No FRT today, because I have to fly out this afternoon, and I want to get my post up about Nancy Keenan’s speech at UT last night to commemorate the 35th anniversary of Roe v Wade early for Feminism Friday. Don’t worry; I still intend to Blog For Choice Tuesday—I have a post in my head touching on groups that inadvertently claim that black women are committing genocide against themselves and on Feminists For Life writing Amnesty International to protest women who somehow appear to be raping themselves for that—but I want to talk about Keenan’s speech while it’s still fresh in my head. I was even more firmly decided last night that the soundbite culture has to go (and blogs, with our abilities to speak in entire paragraphs, can help fight it). I had always heard soundbites that Keenan was walking around talking about the “moral complexity” of abortion, and it got my back up against the wall, because I heard that to mean “the people who think abortion is killing have a point”, and I don’t actually think this is an issue that’s painted in shade of gray. “Shades of gray” only comes into the equation for me when actual, feeling beings are killed or forced to suffer for reasons that are understandable,* but as fetuses are unfeeling balls of flesh that have brain activity far below the sort of animals we thoughtlessly kill in animal shelters and farms every day, I find there to be no complexity. In a battle between what is still technically a feeling-free parasite on a woman’s body and a living, breathing, feeling woman, the latter wins hands down, and there’s no complexity or shades of gray there.**
But when I listened to Keenan elaborate on “moral complexity”, I realized she wasn’t conceding that anti-choicers had a point. She was saying more that the people in the mushy middle feel like they’re in a moral quandary about abortion, because it’s all mixed up with various other issues about sex, commitment, self-image, family, ickiness, and other touchy subjects and thus most people refuse to really think the issue through and come to the correct conclusion: Anything so complex and personal should be a matter of personal conscience. The term “moral complexity” is a way of saying to those people, “Yes, we’re aware that all these buttons are pushed for you, but you should really talk and think this through anyway, and ask, should the government really be making the decision to force you to have a child?” In fact, she went on to talk about faith and god, which is again something that often makes me get my back up in soundbite terms, but in a full-length speech it was clear she was arguing that abortion is best framed as a 1st amendment issue in the face of Bible-thumpers who want to put their god on your body.
I think, on the religious freedom point, she has a great point. The problem with Roe is that it was decided in a way that made a rough sense at the time—it wasn’t really that much of a religious issue in the popular imagination until after the decision, when it was picked up by the newly minted religious right who was seeking issues to add to their pro-segregation efforts. Catholics were officially anti-birth control, sure, but they were also against meat on Fridays and that wasn’t considered eligible for government mandate. I’m oversimplifying the religious issue for sake of brevity, but the idea that god was automatically anti-choice was far from settled in the popular imagination. Considering that abortion came on the heels of SCOTUS decisions overturning bans on pre-conception birth control, it’s obvious that it was truly not about this issue of “life”, but about getting the state out of the business of enforcing patriarchal dictates on women.
I honestly think the issue has become more religious over time, because hiding behind religion is the only way that anti-choice arguments have any traction, now that mandating the patriarchy is off the table as the official reason to ban abortion. A fetus doesn’t have a functioning brain, but you can always say that it has a soul and get the troops whipped up. When people say the debate is over when “life” begins, they’re really talking about, for all intents and purposes, when a soul enters the body. “When life begins” is about wrapping theological questions into secular-sounding language to smuggle theocracy in, like the term “intelligent design”.
Keenan argued that pro-choicers should talk about moral complexity to get our foot in the door with the mushy middle, and then argue that because it’s complex, freedom of conscience and religion applies. I like that argument, but think we should take it a step further and invoke freedom of religion at every turn. And not just on abortion, either, but on the entire litany of sex controversies. Abstinence-only education is religious indoctrination, and students have a right to their 1st amendment protections like everyone else, for instance. What’s nice about Mike Huckabee running is that he doesn’t bullshit on this—in order for the religious right to get their way on all these various issues, we need to dump our secular government and become a theocracy like Iran. By the logic of secular government and religious freedom, you can’t make an honest argument against the rights of women or even men (like gay men or straight men who are down with women’s equality) who don’t conform, and his admission that he wants to create a theocracy is tipping his hat to this fact.
*Examples of shades of gray: Morally defensible wars (such as those against genocide), meat-eating, the drug war (which does admittedly have a moral defense in that addiction is so destructive), animal testing, killing in self-defense, etc.
**Later term abortions are a fraction of abortions, and of those, there’s a fraction that are in the gray zone of fetal development where it might feel pain. These are undoubtably uncomfortable, but since most occur when the fetus is already dead or in literal self-defense of the woman, I still feel that there’s no reason for these abortions to be controversial. They are only controversial because anti-choicers who agitate against them lie to people by not telling them the very understandable reasons these are performed. What’s not morally gray? Lying to people to cause unnecessary suffering to others. That’s always wrong.
96 Responses to “Abortion is a 1st amendment issue”
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Your reading of Keenan is quite insightful Amanda. Thank you.
I know you’re not trying to establish yours as the only respectable perspective on the rights of mother vs. fetus, so let me throw out a different point of view. I’ve always thought that a fetus is, for all intents and purposes, a human life.
No one’s life exists in a vacuum, however, and so for me the question becomes one of weighing the rights of the woman against the rights of the fetus. On that score I come down firmly on the side of the former, and so am firmly pro-choice.
One observation: I think fundamentalists have been given a free ride on the abortion, because a literal reading of the Bible indicates unambiguously that a fetus is NOT a human life entitled to all the rights of fully-formed, breathing, birthed individual.
Caveat: I’ve previously identified myself in this forum as a Christian, but I am NOT a fundamentalist. Fundamentalism, in my not so humble opinion, is demonstrably wrong. Just plain dumb in fact.
Well, the idea that a fetus is a “human life”, aka a person, is a religious belief. It’s not really a matter of public debate that touches on the legality of the issue. You can believe a fetus is a baby and that wafer is Jesus and whatever you like. That’s why I’m arguing this is a 1st amendment issue. The secular government only recognizes breathing, born people as persons, which is the most realistic view to take if you’re trying to establish the rights of actual human women. If you feel uncomfortable having an abortion or skipping church, you are free to live by your own rules.
Ummeli - I hope that most pro-choicers won’t quibble about the fact that a fetus is alive, and is in fact some form of human life. I hope that the point that we want to make is that this isn’t really relevant. Grass is alive, but we don’t hesitate to mow. Mosquitoes are alive, but we don’t worry about squishing them. And, of course, mammals are alive, and some of us will happily kill and eat them while others of us are more hesitant. My point isn’t to equate a fetus to anything of these things, but to suggest that the ‘life’ part of it is only marginally relevant to the discussion, and I think that Amanda is right on the money when she says that the “life begins at conception,” argument is code for a theological position.
“…fetuses are unfeeling balls of flesh that have brain activity far below the sort of animals we thoughtlessly kill in animal shelters and farms every day…”
Yikes, this kind of talk is why Amanda could not be allowed to work on JE’s staff. Whether you think this is true or not, you can’t have your staffers talk like this while you’re running for president.
On-topic. A very interesting argument from the First Amendment, and surely a better one than contained in Roe v. Wade, which is a transparent bunch of nonsense.
I would say that a fetus is “human life”, in that it is alive and it is part of a human (the woman), but it is not “a human life”, meaning a separate whole human being (with rights). My cancer tumors were as much of separate human being as a fetus is.
This whole “life begins at conception” theme is B.S. because there is no real beginning of life. The sperm was alive and the egg was alive and they merged. If you want to get literal about it, life began millions of years ago in a swamp and has been passed along ever since. Indeed, they are talking about a soul, not life.
I think it’s dangerous to bring the moral status of the fetus up in this debate at all. It’s taking on a burden of proof that we shouldn’t have to take on. We don’t need to prove to anyone that there’s no “moral complexity,” only that the state has no right to make that determination.
I also don’t agree that most women who have moral problems with abortion feel as they do “because it’s all mixed up with various other issues about sex, commitment, self-image, family, ickiness.” That seems pretty condescending. Most Americans actually do believe that there’s a soul that enters the body at some point. We don’t need to convince them otherwise, only convince them that it is, as Amanda says in her comment, “not really a matter of public debate that touches on the legality of the issue.”
By the way, this is sort of neither here nor there, but it’s worth noting that while many vegetarians believe that eating animals is wrong, it’s very rare to meet one who thinks it should be illegal.
Even if a fetus IS a “person” (as opposed to mere “human life”), no born person has a right to another person’s body.
So neither should a fetus.
I think that most people think not only about the status of the fetus at the time of the abortion, but the fact that the fetus is *potential* conscious life that would become fully “human” (ie sensing, feeling, thinking) if the status quo continued. You can’t really argue that the fact that the fetus is unconscious is your trump card to show there’s no moral complexity in the choice — you wouldn’t say that a person in a coma has no rights, would you?
Abortion is morally complex in and of itself, because it balances the interests of current consciousness (the mother) versus potential consciousness (the fetus). You obviously know where you stand in the balance, but just because it’s no contest for you doesn’t mean there’s no moral complexity.
Abortion is morally complex in and of itself, because it balances the interests of current consciousness (the mother) versus potential consciousness (the fetus). You obviously know where you stand in the balance, but just because it’s no contest for you doesn’t mean there’s no moral complexity.
The thing is, a person in a coma had, at some point in the past, a will to live, and probably plans and desires for the future, and likely in some sense still exists as that same person (as you still exist when you are asleep). A fetus has not developed any such person-hood.
I think it’s dangerous to bring the moral status of the fetus up in this debate at all. It’s taking on a burden of proof that we shouldn’t have to take on.
Well, ignoring it is not the best way to get the message across. The best way is to say that it’s a matter of religious belief and conscience, and therefore protected. We can’t deny that a lot of people are swayed by anti-choice arguments because anti-choicers—while lying misogynists—at least pretend to take one’s sentimental feelings about sex and family seriously. We actually do take people’s lives seriously. We have the moral high ground—refusing to talk about morality lets them have it.
We are the moral side. Don’t be ashamed to say it.
A person in a coma is not a potential person. The feelings of potential people feel could be extrapolated to say that if they aren’t fucking right this minute and making a baby, they are depriving a potential person of life. If they are currently pregnant, they are depriving the other babies they could be making right now of life. Abstinence is abortion, birth control is abortion, menopause is abortion, miscarriage is abortion, having a headache is abortion, etc. Someone has a right to their very arbitrary decisions about what potential counts and what doesn’t, but again, it’s clearly personal. To mandate all-potential-should-be-realized is to require 24 hour fucking and penance for women who are pregnant for the lives they aren’t currently making.
Citation, please? I’d love to have that in my back pocket.
I think the Huckabee candidacy is great, largely for the reasons Amanda mentioned. By speaking in Fundy instead of Pander he removes all ambiguity from those who choose to support him. The Republican primaries have turned into a census through which we are going to be able to see just what proportion of them really are reactionary, bible beating cranks who only attach the “R” to their name for the common social oppression related goals.
I believe his latest gaffes have been massively underreported, but they’ll prove to be good fodder in a general election should he beat out Panderbot and the Senator with nowhere left to go after Arizona.
And “Libertarian,” you do grasp the concept of personal views vs. policy, right? Personal blogs vs. campaign collateral? As long as JE doesn’t nominate Amanda for a DoHHS or really any sort of policy driving cabinet position what she says on her personal blog is irrelevant. If she were to market these beliefs at a campaign stop or in a press release while not explicitly stating that the views she is sharing are her own and not the candidate’s then there could be an issue, but Amanda is good enough to be able to separate her views from the policy directives it would have been her job to disseminate.
I personally believe keeping such “controversial” figures attached to his campaign would have done much for helping the masses to understand just such types of nuance. To perhaps grasp the relationship between pragmatism and idealism. To help people understand that a president, a blogger, or even a supporter can differ on ideology, but when you are the president of an entire country, or the blogger for a campaign not your own, your job is bigger than your views on any single issue.
Except that this was the reasoning behind Kennedy’s partial birth abortion opinion. Those emotional women! They don’t know what they’re doing!
We don’t really get a choice on whether it is brought up or not. That’s the frame of the anti-choice argument. Addressing it always going to be productive, but ignoring it will be less so.
If belief in a soul was the only hang up, this wouldn’t be an issue. The protesters would be outside fertility clinics. Contraception wouldn’t be objected to. The supposed failures and weaknesses of women wouldn’t be standard in the rhetoric. Bloody pictures wouldn’t be up on billboards and placards.
Addressing it ^isn’t^ always…
I think that most people think not only about the status of the fetus at the time of the abortion, but the fact that the fetus is *potential* conscious life that would become fully “human” (ie sensing, feeling, thinking) if the status quo continued.
I hear this a lot. But it’s more an emotional issue than a moral one. I think in America we tend to treat the two as the same. Morals are basically principles of right and wrong. If you say that it’s wrong to terminate a potential life, then how far back do you go? The people I’ve heard this argument from don’t argue from a moralistic standpoint (except for those who are very dogmatic about it, like very strict Catholics). It’s always seems that they’re so sad about how this little embryo won’t grow up and be a person and experience xyz. That’s sentiment, not morality.
And Amanda said the rest better than I can.
I swear I fixed that italics tag three times! Only the first paragraph should have been italics. Sorry.
How is it condescending to suggest that women might be responding to an array of social and personal pressures? Seems to me that religion is mixed in with all of those topics anyway.
but think we should take it a step further and invoke freedom of religion at every turn. And not just on abortion, either, but on the entire litany of sex controversies. Abstinence-only education is religious indoctrination, and students have a right to their 1st amendment protections like everyone else
Thank you! Dude, I’ve been saying this for years, regarding abstinence-only ed, “intelligent design” and school prayer. I’m really confused as to why there isn’t, like, this visible, vocal, angry organization of folks belonging to minority religions plus atheists and agnostics, screaming against this stuff and calling it what it is: that these programs are about taking away students’ freedom of religion (and freedom to not be religious).
Going on a slight tangent, but: I almost feel like scientists are missing the point when they go, “But it’s not SCIENCE!” in response to fundies putting creationist crap in schools. Of course it’s not science. I’m confused as to why there isn’t more of an effort fighting them where they live: religion. (Maybe there is an effort and I just missed it?) Fundies whine all the time that their freedom of religion is being taken away because, gasp, they saw two guys holding hands. I would love to turn the tables on ‘em.
If belief in a soul was the only hang up, this wouldn’t be an issue.
True. I don’t think it’s the only hang-up, but I suspect it’s one of them for a lot of people.
In response to the commenters above, I partly retract my first comment. When the “pro-life” side claims that abortion=murder, that claim obviously does need to be refuted. We have to convince people that it isn’t black-and-white the way they see it. But, we don’t need to convince anyone that it’s black-and-white the way we see it.
Wemblee, see Monster, Flying Spaghetti.
“Citation, please? I’d love to have that in my back pocket.”
There’s two bits, as far as I recall. The first is in Leviticus somewhere. If you injure a pregnant woman while she’s trying to break up a fight and cause her to miscarry, it’s a fine paid to her husband. The penalties for manslaughter of born people are much, much harsher. The other one is in the first five books somewhere. If a woman’s husband accuses her of being pregnant through adultery, she basically has to go through a trial by ordeal where the priests give her an herbal tea. If it causes an abortion, she’s guilty. If it doesn’t, her husband has to shut up about it.
How is it condescending to suggest that women might be responding to an array of social and personal pressures?
It’s not, necessarily. After all we are all influenced by social pressures. What I think is condescending is to suggest that they ONLY respond to these social and personal pressures, i.e., don’t have any independent agency in forming an opinion. (Of course, as you rightly point out, religious belief is often to some extent itself a response to social pressures. But I still have to think that all people have SOME genuine agency in arriving at their beliefs.)
Oh, then people start screaming about how it’s “freedom OF religion, not freedom FROM religion”
(more reasons to hate soundbite-driven media)
Arrrrrg, FashionablyEvil, I HATE that particular soundbite. Freedom OF religion IS freedom from religion. It’s freedom from other people’s religions! What are people even trying to say with that line? That freedom of religion means THEY have the “freedom” to have the govt. indoctrinate people into THEIR religion?
What?
SarahMC, I have no idea. As I was typing, I thought, what does this even MEAN? I think it most often comes up with regards to the “War on Christmas”–basically, “It’s not my problem if you don’t like it when I practice my religion (ie, put up Christmas trees or say “Merry Christmas” in public.)”
Definitely seems to be heading in the “I should have the right to indoctrinate others!” direction, though
Amanda, thanks for all the F-Bombs, your’re a real intellectual woman.
Question, so when does a fetus become a baby? only after it is born? So is it ok to kill a 8-9 month fetus?
If you think that is ok then your morals are even more screwed up than I ever thought!
In response to the commenters above, I partly retract my first comment. When the “pro-life” side claims that abortion=murder, that claim obviously does need to be refuted. We have to convince people that it isn’t black-and-white the way they see it. But, we don’t need to convince anyone that it’s black-and-white the way we see it. - Brendon
This is where I feel pro-choice advocates are lacking. What seems necessary to me is a logical, unemotional, breakdown of why abortion murder. Just a series of logical propositions that show where the “assumptions” or “truisms” are in the pro-choice argument. This way people can decide for themselves whether or not they agree with said assumptions and truisms.
Plus, feminists keep showing how people are “dumb-founded” when they’re asked “well, what then should be the punishment for abortion if you want it to be illegal”. I don’t think they are dumb-founded though, I think it’s a deliberate strategy to avoid having their answers put into print so they cannot be quoted on them. The question needs to be asked of major candidates to put the absurdity of the answer “let’s throw them all in jail like murderers are since that’s what I equate it to”. Maybe then the public would understand, especially those on the fence.
Not just atheists, agnostics, and minority religions. I am a big ole Catholic and ab-only, anti-choice policy, and creationism in the schools is abhorrent to me.
Cookie, how’s this for an f-bomb? Fuck off!
Cookie, thanks for the poor grammar and spelling, your’re a real intellectual woman.
Abortion of viable 8-9 month fetuses doesn’t happen. You’re setting up a straw argument. Since the issue of late-term abortion is addressed in the original post, it’s clear you’re only here to troll.
people like cookie confuse me, and not just because i’m not fluent in stupidity.
so amanda’s morals are more screwed up than you thought? …… okay? then what? give me a situation, no matter how implausible, that her “screwed up morals” affect you, cookie.
I think our visitor Cookie proves that even having these complex discussions about abortion is useless, as anti-choicers do not get it. They don’t *understand* the human vs. person distinction. They don’t *understand* what bodily sovereignty means. They don’t *understand* what makes a fetus that’s physically attached to a living woman different from a baby who could be cared for by anyone. Here we are, using our brains to come up with reasoned, intellectual, even constitutional reasons for the legality of abortion, and they prove time and time again they don’t FUCKING (F-bomb!) get ANY of it.
It all comes back to “Can I kill a baby a minute after birth?”
Question, so when does a fetus become a baby? only after it is born? So is it ok to kill a 8-9 month fetus?
OK, so did you honestly miss the whole point of the post or are you just trolling?
When a fetus becomes a “person” is a “morally complex” question: it depends on your religion, philosophy, past experience, current situtation, etc. The whole point is that the state cannot legislate that “personhood” without infringing on personal religious freedom.
If you think that is ok then your morals are even more screwed up than I ever thought!
But what if the 8 month fetus has its brain developing outside the skull or has severe encephalytis and cannot possibly survive once it is born? And what if the continued development of the fetus will kill the mother? Is is OK to kill the fetus then? If not, why not?
Or what if the mother has a catostrophic illness and the treatment for it will kill the fetus? Is it OK to treat the mother’s life-threatening illness? And more to the point, what family would ever want the government interfering in such a painful, personal desicion?
That right there is the entire point. These kinds of decisions are PERSONAL. They are based on PERSONAL CIRCUMSTANCES and PERSONAL BELIEFS. The government should stay the hell out of them.
How screwed up are my morals?
Here’s another one: FUCK OFF, COOKIE
Besides, your stupid is showing. Again.
i agree, sarah. when it comes to either anti-choicers, you are either evil - in that you don’t care that women get hurt and you are intentionally upholding the patriarchy or you are flat out stupid and incapable of any higher thought process that goes beyond “blood is icky! lots of blood is bad!”
and i love how some people think that if you’re smart you can’t possibly have any room in your head left over for naughty words.
it must be some sort of automatic assumption that everyone understands that “only low-class people use bad words, and low-class people can’t be smart, ergo saying fuck invalidates everything else you said”.
or is it maybe “you can’t take seriously a woman who doesn’t prioritize being polite when she speaks”? hm.
or is it maybe “you can’t take seriously a woman who doesn’t prioritize being polite when she speaks”?
Yes. This.
Jessica Valenti gets the same horrified reaction from trolls on her site. “Tsk tsk, you’re so pretty but your mouth is filthy!”
Swedgin
I think you overestimate “the public.”
Please stop feeing the trolls.
I use the dreaded “freedom from religion” soundbite to remind people that some of us are not religious and don’t want any brand of it being shoved down our throats whenever the word “morals” comes out.
roula:
It’s just an ad personam argument. But that’s all they’ve got, isn’t it? Cookie and her ilk can’t argue with what Amanda has said on its merits, so they have to argue irrelevancies like “ZOMG BAD WORDS!!!”.
That, too. It’s amazing how much petty misogyny is wrapped up in even the most casual of wingnut utterances.
Except that this was the reasoning behind Kennedy’s partial birth abortion opinion. Those emotional women! They don’t know what they’re doing!
Point taken. I guess my larger point is that while it’s obviously about making the patriarchy law again, they have to be disingenuous about it, because they don’t have majority support. Thus the religious talk, because that makes it easier to get sympathy and take the moral high ground you don’t deserve, because you’re scum who wishes to oppress women.
Also, I do believe that Miss Manners cautions against scolding people about their manners. Ergo, cookie’s concerns about politeness are what we in the business call hypocritical bullshit.
SarahMC:
Of course, there are plenty of anti-choicers who don’t, or won’t get it. But it seems plausible that there are plenty of anti-choice fellow travelers who can be reached. Polls in the US show a tiny minority of true-hate types who believe in no abortions anytime, anywhere, but a lot of fuzzy types who think that abortions they think are OK (rape, incest, genetic conditions, danger to the life of the pregnant woman, danger to the health and welfare of existing children and on up the slippery slope) should be allowed. They usually show up on in the numbers as the ones saying that current restrictions on abortion should be tightened.
If we can reach some of those people (especially if we can convince them that the true-hate types are their enemies rather than their friends), the political and economic situation for abortion will be much better. And that probably does require acknowledging that for many people abortion does have moral complexities. The debate shouldn’t be about whether abortion is a morally complex issue, it should be about how that perceived moral complexity gets enshrined in law. Frankly, I think there’s a lot more justification for stoning adulterers…
On a tangential bent from ‘pro-life’: I came across this article about the catholic ‘church’ terrorizing Eskimos.
Nice…
I wonder if the church is pro-life to be able to inflict their disease on the most amount of people…
The ability to feel pain is the standard for human sentience now?
Cool. I’ll be over at the leper colony for some target practice.
Libertarian - I may overestimate the public. I am a bit of an optimist. However, from what I understand cable news ratings are up tremendously over the last few months, and many attribute this to the writers strike.
People are becoming more engaged in the political process, and things like Rudy’s failures and the Huckster’s abysmal showings in non-evangelical strongholds lead me to believe there is hope for the public. I actually think we may owe Rudy some gratitude, his having desensitized even the right from fear mongering to a large degree.
People tend to care more about their government when their government doesn’t serve them well, when people aren’t happy. Don’t underestimate the public’s outrage over only getting 8 episodes of Lost this year.
I guess my point is that it is hard to explain nuance in a 30 second attack ad, but without other alternatives people are tuning in. Blend that with genuine angst over every policy decision made in the last 7 years, add an inspirational candidate or two and maybe, just perhaps, the public can grasp the difference between your job and your politics if you don’t have to yell to explain it. Add to that the fact that people can’t deconstruct last night’s episode of “Earl” at work and you get more people having more complex discussions about things like fundamentalism, torture, health care, race, gender, abortion…it’s heartening, even in this deep, dark red state. You’ve got more than 10 seconds to make your case because there are less distractions right now.
This election, given everything that has happened in the last 8 years, is bringing a lot of people who otherwise wouldn’t care to the table. I believe that this distended primary season has also provided tremendous opportunities to have nuanced, emotionally complex discussions. The public understands the significance of this upcoming election, and I think people are really taking a look at what they want being “American” to mean.
Please, just one scoop of troll kibble? Pretty please?
***
“Question, so when does a fetus become a baby? only after it is born? So is it ok to kill a 8-9 month fetus?
If you think that is ok then your morals are even more screwed up than I ever thought!”
cookie, here’s the deal: You make asinine and fascist comments regarding cop-related threads, okay? Philosophy, ethics, logic, science, and other deep topics are for the rest of us.
Besides, cookie, isn’t your Taser all revved up and rarin’ to go? Aren’t their some (brown-skin covered) heads that need a good beating? Isn’t there some place where a fine “Peace” Officer such as yourself can limit or eliminate somebody’s civil rights? Well get moving!
Those suspects/perps/scumbags/citizens won’t just brutalize themselves you know…
Not to feed the troll, but the appropriate term is Hansen’s disease. Calling someone a leper is akin to using the term “mongoloid” to describe someone with Down’s syndrome (i.e., rude and pejorative).
(Things you learn on NPR.)
/threadjack
Many things in these comments just serve to emphasize Amanda’s point, that this is a first amendment issue, that declaring when life begins - life meaning personhood or ensoulment - is fundamentally a question of faith.
There is no way to make an objective determination prior to baby emerging from womb able to survive without the mother. There’s a lot of time and development that goes on between sperm meets egg and birth, and people of good conscience have vastly different opinions on whether those states of fetushood constitute personhood. Attempts to legislate declarations that life and rights begin at conception are attempts to legislate one particular religious viewpoint, and that is a direct violation of the first amendment.
Anytime we fall prey to arguments about the rights of a fetus vs. the rights of a woman, we’ve already lost ground because we’ve accepted the anti-choice side’s assumptions. The issue is more fundamental than that.
I realize that fetushood is not a word, but it should be.
Amanda,
I’ve considered a fetus to be a human life since long before I started calling myself a Christian. I come to my pro-choice position not by religion but through a comparative rights analysis, mostly.
I agree whole-heartedly with your ultimate point, that one is free to live by one’s own rules.
Swedgin,
Sorry, I knew I should have provided the Bible citations, but I’m at work now and don’t have them committed to memory. Preying Mantis is right, one is in Leviticus, the other is somewhere in the Pentateuch.
The story of the Valley of the Dry Bones in Ezekiel 37 is also useful. Ezekiel has a vision is which he see a bunch of bones (guess where). They begin to wriggle together into skeletons, ligaments and cartilage form around the bones, followed by muscle and finally skin. They were not alive, however, until God blew air (or spirit) into their lungs and they began to breathe.
If you look at the creation story in Genesis, Eve, too, is not alive until she begins breathing, even though her body is formed.
I forget the Hebrew word for spirit, but it is word used for the “air” that God blows into the lungs in Ezekiel and Genesis, and also for the “spirit” that resides in the blood. That is why Jehovah’s Witnesses won’t give blood - because they believe it’d be like giving your spirit away. (I believe it’s also the reason why kosher food must have all blood removed - although I’m not sure about that).
Since the Bible says a body must have spirit to be alive, and the spirit resides in the breath and blood, that means there are two necessary preconditions for life: (1) respiration and (2) circulation.
Circulation is present in a fetus fairly soon after conception (a few weeks?), but respiration doesn’t begin until after the baby is out of the birth canal.
So… a fundamentalist reading of the Bible in which the book is taken as being true word-for-word, leads you inevitably to the conclusion that a fetus is not a human life on an equal footing with the mother or anybody else until it is born and begins breathing.
Read the Ezekiel story. In my experience it’s a tough one for fundies to deal with.
Not being as coherent as I’d like to be. Trying to write this while answering the phone etc.
Please remember, I am not actually a fundamentalist myself. I just spend a lot of time around them (against my will).
Oops. Didn’t see Phoebe’s post before I posted the previous.
I’m going to respectfully disagree that we lose ground by talking about fetal rights vs. mother’s rights because we accept the other side’s assumptions. I think a comparison of their rights can only yield a pro-choice result, UNLESS you factor religion into it and elevate the fetus to some sacrosanct status. But then you’ve fundamentally changed the nature of the discussion by bring your personal religious beliefs into it.
Anti-choicers generally don’t treat the mother like she has any rights at all.
To those who are thinking of giving up on these discussions because anti-choicers Just Don’t Get It:
Please, please don’t stop talking about the moral issues, the emotional issues, the legal issues, and every other aspect of this subject. I’m anonymous for this comment because I’m a constant (obsessive) reader and occasional poster to this site, and I’m not quite ready to out myself as…
a former “pro-lifer.”
I really swallowed the garbage about “pro-life” being about the babies. I still think abortion needs to be entered into with absolute deliberation. I still think it’s tragic that potential lives are lost. But. I understand now that it’s even more tragic to take the responsibility and the right away from the woman it’s happening to.
Discussions like this one, from intelligent, patient people like yourselves, have helped me to see that all that crap about respecting life ends at the uterus. It’s been painful and slow for me to realize that “pro-lifers” are not pro-life–they’re just anti-woman.
I get it now. Thank you.
Anyone *cough* Chico *cough* who thinks that people with Hansen’s Disease don’t have a functioning brain, don’t suffer mental anguish (regardless of the state of their pain nerves), and don’t have an opinion about their own disposition is welcome to come over here for their well deserved slapping.
Cookie’s hysterical. Here he’s trying to stick up for the unborn, when in a previous post’s thread he’s all about defending cops who taser pregnant women.
Hmm.
“Cookie’s hysterical.”
Maybe he’s a freelance troll now…?
As a dedicated pro-choicer, I’m not so happy with all the rhetoric of personal choice on this thread. It just doesn’t address people’s concerns about abortion.
Let’s say I believe that a fetus is a person. You telling me that I am entitled to my belief but you disagree and so you are entitled to have an abortion isn’t going to cut it for me. I will see it as murder and your argument will be just as convincing as if you told me Jews weren’t people, but I didn’t have to kill them if I don’t want to.
The moral stakes here are high, too high for personal choice to solve them. There needs to be some positive assertion of the fetus’ moral status, not the relativism of letting everyone pick for themselves.
As an aside, eating meat is greyer than abortion? Really? The question of abortion is what makes a human human and when and how does that happen. That is as complex a question as I can imagine.
“should the government really be making the decision to force you to have a child?”
This argument makes no sense.
Unless the government has forced you to get pregnant, it isn’t forcing you to have a baby.
“Choice” includes the decision to have sex in the first place.
“Unless the government has forced you to get pregnant, it isn’t forcing you to have a baby.
“Choice” includes the decision to have sex in the first place.”
I can’t speak for anyone else here, but that’s the very first time I’ve ever heard that argument.
Well, let me be clear. It’s the first time I’ve heard it within the last hour or so…
Doesn’t surprise me a bit.
After all, it’s just common sense…
“After all, it’s just common sense…”
…and you know what they say about common sense…
“Choice” includes the decision to have sex in the first place.
Yes, it does. It’s everyone’s choice as to whether they will have sex and with whom they will do so. It is also a woman’s choice to decide what is done with her body.
Ah, but you don’t like that second choice, so you want to make sure women don’t get to make it.
Can’t say that I do. But I do know that you can’t claim the government is forcing you to have a child if it didn’t force you to get pregnant in the first place.
It’s not what you know that hurts you, it’s what you think you know that isn’t true that hurts you.
Your grasp of logic…is not very good.
That last comment was in response to Mike’s post. As far as I’m concerned, abortion is perfectly legal. I just don’t follow the logic of the argument that the government is somehow forcing anyone to have a baby.
gwanggung-
Please point out the logical fallacy then.
“Please point out the logical fallacy then.”
The “baby” is not there at conception. It takes nine months to be built by the woman’s body. Therefore, if abortion is illegal, the government is forcing women to build and bear babies against their will.
Kate-
Biologically, that makes no sense whatsoever.
The “baby” is created at the point of conception. It’s just at an earlier stage of its development.
Oswald: clearly you’ve never been pregnant to make an asinine statement like this:
Biologically speaking, it made of human DNA and in early development. Point me toward a baby born of a tumor.
Don’t be so silly. You’re the one who is trolling.
oswald,biologically speaking,an apple-seed carries all the DNA of the grown apple-tree.It is,according to your definition,an apple-tree in early development.Do you think I ate a forrest for breakfast this morning?
I find it interesting that opposition to Roe was far more “astroturf” than “grassroots.”
Anti-abortion activism started from the top down. The Catholic leadership was always opposed, but those in the pews paid little attention. Evangelicals didn’t care. However, thanks to a well organized, mostly political, effort by certain persons opposition to abortion has become almost a litmus test about whether or not one is a Christian.
I believe that baseball strike and the cancellation of the 1994 World Series played a major role in the Republican “revolution” that year. Instead of baseball, angry white males started listening to talk radio.
I actually think (nowadays) that it is morally very simple, at least for everyone who isn’t the pregnant woman:
The fetus, zygote, or whatever stage you like post-fertilization “becomes a person” when the pregnant woman decides to become a mother by deciding to carry it to term. In materialistic terms there is absolutely no sharp dividing line, no transition the fetus goes through after which we can reasonably agree “this is now a person” and before which we can agree “up to that point it wasn’t yet.” So the whole quest for that line is a snipe hunt. There isn’t one because pregnancy is a nine-month long process that must take place in the uterus of some woman or other.
But morally, and it ought to be legally, the matter is very simple for everyone else. She decides, end of question. And that is a sharp, clear line to base our legal procedures on.
If she decides that this is not a good time to be pregnant and have a baby, then she would rationally seek to end the pregnancy as soon as possible; every consideration points in that direction. Therefore if she decides otherwise, to have a baby, she thereby commits to making a baby, and it makes perfect sense for everyone else to accept what is developing in her womb as a person from that point on. It is only such women, (or perhaps the victims of coercion and/or manipulation, denied the opportunity to abort their pregnancies as they really intended) who might face the question of late-term abortion, and then only because either their babies (no quotes, scare or otherwise, needed, because that’s what they intended them to be) are doomed, or because they face severe consequences they were unaware of (mainly medical ones, in real life experience) when they made the decision. In either case, or in the case of women who intended abortion but could not get it earlier, I see no reason to arbitrarily forbid it.
Roe is actually a compromise already because it does allow the state to interfere with late-term decisions.
It’s only “complicated” when third parties pontificate about rules to be applied mindlessly to other peoples’ pregnancies without regard to their choices. Then there are all these conundrums, which can only be resolved radically–either by total respect of the individual woman’s right to choose, or by the absolutist claim that all fertilized human eggs are automatically and instantly human beings, in defiance of the necessity for their development and of the statistics that show that a very large percentage of them will not make it to term no matter how carefully the pregnancy is assisted. No set of cut-and-dried rules can possibly provide for all the complexities of human reproduction without imposing draconian burdens on women.
Which, I think, is the real goal of all these agonized anti-choicers, whether they understand this clearly or not.
The woman, of course, often does have to perform a Solomonic feat of judgment for her own case. This sucks, but it is inherent in human reproduction. It behooves the rest of us to either help or butt out.
I think a new term needs to be coined for the very frequent fallacious claim that potential = actual. Appeal to potential perhaps.
Biologically the stages of development go zygote, embryo, fetus, baby….on to adult. By your reasoning, we might as well just call it an adult.
“The woman, of course, often does have to perform a Solomonic feat of judgment for her own case.”
…which, of course, is the start of the problems for the anti-choice crowd. They don’t think ANY person should be allowed to make that judgment (unless it disallows abortion), but most especially not women - being encumbered by vaginas and uteri, and placed by god in a permanent position of subordination to their husbands, fathers, or other males in authority.
Until the fundnuts are able to accept the full equality of women - which will require major re-editing/re-evaluation of the bible, among many other things - they will not reach the enlightenment needed to understand and accept that women should be allowed to make decisions governing their own bodies…
That’s Sam Harris talking. For oswald or anyone else who doesn’t get the point, he’s talking about cloning. There is a full human’s DNA in every one of your cells. You could be making millions of new people from that DNA, and it is assured that if you did so, most of them (those who don’t suffer suicidal depression) would want to live, as soon as they could want anything.
If you owe moral responsibility to a blastocyst, then you owe the same responsibility to all your millions of potential clones.
Wow. You all are trying very hard to twist my words! I never said that a baby was the same as an adult. Simply never said it, or even implied it. In fact, I was careful to point out that it was simply at an earlier stage of development. But you don’t get the adult without the zygote, embryo, fetus, baby…do you?
And I’m really not sure what apple trees have to do with any of this.
Again, my point was that unless the government forces you to get pregnant it is not forcing you to have a baby.
Whatever your position may be on abortion, there is no denying that fact.
Again, my point was that unless the government forces you to get pregnant it is not forcing you to have a baby.
Whatever your position may be on abortion, there is no denying that fact.
if the government is denying a woman the right to an abortion, that woman is going to have the baby. she might die, or the baby might die, but the pregnancy cannot legally be stopped by a doctor thanks to the laws of the government.
how, then, is the government NOT forcing this woman to have a baby? it takes away her option to stop the pregnancy. no, it doesn’t tie her to a chair and lock her in a cell, but if she’s left with no choices because of the government’s actions — actions which INTEND to prevent her from having an abortion — then the government is, in fact, forcing her to have a baby.
it really shouldn’t be that hard to get into your head.
I’m regretting the troll food as I type, but maybe I’ll get through to Oswald–what, a 5% chance?
Let’s say for argument’s sake that the zygote or blastocyte is a baby, a person. The government coercion: A pregnant woman who does not want to have a baby and who has no right to an abortion is forced by the law to labor, suffer, and donate the workings of her own body against her will to benefit this person. Even when a person agreed to have sex in the past, we don’t force him or her to donate his blood or her kidney two months later as a consequence.
Either Oswald is stupid or Oswald is trolling: hard to tell which. Or possibly Oswald is a virgin boy who got all his sex education from pro-life and abstinence sites and is genuinely under the impression that women only have sex when they intend to get pregnant. Which is more likely, folks: (a) stupid (b) troll (c) virgin naif?
“Which is more likely, folks: (a) stupid (b) troll (c) virgin naif?”
Stupid + Troll AND Virgin Naif…
I think a new term needs to be coined for the very frequent fallacious claim that potential = actual. Appeal to potential perhaps.
I’m all for giving them a bolt of silk, some rope and some leather strapping and throwing them out of an airplane. I mean, it’s a potential parachute, right?
Speaking of stupidity, check out this editorial from the KC Star this morning. This anti-choicer’s arrogance and self-congraulatory gloating are truly breath taking.
BTW, I love how Oswald thinks that a feritlized egg magically becomes a baby just by existing for nine months, and the woman’s womb which nurtures it, protects it, and helps it grow is somehow non-existant. Tell you what, O, let’s do an experiment; put a one minute old baby on the sidewalk next to a one minute old zygote. See which one exists longer.
By Oswald’s way of thinking, no one should be allowed to cremate or bury corpses, since “corpse” is just another stage in a person’s development. Aside from the “not breathing” part, that is.
oswald: Unless the government has forced you to get pregnant, it isn’t forcing you to have a baby.
Oh, for fuck’s sake.
“Having a baby” in common usage means carrying a fertilized, implanted egg all the way to birth, after which the egg is no longer called an egg, but a “baby.” The terminology is beside the point. So, for the sake of clarity, I’m just going to go with oswald’s (mis)characterization of a blastocyst/zygote/embryo/fetus as a “baby.”
Obviously, the government does not cause the baby to be inside of the woman in the first place. It does not force her to become pregnant. But by denying her the option to terminate the pregnancy, it *is* forcing her to continue to carry, and ultimately give birth to, the baby. In other words, forcing her to “have the baby.” The government doesn’t force anyone to GET pregnant, it forces them to STAY pregnant and then give birth.
Once a woman is pregnant, she has only two options (under her control):
1) “have the baby” continue the pregnancy, i.e., carry and eventually birth a baby
2) discontinue the pregnancy, i.e., abort the baby
By making abortion illegal, the government takes away option (2), thereby forcing the woman into option (1), i.e., forced pregnancy. Forced continuation of a pregnancy that she would otherwise terminate.
really and truly, i tried to read most of the comments above. ultimately led me to long for the good old days before roe v. wade…when i had my illegal and safe abortion performed by a well known ob-gyn in the coal-mining hills of pennsylvania.
i made a choice in 1957. this doctor supported it. no ugly people around the clinic. no obeisance to people who need to control the reproductive lives of others. i’m ready to support with serious dollars another jane, the underground clinic, run by very courageous women.
with violence against clinic workers and doctors, with the violence against women pushed to continue unwanted pregnancies, how can there be talk of “gray”? we waste important time with all this. we have work to do to save our lives.
I think I should point out, Oswald, that your insistance that “if you don’t want to have a baby, you shouldn’t have had sex” is a reasonable answer to our (well, my anyway) claim that abortion is a morally and legally OK option for a pregnant woman to exercise, is indeed a straighforwardly misogynistic position once we have disposed of the notion that a “baby” with full human rights equal to its prospective mother’s exists at the moment of fertilization.
That position can only be justified by theological fiat, not even clearly supported by the sacred texts of the world’s major religions but only on the recent say-so of certain self-appointed authorities. In a secular context there is no convincing argument whatsoever for the full human personhood of a zygote or embryo or early-stage fetus. And as I’ve said above, I claim the whole moral/legal tangle can be simply and elegantly and justly disposed of by the simple expedient of leaving it completely up to the woman, without restrictions of any kind, because women (as demonstrated amply by actual human experience if not by straw-slut based hypothetical argumentation that never advances even one particular non-fictional example in my experience) can be trusted to quickly make up their minds in this personal crisis (if that is how they see it, as they often do) to either commit to having a baby, or if they judge they cannot or should not, to seek an abortion as soon as possible, as there is no reason for them to delay and many not to. Thus in reality abortions do take place long before any reasonable argument for the humanity of the fetus can apply, and the exceptions overwhelmingly involve serious life-threatening or major health-threatening considerations that were not known to be present earlier.
That being the case, your insistance on “sex=pregnancy” for women as something wrong to prevent by perfectly feasible means boils down to either severe changes in human sexual behavior for everyone who wants to have heterosexual sex, or maintaining our existing double standards for men and women.
Roe v Wade is rather more restrictive than I think it ought to be, but in practice it is workable and reasonable as long as unreasonable additional restrictions are not imposed.
And if you or anyone thinks God is minting fully Human Souls ™ and stapling them to a single cell that has just formed by the union of an egg with a sperm, that means God is knowingly condemning the majority of these bodies He has just attached a Soul to to death long before they can even form a rudimentary neural net, since the majority of fertilized eggs don’t even reach the stage where a woman knows it has implanted. The testitmony of human history, if not pontificating moralizing, is that women and people who in practice care at least about particular women they are involved with, accept a distinction, and by adopting a choice-based, rather than developmental-time-line based, set of rules about how society deals with it we conform both with human history and common sense. If people think God hates our best practices, then I suppose Eternity would be miserable no matter how well or ill we conform with such an arbitrary Deity’s orders. I actually trust whatever ultimate Power may exist as I trust the women of planet Earth, do be reasonable and fair in the long run.
Its amazing the lengths people will go to bend a position to argue it on their own terms. Many of the positions you all have ascribed to me are dishonest, others are just ridiculous.
And who better proves this than Mark, who actually goes so far as to ascribe to me completely false quotes, bemoaning my “insistance” that, “sex=pregnancy” and “if you don’t want to have a baby, you shouldn’t have had sex”, when any thinking person can easily scroll up a few inches to see that I’ve never actually said these things, or anything close to them. Can you please explain that?
(And, btw, your forceful conclusion that “The fetus, zygote, or whatever stage you like post-fertilization ‘becomes a person’ when the pregnant woman decides to become a mother by deciding to carry it to term” has no merit logically and actually contradicts your own argument in your next post where you assert that, “In a secular context there is no convincing argument whatsoever for the full human personhood of a zygote or embryo or early-stage fetus.”, when you just claimed that the pregnant woman’s own decision to carry the child to term rendered it “a person”. Emphasis mine. Did your first position not even convince you? Please make up your mind.)
Where have I even remotely implied that women should only have sex to procreate?
Why conjure up a ridiculous notion of a “consequence” of sex being forced blood or organ donation? Why not just list an actual potential consequence of sex, for instance, pregnancy?
I never delved into any discussion as to the relative “personhood” of a zygote vs an adult. Regardless of your view on the value of humans during various stages of development, there is obviously no denying that each stage progresses from the previous. The point is that the government did not create the zygote, or fetus, therefore, it cannot be held accountable for the resulting “baby”.
The comment about my “thinking” that “no one should be allowed to cremate or bury corpses, since “corpse” is just another stage in a person’s development.” makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.
I certainly never invoked a theological argument for anything that I’ve said. So all of the argument against that is simply a strawman.
I never stated, or even implied, that I was opposed to Roe v Wade or abortion(at any stage) for that matter. In fact, I very clearly stated that abortion was “perfectly legal” in my view.
My argument was that the government, if not forcing anyone to become pregnant, is not forcing anyone to have a child. Government ensuring the right to abortion and government not forcing you to have a child are two separate arguments.
“And who better proves this than Mark, who actually goes so far as to ascribe to me completely false quotes, bemoaning my “insistance” that, “sex=pregnancy” and “if you don’t want to have a baby, you shouldn’t have had sex”, when any thinking person can easily scroll up a few inches to see that I’ve never actually said these things, or anything close to them.”
You know, oswald, I DID scroll up “a few inches”. And what did I find?…
…sure sounds exactly like the same old slut-shaming “argument” that we Pandagon regulars have heard
dozenshundreds of time previously.If our understanding of your comment is incorrect, then what exactly do you mean by the sentence “‘Choice’ includes the decision to have sex in the first place.”?…
“(And, btw, your forceful conclusion that “The fetus, zygote, or whatever stage you like post-fertilization ‘becomes a person’ when the pregnant woman decides to become a mother by deciding to carry it to term” has no merit logically and actually contradicts your own argument in your next post where you assert that, “In a secular context there is no convincing argument whatsoever for the full human personhood of a zygote or embryo or early-stage fetus.”, when you just claimed that the pregnant woman’s own decision to carry the child to term rendered it “a person”. Emphasis mine. Did your first position not even convince you? Please make up your mind.)”
Mark was obviously saying that there is no inherent “full human personhood” in a zygote, embryo, or early-stage fetus. Which is exactly correct for anyone who isn’t drinking the anti-choice Koolaid.
OTOH, if a woman wants to carry a pregnancy to term, she is certainly allowed to think of the clump of cells as a “baby” if she likes - given that calling the clump a “baby” still does not confer “full human personhood” to the clump.
Why? Because: “In a secular context there is no convincing argument whatsoever for the full human personhood of a zygote or embryo or early-stage fetus.”
Why is that so hard to understand?…
Actually, O, it does, if you insist on giving “personhood” to a clump of cells, since anti-choicers love to call themselves “former fetuses”, which makes as much sense as calling yourself a “future corpse”. Yes, once my body was a fetus, just as someday it will be a corpse. My spirit wasn’t in the fetus, and it won’t be in the corpse, so why should I care what happens to it then?
There was absolutely no shaming at all. Can you find any? I’ve passed no judgment on anyone, ever. My post follows the logical argument that (again) the government is not forcing anyone to have a child if it is not forcing anyone to get pregnant. Yes, there is the notion that a person choosing to have sex is taking on the potential consequence of pregnancy. But that’s not a judgment. That’s a biological fact. And(again) I’ve never suggested that a woman shouldn’t have the right to an abortion. And it does not logically follow that saying that sex could lead to pregnancy is the same as saying “sex=pregnancy” or that you should have to get pregnant if you have sex, or that you should only have sex for the purpose of getting pregnant or “if you don’t want to have a baby, you shouldn’t have had sex” I never said anything close to these things. So, no, they don’t sound anything close to “exactly like” what I said. And, more to the point I was making about Mark’s claims, they sure as hell weren’t quotes made by me. So, yes, your understanding is incorrect.
That’s great. But that’s an argument you should have with some other person(an anti-choicer if you like) who actually insists on “giving personhood to a clump of cells”. Since I did not, it makes no sense to use such a construct to attempt to refute my actual point.
But it certainly is much easier to label someone who clearly stated their support for abortion an anti-choicer and ascribes all kinds of other false arguments to them simply because they disagree with you on a single point, isn’t it?
Oswald:
Say you wanted to dump your used motor oil in the sewer. But the government has banned that practice because it pollutes the oceans. Therefore, the government is “forcing” you to take your used motor oil to the dump.
But by your logic, the government isn’t actually “forcing” you to do anything in this example. You could have just decided not to drive at all and not accumulate dirty motor oil. The government is simply passively directing your conduct once you’ve already made the choice to drive.
Government regulation compels or forbids certain kinds of conduct by taking away choices and options. It’s just a meaningless game of semantics to say that the government doesn’t “force” anyone to do anything when it makes laws.
Giving the benefit of the doubt…
Such an argument is only logically sound if getting pregnant, ie sex, is an inseparable act from giving birth. As such is not the case, the argument is incorrect. That you would make such an argument does however indicate that you consider such a premise to be correct, thus leading to much of the criticisms above.
While perhaps not a judgment on said person’s morality, given the apparent view you take regarding pregnancy and birth, it is a judgment upon their consciousness. You are attributing a decision to said person. Placing a judgment upon their intent based upon their action. This is a rather vile thing to do, as requires the premise that you better know said person’s mind than she does herself.
As to the claim of personhood, I expect post # 67 is responsible.
Unless the post is a meaningless agreement with kate presented as a challenge, the only obvious interpretation is a claim that a fertilized egg is a baby, ie a person.
Exactly, D.
Unless you want to disavow your #67 statement and say some other Oswald made it, then yes, you regard a two cell zygote as a baby, just at an “earlier stage of development”. As for you being an anti-choicer, if the shoe fits…