This puzzles me, if abortion isn’t morally wrong why should it be rare?
Do we say removing tumors should be rare?

Unless you are insinuating that abortion is killing something? If it is killing something. What is it that you are killing? If it’s a parasite, we should kill it. Why make killing parasites rare?

Aren’t you being disingenuous when you say that. Abortion should be safe and as frequent as you need it. What’s this rare nonsense?

Well first, maybe it would get her mostly off the hook. After all, a woman did just get released from jail for voluntary manslaughter after a few months after shooting her husband in the back, if we’re to believe some recent media reports. So shortening sentences for murder-like crimes is not exactly unheard of, if the mitigating factors fit.

Could you please link to some of those media reports? I’m curious as to just what those mitigating factors were. If we’re talking about “battered wife syndrome”, I think (although I’m no criminal lawyer) that that may be considered a mitigating factor because it has some relation to self-defense. However, since it’s self-defense against a general situation instead of an immediate threat, the killing is still a crime, albeit a lesser one.

A woman is in no danger from her six-year-old child (although, ironically, she may indeed be endangered by a fetus), and I’m pretty confident in saying that poverty or parental displeasure would not be accepted as mitigating factors.

But in any case, pro-choicers themselves argue very forcefully that it’s not the same thing for a woman to kill her six-year-old in cold blood. Abortion doesn’t reach the same level of callousness, mostly because of the woman’s accepted obligation to care for the six-year old and her personal, subjective view of the six-year-old’s moral worth. Abortion also involves issues of bodily autonomy, and is often not done “in cold blood” and stoic calculation.

Why, yes. Very good. That is, in fact, a summary of the pro-choice position.

However, I’d like to point out that legal definitions of things like “in cold blood” can be very different from the commonly-used meaning. It doesn’t matter how upset you are, if you can think clearly enough to hire someone ahead of time to kill the person you want dead, that’s murder 1.

Pro-lifers could agree that there’s a difference in gravity between killing a fetus and killing a six-year-old and still not think that killing a fetus should be legally practiced.

Maybe, but that’s not what they do. Their rhetoric is that having an abortion = killing a baby, and that’s the rhetoric that has gained them so much support. It’s simple, it’s clear, and it’s powerful. They don’t want the issue to become more complex than that. Complex issues with gray areas make it difficult to rally people’s emotions. Look at how carefully their rhetoric removes even the woman from the equation, making it completely about the fetus: “It’s a child not a choice”, “Abortion stops a beating heart”.

“How much time should she do?” forces the woman back into the equation, which is something that the anti-choicers don’t want. It muddies the waters. More importantly, it forces non-hardliners to think about the logical conclusion of their rhetoric: if it is, in fact, a child, then having an abortion is the same as hiring someone to kill your baby. That’s first-degree murder, with some conspiracy charges thrown it. In some states, that’s the death penalty. And since there’s no statute of limitations on murder, the fact that you’ve Found Jesus since you had your abortion twenty years ago and that you now protest outside women’s-health clinics to atone for that sin means nothing.

Much as you would like us to STFU about this because it’s uncomfortable for you, 87, “how much time should she serve” makes it perfectly clear how little anti-choicers think of woman, and how much bullshit their “fetus = baby” rhetoric is.”

Well first, maybe it would get her mostly off the hook. After all, a woman did just get released from jail for voluntary manslaughter after a few months after shooting her husband in the back, if we’re to believe some recent media reports. So shortening sentences for murder-like crimes is not exactly unheard of, if the mitigating factors fit.

But in any case, pro-choicers themselves argue very forcefully that it’s not the same thing for a woman to kill her six-year-old in cold blood. Abortion doesn’t reach the same level of callousness, mostly because of the woman’s accepted obligation to care for the six-year old and her personal, subjective view of the six-year-old’s moral worth. Abortion also involves issues of bodily autonomy, and is often not done “in cold blood” and stoic calculation.

Pro-lifers could agree that there’s a difference in gravity between killing a fetus and killing a six-year-old and still not think that killing a fetus should be legally practiced. Again, it’s the difference between a justification and a mitigating factor.

Of course I don’t want you to “STFU,” I just don’t think it opens and shuts the issue as decisively as some people think.

So the obvious answer is that abortions should only be performed by pregnant woman doctors.
Or something.

Ah…the insane would be running the asylum!!!

I suppose we’d just have to “pray for them,” then, as the little old lady in the YouTube video says.

Or would it only work if the pregnant doctors performing the abortions intended to abort their pregnancies as well? B/c if they were carrying the baby to term, they’d be sane, right? So to be legally insane, they have to intend to get an abortion at some point after they perform the abortions.

Talk about restrictive! Those damn fundies.

Just like pregnant teens: The ones who want to have abortions are too immature to make that decision, while teens of the same age who decide to keep teh baybee are automatically emancipated from their parents and free to make all medical decisions regarding their bodies, their pregnancies, and the results. You don’t need a judge’s order to allow you to continue a pregnancy without your parents’ permission, just to end one privately.

As long as a woman chooses the “right” answer, they’ll pretend she had a right to make that choice, b/c choosing abortion is just craaaaazeeeee. It’s just pretending b/c there’s only one allowable choice, and no matter what the reasoning, any other choice is crazy. Well, unless you feel like fulfilling fundy rape fantasies and are willing to go into graphic detail of how violently violated you were, ya know, cause then even Bill Napoli will say it’s not crazy to terminate. But that decision certainly can’t be left up to a pregnant rape victim and her doctor! The doctor just wants the huge abortion fee and the woman is crazy unless she wants to carry even a life-threatening pregnancy to term.

Fundy logic makes my head swim. For example, Kate Gosselin deciding to carry 7 fetuses to term instead of selective reduction was a perfectly sane choice. Fill that quiver with one go! But since one died in utero, should she be charged with negligence? Cause if she’d reduced, the miscarried one might have lived. But if she’d reduced, then she’d be crazy and incapable of making such a decision for protecting her health and insuring healthier outcomes for the remaining feti. And she’d be a murderer. So, instead, she miscarries one that might have survived a normal pregnancy. Is that manslaughter? Or murder since she decided to carry all of them? How long should she go to jail?

You obviously missed the week-long Feministe thread where this answer was given sveral times, and rebutted.

We do not let convicted murderers serve their time by doing community service, or teaching high school students. I think you would see a great uproar from parents, that a murderer would come to their school to talk about how bad murder is.

So, obviously, abortion =/= murder, if they are willing to let them off with community service.

I’d like to see more of these pro-lifers working for women’s health and well-being. Women who want abortions aren’t crazy. Infact for the most part they’re quite smart in realizing that having a baby is a big f’n deal and you’re on your own dealing with it.

But of course “Safe Legal and Rare” is also a part of the whole Clinton “triangulation” politics…so maybe in someways your right that it’s pandering.

Yet another cheap trick to shut up someone who disagrees with you.

Like I said to Wallace, criticism (rather mild criticism, really) is not censorship. Nor is it a cheap trick. That’s what this blog is for.

a) Not new. Just because it’s the first time you saw it on YouTube, doesn’t make it new. It doesn’t work. It’s been tried before. Really, are any of YOU persuaded by this argument?

We don’t need to be. We already agree with it. Besides, just because something isn’t new doesn’t mean it can’t be effective if it’s used and promulgated in a new way. There were space operas before Star Wars, after all.

Doesn’t get to the root of the issue: the woman’s human rights. It’s focussed on the application of law, not the morality of law. Using this reasoning, we shouldn’t have any laws where the penalty doesn’t fit the crime or when the law can’t be enforced well. It ignores the other reasons for laws, that they are guiding principles for a community, a reflection of the community values.

All true, but…well, I think Leandra said it perfectly:

This new campaign does not negate the main reason for abortion rights-personal reproductive liberty-but forces people to think about the consequences of opposing abortion rights in terms of emotions they understand which, like it or not, is the way you have to appeal to the masses. Anti-choice groups also don’t have a good answer to it that doesn’t undercut their argument that a fetus is the same as a life, so it makes them look stupid and extremist, which is what we need to maintain abortion rights.

Too open ended: the first time someone comes up with an answer, say, community service teaching pregnancy prevention to high school students, you’ve lost the argument.

Wrong. That’s when we say: “Wow, that’s an awfully light penalty for what you’ve been calling murder. And you say liberals are soft on crime! Or are you admitting that an embryo/fetus is different than a baby?”