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…

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

“…sure sounds exactly like the same old slut-shaming “argument” that we Pandagon regulars have heard dozens hundreds 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.”?…”

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.

“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?

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?

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.

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?

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?…

You know, oswald, I DID scroll up “a few inches”. And what did I find?…

oswald- “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.”

…sure sounds exactly like the same old slut-shaming “argument” that we Pandagon regulars have heard dozens hundreds 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 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.

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.

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.