I suppose that close watchers of the anti-choice movement could have guessed that it was just a matter of time before anti-choicers attached their pet issue to the Michael-Vick-murdered-dogs thing. “How can it be illegal to torture and murder animals while it’s legal to flush out an inch-long embryo?” is a question that makes sort of a rough sense to the slow-witted, but upon giving it any thought makes about as much sense as arguing that because both stubbing your toe and having a tooth pulled cause strong, throbbing pain, they are exactly the same thing and equally to be avoided.
Scott basically wraps up why the comparison is stupid and ties it off with a bow. The dogs vs. fetuses argument only makes sense to people who spend a lot of time engaging with cutesy pictures of disembodied fetuses and forget that women who have abortions actually have a medical condition that they’re trying to terminate. There’s no great life-changing inconvenience if you’re forced not to torture and kill dogs for sport, but pregnancy is a little different. Also—and this will also shock people who thought of the clever dogs vs. fetuses argument—unlike people who kill dogs for fun, women who get abortions aren’t popping back a few beers and thinking, “Heyyyyyy, you know what would really make the evening entertaining? Getting my uterus scraped!”
So, the two aren’t really alike at all. I would add to Scott’s argument that there’s also a society angle to this. Sadistic animal torture is both a problem from a moral perspective and a problem in the sense that once that kind of sadism enters a society, we are all the worse for it, because sadism can kind of spread out from there. Women get abortions most of the time because they’re making responsible choices about their health and futures. Strictly from the standpoint of discouraging sadism and encouraging responsibility, legal abortion and illegal animal torture make perfect sense.
I haven’t followed the story about Michael Vick and the dog-fighting too much. I think that laws against dog fighting are wise, but I can’t help but flash back on the fortunes of another admitted sadist who went after cats and wonder if there isn’t a double standard in our society.
65 Responses to “One of these things is not like the other”
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O/T, but not completely, what’s with the disgusting bullz-eye.com ads?
one could add that a dog or a cat are conscious, sentient, fully realized creatures with a complete and functioning nervous system; a one-inch embryo is essentially a bunch of parasitic cells incapable of experiencing anything.
One could add that a dog or a cat are conscious, sentient, fully realized creatures with a complete and functioning nervous system; a one-inch embryo is essentially a bunch of parasitic cells incapable of experiencing anything.
One could add that a dog or a cat are conscious, sentient, fully realized creatures with a complete and functioning nervous system; a one-inch embryo is essentially a bunch of parasitic cells incapable of experiencing anything.
One could add that a dog or a cat are conscious, sentient, fully realized creatures with a complete and functioning nervous system; a one-inch embryo is essentially a bunch of parasitic cells incapable of experiencing anything.
One could add that a dog or a cat are conscious, sentient, fully realized creatures with a complete and functioning nervous system; a one-inch embryo is essentially a bunch of parasitic cells incapable of experiencing anything.
Exactly a year ago, I wrote a book review for the American Prospect discussing this issue. Dogs can feel pain while first- and second-trimester human fetuses can’t. (The brain hardware required for pain experience hasn’t yet developed.) So there’s plenty of reason to have laws against cruelty to animals while not worrying about harms to fetuses.
One could add that a dog or a cat are conscious, sentient, fully realized creatures with a complete and functioning nervous system; a one-inch embryo is essentially a bunch of parasitic cells incapable of experiencing anything.
People be ODing. Unfortunately, rationale is overshadowed by people who like to make arguments for arguments’ sake. Good post.
I second the Bullz-eye ad disgust.
This is just yet another bit of illogic from these people. The better question to ask would be: why are we as a nation significantly more upset by the torturing of dog then we are at the torturing of detainees at Guantanamo and other sites? I am sure they would argue something about national security and moral agency, but the removal of a fetus is not intended to torture — what Vic did and what the CIA does is to intentionally inflict pain.
btw. Did you see Now this weekend? They did a pretty good story on the “women as victims of abortion” movement.
The problem with abortion argument analogies is that there’s nothing validly analogous to abortion. There’s simply no other issue that combines a comparable set of concerns.
Argument from analogy is usually pretty weak anyway. The result is that the analogy gets improperly manipulated and the argument goes nowhere.
This is even more true with this issue.
And, of course, it’s still legal to terminate the pregnancies of, or even euthanize, cats and dogs…
Semantically speaking, I don’t think you can murder an animal.
Yes, the very thought of having your uterus scrapped out *and* being subjected to cries of moral extremism, with the obligatory death threats thrown in, is ever-so pleasant.
With regards to Vick v. Frist: I totally forgot that the latter totally admitted to cruel torture of cats. Unless cats are capable of defending themselves more than dogs are, it is quite something that he has largely escaped even a fraction of the wrath that Vick has rightly endured. From what I remember, people essentially just dismissed it or justified it as in the public interest since he became a doctor and all.
Amanda,
Fundies have broken my brain with this.
I honestly have learned more from this blog than from most textbooks. Allow me to tip my hat to you.
In repentence for the aggravation through the learning process, I look forward to buying a copy of your book.
Take care, and sitting on the sidelines,
Grill
That reminds me of an anti-choice bumper sticker I see often that drives me bonkers. It has a bunch of endangered animals on one side, a fetus on the other, and asks “Guess which one isn’t protected”? Talk about comparing apples and oranges. Or apples and tack sheds.
Tell you what, when the human population is only a couple thousand individuals, you can get on the endangered species list. Then your sticker will be on its way to making sense.
Amanda:
Frist has a better publicist.
John Stewart hit it exactly right the other night with regard to Vick, and particularly the shallowness of sports “reporting” and “athletic culture.” Violent masculinity, that’s what we’re talking about, and about minimizing violent masculinity.
I agree with Laurent, and I believe her words deserve repeating. At least six times. Kidding aside - that’s really what it comes down to for me - sentience and the ability to suffer. I have no objection to torturing earthworms, f’rex, though I’d avoid anyone who did on the principle that being crazy and mean makes a person a lousy friend.
The above is the fetus-centric view, one which sort of leaves out an important concerned party (not Dobson). My point is simply that the argument falls on its ass even if you buy into the view of fetus as the primary consideration.
Why is sadism immoral, in your opinion? Is it still immoral if such acts are commited on a masochist?
Would you say that it is no longer sadistic if the person is a masochist and that my question is therefore irrelevant? Or is it the intent which matters, regardless of whether it is enjoyed?
Matt,
“Would you say that it is no longer sadistic if the person is a masochist and that my question is therefore irrelevant? Or is it the intent which matters, regardless of whether it is enjoyed?”
Wouldn’t it be fair to consider that intent changes in that case, though?
Funny, isn’t it, how the wingnuttery reduces intelligent people to have to repeat endlessly “cactii are different from roses”.
When will wingnuts not be on the attack but mostly on the defense, having to repeat “we’re really not total idiots”?
Perhaps that is the purpose, to keep one from doing something better. Perhaps drag-down politics goes along with trickle-down economics.
Wouldn’t it be fair to consider that intent changes in that case, though?
No I don’t believe it would, becase the intent is still to hurt. The receiver might like it but that doesnt change his intent. If his intent is not to hurt than it cannot be considered sadistic. Intent is intent. The outcome does not change the initial purpose (intent). The intent comes from the
If the intent is to cause pleasure through sadistic acts, then the act isn’t sadistic, though it might cause pain. The pain is pleasure in this instance, so it is not sadistic, regardless of what S&M enthusiasts might convince themselves of.
Knowing that the pain will cause pleasure I don’t believe is necessarily non sadistic. If I know the person likes pain, there might be a limit and I will try to push that person to the limit so that he/she feels nothing but pain and it is no longer e njoyable to anyone but me, the sadistic.
I am not sadistic. I just used “me” in general.
Anyway, I was wondering what her thoughts were on the subject and what does in fact qualify as sadistic. And why she believes it to be immoral, and what moral even means.
Because in one case, there’s consent, and in another, there isn’t?
That kind of makes a difference.
Sadly, there is a bit of a double standard between dogs and cats — dogs are associated with men, being all heirarchical and authority-following and such, and cats are associated with women, for a lot of reasons both real and folklorical. Thus a lot of the harmful intentions of misogynistic asshats who aren’t quite up to beatin’ the wimmins yet slops over onto cats.
But it’s all part of the same thing. And may The Great Cat torment so-called “Doctor” Frist in the Litterbox of Eternity for his crimes.
That’s kind of what I was thinking, Pai.
Matt, if a ’sadist’ inflicts pain on a ‘masochist’ with the intent of producing no pleasure (hence contrary to the wishes of the masochist) and only pain, then I’d say that the intent is immoral, even if by lucky coincidence the intent isn’t realized.
From Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of Law: I’d say that it’s possible to murder an animal, as all the elements of a murder against a human can be present in the killing of an animal. The only difference, as far as I know, is that there is no specific law defining the murder of an animal.Matt,
Suddenly, I remember the old joke; ”
Masochist: “Beat me!”
Sadist: “No.”
The circumstances defined by the statute address the killing of a human being. These laws do not exist to regulate the killing of other species.
It is a legal term, and is no laws address the killing of other species then it is not murder.
Don’t confuse ‘killing’ with ‘murder’, as the 2 are not synonymous even when discussing humans.
Masochist: “Beat me!”
Sadist: “No.”
Hah!
Damian,
Perhaps your law dictionary can shed more light on this; I’ve always understood that in Western tradition at any rate, humans and animals are assumed to be in radically different categories, and “another” refers to a person, that is, a human being and not any kind of animal.
Morally, I think cruelty is cruelty, and a bad thing, period. It is one thing to inflict some kind of pain or other harm for a decent purpose, and quite another to do so just for the fun of having some other being, at any level of status, writhe at your “mercy.” I’m afraid this leaves me with no sympathy for “sadists” as Matt defines them, as people whose fundamental goal is to cause suffering. If this is illiberal of me, make the most of it–but I suspect that many if not all the people who favor “sadism” as a sexual kink don’t require absolute suffering, only certain stereotyped expressions of the appearance of suffering, and can in principle be satisfied to find some cooperate “machocist” for mutual enjoyment. (It does seem like a dangerous kink, though, because they might not care to limit themselves to such partners or might get a special thrill from really hurting someone or some thing; I’d encourage anyone I cared about with such tendencies to seek ways to enjoy pleasure as such and not in such a twisted way, for their own sakes. Again, if this makes me intolerant or something, sue me.)
Philosophically, the Western tradition of humans as being radically separate from the rest of life and existence in general rests on hierarchial, fundamentally religious, dogmas that say we are special because God made us special, so there. Also, in the Christian tradition, the designated Lords of Creation. As my Dad puts it, humans are radically more important than animals because Jesus, the incarnation of God, was incarnated as a human and not something else, therefore we must be special.
Actually we evolved from other animals and perhaps our form of intelligence represents a new category of thing, just as we can reasonably talk about animals being something distinct from plants and living matter being distinct from nonliving; in each case it isn’t because some mysterious new substance or essence has come into being, but because of increasingly inclusive forms of self-organization of matter.
In short, if we humans have any claim to a special status, it is because we are more capable of a deeper, more meaningful understanding of our situation and that of the “lower” beings. To me, this suggests not so much a special privilege to dispose of other things as our whims suggest, but rather a stronger moral obligation to do right by them as well as ourselves, because we know better.
But you see, I’m trying to formulate an “earth-centered” or dispersed or techno-neo-pagan world-view as opposed to creationist hierarchy. To me the thing is for each individual thing to act with integrity and due consideration for the interests of whatever we interact with. This is a different approach than the basically Roman/Christian foundations of our legal theory.
Or as Sam Johnson put it: all too often, “The law is an ass.”
Sorry to bother you with an off-topic post, but is there anything you can do about those bullzeye.com ads with the nearly-naked women? Having the Pandagon homepage be NSFW is putting a crimp into my daytime reading.
[/whinge]
Sorry to bother you with an off-topic post, but is there anything you can do about those bullzeye.com ads with the nearly-naked women? Having the Pandagon homepage be NSFW is putting a crimp into my daytime reading.
I was wondering about that too.
What the anti-choicers are doing is nothing short of disgusting. Comparing animals, which can’t write or walk on two feet to a human, which can’t walk on four feet (that well anyway) and that doesn’t have a tail. Animals and humans are two completely different species, and comparing apples and carrots is totally ridiculous.
As to what or who is not protected: the women are NOT protected from savage, mass murdering, anti-choice terrorists who have bombed abortion clinics non-stop for the last 25 years. Every single day, I keep seeing on women’s groups’ web pages about how anti-choice terrorists continuously plot al-Qaida-style attacks on women’s clinics. So, here is who is and who isn’t protected. Animals: protected. Children: protected. Men: protected. Women: not protected. So now, the anti-choice terrorists can take their strawman argument and bury it for all I care. Because I know who is and isn’t protected. And guess who isn’t protected? Hint: 224 million of these, including Becky Bell in 1988, have been slaughtered during pregnancy by our anti-female, anti-choice government since our nation was founded.
Y’know, we as a society kill dogs. And cats. We kill them when they’re a danger to others, we kill them when there’s no practical way to feed and care for them, and we kill them when they have a medical condition that would make the rest of their life suck. We try to do it as nicely as possible, but we do it.
So maybe there is an analogy to abortion after all—not between abortion and animal torture, which is a different and nastier thing altogether, but between abortion and animal euthanasia. The anti-choicers are like people who want to place all the animals in the pound, randomly, with people who might not want them or be able to support them, with no possible returns, no vet support, and a side-order of name-calling. And outlaw mercy euthenasia. And cancel Christmas.
Irene
Jovan1984:
The point is, really, that no category is absolutely “protected;” “protection” is actually a function of servicability to The Man.
Even owners of substantial property, realistically, are “protected” only insofar as they serve the protection racket. The legislation giving various kinds of cops and other enforcers the right to loot the property of people accused of drug offenses back in the ’80s illustrates that, and of course foreshadowed the recent executive declartions by Teh Shrub about Homeland Security or the AG on his say-so, declaring, perhaps secretly, anyone an “enemy combatant” and thus seizing their property. When even private wealth is not sacrosanct to the partisans of property uber alles, we can see clearly that The Purpose of Power is Power.
This is what dominator society is all about.
An alternative approach to what society is and what should be valued would stress the integrity of everyone and every thing, and be about ethical relations between them. Long before I started trying to integrate stuff I then called “ecofeminist” insights, it became obvious to me that a deep principle in political science was that people need to speak up, and act, on their own behalf, for their own interests; this is the basis of democracy. Not that we try to choose the “best, wisest” protectors, but that we assert that everyone needs to be heard from, and respect that everyone needs some credible power base to assert themselves from. Democracy is about that, insofar as it is effective and actual.
Animals, of course, not being part of intelligent society, are pretty limited in their ability to assert themselves; they certainly can’t collectively. (I would not want to be the guy to treat a cat cavalierly, though, not without putting on lots of protective clothing first…) There, what protects them is human awareness that we are in fact integrated into a greater web of being; the vague mystical notion that there is such a thing as karma, and the concrete fact that there is such a thing as the ecosystem (which protects plants and other life forms too) that we should be careful fooling around with; such thinking would tend to naturally establish ethics about dealing with individual animals and failure to learn such thinking will lead predictably to serious problems for us.
It’s necessary for those of us on the lower rungs of the hierarchial order to show our claws from time to time. That’s the Spirit of ‘76.
“Sorry to bother you with an off-topic post, but is there anything you can do about those bullzeye.com ads with the nearly-naked women? Having the Pandagon homepage be NSFW is putting a crimp into my daytime reading.”
If you’re using Firefox, you can right-click->block images as a quick fix.
My last post, taking off on Jovan1984 above, seems to have vanished, presumably into mod.
I discussed there how mainstream ethical thought is dominator society thinking, and indicated some notions of what an alternative mode of ethical/moral thinking might entail.
Taking the case at hand:
In a non-creationist, non-hierarchial mode, human babies are produced only by human women who choose to go through pregnancy. In real life as opposed to straw-fetus hyptothetical cases cooked up by authoritarians, women actually choose to terminate their pregnancies either 1) very early in the term, as soon as possible, in fact, for a number of good related reasons–in these cases the alleged slippery slope between aborting a fetus and killing a human baby is very far-fetched, and these are the vast majority of cases; or 2) something goes wrong late in the pregnancy, either with the fetus or the mother, so that in these cases in some combination the prognosis for a successful birth is low and the danger to the mother is high; mainstream ethicists have generally conceded that abortion is A-OK when there is a tradeoff between the mother’s well-being and the fetus’s of such severity–again, in real life, these cases are in fact serious and not trivial, since women who prolong their pregnancies this long intended to have the baby (and that’s why I use the terms “mother” and “baby” here.)
Therefore it is not at all problematic to adopt the maxim that “women decide whether or not to continue their pregnancies, period.” There is no serious likelihood of a meaningful conflict between the rights of a highly developed fetus and the woman bearing it. Thus, it’s a woman’s right to choose and everyone else should just butt out.
When we deal with animals, on the other hand, we are dealing with other beings that we didn’t create and don’t have to sacrifice ourselves to bring into being. As living beings we can see ourselves as in competition with others, or in a cooperative relationship; the general rules for negotiating between entities that both have claims on living in the world apply. If we can let other critters live without some severe sacrifice being called for on our part, it’s clearly good sense to do so; taking the attitude that we have some kind of pre-emptive right to order lower beings about at our whim is obviously nasty and probably counter-productive even from our narrow viewpoint, in the long run. This is why we shouldn’t torture kittens or pull wings off flies–though we may well drown kittens when we can foresee they will be badly cared for or there is a huge overpopulation of cats in the vicinity, or use electric swatters and the like to sweep infestations of flies from the air around us.
And in the same way, sensible women and men generally take some steps to avoid undesired pregnancies; this cuts down on the inconvenience and risks and expenses of abortions, while still allowing for heterosexual people to enjoy sex with each other.
As for carping about protecting endangered species and not human feti:
Obviously when we are contemplating the wholesale extermination of a species, we are facing at least a danger signal, and possibly a cause, of a severe disruption of the ecosystem as a whole. Whereas there are already plenty of H Sapiens Sapiens cluttering up the landscape; no danger of the unique strand of evolutionary history we represent dying out. Unless of course we persist in being moronic about living respectfully in the ecosystem; then even our future is in doubt.
Such entity-centered ethics obviously does not deny any woman the right to choose to have babies anyway, regardless of population levels. But if we had this kind of ethics, it seems likely to me that women would generally choose sensibly.
The kinds of ethics that dominate our institutions, it seems to me, are fundamentally creationist and authoritarian in their assumptions about the radical separation of humanity from other beings in general, and either break down in illogic, or frankly appeal to some Creator God for their basis.
Hence our wacky policies and debates about them.
and
http://powerofnarrative.blogspot.com/2007/08/american-way-of-doing-business.html
As my Dad puts it, humans are radically more important than animals because Jesus, the incarnation of God, was incarnated as a human and not something else, therefore we must be special.
How does he know? What if Jesus (taking as given, for the sake of the argument, that Jesus was the incarnation of God) was just the human incarnation and there were also dolphin incarnations, elephant incarnations, chimp incarnations, etc of God? Maybe the elephant incarnation was much closer to the actual reality of God and therefore elephants are the truly special beings? For that matter, what if God is really a cockroach and humans are really just a convenient food source…Would we even know?
I have looked at that cat picture 100 times now and it still makes me laugh.
Thanks, grill.
That reminds me of an anti-choice bumper sticker I see often that drives me bonkers. It has a bunch of endangered animals on one side, a fetus on the other, and asks “Guess which one isn’t protected”? Talk about comparing apples and oranges. Or apples and tack sheds.
No Bible-thumping Bush voter ever blew his load and made an elephant. Which is all you need to know.
Matt, you are engaging in classic cruising-to-be-offended behavior. Murdered dogs, we can safely understand, didn’t just fail to use the safe word. BDSM, which seems to me to mostly be grown-ups playing cops and robbers, isn’t the same kind of “sadism”. Surely we are all grown-up to understand the concept that some words have multiple definitions. There are some people in BDSM relationships who cross the line into the “real” sadism and become genuine abusers, but hell, that happens in more vanilla sexual relationships all the time, as well.
I don’t necessarily buy feminist concerns that BDSM provides an especially good cover for abuse. I think the widespread nature of domestic violence indicates that the real factors are shame, control, and men’s social power over women, and I would bet dollars to donuts a woman in an abusive BDSM relationship has the same mental processes as a woman in an abusive vanilla relationship.
Dianne,
Of course my Dad doesn’t know. That’s a faith-based claim he makes, based on accepting Christian orthodoxy. Which is to say, his argument assumes what he sets out to prove.
I suppose Hindus, for instance, assume that God incarnates as animals with missions either for us or their own species all the time.
“The Passion of the Slug-Redeemer”–”‘Cast her on the salt lick,’” burbled the multitude of snails…”
Has anyone ever seen a French movie called “Sorceress,” made in the late 80s? It came on Bravo or some such channel way back in ‘89 or so, when I was first moving in with Natasha. It got interesting reviews in the LA Weekly and when I saw it I was pretty impressed, possibly because as a foreign-language film it was captioned long before I ever saw closed-captioning. It was about a priest in medieval France sent to some parish out in the boonies where the local people regarded a legendary dog as a saint because of some noble thing or other the dog did. It was also about the priest’s relationship with a local wise woman, and his past as a rapist, as well as class relations between the local lord and the peasantry. I’ve never been able to see it again and the videotape I made at the time was really sucky in quality. (There’s some other damn action flick of the same name, about an explosive truck or something, that turns up instead.)
Toward the climax, the penny finally drops for the priest that the peasants revere the dog and he blows his top. “C’est la sorcerie!” (It all turns out OK in the end; no women or dogs actually get burned at the saint and he weasels out some syncretic rationalization or other for the cult, not to mention letting the woman off the hook somehow and resolving the conflict between the lord and the villagers.)
“Perhaps your law dictionary can shed more light on this; I’ve always understood that in Western tradition at any rate, humans and animals are assumed to be in radically different categories, and “another” refers to a person, that is, a human being and not any kind of animal.”
Well, that may be true now, but it hasn’t always been. There’s a book called something like Criminal Prosecution and Animals, I can’t remember the title, and it’s out of print again anyway, that talks about the history of this.
Before the nineteenth century, the only thing that really mattered to the law was your social status. High ranking people and their animals got away with things, low ranking people and animals were seen as equals. For example, a sow that killed someone would be judged and hanged as though she understood her crime, if your dog followed you on a stealing rampage, they’d hang the dog beside you as an accomplice. And maybe your horse. (The horse was worth something, and had a bit in its mouth, so it might escape that fate.)
My favorite was a dog in, I think, Germany, who was sentenced to a year in a cage in the town square for snapping at a court justice. There were public pamphlets where it was discussed how stupid it was to do such a thing to a dog, who couldn’t understand why it ended up in the cage. Society generally catches on to things way before the legal system adjusts.
I really hope that society wouldn’t have the same discussion about toddlers being given knifes and encouraged to stab each other for entertainment and profit that it currently seems to be having about doing basically the same thing with dogs. When left to their own devices, dogs mostly avoid gathering together to fight to the death in an arena/ring while others gamble on them. That form of “entertainment” was invented by humans.
When the fundies get their knickers in a twist over the Humane Society and their practice of “destroying” animals to control the population, I might think them serious.
Meanwhile, the Bushies are trying to create a ONE YEAR waiting period for CHIP insurance for children. How pro-life is that?
Amen!!
Perhaps this point was inevitable.. but:
I loved how he pointed out how misguided/ignorant the sports-world commentary was, but I was also somewhat annoyed by the segment.
Whenever I see people complaining about domestic pets being treated inhumanely, all I can think of is livestock (veal!) on a factory farm, and how unfortunate it is that we direct our concern to once-in-a-while events like this, instead of at the tragedy that needs it.
Like, pigs are significantly more intelligent than dogs. They deserve more consideration for happiness and suffering, yet their treatment is way, way worse than what (as far as I understand) this weirdo did with his dogs.
Kyle, I’m not so certain that Vick was prosecuted out of some fuzzy and sympathetic need to protect animals. I think the law has come to recognize that people who torture dogs and cats don’t usually stop there.
He was also running an illegal gambling operation, but that might have been more difficult to prosecute than the viscerally disgusting animal torture charges.
Hm, I wonder about how the extreme anti-birth control anti-choicers feel about neutering and spaying one’s pets? I’ve never heard about them picketing or blowing up a humane society before, but what do I know?
Arun, at comment 39 above, excerpts an essay of mine — WHICH HAS ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO DO WITH ABORTION. Bah.
However, I recently wrote about abortion and about a woman’s right to her own body, which in my view must be absolute (i.e., up to the time of birth):
Of Abortion, and Women as the Ultimate Source of Evil
sylvie,
I think this is because fundies refuse to believe that humans are primates and that in the cosmic, universal scheme of things, we are no more important than another terrestrial species.
This is pretty telling when so-called Christian ministers chastise CF people and tell them that refusing to have a quiverful is a deliberate attempt to defy God’s plan, regardless of the circumstances that cause humans to want to control their births in the first place (overpopulation and environmental concerns, being unable to afford more than a certain number of children and economic concerns, etc.). I once saw it described thusly, “Animals breed, but humans procreate to the glory of God.” Oh, how they love to ramble on about how “accidents” are prone to happen and that the evildoers’ hearts will be turned to sheeplike Christian devotion once they give birth to that first unplanned child, because if God really wants someone to reproduce, he will personally intervene in their birth control method and cause it to fail.
I tend to differ, in as much as I believe that the only difference between humans and animals is that we can control our reproduction, and they can’t. Therefore, we’re held to a higher standard of environmental stewardship than your average whitetail deer or mountain lion.
You know, I bet you could flush an inch-long dog fetus and not get in trouble with the law as well. I wonder if development has anything to do with this? Nah, don’t bother thinking, it would ruin the happiness of pure outrage!
I wasn’t aware the dogs were in Vick’s uterus.
Hey, I don’t know if anyone else is taking notes, but beyond the basic correctness of Amanda’s argument here, this is a great example of the reframing of this particuar issue that she mentioned a few months ago. I have to admit, the dead dogs vs. dead fetuses (feti?) argument, while obviously a giant stretch, wasn’t something that I found easy to actually build an argument against. Reframing it as sadistic dog killers vs. women with actual health concerns makes all the difference.
No Bible-thumping Bush voter ever blew his load and made an elephant.
That’s just great.
I’ve been reading so many apologists for Vick. I don’t understand it, and it makes me despair for us as a society.
Not only is Vick’s crime being compared to abortion, it’s also being compared to drunk driving and domestic assault, as in, why should he get time for this when some people get away with crimes against humans?
But there’s no need for a comparision. A bioterror attack would be worse than dog fighting too, but so what? How does that minimize what he did? I wouldn’t click on the link that was cited above regarding cats, it would make me cry and I can’t take it anymore. Not after I read about how he and cronies would kill the underperforming dogs by HANGING and DROWNING (and I capped that so that those who don’t want to think about this ‘cause it’s “just dogs” get a picture in their heads about what happened to them. It chills me. Vick is an EVIL person, and I wish there were a hell because enternity isn’t even enough time for this sadistic monster to rot in it.
You don’t have to be a fundie to have bought the notion. Millions of atheists have, too.
It’s not fuzzy or sympathetic, it’s an interest in rudimentary ethics. It’s a simple concern for suffering. I dislike pets and don’t like being around animals in general, but I respect ‘em.
Livestock are essentially tortured too. A British court even decided it in a case against McDonald’s. All day today animals were tortured, all over the world.
I’m just saying that we should be this outraged every day over animal rights if we want it to mean anything at all.
THAT’S sperm magic.
“How can it be illegal to torture and murder animals while it’s legal to flush out an inch-long embryo?”
The people who think this way have no problem with Gary Bauer praising then-Governor Bush, who was a serial executioner, for respecting the “Sanctity of Life.” He clearly does not respect the sanctity of the word, “sanctity.” What this shows is the wingnuts’ bloated sense of entitlement. They expect us to come a-running when they use the Magic Words, but when it’s pointed out that Issue B has a greater claim to that word than Issue A, they won’t lift a finger.
I hope I live to see the day when I can hear politicians and activists talk about “life,” and I can assume they mean Life and not Antiabortionism.
the women are NOT protected from savage, mass murdering, anti-choice terrorists who have bombed abortion clinics non-stop for the last 25 years.
How many women have they actually murdered?
I get the impression that for every actual nutter who’s willing to shed blood, there’s a thousand pin-dicked little bastards who cream their undies at the thought of women being scared of them because of the actual nutcases.
But Phoenician -
It really doesn’t matter how many are actually killed. Because if the garden-variety nutters, who work on the backs of those that DO kill, in increasing their intimidation of women through the fear the women have of being killed, above what their own harassment of these women gives them, then what they are doing is terrorism, just like what the actual killers do.
Of course it’s terrorism - but it’s a particularly cheap terrorism. With “real” terrorism, we’re at least talking about thugs - people who will go out and shoot weapons into neighbourhoods or bomb marketplaces, but people who are willing to at least engage in some form of risk in pursuit of their fun in killing civilians to prove a point.
Here we’re talking about a movement which almost entirely consists of cowards, which is probably why they’re so het up about maintaining control over Teh Evil Womenparts via the law.
Personally, I think they should be met by the maximum amount of intimidation allowed by the law. Make certain they know you have their names and addresses. If it’s legal to publish them, publish them. Take their photographs - and make sure they know you’re taking their photographs. If your State allows the overt display of guns (which I find really, really wierd), make certain their protests always include a bunch of silent watchers carrying guns.
I think some abortion clinics do use armed guards. You’re right that there’s a weird cowardice to it. Most clinics that get bombed are ones that are staked out the most by largely non-violent protesters. Basically they create this situation where hundreds, sometimes thousands, of creeps linger around the clinic, so when someone crosses the line and shoots a doctor or bombs the place, it’s hard to narrow down who did it, especially if the acts happen (like in Birmingham) in states where the majority of the community is not pleased about abortion rights.
Basically they create this situation where hundreds, sometimes thousands, of creeps linger around the clinic, so when someone crosses the line and shoots a doctor or bombs the place, it’s hard to narrow down who did it, especially if the acts happen (like in Birmingham) in states where the majority of the community is not pleased about abortion rights.
Cause and effect, or merely a function of the size of the pool?
Vick is an EVIL person, and I wish there were a hell because enternity isn’t even enough time for this sadistic monster to rot in it.
Oh, for god’s sake. Overreact, much? A few dead dogs is just as bad as, say, 3000 dead Americans on false pretenses? Come on.
I get that many people may find Vick’s actions cruel, needless, and possessed of a disregard for the suffering of an animal.
If you eat meat, though, so are your actions. Yet you accept that it’s ok to needlessly torture and kill pigs for meat, even though you could just as easily live on beans. Suddenly the same mistreatment for entertainment is wrong?
If you do things like:
Go to the zoo
Eat beef and pork
Use animal-tested products
Use medicines or benefit from science
then you’ve been a part of the vivisection and killing of animals for human purposes.
I don’t have a problem with it. I eat meat because it’s delicious. A pig is just as smart as a dog and they’re hardly raised under better circumstances than some of these dogs (I know, I’ve visited the barns.) I certainly find animal bloodsports cruel and offensive.
I just don’t see why it should be illegal. Vick didn’t steal the dogs. That his conduct with them offends some of our consciences doesn’t strike me as terribly relevant. You or I may believe that his conduct was a breach of ethics, but clearly he did not; what’s society’s interest here? Why are dogs better than pigs? If he bought and sold cattle, why would that have been better?