I thought Canadians had more sense than this: an MP, Jeff Watson, would like to know if you’d like a complete ban on all abortions. Right now, 37% of his constituency seem to think that’s just fine and dandy. Maybe he needs some global input?
Which best describes your position:.
I support fully taxpayer-funded abortion, at any time in the pregnancy, for any reason at all; 41%
I support some legal restrictions on access to abortion, for example restricting full access to abortion to the first trimester of pregnancy; 11%
I support abortion for any reason but it shouldn’t be taxpayer-funded; 2%
I support creative policy options and supports that help women with unexpected pregnancies keep the baby; or 7%
I support a complete ban on abortion. 37%
I guess he doesn’t want any opinions other than his own, 403 forbidden LoL
I voted. Full access-47%.
If you click the article link in the OP (above the blockquote) it takes you to the article on the Canadian Atheist site–at the end of the article is a working link to the poll. (For now, at least…)
Interesting how opinions were divided between two extremes.
It worked for me, but I am in Canada. Give it another try; why would they go to the trouble to IP restrict?
Current standings: 47% for full abortion access with tax payer funding, 1% full access without taxpayer funding (abortions for the rich!) vs 49% various forms of anti-choice options. Anything less than 50% on the full for side will be considered a victory for the anti-choicers because that is how Conservatives read polls. (See Wheat Pool voting.)
More reliable polling tells a different story: (I know, it’s a shock to everyone here that an internet poll is less than accurate…)
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/health-and-fitness/health/canadians-dont-want-abortion-debate-reignited-poll-finds/article7902348/
44: Percentage of Canadians who say abortions should be permitted in all cases
23: Percentage who say abortion should be permitted, but subject to greater restrictions than now
18: Percentage who say it should be permitted only in cases such as rape, incest and to save a woman’s life
4 Percentage who say abortion should only be permitted to save a woman’s life
5 Percentage who say abortion should never be permitted
59 Percentage who say there is no point in reopening the abortion debate right now
Full support already up to 54% :D
I emailed te MP telling him to keep his religious ‘ethics’ out of my law. It’s not my business what a women does with her body.
It is not surprising that as a conservative, he would choose to word the poll question that way. The conservative party is not at its first attempt to re-open this debate. Now they are trying to use an editorial from the Canadian Medical Association Journal that states sex selective abortions are a problem in Canada. It is important to note that we have no data on this, and that the editor’s recommendation was to deny parents information on the sex of their fetus….not mess with the laws as they stand.
Whily bunch, those conservatives. I’ve been ready to go back to the voting booth about 5 minutes after the first time they got into power.
That was quick. 61% now.
I actually really like the fourth option, so long as it’s paired with the first option.
Up to 60% now .
The “for any reason including sex-selection” does add a bit of a tricky ethical dimension to it, but for me, bodily autonomy trumps all, including any feelings I have about that particular case. Better to fight against sex-selecting abortions by fighting misogyny in our culture than to do it by restricting women’s rights any further.
The categories are instructive; to support taxpayer funded abortion, you must support it for any reason at any time up to birth, or only during the first trimester. What if you support it in the first two trimesters, and in the third trimester for health reasons? That would be a category that would be much more acceptable. (And while for any reason might be construed to be for things like sex-selection, etc, I think ultimately we do have to let the woman make the decision. And I can attest that when someone wants a boy and gets a girl, if the want is deep enough, the girl might be better off not being born).
Ok, so here’s the problem I have with “any time in the pregnancy, for any reason at all.” I’ve commented before that there is no essential difference between a new-born baby and a fully developed fetus, and so it seems like at some late stage in the pregnancy, killing a fetus should have similar legal ramifications to killing a baby. This argument has been met with two responses:
1) Even if it were an adult human living inside the woman, the woman still has the right to kill it because you can’t force another person to provide life support for you for nine months
2) Late-term abortions are rare and usually only happen when the mother’s life is in danger
The second argument is completely pointless in my opinion; the fact that something rarely happens is not a good excuse to make it legal. We should, of course, continue to allow late term abortions when the woman’s life is in danger, but that doesn’t mean we should also allow late term abortions “for any reason at all.” I realize that this is already the law in most states, but I’m just pointing out that this is different from “any time in the pregnancy, for any reason at all.”
As for the first argument, I agree with the premise that you have the right to kill someone if they are trying to hijack your body for nine months, and I also agree that consent to having sex is not consent to having a baby. However, it seems like if you’ve been pregnant for six or seven months, some sort of irreversible consent has been given. Here’s an analogy: if an intruder comes into your home, you have the right to use deadly force to resist him. But if someone comes to your house and you tell them that they can live there for nine months, and then in the seventh month you decide to kill them, there are going to be legal issues.
I apologize on behalf of my nation that we elected manipulative, shallow-thinking tools like Watson and Woodworth.
Ashamed to say Dear Jeff is my MP. It used to be a Liberal riding but that ended with the meltdown of that party.
Could we not compare pregnancy to house guests?
Congratulations, all you people who I have a hard time not noticing have male sounding names (with the exception of iknklast who I think is male too, but feel free to correct my misconception), you are all falling for the good old “but what if a woman wants an abortion after 8 months 3 weeks and 4 days, because she finally got sick of the fucking belly and now requests abortion via slicing the fetus into bits because she’s just that sick of the nasty little thing”. Playing right into Jeff Watson and his ilk’s hands.
Well, who would have thought. Those bastards aren’t all that stupid after all.
I meant also to say that Eric MacDonald at Choice in Dying did a post not long ago about Harper letting his back benchers introduce bills to
put women in their placedefend babies. He knows they won’t pass but it lets the MPs from religious ridings to say that they tried.There are skewed sex rations in some communities in BC such as Abbotsford where there are 1.2 boys for every girl. It’s assumed this is the result of sex-selective abortion because the Indian-Canadian population is so high in Abbotsford. Instead of overhauling legislation, ultrasound providers in public health just refrain from disclosing gender before twenty weeks, after which point abortion is no longer readily available in the province and physicians are unlikely to provide the service without what they perceive as necessity. This, of course, doesn’t impact private ultrasonography providers. I don’t know what ratio of ultrasounds are performed privately vs. publicly.
Regardless, I’m a bit squicked by the idea we could, as a province or country, tell women the reason they’ve given for having an abortion, particularly one before twenty weeks, isn’t good enough or that we’re going to deny them the opportunity to make what we consider bad choice regarding their pregnancy. Yeah, sex selective abortion is dumb. It’s still their body and the fetus still isn’t entitled to life.
The devaluing of female people worries me enormously. As a female person though I fuss about what implications barring sex-selective abortions might have on me, not because I would opt to abort based on sex, but because other reasons to terminating might be found to be frivolous. I go in circles about the issue.
I’d really like to see the numbers regarding abortions in the province and determine if sex-selection is as prominent a reason for the therapy as we’re led to believe based on sex ratios.
travisrm89,
As far as I know, abortion at any time at all is already legal in Canada.
No such thing. In matters of bodily autonomy, consent can be withdrawn at any point. That’s what bodily autonomy means.
@ travisrm89 as a man, I thought similarly until a woman helped re-frame the question for me.
There are ethical ramifications to every medical intervention, due to risks of complications, quality of life considerations, etc.
We already have highly-trained professionals, doctors, working on a case-by-case basis and making these decisions with the best information available in each instance. Further, they have their own systems of oversight, including licensing bodies and malpractice law, already in place.
Why should abortion be legislated any differently than any other medical procedure? Why is it only in this case that the knowledge and judgement of a politician trumps that of the doctor working personally on the case?
Rememer that just because there’s no legal prohibition on specific kinds of abortion doesn’t mean that they’ll happen willy-nilly – as long as there’s a doctor involved who can make an informed judgement in each case. When blanket prohibitions are introduced, people will seek out other means, and trained doctors and the oversight they bring are removed from the process.
Thinking about it as a medical procedure performed by a professional of sound judgement, does it make more sense now why many would prefer to avoid legal/political micromanagement?
Irreversible consent, eh? So if you have a sex partner for six or seven months, I guess you’ll just have to keep fucking them forever. A uterus is just like a house and not at all like an internal organ in someone’s body, right?
agreed.
We had a similar discussion a while back about refusing to give women information about their pregnancies being used to stop sex-selective abortions in India; given that women who give birth to daughters there often face physical abuse, refusing to tell women the sex of the fetus amounts to protecting the fetus at the cost of the woman’s right to protect herself from physical abuse.
I don’t know to what degree that is a problem in Canadian Indian communities; however, it’s still largely the same dynamic: keeping the sex secret is to withhold information that is salient to a person making informed decisions about their health/their body, in order to protect fetuses from those decisions. It is fucked up.
Um, what about extreme fetal anomalies not diagnosed until 22 or 24 weeks? Do women consent to that irreversibly?
Or a fourteen year old rape victim whose been in denial? Did she irreversibly consent to another three months of a pregnancy she hadn’t even admitted to herself was present?
BTW, yes, abortion is legal in Canada at any time for any reason. Provinces and territories operate according to different guidelines though and physicians are not legally required to provide abortion services. Their legal obligations are providing adequate information and referrals for abortion in addition to not “standing in the way” of a patient obtaining abortion services. Some provinces still fly patients to Colorado or Kansas because they don’t have enough willing, skilled physicians to provide services past eighteen or so weeks. It’s quite embarrassing.
What a horribly worded pair of options. Say rather: I support taxpayer-funded abortion for any reason [either, before viability / before the third trimester].
People supporting the general idea of legal abortions are being divided into two camps, and they will likely be dismissed as a minority if either one is less supported than the primary fundamentalist option.
More abysmal wording. There is no reason to present this as if it was mutually incompatible with other options.
Yeah, well, here’s the thing, christian right wingers: fuck you.
Also in Canada. . .
[url=http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/story/2013/02/24/ottawa-comic-book-gay-marriage-orson-scott-card-shoppe-boycott.html]Ottawa comic shop pulls books of anti-gay writer[/url]
@dmgregory
Yes, it makes sense not to have political micromanagement, but legal guidelines are still necessary. For instance, we don’t want micromanagement of city police departments, but we can still agree that police should not be allowed to use deadly force in any situation, and a discussion of the types of situations in which deadly force should be authorized is necessary.
@The mellow monkey
I’m not claiming that all (or even most) consent is irreversible, but I think we can all agree that there are certain situations in which you can’t back out at the last minute. If you agree to give someone a ride, you can’t just change your mind halfway through and leave them stranded in a desert (obviously there are some exceptions, just like there are exceptions for abortions).
@marinerachel
I hardly think those situations would fall under the category of “any reason at all.”
*snicker*
well whatever. The abortion issue isn’t going to be reopened in Canada. These people are just rattling their chains in front of social conservatives to prove that the divide is still meaningful and that a glimmer of hope exists. The common ground, though, is that the decision should not be entered into by trivial reasons, like caprice, or losing a bet, or whatever. Hopefully we’ll arrive at the right balance of rights one of these days
@Beatrice
Yes, I realized how funny that sounded after I hit submit. What I should have said was:
“Those situations are part of a much narrower category than ‘Any reason at all.'”
Why is there nothing between ‘any time, ay reason, full payment’ and ‘ban on when and where’?
Honestly, if I’m paying for something medical, I want to know it’s medically warranted. But that doesn’t mean I want some inflexible restriction. I’d just want to encourage it to happen when safest, in other words, earlier. Having an extra doctor sign off after a certain date might encourage that, I dunno, but that’s still not ‘gay abortions for everyone every tuesday’ as the option vs a blanket ban.
Uhh, my point being that I think the poll is specifically disingenuous in its wording. x-x
travisrm89 – you can dump them out of your car if they pull a gun on you, right? So there are indeed reasons you can back out of a deal.
Here’s another way to look at it – there are a lot of things that are legal even though we know for an absolute fact that their legality leads to deaths. You can buy four full bottles of liquor at once even though if you drink them all at once you’ll probably die. You can have a gun in your house, in some areas loaded and without any safety on them at all, even though if a kid comes across it they could shoot themselves. You can go for a long drive on the highway when you’re sleep deprived even though you will probably get into an accident. In some areas you can drive on a motorcycle without wearing any safety equipment. And the list goes on and on, and in most of those things you wouldn’t be charged with any offense at all if the worst happens (or negligence at best, with a tiny fine).
So given that we let personal freedom and bodily autonomy trump actual deaths of people in so many other areas, why be such a stickler about this one? The life of a fetus is so important that we will eliminate bodily autonomy to the point of forcing a woman to remain pregnant for a few more months even though it literally raises her risk of dying, but on the other hand life is not so important that we’ll eliminate the bodily autonomy to… not keep a gun locked up? Not wear a helmet? Not drive while tired? This is an enormous discrepancy.
Also, you’re presuming that the woman in question AND her doctor both will potentially make a bad decision. If the fetus is entirely viable, the medically safest way to remove it from the woman is birth itself, and the doctor would encourage that option (and may refuse to perform the other). If the safest method is abortion, then the doctor would encourage that option.
Whether they abort or deliver, I’m paying for it and abortion is usually safer than delivery so preventing women from accessing later abortions isn’t really encouraging safety or saving me money.
90% of abortions in Canada are performed within the first twelve weeks. Less than .5% are performed in the third trimester in extreme, complex situations. It’s very likely there’s no way to avoid the .5% abortions that are much higher risk than the others because we aren’t preventing the scenarios in which they’re required.
@travisrm89
Just because you’ve said it before does not make it true. Repeating something over and over doesn’t somehow increase its validity.
The essential difference between a newborn baby and a fully developed fetus is that only ONE of those things continues to directly infringe on someone else’s bodily autonomy.
That’s pretty fucking essential. If you don’t understand that there’s a huge difference between “born” and “not born”, I hope you’ll understand if women prefer doctors to help with delivery rather than anonymous internet commenters.
And if you’re foolish enough to believe that anti-choice activists and lawmakers are “reasonable” enough to put more value on the pregnant person’s life than the fetus, I must conclude that you have not been paying attention.
“women” should be “anyone who is pregnant”. Sorry.
I sent him the following message
*headdesk*
People, cag just being the last one, since abortion is legal in Canada at any time and for any reason, you are telling this bastard you want to change that law and restrict it. What the hell?
@ llbguy
I’m not sure if I misunderstood what you wrote, but what does getting an abortion as a “caprice” even mean?
And presuming that this happens often enough that it warrants taking every woman’s bodily autonomy away by means of the threat of prison for both woman and doctor if they make “the wrong”* decision in someone else’s eyes. In other words, fuck your paternalism, travisrm.
*The “wrong” in question not already being covered under existing laws surrounding sound medical ethical practice.
Just a reminder: abortions in the third trimester occur for more reasons than just the health of the pregnant person. It also includes fetal health and death. Just because a pregnant person could possibly give birth to a deformed or dead fetus and suffer no additional ill-effects than they would if the fetus had been healthy or alive doesn’t mean they should be forced to go through such an awful experience.
Blanket legislation causes real harm to real people.
maudell,
Well, the official name for that is “abortion on a whim”, usually done for reasons such as wanting a trim waist back immediately or craving to go bar hopping (which you get shit for if you have a belly up to your nose).
@cag
Thank you for supporting reproductive slavery in Canada. Here’s a cookie for you, douchebag.
sure, but none of them involve bodily autonomy; which I think you know quite well, or else you wouldn’t have to fall back on non-bodily-autonomy-based analogies.
Accurate analogies:
It’s legal to back out at the last moment from a marrow or organ donation, even if this will kill the patient.
It is entirely ok to withdraw consent for sex, even after already having started to have sex; continuing after consent has been withdrawn is rape.
@ Beatrice
Abortion after 20 and 24 weeks is already restricted in Canadian provinces and territories. That it’s not restricted by Ottawa doesn’t change that reality.
@Ibis3
Your statement kind of deprecates actual slaves. I’m pretty sure slaves would be thrilled if they had 20 weeks to decide whether or not they wanted to continue to be slaves.
@travisrm89
Care to acknowledge the difference between newborn babies and developed fetuses?
@mythrbi
Yes, there’s a difference between newborn babies and developed fetuses in the same way that there’s a difference between a person on the street and a person in your home. My point was that this difference is not always sufficient to justify the killing of a person in your home or a fetus in your womb.
Lets all vote on whether or not Travis can have an appendectomy.
@travisrm89
Nope, that’s not the same way they’re different (that sounds strange to me, but hopefully you understand what I mean).
Tell me, why do you think that women and female-bodied persons are so flighty and stupid that they require legislation telling them what to do with their own bodies after a certain point in pregnancy? What makes you think that any abortions that result in the death of the fetus are done for insufficient reasons? What authority do you have that makes you qualified to separate sufficient reasons from insufficient reasons?
travisrm89 – do you support legislation that will prevent people from doing anything that may cause a fatality?
incorrect.
I am not like my possessions. Someone inside me is not even close to like someone inside something I own.
@jafafa
If my appendix morphed into an infant and I already made the decision for the last six months not to remove it while knowing that it would morph into an infant, then you can vote on whether or not I can have an appendectomy.
being like
@carlie
no… just about anything “may” cause a fatality.
Liar. There are several import and irreversible changes during and after the birth process, and you can’t ignore them. The biggest changes: 1) No longer inside of the woman. 2) Breathing and receiving oxygen on its own. 3) Fetal hemoglobin changes to regular hemoglobin, jump starting the brain. 4) It can be nourished by people and methods other than parasitically leeching from the woman. Until you discuss facts, your OPINION can and will be *floosh* treated as the bullshit it is.
You want to take away my right to decide what happens within my own self, within my body? You want the state and it’s legislators and judges to force me to undergo medical procedures I don’t want or to prevent me, for other than medical reasons, from availing myself of medical procedures I determine that I need? How is that any different from any other kind of slavery? It may be different in focus or duration from labour slavery or sex slavery, but when you use me as an object (i.e. an incubating machine), without regard to my right to bodily autonomy and security of person, without regard to my health or well-being, that’s the word we have to describe that situation.
@travisrm89
Even if that appendix-baby were killing you?
That’s a lot of power you’re willing to put into the hands of people who don’t even know you.
irrelevant.
people are allowed to withdraw consent about what happens to their bodies, even at the last minute, even if it will cause someone to die. This is true for marrow/organ donations, and it’s true for abortions.
Funny how the arguments goes to the least likely abortion.
(No so funny is, how in the US, it has been made more difficult to get an abortion as early as possible.)
@mythbri
I said in my very first comment that abortions to save the life of the woman should be allowed.
Voted! And sheesh, people, fifty comments in and nobody’s linked to Thomson’s A Defense of Abortion? Her arguments convinced me that unrestricted abortion can be strongly defended, and I have yet to hear a good counter to her reasoning.
neither is it funny that this sort of wangsting over late term abortions is precisely the reason they’re nigh impossible to get even when the woman’s live actually is in danger, and why they’ve been made more dangerous by banning some types of late-term-abortion.
AFAIK, there’s only 25 clinics in all of the US where late-term abortions are performed.
Just not those women who, at eight and a half months, decides, on a bet or on a whim, to end it.
but not her health?
the fuck? wrong quote; last post was supposed to quote Janine’s last comment. oops.
I don’t know your gender, and I don’t know specifically why you use the screen name Travis, but if you are actually named Travis and are like most people named Travis, your being pregnant is about as likely as having an appendix-baby inside you. If that’s the case you’re fortunate enough to not have to worry about anyone telling you what choice to make about your body.
I don;t know for sure, since I’m a man and will never be pregnant, but I have a feeling that people who can get pregnant might have a different feeling about the idea of others telling them what they can and can’t do with their body than those of us who will never be and can never be that physically or emotionally invested in the outcome.
At any rate, if your appendix morphed into an infant, that would mean it had been born.
I join you in opposing all post-natal abortions.
No, there are many things that DO cause fatalities. Known to do so, absolutely do so, still legal. Why not be on the safe side and restrict them? Don’t you care about life?
Excuse me, but Savita Halappanavar overrides any random dickbag’s “morality.”
@travisrm89
But I say that you have a 40% chance of surviving giving birth to the appendix-baby, so I vote that this is an acceptable risk for me to force you to make.
Any delivery carries with it a life-threatening risk. If I get to decide what level of risk is acceptable, then I get to force to you continue with the pregnancy of your appendix-baby regardless of how you feel about it.
Travis the fuckwit:
One problem, your claims then go to elective abortions at term. Now, show us that actually happens. If you can’t, you are nothing but a liar and bullshitter. If you can’t, shut the fuck up, as you have no argument.
Shoot a few more doctors an all the rest can be closed. And the tea bagging ghouls can put up more laws to make it impossible to reopen them.
Travis:
No, actually NO ONE would have the right to vote on what you do with your body. From what I see in this thread, you either do not understand the concept of bodily autonomy, or you do not respect it. The former makes you ignorant. The latter makes you an asshole. Which are you?
Usernames are smart, you have been around long enough. You know that the use of gendered insults are not welcome here.
Even the ones that aren’t terminated.
I know of a couple of women who developed life-threatening illness years after their child was born because of thyroid problems that are apparently triggered by pregnancy. Auto-immune disorders as a result, etc.
@Jadehawk 60
I must admit that the marrow/organ donation argument seems like the most compelling argument for allowing abortions at any stage. I’ll have to think some more about it.
That’s something that can’t be said enough. People crying about late term abortions are the same people making late term abortions more necessary than before.
Source.
So as we see the GOP create even more hoops for women to jump through, late term abortions will increase, increasing the stress on women who wish for this treatment. Not just in terms of physical stress, but emotional stress as well. The last one is likely a feature in the eyes of anti-choice nuts.
Source.
Thus making anti-choice legislation self-defeating, and such laws will just increase the dangers with abortion. If these people were concerned with the health and well-being of women, they would look for ways to reduce unwanted pregnancies.
But we all know they are concerned only with enforcing their barbaric religious values onto others. I really wish there was a person like this in this very thread. I mean, how great would it be for someone like that to show up and say really dumb things?
Have any late term abortions of the “willy nilly” nature travis and other anti-choicers have ranted about ever happened?
(note, even if they did happen, that is still no justification for making a woman keep the fetus)
****
travis:
Why do you feel a fetus’ rights in the 8th month of gestation should trump the mother’s bodily autonomy?
Why do you think that society has the right to demand that in some cases women do not get to decide what to do with their bodies?
(I will metaphorically strangle the first person to present a fucking hypothetical)
It’s compelling. Plus, there is no abortions on demand for viable feti. After 30 weeks, nothing but fetal deformities or to save the life of the woman. Prove otherwise with third party evidence. No evidence, no need for inane hypothetical and fuckwitted arguments.
Next thing you know conservatives will start arguing that we need to restrict people’s access to the vote because someone somewhere might cheat some day.
oh, wait…
@travisrm89
Also note that in the U.S. at least, even corpses are not forced to give up their organs for donation if their consent had not been established while they were still living.
Do you think it’s odd that dead people are afforded more bodily autonomy than pregnant people?
@Nerd of Redhead 72
I was responding to the claim that abortions should be allowed “at any time in the pregnancy, for any reason at all.” The fact elective abortions at term are rare is not a good argument for why they should be legal. Murder is rare, but it should still be illegal.
Travis:
You are not doing yourself any favors by continuing to comment. Your ignorance shines for all to see, just as your disrespect for women has lit up this thread. I had hopes that your comment @77 meant you would try to be more informed. Seeing you compare aborting a fetus to murder has me doubting you.
Murder ends the life of an individual, autonomous human being.
Abortion does not.
The two are not the same.
My point is not that it is rare, it is non-existent. Either prove abortion on demand occurs with a viable fetus or shut the fuck up about it. It’s one or the other unless you are irrational without honesty, and integrity…welcome to science, not blather….
@Tony the Queer 84
I wasn’t equating abortion to murder. I was just giving an example of something that is rare and yet is illegal.
@Nerd of Redhead 85
A large part of why it might be non-existent is that we already have laws in place to prevent it from happening. But the original poll category said “at any time in the pregnancy, for any reason at all.” Whether or not this category corresponds to current laws or what actually takes place is a separate discussion.
@Nerd Why are you going down the rabbit hole of judging motive? I’m sure that there are many cases where abortions occur when a foetus is viable (i.e. able to, theoretically, possibly, be kept alive via medical intervention if, hypothetically, the foetus had been an already born neonate, instead of, a, you know, foetus inside a person’s body). So the fuck what? Why should anyone care but the person with the uterus and their physician?
Eric O
I understand your gut reaction. Most likely this means that a woman will abort a female fetus and the instinctive reaction is “Nonononono”.
But think about it like this: This woman, who most likely is pregnant voluntarily, who has gone through 4-5 months of pregnancy alsready, thinks that it’s better to have an abortion than a girl.
If she’s prevented from having an abortion, a baby girl will be born into that situation. Who could support that?
travisrm89
Asserted without evidence, dismissed without evidence.
Wrong. You can withdraw consent for marrow donation last minute even though it means the other person will die. And compared to pregnancy, that’s a walk in the park
marinerachel
25 weeks before we even found out that something was wrong with the liitle one, a few weeks more to find out it was NOT Potter’s syndrome (no kidneys, 100% lethal)
Do these shitheads think we do that for fun?
To quote myself on this:
No, it has to do with medical ethics too. And fuckwitted idjits who can’t look at reality, and pretend that things happen that don’t.
Yes, and try to find the real differences between the US, which has draconian laws, and Canada, where there are no regulations for third trimester abortions. Anybody looking at the evidence, and not mental wanking about something that really doesn’t occur, doesn’t make a continued ass of themselves telling half the population what to do with their bodies in hypothetical situations. Look in the mirror.
Does anybody have the link to Alethea’s comment the last time this came up handy? Because that was the kick-assingest of kick-ass statements regarding “but can we control them if [x improbable situation]?”.
@travisrm
There are no abortion laws in Canada.There are medical ethics as decided upon by regulatory bodies such as the CMA, and there are, unfortunately, obstacles to access in the form of geography, limitations on provincial funding, and a dearth of trained medical personnel in certain areas (in both the procedure sense and the regional sense).
Here ya go, carlie.
I recall the point of it having been explained to you MANY times.
at this point, why should anyone give a flying fuck about your opinion on the matter?
Let me just say woot legal government funded abortions anytime for any reason boo not enough abortion access. I wish we (canadians in general) could stop arguing about the former and get working on the latter.
not if part of the discussion is:
“how to create biased and leading poll questions”
but then, you seem to have absolutely no problems whatsoever presenting biased and leading arguments yourself, you dishonest shit.
carlie: also for future reference
http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/category/bloggery/molly-award/
^This. I mean, it’s been more than two decades since the Morgentaler decision.It’s time to press forward.
Way to go, Travis, comparing a human being (a woman) to an inanimate collection of wood, brick, metal, and drywall (a home).
Very very telling of what you think is important and what you think is not.
Ow, she’s a brickhouse
She’s mighty mighty, just lettin’ it all hang out
(Sorry. Sometimes I cannot help myself.)
If this is true, why are the 3rd trimester abortion rates pretty much identical between Canada, where there are now law restricting access, and the USA, where there are?
Logic! Facts! They are your friends.
Fully viable pregnancies after around 30 weeks are terminated by induced birth. Abprtion is not medically indicated and thus not offered. “Abortion” at this stage is not murder but it is medical malpractice, and already covered by existing law.
In fact, the technical medical procedure of an induced birth and an abortion at this late stage of pregnancy are ALMOST IDENTICAL. In both cases the products of conception are removed from the uterus. There are only so many ways of doing this, technically. Upon rival from the uterus, a normal viable fetus is capable of sustaining its own life ON ITS OWN. It becomes a baby. A nonviable fetus (which at this late stage can only be due to a medical abnormality) will either die or already be dead, ON ITS OWN. And that is the only distinction between induced birth and abortion in the late term. The distinction is BIOLOGICAL and has nothing to do with the medical technique chosen to terminate the pregnancy.
And that is why “abortion” of a normal late term viable fetus does not exist. It is biologically impossible. The only way a viable fetus ends up dead after termination of pregnancy in this scenario is medical error or malpractice. If it dies for any other reason the by definition it was not viable!
And by this, you mean that women and female-bodied persons are flighty and stupid and will endure months of pregnancy only to abort at a whim.
I remember joey making this argument. #stickssharp
I think it was just badly worded. What’s meant is that anyone driving a Caprice shouldn’t be allowed to reproduce.
This is the response I left in the comments section of the Canadian Atheist page:
The idea in this poll is to frame most of the options as unpleasant, to push the poll-taker to the desired outcome:
Most people won’t want to allow abortion “for any reason at all”.
As Iknklast above says, “What if you support it in the first two trimesters, and in the third trimester for health reasons?” That’s not an option here, or at least vague.
Suppose there’s support for abortion for SOME reasons but the poll taker doesn’t want it taxpayer funded?
Basically, this is just a dishonest poll framed for a particular answer. I wish I was shocked. What’s nice is that it’s been pharyngulated into an answer diametrically opposite to what the MP wanted.
You know, I have a suspicion that many people who share the same opinion as travis (and joey) have no idea how much pregnancy affects the health of a woman. I have to admit I was uenaware of the hazards of even a low risk pregnancy until a few months ago.
Beatrice @17 (sorry it’s taking so long to answer, but I’ve been involved in many other activities, and just now saw your comment): Just to set the record straight: Female. And I really don’t have a problem with late-term abortion. If my comment made it sound as though I do, I apologize. Perhaps I have expressed my opinion badly; I just thought the choices were limited and manipulative.
I am on record as saying (totally in jest, of course) that a woman should have the right to abort right up until the 30th birthday (I have now increased that to 40, since my beloved and adored son just turned 30, and I can no longer tease him with that comment). I do believe there is a difference between a fetus and a baby, and I also believe that a woman is the final arbiter of her own body. I’m not saying that out of selfish desire to have abortion available; it is not a choice I will ever be forced to make again. I simply do not consider myself the appropriate decision maker for any woman but myself.
Ugh.
Above, where I said “even the ones that aren’t terminated,” I actually meant even the ones where there are no complications. Even successful births can have life-threatening health consequences years after the fact.
Sorry, been sick the last 4 days, can’t think straight.
Thanks, Ibis3! Everybody else who is trying to argue why we should restrict abortion: go read that other post and thread linked to in #93 NOW, ok? Because it’s really stupid to be so repetitive when so much has already been laid out there. Yes, it’s long. Waaah. Go do some homework before trying to monopolize everybody’s time.
thankyou. I couldn’t for the life of me remember the correct term for it a few minutes ago.
@carlie, nope, might as well just post the gist of it as a question to Travis, since I’m sure he’s heard it before…
so, Travis… why are you?
As an aside, sometimes there are extremely good medical reasons for sex-selective abortions. My good friend’s BIL has just been diagnosed with a genetic disease, degenerative and terminal, and it’s X-linked. Luckily he has daughters not sons, and luckily his only grandchild is a girl. And now any other grandchildren WILL be girls.
I’m probably gonna get flamed for this but I actually agree with travisrm here, his first post that is. The last months of pregnancy, the moral option is to deliver the baby, not kill it. I can’t see how you can have a moral right to kill someone that’s been a guest in your house if driving them out will get rid of them aswell. Before birth is viable and relatively safe, yes go for abortion – if the intruder refuse to leave alive then by all means kill him, but when the police has already arrived and pacified the burglar in your house the right to shoot him in self-defence is long gone even if he still technically is on your property. Likewise when there is a good chance to terminate the pregnancy without killing the fetus you no longer have any right to kill it in the name of bodily autonomy. I’m speaking as a general rule of thumb here, ofcourse there will be exceptions and I’m guessing that those few women who had late abortions actually had (atleast 99% of them) very good reason for it.
That’s why I, unlike travisrm, don’t want to change any laws. If it had been like a pill anyone could take that magically killed and removed the fetus from the womb then that would require a bit more legislation, but as it’s handled already by professionals in the field of medicine which furthermore, unlike the government, actually has a code of ethics, the issue is in the hands of those best qualified to judge best course of action: The pregnant women themselves and their doctors.
Pre-natal sex selection is a problem that will sort itself out in time. The communities that practice it (notably the Indo-Canadian, but also the Chinese in their motherland, I believe) will eventually wake up to the problem that there simply aren’t enough women to go around. Taking Abbotsford as an example, and making some simplifying assumptions (universal heterosexuality, everybody wants to get married and within their own community), one out of five Indo-Canadian males in Abbotsford born in the twenty-teens won’t be able to find a wife in their age cohort.
Suddenly Indo-Canadian parents will realize that daughters command a premium in the marriage market.
What the anti-abortion maniacs wilfully turn a blind eye to: the old laws against abortion never stopped anyone from trying. Some were lucky, and merely had to have sex with their dentist in order to undergo the operation after office hours. Others weren’t so lucky and resorted to coat hangers, often resulting in the death not only of the fetus but also the mother-to-be.
Incidentally, non-Canadians need to know that the abortion laws in Canada were relaxed in part because the Crown could not get a guilty verdict when they prosecuted. Juries simply refused to convict. Google “Henry Morgenthaler”. And these days, the morning-after pill, Plan B, is sold over the counter. My pharmacist has it sitting on the shelf behind the cash register in full view.
For fucks sake!
Facepalm
Headdesk
Hulk smash
#114, have you even read the thread?
Why do you care more for the fetus’ “right to life” over the woman’s bodily autonomy?
Comparing a womans body to a home is fucked up. A woman has agency and full bodily autonomy. A woman gets to choose what to do with her body. Last I checked, homes are not sentient creatures capable of feeling pain and possessing bodily autonomy.
Fuck. This isn’t that hard.
Quit trying to create a wedge in a woman’s right to choose.
Silly question time, skaduskitai. Do you think that women, if they have free and easy access to abortions during the earlier part of their pregnancies, are going to get to the eighth month and decide,, on a whime, to end it?
When pregnancy is not a compulsion, when a pregnancy gets to the eighth month, that is a desired pregnancy.
Why is this so fucking difficult to understand?
<blockquoteThe last months of pregnancy, the moral option is to deliver the baby, not kill it.
What if the fetus is anencephalic?
What if it has Patau’s syndrome?
What if it has Cytomegalovirus?
I guess some women just do it for the stretch marks, Janine.
Jafafa:
I couldn’t muster up more than a chuckle. I guess I am tired of threads like this always bringing out the hypotheticals (are they distant cousins to the hyperskeptics?) …
Because what you need to understand is the same thing that travis needs to understand: you are advocating a legal restriction that will cause harm because you are worried about a hypothetical possibility that has never once been shown to actually happen. If late-term abortions are banned, then women carrying anencephalic fetuses will NOT have the option to abort. Women who are infected with cytomegalovirus will NOT have the option to abort. And you can’t hand-wave that away by saying “Oh, those are rare cases”, because they DO HAPPEN, and they happen at much higher rates than your hypothetical what-if 8-month pregnant woman who wants to wear a bikini two weeks sooner.
And do you know what happens when it is illegal, even when there are minor exception loopholes? Nobody gets trained in how to do them, because medical school is short and rotations are short and there are so many other things to be trained in and hey, they’re rare, and even when they’re indicated the threat of not following all the legal restrictions to the letter is so high that doctors are hesitant to do them. And then even when they realize it has to be done, there is nobody around who has done them or who has gotten training in them and then it’s much more dangerous than it has to be. And women will die, and women will be forced through the agony of delivery of a fetus that has zero chance at life, just to soothe your wounded morale that there won’t be a single capricious woman out there who is allowed to carry out her life as she sees fit.
I am not a house
was the guest using your internal organs as well?
no?
then it’s NOT COMPARABLE.
gees, just how dense are people?
that’s uh, rhetorical btw.
See, what we need here is an analogy.
A woman having to listen to legislators tell her what she can do with her body is just like… a person listening to the silverware in their kitchen drawer telling them what to make for dinner. You don’t listen to your silverware, right? That would be a bad thing to do, becuase silverware doesn’t talk and if it did you shouldn’t listen to it.
QED
BOOM
*drops mic*
what if it’s Hitler?
I can haz godwin?
The moral option for those who require forced birth is to pay for the birth and neonate/infant/toddler (and beyond) care for this out of their own pocket, and to care for the neonate, since they are taking responsibility by making the decision for somebody. Not require those with options to do anything. Funny how they never, ever, go there….
can you communicate in “fetus”?
I know I can’t.
Or, let’s see…
A man getting a Viagara prescription on his insurance co-pay is like a… hedgehog getting an ice cream cone. The hedgehog likes the ice cream, yeah? But hedgehogs, they don’t need to eat ice cream! It’s not a moral right for them to have the ice cream, especially since they won’t pay for it because hedgehogs don’t have anywhere to carry a pocketbook. So I’M NOT PAYING FOR YOUR ICE CREAM, HEDGEHOG. YEAH, THAT’S RIGHT.
:) sarcasm is good.
now I just have to post this…
Ichthyic, plz have this godwin, which is carefully wrapped in a hand-tatted internet.
And, in fact, they are often the most vocally opposed to paying into any social service that will help any born child anywhere for any reason.
-new tshirt slogan
-new website domain
-band name
A woman without a man is like a hedgehog without an ice cream.
….
but what about lactose intolerant hedgehogs?
@carlie 124
So… in your analogy, the silverware are the legislators? So you’re saying that legislators don’t talk, and if they did we shouldn’t listen to them? I’m confused…
re 144:
abortion is not, by definition, murder. “take it out, stop using my body” is not a “euphemism” for “kill it, just kill it, and get rid of the corpse”.
To use that “lamest” analogy: what’s wrong with “just get out of my house, if you die, so what, just get out.”? No one is saying the homeowner can just kill anybody in his house (except Texas, maybe), but all agree he can through anybody out the door. That is all an abortion is, just eviction from the uterus.
If you want hypotheticals; where are the artificial wombs we need to support all those poor little evictees? oh I know, Obamacare is hiding them or banned their invention.
Color me surprised.
thinking about the purported reasons behind China’s demographic laws, I’m thinking that would be viewed as a feature, not a bug.
IIRC, skewing the sex ratio was indeed specifically part of an intention to lower population levels.
IOW, they don’t WANT to have “enough women to go around”, so you might not want to try and use this argument there…
In my analogy, things that are inanimate are being made to stand in for things which are animate and have brains, which makes my analogy completely break down and be entirely unrelated to the actual situation, in the same way that your analogy of pregnant women and houses does.
Beatrice, Ibis – when dealing with a fundie who wants to eliminate all abortion is it not better to offer a reasonable alternative than to present a position which the fundie can use as a rallying cry to their constituents? A quick search indicates that 20 weeks is a reasonable position to present to the fundie for a non-medically indicated abortion as the CMA definition states.
A recent article in the National Post (no link so as to avoid exceeding the link limit) at http://news.nationalpost.com/2013/02/22/the-big-shift-canadas-conservatives-poised-for-decades-of-power-in-ottawa/ presents a vision of the future that indicates that part of the pie may be all that we will get.
I would like to get rid of all religion, but the pushback would be overwhelming, so the best that can be expected is a compromise. When dealing with fundies that may be in power for a long time, with a large component demanding an end to abortion would not a somewhat reasonable compromise be preferable to a complete loss?
This is where I’m coming from. Tell me, without expletives, how my position of compromise, where the political reality points to the possibility of an all out ban, is untenable. Tell me how to get a reasonable outcome from a group ideologically opposed to abortion, poised to remain in power for a long time, if you are unwilling to compromise. We have to live in the real world, not the world we are working to achieve. Look to the USA and see what happens when ideologues gain power in state legislatures.
What is with the HTML not lining up in preview?
Travis fails the sarcasm test.
color me shocked.
shocked, I say.
re 134:
oops, should have been “re 114” not 144
seriously, I am so going to get a black tshirt with big white lettering, saying
I’M NOT PAYING FOR YOUR ICE CREAM, HEDGEHOG.
on the front
and
FREEZE PEACH!
on the back
let people smoke their brains on that.
Ichthyic, typical american.
no, because their position is not, and is not meant to be, reasonable in any sense of the word to begin with.
so, the correct response is to move the overton window the other direction.
you don’t do that with “reasonable alternatives” whatever the fuck that means, since how is it REASONABLE that you can rule on someone else’s personal bodily autonomy, let alone for half the population?
I have that on a tshirt too.
[addressed at the same people addressed by carlie]
Or what if the mother has a stroke or debilitating accident and can’t care for a newborn anymore, at least not right away?
Or what if the father rapes and beats her and she no longer wants to have a child with him and be tied to him for 18 years?
Or what if another child in the family is diagnosed with a disease that will require all of the family’s money and resources to care for?
Or what if she’s a young teenage victim of incest who has to raise enough money to go to another city to have an abortion and can’t manage to do so within your arbitrary deadline?
Or what if the family’s home is destroyed in a natural disaster and they decide it would be better to wait until they have their life stabilized before bringing another human into the picture?
Or what if the mother is addicted to drugs or alcohol and, though she had good intentions, finds out she can’t abstain, thus risking FAS or other complications?
Until you’re the pregnant one, and you’re making the decision for yourself, it’s none of your fucking business.
@carlie
Gotcha. Though, to be fair, I wasn’t making the house stand in for a woman, I was making the house stand in for her uterus. Still, I see the point.
Or the hedgehog holding the ice cream could be sitting on the frozen peach! :D
I rather highly doubt that.
there will be a quiz next monday.
Such a fine difference. So, travirm89, is your testes a SRO?
travis:
You do understand that a house is not like a uterus, right?
Like, not at all.
It’s not clear to me that there should be any abortion legislation. This is a decision completely up to the pregnant person. The state has no business meddling in that decision and any attempt to legislate it will be clumsy at best because laws can not adequately cover all the potential circumstances. And, as Carlie suggests, the mere fact that there is legislation governing abortion can inhibit its availability.
The survey awkwardly mixes in the question of whether the state should pay for abortions, but that’s a separate issue. I’m enough of a socialist idealist to believe that the society should provide all its members complete medical care regardless of the circumstances.
Which… is part of the problem, that you can even think that it’s possible to make that substitution. I hate to get all but you don’t knooooow what it’s like, but seriously, for a minute. It is pretty damned impossible to adequately convey what it’s like to be pregnant to someone who hasn’t been. To describe what it feels like to actually feel something moving around inside you, to poke you in the diaphram at odd moments, to kick at your bladder, to see your own skin move and you’re not making it happen. The changes that come with pregnancy are legion, and you feel them everywhere. Your breasts hurt. You cry and fluid leaks out of your nipples. Your joints get loose and pop more often. Your skin oiliness changes. Your blood pressure goes up. You develop carpal tunnel syndrome in both hands. Your stomach rebels against your favorite foods. You feel nauseated and heartburny, sometimes continually for weeks on end. You feel these things every minute of the day, and it’s not all glowing happiness and goodness. It is not in any way like an inert container that has something inside it.
And these things aren’t just unpleasant or uncomfortable. They are dangerous. Women die from pregnancy. More women die from childbirth. This still happens. Pregnancy is not simply a “natural phenomenon” that modern science has made a wonderful experience. It is, to put it mildly, a big fucking deal. So it’s incredibly inappropriate to compare it to a person sitting in your living room dropping Doritos on your white carpet.
Is this the Twilight Zone?
Carlie, you are not making it sound like that you fulfilled you purpose in life.
travis:
This is the point where you (and those who agree with you) should stop…listen…comprehend…go do some research…empathize…and stop trying to chip away at a woman’s right to choose because you think your morals trump her agency.
Lol @ Janine. I guess if all my sperm cells suddenly turned into babies it would be similar to an SRO. It would be more like a 3MRO, though (3M = 30 million).
Can’t stop laughing.
chigau:
Nah.
More like Tales From the Darkside…
And the point goes screaming silently past his head.
Janine, it’s like having a fucking hedgehog inside you demanding banana splits, let me tell you.
It’s all just chuckles to you, ain’t it clownboy.
Carlie, I would like to see that printed on the torso of a maternity blouse.
Still waiting for Travis to say something intelligent. Like “I’m sorry, not my decision, I’ll shut the fuck up”.
hey, I’m not payin’ for that, just so we’re clear.
Tony
Maybe it’s Groundhog Day.
The same thing repeated over and over andoverandoverand…
I’m going to re-post a comment I made in the Thunderdome when my cousin almost died at the beginning of the year. The tone is a lot more rage-y than the one I’ve been using in the thread this far – but let’s be honest: lots of people will take offense at tone in order to ignore the argument within.
Link for original context:
http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2012/12/24/thunderdome-13/comment-page-1/#comment-524714
This is not true. They are alike in one important way: Republicans think they can seize both of them for the public good by means of Eminent Domain.
*rimshot*
I wish it was a joke. It is more a slight exaggeration.
Then again, with the recent spat of anti-choice laws I’ve seen the past few months, it might be becoming an understatement. I’m sure Personhood 2.0 is just around the corner here.
Don’t worry, glodson. I saw it for was it is. Just because I laugh does not mean it is not bitter.
Ah, it is just living in Fucking Texas that saps the fun out of it. I swear, this is a state bravely blazing the path of reducing everyone to being less than human. It is like we look for the most dangerous among us, and then put them in charge.
No, third trimester abortion is not identical to delivery. In the case it’s an induction abortion, yes, very similar, except you’re not full term and the fetus is dead, it’s tissues softened, so delivery can proceed with the patient’s well-being of exclusive concern to the care team. Induction abortion is performed in cases where either the patient requests it or the skill set and/or facilities to provide a D&X aren’t available though. D&X requires no induction of labour, just cervical dilation.
And, if After Tiller was accurate, Carhart, Hern, Robinson and Sella are the only physicians left in the United States providing third trimester abortions under any circumstances.
And sometimes you give them to the rest of the US. That is when your governor is not talking about succeeding.
Ichthyic #143, we do not live in a reasonable world, we live in a world where religion and its irrational beliefs still hold sway. What we consider reasonable is not what the fundies consider reasonable, and they have power in Canada. If you want to be shut out of the decisions, do not play the political game, insist on what the people in power reject. It bothers me that a political group generally opposed to abortion may be in power long enough to become so blasé about the opposition to their agenda that they force through regressive laws. If that scenario ever comes close to becoming a reality, the diametrically opposite will be ignored. There is real danger here and a variety of approaches are needed. Ideology is fine but it is the ideology we oppose that currently holds sway in Ottawa. To refuse to play the political game will, under the current regime, result in a loss.
@cag
Compromise of the kind that you’re talking about is what led the United States to be the minefield for abortion rights that it is today.
Compromise is not an option. Learn from what the Republicans have said and done, and don’t let it get to that point in Canada. It’s not about playing political games. It’s about human rights and saving the lives of women.
which is exactly why your approach will not work.
you CANNOT appeal to fundies, because they AREN’T REASONABLE.
instead, you MUST portray the exact nature of just how unreasonable they are.
that said, you also apparently are still missing just how unreasonable it is to actually impose legal restrictions based on gender on one’s bodily autonomy to begin with.
You don’t know politics at all.
really.
nobody who actually deals in politics would ever say what you just did.
@mythbri
I truly empathize with your cousin and what she had to go through. I hope she is feeling better now/ continues to feel better. I wouldn’t dare to pronounce a moral judgment on an individual who is going through something that I’ve never been through.
Don’t take what I’ve said as me casting judgment on women who make certain choices. It’s possible to have a discussion of what the laws should be in order to make the best society without looking down on those who make the best decision they can within the confines of those laws. I would be hesitant to cast a moral judgment on a soldier in battle in any situation, but it’s still reasonable to have a discussion about what the laws governing soldiers in battle should be. The same applies to the issue of abortion.
fool. that is exactly what you actually need to learn.
I call you a liar, and would to your face.
Mythbri, that would be compromise and the use of violence.
Many on the anti-choice side in the US, if not outright terrorists are sympathizers.
But, since you can’t get an abortion, your OPINION is *floosh* irrelevant. Just like you mental wanking not looking at the evidence….
And yet you choose to dwell on the abortions that happens the least often. And you are talking about confining the rights of women.
Forgive me if I feel the need to sneer And to burn bridges.
Ichthyic:
I’m not sure this is totally right. (I had to look it up last time it came up.) The one-child policy was strongly-enforced, but given a general Chinese–pre-existing–preference for boys, selective abortion (against female fetuses) became a problem.
Some provinces introduced an intermediate “if you had a boy, that’s your one child; if you had a girl, OK, you can try again” policies. I don’t think that politically, there was ever a desire to reduce the number of women in order to directly control the reproduction rate. Just a bad combination of policy and pre-existing culture.
As the birth rate has fallen, it’s become somewhat moot, though, and the official policy is moving away from one-child, especially as the 4-2-1 generational structure starts making it hard to run any kind of sensible pension programme …
Corrections from better-informed Sinologists welcomed!
Sorry, but I’m too tired to continue conversing with intellectually dishonest, and corrupt, “thinkers” like the good reverend travis here.
I’ll just raise my middle finger in salute and head off to the beach.
AS I recall it, there were only penalties engaged on a second child in the system if the first was a girl.
that indeed was the most common way the policy was enforced for most of its history.
that said, I stand corrected here:
I can find no direct evidence of this, it does indeed seem an artifact of the way the policy was commonly implemented.
I’m from Canada and I thought the 38% was pretty high especially since the MP’s district seems to be fairly urban. But it’s not an official poll, it’s just a poll on the MP’s website. And it’s down to 11% for a total bsn on abortion and up to 75% for completely funded abortions at any time and for any reason. BTW, we have had NO abortion laws in Canada for 25 years or more now. Our PM, Stephen Harper, is a fundamentalist Christian and he will not even say the ‘abortion’ word. In fact, he is so low key on his religion that most people in Canada probably don’t even know his religion. We tend not to trust politicians who drag their religion into the nasty world of politics. My province of BC had a premier some twenty years ago who spoke out against abortion rights, even doing it in the legislature. His party, the dominant party of BC for 40 years was destroyed utterly and completely. That’s why I don’t go to Canadian political forums. They are boring. All the fun is on US forums.
@travisrm89
Merely by saying that those laws need to be in place, you imply that they are necessary. If they are necessary, then that must mean that there exist women and female-bodied persons who cannot be “trusted” to make medical decisions about their own body. If women and female-bodied persons cannot be “trusted”, then that necessarily means that they are not making the “right” decision. If they are not making the “right” decision, that implies that there IS a “right decision”, which means that someone, somewhere (YOU) are casting a judgment.
“If someone wants to take away a lot of your rights, isn’t it better to offer to give up some of your rights rather than risk alienating them?”
No, it’s fucking not.
mythbri 186
This is like saying that soldiers cannot be trusted to make good decisions on the battlefield. Of course they can. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t have laws about appropriate conduct during war.
And it doesn’t mean armchair quarterbacks like you should make the laws. Your OPINION is irrelevant compared to somebody who did serve and faced battle.
Yes, because being pregnant is analogous to be a soldier.
@Nerd of Redhead
I think it’s hardly fair to say that only those who have served in combat should be able to make laws about combat. In practice this is never the case. And this rule would never be applied to anything else that is illegal. You don’t have to be a gunowner to make a reasonable argument that certain types of weapons should be banned, for instance. In fact, this is a pretty good analogy. Banning or restricting access to some types of guns will result in harm to some people who are left defenseless because of the restrictions. But lawmakers have to consider what is best for society as a whole and balance this with the rights of individual gunowners.
Hey, let’s be reasonable while I talk about how your rights should be restricted. Because, you see, being pregnant is like being a soldier at war…
Who gives a shit what a person who has never faced combat, telling those who have what they should do.. You don’t get it. Your OPINION, not based on reality, is worthless, and *floosh* sent to the toxic waste system. You need knowledge, not just mental wanking, to have INFORMED opinions. Your opinions, being not informed, are worthless. Nobody gives a shit what you think. But then, why should we?
NO ICECREAM FOR HEDGEHOGS
fuck me, but are you really this clueless, that you can’t communicate an idea except through failed analogy?
dude, go. learn something. read a book.
forget communicating with others, it is clearly not a strong point of yours.
I was right.
Twilight Zone.
@travisrm89
But abortion is a morally neutral medical procedure. We don’t have laws in place telling men when and how they should get vasectomies. We don’t have laws requiring mandatory organ, blood, tissue or marrow donation, even when we know that very sick people will die without them. This is an issue of bodily autonomy.
Behavior in wartime is in no way analogous to deciding whether or not to remain pregnant. Wombs are not battlefields.
@mythbri
I agree that wombs are not battlefields, but the analogy was only meant to show that having laws in place does not necessarily entail a lack of trust.
Mythbri, that is because wombs are houses.
Now urban door to door combat is taking on even more disturbing meaning.
travis:
You do not see a difference between a woman making a choice about her own body versus a soldier making a choice on a battlefield?
Are you seriously that dense?
Do you understand now the point that Mythbri was making?
You are directly implying that you feel that some women are incapable of making the “correct” decisions at some point during their pregnancy (despite the fact that you’ve not shown any shred of evidence that late term abortions that are not a risk to the life of a mother have even been performed). Who are you to judge for someone else what is right or wrong for their own body?
This is a discussion about bodily autonomy.
About the rights every individual has to the ownership of their own body.
You keep making these fucking stupid, inane comparisons that don’t work.
@travisrm89
Then I think we should assume that men are incapable of making responsible decisions regarding who they impregnate.
Therefore I suggest that we require every man or male-bodied person who is not in a stable relationship where he and his partner are intending to procreate should be given a mandatory vasectomy, which can be reversed when and if they enter into a relationship with someone who has agreed (in writing, notarized) to let them attempt impregnation.
Clearly, there are some men who are not making the ‘right” decisions about their ejaculate.
How does that quote sound to you now, Travis? Should your blood, bone marrow, liver, or kidneys be subject to legal seizure to save lives for the good of society? Or are uteruses the only organs subject to eminent domain?
(Never mind that nobody’s bone marrow ever went off by accident because the safety wasn’t on.)
travis:
The analogy fails-completely-because only one situation deals with bodily autonomy.
Do you understand *NOW* why restricting the actions of a soldier on the battlefield is NOTHING like restricting women’s access to abortion?
Well, the ability to make laws about something should certainly be kept away from people who misunderstand it so badly that they can’t even figure out what a good analogy to said topic is.
Seriously. Put down the analogies. You aren’t doing well with them. You, sir, are no ice cream-eating hedgehog. I SAID GOOD DAY, SIR.
lol
Hey, love is a battlefield.
IS THERE WOMB FOR FREEZE PEACH HEDGEHOGS WITH ICE CREAM?
travis:
Every time you laugh about the seriousness of this topic, my disdain for you increases. The jokes people are making are at your expense. We know you don’t “get” the jokes, but they aren’t being made for the sake of being funny.
I’m gobsmacked at how shitty a person you’ve presented yourself as in this thread.
See what happens when you leave humor in the hands of an amateur analogist. There should be a law.
Just so that it’s clear, I wasn’t joking.
Men, time to step up to the plate and consign your ability to produce sperm to the state for the good of society.
@Tony the Queer
Come on, I’m not laughing at the seriousness of the topic, I’m laughing at a particular comment that was intended to be funny. The fact that it was intended to be funny at my expense does not make it less so. It would be sad if I didn’t have the ability to laugh at myself.
Travis, just so you know, you are not a friend. I am not laughing with you.
You are just an other faceless asshole who thinks it is reasonable to restrict the rights of people of my gender.
Now, laugh for me.
But you didn’t show what your meant. Your ideas don’t jive with reality. Which is why your OPINION is worthless, and shouldn’t be listened to.
Travis – do you have a single example of an actual case where a women who was perfectly healthy, financially stable, suffering from no pregnancy complications, had wanted to be pregnant and had been very happy to be so for 7 or 8 months suddenly and inexplicable decided that she wanted to abort at the 8 month mark. Not only do you need to find this women you need to prove that her doctors (multiple as she may have mentioned it to a GP who referred her to an OB who then took on her case agreed to perform the medical procedure which requires the co-operation of yet another doctor an anaesthetist) all agreed to perform a medical procedure which they felt was unnecessary where the fetes was completely viable. I want an actual example, no more wishy washy hypothetical “well this could happen”, so could a whole bunch of things which actually don’t. I can’t find who mentioned it but someone informed you that only 0.5% of abortions in Canada are performed late in pregnancy, and from all the information I possess it would be perfectly reasonable to assume that they are all for serious reasons.
.
There are already laws by which doctors have to consider ethical implications of all medical procedures why do we need extra ones for abortions. In all other medical situations we trust that a patient and their doctors can consider all the implications of a situation and come to the best decision for the patient. Making specific laws in regards to any medical procedure won’t consider all of the serious other factors as each situation is different. Would it be reasonable to make blunt generalised laws if it came to surgery to remove tumours?
.
This argument is not intended to inform you that I would agree with you if you find a case where it has happened (I don’t believe you’ll find one) even if you do I view a person’s right to bodily autonomy as important and no one should be forced to give their body up for someone else.
@Janine 211
Well, it’s sad to me that you hardly know me at all and yet you dislike me because I have a slightly different political opinion. I care deeply about women’s equality and I have no desire to restrict the rights of women. I am open to the possibility that my political views may be wrong, which is why I like to engage in discussion with people who have an opposing view. As I already mentioned, arguments such as blood and organ donation have resonated with me and given me cause to possibly reconsider my position. I’m just trying to hold everything to a skeptical light, and see what glows and what doesn’t (I know, it’s already been mentioned that I’m bad with analogies :)
This isn’t a political OPINION. It is a moral decision where you trample the rights of women to bodily autonomy, and do so for reasons you can’t articulate with evidence. And you wonder why you receive derision for your fuckwitted OPINION. Here’s a clue. Never tell another adult what they must do based on your unsupported presuppositions….
@travisrm89
Would you want to be friends with someone who thought that there ougta be laws about decisions you make about your own body? Would you want to be friends with someone who would dredge up hypothetical scenarios to support those laws? Would you want to be friends with someone who thought there could be “civilized debate” about an aspect of your bodily autonomy?
Holy. shit.
It’s not “slightly different”. It is worlds different.
And it is not simply political. It is about actual lives of actual women and their actual deaths you would like to hasten.
And yet, you have no problem restricting those rights, either.
Have you read the OP and thread linked in #93 yet? Because there’s a lot of light over there.
I just voted, and the scoreboard now stands at:
Which best describes your position:
2579 total votes:
I support fully taxpayer-funded abortion, at any time in the pregnancy, for any reason at all: 75%
I support some legal restrictions on access to abortion, for example restricting full access to abortion to the first trimester of pregnancy: 8%
I support abortion for any reason but it shouldn’t be taxpayer-funded: 1%
I support creative policy options and supports that help women with unexpected pregnancies keep the baby: 2%
I support a complete ban on abortion: 11%
Travis, you are avocating that the rights of women should be curtailed. People have pointed out the improbability of a woman, after making it through eight months of a wanted pregnancy, decides to end it.
You have not addressed any of this. Instead, you fucking compare being pregnant to being at war. And many of us here in the US have over thirty years of experience with people calling for reasonable discussions about curtailing the rights of women.
Fucking forgive me if I do not believe the claims about yourself.
And fucking forgive me if I express that I do not like you.
Travis, you don’t have a slightly different political position.
What you have is less respect for other human beings’ rights than your own.
What you have is a desire to restrict the rights of other people in ways that will never personally effect you.
What you have is the inability to see woman as full human beings rather than as houses, battlefields, or other pathetically inept analogies.
What you have is the idea that you are a better judge of what someone else’s predicament means than they do.
What you have is the toxic combination of startling ignorance combined with a vast overestimation of your own knowledge of the very subject you’re ignorant of.
What you have is a habit of treating your own baseless opinion as more important than other people’s rights or even their lives.
What you have is an authoritarian desire to make decisions for other people.
What you have is “skepticism” as to whether or not women can be allowed to think and choose for themselves.
What you have a negative opinion of people you can’t even demonstrate the existence of.
What you have is the personality of an asshole.
@mythbri
Well, I’m friends with many people who believe that masturbation and sex before marriage is a sin. I’m also friends with many people who believe that assisted suicide should be illegal. We are still able to discuss in a friendly way whether or not these beliefs are true and/or correspond to a happy society.
travis:
Ok.
That’s it!
Gloves are off.
You fucking shitbag.
This is not about political opinions.
This is about the fundamental right of all women to decide what to do with their bodies. Full stop. I’m fucking sick and tired of reading all your excuses and seeing peoples’ points whizzing past you. I’m sick of you being so casual about the lives of women.
In short, I’m fucking sick and tired of you.
Take your callous disregard for the lives of others somewhere else. You and your disgusting views are NOT welcome here.
You aren’t discussing. If you won’t/can’t admit your OPINION is wrong and unrealistic, you are preaching. We know the difference.
@travisrm89
I imagine you have a greater history of friendship with these people than an anonymous internet comment thread.
I don’t know you. I don’t like what you’ve written here. I find it ironic that you profess to support equality for women and women’s rights, and in the same comment thread express distrust about their ability to make decisions about their own bodies. Unfortunately, I don’t find it at all hard to believe that you’re willing to “debate” a human right because you will never have to suffer the affects of that kind of legislation.
Are these friends of yours advocating that people who masturbate be denied lifesaving medical care? Are masturbators suffering bodily harm and death because of their opinions? Think that might have something to do with why you don’t think their views compromise your friendship?
travis:
You have every right to be friends with whomever you choose.
Just as those of us here who find your views odious have every right to consider you to be an asshole.
Want to stop being seen as an asshole?
Understand and comprehend that women have full bodily autonomy and *nothing* trumps that.
Fine, Travis! You are a much bigger and better human than I could ever fucking hope to be.
Please, take this skeptical attitude and shine a light on black people. Perhaps they took move civil rights than what is good for society.
And when they question you, I FUCKING WANT YOU TO SAY THE SAME SHIT YOU JUST TOLD US!
Janine:
Normally, your responses are on the money, but I think you were off a bit here. I took the liberty of correcting you.
Travis, it’s clear you have comprehension issues, but lets try this one more time.
The key difference is that masturbation is not ILLEGAL. And in most places in the US assisted suicide is also illegal.
Whereas abortion IS legal, IS a right, and has been for decades.
You’re comparing some people’s irrational distaste for a legal and healthy practice, and other people’s reluctance to grant rights that are not currently available – to REMOVING long-standing rights from people, an action that will result in severe harm and DEATH, because you THINK that someone somewhere might use that right in a way you don’t personally approve of, despite there being no evidence that such a thing ever fucking happens.
You are willing to pass a law that WILL KILL PEOPLE in order to salve your baseless concern that someone, somewhere might legally do something you don’t like.
Your friends are not trying to enact a law that could kill you,
You STILL don’t fucking get it.
I have six women in my family that are of child-bearing age.
You want to pass a law that could result in one or more of them fucking DYING, and at the very least restrict their rights.
Assholes who want to restrict my loved-ones rights up to and including causing risk to their life are NOT MY FRIENDS.
They are my enemies.
If you can’t accept that my female relatives, friends and neighbors have the right to their own bodily autonomy without some clueless fuck with no skin in the game deciding he knows better, then you are a problem that needs to be solved.
YOU HAVE NO RIGHT to control another person’s body or reproduction.
If you don’t like that, TOUGH SHIT.
whoops, unbold tag didnt work.
actually Jafafa, I think the unclosed tag works quite nicely :)
You got the point across, Jafafa Hots, quite strongly.
Even with that little mishap.
I feel like this thread exposes a lot of the problems in the atheist community that some have described as feminism poisoning atheism. I made it clear that I support the rights of women to have abortions in all early term cases and in many late term cases. We should be united against those who would ban all abortions. If the figure of 0.5% is correct, then I support at least 99.5% of abortions which are opposed by those who want to ban all abortions. Why am I being alienated for presenting what I feel is a reasonable concern about some of the other 0.5%? I understand that many think it is not a reasonable concern, but to conclude that I am some sort of misogynist on this basis is really not fair. If someone who agrees with you 99.5% of the time is not welcome, then who is?
travisrm89
What is “the atheist community”?
Why would you ban any abortion?
Nice fucking tell.
You are arguing for something that does not happen. You are arguing a hypothetical when most of us can see the result in the US of when these “reasonable” curtailing happens.
And you claim to be on our side?
I’m in a mood to burn bridges.
Someone who effectively doesn’t want women dead.
Fuck off, asshole.
Weren’t you just saying that murder isn’t acceptable just because it’s rare?
Travis:
As far as I’m concerned, you are not my ally. You are not my friend.
You are my enemy.
You declaring yourself to be my friend ignores my individuality. So fuck off.
Because your OPINION is ignorant, non-factual (you weren’t aware of the dramatic and significant irreversible changes to the fetus during the birth process), and you haven’t presented any evidence to back up your uniformed OPINION. As per Christopher Hitchens, “that which is asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence”. Which is everything you have said. Now, shut the fuck up. You have nothing cogent to say preacher.
@travisrm89
I don’t recall anyone calling you a misogynist. I certainly didn’t.
I don’t see any reason to think that the >0.5% of abortions that you don’t support are anything other than the last resort for people in desperate circumstances, based on the types of abortions that are available and necessary at that point in a pregnancy. I don’t feel comfortable forming any kind of negative – let alone legislative – opinion of them.
Travis, you’re right.
Someone who thinks that women have the right to control their own bodies 99.5% of the time (compared to the 100% than men enjoy) is not welcome.
Yeah, you’re no misogynist… you think that women almost always don’t need men to tell them what to do.
We’re all equal, but some of us are just .5% more equal than the rest.
Reasonable concern? BULLSHIT.
You have an uinreasonable concern that there might be women out there, despite all evidence to the contrary, that happen to match the misogynistic “slut who waited too long” that exists in your imagination.
And you value a fucking figment of your imagination over the rights and lives of millions of women.
This thread does not expose a problem of feminism poisoning atheism, unless you consider women having equal fucking rights poison.
Actually what this thread exposes (for the zillionth time) is that atheism has a problem with misogynistic shitheads valuing their own imaginary hypothetical “women who can’t be allowed to think for themselves”, and their desire to control others, over the lives and rights of half of the fucking population.
If feminism “poisons” the atheistic community so much as to drive off those who want to restrict the rights of others with no effect on themselves, then bring on that fucking “poison.”
Here is a clunker for some on this thread. I live in BC, Canada. I grew up about three miles from the border. Some couples in Canada go to the US for sex-testing of the fetus of the wife. And if the test comes back ‘female’ the fetus is aborted. To be ethnically incorrect, this happens almost only in the Indo-Canadian society. It is only advertised in the Indo-Canadian media, nowhere else. Now, should this be outllawed? And should the various concerned governments put out an advertising campaign telling the listening audience how disgusting and immoral this is, and should it be put out mostly in the Indo-Candian media, or be distributed equally through all media outlets? Have at it.
@mythbri 240
See Jafafa Hots post at 241 for an instance of me being called a misogynist (technically he says I’m no misogynist, but I’m pretty sure he’s being sarcastic).
I’m calling Travis a misogynist.
If someone thinks women can’t be trusted to control their bodies and need to have laws to stop imaginary capricious abortions, then in my book they are a misogynist.
If someone thinks women should have less control over their own fates, should not be able to make the final decisions about their own health and reproduction, then they are a misogynist.
At least in MY book. Because if that ISN’T misogyny, then what the fuck IS?
No laws against that. But the misogyny expressed in aborting a female fetus has to be addressed.
Oh. Wait. This was supposed to be a “gotcha” question.
@brubakerknows
It’s considered polite to read the thread before commenting. The issue you’ve brought up has actually already been addressed in this thread.
@Jafafa
My mistake – I must have missed that in one of your comments.
@travisrm89
Given that abortion restrictions are by their very nature sex-specific, meaning that they only affect people with female bodies, would you not characterize such restrictions as sexist in nature? And how would you characterize the people who supported such restrictions? Are they also being sexist?
We used to have laws that were color-specific, that affected only people of color to the advantage of white people. Would you characterize those laws as racist in nature? How would you characterize the people who supported such laws?
Travis, has Jafafa Hots called herself a man?
Look, Travis, you’re convinced some of those >0.05% of abortions are performed without justification. Where do you get that idea? What is it about people who seek abortion services that makes you think they’d go to such lengths despite being in an excellent position to finish carrying a pregnancy and deliver a baby? What about the physicians who provide the service makes you think they’d be willing to do so for someone whose entire reasoning was “I’m tired of being pregnant”? Why is it so hard for you to believe that all individuals having late term abortions are all in complex, extreme circumstances and that’s why the few physicians in North America who provide the service agree to help them?
brubakerknows
No.
@travisrm
It’s like surgery, you have to look not at the hypothetical goals but the effects on the ground. The >0.5% is so vanishingly rare that there will be virtually no actual abortions that would fall under any law each year. Thus the main effect of the legislation would be to put up barriers and curtail access to abortions that are actually needed as doctors try to ensure they don’t get prosecuted under the law. It’s a waste of legislative, medical and judicial/enforcement time.
This is not a problem* that needs legal action. Leave abortion open, increase abortion access, sex education, family planning and birth control to reduce any unwanted pregnancies making it to the third trimester. That way you won’t have awful bills curtailing women’s rights over their bodies and you won’t have any ridiculous hypothetical late term abortions.
*not convinced it’s even an actual problem
Already been through it, brubakerknows. If it was as simple as “fetus female, fetus aborted” the skewed sex ratio in cities like Abbotsford would be a lot more extreme than 1:1.2.
travis:
Ah, your true colors shine now.
Feminism is the advocacy of equality for women in social, political, and economic arenas. It is a positive, progressive idea.
Atheism is a lack of a belief in a higher power(s).
For many atheists, rejecting god belief carries with it implications that affect matters of social justice (don’t believe in god? Why be mean to gay people? Don’t believe in god? Why oppose abortion? Don’t believe in god? Why should women be subservient to men? Don’t believe in god? Why should creationism get any coverage in a high school science class?)
Your characterization of feminism shows that you do not view it in a positive light.
Which means your support for women’s rights is conditional. It depends on women conforming to your beliefs in certain situations.
Mine is not, you shithead.
Many of us here are.
You are not.
Which means you do not support those .5% of abortions. Which means you do not support full access to abortions.
Moreover, you have NOT FUCKING PRESENTED ANY EVIDENCE TO SHOW THAT WOMEN WHO HAVE CARRIED A FETUS FOR 7 MONTHS, SUDDENLY, ON A WHIM, DECIDE TO ABORT A FETUS, FOR NO LIFE THREATENING REASONS. Even if you could find ONE scenario, it still doesn’t matter. Full bodily autonomy. You’re a goddmned fucking idiot if you cannot understand this position by now. I gave you a fucking definition.
What, are you so incompetent you cannot read for yourself, fuckface?
A: you have shown no evidence to support this other %.
B: even if you did, it doesn’t trump a woman’s bodily autonomy.
C: you are trying to be” reasonable” about robbing women of their bodily autonomy and you fucking DARE to whine about the treatment you’ve received?
No, it is not a reasonable concern. You cannot even give one example of this concern occurring in history. Yet we’re supposed to take your unevidenced opinion seriously?
No one has called you a misogynist.
I’ve called you several names.
All of which you have earned, shitstain.
By the non existent gods of Asgard, you are a disingenuous fuck.
This discussion is about equality.
Human rights.
Women’s rights.
You claim to support women’s rights.
Then you make that conditional.
The minute you did that, you branded yourself an enemy.
Fucking shitbag.
brubakerknows
Should it be illegal? No.
Alternatively, we could fight this by say (one idea) working with organisations, groups, and people in the community that agree with us that female children have value and shouldn’t be aborted. Thus supporting a cultural change from within the group away from the practice.
For fuck’s sake, can’t you assholes come up with a more original argument than “OMG LATE TERM ABORSHUNS!!” It’d be boring if it wasn’t a life-or-death argument.
@Jafafa Hots 244
Ya’all are going to hate me for making another analogy, but here goes: If I say that I think public urination shouldn’t be legal, it doesn’t mean that I think men can’t be trusted to control their bodies. The fact that a certain segment of the population tends to more often be in circumstances which a particular piece of legislation targets does not mean that the legislation is unfairly targeting that demographic. Granted, women are involved in 100% of late-term abortions, whereas probably only around 90% of public urination cases involve men, but the principle is the same. And because I know that the very next comment is going to say “so you think abortion is the same thing as public urination?”: no. I’m just demonstrating the point that it’s possible to reasonably advocate for legislation which affects one segment of the population more than another. But this is not the same thing as saying that any legislation which affects one segment of the population more than another is okay. There must be a rational basis for the legislation. In the case of abortion, I have held that protecting the life of a fetus in certain circumstances is a rational basis. Many disagree, but the people who do agree are not necessarily misogynist, and it seems antithetical to the feminist movement to alienate those who disagree on a minor point rather than having a friendly discussion about it so everyone can come to a reasonable conclusion.
Give ’em credit; they’ve added “ZOMG, SEX-SELECTIVE INDIAN ABORSHUNS” to their arsenal.
So you would allow the abortion of fetuses based on the fetuses sex and if a ‘gay’ test ever shows up I assume you would allow abortion on that test result also. Now, I am for a woman’s right to choose at all times. What you seemed to have missed is, is it really the woman’s ‘right’ to go to that ultrasound clinic. Does she really want to do that? Or is the husband making her do so? Is it really the pregnant woman’s choice to determine the sex of the child to choose whether or not she aborts the fetus? I don’t think it is. What should the government do about it? BTW, I am a middle aged male with no kids and if I had had children I wish the first one would have been a daughter because a daughter is always there for her dad. Son’s leave when they get married.
Wow. A commenter on the Internet assumes someone else is male.
I guess women really are invisible.
Fuck.
Travis, SHUT THE FUCK UP.
Who the fuck is present for the decision other than the woman and her doctor? Definitely no room for you in that decision…
public urination?
daddy’s girl?
We are so beyond the Twilight Zone…
@259
There’s no gender-neutral pronoun in English, so I took a stab in the dark. I apologize for the mistake.
Uh, pissing in public isn’t a life-saving therapy provided by discerning physicians to patients in extreme circumstances.
And yes, if you think pissing in public needs to be illegal it’s because you believe pissing in public to be a thing. There is no evidence, provided by you or anyone, that any of the third trimester abortions performed in North America by licensed physicians are for patients who are not in complex, extreme circumstances. That’s your belief.
You need to establish that it actually happens before you decide it needs to be legislated against. Until then, it’s your mistrust of pregnant people, nothing more, that you’re using to push legislation.
Wrong. Show me who should make the decision other than the woman and her doctor. No place for you or your inflated and fuckwitted OPINION in that room. But then, it would have to be size of stadium to hold what you think your OPINION is worth. What I think your opinion is worth, is about a size of an atom….
brubakerknows
So you have a husband forcing medical procedures on his wife? See my previous post and add women’s shelters/services to the list of things you need to promote in minority communities.
Here’s the thing Travis, either you think your bodily autonomy is up for popular vote, or woman’s bodily autonomy isn’t up for popular vote either. Nothing makes her more subject to the law than you. You haven’t proven that point with evidence, as your OPINION isn’t evidence. It is unevidence bullshit.
@brubakerknows
No.
*headdesk @262*
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singular_they
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender-neutral_pronoun#Modern_alternatives_to_gender-neutral_pronoun
And now men urinating in public is being compared to women being pregnant.
TRAVIS: WHAT IS IT THAT YOU DO NOT UNDERSTAND ABOUT BODILY AUTONOMY?????
It has been explained to you.
Why do you not grasp this?
I understand that your fee fees are hurt by my profanity and calling you names, which is likely why you haven’t responded to many of the points I’ve made, but you need to grow the fuck up and realize that there is substance BEYOND my insults. I tried the 3 post rule with you. I tried to get you to understand where you went wrong. Even now, as I include insults directed at you, I still have a point that I’m trying to convey: Bodily Autonomy.
Go.
Fucking.
Research.
It.
As of 2006, there were 95.9 male babies born per 100 female babies in BC.
So, let’s reexamine the awful brown people and the horrendous upset they’ve cause to sex ratios in my home province.
travis:
‘Round these parts, we use the word xe to refer to an individual who’s gender is unknown.
eg.
“Tony sure is being an asshole to me. Xe doesn’t even know me, yet xe is calling me an asshole.”
Another word used: “hir”.
“Tony said I’m an asshole. I don’t know what hir problem is with me.”
After all, you have no idea if I’m male or female. I think I’ve made it clear in past comments, but as we’ve seen, you aren’t very good at reading for comprehension.
A minor point? You want restrictions on women’s rights.
The imaginary percentage of imaginary ‘abortions for fun” you trot out would not restrict the rights of .05% of women – it would restrict the rights of ALL women.
That is NOT a fucking minor point, asshole.
If you think there’s room in the feminist movement for people who think that all women’s rights should be restricted because you can imagine a tiny few women doing something you personally don’t approve of, you’re a fool.
You think women should have 99.95% control over their bodies and reproduction.
No, we cannot have a friendly discussion with someone who wants to restrict women’s rights because they have an unconfirmed feeling that they know better than said women.
The reasonable conclusion is for you to fully support a woman’s right to control her own body and reproduction.
What’s antithetical to the feminist movement is people who want to restrict ALL women’s rights to the point that many women will DIE, all because of something in their imagination, especially that something being women who just can’t be trusted to choose for themselves.
I don’t WANT a friendly discussion with some asshole who is willing to let women die because they imagine some bullshit.
What I want is your disgusting opinion that women’s rights should be restricted, your self-centered “my imaginary scenario is more important than your real life” opinion defeated.
You’re what I am fighting against.
I’m not looking for some three-fifths compromise.
@marinerachel 263
Well, I was never claiming that it happens often (or at all), and I commented earlier that current laws and practices in the U.S. are probably fine. I was simply reacting to the poll category of “any reason at all.” Even if it rarely or never happens in places like Canada where women are currently allowed an abortion for “any reason at all”, I’ve pointed out that that is no reason for it to be legal. I understand Michaeld’s and others’ concern that such legislation would have no positive purpose and would only be used to restrict abortions in actual legitimate cases. I think that’s a valid concern.
Sorry for pressing some hot buttons among my US commenters. As a Canadian, the abortion issue is settled. Woman have the right to an abortion. As I commented earlier, we have had no abortion laws for almost 3 decades and we seem to like it that way. It’s only the fine details of abortion rights that we really involve ourselves in. Like aborting fetus’s for their sex, and maybe in the future for their (possible) sexual orientation). I am sorry for bringing up the fine details on abortion in our society into a thread of US abortion rights where one judge on your Supreme Court can take women back into the 1950’s.
And you haven’t shown your OPINION is worth the electrons for your bombast. You haven’t shown any problems. All you have shown is ego and hatred for folks who make decisions without your permission.
Load of shite, that. My dad’s got nothing but daughters and, after decades of resenting us and opting out of parenting, we sure aren’t there for him nor are we obligated to be.
Why should this even be concerning you. You aren’t present at the decision. You know that. Why get defensive. Just back away and let others do what they think is right…those actually involved at the time.
Awww, I see Travis’ poor fucking fee fees have been so hurt that he cannot address the substance of anything I’ve directed his way in…gosh, I have no idea how many posts.
Perhaps Pharyngula is not the blog for him.
Maybe Camels With Hammers would work better for him.
There, people are not allowed to use profanity. Or call people bad names. Or insult people. Or use invective.
Yeah, that’s the place for sanitized language for the purpose of appeasing the ego of a blogger who will never know what it is like to be part of an oppressed class.
I do not have the energy to tackle “daughters are there for their dads, while son’s abandon them”. You folks have fun with that one.
WTF is up with threads like this that attract a certain type of commenters?
Let’s try rephrasing that in a way that will mean the exact same thing, but is NOT specifically designed by an anti-abortion person to push the buttons of the less thoughtful.
Change “any reason at all” to “it’s HER decision.”
Same meaning, less slanted to conjure up images of women having late term abortions “because, ya know – they’re so flighty and shit.”
@Tony 279
I’m not particularly offended by harsh language, I just think it’s sad when people resort to name-calling. No one would call someone an asshole or a fuckwit if they were having a discussion in real life, so there’s no point in doing it online.
Really? I cannot think of one son who goes to their elderly parents house to bathe them. It is always a daughter. I cannot think of one son who gives up a month or month’s of income to take care of their infirm parent(s). It is almost always a daughter.
@ travis
I think it would be most instructive to consider an analogy that’s a lot closer to the reality of the situation, namely involving a person’s body.
The example given above of bone marrow transplants is actually really good, and worth considering: Why don’t we force people to undergo a marrow donation if they are found to match a patient? Because, of course, we realize there is a risk to the operation, and one has a right to one’s own body.(Although, I suppose to be consistent I don’t really believe in rights, but they are a useful legal concept). Now I might reasonably(I think) argue that if one can save a life via a kidney or marrow donation, one definitely should do that. But passing a law forcing it would seem wrong, because it means one can’t opt out of the risk, and your time, health, and personal autonomy are being stripped away. Yet if we don’t force this, how can we force pregnancy, where the fetus in consideration is certainly less of a person than the adults or children needing a transplant?
It is true that we might pass laws against unlikely things. But context is vital in these matters. It may be true, for example, that we could pass a law against weaponizing heavy books into WMDs. It would be absurd, but I guess we could do so without any real harm. The problem is when we are discussing abortion, the context is not some friendly triviality. It is, as mentioned above, a matter of life and death for many people. And the people pushing for these bans aren’t coming from the perspective of wanting to just limit some absurd thing that will never happen. They are trying to get rid of abortion writ large. What’s more, you are playing into a ploy that takes advantage of some serious sexism, namely that women are irrational or even evil, and are just going to out of nowhere go and get an abortion after 8 months of pregnancy. It’s just not reasonable, and in the extreme cases you might consider of any reason to be not right for the woman, it is much better to trust the doctor and the woman than politicians. I don’t know about you, but if I find myself in agreement, even a little, with the fundamentalist right in the united states, I rethink my opinion.
So it would be for the best perhaps to say: I think it would be wrong to have an abortion at 8 months 29 days because you think it would be fun, or whatever absurd and nonexistent thing might occur. But then go on to say “But I recognize passing a law against it would be not merely nonsensical, but harmful, making it difficult for real women to gain access to care they need in order to avoid suffering or death.”
Or you could just say ” Since I will never be in the situation to decide in a matter of abortion, perhaps I better listen to other people and maybe not express an opinion and trust the people who will have to make this decision.”
Also, you can use “they” or “one” for a genderless pronoun in english. Also xe if you want.
—
@ everyone else
This was a really helpful thread for me. Honestly, I tend not to resonate as well with some of the classic arguments as I want to (my utilitarian worldview sometimes means arguments based on rights just fall flat for me, which I find troubling). But I really appreciated the straight out assault on the bad arguments presented here and how they aren’t used in good faith but just to keep going after women. Honestly, I give to planned parenthood and Emily’s List, but I had never considered before the utter inanity of the “LATE TERM ABORTION” argument in such detail, and the personal stories were both scary and enlightening. I feel like perhaps I gave too much benefit of the doubt to the half-choicer/half-lifers. Thanks for making it crystal clear how evil and absurd such a position is.
Sorry that you have to waste them on people who aren’t listening, evidently. I feel like if the others were in good faith, they would just stop arguing, admit they were wrong and get on with it, but pride is a stubborn thing I suppose.
@mythbi:
I would be up for mandatory vasectomies on only one condition: mandatory vaccination at the same time, including hpv. Although now thinking about it, perhaps that would have the unfortunate side effect of increasing the rate of unprotected sex(and hence std transfer.) Hmmm…
See, the fact that you think this is a “minor” point is quite disturbing.
travisrm89
This is real life.
—-
brubakerknows
You are very creepy.
Wrong.
If you were making the same inane, bullshit argument to me personally, face-to-face, I’d definitely call you an asshole.
If you were advocating a law that would restrict my loved ones’ rights and potentially endanger their lives, I’d call you an asshole, and worse.
Now this is what is called “putting a woman on a pedestal”.
And you know what? Putting her on a pedestal is STILL treating her like an object.
I think it is sad when folks who have nothing to say, like yourself, repeat their OPINION ad nauseum, as if repetition is their only argument. So far, it is all you have. Not citing the facts hurts you OPINION.
A daughter’s purpose for existence is to take care of their elderly infirm parents? Is that what you believe?
Good to know.
Ah a relevant comment to make to both:
travis:
and
brubakerknows:
The two of you honestly think that your subjective experiences are indicative of others?
Travis–contrary to what you think, there are *many* people who would call someone an asshole in conversation. Just because you haven’t encountered anyone who has done so does not mean such a person does not exist. There are 7+ billion people aside from you on this planet.
brubakerknows–Yes, there actually exist sons who care about their elderly parents. My parents are in their 50s…not elderly…yet I’m still fucking insulted that you would make such a statement as if it is an absolute. Some sons don’t care about their parents. Some daughters don’t care about their parents. Newsflash: your experiences do not automagically reflect reality. You need to look beyond yourself.
brubakerknows
“Really? I cannot think of one son who goes to their elderly parents house to bathe them.”
My uncle moved from Kolowna BC to Edmonton Alberta away from his job and spent 2 years taking care of my grandmother while she was pretty much bed ridden with cancer until she died.
Since you cannot think of them, they just must not exist, is that it?
Also, has it ever occurred to you that the reason many women DO these things is not because they are more inclined to, but because the way our society is structured it is just one more burden that is thrust upon women, and one more responsibility that men can skip away from without consequence?
No… to you it’s just that “women do that stuff, men don’t.”
You imagine they are born that way, not that you as a father would condition them that way because of your preconceived notions.
Yeah, women are just “more into” that kind of thing. It’s genetic or something. (rolleyes)
For fuck’s sake.
I fucking give up.
No. It isn’t even practically feasible to even enforce such a law.
They way you deal with that situation is to change the social attitudes that result in such decisions being made.
It’s a gal thing!
I should mention, I think, that the extreme cases I was thinking of were mostly those involving serious mental illness(in effect the same cases where suicide becomes problematic for me.) Where it seems like the mental illness might be doing awful things to decision making processes. I figure in these cases it is still best to trust a doctor and patient as opposed to crafting some inane and harmful law.
(I spent four months staying with my sister and brother-in-law while he was dying of cancer to help out. Honestly I’m afraid I was not as much help as I could have been… but…)
When I was in dilemma and needed to move from FL to NY, that same brother-in-law, who was at that time dying of cancer, drove a moving van with my stuff from FL to NY because none of my healthy blood relations could spare the time.
He also took care of the kids while my sister worked, and took care of his elderly mom.
And helped countless people in AA.
But other than that, guys really don’t do that sort of thing.
Travis,
What reasons should make abortions illegal, and how does that reason trump bodily autonomy? Specifically, please.
Jafafa:
Wait.
Is this one of those things that men don’t think about, participate in, speak up about, go to conventions about? Is this one of those things that’s a woman thing?
I never made an absolute statement. I said that I cannot think of one male, including myself, who bathed his elderly parents. My sisters did. That is not an absolute statement. It is base on my limited experience. I know of many male friends who talked about their parents advancing years, and they never mentioned bathing their parents or changing their diapers. Or giving up their jobs to look after their parents. This is my reality. I am 57 years old. My parents are dead. Most of my friends parents are dead. And it was the daughters who were mostly there for the aged parents. If you wish to deny my reality, my life experience with aging parents to fit your preconceied idea of reality so be it. Sorry my a-posteriori reality does not fit with apriori reality.
crayzz:
good luck.
Travis doesn’t comprehend bodily autonomy.
Please don’t tell me what I would do. I certainly would call you an asshole. Waltzing into a thread about women’s rights and wanking on about how there’s some extreme case where women’s rights to control their own bodies should be restricted because REASONS makes you an asshole.
Tony, I didn’t think so based on what I’ve seen, but I guess I was wrong.
Musta been a mirage.
If that is so, then it was an irrelevant argument. So why did you choose to bring it up?
Yeah, that’s the kicker, isn’t it. You can always imagine a scenario where some slutty bitch’s reason for getting an abortion is totally stupid.
So what? You need to present compelling evidence that a.) this scenario exists in reality and b.) it warrants sending people to jail, or condemning them to needless suffering, which is what is at stake when we are talking about the legality of abortion.
If you are not wanting to send women to jail, or condemn them to needless suffering or even death, but rather just expressing your personal feelings of subjective squickiness at the idea of women making decisions of which you disapprove! (*gasp!*) well then, you’re in the wrong comment thread, aren’t you? Because this discussion is about the legality of abortion, and/or the accessibility of legal abortion, not Travis’ squicky feelings.
“Any reason at all”? Really? That’s a problem for you? Well then I guess you don’t actually support women’s equality, as you claimed. You support women’s equality, except when you have squicky feelings about women making decisions about their own bodies and reproduction. And that, my friend, is NOT supporting women’s equality. It’s supporting male control of women’s bodies. That is a fact. You can deal with it or not, but your denial of reality doesn’t change reality. Claim to support women’s rights all you want, but as long as you support substituting YOUR judgment for that of a pregnant individual, and are willing to give your judgment the power of law, you’re NOT _in practice_ supporting women’s equality.
NO THE PRINCIPLE IS NOT THE SAME!
This is NOT ABOUT what segments of a population are more often targeted. THIS IS ABOUT BODILY AUTONOMY.
Bodily autonomy.
Bodily autonomy.
BODILY. AUTONOMY.
BODILY AUTONOMY
Preventing a woman from obtaining an abortion when she wants one VIOLATES HER BODILY AUTONOMY in a way that preventing a man from urinating in public DOES NOT.
GET IT?
now how the hell did I manage to totally INVERT that blockquote????
BTW, i was there for the easy stuff, mowing the lawn, changing light bulbs, even redoing the cedar patio when it needed replacing, but for every case anyone mentions about a son taking care of their elderly parents in their last years, come on, there are a hundred daughters I can say the same for. And to call an observed fact that daughtesr take care of their parents when they get older as ‘creepy’, to that idiot I can only say you are a creepy idiot.
brubakerknows:
You may have not intended it this way, but this statement sounds just like an absolute. You took your experiences-which are perfectly valid for your life-and made a comment that extrapolated those experiences to the rest of the humanity.
I take no issue with the fact that this was the case…for your life.
I take issue with framing this as something that “women do” vs something “guys don’t do”.
And why is this so? Think about it. Think DEEPLY about it. In fact if I were you I would not return and comment here again until I have finished thinking LONG AND DEEPLY about it. But that’s just me. You are free to do as you wish, and accept the consequences of your choices.
Here’s a hint.
IT IS NOT ABOUT YOU.
Like telling brown women they can’t make up their own minds about their own bodies? I’m Canadian and I don’t do that.
I can. But what do I know, a daughter is always there for her father.
Yes, I am calling bullshit to your claim that you made no absolute statement.
It was absolute and it was creepy.
You can?
Ok let’s hear it.
List them.
By my count your owe us at least three hundred names.
Oh wait, you’re confusing your own opinion with reality again, aren’t you?
brubakerknows
I did not call “…an observed fact…” creepy.
I called you creepy.
Because “a daughter is always there for her dad” is creepy.
brubakerknows:
Ok…a different approach.
I am a gay man.
I have experienced very little discrimination (that I’ve been aware of) based on my sexuality. If I were to say that gay men do not experience discrimination for their sexuality, because of *my* experiences, I would not only be wrong, I would boldly go to those places where people who are immensely wrong, go to.
My subjective experiences cannot be used to describe the experiences of others; others who had vastly different ones.
For instance, the best friend in my life, M, died years ago. His experience of being gay was vastly different than mine.
I never had a father tell me that he’d kill any of his kids that said they were gay.
Is my experience indicative of a gay man’s experience in the US?
Was M’s?
You cannot know based on two anecdotes.
One anecdote…two anecdotes…that’s not data.
Now if you had 500K gay men all explain that they had no noticeable discrimination that they face…
or
If you had 500K gay men explain that they all faced tremendous opposition from their families if they came out of the closet…
You might have some data to work with.
You have taken YOUR experience-which is valid for your life only-and applied it broadly to tremendous number of people.
You simply do not know that women, not men, take care of their parents, based on your experiences. You do not have enough evidence to make that claim.
“Because “a daughter is always there for her dad” is creepy.”
Then you have had a very creepy relationship with your dad. For you to take that innocuous statement and parse it to imply ‘available for sexual services whenever he wanted them’ is pretty messed up. I do not know what your history with your father is or was but you are the one coming off as creepy.
brubakerknows:
In a country of 300 million+ people, even if you knew 100 daughters that cared for their elderly parents (and I doubt you know that many women), that still would not mean that “women care for their elderly parents, and men do not”.
You made an absolute statement based on your limited, subjective experiences, and you refuse to admit that you have no basis for making that statement.
The only thing you can say with truth is that in your limited experiences “some women have cared for their elderly parents more than men have”.
That’s it.
My aunt actually did take care of my grandfather. She lived next door to him, after all. Plus, she worked in a nursing home, so it was easier for her. Still, my father spent a lot of time caring for my grandfather, even though there was no need because my aunt was always there.
My father then worked 16 hour days for a month (8 hours at work, 8 hours renovating) so he could fix up a house for the other grand parents (the ones who weren’t his parents).
recalls a recent story of a known daughter being disowned by her pops for dating outside her “race”…
seems brubaker thinks this a one-way relationship.
feels a lot like trying to reason with a creationist, don’t it?
even to the overuse of analogy.
brubakerknows
Where did you find sex in anything I said?
I’m not the one who’s messed up, here.
So, it’s only a half case, since my aunt did half the work, but I think I’m owed at least a list of 50 cases of daughters taking care of their parents. Independently identifiable, of course.
(it’s even creepier coming from a man who is not a father, has no daughters, and is only imaging what they would be like if he did. I find myself feeling relieved that these non-existent women are fortunate enough not to exist.)
I’m not married, never have been married, but I wish I was because if there’s one thing I know, it’s that women are always there to cook and clean for and submit sexually to their husbands.
(ick. that was gross to type)
Well at least these endless bad analogies don’t all involve sex dungeons and mutilations and shit. Remember THAT guy?
I really like Mythbri’s suggestion at 201.
why don’t you think about THAT for a while, Travis?
maybe I spoke too soon.
@travisrm89
I’ve said before in this thread (directed at cag) that compromise on this issue of bodily autonomy is not only harmful, it is ridiculous.
“What if…?” arguments are arguments that anti-choice activists, voters and lawmakers make.
“What if…?” arguments are arguments that cause real harm to real people when they’re backed by legislation.
“What if…?” arguments are arguments that are made when you take people’s rights away from them. “If we let gay people get married, then people will be able to marry their dogs!”
If you think that you can justify taking away my bodily autonomy even in >o.5% of cases, you are not treating me as a full human being, with control over my own body. If you think you can justify taking away my bodily autonomy in >1% of cases, why not >20% of cases? Why not 40% of cases? Why not 70% of cases? Why should you even respect my bodily autonomy at all?
You need to back well away from this kind of thinking, particularly your remark abovethread about (paraphrasing) “eventually you reach a point of implied consent.”
Actual, autonomous human beings have absolutely no right to use my body. Why would you grant a fetus more rights than we grant people?
brubakerknows:
You fucking dumbass. You apparently don’t know the definition of always. Let me help you:
The only time you qualified your statements was that last one where you put “almost always”. So it’s no wonder everyone thought you were being definitive and dismissing other’s experience, because YOU WERE.
And seriously, want to take a stab at why more women are forced/pressured/assumed to be the caregivers?
Hint: You sexist creepy douche. <— The answer to my question is one word in that sentence, can you figure it out?
I bet not.
No.
*whistles*
….and don’t you dare try and remind me.
;P
@brubakerknows
Even if your own personal experience is indicative of society at large, what exactly does that mean? It has been the role of women, indoctrinated and enforced*, to be the “caregivers” of other family members.What does that have to do with the topic at hand? You think you’re better than a woman who would choose to not carry a pregnancy to term if she finds out that she’ll have a girl? A woman whose situation and circumstances you are in no position to judge? Because you think you might have some use out of a girl in your old age?
*Your own statement is a form of gender policing, requiring your daughter to always be there to take on the task of looking after you, even if you were to also have sons–which is why it sounds creepy
How come when I hear shit like I get an image of Purity Balls and daddy giving a key to his heart to his virginal little girl.
tony l I think you and I are on the same page. Yes, I do not have much experience with gay men. I really did not know gay men existed until I was an adult. And at that time I was not a fan of gay rights. Now? Gay rights and marriage is not on my radar sights. It is an established fact in Canada, it will never be repealed and I could not be happier for gays who wish to marry. Gay rights do not diminish my rights or anyone else’s rights in any way, it does not hurt society in any way. Can you appreciate how far a straight, middle-aged man has come in his life? Does it not give you hope for others? I added the ‘daughters are there for you’ simply to tell people that aborting a fetus for it’s sex was abhorrent to me. And what should be done about it? Aborting a fetus for being ‘gay’ would be equally abhorrent to me if it ever comes to be. At this point women are being forced to have abortions because the wife’s fetus is female. The wife has no choice in the matter, and it should only be her choice. It is only the father’s choice. I don’t think this should be allowed. Because the women has no say in the matter. As I said in an earlier post, I am sorry I brought this up in a US thread where the choice of one Supreme Court judge could overturn such a fundamental right to all American women. But in Canada, abortion rights is not at question, just the minutiae of abortion rights are, like advertising sex selection by ultra-sound, which I as a supporter of female and gay rights find abhorrent.
I actually typed the very same thing and then decided not to post it, deleted it. (though I couldn’t remember the name for the balls)
I was already getting too creeped out.
OT:
Crayzz, your username makes me uncomfortable and I don’t actually use “crazy” due to it being ablist. I don’t want to derail the thread but haven’t seen you in other threads.
…in Canada???
Getting caught up on this thread…
I must be drunker than I thought. There’s no way I just read that.
and people with autistic children who blame vaccines can’t think of any cases of autism where vaccines weren’t involved.
It’s called recall bias.
There was a reason why many of us ended up mocking Travis, glodson.
I’m not even halfway done with comments I missed, and I’m already read to mock Travis.
But hey, let’s just see how much stupider this can get. I’m certainly feeling smarter already, and I’m a complete dumbass.
JAL:
I have been aware of crayzz for a time now (4…6 months? Maybe a little more), having seen hir post here more than a few times, and always well within the house rules.
I do understand the discomfort there. The nym is one that walks that fine line. Given the quality of hir posts, though, I am inclined to grant benefit of the doubt. YMMV.
comment #334
brubakerknows (nothing)
If you weren’t so dense, proud and your sexism wasn’t blatantly obvious, that word would be a tell. Every other part of the post it’s women, then it becomes female rights.
Yeah, because me, and sows have the same rights. We’re totally the same thing. *snort*
JAL:
I have been aware of crayzz for a time now (4…6 months? Maybe a little more), having seen hir post here more than a few times, and always well within the house rules.
I do understand the discomfort there. The nym is one that walks that fine line. Given the quality of hir posts, though, I am inclined to grant benefit of the doubt. YMMV.
****
glodson:
I am sorry to inform you…what you read is real.
Perhaps you should return tomorrow to verify what you saw tonight. Don’t worry, it will be *just as bad*,
JAL
crazyy has been commenting occasionally for several months.
(since last summer, at least)
brubakerknows… you do realize, don’t you, that with in vitro fertilization sex is often chosen and the “wrong” zygotes are trashed? (There are always some trashed anyway)
I can understand that misgiving, and I share it to some degree, but again… it’s NOT MY DECISION.
If a woman has three boys, or three girls, or whatever, and decides she wants a child of a different gender this time, who am I to tell her she can’t?
And, how is it OK to abort a fetus because she has decided not to have a child at all, but not ok for her to abort a fetus because she doesn’t want to have a boy (or girl)?
To my mind, the one right that is nearly or even exactly equivalent with the right for a person to live, it’s the right of a person to control their own reproduction to the degree they can. (Men have less control in this respect, that’s just the way it is. No complaining – that’s the one difference that IS determined by nature. There’s a downside for women in that too.)
Taking away a person’s right to control their own reproduction is immoral.
Taking away a person’s right to control their own body is immoral.
That just means you’ll have to live with people having different opinions about their own reproduction than you do… and it means you have to learn to live with not being able to run other people’s lives.
glodson:
Let me save you some time.
I adhered to the 3 post rule and was civil towards travis.
It was all for naught.
You may find some entertainment reading the rest of the thread, but I have to say…because I like you…please find some fluffy pillows and place them all around you. I do not want you banging your head on any hard objects.
I’m guessing since they has been around, the topic of inappropriate username has come up already?
…in Canada???
Yeah, really. We had advertisements for ultra-sound testing in Bellingham on Indo-Canadian radio stations. Ultra-sounds are covered by our medical plan. There was only one reason for the testing. Sex selection. The leading opponents to this testing were not middle-aged white guys like me, but women’s rights leaders in Indo-Canadian society. But apparently I am a very creepy guy for bringing this up. I find ultra-sound sex selection very creepy, and if that makes me a creep, then I am a creep. A proud creep.
Jafafa:
Although this isn’t addressed to me, I felt the need to comment.
Not only do I accept that I have to live with people have differing opinions about their own reproduction, I have *zero* problem with that fact.
I have no desire to run other peoples’ lives.
Does that make me an FTBully?
I get the distinct impression you’re ignoring me. So I’m going to try this only one more time before I go to bed and nurse my headache.
1. How many women are being *forced* rather than persuaded or even just influenced by the subculture?
2. How might we help women who are being *forced*? (Hint: Think along the lines of making sure she has the ability to avail herself of her rights rather than restricting them for all women.)
3. This is not “a US thread”.
4. Our rights are always at risk, because there are people who want to legislate them away.
5. Also, rights mean zilch if there is no access.
6. Once you decide that what you find abhorrent can dictate what rights a woman has, you leave the door open to people who would judge differently from you.
nope, there are any number of reasons, actually. use google to find them, as I’ve already grown weary of your ignorance.
what’s more, you claimed women were being FORCED TO HAVE ABORTIONS, which is really quite a remarkable claim, under any circumstances.
you have provided no evidence in support of this claim.
You have one more chance before I add “liar” to the label “ignorant” for you.
brubakerknows
Now you are just lying about the use of the word “creepy”.
This is something that I was thinking about today, after my day went to shit.
This argument is another way of robbing a woman of the ability to consent. When a woman gets pregnant, she can consent to carry the fetus or not. This consent can be rescinded at any time. This should be well within her rights. A woman who wants to be pregnant consents. She chooses too, and the various feelings she develops as the fetus gestates are a part of her consent.
But people want to rob women of this ability. They want to limit it. Set parameters or remove it completely. They assume that the woman will make a foolish decision without these limits. It is like they imagine that a woman eight months pregnant will wake up one day and just be ready to abort the pregnancy. While this should be her right, that doesn’t make sense either. Like getting an abortion is a fucking whim. Like women who need them don’t agonize over the decision already. Like there isn’t an inordinate amount of pressure already. Like there isn’t a culture that induces guilt.
I guess I peeled these ideas back in my mind and saw how truly monstrous they were. I have long rejected the idea that anti-abortion people are pro-life. They don’t care about life. They care about control. I guess it has been a day of examining how religious ideals relate to controlling women by attacking their sexuality and genitalia.
It is rather embarrassing that I didn’t realize this before. I guess this is the growing pains of a newish feminist.
Brubaker, stop dodging the reason you were called creepy.
It had nothing to do with incest, it had nothing to do with sex-selection.
You know what it had to do with, it was spelled out for you more than once.
Stop playing the fool.
It’s just redundant at this point.
Tony: I gave up.
It was just too stupid. Fuck, I know I can obtuse and stupid, but goddamn. That was… it was like he was expertly crafting really shitty things to say.
Yes, and a femistasi too.
“And, how is it OK to abort a fetus because she has decided not to have a child at all, but not ok for her to abort a fetus because she doesn’t want to have a boy (or girl)?….
Taking away a person’s right to control their own reproduction is immoral.
Taking away a person’s right to control their own body is immoral.”
Uhh, again, the women has no choice in the matter as I have described it. It is the husband taking her to Bellingham for the tests and deciding if his wife will have an abortion or not. No choice involved on the women’s part whatsoever. Again, I am not arguing against a women’s right to choose. I am in Canada. That right is settled. As I mentioned before, even our fundamentalist Christian Prime Minister will not even mouth the ‘a’ word. He will never bring in any kind of abortion law into Canada. It is a settled matter here. We have moved onto the minutiae of abortion rights. Like sex-selection where it is obviously the husband who is making the choice and not the woman. Again, I am sorry I brought this up in an American forum where abortion rights are one Supreme Court justice from being overturned. But the thread did start out about a Canadian poll on access to abortion and I thought I would add my two cent’s worth. Sorry I did.
I suspect Brubaker is here to do us a backdoor on Roxanne’s Law in Canada.
a quick look at who is for and against that law should clarify.
I must be a horrible bully. I really don’t want to tell people how they should handle their own reproduction either. I really want them to be free to chose, and have a safe environment in which to make this decision.
I’m a monster!
I’m still fascinated by this “implied consent” thing.
Just imagine all the fun horrors we can allow if we do actually create such a legal concept. First with abortion, but then… the possibilities are endless!
JAL:
re: crayzz
I have commented on this in The Lounge, so as not to derail this thread.
@JAL
The nym actually has nothing to do with the word “crazy”. It was an arbitrary choice. The similarity is coincidental.
Nope. Maybe because I don’t post much.
Which is unfortunate, as I am rather attached to it.
I guess it’s all for the best. My “Z” key is broken anyways. New nym ahoy!
Do you have ANY examples of this happening in Canada?
If you do, I can guarantee we will all be just as offended as you.
But if this is just another reality that you imagine is happening so it must be reality because you imagine it so it must be…
… then I think we can dispense with it.
I’m sure everyone here will agree, as if it were not already made apparent in over 300 comments, that we want NOBODY telling women what they can or can’t do with their bodies and their reproductive choices.
You cannot possibly think for a moment that anyone here disagrees with that.
You are arguing against people who ARE NOT HERE.
That is, at those times when you conveniently shift the subject to that particular topic, forced abortions.
Not that anyone here was talking about that, and not that that was the subject of the poll, or the discussion we were having, or for that matter, not that that was the topic YOU were discussing in most of your comments.
that was right decent of you.
kudos.
Jafafa:
Whoa.
I can handle being an FTBully.
But femistasi…?
I need a moment to get my bearings…
Ok. Rock on. I shall embrace my femistasi status. I am in good company!
Can I get a Femistasi Freeze Peach Seeking Ice Cream Eating Hedgehog T shirt?
What was creepy was the CONTEXT in which you brought it up, as a reason to PREFER daughters over sons, as if this was something daughters are meant to do or expected to do.
What is also creepy is how you immediately assumed criticism implied anything at all do with with sexual services, and not for the other reason above.
What is creepy is how oblivious you are to why the first reason is in fact so creepy.
What is creepy is also how you seem to think that such a statement is “innocuous”.
Sorry, the femistasi uniform is all about sashes, gold buttons and boots.
Really? You are willing to call me a liar? Did you Google anything on it? Google “Baby sex selection ad targets Indo-Canadians” Can I call you wilfully blind? Or just lazy and blinkered?
Jacob @363:
You know what.
I am impressed.
This has been a thread with some individuals who refuse to listen to reason, and would rather adhere to their subjective, uninformed opinions.
Yet here, you had a long time commenter (JAL) express discomfort with your previous nym, and instead of challenging that, you chose to change it so that you wouldn’t offend hir (I do not recall JAL’s preference with regard to being gendered outside of the Lounge, hence the use of a non gendered pronoun).
For what it’s worth, I greatly like and respect that.
I think the problem that travisr had was that xe was approaching the “question” of abortion from a purely philosophical direction.
Travis gave every indication of being almost completely unaware that he was arguing an issue that affected REAL PEOPLE. The callous and sterile way xe went about badly arguing against universal abortion access made me feel that xe didn’t really cognitively realize that constricting abortion rights causes REAL harm to people. It feels like travis was surprised that people would become passionate about harming half of the human race, and frustratingly I doubt travis figured it out from the comment thread. That last run of posts were travis fell back on “Bitches be crazy!” logic suggests that travis is well insulated from empathy with half of the human race.
Suppose this were in fact true. Suppose you wanted to make a law to prohibit this.
Now, how exactly do you propose to enforce this law? How would you prove it in a court of law? How could you ensure that this law could not be used to deny women the right to choose an abortion for herself for her own reasons, which you claim to support?
A law that cannot be reasonable enforced is a BAD LAW, even if it was meant to address a noble social cause.
The law is a blunt instrument. Not every social problem can be addressed by law. Some things must be dealt with in other ways.
brubakerknows:
Familiar are you with the term “doubling down”?
Jacob Schmidt, thank you for bringing that to an end. Also, you post enough to be noticed. That is not a bad thing.
Incidentally, if the husband is the one forcing the woman to undergo a medical procedure against her will, and you can prove that, rather than the woman also agreeing and willing to have a sex selective abortion, we already have a law for that.
It’s called assault and battery, and both the husband and all the medical professionals involved in providing that abortion would be guilty.
brubakerknows:
What would you do to stop this? If there is a problem with husbands forcing wives to abort female children against their will what would you do? What law would you create that would fix this? You raise an issue, but it seems to me that the solution is not to change Abortion laws to harm other women in the crossfire but to work in communities to grant women more control over their own affairs.
Offended, outraged even. But I (and I’m sure most others here) certainly wouldn’t advocate arbitrarily barring women from having information about the (presumed) sex of the foetus they’re carrying because of it, or preventing women from voluntarily choosing a sex-selective abortion. There are all kinds of other options available to prevent and deal with assault, coercion, domestic violence, and/or medical malpractice.
brubakerknows’ argument sounds to me like arguing that all women should wear burqas and never go anywhere unaccompanied by a male relative because some women are murdered in so-called honour killings when they go out on dates without their hair covered. It’s fucking ass-backward thinking.
omnicrom:
{meta}
Your post serves as a reminder that gendering is done unintentionally by many of us. Though I added to the criticism of hir gendering of Jafafa, I do not know what gender travis identifies as (xe may have mentioned it at some point, but upon reflection I do not remember). I should not have assumed a gender.
(waitaminnit, can a member of the Horde be wrong on the Internet?)
Yeah I only caught that after it went out Tony. It kind of sucks when you slip up even after being so careful.
brubaker, you ignorant twit, here is an excerpt from an email I sent yesterday:
“Just got back from another 3 days with my father. My mother, as per usual, had kept from us how bad he has gotten. Mum admits she is having a lovely holiday in hospital, sleeping through the night for the first time in 2 years; in this way, the stroke has been good to her.. It seems that for the last 2 years my father has been waking up 2 – 3 times a night and wandering about the dark house, being much in danger of falling down. So of course my mother would get up and watch him, follow him, and try and chivvy him back into bed. It was like having a newborn baby, except she is 84 and doesn’t have the endurance of young parents.
James, who is 61, has been giving up six month of his life every year for the last three years, three months on and three months off, living with my Mum and Dad, to keep them in their home, instead of a Home. He goes back to work every three months, but he has still been giving up six months of income every year. As an eldest son, he has certainly risen to the occasion.
But Mum’s stroke came and the f/t care of Dad at home is too much for him. My brothers and I are sharing the load while my mother recovers, and trying to arrange permanent care arrangements for Dad. When I am there, I, I sleep in the bedroom next to his, and I am woken up in the night, usually by my father banging on the door to my bedroom and asking where my mother is.
“She’s in the hospital, Dad.”
“Is she all right?”
“She’s had a mild stroke, but she’s going to be all right, Dad.”
“When can we visit her?”
“In the morning, Dad, we’ll go there together.”
And then there’s getting him back and forth the bathroom each day, getting him to change his
diaper, changing the pad on the bed, and washing 2 or 3 pairs of pants each day. And of
course telling him 5 or 6 times a day that Mum is in the hospital. And, sadly, telling him that
he is going to be put in a home, for she cannot take care of him any more.
The icing on the cake is the last night: I was woken at 5am by moaning (after a couple of earlier wakenings). I quickly get up and I find my father sitting in his diaper on a sofa in the living room. He is looking out the window at the wilderness area which has been his view for the last twenty years; songbirds, seagulls, eagles, deer, hikers, wind, and weather and sunshine and clean, clean air have been all his for the last 20 years.
He has been fed his favourite foods, watched his favourite shows, had the eyes of his
children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren looking down on him from dozens of
pictures scattered over the walls, in nooks, and on the tables of his home. And he knows he
is leaving all this; the repeated messages from all of his sons have penetrated. He will be put
in a room with a little window, and sit, smelling the excrement of all the other aged, and
listening to their cries of pain and confusion, without his wife of 62 years. Until he dies.
It has come to this, his greatest fear. He is 92. He bicycled across Canada the last time when
he was 79. All his life he has been fit and strong. And he wished devoutly for a quick exit, a
sleep never interrupted by waking. But his body, which he kept so fit for so long refuses to
betray him — and so betrays him.
I sit beside him in the morning dark and hold his shoulders as he mourns. And I mourn with
him. It’s all I can do.”
So fuck you, and fuck anybody who says that only daughters take care of their parents. Just. Fuck. You. (And just so you know, brubaker, I’m 55, same generation as you, but I somehow manage not to be an ignorant, sexist douchebag.”
brubakerknows, the claim that requires evidence is not that sex selective abortions occur, it is the assertion that “it is obviously the husband who is making the choice and not the woman” and that women are being forced into such abortions against their will as a routine and common occurrence.
And your google links do NOT provide that evidence.
Aargh. Sorry for the partial threadrupt, people. I just read brubaker’s comments about taking care of parents, and my present situation got me all triggered. I pulled up the excerpt and read it a couple of times, trying to get myself to cool down, but I didn’t cool and I said “fuck it” and posted.
In fact, even just taking the woman for the test, against her will, is assault and battery, if it can be proven. And the medical staff in the clinic would also be guilty of it, under both US and Canadian law.
You made the claim. (Why, I don’t know – it has nothing to do with the topic at hand).
So you provide the evidence.
You made a LOT of bullshit baseless statements. Were we supposed to google “women take care of their parents more” also? How about “women are always there for their fathers.”
How are we supposed to know which homework you’ve assigned us?
And again, as I said and as you keep ignoring, we have been saying for 375 comments now that we oppose people imposing their will on women’s bodies and reproduction.
So again I will ask – who the fuck do you think you are arguing with?
Who here do you think supports men forcing their wives to have abortions?
I’m not going to call you a liar over this, but I WILL call you a dishonest shit because you are inventing an argument coming from us against that position.
You’re dishonest because every fucking time someone responds to you you DELIBERATELY change the subject, or act as if they are arguing something they aren’t, or accuse people of calling you names for opposing forced abortion.
You are being dishonest as hell by doing anything and everything possible to avoid having to acknowledge points people are making, and by misrepresenting what people’s positions are.
You’re a shit-stirrer, you;re engaging with us dishonestly.
It doesn’t take out-and-out lying to be a dishonest ass.
*hugs, if you want ’em, Hairhead*
And now I really am going to bed, I promise.
Incidentally, I did mention way the fuck back there somewhere that I am a man. Just saying.
You are right, as are the other’s who have raised objections based on practicality. I have since learned that these advertisements have been outlawed in Canada for quite a while. And they have been banned in India and China where the difference of the sexes of newborns has climbed into double-digit figures. Should they have been banned? As a Canadian I say yes, I don’t know what champions of the US’s 2nd law would say about it. Again, this is a minor detail about abortion rights on a forum where much more fundamental rights – such as the balance of Supreme Court Justices re: Roe v Wade are at stake.
tell me, brubaker…
do you support Roxanne’s Law?
You can pay for private ultrasounds in which sex will be revealed prior to twenty weeks right here in BC so the claim of Indian-Canadians running across the border for the procedure doesn’t hold water.
The issue isn’t anywhere near as simple as Indian-Canadian women having the procedure forced upon them by husbands after the fetus’s sex is revealed to be female. Those women belong to the same culture that devalues female persons to which their husbands belong. Even those who don’t necessarily want to abort female fetuses don’t want to suffer the consequences of bringing another female child into their community. It’s a nuanced social issue, not a cardboard cut-out representation of Indian men.
Besides, within these communities (Surrey and Abbotsford come to mind) girl children are still born to Indian and Indian-Canadian parents. The skewed sex ratio isn’t extreme so let’s not get hyperbolic and claim abortion of female fetuses is the norm within Indian communities in BC. It’s not.
This doesn’t sound like a tangential abortion concern. It sounds like grumbling about brown people.
Also, there are a million reasons for private ultrasounds. The primary one is families enjoy them, not sex determination.
Hairhead:
I hope you were not triggered by brubakerknows’ self centered comments.
Hugs if you were.
Hell, hugs even if you weren’t. The love and care you show for your father is commendable.
Which shows that you are guilty of what you accused us of – not doing your homework.
And the advertisements, their having been banned in Canada, and their legality re: the US 2nd amendment still have absolutely NOTHING to do with your claims that men were forcing their wives to get abortions, or the implication that that was somehow legal if it did take place.
Unless, of course, the ads you’re referring to said “Canadian husbands – Bring your wives here for the lowest prices on forced abortions!”
brubakerknows stop fishing.
If you have a point to make please just spit it out. There’s a certain level of disingenuousness to just “raising issues” as you’ve been doing. If you’re raising a contentious subject and care enough to want somebody else’s input that suggests pretty strongly that you do have an opinion of your own. If you aren’t going to share what you think first it has the dishonest vibe of someone who is “Just asking questions.”
I am sorry, Jafafa Hots. My only excuse is that I though I read that months if not years ago. (We both have been around awhile.) I should know better than to rely on my memory.
Janine, no need to be sorry. I’m ok with being male, really. ;)
(oh man this thread didn’t come at a good time, insomnia and everything.)
Yeah Tony, I was triggered. Thx everyone.
That was not what I mean.
*raspberry*
I meant that I am sorry that I misgendered you.
”
tell me, brubaker…
do you support Roxanne’s Law?
”
I actually had to look it up. I would say yes. With reservations. Please understand that many members of the Conservative government are against abortion rights. Three of them sent a letter to the RCMP a few weeks ago asking that abortion providers be investigated for murder. We had a Conservative minority government for many years and these guys knew they could not rock the boat when it came to abortion rights. Now that we have a Conservative majority the anti-abortion rights crowd are thinking they have a right to be heard. —- And there you go. I just read where this otherwise laudatory bill comes with language that would make a fetus a full-fledged legal humans being, and therefore make all abortions illegal. Know why would the integrity of the pregnant women be dependant on the fetus being made a legal human being other than to sneak making all abortions in Canada illegal through the back door? And there you have it. When they make the pregnant women’s choice all about being her choice and nothing else then I will support it. And that will be when the Conservative members who brought this bill up abandon it.
In short it is a Trojan Horse.
No worries.
I didn’t feel a thing.
Have you noticed that they support this bill?
why do you think that is…
HUZZAH!
not a liar after all, AND capable of learning quickly!
I reset my trollometer.
btw, we had bills with the exact same language being put forward in several states in the US at the same time.
coincidence?
hardly.
It is almost as if these were coordinated efforts being funded by super rich people.
“Canadian husbands – Bring your wives here for the lowest prices on forced abortions!”
The ads were run on Indo-Canadian radio stations only, why? China and India have newborn sex ratios completely out of balance, way in favor of males. They have banned using ultrasound for sex-identifications of fetuses. Why? Are you really not going to be against any Republican bills about access to abortion in the US until you find one titled “A bill to outlaw all abortions in the US and jail all abortion providers for now and forever?” Just using your logic. Or rhetoric.
*sigh*
trollometer at level 1 again.
You really do not know just how the lose of reproduction rights has happened in the last thirty years in the US. It is a combination of the passage of nuisance laws that closes clinic on technicalities and violence committed against abortion providers.
“You can pay for private ultrasounds in which sex will be revealed prior to twenty weeks right here in BC”
Yes, you can. You forgot to mention that it is illegal. BC Medical charges extra for sex identification after 20 weeks when an abortion is no longer elective surgery and BC Medicalwill not give out the sex of the fetus for any amount of money before 20 weeks. Why?
@brubaker: Legality is not Morality. Legislators do not Know Best.
No-one should be forced to carry a pregnancy to term.
No-one should be forced to have an abortion.
No law should require anyone to carry a pregnancy to term.
No law should require anyone to have an abortion.
No-one should permitted to force another person to carry a pregnancy to term.
No-one should permitted to force another person to have an abortion.
If you’re really concerned about people being forced into having medical procedures that they don’t want, aim legislation at the people doing the forcing, not the people being forced.
Last post.
Sorry for going off on a tangent about sex-selection. Took the thread way off kilter.
Yes Janine I know all about the Republican assault on women’s rights. The nasty little bills that result in ‘special’ requirements for doctors and clinics that provide abortions. The insertion of ultrasound probes and whatnot. We get a whiff of that stuff in Canada, but it is only from backbenchers who have decided they will be permanent backbenchers, like the guys who brought up “Roxanne’s Law”, which by the way is an American intrusion on naming bill’s after people or cases that I don’t like. ‘How can you be against what poor Roxanne had to go through by voting against this bill we named after her?” Makes for cheap bumper sticker rhetoric. I will raise it with my MP. Oh, he’s a fundamentalist Christian also, he’s probably already signed his name to the bill.
Anyway, last time I looked the MP’s poll was up to 75% of respondants supported government funded abortion for any and all reasons.
Sorry about over-generalizations I made. Peace out.
Outlawing sex-based abortion is like outlawing burqas.
“We think it’s wrong that THIS group of men is controlling you and taking away your ability to make choices, women! That’s why WE will now control you and take away your ability to make choices!”
brubakerknows, above @358, you wrote:
Well now, isn’t that the basic problem?
(What do you imagine the pro-choice position is all about?)
Travis, the reason we care about that “tiny” .05% is that we care about the women who make up that 0.5%.
That 0.5% is made up of women who are in terrible, horrific circumstances. They have carried a pregnancy through, they are about to give birth within mere weeks, and then…something goes wrong. If you want, we can take out the “life of the mother” cases where it’s obvious the woman will die if the pregnancy continues. The ones left are cases where there is something terribly wrong with the fetus, either not noticed before, or recently occurring in development or by infection. These are not hypotheticals, these are real, actual cases. These are what you find when you go looking for that 0.5%. They find out that the fetus is likely not strong enough to live through birth, that if it does, that it will last a day or two, maybe three, but that every breath it takes will be an agony, that it will be in severe pain from birth to death, that it won’t be able to hear, or see, or think, or know any comfort. These are women who bravely, selflessly decide that their desire to hold and cuddle their baby does not stand up against their desire to spare their baby any more pain.
And what your opinion does, travis, if enough people think like you to make that decision illegal, is not just to force that fetus to be born and suffer for a day or two. The woman carrying it has to go through the hours and hours of labor, knowing that it will be futile. If the fetus dies in the process, she will still have to finish out labor and delivery of a stillbirth. Know where birth happens? It happens on a maternity ward, because that’s where they have the equipment to deal with it. So not only would she be forced to endure a painful and medically dangerous day or two of labor, she has to do it in the company of women happily having babies all around her. She has to hear the babies crying, hear the laughter of families down the hallway, watch flowers and teddy bears being delivered to all the women around her while she labors to produce a dead baby, or one that she will have to watch cry in worse pain than anyone can imagine for a day before it dies.
And you think this is an acceptable price to pay for the random, impossible, off chance that some woman, somewhere, will decide to have an abortion “on a whim”. You can’t prohibit one without causing the other. You have decided that it is ok to make those women, the ones we know exist, suffer even more rather than to let one flighty chick “off the hook”, even though there are no cases of it ever happening and no known doctors who would agree to do it.
THAT is why this is not a “minor political difference”. That is why we oppose your position so strongly. That is why we get so upset when you talk of this as if it is simply an inconvenience to some, that it is not a big deal, that it is simply common sense or being reasonable or a good compromise. Because your position, if adopted, would absolutely, definitely cause women to suffer in ways no one has any right to make them suffer.
Full access up to 76%
“I support fully taxpayer-funded abortion, at any time in the pregnancy, for any reason at all” This doesn’t mean you will be waddling in at 8.5 months and getting an abortion on a whim. It is more dangerous than giving birth in the later months.
But if you have eclampsia, fetal death or any of the other serious problems that can only be diagnosed late term, the safety equation shifts.
You all (you know who you are) are awesome. I made a present for you. You’ll know where to look. I hope it delights.
The Horde, as always, makes my world that much better, and thanks for the giggles, carlie, about ice-cream-eating hedgehogs on freeze peaches *hinthint*. I have a crowd of internet heroes I look up to, and yes, Horde, that’s you.
carlie, thank you for that comment – thank you for saying it so strongly and so well. And thank you to the may other Horders who have explained in this thread – again – that women’s bodily autonomy is no more up for “discussion” than is that of men.
Travis
Because you insensitive shithead want to hurt, hurt, hurt women who are just in the worst situation of their entire lives. They have become pregnant, went to all the prenatal care, chose a name, painted a nursery, have been happily handing around ultrasound-fotos for months whether you want to see them or not and then they get told that the fetus is seriously ill. That if it survives birth, it will be a short life of misery. And they have to make a decision.
And you want to set hoops and hurdles, want to make them justify a decision that is so cruel they can hardly make it anyway and you want to treat them as potential criminals.
Or something has really, really, really gone wrong quickly by week 24. And you don’t want to do anything because you’re “worried” about an abortion. So she dies of HELLP. Sure her widower and the 2 elder kids will be prefectly happy now that instead of getting a new sibling they get neither sibling nor mum back.
“They” has worked perfectly for a couple of centuries by now.
brubakerknows
Why do you hate baby-girls so much that you want them to be born to a family that would rather see them dead?
So, how about giving women help? You know, like making sure she can have a chat with the health-care provider alone?
Glad you don’t have any children you can inflict your fucked up sexist ideas upon.
It’s not our fault you’re a shitty human being who apparently thinks himself to be too good for such work but who has no problems dumping that shit on his sister.
I doubt that. Tony is on the “decent human beings page”. You ain’t.
You’re woefully uneducated about the realities of prenatal care. Ultrasound testing is an important standard of prenatal care (and yes, most parents want to know the sex), because you can find out things before that have consequences, like a fetus with a heart defect needing to be delivered via c-section or the extra special tests we needed because our daughter lacks a kindey, which we found out the same day we found out her sex.
marinerachel
Interesting, as the natural ration is 105 to 100. Guess all the white people abort their male fetuses so they can make up?
Hairhead
That was beautiful.
My sympathies for the family situation.
+++
Now I want my ice cream
carlie:
That was a great post. It perfectly explains the issue of late term abortions and why they must remain legal.
Hasn’t it ever occurred to you brubakerknows that the whole Those nasty brown men are forcing their poor wives to abort girl children just like they do in India!!!eleventy!! thing is also a Trojan horse? A deliberate attempt to get the majority of Canadians who are pretty much content to let abortion be a medical rather than political issue to pay attention and support any kind of restriction the anti-choicers can fly under the We Civilised People Must Save the Uncivilised From Themselves banner? Of course not. There are ads, so there must be a widespread epidemic of Indo-Canadian men forcing their wives to have abortions they don’t want. You’re falling for a scare tactic and jumping on board the anti-choicer train without a moment’s rational consideration or evaluation of the evidence. And to top it off, your answer to this imaginary epidemic isn’t to do everything to ensure that all women can avail themselves of their right to security of person, but to place obstacles in front of all women so that none of them can have access to information about the foetus inside their own bodies.
I’m coming in to this super-late (glanced at it on Saturday, came back this morning and wondered “how the shit did this hit 400+ comments?”), but I wanted to drop a couple of thoughts.
I grew up in Tecumseh, a suburb of Windsor, the largest community south of London and the city across the border from Detroit. It’s the one place along the border where travellers enter Canada from the north. I attended high school in a town twenty minutes from home, in the area this MP now represents, and often visited other parts of the county for schooling, or visiting friends and relatives. The urbanized ridings of Windsor West and Windsor-Tecumseh have been pretty solid NDP areas for a few decades now due to the now-flagging strength of the CAW and other unions, while the agricultural county used to bounce between Liberal and NDP until a decade ago, when it went Conservative. I don’t know how to explain this shift, except as an effect of the messaging and targeting efforts by the current incarnation of the Conservative party to solidify a plurality of votes, some of which involve inflaming fears about “undeserving” immigrants, tax-and-spend politicians (don’t get me started on the Conservative party’s own record in this regard, you’ll be here a while), and support for authoritarian social policies. Basically, the ruling Conservatives are trying to recreate the GOP machine here, and there are suspicions they’ve discussed such things with GOP-linked operatives and firms. There are serious allegations of attempted voter suppression by directing voters in some ridings to incorrect poll locations, and while the election administration agency is investigating, the process is slow and the tracks hard to uncover. It’s likely the next election will involve even nastier tactics, which they will continue to get away with until and unless a backlash ejects them from power.
@95, very good point about the lack of access to services across much of the country. A friend worked for CAS in Happy Valley-Goose Bay, NL. A significant fraction of the population in this remote area is of aboriginal descent, and there is a military base. Many of the women, who have already suffered personal and intergenerational trauma, are routinely sexually abused, coerced, or otherwise plied into unprotected sex. There are practically no consequences for the men involved. There are no reproductive services. You do the math.
That pretty much sums up the Conservative position right now: inflaming fears about . Oregon sits poised to allow illegal immigrants to go to state university at “in-state” tuition rates. It’s expected to help all of ~50 people/year for the first several years. What an insignificant cost burden Oregonians stand to bear for those 50 people amongst the 16,000 university undergrads starting every year. But what an important difference it will make for those individuals that are able to make use of the program!!
If Travis is still around, he should read this.
as if the fundies wouldn’t use anything other than a complete ban of abortion and contraception as a rallying cry anyway.
– – – – – – – –
no. this has already been discussed, which means you’ve not read the thread you’re dumping your opinion on. That doesn’t make you look like an asshole at all; nosiree.
and that’s precisely why it shouldn’t be outlawed. or do you actually think in such situations a woman won’t be physically harmed for giving birth to a daughter?
aside from that, forcing someone to have an abortion against their will is already illegal.
– – – – – – –
if you think you can compare something that’s part of oneself to a mere posession, you don’t see the point.
I cannot fathom the line of thought that would compare exercising bodily autonomy to the scourge on human minds and bodies that is warfare. O.o
what? No they can’t. Soldiers are purposefully trained to do horrible things to other people. That training/brainwashing doesn’t always take, but when it does, there’s no reasonable expectation that a soldier will know which horrible things it’s ok to do to an enemy and which aren’t. Hence the ridiculous prevalence of war crimes.
once again: I am not like my possessions. To take away the right to control my body is nothing at all like taking away the right to some specific possession.
yeas it does. The reasons we have designated some things as “war crimes” is because they were/are happening; we couldn’t trust soldiers not to do atrocious things to other people because they were trained to do precisely that.
given that your “slightly different political opinion” amounts to saying I shouldn’t be allowed to control my own body, any negative feelings directed at you for holding it are entirely warranted.
because you’re suggesting that women’s bodily autonomy is not absolute, unlike that of men. it’s fucked up.
but you don’t. we think bodily autonomy is inviolable for all humans. you think it’s inviolable for only half of humans. That means you’re at best only 50% in agreement. And given that you think feminism is “poisoning” atheism, I’m willing to bet it’s much less than 50%.
actually, that’s exactly what it means. if we could trust everyone not to piss on the wall, we wouldn’t need such laws. d’uh. Also, pissing is not anything like pregnancy. jesus fuck.
actually, that’s exactly what it means. Most voter-restriction laws are being declared unconstitutional precisely because they unfairly affect some demographics more than others.
you’re demonstrating that you have no flaming clue about how laws and society function, actually.
incorrect; and besides, you could have just said “he/she” if you didn’t know.
jesus fuck, NO! they aren’t. They’re the opposite of fine. They’re abusive, restrictive, harmful, and designed to punish women for daring to exercise their right to bodily autonomy.
You are so fucking ignorant about this, you should be ashamed.
that’s a very authoritarian perspective. There needn’t be a reason for something to be legal; but there must always be a very compelling reason for restricting something.
Aside from that, of course there’s a reason for it to be legal. It’s called bodily autonomy.
don’t bet on it, honeycakes.
forgot to add: my state is one step away from outlawing all abortions, IVF, and possibly even some forms of BC (due to misinformation about how it works). That’s not “fine”.
Ignorant buffoon.
brubakerknows:
“Yes, you can. You forgot to mention that it is illegal.”
Wrong. It’s perfectly legal for private ultrasonography companies in British Columbia to reveal the sex of a fetus prior to twenty weeks. It’s illegal if the ultrasound is being provided through public health services. That legislation does not impact private companies in British Columbia. Brown people aren’t border-hopping to determine the sex of the fetuses so they can run home for a free abortion if it’s female. They don’t have to. They can pay companies right here at home to reveal the sex of their fetus. It’s only illegal through public health services.
Please don’t dictate to me that which you do not know. I forgot nothing,. You are simply uninformed on this issue.
That said, you’ve run away before you could be corrected so I guess no learning will occur here.
Brubakerknows
You know what? This kind of thinking isn’t just stupid – it’s also one of the causes of the sex-selective abortions you are apparently so concerned about. You see, in India it’s traditionally the son who stays in his parents house and supports his parents, and brings in a wife who helps his mother with the housework. Daughters, on the other hand, go live with their husbands’ parents and help them out. So girls are a burden who then leave, but sons are a valuable investment. It’s sad that you think the problem is serious enough to warrant violating a woman’s bodily autonomy, but not serious enough to cause you to reconsider your thought patterns.
It’s also just plain wrong. Just because you’re a selfish shit who left all the hard work to his sisters, doesn’t mean that all men are. Especially if you raise them properly from childhood.
if someone is your friend 99% of the time, but wants to shoot you in the head the other 1%…
Have you seen the news?
Several states have passed laws that are de facto bans on Abortion, like defunding clinics or changing the laws as to drive abortion providers away from people.
http://www.prochoiceamerica.org/government-and-you/state-governments/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abortion_in_the_United_States_by_state#State_table
Note that at least 22 states have a grade of F for their abortion laws. And these laws are getting worse.
You are wrong. A woman’s bodily autonomy is hers and hers alone. And this whole talk of creating a situation where a woman will wake up 8 months pregnant and decide to abort on a whim is nonsensical.
In addition to the other problems with brubakerknows’ argument, the reference @370 to “Baby sex selection ad targets Indo-Canadians” is not what he claims it is.
http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/04/17/u-s-fertility-clinic-targets-baby-gender-selection-ads-at-indo-canadian-community/
The ad (from April of last year) was for a Seattle IVF Clinic. No abortion or even ultrasound in the ad. brubakerknows’ claims that Indo-Canadians are going to the US for ultrasounds, then returning to Canada for the free abortion of female fetuses is not supported by this ad.
I’m convinced that there is a deliberate misinformation campaign, funded by antiabortionists, targeted at Canadians to try and get them to support the trojan horse that is “Roxanne’s Law” or a similar version of it.
I think Brubaker was just a victim of that.
Never doubt the power of idiots when in numbers.
@BruBakerKnows
/delurk
You are a fuckwit.
/relurk
While I’m personally of the opinion that people who aren’t satisfied with having a healthy child shouldn’t have children at all, I’m also wondering what people who want to outlaw sex selective abortions or IVF think they would achieve by doing so.
They won’t change people into happily embracing the girls they never wanted to have. They won’t stop those people from having children at all which would probably be the best.
No, they will only make sure that those people have children until they have reached the desired number of sons.
Apparently, a woman who is pressured into yet another pregnancy isn’t any issue at all, but a woman pressured into having an abortion is. And they seem to give shit about all those girls who’ll be produced yet be unwanted in the process. Because, aren’t you glad to be alive, little girl, although your parents don’t love you even half as much as they love your little baby brother and would have aborted you if they could, but since they couldn’t, they’re stuck with you and will make you feel that you’re an unlucky surplus to the family in a million uncaring ways?
*cough*
Votes on the first option have sunk to 46 % ATM. The second is at 6 % and the third at 1 %, so only 53 % in all for the abortion “positive” alternatives.
Thought you ought to know…
And today, with an apparently closed poll (unless it uses your IP address to prevent multiple votes, since I have cookies disabled), it’s:
I smell a little manipulation, but maybe it was just counter-Phayngulated.
Full support is showing 38% but its bar is longer than that of no abortion at 48%.
Only a few hundred votes have been added, 500 at the most, so it hasn’t been counterd.
I missed the argument earlier about how we need laws to prevent late-term abortions. May I point out that the criminal abortion law in Canada was struck down in 1988? Do you know how many abortions occur in the third trimester? Half a percent.
Abortion is something like 13 times less likely to kill than childbirth, so preventing any woman from having an abortion is actually endangering her life and so it’s obviously immoral.