I was going to find a way to incorporate this into my podcast, but I can’t find the damn video anywhere, so onto the blog it goes instead. Digby posted a transcript of Chris Matthews applying some actual hardball questions to the leader of National Right To Life, actually the question that they can’t answer. At stake was why National Right To Life was endorsing Fred Thompson, even though he gave the squishy answer about how they don’t want to throw women in jail for having abortions.
MATTHEWS: I have always wondered something about the pro-life movement. If—if you believe that killing—well, killing a fetus or killing an unborn child is—is murder, why don‘t you bring murder charge or seek a murder penalty against a woman who has an abortion? Why do you let her off, if you really believe it‘s murder?
O‘STEEN: We have never sought criminal penalties against a woman.
MATTHEWS: Why not?
O‘STEEN: There haven‘t been criminal penalties against a woman.
MATTHEWS: Well, why not?
O‘STEEN: Well, you don‘t know the circumstances and how she‘s been forced into this. And that‘s…
MATTHEWS: Forced into it?
(CROSSTALK)
O‘STEEN: … to be effective.
We‘re out—we‘re not out—we‘re out to try to protect unborn children.
(CROSSTALK)
MATTHEWS: See, this is where the hypocrisy comes in, sir. If it‘s wrong to have an abortion, why don‘t you criminalize it?
(CROSSTALK)
O‘STEEN: I don‘t think that‘s the way you‘re going to protect unborn children.
(CROSSTALK)
MATTHEWS: But, if you say it‘s murder, why don‘t you act on that?
O‘STEEN: I think civil—I think civil penalties, aiming at the doctors, taking away their financial incentives. We‘re after what works to protect unborn children. And that‘s the goal.
MATTHEWS: But the problem with all the states‘ rights is, you just go to the next state. And, if you outlaw it in America, you just go to Canada or Mexico or Dominican Republic.
Unless you penalize the person who has an abortion, I don‘t see how you actually stop somebody from having one.
O‘STEEN: Well, I—I‘m not—we have never sought criminal penalties against a woman.
I think it‘s much—far more effective to take away the financial incentive of the abortion doctors that are doing this for profit and for money. And we are—and our goal, remember, is to protect unborn children and to do what will work.
And it is a fact we have a federal system of government, yes.
MATTHEWS: Right.
O‘STEEN: Yes, we‘re going to work for laws in all of the states. And we will overturn Roe v. Wade. And Fred Thompson would help do that.
MATTHEWS: Do you believe that abortion is murder?
O‘STEEN: I believe it‘s the killing of a human being. Murder is a technical term. And right now, unfortunately, it‘s legal. But it‘s the killing of a human being.
MATTHEWS: But you do believe it‘s murder?
O‘STEEN: I believe it‘s the killing of a human being, that‘s the term.
MATTHEWS: It just seems like you make a basic political judgment that would blame the doctor, when, in fact, these doctors don‘t go door to door offering people abortion services. The person who wants the abortion goes to a doctor and has the procedure done by the doctor. Yet you put the onus on the doctor. It just seems to be the strangest way to enforce a law.
O‘STEEN: Remember, that‘s where the financial incentive is, and the physician knows what they‘re doing. How many women have been told this is a blob of tissue? This isn‘t really a human life? How are they pressured by men that want to escape their responsibilities, perhaps? What about a young girl that‘s been impregnated by a male, where it‘s a case of statutory rape?
But the abortion doctor knows exactly what they‘re doing. They‘re taking a human life. And you will see Roe v. Wade reversed and you‘ll see respect for human life restored. And Fred Thompson will help do that.
Anti-choicers correctly perceive that their raging misogyny is a strike against them, that their quivering hatred of women who don’t apologize for being daughters of Eve with actual sexualities and carbon-based bodies will tend to draw people short, since half of us are women (with sexualities, due to that humanity thing and all) and the other half still have mothers, sisters, wives, daughters, and friends that they don’t want to see being treated like criminals for the high crime of living your life, even with the dreaded sex in it. And in order to get the stench of misogyny off them, they came across a, um, brilliant? P.R. move: Instead of saying that women are evil, let’s just say women are stupid, that they have sex (and use contraception and have abortions) not because they really want to, but because they’re badgered by men, feminists, and doctors who make so much money off performing a procedure that technically goes on the books as running in the red and is, at places like Planned Parenthood, subsidized largely by more profitable endeavors like supplying contraception. (Not that PP ever runs in the black, since they are a non-profit and subsist not only on fees, but donations and government funding.)
The question here is why do anti-choicers go with the “women are stupid” line instead of the “women are evil” line—because they are stupid? Or because they’re evil? Today, I’m leaning towards the latter, at least with the leadership. They think they’re so damn clever, with their fucked-up story about the supposedly high-rolling abortion “industry” and helpless women of a sheep-like stupidity who can’t be held to account for killing someone. Which does make me wonder why they don’t picket women’s prisons and demand the release of all the prisoners, who are not morally accountable human beings, but barely sentient ambulatory wombs in the anti-choice estimation. They don’t, of course, because they’re full of shit. I think David O’Steen is a liar, actually. I think no human being can be so stupid as to think that you can ban an act without enforcing the ban if you want it to work.
Plus, part of the fable of the stupid-bitches-er-darling-misled-angels-who-get-abortions is that they’re misled by The Feminists, the secret lady cabal that runs the world. Well, The Feminists get abortions, don’t they? I have no doubt that David O’Steen would be chomping at the bit to throw someone like me in jail on 200 different offenses, starting with the use of hormonal contraception and just general uppitiness. Thinking on it that way, I have all the more reason to suspect that the fable about not punishing the poor misled womb containers is just a thin P.R. maneuver from the leadership, and if they sheep follow it, it’s because the sheep are ideologically opposed to questioning authority.
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I get the feeling that people like David O’Steen wish they lived in “The Screwfly Solution.”
Why doesn’t anyone in the media ever call these idiots on their bullshit mantra that somehow the “abortion industry” is making a huge profit off of this? I mean, as long as Chris Matthews is willing to ask one hard question, he should go the distance and ask even more.
If you like the War on Drugs, you’ll love the War on Abortions.
The NRLC can try to spin this all they want, but one thing remains the same: the leading anti-choice organization’s number one goal (as with all other anti-choice groups) is to kill as many women as possible.
My family was trying to talk up Huckabee was their candidate of choice next year and I flat-out told them that being anti-choice was a “deal breaker” for me and that I would never vote for such a candidate.
You can be as pro-life as you want to, but when you venture into the realm of wanting to take that choice away from women you are essentially depriving them of their humanity. I work in healthcare and can tell you firsthand that women die before and during childbirth and can also develop lifelong health problems due to pregnancy. You DO NOT make a women go through that against her will and finger-wagging “well, she should have kept her knees together” is a la-la land refusal to deal with the reality of the situation and is pointless after the fact. The real agenda of persons who want to deprive a woman of her humanity is abundantly clear when you compare their desire to force childbirth and punish women to the non-existent good acts they *actually* do to prevent unwanted pregnancy to begin with.
Wait, are they actually saying that if I, a non doctor learn how to do a safe abortion procedure and I don’t charge money to perform it, then that would not be outlawed? Because if that is the way the laws will be written, then I am willing to learn the procedure and perform it so that women still have choice. I know that before Roe v.Wade, the Jane group eventually performed the abortions themselves because they were actually being safer than some of the doctors that were involved. If the right to lifers aren’t careful about how they write this it could move abortion out of the medical area and back to where it started, in the hands of women.
On a completely different note. I totally understand why you need the anti-spam measures, but is there anyway the numbers can be easier to read. I have real trouble sometimes and have to repost because of the display of the numbers.
Matthews can be a jerk sometimes. This is not one of those times, this is a time I actually feel like cheering for him.
But I’m not sure it’s fair to say that they all think the way you’re describing here, Amanda. I’m sure that a lot of people on that side just hate the idea of what they consider babies being ripped apart by vacuums or vivisected or whatever. They are never going to convince me that intelligent life literally begins at conception, that a day old embryo is the equivalent of a human baby and is therefore entitled to the same protection as a human being. But when the fetus gets a cranium with a working brain inside, and arms, and legs, then it’s a hell of a lot harder to say that it’s something other than human. People will look at the ultrasound and see a baby.
So it’s understandable that some people are going to say “human life is human life and no human should be killed, ever.” Some of these people are undoubtedly misogynists and think the way you say, and some undoubtedly lie and use unscrupulous tactics in order to further their agenda, but the rest just mean well.
I know somebody like that, who is actually pro-life because she did have an abortion and felt terrible about it afterwards. I haven’t asked her why she felt that way, all I know is that she did, and this isn’t something that you want to grill somebody about when they don’t want to talk about it too much. What am I supposed to tell her, that she’s wrong for wanting to protect something that others don’t think is worth protecting?
Neither you nor I like factory farming, Amanda, because the animals suffer horribly–and yet a lot of people are content to just put it out of their minds, or remain willfully ignorant, or say “well I don’t like it, but we need protein so I need to keep eating meat.” Others might say that animals don’t matter because they’re not intelligent, and they’d say that we are stupid and wrong to feel sorry for them. That they are not worth protecting, and that we should just keep our mouths shut about conditions in factory farms because they don’t wanna hear it (which I do for the most part, but when I see meat being served it’s difficult to avoid thinking about it and to just go about my business and say nothing).
If this guy and his ilk are really saying that all women who get abortions are gullible sheep who have been misled by representatives of an industry whose eyes turn to dollar signs with a “cha-ching!” sound whenever another woman enters a clinic, they are condescending jerks and full of shit. But there are those on the other side who just don’t want to see anything or anybody die or suffer, who hold every living thing in high regard, and that’s something I can understand even though I’m certainly not in favor of a hard and fast law saying “no abortions–ever!”
Because if woman chose to end their pregnancy it would go against their mental construct that the true God calling of all women is to be mothers. . . that if women would just knuckle down to being mothers, they would be happy and the world would be at piece.
No they can’t get their minds around the double speak they have about women caused original sin and women are Godly when they are mothers and wives and subservant to men.
Women, in their construct, wouldn’t actually deny and distroy their God ordained roll, they have to have been misled.
I will echo Sheesh—not every pregnancy is dangerous, no, but pregnancy can be dangerous and it is unconscionable to impel a woman to bear that risk against her will. If my birth control failed and I got pregnant by my husband, I would need an abortion for my health. Anti-abortion folks who would ban abortion don’t give a shit about my well-being. They don’t care if they’d speed my demise. So fuck ‘em all. (Not literally. I wouldn’t wish that on anyone.)
Some of them may simply be ignorant, Orange. I was actually unaware myself that pregnancy carried such dangers with with advances in modern medicine, until Sheesh said so just now that is. I was under the impression that the reason most women got abortions was one of the following: “I can’t support this child, having a child at this point would ruin my life, I’m not ready to be a mother, I can’t handle 9 months of pregnancy or giving birth itself, etc.” I thought that “I might very well DIE or suffer health problems if I don’t get an abortion” was actually rare.
Maybe some of them don’t give a shit about you, but others probably just don’t understand. They’ll say “Why can’t she just wait nine months, have an epidural, and give the kid up for adoption if it would be such an inconvenience?”
Why is it taking the cowed, faux reverent news media so long to call out these irrational whackjobs? I’ve never heard the most obvious question put to these fanatics: if a woman — a couple — has one child, why not a dozen or more?
Rob: because becoming a walking incubator, even if the pregnancy is not a risky one, carries a bunch of other tangible problems for a woman?
She may work or school in an environment where her privacy will not respected, and will be subjected to a never-ending barrage of questions, comments, and unsolicited opinions and “advice” from people who disapprove of her situation or decision to “throw away her baby” to strangers. (e.g. “Oh, I just know that I couldn’t do that … feeling a child grow inside of me for 9 months and then just handing it over. No, the maternal bond would be too strong. Can’t even imagine it. I don’t know how you could do it. I bet you’ll change your mind at the last minute. The maternal instinct will kick in and you’ll want to keep your precious little baby.”)
She may risk being ostracised by friends and family for becoming pregnant
The everyday problems associated with pregnancy (fatigue and morning sickness to name a few) could make it difficult for her to hold down her job or finish school, creating a longterm negative impact on her life.
Her risk of being murdered by her boyfriend or husband will increase something like 9-fold when she’s pregnant. In fact, the leading cause of death for pregnant women is murder.
How about this: It is inside my body, therefore it is my decision. No rationalizations, no justifications, no excuses need be made.
How often does Right to Life claim any societally-valid right to intervene when somebody makes a live donor organ donation?
Jesus…I had no idea, Mighty Ponygirl. Almost all of that is stuff I didn’t know or just didn’t think about. People on the pro-choice side have gotta get the word out somehow, moreso than they currently are. If they did, I’m sure that a lot fewer people would be inclined to scream “murderer” at women when they go to get an abortion.
The ones who would hate them regardless of all that really are assholes–it’s not like they asked for this and the procedure is going to be any fun for them, you know?
Rob:
Theoretically, yes. In practice, there is *no* major anti-abortion organization or group that acts like it.There is *no* excuse for not pushing condoms & other barrier methods, if you truly believe that human personhood begins at conception. No excuse, none.
There are a few (very few) anti-abortion groups that are also anti-torture, anti-death penalty, and anti-war. They get a micro-pass for not being astronomically hypocritical, but until they come out in favor of condoms for all I have to assume that they’re at best kidding themselves about their motives.
Rob: Maybe some of them don’t give a shit about you, but others probably just don’t understand. They’ll say “Why can’t she just wait nine months, have an epidural, and give the kid up for adoption if it would be such an inconvenience?”
Because anyone who says “Why don’t you just give the kid up for adoption?” clearly doesn’t give a shit about you.
Separating newborn babies from mothers because the mother cannot afford to look after the baby - which is what “inconvenience” means in that sentence - is an inhuman crime. Babies ought to be cared for by their mothers. A woman who knows she won’t be able to do that is making a responsible decision if she decides to terminate: better if she never conceived at all, but accidents happen.
“Pro-lifers” who argue that a pregnant woman who can’t afford a baby can “just give the baby up for adoption” are arguing that women are incubators, nothing more. It is precisely the same state of mind that enabled white slave-owners in pre-Civil War America to justify taking a slave woman’s baby away from her for sale.
Sometimes, infant adoption may be necessary. But it should never be - never - something proffered as a default option. Adoption is a service provided to children who need new families, not a means of letting couples who can’t have a baby get one via a woman who can’t afford to keep it.
“Maybe some of them don’t give a shit about you, but others probably just don’t understand.”
I’d have more sympathy for the plight of the poor, underinformed anti-choicers out there if it weren’t for the fact that they’d know all this shit if they just shut up and listened for once in their goddamned lives.
There’s only so many times things like “pregnancy is unpredictable and can turn dangerous very quickly” and “pregnancy is not just abstaining from alcohol for 9 months” and “hey, passing a baby through your vagina (or abdominal wall) is actually kind of a big deal” can be said before it’s no longer anyone’s fault but their own if they’re somehow unaware of how drastically pregnancy can fuck up a woman’s body, life, and future prospects.
Sorry, Rob - I posted the above comment before I saw yours at 10:26 am. While I hold by everything I said in it, I’d have phrased it less aggressively if I’d seen your comment then.
Spam filter killed my first post, so hopefully this isn’t a repeat.
So it’s understandable that some people are going to say “human life is human life and no human should be killed, ever.”
Fred Thompson will dismantle the military? Because that’s used to kill human life. Fred Thompson will ban handguns and semi-automatic weapons? Because those are used to kill human life. Fred Thompson will stop all arms sales from the US to other countries? You know, those bombers and warships? Because those are used to kill human life. The NRLC holds anti-gun, anti-military rallies? Ok.
These people support Republicans because they are complete pacifists? Sure. Right. Where’s the other bridge I’m buying today?
—-
and you‘ll see respect for human life restored. And Fred Thompson will help do that.
This only works if one doesn’t see women as human life or people. One doesn’t respect human life by denying people the right to liberty; by denying people the right to say who uses their body, for what, and when; by denying people medical care to save their lives or health. So, yeah, they’re lying with their cold, black hearts and they know it.
I understand the appeal of the argument that “the fact they think abortion is murder but don’t want to jail women who have abortions means they think women are stupid and incompetent.” But I wonder if it’s actually something much simpler.
I see the unwillingness of abortion opponents to advocate jailtime for women who get abortions is actually evidence that pro-choicers are right, and that the reasons we are right are carved so deeply at some internal level in the hearts/minds/souls of all people with a shred of humanity left in them, that no matter how much happy talk abortion foes might make about how all women really love their babies, how much they pretend that carrying a fetus to term and giving it up for abortion solves the problem, how much they try to convince themselves that women who get pregnant asked for or deserve it–At a fundamental level they cannot erase from themselves the knowledge that pregnancy is a real physical imposition and violation of a woman’s bodily integrity and autonomy that places her at risk; that women are entirely within their rights to protect themselves against that risk; and that ultimately women’s bodily integrity is a sacred, fundamental right, as much as life is. Even if they strongly believe that abortion is murder, they can’t really ever be free of a small internal voice that tells them, “yes, but it’s clearly murder in self defense, and we don’t punish people for that.” (I think it is entirely possible for them to have this internal knowledge and still believe that the doctors who perform abortions are wrong, since they are not under the same personal threat women are.)
But, they can’t actually say that, because it would call their entire line of argument into question. So they make up bizarre complicated not-really-sensical arguments about women being “coerced” into abortion. But, at some level, they know they are wrong.
Because if woman chose to end their pregnancy it would go against their mental construct that the true God calling of all women is to be mothers. . . that if women would just knuckle down to being mothers, they would be happy and the world would be at piece.
You know, I wonder if it’s the same mindset that leads to continued abuse of residents and interns, continued hazing rituals, etc. I wonder how many parents are in the anti-choice movement because they had to put up with their own unwanted children, and, by god, no slut is getting off easy when they couldn’t because that’s not “fair”.
There’s also the issue of “if anyone questions my world view that motherhood = happiness, then it threatens my faith”–which is a problem with a lot of the authoritarian crowd: anyone not accepting their mindset 100% is an active threat, because their mindset is too fragile to withstand even the existence of an alternate idea.
Rob, I’m assuming you’re arguing in good faith, but FYI, these points have been covered on this blog hundreds of times:
I was under the impression that the reason most women got abortions was one of the following: “I can’t support this child, having a child at this point would ruin my life, I’m not ready to be a mother, I can’t handle 9 months of pregnancy or giving birth itself, etc.” I thought that “I might very well DIE or suffer health problems if I don’t get an abortion” was actually rare.
Here’s the problem: even if physical damage or death are rare, banning abortion will still hurt these women. Doctors won’t learn how to do the procedures (since they are banned), and any that already know it will be afraid to do it because of the potential legal penalties. The “partial birth abortion” is the perfect example: that procedure is only used in crisis pregnancies when the fetus is dead or non-viable, and further continuation of the pregnancy will seriously harm the mother. And yet, that procedure is now illegal, thanks to the efforts of NRTL.
Maybe some of them don’t give a shit about you, but others probably just don’t understand. They’ll say “Why can’t she just wait nine months, have an epidural, and give the kid up for adoption if it would be such an inconvenience?”
And if I can’t afford to have a kid, I’m going to come with the $10,000 for nine months of health care exactly how? And if the pregnancy develops problems, then what? And if I get fired from my lousy job because I don’t get sick days or medical leave, I will feed my existing kids exactly how?
Pregnancy is never an “inconvenience”: it’s a life-altering event.
OT but trying to be helpful: “On a completely different note. I totally understand why you need the anti-spam measures, but is there anyway the numbers can be easier to read. I have real trouble sometimes and have to repost because of the display of the numbers.”
If you use the “REGISTER/Site Admin” menu option at the top of the page, you can make yourself a user ID that will allow you to avoid the spam thing. Once you have a user ID with Pandagon, you can log in on another computer and it will remember you so you (usually) don’t have to login again.
Makes everything much easier…
“Wait, are they actually saying that if I, a non doctor learn how to do a safe abortion procedure and I don’t charge money to perform it, then that would not be outlawed?”
If it came down to it that’s an interesting idea. Hard times demand creative solutions.
OTOH, practicing medicine without a medical license will get you put in jail, even if the abortion procedure were somehow legal by itself…
Doctor Science:
Agreed. Unless you are crazy enough to believe that every sperm is sacred, that is.
Also agree that this is hypocrisy of the highest order. I believe in one American Dad episode, Stan Smith says that abortion is the ONLY knd of killing conservatives like him are opposed to. Funny because it’s true.
Jesurgislac:
I think that’s stretching it a little bit. In their minds (or the minds of some of them at any rate; I mean, Martin Sheen’s pro-life and I’d like to think he sees women as more than incubators), a child being born, surviving, and being put up for adoption is preferable to the same child dying. In both cases, the mother isn’t going to be raising the child. In both cases, the decision will probably be difficult for the mother. In the case of adoption, the child is still alive and the mother can maybe play a part in their life and get to know them at some point.
Again with the God damned “doctor’s financial incentives.” Which ones would those be? You literally can’t get two fillings at the dentist for the price of an abortion.
Rob: It’s an interesting phenomenon. People love to wax philosophic about shit they know nothing about (myself included), but there really should come a point where — esp when it becomes a matter of law — we should look at the issue in a more complete way. But pregnant women are already such a public commodity (they get total strangers walking up and placing hands on tummy, orders about what they can and cannot do “for the baby” and generally watched like a hawk for any signs of weakness) people don’t stop and think to themselves “maybe there’s more to it than that.” We’re conditioned to fetishize the pregnant mother, so it’s not the most obvious thing to think about how pregnancy could be unpleasant.
A lot of women proclaim that they are personally against abortion, would never have one, and maybe even declare that they would still like it to be legal, but when the pregnancy is staring them in the face and they start thinking about how it will impact them in real life, they realize that it isn’t as simple as just swanning through nine months of crap so that they can achieve perfect self-sacrificing womanhood by giving their baby up for adoption, and they’re pretty thankful to be able to have a choice at those times.
Hope you’re not feeling gangpiled here–I for one appreciate your open-mindedness on the matter.
Erm…if women are essentially stupid and have abortions only because some male or doctor pressured them into it, does this mean female doctors who perform abortions are pressured into that and shouldnt be prosecuted either?
Godmonkey — particularly when you accept that there’s no such thing as an “abortion doctor” — the man is an OB/Gyn, and thus, is not only providing termination of pregnancies, but also has the opportunity to participate in extremely lucrative birthing of babies! If an OB has a choice between a $400 outpatient abortion and a $10K inpatient delivery, not to mention all of the goodies that go ontop of that should there be a complication in delivery, and s/he’s in it for the money, then no doctor in the U.S. would provide abortion services.
* or woman
As far as the “women are manipulated into abortion, therefore they’re not responsible” meme, I think that “loophole” would last about 5min after they achieve a federal ban, or a SCOTUS decision that is a de facto ban.
These people are hell-bent on having their Gilead, and ultimately women must be made to pay the price for their “sins”.
I would expect that abortion would be made a capital crime for the doctor, the patient, and all who assisted would be accessories to murder. BC must be made a crime as well.
Look at all the people we have already locked up for various minor drug offenses. With all the domestic spying going on, we’re bound to add a bunch more people for “sedition” or thoughtcrime, or whatever.
To those will will add the new group of “anti-life” offenders who used BC, assisted in an abortion, or knew of a pregnancy and failed to inform the authorities.
Looks like building and maintaining prisons is going to be a (huge) growth industry…
We’re conditioned to fetishize the pregnant mother, so it’s not the most obvious thing to think about how pregnancy could be unpleasant.
Yep. As others have pointed out, even a completely normal pregnancy can be very unpleasant. My best friend found out that she’s one of those women who gets to have “morning sickness” all nine months, so she got to spend nine months being nauseous every single day.
Not to mention that the cutely-named “morning sickness” can actually be life-threatening — some women have to be put on intravenous fluids (my husband’s company does home infusion services and they refer to those patients as “pregnant pukers”).
After seeing what various friends of mine went through with, again, completely normal and uncomplicated pregnancies, I can’t even imagine insisting that someone do that against her will.
Rob, re your friend: You could tell her that she’s dealing with her guilt and grief by wanting to punish other women for doing something she freely chose to do, and that’s immature and shitty.
I honestly wonder if you’re a concern troll, because when people start throwing around terms like “inconvenient” to describe pregnancy and childbirth, it suggests to me either they are so privileged and insulated that they feel qualified to shoot their mouth off on issues where they have no clue at all, or they know perfectly well what they’re talking about and are throwing around buzzwords.
Given this line of reasoning, is there any crime for which a woman womb-bearer should be held responsible? How do we know she wasn’t “pressured into” whatever act she committed?
I had a “normal” and uncomplicated pregnancy 20 years ago. I also had extreme anemia the entire time I was pregnant, and therefore that bone crushing fatigue that some women get in the first trimester never ever went away for me.
I now work as a systems engineer, routinely put in 70 hour work weeks, many more hours when I’m on call (and those are round the clock hours…getting more than three hours sleep in a row those weeks is rare).
If I were to get pregnant now, there’s no way I could do my job. Normal pregnancy for me includes severe anemia and exhaustion. Carrying to term and giving up a baby for adoption wouldnt be an option for me, I’d wind up without a job or health insurance, for that matter
Mighty Ponygirl:
Glad you do, and it’s not getting to me but thanks all the same.
Dorothy:
Thing is that I haven’t been reading this blog for a particularly long time and even now I don’t read every post and the comments that go with it. So this is new to me.
SmallTownPsychosis
What I said above to Mighty Ponygirl about it not getting to me? That remark gets to me a little tiny bit. You see, SmallTownPsychosis, it’s incredibly simplistic to say “they’re pro-life, therefore they must support Republicans and they must hate the idea of gun control and they must like the idea of war, etc.”
The woman I mentioned in my first post is pro-life as I said and yet the last time I talked to her she said that she wanted Obama to become President. Fancy that.
Quite excellent point, Ponygirl. I happen to be friends with an abortionist — I use the term only for its existential noirishness, it makes me feel like a Celine character, being friends with the abortionist and all — and he is, indeed, in the business of women’s health. He would never push an abortion on a woman to satisfy some kind of nefarious agenda. What the hell are pro-lifers thinking?
The poor bastard and his family have to live a semi-underground existence — I am not making this up, they live in what amounts to a camouflaged fortress on the edge of town.
While my other comment is in moderation…
Just remember - The Handmaid’s Tale is going to turn out to be a prediction, and not merely fiction…
It costs TEN BIG ONES to have a baby in a hospital? Oh my god!
Even if you’re not likely to die from your pregnancy, physical complications can be permanent. As I sit here, my tailbone is in agony from a birth 19 months ago and I have to go to the bathroom every twenty minutes because I have a bad cold and every time I sneeze, I pee myself unless there is no urine whatsoever in my bladder. My stomach muscles are permanently displaced and my abdomen distended so I still look pregnant. My babies have never sat on my real lap; they sit leaning against this squishy bulgy thing that sticks out and covers my real lap. My first pregnancy required three weeks of hospitalization toward the end and eight weeks of recovering from c-section, which is more than some people’s maternity leave will pay them to take off even if they *have* paid maternity leave, and it cost $14K, which thankfully was mostly paid by insurance. My second cost $10K, again mostly paid by insurance, and made it impossible for me to sit without pain.
I want people to understand that life is a gift your mother gives you. Once you are born, she has no right to take her gift back, but before you are born, you have no right to demand that she give you your life. It is a sacrifice, a price paid in her blood and flesh, and no matter what a shithead she was to you after you were born you must at least respect that she paid the price for your life. *no* one has the right to demand to be given a gift. No one has the right to demand that another person pay for their life with her own body. You have no right to life until you can live on your own. I’ll concede a gray area where viability comes in, where your mother has already paid six or seven or eight months and you *could* survive out of her body with medical intervention; at that point I think at least it would be fucking rude of her to cancel her gift without excellent reason, and I can see the point to forbidding such abortions unless you cannot live anyway or she might die. But up until viability, everything you are is a gift from your mother, and any unwanted child is a thief. An innocent thief, a thief who cannot be blamed for their actions, but a thief nonetheless.
Until mothers do not need to feed their fetuses from their own flesh for many months and house them in their own bodies, until we have the technology to safely remove and incubate a fetus with no more risk to the mother than an abortion and we can do it cheaply enough that the state can eat the cost if the mother can’t pay, we need abortion. Because life is a gift, and it’s not given by God, it’s given by Mom. And that terrifies the shit out of religious misogynists. The power they attribute to an imaginary father in the sky is actually held by a real flesh and blood mother here on Earth, and she doesn’t have omnipotent powers, and she can be hurt or killed, and she doesn’t have a penis. Ruins their entire fantasy.
You know Godwin’s Law? I propose Offred’s Law:
As an online discussion about reproductive rights grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving The Handmaid’s Tale approaches one.
Where should I submit this law to?
I wish Matthews had asked this. Though I’m sure O‘Steen would have given his standard reply of, “Well, I—I‘m not—we have never sought criminal penalties against a woman.”
Rob- the post is about the NRLC and Fred Thompson. Fancy that.
What you appear to want is sympathy for people who willingly and knowingly advocate the removal of MY right to liberty. Can’t pretty it up, even with a reference to Obama.
I’m still not 100% on board with Matthews here:
MATTHEWS: See, this is where the hypocrisy comes in, sir. If it‘s wrong to have an abortion, why don‘t you criminalize it?
Actually this is not hypocrisy at all. There are many pro-choice people who feel abortion is (morally) wrong, but figure that just because something is wrong doesn’t mean it makes sense to criminalize it. E.g., we Jews believe eating blood sausage is wrong — are we pushing to criminalize it?
So-called pro-lifers would have you believe that abortion is wrong so therefore there should be laws against it … and then they duck the issue of what having those laws on the book actually means. While I would reckon there are some laws that should be on the books even if they don’t get enforced (some drug laws come to mind), in general, if abortion is teh ultimate evil baby holocaust, why do anti-choicers claim they want to have abortion bans on the books (or have the states decide … what’s next, we just get rid of amendments 13-15?) and not enforce them because what would be required to enforce them would be impractical and a bit scary?
The hypocrisy comes in not for believing something is wrong yet not wanting to criminalize it. The hypocrisy comes in saying something is so evil that it should be criminalized as it is tantamount to murder and then ducking the issue of actual enforcement because it makes your side look bad.
Broce:
Point taken. Thing is that I live in Canada as a dual citizen as a result of my parents being U.S. citizens and moving here before I was born. So I pretty much take it for granted that health care won’t cost a lot and I have to remind myself what it’s like in the States.
I really had no idea it was that expensive to have a baby and must echo Em’s exclamation of OMG. That’s fucking insane.
mythago:
I know what a troll is but not a “concern troll.” I’m not a troll. But believe whatever you want to.
Mighty Ponygirl, you’re correct.
The problem is Atwood wrote the quintessential reproduction-related novel of our age. Much like Orwell before, she anticipates with scary realism the ultimate expression of the “pro-life” attitude.
She’s just too damn good…
He would never push an abortion on a woman to satisfy some kind of nefarious agenda. What the hell are pro-lifers thinking? - Godmonkey
It’s called projection … so-called pro-lifers push non-abortion on women to satisfy their agendas … so it must be the case that we pro-choicers are the same way.
These people will never admit the real reason they don’t want to prosecute women seeking abortions: It’s not politically viable. The great majority of people in this country knows someone who has had an abortion. The anti-choicers know they will never convince a majority that they themselves, their sisters, daughters, cousins, co-workers, etc., are all criminals who deserve to be jailed.
SmallTownPsychosis:
I don’t want them to have the right to tell you what to do, but if you can’t paint them all with the same brush. You’re acting like you can read the minds of each and every individual pro-lifer–not just the NRLC, but EVERY one of them–and you know what they want and why they want it.
If you’re against war then you oughtta be pro-diplomacy, which means trying to have a civil discussion about issues instead of what amounts to a shouting match and trying to bait people who disagree with you.
Finally, when I say “they mean well” it’s not the same as me saying I think they’re right, because you know what they say about the road to hell.
“How about this: It is inside my body, therefore it is my decision. No rationalizations, no justifications, no excuses need be made.”
THANK YOU. I’m very tired of the pro-choice tendency to justify their position with a lot of buffers like “*I* wounld *never* have one but” or “Only if it will hurt the mother”
To hell with that.
The Handmaid’s Tale was not about abortion; it was about how women provide the necessary collusion in their own and other women’s oppression.
Rob, a “concern troll” is a troll who tries to mask their agenda by pretending to be very, very concerned about the people they hate, e.g., “it’s not that I think fat women are ugly, but aren’t you ladies concerned about your health?” sort of thing. So when a new poster starts talking about pregnancy and childbirth being ‘inconvenient’ and how unfair we’re all being to pro-lifers, well, I don’t know if it’s a duck but it’s definitely paddling around the pond.
You’re proposing the fallacy that we can’t identify the species of every tree in the forest, therefore we can’t talk about the forest. (”How can you say there is a carpet of dead leaves in the fall? There are evergreens in that forest too!”) Amanda is not referring to remarks made by a random “pro-lifer”, but by the head of the largest and most prominent anti-abortion group in the US.
And, as has already been noted, there is *no* national anti-abortion organization in the US that is pro-contraception. None.
I know other people have said this (and that I’ve said it before), but my (very wanted) pregnancy was hell on earth. I threw up at least five times a day. I started out losing a ton of weight. I was malnourished, exhausted, and miserable. I was working barely-half time. I hated every instant of it.
And what if I didn’t have a wealthy husband to continue earning money while I tried to stay completely immobile? What if I didn’t have an awesome boss who was so happy for me he didn’t care if I was doing a lousy job? What if I didn’t have the millions of advantages I had? My completely normal pregnancy, which required no medical intervention (although I did try drugs for the morning sickness - they either didn’t work or put me to sleep), completely turned my world upside down. I was willing to suck it up for nine months because I desperately wanted a child. I would never want someone to go through it if they didn’t want a child.
And it’s not just me. My mother dropped out of college during her first pregnancy. The woman in the next cubicle failed every class the semester that coincided with her first trimester. Some women have easy pregnancies. Lots of women don’t. Even if our lives aren’t physically in danger, pregnancy itself can ruin lives.
Betty: agreed. I find this an incredibly weak position. If you believe that a blob of tissue is a human, and that there’s something morally questionable about taking it outside of the womb where it will perish, then you need to square with that or change your tune. The circumstances surrounding the blob do not change the reality of the blob, and if your perception of that reality = baby, then it’s a baby no matter if the mother consented to the sex, or will suffer kidney failure as a result of the birth, or whatever. Reality, in my book, does not preceed potentiality (as a vegetarian once said: therefore I eat eggs)
I have known a pro-lifer whose position on the matter I actually respected. She was a vegan, anti-war, anti-death penalty, anti-gun. She also didn’t go around screaming murderer and picketing Planned Parenthood. Then she got married and pregnant, went through a pregnancy, and started to realize that it was a complicated business with a lot of crap involved. I think she’s still pro-life in general, but not quite as hard-line as she was because she understands the intimate burden that a woman must ultimately bear alone when she’s pregnant.
I’m just personally in the habit of phrasing things to avoid painting everybody with the same brush, mythago.
For instance, if there’s a position the Republican Party takes that I don’t like, such as drilling in ANWR, I’m not going to say “All the Republicans want to drill in ANWR because they don’t give a shit about the environment.” I’d say “a lot of Republicans don’t give a shit about the environment” or maybe “I haven’t heard of any Republicans being opposed to drilling in ANWR…don’t ANY of them care about the environment?”
Because, you know, there are exceptions.
Too bad that somewhere, way way back in the beginning of this mess, people didn’t label the pro-choice people as being “pro-life” and the anti-choice people as “pro-birth” or some other such truly descriptive phrase. I wonder if, all these many years later, that may have made a difference in the current framing. When you think about it, we pro-choice advocates really are the “pro-life” advocates.
Just sayin’.
All this talk about the pains of pregnancy is making me feel very thankful for my mother. I can’t believe she went through that three times!
Mighty Ponygirl:
Oh man, I know I said that I wasn’t feeling gangpiled before, but that was before. So I’m glad you know somebody like this who believed this without forcing her opinions on others and who was able to see the pro-choice side of it.
I don’t know if you’re vegan or vegetarian yourself, and I realize that this might just be a metaphor, but if you are I would recommend looking for eggs from free run or free range hens if you can get them. I don’t want to preach so I will say no more unless I’m asked.
Rob: Think about it.
A vegetarian saying:
Reality precedes potentiality: therefore I eat eggs.
It has zero to do with whether or not the hen was free range, just like abortion has zero to do with whether or not the mother was raped.
An egg is not a chicken. It has the potential to be a chicken, but it is not a chicken. If you went to a diner and ordered and couple of eggs and they gave you a couple of fried drumsticks, you’d be rightfully pissed, vegetarian or no.
Because, you know, there are exceptions.
If there are exceptions, that rather strongly implies there is a rule.
If you re-read Amanda’s post, you will not that she did not say “all people who think abortion is wrong, or that life begins at conception”. She referred to “anti-choicers”. That would be the aforementioned head of National Right to Life and those who agree with him and his organization’s goals. For example, those who believe that murder is a ‘technical’ term and that women who get abortions are not evil, just morally and mentally infirm.
So if someone says “everybody who thinks abortion is wrong believes X, Y and Z,” you would certainly have a point. But you’re arguing against something Amanda didn’t say. I am getting old and my Latin is starting to go, so I’m afraid I don’t remember the name of the fallacy that suggests “pretend your opponent took a more extreme position than she took, and attack that”. I’m willing to believe you’re not doing that on purpose, but it’s certainly the end result.
Rob- you’re doing a lot of fancy lipservice for people who want to remove my right to liberty.
“They mean well.” No, they don’t. One doesn’t mean well by advocating for the removal of my liberty where I have commited no crime; by suggesting others are entitled to use my body where I object; by suggesting my health and life are unworthy of defense. “They mean well” is nice code for “look at the monkey over there” or “move along, nothing to see here.” You appear to want to paint these people as imbeciles who can’t figure out what they’re saying. I suppose you mean well.
I’m not automatically against war. Or guns. Or killing. I believe there are things worth killing for, and dying for. My right to liberty and to protect my body from harm by another are on the short list.
Ah, but Rob, even *with* health insurance, you miss my point. I’m 49 years old. I have asthma, a bum knee and several other health issues. I also have a 20 year old in college, a mortgage and an house to support.
Even *if* we had universal health care here, were I to get pregnant and experience the severe anemia that’s “normal” for me…I couldnt do my job. Without my job, even if the government picked up the cost of prenatal care, labor and delivery, I’d still be out of a job, my son would have to drop out of college, and I’d lose my house. Those are *permanent* consequences of my carrying a pregnancy to term which are unacceptable to me. Continuing a pregnancy and giving the child up for adoption is *not* as easy as prolifers assume it to be, even if health care were readily available for all pregnant women at no cost.
The follow-up was missed. If killing the unborn child is murder then what about invitro fertilization? Lots of people had a petri dish full of unused but fertilized eggs that they disposed of. Should we be bringing charges against them and the lab technicians that tossed the eggs in the trash?
Make no mistake, as soon as Roe goes, there are plenty of states that will adopt criminal sanctions. You will even see people prosecuted for driving people across state lines for legal abortions. This ‘we have never advocated criminal sanctions’ thing is a mere smoke screen.
Isn’t it amazing how people who slobber over The Miracle Of Birth suddenly turn dismissive when the topic turns to the actual impact on the mother? Oh, pregnancy, that’s just an inconvenience, get over yourself, who cares if you could have permanent or fatal health effects? (And don’t get me started on adoption. Anti-choicers seem to think women are barnyard animals, where if you take their babies away, they’ll bellow for a day or two but then they forget all about it.)
Occam’s got a whole roll of razors here: one being, no-choice deadbeats need to show standing before bloviation (or be asked to show it by overly reverent media.) They sorely need to be challenged on that basis, mainly so that jerks like Flip Flomney can’t get away with crap like this …
Once again, I’m not a signatory to any of the gospels and dogmas being thumped on my head, yet am expected to obey them more stringently and far beyond those greedy, lying, multiply married sons of bitches who do subscribe — allegedly — to those beliefs.
“You will even see people prosecuted for driving people across state lines for legal abortions.”
Didn’t Ohio produce a bill intended to do precisely that something like 2 years ago?
Sometimes, infant adoption may be necessary. But it should never be - never - something proffered as a default option.
I’ll go further. Adoption is sometimes the best solution for a particular problem, that an infant has been carried to term and then abandoned by the mother for her own reasons.
The suggestion that adoption is an alternative to abortion is morally repugnant not only because it treats the mother as an incubator, but because it treats the human life created by full term pregnancy as a product to be re-distributed.
The fact is that, for some adoptees, it’s emotionally problematic that the mother who carried them for 9 months then walked away from her baby, which our culture teaches is a grave crime against her maternal instincts. I think it ought to come up when fools come out with, Well, she can place the baby.
The baby grows into a child, then an adult. If you think the abortionists are making a killing, try pricing some quality psychotherapy for a child with abandonment issues. Now that’s a living!
Of course, my friend who does that kind of therapy doesn’t have to live with hiding her address, keeping her phone number a secret, never facing the camera, and collecting the shell casing discharged by the so-called pro-life like my friend the abortionist does.
Rob: I think that’s stretching it a little bit.
No, not at all. The arguments of those who say “just put the baby up for adoption” are the arguments of those who believe a woman has no human feelings that need to be considered: her function is simply to incubate the baby for nine months.
In their minds (or the minds of some of them at any rate; I mean, Martin Sheen’s pro-life and I’d like to think he sees women as more than incubators),
So would I. But if he’s a supporter of forced pregnancy, then obviously he doesn’t see women as more than incubators. This is depressing, because I like him as an actor, but as I haven’t myself read anything personally by Martin Sheen saying he supports forced pregnancy and opposes a woman’s right to choose, I won’t assume right away he doesn’t see women as incubators.
a child being born, surviving, and being put up for adoption is preferable to the same child dying.
True, but irrelevant. We’re not talking about a child dying: we’re talking about the right of a woman to choose to terminate her pregnancy rather than have a child born and give the child up for adoption.
In both cases, the mother isn’t going to be raising the child. In both cases, the decision will probably be difficult for the mother.
Yes. But the decision to give a baby up for adoption is uniformly described (by women who’ve done both) as far, far more difficult and painful than the decision to terminate a pregnancy.
In the case of adoption, the child is still alive and the mother can maybe play a part in their life and get to know them at some point.
Maybe. Or the baby may be adopted by a couple who intend to fly to another country. Or may be adopted by child abusers. Or may be adopted by racists. Or homophobes. Or may die of cancer or in a road accident before the child’s 18. Or may never decide to get back in touch with their birth mother.
In any case, arguing that a woman can “just give the kid up for adoption” is pretending that woman has no feelings about the inevitable 18 years during which the child will not be permitted to know anything about the birth mother - may not even be told that s/he’s adopted. Claiming that this is better that the woman deciding to terminate as soon as the woman finds out she’s pregnant is claiming that a woman’s feelings and life and health are just irrelevant: that a woman is merely an incubator, or an animal. As I said: the same arguments were used in the 19th century to justify removal of babies born to slave women. Some things never change.
Broce beat me to the point, but the issue is not money or availability of healthcare. The issue is that even a normal pregnancy is severely disruptive to a woman’s health and body functioning in a way that free and liberal health care can’t help her with.
Besides, making it a matter of dollars and cents just devalues the very real impact on a woman’s body, and makes it sound, frankly, like you’re one of those MRAs who’s always crying about the effect of pregnancy on their wallets.
You’re also just a little too faux-naive to be believable. Particularly since you live in Canada, where abortion is a matter of health care, not morality.
PhoenixRising: The suggestion that adoption is an alternative to abortion is morally repugnant not only because it treats the mother as an incubator, but because it treats the human life created by full term pregnancy as a product to be re-distributed.
Good point.
Given that there is a shortage of adoptive parents in the US (and the UK) - far more children who need parents than parents who are able to take them - the one thing not needed is a large supply of homeless babies provided by laws that require the state to treat women as incubators. Any state which has passed such laws has inevitably ended up with a large numbers of babies and children warehoused in “orphanages”. The US had such warehouses for children: so did the UK. So did Romania, until the last generation of unwanted babies born before Ceauşescu fell grew up…
It costs TEN BIG ONES to have a baby in a hospital? Oh my god!
$10,000 altogether at insurance rates is a cheap pregnancy, probably via natural childbirth (the epidural will add $3000-$5000 to that easily) and with release 24 hours after birth.
If you’re doing it without insurance (without the “cheap” rates negotiated by insurance companies) you probably couldn’t do standard pre-natal care and a hospital birth for only $10,000.
There’s no shortage of adoptive parents for healthy white babies. It’s all the others who go begging for parents.
(A couple of months back, on pandagon, I added up how much the insurance+we paid, at negotiated rates, for the kid’s birth in 2006. We did things on the “cheaper” side: none of the recommended in vitro testing (blood or amino) during the first or second trimester, natural childbirth, release 24 hours after birth. I did go “high-risk” due to GD in late pregnancy but the only additional cost due to that was a dietitian visit at about $100, and three additional U/S at $250/each. The full cost came to just over $10,000; subtract off 250x3 + 100 for a non-high-risk pregnancy as cheap as possible, at insurance rates.)
SmallTownPsychosis:
Rob- you’re doing a lot of fancy lipservice for people who want to remove my right to liberty.
“They mean well.” No, they don’t.
They might… but if we were to posit that at least some do, we could phrase it this way: they might mean well, but they don’t care… not enough to dig into the issue and truly understand it.”
There’s a huge difference between “meaning well” and “caring”. People who “meant well” could have supported the war in Iraq; people who “cared” would recognize how damaging war is, and balanced it against the presumed good. “Let’s kill a whole shitload of Iraqis for their own good!” isn’t something a caring person can say. It is something that a well meaning person can say.
Being well meaning is, well, meaningless.
Some of them may simply be ignorant, Orange.
Willfully ignorant doesn’t strike me as significantly different than full of shit. They could know if they wanted to; they are told this. But ever try to tell an anti-choicer that pregnancy is risky? You’ll get a blase, denying answer that makes it quite clear they don’t give a shit if Orange dies, since she, after all, had sex. And the wages of sin are death.
And, yeah, sometimes they get a little misty about the babies that are being torn up, even though they know damn well that’s a vanishingly small minority of abortions. I mean, they had to do the digging to find dead fetus pictures; they know how hard they are to find since most abortions are done when the fetus is not recognizably human. But again, you’re not really in this for the long haul unless women’s sexuality freaks you out, or else you’d be motivated to get even a modicum of education.
People don’t want to know the truth because then they’d be force to question their own misogyny.
EVEN here, I don’t see people wanting to know the answer to the REAL hard question: “If you’re so against abortion, why aren’t you out there handing out CONTRACEPTIVES?”
“They mean well.”
Look! It’s the paving on the road to hell (on Earth)!
Matthews has sort of brought up my one big… issue? with the pro-life community. If I truly believed that abortion was murder, and that there was a doctor in my town comitting hundreds of murders of innocent babies a year, I honestly don’t believe I could rest with picketing and protesting. I honestly believe that if I knew a serial killer was going free, I would take the law into my own hands, that going to jail would be worth it, and I feel that most of them could justify it as fighting for their lord.
And yet this very rarely happens. When these people are willing to risk their lives and freedom, then I’ll believe that it’s about saving the ‘life’ of the fetus. Until then, not so much.
10,000 is cheap for a pregnancy these days. I stopped adding up the cost for my first pregnancy and delivery at about the $30,000 mark, and the bills kept coming for some time after that.
The kicker? I had a relatively normal pregnancy and a healthy baby. The only serious complication was an undiagnosed malpresentation that required an eleventh hour (well, actually 21st hour) emergency C-section. And that $30,000+ was nearly ten years ago. Things have only gotten more expensive since then.
Willful ignorance is how I would describe the attitude of most “well-meaning” pro-lifers. I hang out intermittently at one of the more polite pro-life blogs. The posters hang everything on the experience of the easy multiparous mothers (”I had six pregnancies and loved every minute of them.” sorts), while completely ignoring the posters with health problems that would impact pregnancy. “Why would you find it so much easier to get an abortion than brain surgery?” is a direct quote - and not particularly clueless for the level of the board.
Mighty Ponygirl
Please, please, please refrain from posting the “pregnant women are 9 times more likely to be murdered” meme. It’s an inflammatory, misleading statistic that’s all too frequently mis-interpreted.
Pregnant women have a much, much lower mortality rate overall. Pregnant women are much less likely to die than women who are not pregnant. The reason murder is a more frequent cause of death among pregnant women has nothing to do with misogyny, and everything to do with a property in statistics called a “self-selecting population”. The leading causes of death among women overall include breast and colorectal cancer, conditions vitually non-existent in the population of pregnant women. (especially in the terminal stages) In fact, virtually every diagnosable, controllable, or predictable cause of death for women at large is absent or present only in near-neigible rates among pregnant women. This results in both a lower mortality rate overall, and a larger percentage of that mortality rate being occupied by uncontrolled, unpredictable causes of death. (Which is why the #2 cause of death among pregnant women are car accidents)
You’re acting like you can read the minds of each and every individual pro-lifer–not just the NRLC, but EVERY one of them–and you know what they want and why they want it.
Aaahhh! terminology issue here:
You may not have noticed, but Amanda uses the term “anti-choice” instead of anti-abortion” or “pro-life”. People who are “anti-choice” are anti-abortion, anti-contraception, anti-sex education, etc. They are not just opposed to abortion (regardless of their rhetoric): they also have policies and positions opposing anything that might make it easier for a woman to have a normal sex life and not get pregnant once a year.
NRTL is one of these groups. If they were actually trying to reduce the number of abortions, they wouldn’t oppose increasing welfare and daycare subsidies for new mothers, they wouldn’t oppose comprehensive sex education, they wouldn’t oppose emergency contraception or all forms of contraception in general.
But they do. They complain about how evil abortion is while at the same time they actively work against public health policies that are proven to lower the abortion rate. This is why the people here are adamant about NRTL (and other similar groups in the US) acting in bad faith, being full of shit, etc. We’ve see them do it over and over and over.
Hence the term “anti-choice”. There are very many people actively working to lower the abortion rate and help pregnant women. In the US, these people very quickly end up in the pro-choice groups.
(Disclaimer: I am one of those people who left NRTL as soon as I found out the kind of bullshit they were spewing. And here they are, 20 years later, spewing the same bullshit, and not helping anybody but their board of directors and their candidates.)
So rodeobob, how do you square with the fact that the #1 cause of death among pregnant women is murder as per the link I provided?
“So rodeobob, how do you square with the fact that the #1 cause of death among pregnant women is murder as per the link I provided?”
…puts his fingers in his ears, closes his eyes, and says “Lalalalalala, I can’t hear you!”…
Mighty Ponygirl-many people have a problem with reality. especially when it’s ugly.
I was hoping for another one of his delightful dances.
Because you know, murder is just like a car accident. It just happens sometimes. It’s a self-selecting population! If I say please one more time with the proper HTML tags around it when pleading for this crazy bitch to shut up with her damn statistics about murder rates, maybe they’ll think I know what I’m talking about!
This results in both a lower mortality rate overall, and a larger percentage of that mortality rate being occupied by uncontrolled, unpredictable causes of death.
Murder by one’s spouse or boyfriend is “uncontrolled” and “unpredictable”? I guess being murdered is just like having your house destroyed by a tornado — just one of those weird things that happens for no particular reason.
Rob, I actually don’t think you’ve crossed the line into concern troll, in that your questions seem sincere. But then I used to be pro-life/anti-choice/pick your term. And I did grapple with many of the questions you’ve raised.
It helped me to put the struggle in context this way (basing this on the Carol Tavris book Mismeasure of Woman, I think). Our current laws, and thus our ways of deciding criminality/innocence, were set up in a patriarchal system in which women existed only as property (the “reasonable man” never gets pregnant). The complexity of the relationship between woman and fetus, the question of viability/responsibility, respect for a woman’s autonomy–none of this is considered anywhere in the ancient laws that we base our current system on. There is no “reasonable woman” standard. Creating one would open up a whole new area of law. Instead, we used a contested idea of “right to privacy” (with Roe) to try to patch this hole.
If women had always possessed equality, our laws would reflect centuries of thinking about such issues–but they didn’t. So now we are having to quickly expand our idea of personal autonomy to include pregnant women, if we want to allow them the full humanity we grant to everyone else. Since we traditionally think of them (as a society) as less important than the babies they carry, this change is being resisted. To grant pregnant women full agency is to lose control over the power of reproduction; the ban against abortion is a vestige of bans against sexual freedom and contraception, because one of the underpinnings of patriarchy is taking the power over reproduction away from women and giving it to (certain) men.
Whatever you think of a woman’s choices, to not allow her to decide what they will be in regards to her own body is to make her a second-class citizen.
From a utilitarian viewpoint, the real stupidity of RTL is that countries with free and low-cost contraception and abortion access have far lower abortion rates–so pro-choice policy, in the long run, “saves” more fetuses than anti-choice ones.
It’s pretty easy if you look at the statistics.
Of the top 10 leading causes of death of women for the last 5 years, cancer, congenital abnormalities, heart disease, lung disease, and influenza are all present in the population at large.
How many pregnant women die of cancer a year? How many die of influenzea? Diabetes? Liver disease? Chronic respitory disease? If you take out the five of the leading causes of death by self-selection (how many women in the terminal stages of cance become pregnant?) then logically, the next five leading causes move up in significance.
Let’s use some actual data to illustrate, found here.
If we take out Malignant Neoplasms (cancer), and we drop Heart Disease by half (given that pregnant are seeing doctors and more likely to get medical treatment than the general population), and do the same with Suicide (again, more medical attention) we see that Homicide jumps from #5 to #2. Not only that, but (to use the language of the link) the “odds of being murdered just jumped by 50%!”
But wait! The “9 times more likely to be murdered” stat is drawn from all age groups, comparing pregnant women (which we’ll estimate range in age from 12-65) with all women of all ages.
The statistic in your link can be expressed as followes:
(# of pregnant murder victims/total dead pregnant women) = 9 x (# of female murder victims/total dead women)
What’s missing is
(dead pregnant women/total pregnant women) vs (dead women/total women), which would be the necessary element to make an apples-to-apples comparison.
If pregnant women have an 27% chance of dying from murder, but only a 1% mortality rate, versus a 3% chance of murder for women in general with a 10% mortality rate, then the “odds of dying from murder” are nine times higher, but fewer pregnant women die from murder than do non-pregnant women.
That’s why I don’t like that statistic. Women are much less likely to die when pregnant. Mortality rates for pregnant women are much lower. The causes that constitute the mortality rate include a higher percentage of uncontrolled causes, but only because pregnant women are a population that does not include controllable causes of death!
If you could predict being murdered, I think you’d avoid it.
If you could control being murdered, I think you’d avoid it.
Am I wrong?
Good to know that you think Lacie Petersen got what she deserved, because she didn’t predict that her husband would murder her. If only she hadn’t been so stupid as to trust the father of her child, she’d be alive today, right?
Sorry, missed a back there…
Here’s the full chart for women’s mortality causes. Notice how overall, murder doesn’t even crack the top 20. Go to the far right column, and go line by line, asking yourself how many women diagnosed with those conditions and less than 9 months left to live become pregnant?
There are some horrible things in that chart. That murder is the second leading cause of death for 15-24 year olds is a serious problem, and horrifing. But the ‘nine times more likely to be murdered’ meme is misleading and inflammatory. It’s statistically true, but lacking in meaningful context. (i.e. overall mortality rates to generate total mortality numbers) If you’re 9 times more likely to die from murder, but 20 times less likely to die at all, most folks would see that as a “good thing”. If I point out that pregnant women are 9 times more likly to die from murder, but 99.9% less likely to die from cancer (while they’re pregnant), it starts to reveal the misleading nature of the statistic.
WTF? That’s about the opposite of what I said.
I said being murdered could be categorized as an unpredictable, uncontrolled event.
Someone mocked that, suggesting that murders occur for no reason. Straw man alert! I didn’t say ‘inexplicable’, just unpredictable (you didn’t see it coming) and uncontrollable. (if you could have stopped it, you would have)
Serously, where do you get that I think murdered women ‘deserve’ to be murdered? I said exactly the opposite!
If I point out that pregnant women are 9 times more likly to die from murder, but 99.9% less likely to die from cancer (while they’re pregnant), it starts to reveal the misleading nature of the statistic.
Not really. There is probably no time in a woman’s life when she’s going to be seen by a doctor more often than she is during pregnancy. If cancer is detected, it will be caught early and either dealt with immediately or the pregnancy will be terminated so the woman can begin cancer treatment. It would be VERY unusual for a woman to have absolutely no pre-natal care whatsoever to the point where a cancer would go undetected for nine months.
But, again, you’re ignoring that cancer cells have no volition. Human beings do. The fact that pregnant women are most likely to die at the hands of other human beings and not from accidents or disease is, or should be, pretty horrifying. Apparently, though, for you, a woman being murdered is no different than her dying of cancer. Hi-ho, just another day at the office, I guess.
A better question might be how many pregnant women diagnosed with those conditions stay pregnant. Pregnant women diagnosed with serious or life-threatening illnesses are routinely offered the opportunity to abort their pregnancies, particularly when therapeutic interventions for their disease would predictably cause harm to a fetus (as will chemotherapy and radiation, for example).
Serously, where do you get that I think murdered women ‘deserve’ to be murdered? I said exactly the opposite!
You seem pretty unconcerned about it. I’m not sure what else to make of your insistence that it’s perfectly normal for women to die of murder while pregnant.
Rodeobob’s link is broken, unlike mine (CDC represent, yo)
Let’s look at these tables and what they mean.
Between 15-24, Homicide is the #4 killer of women in america, with Unintentional Injuries coming in #1 (for matters such as car accidents).
when a woman in that same age group is pregnant, Homicide becomes her #1 killer, with unintentional injuries coming in #2. That’s quite a jump and gives lie to the “self-selecting” bit. Homicide jumping to #2 would indicate that women were not so keen to kill themselves (the current #2) and that cancer (the current #3) is more thoroughly screened and eradicated because of increased doctors visits. The fact that homicide surpasses the previous first-ranked killer of women in the U.S. when she happens to be pregnant would indicate that pregnant women are more at risk of being murdered than non-pregnant women. When you look at the Rinse and repeat for the rest of the years. Now, look at the age group 35-44. Homicide is pretty low there. It’s also when women typically go through “the change of life” and can no longer become pregnant without medical intervention. Homicide doesn’t even rank on the charts after the age of 44. At no point does “pregnancy complications” outstrip “Homicide” as a cause of death among women.
For more about how women are at risk for physical violence check out the fact sheet from the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence.
Blast, the links have held up my comment in moderation.
There’s no shortage of adoptive parents for healthy white babies.
Zuzu, would that this canard were still true.
What’s interesting is that over the past 10 years, a number of forces have collided to create unexpected results. So in fact in some states healthy white babies are being left to the public system to deal with.
Is it coincidence that at the same time, it has become vastly harder for most US women to obtain an abortion? I think not. If only there were a sociologist in the house, to look at the stats on these two seemingly related phenomena…(wrings hands)
The self-styled ‘right to life’ community counts on certain demographics of adoptive parents to be on their side no matter what, because those ungrateful pregnant women who choose not to carry a child are affecting supply. These folks tend to assume that all adoptive parents agree with them, which makes for some interesting playgroup dynamics.
Needless to say, I hate them with a fiery passion.
Hmmm…a self selected group. Well yanno…pregnant women are *far* more likely to die of pregnancy complications than non-pregnant women, too. If we compare the rate of death from pregnancy complications of pregnant women to the rate of death from pregnancy complications of non-pregnant women…we’d have statistics that make about as much sense as the rest of the nonsense posted by Rodeobob.
I think, given a large enough population, some women will die of murder while pregnant. That’s a value-neutral statment. You really need me to condemn murder? Frankly, that’s insulting. I’m trying to illustrate how a statisitic can be misleading and inflammatory, and I’m getting accused of cheering for murderers… which seems to be illustrating my point.
Sorry to mash two folks together, but this is exactly my point. It is this kind of rational, predictable, self-selecting behavior that skews the statistics in this scenario to create a misleading quote.
Pregnant women don’t face a “greater risk” of being murdered because of some question of human agency. The studies aren’t comparing muder rates, they’re comparing causes of mortality
Violition is a red herring, and the conflation of “accidents or disease” is incredibly misleading, because pregnant women don’t generally die from (preditcable, diagnosable, treatable, controllable) disease! If you look at the studies in question, you see that accidents are usually #2 or tied for first with murder.
Saying “If you die when pregnant, the cause of death is more likely to be murder”
is not the same as
“You are more likely to be murdered when you are pregnant”! That so many people are so eager to think those two statements are the same is the problem with that statistic!
The ‘risk’ of being murdered while pregnant would be expressed as (# of pregnant murders/# of pregnant women). The “leading cause of death” statisit is (# of pregnant murders/# of pregnancy deaths). See the difference?
I had 2 very easy pregnancies. I was in class 4 days after the first and worked the day I went into labor and was back at work 3 weeks later for the second; but I would never say it didn’t have an extreme impact on my body to this day. I will never get my hips back in those jeans since the bones actually seperate and never quite go back, not to mention most women never regain all the abdonimal strength, no matter how much they work out, and that’s if everything is better than normal. No one should go through even the best pregnancy for a child they don’t want. To force a woman to do so is insanely evil.
Except when murder eclipses other non-medical causes of death when you are pregnant, as my recently-released-from moderation comment explains.
Dance, monkey, dance!
“pregnancy is not just abstaining from alcohol for 9 months”
Correction: “…for ever”.
The research I’ve seen reported suggests that damage from alcohol can occur before the mother realises she’s pregnant. That’s fine if you’re *trying* to have a baby - you just stop with the vino.
However the implication of banning abortion, and regarding alcohol consumption while pregnant as some sort of crime (the latter of which I have some sympathy for, assuming the pregnancy is intended to go to term) is that any fertile woman should not be allowed to drink.
Which would seriously piss off most of my XX associates.
I think what Rodeobob is trying to say (I cannot get any of the links to work to get to underlying data) is that it is apples and oranges to compare causes of death of women who die while they are pregnant to the causes of death of all women without doing some corrections.
If the data that Mighty Ponygirl is using (again, can’t get to it) is for all women of all ages, then clearly, you need to control for the ages that women get pregnant, and causes of death among post-menopausal women, for example, need to be dropped out of this discussion.
You also have to allow for the fact that pregnant women are not exactly the same sort of population as say, women of European descent, or women over 6 feet tall. She will be pregnant for a time, and then drop out of the population of “pregnant women.”
As Rodeobob pointed out, a woman who knows she is terminally ill will probably try to avoid pregnancy, and any cause of death that takes more than nine months will probably not kill her while she is in the population of pregnant women.
Controlling for age and general health, you are probably going to find that things like murder and car accidents rise sharply among the entire population of women.
Mighty Ponygirl, it sounds as though you are saying that the mere fact of pregnancy is a CAUSE of murder among pregnant women. Are you actually saying that it is your belief that there is a statistically significant number of murders of women specifically because they are pregnant, who would not have been killed if they hadn’t been? By a factor of nine?
PR: there are a whole litany of things that the CDC has advocated for “women of child-bearing age” — folic acid intake, avoiding freshwater fish, and yes, avoiding alcohol… all in the name of protecting accidental fetuses. Not to mention all of those “women who are pregnant, nursing, or may become pregnant” disclaimers in drug ads.
rodeobob: then the “odds of dying from murder” are nine times higher, but fewer pregnant women die from murder than do non-pregnant women.
but that still doesn’t tie it all up — i do expect that, as you said, fewer pregnant women die from murder than do non-pregnant women. but only because there are probably fewer pregnant women than non-pregnant women in the total population at any given time. i don’t actually have stats for that, it’s just a strong hunch, but feel free to challenge it if you know otherwise.
anyway. rob, i think what you keep missing here is that your friend who’s pro-life doesn’t HAVE to be anti-choice — i know people (though not enough) who consider an embryo to be life worthy of concern but still keep away from making claims on my liberty. but if she is in favor of prohibiting abortion then she IS anti-choice, and it IS because she’s got her priorities wrong when it comes to whose life ought to be respected if it came down to a choice.
However the implication of banning abortion, and regarding alcohol consumption while pregnant as some sort of crime (the latter of which I have some sympathy for, assuming the pregnancy is intended to go to term) is that any fertile woman should not be allowed to drink.
You’re not thinking far enough ahead. The implication is that any woman who does anything that can harm a fetus should be criminally liable, for child endangerment at the very very least.
“Are you actually saying that it is your belief that there is a statistically significant number of murders of women specifically because they are pregnant, who would not have been killed if they hadn’t been?”
This is most likely true. Abusers will escalate to murder because the victim is pregnant. 9x? Probably not.
Btw I think you guys are (for the most part) being rather unfair to Rodeobob and imputing motives to him I really don’t think he has.
Peter:
As the links provided indicate, (you need adobe reader), a woman is more likely to be murdered when she is pregnant than when she is not. I don’t believe that pregnancy *CAUSES* murder, any more than miniskirts *CAUSE* rape. Several studies have shown that a woman who is in an abusive relationship with her boyfriend or husband is more likely to see an escalation of that abuse when he discovers she is pregnant. The men in this instance often see the pregnancy as something “outside of their control” and seek to exert control over the situation or as merely an extension of controlling the woman herself. Then there is the whole “I don’t want to be a dad” rationalization, if the woman is not interested in terminating the pregnancy the man may find ways to cause her to miscarry and if that happens to involve her dying as well, oh well. It’s really not that hard to believe, it’s sad that people are pretending like domestic violence is some strange unheard-of phenomenon.
Mythago - Not to mention criminal investigations of women who are suspected to be pregnant/have had abortions/miscarriages. I can’t find the article but I saw something once about a woman’s uterus being taken out in south america as it was evidence of a crime. I swear i’m not just talking out of my hat.
to clarify, i realize rodeobob and rob are two separate commenters, and i should have provided a little more separation.
and also to clarify, when i said “i know people (though not enough) who…”, i meant that more people should “keep away from making claims on my liberty”. not lamenting how few people i know who “consider an embryo to be life worthy of concern”.
I’m trying to illustrate how a statisitic can be misleading and inflammatory, and I’m getting accused of cheering for murderers… which seems to be illustrating my point.
You’re looking at all women in all age groups. Comparing a fertile 25-year-old to a post-menopausal 80-year-old is cherrypicking your data.
Mighty Ponygirl is looking at women 15 to 24, a demographic that is likely to be pregnant. And guess what? The fourth leading cause of death among 15-24 women in general is homicide, but the #1 cause of death among 15-24 pregnant women is homicide. In other words, pregnant women 15-24 are more likely to be murdered than non-pregnant women.
Still want to stand by your statements that murder during pregnancy is statistically insignificant?
Btw I think you guys are (for the most part) being rather unfair to Rodeobob and imputing motives to him I really don’t think he has.
I think Rodeobob is cherrypicking his statistics and comparing apples to oranges. What his motive is for this, I can’t say for sure, but it’s awfully odd that he would show up in an abortion thread and insist that because more 80-year-old women die of cancer than there are pregnant murder victims, that shows that there’s no problem and we need to stop talking about the risk of murder while pregnant.
I didn’t think he was saying statistically insignificant, just not as horrible as the 9 times stat made it sound. That said, that’s an awfully good point Mnemosyne.
Meh. His comments came off more as “stop using that statistic, it’s a real problem but it doesn’t help to use inaccurate stats because it makes people wave away the thrust of your argument because they assume you don’t know what you’re talking about” to me, but that might be me reading my good motives onto him.
I would be very surprised if anyone claimed ignorance or unimportance of men murdering their intimate partners more during pregnancies.
But i’ll bow out now, as you guys are probably better at sniffing out trolls/MRAs than me.
Okay, what’s the actual risk of being murdered while pregnant vs. the actual risk of being murdered while not pregnant?
In other words, are pregnant women *actually* more likely to be murdered than non-pregnant women? Or are they just less likely to die of disease? I want to know what the *actual* risk of murder is for pregnant vs. non-pregnant women. Because that’s the statistic we need to resolve this.
So I went to the actual study, which examined women in Maryland over 1993-1998. (BTW, MD, containing Baltimore, is a high-murder-rate state; it isn’t actually true that all studies have found murder to be the leading cause of death for pregnant women. Actually, nationwide, it’s number 2.) The link is here.
What they found was that when they adjusted for race and maternal age (because the majority of the pregnant women in Maryland are young black women, and being young and black are all by themselves indicators for a higher risk of murder), the non-pregnant murder rate was 11% and the pregnant murder rate was 20% (that is, of all the women who died at all, 11% of the not-pregnant ones died of murder and 20% of the pregnant ones did.) So the increased risk of murder being the reason that you die is *twice* the rate of the not-pregnant women, not nine times. Still not good, of course, but *very* different from nine times as likely.
What they don’t show me is what your likelihood is to die in the first place. That is, they’re looking at all the women who died and saying “of the women who died, what is the likelihood that they died of murder?” This doesn’t actually say what your likelihood of being murdered is, just that if you die, what the likelihood is that someone killed you. I would say that overall the murder rate is much, much higher in a population of dead people than live people — if you die, the odds that you were murdered are much higher than your odds of being murdered are when we look at you in life.
Let’s consider some fake numbers to illustrate this.
In Sample City, there are 100,000 women. At any given time, ten percent are pregnant.
1,000 women die every year. 50% die of old age. 25% of disease. 10% in car accidents. 10% in other accidents. 2% of medical reasons that are not disease. 1% of suicide. 2% of homicide. So that’s 20 women who are murdered every year. If you are a woman in Sample City, your odds of being murdered are .002%. But if you are a dead woman in Sample City, the odds that you were murdered are 2%. In other words simply by being dead your odds of death by murder went up 100 times.
Now remember that 10,000 women are pregnant in Sample City every year, and 90,000 are not. Let us say that 10 pregnant women die every year. Of them, 2 are murdered (a whopping 20% of the dead pregnant women) and the rest die of other causes.
Your odds of dying while pregnant: 10 of 10,000, or .1%
Your odds of dying while not pregnant: 990 of 90,000, or 1.1%
What people who use statistics to lie to you say: Being pregnant cuts your risk of death by a factor of 10!
What’s actually happening: Old women and women dying of cancer don’t get pregnant; the leading causes of death in Sample City are old age and disease
Your odds of being murdered while pregnant: 2 in 10,000, or .02%
Your odds of being murdered while not pregnant: 18 in 90,000, or .02%
Pregnant women are just as likely to be murdered as not-pregnant women
If you’re dead and pregnant, the odds that you died of murder: 2 out of 10 pregneant dead women, or 20%
If you’re dead and not pregant, the odds that you died of murder: 18 out of 990, or 1.8%
Oh my god, the odds that you are a dead pregnant woman who died of murder is more than 10 times the odds that you are a dead not-pregnant woman who died of murder! There is an epidemic of murder against pregnant women! Pregnant women are 10 times more likely to be killed!
Except they’re not — your odds of being murdered while pregnant or not pregant were identical. What changed were your odds of dying of something that wasn’t murder.
Like I said, these numbers are totally fake; I’m using them only to illustrate some facts about statistics. Namely, that precentages will always add to 100, so if you have something like a population of dead people, and they are less likely to die of old age or disease, their rate of dying *at all* will go down but their rate of dying *of murder* will go up. If you only look at the dead people, you can’t see that the rate of death in general went down.
So to know the actual rate of murder, we need to know the following:
What is the population of living women in the location tested?
Of them, how many are pregnant?
What was the population of dead women in the location tested?
Of them, how many were pregnant when they died?
What was the population of murdered women in the location tested?
Of them, how many were pregnant when they were killed?
The JAMA study looked at the population of dead women and compared dead pregnant women to dead not-pregnant women. But to get the actual murder rate, we need the population of *living* women, pregant and not, to compare the likelihood that a living woman who is not pregnant would be murdered vs the likelihood that a living woman who is pregnant would be murdered. Because, when I’m a living pregnant woman, I don’t *care* about the rate of murder among dead women; dead women had to have died of *something*, so their rate of murder is much higher than if you look at the living *plus* the dead, where you compare all the women who died of murder to the women who died of other causes *AND THE WOMEN WHO DIDN’T DIE AT ALL.* The JAMA study does not look at the number of women who didn’t die at all to get their murder rate numbers.
And, BTW — bad statistics, it burns. One does not need to be a troll to wince at the bad stat. I am fully cognizant of the risk to women of abusive partners killing them, but looking at a pool of dead women, breaking them out by pregnant/not pregnant and murdered/other causes, and trying to infer from this what the likelihood is that a *living* pregnant woman is going to be murdered… I’m sorry, this breaks my brain, and probably rodeobob’s as well. The March 2001 study doesn’t even say what people claim it says (9 times? It says that 20% of pregnant dead women were murdered, 6.4% of not-pregnant dead women were murdered, and when they controlled for age and race the not-pregnant number went up to 11%, and none of this says that pregnant women are nine times more likely to be murdered than pregnant women. 3 times, unless you control for age and race, and then it’s twice. And it’s *still* just looking at the dead and identifying how many were murdered, rather than looking at all the women and *then* saying how many were murdered.)
WTF? That’s about the opposite of what I said.
Welcome to the Little Sisters of Perpetual Outrage, Bob.
I can see what you’re saying, but be aware that some will interpret it in the worst possible light. You need to provide working statistics.
Except when murder eclipses other non-medical causes of death when you are pregnant, as my recently-released-from moderation comment explains.
Ponygirl, the table at the link you provided doesn’t seem to state that; I can’t see it distinguishing between pregnant and non-pregnant women. You might be thinking of this from the same site.
Tracing through the references, we have this abstract:
“Results. Six hundred seventeen (8.4%) homicide deaths were reported to the Pregnancy Mortality Surveillance System. The pregnancy-associated homicide ratio was 1.7 per 100000 live births. Risk factors included age younger than 20 years, Black race, and late or no prenatal care. Firearms were the leading mechanism for homicide (56.6%).”
From here (table 1, p.22 on), mortality rates for homicide for females as a whole (2003) were 4.8 (20-24 yrs), 3.9 (25-34) and 3.6 (35-44).
This would suggest that, while it may be true to claim that homicide is a leading cause of death among pregnant women, Bob is right to question what this assertion actually means in actual figures. Remember, he took issue with a claim that pregnant women were 9 times as likley to be murdered as non-pregnant women.
I am sceptical about his claim about other causes of death dropping dramatically for pregnant women - this may be another statistical artifact and he has yet to provide a link. I also point out that pregnancy lasts only 9 months - that “1.7″ figure above may represent a significantly increased risk factor given this limited period.
What needs to be compared is the chance of mortality from homicide over a nine month period for women of the appropriate age groups as a whole, and of pregnant women. Until that is given, the claim that pregnant women are nine times as likely to be murdered has yet to be supported (although, given the second point in the para above, it cannot be dismissed).
Uhh…. Rodeobob is making some perfectly valid points everyone. I don’t know if he’s necessarily correct, but perhaps some of us could stop accusing him of supporting the murdering of pregnant women? Christ.
The real question is this: What’s the murder rate of non-pregnant women, ages 18-30 vs. the murder rate of pregnant women, ages 18-30? And by that I mean the rate within their respective populations. How many pregnant women are murdered per 100,000 pregnant women and how many non-pregnant women are murdered per 100,000 non-pregnant women.
Apoligies for the broken link. My fault for not double checking.
Well, since positions #2 & #3 on the CDC chart are “Cancer” and “Suicice”… I would think that supports my position that pregnant women as a self-selecting population are less likely to die from predictable, preventable, controllable causes, but maybe I’m misunderstanding you. Or you’re misunderstanding me. But it’s not all that surprizing to jump from #4 to #1 when you almost completely remove # 2 & 3 from the sample pool.
No, it really doesn’t and that’s the problem, right there! It’s a misunderstanding of what a statistic says.
Risk of being murdered = # of murders in your population/# of your population.
It does not mean # of murders/# total deaths!
Example:
100,000 people. 1% mortality rate, 1% pregnancy rate.
1,000 deaths: 300 accidents, 100 murders, 700 cancer deaths.
1,000 pregnant women.
100 pregnant women deaths: 51 murders, 50 accidents, 0 cancer deaths.
#1 cause of death? Cancer.
#1 cause of death among pregnant women? Murder
Murder rate overall? 1%
Murder rate among pregnant women? 0.51%
“Odds of dying from murder” overall: 10%
“Odds of dying from murder” while pregnant: 50%
This is an over-simplification, but notice how I can make a totally true claim (”the risk of being murdered is five times higher when you’re pregnant!”) that is, in fact, misleading and incomplete.
Question:
What does the death rate - by murder - of pregnant women have to do with whether or not women are held responsible for murder themselves if they have an abortion or use (some forms of) birth control?
Not trying to be an asshole, but isn’t this a textbook example of a thread derailment?…
I don’t know why everyone’s been sucked into a red herring argument about the risks of pregnancy. It could be safer than taking a crap, and I still would oppose people who want to force me to do it at gunpoint as punishment for sinning against a god I don’t even believe in. As for the stupid “saving babies” lie, there are two major reasons we know that’s a lie:
1) If you thought a 6 week old embryo was a baby, if you miscarried at that point, you’d name it and bury it and give it a birthday or something. Anti-choicers neither do this nor expect anyone else to.
2) If you thought that embryos were full human persons, you would move heaven and earth to keep people from creating them by accident. Every baby a wanted baby would be your motto, and you would stand on the street corners passing out condoms and demanding that the government issue birth control for free and have it hand-delivered to people’s homes.
On the contrary, no major anti-choice organization approves of birth control, and many seek to ban it. The anti-choice movement actively fights all attempts to innovate birth control, such as when they started to fight emergency contraception. They want to force childbirth on women before and after the conception. Which has NOTHING to do with “saving babies”. Period.
Ergo, there’s only one rational explanation that explains the BEHAVIOR not the BULLSHIT EXCUSES. They want to punish women for fucking. Look at the behavior, not the words. Of course they’re going to lie about how much they hate women.
So we can ignore all of the other evidence regarding increase in the rates and severity of domestic violence in existing relationships when the woman is discovered to be pregnant, because gosh golly, a per capita jump in the murder rate for pregnant woman is just playing fast and loose with statistics, and exists completely in a void! Women should be thankful that murder is their biggest concern when they’re pregnant, and not car accidents and cancer!
And, because Amanda and MikeEss are right — I will now stop arguing this stastistic. It was a single point I was making early on in the thread about how women might not want to carry the pregnancy to term beyond simply problematic pregnancies, (and yes, if a woman is taking this statistic into account, then there’s probably a damn good reason for it).
I think Rodeobob is making a lot of sense.
Pregnant women may also be less likely to engage in risky behaviors, which might cut their risk of some kind of accidents.
Abusive men may be more likely to kill a pregnant partner than a non-pregnant one — I’d buy that — but it does look like a tleast part, if not much, of the statistic can be accounted for by looking at other possibilities.
Okay, here are the facts.
Mighty Ponygirl said:
>>>
when a woman in that same age group is pregnant, Homicide becomes her #1 killer, with unintentional injuries coming in #2. That’s quite a jump and gives lie to the “self-selecting” bit. Homicide jumping to #2 would indicate that women were not so keen to kill themselves (the current #2) and that cancer (the current #3) is more thoroughly screened and eradicated because of increased doctors visits. The fact that homicide surpasses the previous first-ranked killer of women in the U.S. when she happens to be pregnant would indicate that pregnant women are more at risk of being murdered than non-pregnant women.”
>>>
I tried to blockquote that, but the preview told me i was hosing it, so forget it, I’ll just use brackets.
Simply talkng about how the likelihood of murder for dead pregnant women becomes the No. 1 reason for death means exactly jack, since the rates of everything else are dropping. Theoretically, homicide rates for pregnant women could remain exactly the same and homicide could still go up to No. 1 if all the *other* reasons drop significantly enough. So let’s compare the actual data to find out what the rates really are.
The actual numbers on your chart say:
(for women 15-19):
Unintentional Injury: 56.7%, Suicide 9.2%, Cancer 7.3%, Homicide 5.1%
(for women 20-24):
Unintentional Injury: 45.4%, Suicide 8.5%, Cancer 8.3%, Homicide 6.7%
From the JAMA study, which is *not* nationwide like CDC figures and may not be representative of the same time period, either:
Of 247 women who died while pregnant or right after giving birth:
50 were murdered (20%)
69 died of cardiovascular disease or embolism (I don’t know why they separate these; embolism is a blood clot blocking the vessel, and therefore is cardiovascular) 27%
18 died in accidents (7.3%)
33 died of hemorrhage (a pregnancy complication if it’s not murder or accident) or hypertensive complications of pregnancy — so call the whole thing pregnancy complications (13%)
That’s the top four. Suicide isn’t on it — 7 women committed suicide, or 2.8% — and cancer isn’t on it because *no* woman died of cancer in this chart. The top reason for death is actually cardiovascular problems, which given the age group of the average pregnant woman, are probably caused by the pregnancy more than half the time as pregnancy is a young woman’s highest risk factor for heart problems and blood vessel problems. Accidents are way, way down, indicating that pregnant women take care not to get in accidents.
The actual rate of being murdered is 20%, compared to about 5 or 6%. This means pregnancy makes you 4 times as likely to be killed as not being pregnant. (This same study found that the rate was actually twice as likely in their sample; the problem of comparing apples to oranges, but it’s the best we’ve got.) So yes, being pregnant is a risk factor for murder. It is not a 9 times risk factor, it is a risk factor between 2 times and 4 times. This is serious and a matter that public health should be devoting resources to in order to prevent it. But it is nowhere near “pregnant women are 9 times as likely to be murdered”, and it actually doesn’t back up “murder is the leading cause of death”, either; it was disingenous of them to separate cardiovascular disease and embolism in order to make them both separately smaller numbers than homicide, when they’re caused by the same root factors and involve the same biological systems.
In other words: yes, the numbers really do bear out that murder is a higher risk factor for pregnant than non-pregnant women (at least when you only look at the dead — I’d still like to know what the murder likelihood is for *non*-dead women, pregnant and not, but these stats won’t tell me.) No, they do not say that pregnant women are 9 times as likely to be murdered as not-pregnant women or that homicide is the leading cause of pregnant women’s deaths. (It’s actually number 2 if you don’t separate cardiovascular disease and embolism. A political spin may be more palatable when it’s your own side doing it, but it still makes my science brain cringe.)
I hope this means we can drop the issue of whether or not pregnant women die of murder at higher rates than non-pregnant women, and how much higher the rates are, and get back to discussing the idiocy of anti-choice wingnuts.
Alara, lets just say that you are fortunate that I am not feeling well today and my brain was too scrambled to stay at work … a job which requires a PhD in epidemiology.
Your emphasis on “statistics” is a bunch of bull, quite frankly. Statistics has diddly squat poopypants to do with study design, which seems to be what you are ineptly trying to criticize. That you confuse the two is evidence of your folly.
To paraphrase Andrew Lang “You use statistics like a drunkard uses a lamppost: for support, rather than illumination”. Actually, in your case, more like a junkie uses a dark corner.
Alara’s comment at 115 was helpful to me in understanding that statistical debate. Thanks for that.
Even before I got there I thought Rodeobob was being grilled because he had the audacity to challenge a really great soundbite stat.
I liked Matthews line of questioning and I will use it whenever anyone tries the crap about redefining the beginning of a new person with rights at conception. One direct consequence of that would be to make a woman obtaining an abortion at least an accessory to murder. Pointing out the bad consequences of an anti-choice policy is better than calling anti-choicers evil or even women haters.
Hmmm, Kate, I thought Alara was piping in on it to help in the screaming match between those who want to use the 9 times more likely to be murdered while pregnant line and Rodeobob who urged us/them not to use that stat. I missed that axe she was trying to grind I guess.
Oh Christ. I step away for a while since I can’t just spend the entire day watching the comments section here replying to every single one and come back to find that I’ve been called a liar (”You’re also just a little too faux-naive to be believable”) among other things.
May I ask what the FUCK I did to deserve this? I didn’t nod my head like an idiot and agree with the majority here on every single little detail…I guess I should’ve known better and need to be taught a lesson, right? If people would just stop being hostile to one another and try to UNDERSTAND one another’s point of view, then maybe the world wouldn’t be quite as shitty a place as it is! I was trying to say, to those who were in a mood to listen which evidently wasn’t all that many people, that instead of automatically assuming that anybody who is pro-life is a monster who would take glee in watching your life get ruined or snuffed out because of an unexpected pregnancy, maybe you should stop and try to get inside their heads to find out if that’s really how they are or if some of them might not actually think the way you believe they do.
There’s a lot of stuff I could respond to here if I had the time, which I don’t, so I’ll just pick the main thing that’s pissing me off and respond to that:
I never said Amanda said that. If you read what I wrote carefully, if you look at it really closely and pay attention, you’ll notice that I was telling SmallTownPsychosis–that’s SmallTownPsychosis, and NOT Amanda Marcotte–that SmallTownPsychosis was acting as if she could read everybody’s mind and knew the reasons why every single pro-lifer felt that way about the issue.
I said this because SmallTownPsychosis previously stated “These people support Republicans because they are complete pacifists? Sure. Right. Where’s the other bridge I’m buying today?” She appeared to be saying that she knew they would all support Republicans and that none of them were pacifists, and there’s no way to know that.
Mighty Ponygirl is looking at women 15 to 24, a demographic that is likely to be pregnant. And guess what? The fourth leading cause of death among 15-24 women in general is homicide, but the #1 cause of death among 15-24 pregnant women is homicide. In other words, pregnant women 15-24 are more likely to be murdered than non-pregnant women.
No, your conclusion does not follow from your data. the statement about “leading causes of death” is about relative rankings, the conclusion about “more likely to be murdered” is about mortality rates.
I have a post in moderation which quoted an abstract of something like 1.7 homicides per 100,000 associated with pregnancy, contrasting it to around 3.5-4.5 for comparable female age populations. Adjusting a bit for a nine month pregnancy, that would suggest that the actual risks of homicide go up by somewhere between 50 and 100% for pregnant women. This seems to dovetail with the Alara has quoted; she’s done a better job digging than I have, since I’ve just snatched time during a work-break.
Rob is right to question the “nine times more likely” bit. He has yet to show his data for other causes of mortality decreasing, and he has not/b> excused violence against women.
Alara: In other words: yes, the numbers really do bear out that murder is a higher risk factor for pregnant than non-pregnant women (at least when you only look at the dead — I’d still like to know what the murder likelihood is for *non*-dead women, pregnant and not, but these stats won’t tell me.) No, they do not say that pregnant women are 9 times as likely to be murdered as not-pregnant women or that homicide is the leading cause of pregnant women’s deaths. (It’s actually number 2 if you don’t separate cardiovascular disease and embolism. A political spin may be more palatable when it’s your own side doing it, but it still makes my science brain cringe.)
See page 22 here.
Thank you! That’s the data I think we’re looking for.
Welcome to the blog
. You should see what happens when the term “Evolutionary Psychology” gets mentioned anywhere. It’s like a volcano erupting. Or maybe an asteroid plunging into the ocean. Doesn’t matter that it’s often in reference to non-peer-reviewed and horribly misinformed “Psychology Today” articles or off-their-rocker nuts misquoting studies elsewhere on the internets… just make sure to stand clear of the blast.
But on the whole, conversation here is very enlightening. I’d recommend hanging around regardless of the way you’re treated. Up to you, obviously.
[Rodeobob] is right to question the “nine times more likely” bit. He has yet to show his data for other causes of mortality decreasing, and he has not excused violence against women.
Let’s look at this a slightly different way, with a disease that can sometimes lead to fatal complications: diabetes. Let’s say that the statistics showed that the leading cause of death for people with diabetes was not any complication of the disease, but was murder.
That wouldn’t seem a little odd to you? That doesn’t make you think, “Geez, it’s weird that people who are going through a major health event are dying not from that health event, but from murder”?
Rodeobob (not Rob, to be clear) didn’t seem to be arguing that the statistic itself was wrong and too high. He seemed to be arguing that the statistic was insignificant by saying things like this:
I think it was the “nothing to do with misogyny” part that set us all off. Because, of course, everyone knows that domestic violence against pregnant women has nothing to do with misogyny, right? It’s just one of those fluke things that happens, like a car accident.
If he had stuck simply to the statistics, and not tried to de-emphasize the importance of them, it wouldn’t have blown up like this. Because otherwise, you do — like Rodeobob — come across sounding like you think the murder of pregnant women is no big deal.
Re. what I said about not having time to respond to everything, disregard it. I’m making time.
What does my nationality have to do with anything?! Do you assume that just because I live here that I was taught from an early age all about abortion and why it’s sometimes necessary?
The subject does not come up in my day to day life very much at all. In fact, it’s precisely BECAUSE the debate over the issue isn’t raging with white hot intensity up here that I know so little about it. But hey, I’m not “believable” according to you so I guess you should go and get corroboration from another Canadian (and btw, if I’m supposedly lying about everything else how do you know I’m telling the truth about my nationality, hmm?).
All I know is the stuff I’ve overheard here and there, stuff I found on the rare occasions when I read about the subject, and stuff I’ve been told.
Believe it or not, zuzu, but a person can actually be ignorant about this. It’s not always an act! God damn it.
See what I told mythago. I was not talking about Amanda.
Ah I see, so because I said “I didn’t know it cost that much and I didn’t know it was often that risky” I’m saying that the ONLY issues are money and the physical safety of the woman.
Because I said that, I must not realize that there are still other, also valid, reasons why women might get abortions.
Whatever.
Anyway, thanks to everybody who hasn’t been a jerk. I’ll respond to your comments after I’ve calmed down.
that SmallTownPsychosis was acting as if she could read everybody’s mind and knew the reasons why every single pro-lifer felt that way about the issue.
I said this because SmallTownPsychosis previously stated “These people support Republicans because they are complete pacifists? Sure. Right. Where’s the other bridge I’m buying today?” She appeared to be saying that she knew they would all support Republicans and that none of them were pacifists, and there’s no way to know that.
Rob, the thread is referencing the NRLC endorsing Fred Thompson. We’ve been over this. Wipe your fucking nose and stop whining like a child.
I don’t think you’re confused. I think you’re being deliberate. Just like those who claim to “mean well” or “not know” while advocating the removal of my right to liberty.
Let’s look at this a slightly different way, with a disease that can sometimes lead to fatal complications: diabetes. Let’s say that the statistics showed that the leading cause of death for people with diabetes was not any complication of the disease, but was murder.
That wouldn’t seem a little odd to you? That doesn’t make you think, “Geez, it’s weird that people who are going through a major health event are dying not from that health event, but from murder”?
Rob’s objection might be to point out that these people are all protected from cancer and heart disease by their treatment for diabetes, and thus the rankings have chnaged. Indeed, the statement about the “leading cause” doesn’t make any implicit statement about whether murder rates for diabetics is less than or greater than the general population.
Consider - cancer is a bigger killer in the US than in Africa. This does not necessarily mean that the US is more toxic, or that Africa has better cancer care. It means that other causes of death are more of a factor in Africa.
In this particular case, the indications seem to be that getting pregnant about doubles your chances of getting murdered. Pregnancy is a huge risk factor for homicide; violence against pregnant women is a real concern.
The issue that has been raised, and it’s a valid one, is whether an inaccurate soundbite should continue to be repeated when using it may discredit the real validity of the issue.
“Pregnant women have a much, much lower mortality rate overall. Pregnant women are much less likely to die than women who are not pregnant. The reason murder is a more frequent cause of death among pregnant women has nothing to do with misogyny, and everything to do with a property in statistics called a “self-selecting population”. [emphasis mine]”
I think it was the “nothing to do with misogyny” part that set us all off.
Indeed. Rob (or Rodeobob, sorry I’m getting them confused) is overstating his case and needs to provide links and/or actual statistics. As my very quick digging and Alara’s much better research seems to show, it is a concern - a major concern - but the size of it is significantly less than has been stated (twice, rather than nine times). Rob is wrong factually, but the point he makes is valid - you cannot use a statement about rankings to draw a conclusion about absolute rates.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Sheen#Political_activism
“He has also supported causes for PETA and is a proponent of the Consistent Life ethic, which advocates against abortion, capital punishment and war,” it says.
That’s where I found out.
I’m very sorry that it was like that for you. I know that pregnancy isn’t a walk in the park by any stretch, but I’d never heard it desribed as “hell on earth” before. There’s a misconception that it’s no fun, but it’s bearable. After reading your description I understand better why a woman might decide that 9 months was too long to endure it. Thank you.
Yes, I get it, Mighty Ponygirl, I was just changing the subject for a second because eggs had been mentioned and because your friend was a vegan so I thought that perhaps you might be one as well.
Briefly: I’ve been eating only free run eggs since I found out how the majority of laying hens are kept. It’s pretty much the same as veal calves as I understand; they spend their lives in a tiny cage, unable to move, just being fed, crapping, laying eggs and being miserable.
As for the main subject, a fertilized human egg is not a human being, totally agree.
Thank you. The first posts I saw when I took a look at these comments were the ones I responded to above, and I missed yours. It’s nice to know not everybody feels like jumping down my throat, and the rest of what you posted was certainly food for thought.
At the risk of stating the obvious…that is fucked up.
That does make sense as it pertains to embryos. Perhaps somebody who talks about how embryos need to be protected really doesn’t believe that they’re humans deep down.
That being said, I could see them possibly sincerely making the “saving babies” argument after said embryo has been around for a while and has had a chance to develop into something more than an embryo.
My own opinion–and I would ask that the people who haven’t already decided to attack me try not to be upset by this, because it’s just my opinion–is that an embryo isn’t intelligent life, but that after it develops and gets a brain, heart, and so forth, after it becomes self-aware (which has gotta happen at some point before the exit from the womb), it is intelligent life and while I would still support the right of the woman to abort it, I would want the procedure to be as painless as possible for the fetus. If it has a brain, it can feel pain, right?
Soon as you stop acting like a jackass.
If you calm down and take some time out from insulting me, you might look at exactly what I said:
“She appeared to be saying that she knew they would all support Republicans and that none of them were pacifists, and there’s no way to know that.”
At the time, I did not know that you were talking only about members of NRLC. You appeared, to me, to be talking about all pro-lifers.
And, since I am all about giving people the benefit of the doubt if I don’t have 100% reliable, concrete evidence of wrongdoing…is there even any way to know the thoughts of all NRLC members? There might be one or two who are misguided and misinformed for all you know, as this O’Steen jerkoff is making women out to be.
Well, Rob, my opinion is that sperm have little brains. It’s just my opinion, science isn’t relevant. Thus, while I can barely manage to support your right to masturbate, I think it’s best if you cut your balls off and get that stain of killing billions off your soul.
Wow, where’d that come from?
If I understand you correctly, you’re saying that my belief that a fetus will, at some point before those nine months have expired and it comes to term naturally, grow a brain and actually start reacting to its surroundings and thinking whatever it is babies think about and things like that…
…that this belief is as ridiculous as a belief that sperm are people, or something like that.
You and I both know that a fetus doesn’t magically become a self-aware human being at the exact moment it’s born and that before that it is no more self-aware than plantlife with no brain to speak of. Come on.
I just want to clarify that the cerebral cortex must be present and developed for any living thing (fetus or animal) to experience pain (or any other physical sensation). In humans, brain development doesn’t begin until the eighth week of gestation, and the cerebral cortex isn’t fully developed to the point where the fetus can experience pain until a few weeks later.
As Amanda has pointed out repeatedly in other threads, the majority of abortions happen before or during the 12th week of gestation.
OK, thank you Mezosub. That’s good to know.
Since I do not obsessively read everything she writes, I was not aware of that fact. So seems a little harsh to respond to me the way she did. Just a tad.
after it develops and gets a brain, heart, and so forth,
all those things people try to use as markers of when an embryo/fetus reminds them of a person — brain, heart, fingers and eyelids, etc — happen at different points, fyi.
and i really don’t think there’s any reason that self-awareness has “gotta happen at some point before the exit from the womb”. in fact i think born infants have no self-awareness. it’s a hard to pin down concept and maybe depends on what you mean or what your field is, but anyway i’m not sure we can say for sure that it happens anywhere before birth. anyone?
I would want the procedure to be as painless as possible for the fetus. If it has a brain, it can feel pain, right?
well, wrong, actually. it has lungs but can’t breathe, after all. having a brain isn’t synonymous with having a developed nervous system, so that’s one way to answer your question. but the more important point is it’s practically a red herring because the the vast majority of abortions (in the US literally something like 99%) happen at or before 24 weeks, and questions of feeling pain don’t even arise until around 28 weeks.
By “self-awareness” I mean that they react to their surroundings (i.e., they express displeasure if you circumsize them), can feel emotions, etc. Maybe I’m using the term wrong; if so, my bad.
OK, I have a question. Despite the majority of abortions happening before the 28 week mark, if a fetus were, say, 30 weeks old at the time, would you consider it reasonable to anesthetize it before the procedure? Or would this strike some here as being the sort of thing only a rabid anti-choice nazi would push for because it acknowledges that we might be dealing with more than an inanimate object or a brainless blob of flesh?
isn’t fully developed to the point where the fetus can experience pain until a few weeks later [than week 12].
mesozub - i had learned that it was actually much later than that. basically that, even with most of the structures in place, sensory input doesn’t reach the brain until the end of the second trimester, and then not much. i know it’s not conclusively known *when* pain sensation is possible but i thought they had pinned down that it *isn’t* possible for quite some time.
just did a quick scan for the guesses out there and there are a few statements that a fetus “might” feel pain before 20 weeks but those opinions don’t seem to be widely shared (or especially well supported in their backers’ statements). 20, 23, 25 and 26 i found more claims for; and then there was 29-30 in JAMA. dunno.
Rob, you know, we generally don’t anesthetise living things with brains just because we’re about to kill them. They have to cross that magical line into “HUMAN” first. I seriously doubt that a 30-week-old fetus is more conscious or able to feel pain than, say, a pig. Or, for that matter, a chicken.
Rob: You and I both know that a fetus doesn’t magically become a self-aware human being at the exact moment it’s born and that before that it is no more self-aware than plantlife with no brain to speak of. Come on.
It’s a rational point that, after the cerebral cortex develops (say about week 15) the fetus may be able to feel pain. One can then argue that it’s extremely important that any woman who is pregnant and just doesn’t want to be, should be able to get an abortion ASAP, ideally before week 8 - during the first 8 weeks, no one could possibly argue that a fetus feels anything.
The vast majority of abortions that take place in the US do take place before 8 weeks. (Indeed, in any developed country where abortion is not legally restricted, that’s true: most women who don’t want to be pregnant, want a termination right now.
Most abortions that take place late - after 15 weeks - happen because tests for fetal health can’t take place until a certain amount of fetal development has already taken place. Arguing that the woman who’s pregnant ought not to be allowed to decide, given the results of the tests? No.
Other reasons for late abortions, however, include:
The woman’s too poor to get an abortion as soon as she knows she needs one, and spends months saving the money to pay for it. People who care about fetal welfare would want to pay for a woman’s abortion to make sure it happens sooner rather than later, yes?
No.
Another reason is a girl is way too young to be pregnant, and too ignorant/sheltered to know she is or to know what to do about it. Arguing that a 14-year-old girl shouldn’t have an abortion at 16 weeks because the fetus might suffer briefly as its aborted, would be to argue that the girl’s agony and permanent damage to her body is of less importance that the fetus’s brief suffering.
No.
You’re wrong that there’s no arbitrary dividing line when someone can say “That side of the line the fetus is not a person, this side of the line the fetus is a person”. There is one non-arbitrary line: birth. After a fetus is born it is inargubly a baby, with its own independent life. Before it is born, it is ultimately dependent on a woman’s body and a woman’s life. I’m pro-choice: I say let the pregnant woman decide, for herself, when in the pregnancy the fetus has become a baby.
Point. But I feel sorry for pigs and chickens too. If I had my way they’d all be treated humanely and live in comfort up until they were killed for food, which would be done in a painless way.
Death doesn’t bother me, basically. Suffering does bother me.
Just for the record, I would never argue that. Just in case somebody reading this somehow gets the impression I would and decides to verbally tear me a new one because of it.
An uncompromising position to take, certainly. If you asked them, they’d probably say “I will never pay a single penny for an abortion, even if it’ll happen sooner or later anyway and even if it means that it’ll be easier on the fetus.” If they really care and can put aside their stubbornness, they’d be pragmatic and pay for it.
Again, for the record, I’d never argue that either. I don’t like the idea of the fetus suffering, even briefly, but I would hate it even more if the girl suffered for a long time.
It’s a choice between two evils for me, basically, because somebody or something might suffer no matter what. It isn’t as black and white as certain parties make it out to be. So I’m pro-choice, but with some reservations, and if Ms. Marcotte feels that this is unforgivable then that’s a shame.
I say let the pregnant woman decide too.
But.
The dividing line is only a legal one. Birth also happens at different times, so if you say “it’s not a person until it’s born, and it will take this long for it to be born, so it isn’t a person until then,” what happens with a premature birth? Is that not a person?
I’m sorry, Jesurgilac; I do not want to get into a nasty argument with you because A) I don’t dislike you and B) I do dislike nasty arguments. But some babies are born sooner or later than others, and I’m afraid I simply cannot agree with the idea that it isn’t a person until it exits the woman’s body. I believe that after it reaches a certain stage of development then it becomes something more. I’m sorry if that belief offends somebody here.
If dependence is the criteria, remember that the baby is dependent on people outside the womb. It can’t survive without people caring for it; the dependence has just taken a different form.
Rob - Simple question (which Amanda alluded to at the start of this thread):
A woman gets an abortion. Should she be prosecuted for murder or not?
…
No, she should not.
Should anybody else involved in the process be prosecuted - doctors, nurses, etc.?
Should the woman be prosecuted for a lesser crime?
If the abortion occurs after the point you feel the fetus can experience pain - what then?…
IMO the doctors shouldn’t be prosecuted, nor anybody else.
This is because I feel that there are circumstances where taking a life is acceptable.
That being said, I never want to see anything–animal, human, or other–in pain. So if there is pain involved, if there’s even a chance that the fetus might feel pain, that’s why I would feel better about it if it there were a way to something to dope it up and ensure that it didn’t feel pain without causing the woman to suffer.
Sorry, I meant to type that I would feel better if “there were a way to give it something to dope it up and ensure that it didn’t feel pain, and that doing so did not cause the woman to suffer.”
Rob, I have been ripped on this board too for not being sufficiently in step, specifically for arguing that not all anti-choicers are evil monsters. There are a few who apparently know what other people are thinking and what their true motivations are. I haven’t been that blessed myself.
There have been a couple of questions about Martin Sheen’s views on abortion. I found this excerpt in a published Q&A:
Q: What are your views on abortion?
Sheen: I cannot make a choice for a women, particularly a black or brown or poor pregnant woman. I would not make a judgment in the case. As a father and a grandfather, I have had experience with children who don’t always come when they are planned, and I have experienced the great joy of God’s presence in my children, so I’m inclined to be against abortion of any life. But I am equally against the death penalty or war– anywhere people are sacrificed for some end justifying a means. I don’t think abortion is a good idea. I personally am opposed to abortion, but I will not judge anybody else’s right in that regard because I am not a woman and I could never face the actual reality of it.
http://www.progressive.org/mag_intvsheen
But some babies are born sooner or later than others, and I’m afraid I simply cannot agree with the idea that it isn’t a person until it exits the woman’s body. I believe that after it reaches a certain stage of development then it becomes something more.
rob, listen. birth itself is a huge factor in development. you seem very skeptical of the idea that certain cognitive capacities could develop “overnight”, and i understand that a lot of things we conceive of as growth/change don’t happen overnight and that’s why you think it’s a safe assumption — but in fact the difference between inside the womb and outside the womb is not just one of a couple hours and a physical barrier.
being born sooner or later doesn’t mean we’re calling some things people that aren’t people, or not calling some things people that are people. being born MAKES you people, for sure in the legal sense but also, in a way, in the sense that i think you’re talking about — the capacity to learn, think about yourself, become autonomous, etc.
we can continue to disagree on whether “fuzzy personhood” begins before then, because it’s not something we can find out. but it’s not just my opinion that the progression of cognitive development depends on getting outside of the womb.
Thanks, SixtiesLiberal, both for the sympathy and the quote.
Hmm, that’s interesting roula. Thank you. You are also right about the reasons for my assumption; physical and mental growth outside the womb are gradual processes and given that the fetus or embryo gradually changes shape inside the womb I figured that it would be slowly approaching the day where it could have thoughts and feelings as well.
By “self-awareness” I mean that they react to their surroundings (i.e., they express displeasure if you circumsize them), can feel emotions, etc. Maybe I’m using the term wrong; if so, my bad.
I think you are using the wrong term, although I’m not completely sure what the right one would be. But by your criteria, an earthworm would be ’self aware’ because it can react to its surroundings, etc. As for my own personal opinion, I don’t think even newborns are all that particularly self aware. They still have lots of developing to do even once they get out (consequence of having big brains is that we’re born earlier developmentally than other mammals). I’d say that my kids got self awareness–as in, know that they are separate from their surroundings, consistently recognize others, show some personality, and generally aren’t crying, pooping, loveable lumps–at about 1 year. Up until then, my cats were probably more self aware and intelligent than the kids. However, once the kid is born and not connected to the woman in question, then it is a separate person/entity and is then entitled to protection. Before that, not so much. I can sort of see the arguments about post-viability abortions, but generally speaking if the fetus is viable and the pregnancy needs to be ended, the woman and the docs would try to find a way to get it out without killing it unless absolutely necessary. So that isn’t really a good argument for banning late term abortions either.
I’m very sorry that it was like that for you. I know that pregnancy isn’t a walk in the park by any stretch, but I’d never heard it desribed as “hell on earth” before. There’s a misconception that it’s no fun, but it’s bearable.
My two pregnancies were very close to hell on earth for me, too, Rob. Severe fatigue, deep depression. Very difficult, hard-to-control weight gain, and I’m a small woman (200 lbs at 9 months on a 5′1″ frame). The aftermath sucked, too. I was traumatized for years after the birth of my first child, which I still can’t bring myself to describe — so much so that I couldn’t imagine getting pregnant again for another five years.
A lot of women tend to be humorously dismissive of the discomforts and downright pains of pregnancy, and some of the worst things are not talked about at all. No one except a couple of very close friends — female — know how deeply disturbed I was by the circumstances surrounding my son’s birth.
So I’m not surprised that you’re ignorant of the less pleasant (OK, hellish) aspects of pregnancy for some women. It’s the people who are ignorant AND want to influence policy who scare me.
also, in response to your question about “what if an abortion had to happen at 30 weeks”- a multi-part answer:
1) a lot of 3rd trimester abortions are for causes like fetal demise or anencephaly (it failed to grow a brain) so tossing those out we’re talking about an even smaller number of cases;
2) fetal anesthetic does exist for surgeries that need to be performed on a fetus in its third trimester;
3) women are, in fact, able to request anesthetic for their fetus during a late-term abortion;
4) however, the more manipulation takes place inside the body during a surgical procedure, the more risk is involved, and that’s true for abortions, so it’s probably not advisable to try to involve anesthesia in all procedures “just in case” or otherwise extend that needlessly;
5) hence why i find it unfortunate that some states are trying to legislate that it must be “discussed” for a regular abortion starting during the second trimester — in fact such a move seems to me like more of a political setpiece, since in the range of time that it’s actually considered a possible need, it’s already available.
Re consciousness and newborns: Humans generally begin to pass the “mirror test”, which is considered definitive proof of having a self-symbol and conscious thought, at about 15 months of age. (Shrug.) If that helps anyone’s argument.
A newborn is different from a fetus of equal gestational age in a number of ways besides location. Some, such as patency of the umbilical vessels or of the ductus arteriosus, are probably incidental to the question of “personhood” (itself a fuzzy concept). However, at least two are probably not: One, the uterus is an oxygen poor environment compared to room air. The cerebral cortex is more sensitive to hypoxia than the brainstem. Therefore, it may not be active during the fetal period. (Fetal hemoglobin is better at binding oxygen than adult hemoglobin, which may compensate somewhat. However, since it is better at binding O2, it is worse at releasing it to the tissues, so it may not help much.) Two, the uterine environment is very low stimulus compared to the outside world. The brain may simply not have enough experience to have any thoughts worthy of the name. Evolutionarily, I can’t imagine what good prenatal consciousness would do: It’s not like the fetus can act independently in any meaningful way.
SixtiesLiberal:
You’ve been ripped, not because you argue that all anti-choicers are not monsters, but because you seem unable to realize that their motives do not matter. They do not matter when the end result of their actions, regardless of motive is to restrict the autonomy of living women for the sake of potential humans.
This is the problem. Whether they’re nice people or frothing misogynists, if the outcome is making abortion more difficult to obtain, whether through voting or shooting abortion providers, they’re no friend to women.
ks, I completely agree with you there. To draw the line of protection at self awareness might well put it beyond birth. Even independent viability might put it beyond birth, since I’ve read that newborns left alone and provided with basic nutrition and nothing else languish. The only legal line that makes any sense to me is birth. I’m pretty comfortable with the balancing interests and trimester analysis of Roe v. Wade.
I should perhaps also point out that in the embryonic period (first 8 weeks), when the majority of abortions take place, there is absolutely no chance of the embryo having any self-awareness or ability to feel pain. The neurons simply haven’t grown yet. So if you’re really worried about late term fetuses dying painfully in abortions, one thing that you could do to help would be to advocate for better access to early abortion so that fewer later abortions would be necessary.
rrp,
I think you’re wrong on this because I’ve said repeatedly that arguments against anti-choicers are more effective when the logical consequences of their positions are demonstrated rather than just saying that they are women haters. When I said they are not all women haters and fence sitters don’t see anti-choicers as women haters I was repeatedly attacked. I don’t remember you as one of the attackers, but if the shoe fits….
dianne, thanks for explaining more explicitly- that was what i was hoping to say but i didn’t have the details for it.
Actually I rarely post, so I was not one of the people that attacked you. Still I remember some of the interchanges and I think the point that you continue to miss is that the actions of anti-choicers, regardless of motive, have real, disastrous effects on women’s lives. Consequently, the argument, “Well, they don’t really hate women” doesn’t tend to go over particularly well.
Thanks to Dianne and roula for the additional information. Seems it may not be as bad as I thought, and that’s comforting.
A lot of people would tell you that motives do matter, though. If motives didn’t matter and if most people felt this way, there would not be hate crime laws.
You will get no argument from me when you say that those who oppose abortion and want to ensure that it is never (or almost never) available to women are not doing women the slightest bit of good.
But in terms of how I feel about such people, I’ll view somebody with good intentions who fucks everything up for others as “they’re wrong and we need to make sure that they don’t get their way”, whereas I’ll view somebody who fucks everything up for others just for fun because they like seeing others miserable as “OMG, I fucking hate those people.”
Since I do not obsessively read everything she writes, I was not aware of that fact. So seems a little harsh to respond to me the way she did. Just a tad.
You know, they invented this really cool gadget called a search engine. In it, you would find, if you actually cared to know, that late term abortions are a teeny percentage of abortions, done mainly because the fetus is already dead or the mother will be killed or injured if she continues the pregnancy. In fact, by anti-choice standards, late term abortions are the MOST EASILY JUSTIFIED. Banning them would not probably save any babies, but it would help kill some evil daughters of Eve.
I’m skeptical of the idea that you’re genuinely interested in learning about the facts. People who want to learn don’t affect pseudo-ignorant poses. They pick up books, magazines, and search engines and start reading.
Rob, if you really think you can tell a person’s motives better by their words than their actions, you are willfully ignorant (my guess) or about 14 years old. Anti-choicers may use pretty sounding baby words, but they mostly engage in woman-hating actions, a better gauge of their woman-hating motives.
well, remember that hate crime sentencing* only kicks in after someone had actually done something, so again it’s the action that’s important. But this is a flawed analogy for another reason.
A “nice” anti-choice person wants abortion to be illegal. His/her motive is because he/she thinks a fetus is a human being, who should have rights. So he/she votes for legislation that makes abortion illegal.
A “bad” anti-choice person wants abortion to be illegal. His/her motive is because women who have sex are hopeless sluts who should have to take responsibility for that sex which should only be for procreation. He/she votes for legislation that makes abortion illegal.
versus
A non-anti-semite walks past a synagogue on a dark night with a can of black spray paint. There’s no one around. S/he keeps on walking.
An anti-semite walks past a synagogue on a dark night with a can of black spray paint. There’s no one around. S/he sprays a swastika onto the building.
See the difference? In the first case, the outcome’s the same, regardless of motive. In the second case, it’s the motive that makes the crime happen.
*that’s really what the laws do, they don’t make something suddenly illegal where it wasn’t before.
Nice, the conversation had turned civil and here you go making accusations and going on the attack again, Amanda. Seriously, what the hell?
OK, I’ll play along and ignore your sarcasm and obnoxiousness.
Let’s say I used one of these–what did you call it?–search engines. I’ll google “abortion.” I’ll get a shitload of hits, which is a daunting amount of reading. In addition, a percentage of those are undoubtedly going to be giving what you’d call “anti-choice” information or propaganda, and I wouldn’t know it until I clicked on them. Plus, I might not know such propaganda for what it is when I see it, depending on how it’s written.
Plus before I wrote the part earlier about vacuums or vivisection I briefly check Wikipedia to see if I remembered it right. I didn’t read the entire entry, but even if I did, an entry on abortion methods would not tell me the reasons women have for getting abortions, it wouldn’t tell me what kind of mind a fetus does or doesn’t have…hell, earlier in these comments we had two people citing different amounts of time it took until the fetus was able to feel pain!
PLUS, jenofiniquity said that she can understand why I might not know how bad pregnancies can be (thank you jen, btw). Why can you not seem to understand as well?
You are not being fair, Amanda. You are assuming the worst about me, blasting me because I didn’t do my homework (and I didn’t do that homework because up until now I thought I knew pretty much everything that was relevant and didn’t need to learn any more), you seem to want to pick a fight.
Once again: what the hell?
Oh FFS Rob. Give it a rest already. You have absolutely highjacked this thread.
Instead of discussing Amanda’s post, many of the posters here have spent time attempting to educate you when you should have, you know, educated yourself. Maybe now that you are aware of one subject where you don’t know “pretty much everything that was relevant and didn’t need to learn any more,” next time a complex subject comes up you’ll remember this experience and instead of positing dopey unsubstantiated unresearched ignorant opinions you’ll do some serious reading first - in the hopes of not posting and broadcasting your ignorance.
Thank you very much.
Listen, I know that people lie. I’m not going to take everything everybody says at face value and disregard their actions.
But I’m also willing to entertain the possibility that maybe, just maybe, some of these people are telling the truth. Maybe, just maybe, they are not doing this for malicious reasons such as punishing women for having premarital sex.
This is called being open-minded, Amanda. It’s called not jumping to conclusions.
Rob: Who is being unfair really? You are trying to defend someone with an indefensible position and doing so on an apparently ill-informed basis. Why do you even think you are owed common courtesy?
If someone commits an evil act then that act remains evil, regardless of their motivation for doing it.
Someone who is anti-choice and actively trying to make abortion illegal is actively endangering the lives of countless women. They are doing an EVIL thing, regardless of their motivation. They are not to be understood or reasoned with - they are to be fought against until such time as they educate themselves and see the error of their ways.
No quarter should be given and these frankly stupid, uninformed people should not be mollycoddled or soothed. THEY ARE THE ENEMY and they CANNOT be compromised with so long as they continue to work towards endangering the lives of women and depriving them of their basic rights.
Rob, you are not paying attention to what people are saying to you. A lot of us don’t give a shit whether anti-choicers are consciously being malicious or just accidentally — the outcome is the same. As has been pointed out already.
Take your condescending “be open-minded” admonishments elsewhere. You won’t ever have to worry about abortion access on a personal level and it’s rich that you’re trying to lecture those of us that do on the matter, and would be even if you were knowledgeable on the subject.
…and for the love of jeebus, will the men please stop crying about how mean the wimmenz tweat them? This is a feminist blog and when you come here and troll/derail/argue with women about experiences THAT THEY LIVE EVERY DAY you are going to be treated like he asshole you’re behaving as.
You realize that you sound like a conservative pundit talking about Muslims, right?
You know why I’m a liberal, Sheesh? Because I have compassion and being ruthless like you’re describing here is not my style. That’s what’s wrong with the right; the Michelle Malkins and Bill O’Reillys and Sean Hannitys are a pack of vicious dogs spewing hate.
You’re asking me to hate people and show them no mercy whatsoever. Fuck that. I’ve got a bleeding heart and I’m damn proud of it.
Spoken like a true bully.
Nobody is telling you to hate anyone (not do I hate anyone and I don’t appreciate or agree with that description of my words).
When your rights and even your lives are at stake, though, you do not capitulate. You stand strong and firm (and yes, sometimes you even use strong words that may make the bleeding heart types wet their pants a little).
These are not people with a rational stance. They cannot be reasoned with until they choose to change their ways of thinking.
After all of these responses, I’m still not sure what exactly it is that you’re trying to advocate. Understanding that people who are advocating the deaths of women aren’t necessarily evil because “they mean well”? We already understand they may be coming from what they believe is a “good’ place, we aren’t simpletons…but you have to see that REGARDLESS OF WHY THEY BELIEVE WHAT THEY DO, THEIR EFFORTS ARE GOING TO RESULT IN DEPRIVING WOMEN OF THEIR RIGHTS AND EVEN POSSIBLY IN THE DEATHS OF WOMEN. This is a wrong and evil thing…the reasoning is ultimately irrelevant.
Okay Rob, let me try to put in white liberal guy speak…maybe something IT related…
If you go to a Mac forum and start posting about how lame and awful Macs are when you clearly have no fucking clue what you’re talking about (and the people there know a lot more about it) you’re gonna get your ass handed to you and you’re gonna deserve it.
You can call it being buiiled and cry into your bag of cheetoes all you want to. I’d call it a well-deserved ass kicking for being a jerk.
ok, rob, here’s some advice that would serve you well if you’re actually in it to get informed: shut up and lurk for a while.
it was certainly good for me, and thinking back about people that have shown up after me it seems like it’s good for most people.
so, i know you said you don’t often read comments, but do. get a feel for what questions have already been answered, and what issues have gotten hashed out over and over, and what prior understandings participants are operating on. aside from learning everything you seem to want to know, you’ll also realize what “concern trolls” sound like which will explain people’s wariness of the new guy who comes in with “yes but” questions that have been addressed to exhaustion. i’ve done it too, and i’m glad i don’t anymore.
Thank you for asking politely. I’ll tell you, and after that I’ll be GLAD to put this behind me, unless there’s something else you want to ask.
First, I do apologize for not knowing what I was talking about and wasting people’s time having it explained to me. I’m also sorry for offending you.
Second, I think I want the same thing you do: women having the option of abortion, including the “partial birth” kind that’s illegal right now. I’d also like to see as few unplanned pregnancies as possible.
I’m not advocating that you back down from these people. I’m not saying that you should give in to them. On the contrary, you should definitely stand up to them.
But you can do that without viewing them all as “evil”, because maybe some of them aren’t.
Actions trump intentions. Yes. But, for me anyway, there’s a difference between somebody who voted for Bush because they knew what he was gonna do and they were in favor of it and somebody who voted for him because he suckered them into doing so. The first is an accomplice, the second is a dupe. Both contribute equally to something terrible, but in my humble opinion the person who didn’t know what they were doing isn’t necessarily a monster or an asshole or a sadist, and they don’t deserve to be labeled that way. I think that THOSE people CAN be reasoned with.
I’m truly sorry if saying that pisses you off further, and I might be totally wrong.
I like to give people the benefit of the doubt, but it’s not my place to tell you that you must do the same.
Jeez, ignore my poor spelling. It’s very late here.
Amanda, dunno if you heard about this, and I’m so sorry to go OT, but I just got this via email, re: an AK legislator proposed last year to enact legislation banning pregnant women from smoking. The legislation went nowhere, but Mike Huckabee supported the proposal. Google it. I’m flippin’ out here, and need to get the word out fast.
“There are a lot of things pregnant women shouldn’t do. That’s just one of them,” Huckabee said, adding: “The point is, if you’re going to make that against the law you’re probably going to have to extend it to all the other things that are equally unhealthy for the child.”
We need to be screaming from the rooftops.
Nobody is inherently evil, by the way. On the left at least, we try not to view people in such black-and-white terms. That does not lessen the evil of their ACTS, though.
Well, let me rephrase…it doesn’t lessen the evil to me in my own humble, personal opinion in a moral sense without getting into the whole legal degrees-of-guilt mumbo-jumbo thing. ^_^
holy shit ahunt. doesn’t that sound like what you’d say if you OPPOSED such a measure? as in, “but that gets you into the territory of doing x and y and z to women” — not as in “great start! next we should tackle x and y and z!” this scares me a lot.
i found an article that provides the quote.
http://www.jointogether.org/news/headlines/inthenews/2006/ark-lawmakers-consider.html
Oh goody, more ammo to argue with the folks over when they try to tout Huckabee again. Speaking of not seeing someone as absolutely evil because pf their actions…
There is virtually no realm of human endeavor outside of pregnancy and childrearing that women may not be excluded from if Huckabee’s position is taken to its logical conclusion.
I’m flippin’ out.
no realm of human endeavor outside of pregnancy and childrearing
childrearing? are you kidding? lugging kids around is hard work — when my mom had three kids five and under in the house, she had serious biceps — probably could cause a hernia and just general abdominal strain. baby-to-be typically being more valuable than existing kids, the toddlers better start carrying themselves.
MATTHEWS: But you do believe it‘s murder?
O‘STEEN: I believe it‘s the killing of a human being, that‘s the term.
Talk about your political correctness.
O‘STEEN: Remember, that‘s where the financial incentive is, and the physician knows what they‘re doing.
I really doubt there is a lot of money to be made in abortions.
Rob, one issue here is that you’ve managed to be ignorant and avoided educating yourself on an issue that affects half of the population, including your guilt-reactionary-anti-choice friend, any female SOs you might have if you’re inclined that way, your female relatives….. What you’ve told us, whether you intended to or not, is “None of that stuff directly affects me, so I’ve never bothered to learn a thing about it; it’s not like I have to have an abortion.” And if you’re a man who has sex with women, on top of that you can add “….and all that stuff is essentially a female problem, not mine.”
At the time, I did not know that you were talking only about members of NRLC. You appeared, to me, to be talking about all pro-lifers.
You were wrong. Problem solved.
But the war makers know exactly what they‘re doing. They‘re taking human life. And you will see Iraq bombed and Iran bombed and you‘ll see respect for human life obliterated. And Fred Thompson will help do that.
Fixed.
Looks to me like a bunch of pinched old men colluding to offer others up as sacrifice to their cause while rubes scurry to shove the less fortunate to the front of the line. Same as it ever was.
Rob: Birth also happens at different times, so if you say “it’s not a person until it’s born, and it will take this long for it to be born, so it isn’t a person until then,” what happens with a premature birth? Is that not a person?
This is two fallacies rolled into one.
First, if the pregnant woman decides, she may decide the fetus is a person at 4 weeks, or 12 weeks - whenever. A premature birth before 24 weeks will die anyway - and before 28 weeks will more often than not die. A premature baby who has any chance in the world of living has, almost certainly, already been decided to be a person by the woman. (The only exception would be a woman who wasn’t aware she was pregnant - which still occasionally happens., but not often enough to make it a rule.)
Second, when I say that a fetus becomes a person at birth, I mean at birth. Not at “nine months”. A woman who gives birth prematurely after 32 weeks is having a baby two months early, that’s all.
The dividing line is only a legal one.
No. Birth is a real dividing line. A real, actual, solid difference between a fetus that is dependent moment by moment on the woman’s body for oxygen and nourishment, and a baby that can breathe and live and feed. Try to claim otherwise? You fly in the face of biological reality.
If dependence is the criteria, remember that the baby is dependent on people outside the womb. It can’t survive without people caring for it; the dependence has just taken a different form.
An extremely different form. Otherwise infant adoption, which you were advocating upthread, wouldn’t be possible. You can’t “adopt” a fetus out of the uterus: you can adopt a baby.
SixtiesLiberal: Rob, I have been ripped on this board too for not being sufficiently in step, specifically for arguing that not all anti-choicers are evil monsters.
Yes, forcing a woman through pregnancy and childbirth against her will makes someone an evil monster. *sigh* Your belief contrariwise that forcing women isn’t evil or monstrous doesn’t make it so.
By the way, something Rob claimed upthread that bothered me at the time: “By “self-awareness” I mean that they react to their surroundings (i.e., they express displeasure if you circumsize them), can feel emotions, etc.” - who has ever tried to circumsize a fetus? Why would anyone want to? What is Rob talking about?
I thought this was a “both / and” blog?
I want to second Amanda’s outrage that this thread was derailed into a discussion of how dangerous pregnancy is. Who cares? There is NO health risk in my sticking my finger up the anus of a man, yet most men assert the right to decide who and when this is done to them. Do you believe women should control their bodies like men do or not?
Having said that, I’d like to point out that abortion is ALWAYS, at EVERY stage of pregnancy, safer than childbirth, and that the DESIRED outcome of every wanted pregnancy is increasing discomfort, inability to sleep, eat, or hold your urine for nine months, followed by a knife to the perineum.
Sorry for going OT, but there is breaking news. Henry Hyde is dead!
Exactly. Whether an anti-choicer’s motives are pure or evil is irrelevant. The anti-choicer with “pure” motives is still stupid. She is unable to follow her stance to it’s logical conclusion(s). In her quest to “save babies” she advocates for policies that do not accomplish that. I am not going to go easier on someone who supports stupid, illogical, harmful policies just because she does so out of stupidity rather than malice.
I agree with SarahMC in that when the point becomes “I am going to lobby and work and vote to take away your reproductive rights” the line is crossed and I’m not interested in mollycoddling and making nice.
I have still had a lot of success in raising the consciousness of (men) who have decided to take up the subject of abortion with me when they have squishy-washy thoughts about saving babies but haven’t really made overturning Roe their top priority. Not to take sides but a lot of them really are just ignant and need the realities of pregnancy and bodily autonomy explained to them.
You can’t save people from themselves, but sometimes there is a cure for the stupid. Not so much for the evil.
bmc90: Make no mistake, as soon as Roe goes, there are plenty of states that will adopt criminal sanctions. You will even see people prosecuted for driving people across state lines for legal abortions.
Add to that that every women of fertile age who is traveling home to a no-abortion state from a legal-abortion one can be taken in for a mandatory examination to determine if she had had an abortion recently.
Yes, there have been such cases at such borders.
Ireland, for example
Yes, and the consequences down the line of banning abortion need to be explained to them, such as the travel restrictions and Mann Act prosecutions. If Roe is overturned we will need the votes of those who can be educated and persuaded. For the ones you persuaded, MP, I don’t suppose you started your discussions with them by calling them evil liars.
I feel like there is a pretty clear difference in my mind between the everyday pro-lifer, who hasn’t really thought about it, but is taken in by “save the babiez” rhetoric, and those who create the rhetoric and/or act on the rhetoric in a manner that extends beyond voting. For the first group, I’m thinking especially those who receive this rhetoric direct from a group or authority that they respect, like church, family, etc. This group reminds me the most of Sara Robinson’s work at Orcinus, in terms of them being the ones that can be reached out to.
At the center of the “pro-life movement” (or pro-birth movement as someone said up-thread) are the anti-choicers. I doubt that this group can be reached. These are the ones for which the strongest language about standing firm is necessary. These are the ones who do everything in their power to keep Planned Parenthood facilities from opening, or make it a requirement that ob/gyn’s that perform abortions have to live under siege.
The first group will follow the second into hell, perhaps, but it will be out of stupidity (not that they aren’t necessarily intelligent people, but they aren’t applying their intelligence to this, in the same way I am stupid about a great deal of financial things simply because I don’t take the time to try and understand them). As to the second group being evil or stupid…I would say the truly committed ones are evil.
I have just about had it with this talk of evil and motivation.
Why does it matter when the results are the same?
And I’m far from convinced that the so-called stupid ones, if acting out of religious belief, are any more likely to be convinced of the wrongness of what they do since it means questioning their faith. I don’t think that’s likely. I know that there are people who post here who have made the long transition from religious, even fundamental religious backgrounds. but really are they in any way a majority?
Sixties said:
For the ones you persuaded, MP, I don’t suppose you started your discussions with them by calling them evil liars.
Did you even bother to read what she wrote?
from the office,
I was thinking specifically about the series of posts at Orcinus called “Cracks In the Wall.” It’s a three-parter, this is the second part where Sara Robinson talks about the ways in which fundies leave their authority-based worlds: http://dneiwert.blogspot.com/2006/08/cracks-in-wall-part-ii-listening-to.html
I have a lot of respect for Mrs Robinson and Orcinus. They do great work.
But you’ll note that the way that fundamentalists leave the authoritarian world-view is not based on what we think or say about them.
Which is why this maundering about motives is useless and satisfying only to those making the distinctions.
Well, I’m not sure why that would bother you, but here’s the explanation.
Nobody ever tries to circumsize a fetus, obviously. I was taking an example of a baby reacting to its surroundings, to having part of its body cut off, and reaction emotionally by crying. So I was just using it as an example of what I had been mistakenly calling “self-awareness”, at a time when I was asking when “self-awareness” began.
That’s all.
OK. Thanks for responding. You seemed to be trying to argue that we know a fetus is “self-aware” because of how it responds to circumcizion, and the more I thought about this the madder it seemed, unless you were trying to equate fetus with baby.
from the office,
I think the distinction between the different groups *is* important. We live in a democracy, which means that in order to create a truly pro-choice society we need to convince people who are currently uninterested and even hostile to the idea that it is in their best interest. That’s all that I was thinking–just that its good to have some idea of who isn’t going to listen no matter what, and who will.
Autrobean, I am tempted to snark back, did you even bother to read all the posts in this string?
That question was rhetorical for the folks on the board who have crossed swords with me over whether anti-choices or pro-lifers are all evil liars. I have argued that it is a tactical, and often an actual, mistake to label those folks that way, even though the logical consequences of their position is bad for women. Undoubtedly MP was successful in her efforts to persuade because she was able to engage them without being overtly hostile. I give her credit for it.
Wrong. Even an infant, already born, is not self-aware.