Perhaps the cuteness of the snufflelump will distract you from the fact that it means “horrible uterine infection” or “prison sentence”.
Often, someone will present me in arguments about reproductive rights, the statistic that demonstrates that women are anti-choice in roughly the same rates as men, and sometimes a little more, as if this is damning evidence against the idea that anti-choicers are working from a misogynist worldview. Usually, I respond by pointing out that sexism is a unique oppression in the levels of internalized self-hatred in the oppressed,* and that many of the women who call themselves “pro-life” do in fact have abortions, and a lot of them are even more likely to than your average pro-choice feminist, because they’re also less likely to be educated about and using contraception. So it’s as much a pose about kissing patriarchal ass as anything.
But there’s another aspect to anti-choice advocacy that can’t be ignored when examining the statistics, and that’s the stupid factor.
I’m asked all the time, “Do you really think that all anti-choicers are crazy nuts who hate women and sex?”, and I say, “No, I think the leadership definitely is, but the followers are mostly sheep, albeit sheep who are drawn to this issue because they have deepset issues about sexuality.” And considering that women, being equal to men, are as likely to be dumb sheep as men, then it follows that as many will label themselves “pro-life” and scream about murdering babies while giving Bush license to murder actual babies with his war in Iraq.
The stupid factor cannot be underestimated. Right now, there’s a raging, um, debate, in comments about whether or not the word “consequences”, when used by an anti-choicer describing what he would like to happen to people, especially women, who fuck, is synonymous with “punishment”. The dumbass anti-choicers think they are incredibly fucking clever using the word “consequences”. “With this word, we can advocate punishing the sluts without actually saying we’re going to punish them! It’s an amazing plan! They will never see through our clever ruse.”
They must assume everyone else is as dumb as they are and we can’t figure out a word’s meaning from context clues, which is something that your average 3rd grader can ace on a standardized exam. The quote that’s being trotted out as one where “consequences” is a value neutral word is from Sean Hannity:
We live in an age characterized by the maxim “If it feels good do it, regardless of the consequences.” It’s a sex-drenched culture–from movies, music, and magazines to TV, radio and the Internet–that glorifies premarital sex, promiscuous sex, extramarital sex, kinky sex, rough sex, and gay sex. You name it, you can find it, and without looking too hard.
If the word is value neutral and refers to good consequences as well as bad, then the statement actually makes no sense. Let’s repeat it, with good “consequences” injected, for the very slow-witted out there.
We live in an age characterized by the maxim “If it feels good do it, regardless of the great orgasms.” It’s a sex-drenched culture–from movies, music, and magazines to TV, radio and the Internet–that glorifies premarital sex, promiscuous sex, extramarital sex, kinky sex, rough sex, and gay sex. You name it, you can find it, and without looking too hard.
We live in an age characterized by the maxim “If it feels good do it, regardless of the life-affirming revelations.” It’s a sex-drenched culture–from movies, music, and magazines to TV, radio and the Internet–that glorifies premarital sex, promiscuous sex, extramarital sex, kinky sex, rough sex, and gay sex. You name it, you can find it, and without looking too hard.
We live in an age characterized by the maxim “If it feels good do it, regardless of the improved cardiovascular performance.” It’s a sex-drenched culture–from movies, music, and magazines to TV, radio and the Internet–that glorifies premarital sex, promiscuous sex, extramarital sex, kinky sex, rough sex, and gay sex. You name it, you can find it, and without looking too hard.
It makes no sense, not even if you’re dumb enough to think a baby can be born alive months after an abortion.
But the fun doesn’t stop here, when it comes to the topic of mocking the neural misfiring of our esteemed opponents on the controversy of whether or not women are full humans with full human rights. Then there’s this awesome story. (Via.)
I decided to go up to the young female students who were passing out their “genocide leaflets” to the students walking by and chat.
I asked each one if they wanted to overturn Roe vs. Wade and make abortion illegal. They all said yes, of course. I asked them if abortion was murder. They all said yes, of course.
I then asked each of them, once this is made illegal, what the preferred prison sentence should be for a woman that has an abortion.
The first girl I talked to seemed bewildered by the question. She literally had never thought about that before. She was willing to stand in front of these horrible pictures and accuse people of murder and genocide, yet she had never even thought what type of penalties women would get if this was made illegal. She looked like a deer caught in the headlights, so I let her go to ponder just what in the hell she’s doing out here.
Another girl seemed a bit taken aback, but then went into the “well, it’s not the women who should be punished, it’s the doctor who performs it” line.
“So wait a second, if someone hires a hitman to kill someone, they’re charged for murder, right? Then why wouldn’t the woman who hires the person to perform the abortion guilty of murder”.
Silence. “Well… maybe. I don’t know.”
“Well, you’re out here calling people murderers and accusing them of genocide. What do you mean you don’t know?”
“Ummmm…”
Read the whole thing, though you might want to wear protective equipment to save yourself from the caustic exposure to the stupid. There are many theories as to why anti-choicers dodge the question of what should happen to someone who actually breaks the law and gets an abortion, should they get their way. The leadership, a bit more intelligent (though not exactly a box of super sharp crayons), realizes this is a P.R. issue, and people should stay away from describing women being thrown in jail for something 30-40% of women do at some point in their lives. But I think the sheep—like these women here—just get so involved in thinking about the poor fetuses being attacked by those horrible doctors, and are immersed in so much language that ignores the rights and very existence of women, that they actually forget that women are out there, getting pregnant and badly not wanting to be. They just forgot. They didn’t think about it, because the idea of a desperate pregnant woman seeking relief from her problem hasn’t been spoon fed to them, and they don’t have the imagination to fill in the details.
At our panel at the WAM! conference, someone asked about what we do with the anti-choice movement to frame their arguments in pro-woman terms. You have anti-choicers making arguments about how women should be banned from aborting because we’re simple fools** that will regret it, and we all will, because women are magically transformed into eager, blushing mothers by magic sperm and if we get abortions, it’s not because we wanted them, oh no, it’s because someone made us. So abortion has to be banned so women aren’t exploited.
I’m of two minds on this argument. On one hand, it’s got some legal teeth, as Carhart v Gonzalez, decided on just this point, that women are too stupid for full citizenship rights. On the other hand, it’s a really terrible strategy for recruitment. Most people accept the idea that a woman can actually be pregnant against her will, so the argument that all women secretly want all pregnancies and just need the law to show us the way is not going to get traction. Also, by even bringing women up, you are shifting the frame away from fetuses and towards women, and once people start to think about women—and about women dying from illegal abortion, or being thrown in jail, or even just having to cross state lines to get what is one of the most common outpatient surgeries in the U.S.—they’re going to be less inclined to take away women’s rights.
*Not that other people can’t embrace their oppression, but it doesn’t seem to be as bad a problem with racism or even, nowadays, homophobia. Maybe I’m wrong. But I don’t see like 40% of gay people polled saying they shouldn’t have the right to marry or 40% of black people polled saying they should sit at the back of the bus.
**This may just be more projection.
247 Responses to “They’re onto our plan! Change the word “consequences” to “snufflelumps”!”
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One thing I think we can do is point out just how ridiculous their rules are when taken to their logical extreme. I blogged today about Florida’s latest attempt to redefine the fetus at conception as a human for the purposes of criminal prosecutions, including being able to charge drunk drivers who cause accidents with homicide of a fetus. So, are cops going to start carrying pregnancy test alongside their breathalyzers if this passes?
“On the other hand, it’s a really terrible strategy for recruitment. ”
It’s an excellent strategy for recruiting *men*, who, like Fox Mulder, ‘want to believe’ that women are foolish and easily manipulated and need to be protected by big strong manly men like the new recruits. It feeds the patriarchial male ego.
And once you have the men, you have their wives and daughters as well, because even if they don’t buy the propaganda line, they know what they’ll get if they don’t do what they’re told. And as for women not in abusive relationships (ie, not married to conservatives)? If the anti-choicers think about them at all, it’s to dismiss them - they don’t want that sort of person around giving their chattel bad ideas. Just hold your sign like a good little girl.
Wow. This is a revellation:
straw-consequences. and straw argument in general.
No one is denying that Hannity is referring to negative consequences. The point is that you stated that negative consequences are punishments in this debate about women, when often times you refer to negative consequences, as well, just negative consequences. For instance when you refer to men having to pay for 18 years of child support if they get a woman pregnant. You say that’s not punishment, that’s just the logical consequences.
You wrote a nice long post, which is a pity, since you immediately decided to attack a nice straw word.
In the prior thread you were last seen calling me a liar. I asked you to do more than label, but to actually lay out your argument. Can you explain how and where I lied? Or is namecalling the level of logical argument here?
When I was a younger women, I think I was a bit more concerned about Heffalumps and Woosels, myself.
I think our pet MRA troll is getting pretty boooooorrrrinnnngg.
Can’t even spell his name right, either.
nope,
I thought teh babieees! were a blessing from god, no matter how they were conceived. That’s why they have to be saved from the hands of reckless womenz who don’t realize that they’re a blessing until they’ve been forced to have them against their will. How is it that they’re a negative consequence of having had sex outside the approved parameters then?
Because, nope, no one is denying that pregnancy is a possible consequence of sex, and abortion is a possible consequence of pregnancy.
However, when you argue that women should not be allowed to have abortions because they have to face the consequences of sex, then you mean for babies to be a punishment for sex.
If a man impregnates a woman, and she doesn’t get an abortion or give it up for adoption, he’s on the hook for 18 years of child support, sure. That’s a consequence. SO IS SHE. That’s a consequence. The man could have protected himself from the consequence by getting a vasectomy or wearing a condom. The woman could have protected herself by getting her tubes tied, using birth control, or getting an abortion. If people declare, however, that she should not be allowed to get an abortion because she must face the consequences, this would be like arguing that men should not be allowed to wear condoms because they must face the consequences.
In other words the consequences are the logical results of your actions. *Punishment* is when people attempt to take away your options to deal with the consequences, and force you into a much more limited set of choices as to how to deal with your consequences.
The Catholic Church at least is consistent. They believe that death or pregnancy should be the punishment for *anyone* who has sex unless they are in a monogamous relationship and were mutually virgins before the relationship began. Thus, they oppose condoms, which save both male and female lives from STDs, as much as they oppose abortion. However, your average right-winger is not interested in stopping *men* from avoiding the possible consequence of sex… only women.
BTW, abortion is unpleasant… I’ve never had one, but I had to have a D&C after a miscarriage, and it was not remotely fun. So abortion is *also* an unpleasant consequence of having sex… something right wingers and anti-choice nuts avoid mentioning in all their rhetoric about having to “accept consequences”.
Nope, you’re funnier than a dog chasing its own tail, sure that this time it’s going to be something different. Dumb. As. Fuck.
You name it, you can find it, and without looking too hard.
That is a damnable lie. I’ve been looking for YEARS for someone to fulfill my Amelia Bedelia fetish, wherein “blowjob” involves professional quality balloon animals and “intercourse” is a small platter of food to be served after the salad but before the main dish.
For a snufflelump that cute, I will overlook all kinds of words.
I thought teh babieees! were a blessing from god, no matter how they were conceived
Well, perhaps in your black and white world, that’s what you might think conservatives feel. But I suspect that conservatives are more sophisticated than your model allows. When I listen to anti-choice conservatives they tell me all sorts of things. Mainly that abortion is murder. Beyond that I suspect they think that babies are blessings, but that babies also require lots of attention and money. Who knows? As covered in the prior thread, I’m a liberal who is pro-choice, just reality based unlike you Mr. Nacho Daddy.
I have no problem disliking Hannity, disagreeing with Hannity, and yet, not othering Hannity. And so I can readily understand Hannity thinking that babies are a logical consequence of pregnancy, that babies are positive consequences in many ways, and that babies are negative consequences in many ways.
What I don’t understand is the question I’ve asked and no one here is willing to answer:
You ARE forced to carry to term 2nd and 3rd trimester babies. When the state forces women to carry those fetuses to term, is that a punishment or a consequence?
Amanda and you all insist that Hannity insists that forcing women to carry a first semester baby to term is a punishment. And yet the state forces women to carry 2nd and 3rd trimester fetuses to term. So is the Amanda feminist viewpoint that the state is punishing women by doing this, or is this just the logical consequence of being pregnant?
If 1st is a punishment and 2nd is a consequence, what is the difference? If they are both punishments, than what about 3rd trimester babies? Punishment or consequence?
So far, no one has answered this.
karpad,
Call me.
Nope, can you scurry along now? Heaping more stupid on the previous stupid doesn’t make you smarter. It just makes the pile of stupid deeper, which makes you seem stupider.
See, stupid is like shit. You can’t conceal shit by piling more shit on it. That just makes the pile of shit bigger and stinkier. You keep thinking by piling the shit higher and deeper, it will morph into roses. And no, it’s just a really big pile of shit.
Nope, you’re funnier than a dog chasing its own tail, sure that this time it’s going to be something different. Dumb. As. Fuck.
I accept your concession that you were full of shit when you called me a liar, and that you are unable to provide any evidence that I have lied in any way.
I accept your concession and thank you for that, but I suggest you learn how to apologize more graciously. Or perhaps better yet, don’t call others a liar, without some proof.
Just words?
My university has a significant minority of dumbshit fundies who feel the need to assert their moral superiority over others. I just give them both barrels whenever they say they’re “pro-life”. So… what do you think about the death penalty, Ashley? They’re always for it. What about women who have abortions: should they go to prison? Certainly not. What about if the woman was raped? Then it should be okay to have the abortion. Usually after about six of these questions, I throw up my hands and ask the rest of the class whether they see any kind of logical coherence to Ashley’s position. They don’t. Sooner or later, Ashley folds her arms and says “Abortion is just wrong!” My response is “See if you still think that when your boyfriend dumps you.” This is childish and wrong, but much too entertaining to pass up.
BTW Amanda, I reviewed your book and gave it five stars on Amazon. One of my wonderful, clever, fun feminist students had it and let me flip through it during my office hours. Then I plugged it in my classes, but it will probably be a week or so before anyone actually has it.
nope,
You have nothing to be indignant about. You came in, acted like an asshole, and got called on it. You should be the one apologizing. Better yet, you should just skip the apologies and fuck off.
Let’s hear it for the MRA Troll - the guy who is bitching about being responsible for his lack of initiative in the contraception department - then mentions his kids IN THE PLURAL!
Honey, if you didn’t figure it out after one of them ….
I followed the link to the guy who confronted the protestors and saw that he’d submitted it to the DailyKos.
Then I made the mistake of reading the comments where the geniuses over there started calling for a man’s right to an “economic abortion”.
One brilliant line was: You want 100% of the choice, you get 100% of the cost.
I really want to dive in, but I can’t bring myself to do it. I want to dive in and talk about choice and how it an abortion isn’t as simple as signing a piece of paper and how childbirth isn’t as simple as writing a check and raising a child full-time isn’t as simple as having your pay docked.
I won’t, though. I’m going to stay sane and also out of it.
Sigh.
Nope,
Although it’s clear you don’t want a serious answer, I’m still going to give you one.
Well, perhaps in your black and white world, that’s what you might think conservatives feel.
Nice try, but I haven’t seen things in black and white since I upgraded to a color tv some time back in the 80s. Okay, that’s not quite the case. I saw things in black and white up until I stopped being a christian conservative, which happened in the mid-90s, not coincidentally around the same time I started attending college and realized the world was nearly as simple as the church had made it out to be.
But you wanted an answer to your question.
You ARE forced to carry to term 2nd and 3rd trimester babies. When the state forces women to carry those fetuses to term, is that a punishment or a consequence?
Actually, you don’t always have to carry a 2nd term fetus to full term, or a 3rd term, if the life of the mother is in danger. The state can restrict abortion in those trimesters, but cannot fully outlaw it, at least not yet.
But let’s get to some ugly truths here. In many cases, women miss the 1st trimester unrestricted window for abortion because it has been restricted through things like mandatory waits or required sonograms or zoning restrictions for clinics or simply the threat of physical violence against abortion providers. Let’s not act as though it’s easy for women in many parts of the country to get a first trimester abortion, okay? Can we at least be that honest?
So if state restrictions keep a woman who wants an abortion from getting one in the time frame that’s supposed to be restriction free, does that make her fetus a consequence or a punishment? I say it’s a punishment, then, because the state has undermined the woman’s ability to access her chosen health care. And the same is true if, instead of the state, it’s a woman’s partner or parents or anyone other than the woman herself.
Nope, the second you started splitting hairs about the word “consequences”, you demonstrated that you are stupid beyond repair, and a liar. An honest person would accept that this is about punishment, and let it go. But you rant pointlessly, and honestly, reading you is beside the point. The very moment you started to quarrel with this, you were a liar, an idiot and a rube. Now, don’t you have some pencil shavings to snort or a dog to court? Anything but clutter my blog with your bullshit?
Thanks, felagund!
Thanks for the link Amanda. I wish I would have had a video of their responses. Mind-numbing.
Well, this thread was not about what I thought at all.
The other day, Barack Obama responded to a question about reproductive education in a way that a lot of pro-choice folks liked. He referred to the challenges of teaching his two daughters strong values, and then said that he feels that f one of his girls makes a mistake she should not have to be punished with a baby.
I thought that was a strange way to put it. As an adoptive parent, I’m aware that my child’s existence on the planet, and presence in my family, is the result of some (probably young and poor) woman’s lack of reproductive choice and education. That woman clearly did experience this child as a punishment.
But my kid is not someone’s punishment. She’s not the expected consequence for immoral behavior. She’s a person.
The language of punishment and morality shouldn’t be stuck to babies, not only because it’s unfair and dehumanizing to women but also because it’s dehumanizing to the babies, who grow into people.
I could say more, but the fatherless bastard (see how these ‘morality’ laden terms become deeply rude and insulting when attached to people?) needs her hair washed. Which is a consequence of spending the afternoon playing in dirt.
Sometimes pleasurable acts have less pleasurable consequences, and part of being a second grader is learning about those relationships.
Hannity is a fuckwit who thinks women have the moral reasoning skills of a second grader.
Funny story.
Operation Outcry came to my campus last week, hosted by the Students for Life group here. I decided to attend because I figured it’d be good to hear what sort of arguments the anti-choice groups are making these days (especially one that collects women’s stories on abortion and asserts that it’s empowering women), and because I’m a sucker for an easily won debate.
So I attend, watch the video they provide (my personal favorite is a woman who’s had an abortion, and regretted it, quoted as saying “women have the right to make an informed choice”), and prepare my questions for the Q + A. As soon as I have an opportunity to speak, I set up the Libertyville questions: do you believe that abortion is illegal (yes), do you believe that abortion is the murder of a human life (yes), how much time should she do? And I got two responses. The first was from the speaker, Kelly Roy, who basically said that the issue is very complicated and that of course they don’t want to be jailing women, but if we ban abortion and turn all of our abortion clinics into planned pregnancy clinics, nobody would have an abortion anyways.
The other response came from an audience member, who pointed out that suicide is illegal in the US as well but you don’t go to prison for it, you get psychiatric care. The assumption being that in both suicide and abortions, the perpetrator is also the victim. Now I can see at least one level of flawed logic here. If the perpetrator is also the victim in an abortion, then the unborn child is not a human being separate from the mother, which invalidates the entire “abortion is murder” argument. But the suicide analogy has me a bit confused and I was wondering if anybody else could throw some light on the convoluted logic behind it. Thoughts?
But the suicide analogy has me a bit confused and I was wondering if anybody else could throw some light on the convoluted logic behind it. Thoughts?
They’re basically saying that any woman who would have an abortion is mentally ill and has to be restrained because she’s unable to make a rational decision. It’s a clumsy bit of circular reasoning, because it depends on the notion that a rational woman would never have an abortion, while we all know that there any number of rational reasons a woman would make that choice, given the option.
“But the suicide analogy has me a bit confused and I was wondering if anybody else could throw some light on the convoluted logic behind it.”
I’m guessing the line of reasoning is that the woman seeking an abortion is basically engaging in self-harm. Of course, if you really want to go with “it’s like suicide”–well, it’s actually like a murder-suicide if you’re rolling with the fetus=baby mindset. To the best of my knowledge, we still prosecute murder-suicide perpetrators who happen to survive for the murder unless they were demonstrably insane by criminal standards at the time.
My favorite brain stopper is to find a rather sincere baby saver and ask her what her organization is doing about the appalling infant mortality rate in vulnerable communities.
I have twice has “controllers” swoop in and steer the person away from me. Fascinating - they don’t want their most sincere and sweet people even thinking about actual dead and stillborn babies. All fetus, all the time!
Oh heavens no, nope; you can’t be described as a liar—you’re just an obfuscator, a caster-up-of-dust into smarting blinketty eyes. And there’s no resemblance whatever between those two things; no, not a bit.
(How’s that for name-calling?)
[the bekabot turns aside and laughs, silently, like a cat]
Re: internalized oppression: I’d wager that the percentage of fat people who buy into almost every negative thing that’s said about them is well over 40%. So it’s not unique to female forced-birthers.
Thanks for the link, Amanda. I wish I could have got those responses on video. Mind-numbing.
A lot of rant on your part Amanda, but you apart from your name calling you still haven’t shown where I have lied about anything. And I admit to being stupid, but since I’ve pwned you about your hypocrisy regarding consequences for men vs. punishments for women, I guess that makes you stupider than I.
Nacho Daddy, in the older thread, Ithaqua was also of the feeling that 2nd and 3rd trimester abortions are no different from 1st trimester abortions. It’s hard to make sense of what she is saying — I think though she does consider forcing a woman to carry a pregnancy to term in the 2nd and 3rd trimester is a punishment.
And yeah, I am ignoring 2nd and 3rd trimester pregnancies that would be harmful to the mother or would result in a severely deformed or disabled or ill child, because abortion is legal for those.
But basically, the law of the land as it is now is that pregnant women are forced to carry to term in their 2nd and 3rd trimesters.
I think it’s really fascinating that you and others consider that to be a punishment.
While I think that the majority of society wants abortions to be safe and legal, I suspect your view that 2nd and 3rd trimester babies should be abortible on demand and that forcing women to carry them to term is a punishment is a very very minority view, even among feminists. It’s one thing to abort a mass of cells without neural tissue or a functioning brain, but I think most people feel very differently about aborting 2nd and 3rd trimester fetuses due to this thing called science clearly showing all sorts of aspects of life and responsiveness to touch, sound, and other stimulation.
So best wishes on that Nacho Daddy, and you too Ithaqua.
Amanda, if you agree with Nacho Daddy and Ithaqua that you favor abortion on demand for 2nd and 3rd trimester kids and consider the illegality of abortion to be a punishment, than I think in the name of intellectual honesty you should make that clear. I think Daddy and Ithaqua would appreciate your support on that account, and so would other feminists. And so too would the feminists that are pro-choice but who disagree with you and think that it should be illegal except in cases of threats to mom’s health, etc. in the 2nd and 3rd trimester.
I would still be interested Amanda in a clear response from you. Is being forced by the law to carry a pregnancy in the 2nd and 3rd trimester to term a punishment or a consequence?
I think most people and many (if not most) feminists consider it a consequence.
Anyway, enjoy your Church Chat. I hear there’s a sex positive feminist sex worker in the fourth pew, so that should give you someone to gossip about and she reads Chaucer! Rabelais! Balzac! and enjoys giving blowjobs.
Incertus Brian, Nacho Daddy: #
But the suicide analogy has me a bit confused and I was wondering if anybody else could throw some light on the convoluted logic behind it. Thoughts?
They’re basically saying that any woman who would have an abortion is mentally ill and has to be restrained because she’s unable to make a rational decision. It’s a clumsy bit of circular reasoning, because it depends on the notion that a rational woman would never have an abortion, while we all know that there any number of rational reasons a woman would make that choice, given the option.
Jebus, Brian, you’re really off the deep end.
All they are doing with teh suicide analogy is trying to demonstrate things that are illegal that we don’t jail people for. That is, we don’t jail failed suicide victims. Therefore “your reasoning that we must throw women in jail who’ve had an abortion” is flawed. It’s finding the one counterexample to show a theorem is wrong.
But the suicide analogy has me a bit confused and I was wondering if anybody else could throw some light on the convoluted logic behind it.
Basically, they’re saying, “We want the law to enshrine our ridiculous sexual mores that no one—including ourselves—can follow, but we know we can’t say that, so we’re going to throw a bunch of shit at the wall and see what sticks.”
See, for instance, this new troll we’ve picked up. Nothing he says makes a bit of sense, but he’s going to keep ranting, hoping he can wear you down and let his illogical nonsense slip in.
See, nope, the trick to successful concern trolling is *learning the language.* It’s always easy to spot an anti-choicer who talks like an anti-choicer, despite claims to the contrary, and you’re a textbook case. “Abortion on demand” is not a pro-choice term because it ridiculously trivializes the effort of decision any woman puts into her abortion. Only anti-choicers would do that. As for the suicide thing, you’ve simply missed the logic train, here. What crimes do we not jail people for here? A) the trivial
B) those excused by insanity
(I know there are other exceptions but I defy you to come up with one that remotely makes sense)
If abortion is murder than A is out, and so the suicide analogy leaves only B, which, btw, is PAINFULLY OBVIOUS as suicide is not trivial, but is DIRECTLY TIED to insanity.
All they are doing with teh suicide analogy is trying to demonstrate things that are illegal that we don’t jail people for. That is, we don’t jail failed suicide victims.
No, they don’t go to jail–they go to fucking psychiatric care, which is in the subtext of that example, much as you may try to deny it.
So which is it–are you stupid or dishonest? Or are you self-aware enough to know the difference?
“Usually after about six of these questions, I throw up my hands and ask the rest of the class whether they see any kind of logical coherence to Ashley’s position. They don’t. Sooner or later, Ashley folds her arms and says “Abortion is just wrong!” My response is “See if you still think that when your boyfriend dumps you.” This is childish and wrong, but much too entertaining to pass up.”
I hate to say it, because I agree completely with you on the issues, but if you’re teaching these kids, ‘childish and wrong’ is too mild a criticism. Try ‘unprofessional’, with perhaps a side of ‘abuse of authority’ - it’s not your job to deprogram Christians, much less belittle them in front of the rest of the class. It annoys the heck out of me when fundie teachers do it to non-fundie pupils, so I can’t consistently let it pass here. Sorry
“It’s one thing to abort a mass of cells without neural tissue or a functioning brain, but I think most people feel very differently about aborting 2nd and 3rd trimester fetuses due to this thing called science clearly showing all sorts of aspects of life and responsiveness to touch, sound, and other stimulation.”
THE FETUS IS NOT THE POINT. There is a WOMAN around the fetus somewhere - remember her? She’s the one you want to punish, er, have-face-the-consequences-of-her-actions-which-does-not-actually-mean-punish, even-if-you-take-great-satisfaction-in-the-thought-of-that-slut-suffering - HER rights are the issue here, and SHE does not suddenly become less than human because her fetus starts wiggling around a bit. Tell you what, nope: if you think post-2nd-trimester abortions are wrong, don’t have one
“I followed the link to the guy who confronted the protestors and saw that he’d submitted it to the DailyKos.
Then I made the mistake of reading the comments where the geniuses over there started calling for a man’s right to an “economic abortion”.”
Ayup. To rephrase a certain whiny conservative, any online forum not explicitly feminist eventually becomes anti-feminist (due to the corrosive effects of patriarchy and male privilege, male posters have an edge over female ones - they’re told from birth that their (male) opinions are important and should be shared, while women are told to stay quiet and agree, and this tendency bleeds over in the aggregate) and Daily Kos is an excellent example of this.
nope,
Amanda has asked that you stop cluttering up her blog.
Would you please cease posting here?
Thanks.
Ya know, you folks could use google, but that might challenge some of your groupthink and you probably can’t do that.
But I did and found this, actually pretty informative considering the source:
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=ZjkwNWQ4ZDQ2NTljNDg4MjUyYWIxZWQ0NDVjMTkxYjg=
An NRO Symposium on Abortion & Women on National Review Online
At the link they talked to lots of law professors and pro-life folks specifically about Quinlan’s question.
You may wish to read it. Turns out none invoked suicide as an example. And several were actually somewhat thoughtful about it.
But I know you come here not for thought but to help get your hate on. So have at it.
Anyway, Ithaqua, we’ll mark you down as pro abortion at anytime in the pregnancy for any reason whatsoever.
I am curious if Amanda agrees with that. Or if there are any pandagonians that disagree with you.
If anyone disagrees with Ithaqua, well, you may wish to speak up, and as you do so, you can explain if you think that carrying a third trimester fetus to term is punishment or consequence.
Ya know, you folks are really too easy. Sad. I’d expected better from my liberal blogosphere.
nope,
Amanda has asked that you stop cluttering up her blog.
Would you please cease posting here?
Thanks.
Ithaqua wrote:
My position is diametrically opposite of this. The fetus is exactly the point, and the mother’s “rights” are irrelevant. My main priority is to prevent that baby from being dismembered. My secondary priority is the mother’s political rights, the mother’s health, the mother’s life… All of this is a political position — a matter of opinion. It’s not that I am a lower life form than you “pro-choicers;” I just disagree with you and operate from fundamentally different premises and moral priorities.
Consequences vs. punishment? Semantics. Jail the doctor or jail the woman? Whichever results in fewer babies dying. Criminal charges vs. contraception? Whatever works — as long as there are fewer abortions, I’m happy.
If anyone’s “rights” get trampled on as a result of preventing that abortion, I really am not bothered by it. Now cry and moan.
I won’t address the ‘punishment’ or ‘consequence’ argument because it is so peripheral to the subject at hand -that being my right to control my own body -that it isn’t worth the time spent addressing it.
I find that people usually rely on semantics when they have nothing else.
Th truly astounding thing about nope is his willingness to declare a win for *no fucking reason*. It’s just… He’s right, so obviously he won that round. Look! He’s right again! He must have won again!
I spent an extremely unpleasant year living with lunatic catholic fundies. Really. Other catholics I’ve spoken to want to disown these wing-nuts. Amanda is spot on the money here. For all the idealization of the woman-as-virgin, there was some serious stench going on around *any* woman once she’d had sex.
Even virgin-till-marriage no contraception sex. *Once the hymen is broken, the woman is a walking womb*. That’s it. Any pattens of behavior that might make her second-guess that after the third kid in four years are ground out. Boys didn’t talk about Dirty Sex where girls could hear them, but the internalized patriarchal loathing was astounding. They were like music boxes: wind them up, and listen to them prattle about the divine feminine until they pass out, then discourse on why women should reneg on brain usage once they get hitched.
Weirdly enough, these people sincerely believed that babies were evil (see the written works of St. Agustin of Hippo for details).
Never, ever let anyone tell you that it’s “only about the babies”. The leaders have a fever, and the only cure is turning me legally into a milch-cow.
Mmmmm, chattalicious.
nope (and has anyone ever had a more apt handle? And the rhyming possibilities……) has confused semantics with the real world.
one of the problems with language as a modeling tool is, it ain’t math. It isn’t rigorous. In the real world, there are no paradoxes. In language, there is. This clearly illustrates the weakness of language as a modeling tool, not the perversity of reality.
Clumps of cells are not humans, abortions are not murders.
Really, he’s just winding you guys up: ban his ass already– he’s consumed enough energy, and you’ll never ‘convince’ him, although faced w/an offspring himself …. well, that probably won’t happen.
Meanwhile, he consumes valuable energy, like a vampire. DTMFA, to quote my favorite columnist.
The juxtaposition of these two captures perfectly what, at base, this is really about.
Do you know why it is that anti-choicers are dumbfounded when asked what the penalty should be for women who terminate their pregnancies?
Because compulsory pregnancy is the punishment.
Nope-
Your “consequence” vs. “punishment” conundrum is not that tricky and goes like this…
Since a consequence is the logical outcome of an act-basically all pregnancies are consequences of sex. If a woman chooses to terminate pregnancy and is denied and must carry the pregnancy full term, that would be a punishment.
Again…..pregnancy can be the logical outcome of sex (consequence), unwanted pregnancies required by law to carry full term (punishment.)
So Nope, if you put a fork in your eye, the logical outcome would be pain and most likely you would be blind (consequence) in one eye. Now if you are denied treatment for your eye and had to just suck it up, then that would be (punishment).
See? It is not so hard.
The other day, Barack Obama responded to a question about reproductive education in a way that a lot of pro-choice folks liked. He referred to the challenges of teaching his two daughters strong values, and then said that he feels that if one of his girls makes a mistake she should not have to be punished with a baby.
…
But my kid is not someone’s punishment. She’s not the expected consequence for immoral behavior. She’s a person.
PhoenixRising, I know you from your comments and I know that we generally agree. (And if I wasn’t so stingy about commenting, you’d know me better; it’s my loss that we don’t.) So I hope you’re not offended when I say I think you’re taking this a bit too personally.
And don’t get me wrong. If I were in your circumstance, I probably would too. But I think there is another way to look at this. And maybe I come at it from my particular point of view because I watched my sister place her baby with an adoptive family. She had been pregnant for months before she and my mother sat down and let me know what was going on. We’d recently celebrated Christmas, but nobody had told me she was pregnant. They were afraid I would be mad at her, you see.
Ha! As if. I’ll never forget that moment right after I was told that she was pregnant, but before I knew how she intended to approach it. What it means to be ‘pro-choice’ has never been so clear to me. Like Schrödinger’s cat, I existed for a moment in several different states that at first glance seem mutually exclusive. On the one hand, she might choose to keep her baby. If she did, I would fully support her decision! From her point of view, she had a baby growing inside her. She was the mother, and she wouldn’t be comfortable with anyone else raising her child. I have two kids of my own, so that’s certainly something I can understand. How could I look down on her for wanting to raise her own child?
But on the other hand, she might choose to abort her pregnancy. If she had, I would have completely understood that too! From that point of view, the ball of cells growing in her wasn’t a baby at all. If it had eventually become one, well, it *would* feel like a punishment to her — a baby she never wanted would be forced out of her vagina (or surgically extracted from her, which isn’t much better).
As it so happens, when push came to shove*, she felt like that ball of cells was a baby. But she also felt like she didn’t have the resources to give her baby the kind of life she wanted her to have. So she chose adoption. And this too is something I can understand. I had no problem supporting her decision.
But that brief moment where I didn’t know — I’ll never forget that. The feeling of, Wait, which way should I go to be supportive of her decision? That made me see more clearly than I ever had that I can empathize with every point of view; that I don’t think any of the viewpoints are more right or wrong than the others. How you’d react in that situation is something you can’t know until you’re in there yourself. As a man, I never *will* be there. But I can understand all too well how it must feel to suddenly be faced with that decision. In that situation, there often isn’t a decision to be made. You just find that you know how you feel.
In general, I think this is where Obama was coming from. But I also think that pro-choicers are put into the position of defending abortion so often that it’s easy to see how someone might think that it is the only option on the table. I think Obama was attempting to reassure people that he isn’t “pro-life;” that he can empathize with women who choose abortion. And that made him give the shorthand explanation he gave without including the long winded explanation that I’m giving now**. Unfortunately, “pro-choice” has come to mean “abortion advocate” in in a lot of ways to our collective conscience. But I learned very well from my sister’s experience that that isn’t always what it means.
PhoenixRising, I hope I didn’t overstep any boundries here. Really, I think Obama’s explanation without the caveats would make me feel uncomfortable too, if either of my kids were adopted. But I don’t think that’s how he meant it to be taken, and I hope this far-too-long comment was worth something, even if we ultimately end up disagreeing.
* Horrible pun. I’d say it wasn’t intended, but nobody would believe me. And rightfully so.
** Sorry, Amanda.
Quoth the forced birther:
Wonder how you’d feel if the tables were turned and it was your “rights” that were taken away because someone wanted to impose their religious beliefs on you.* It’s attitudes like this that make me suspect that there’s no way to get the men of the forced birth brigades to see women as anything other than walking baby factories.
Some of the women, on the other hand, might be reachable by forcing them to acknowledge that their abortion = murder equation doesn’t stand up to logic. Force them to think through their position and really think about what they’re advocating.
Another possibility is to get them to recognize that they might be in need of an abortion themselves some day, especially if they’re one of the hard-core forced birthers who thinks a woman should die rather than have an abortion to save her life. (Your own experience, or the experience of someone you know, can sometimes help here. For example, I have a SIL who wouldn’t be alive today if the forced birthers had had their way. Make it personal and you might be able to get through to them.)
* In my experience, the vast majority of the forced birthers I’ve encountered have been religious zealots; the rest of them have joined in because they’re misogynists. Perhaps I’ve lived a sheltered life, but I have not yet met a non-religious/non-misogynist forced birther.
Sez
trollnope:“But I […] found this, actually pretty informative considering the source:
[link deleted]An NRO Symposium on Abortion & Women on National Review Online
At the link they talked to lots of law professors and pro-life folks specifically about Quinlan’s question.
You may wish to read it. Turns out none invoked suicide as an example. And
several were actually somewhat thoughtful about itmost dodged the question entirely.”There. Fixed that sentence for you.
OK, here’s a suggestion. Every man could be forced to have a vasectomy. There could be a policy of storing several sperm samples before the procedure, or perhaps a system whereby one could apply for a temporary reversal in order to have a child. I think adopting such a policy would bring the abortion rate down to virtually zero, don’t you? So, given your insistence that it doesn’t matter whose rights get trampled on as long as the number of abortions is reduced, can we assume that you’d be entirely in favour of this?
The anti-choice argument as to why women shouldn’t be punished is a little more complex than “they havent thought about the women at all” - and believe me, I know, because I’m the one here who was raised a die-hard sign-carrying prolifer from age 3, remember. So I do know the rhetoric from the inside.
The argument goes - see the “Feminists For Life” newsletters for the latest articulations of this - that women who have extramarital sex, or who are married but don’t want kids, and have abortions, are simply brainwashed victims of the sexist liberal establishment propaganda, not realizing that they’re just being used by men as sex objects, and thus being deprived of their right to *real* happiness as Mothers.
Doctors who perform abortions are part of the abusive liberal male predator population, preying on the poor deluded weak abused women and convincing them to get abortions, to make themselves rich. (There is a long and complex and vile history of anti-semitism tangled up in the prolife movement, which I don’t have the time to dig up the resources, but which I will eventually.)
Thus, doctors should be punished with death, but the women who get abortions should be consoled and taught the truth, and not punished, just as a mentally-handicapped participant in a crime would be treated as another victim while the fully-cognizant party would have the book thrown at them, in a just world.
There is editing of facts, Minitrue style, going on (the rates of natural miscarriages, the fact that doctors are also women) but there is a perverse logic to it, and how the anti-abortion rank-and-file think of themselves as the chivalrous protectors and helpers of women, on the rational thinking level. (On the subconscious, there is tremendous resentment and disgust for women generally and “loose” women particularly, and the “punish them with childbirth consequences” is entirely correct a translation.)
That the logic all revolves around considering women not human enough to be rational moral agents (and thus deserving of punishment) until and unless they have embraced conservative beliefs (at which point they become wise and just and so on, being now in tune with Nature and God and all) is ellided.
But then, that’s kind of like the empowerful feminist attitude that women who support the patriarchy shoudn’t be criticized, poor dears, because *they* aren’t autonomous moral agents, *either*.
Oh Alexander, where’s the fun in planning your child’s existance in advance versus a “oh this is fun don’t wanna stop whoopsie, your problem NOW bitch!”??
Honestly, will no one think of teh fun???
I love it when people say “I hate to say it,” then proceed to criticize at length. The passive-aggressive smiley face icon at the end is especially appropriate.
You’re missing the point. It’s not my job to deprogram Christians. It IS my job to deprogram stupidity. Not all Christians are stupid: many of them are pro-choice. Many others who are anti-abortion understand that they don’t get to impose their morality on others. Mocking Ashley’s incoherent logic is a (childish, admittedly) tool used to clue her and the rest of the class into the incoherence and authoritarianism of the anti-abortion lobby. If Ashley is saying that she, personally, would not have an abortion, that’s her right and I wouldn’t give her grief for it. But Ashley is saying that abortion is wrong in general, and should be punished. And too many people have absorbed through propaganda the idea that the “pro-life” position is morally correct and/or logically consistent, and has something to do with actually being pro life, that this idea must be challenged. Yes, I should engage with her in a respectful manner. But her ilk don’t respect others by virtue of their attitude toward others’ bodies.
“Thus, doctors should be punished with death, but the women who get abortions should be consoled and taught the truth, and not punished, just as a mentally-handicapped participant in a crime would be treated as another victim while the fully-cognizant party would have the book thrown at them, in a just world.”
And yet, strangely, one conservative beit noir is the idea that mentally handicapped criminals aren’t eligible for the death penalty. It’s like their ethics are only situational
Felagund:
Part of being a professional educator, IMHO, is recognizing the power of your authority over a captive audience and the ethical limitations on that power. I don’t know what classes you teach, but unless it’s Introduction to Logic and you’re using anti-choice rhetoric as an example of logical fallacies, the abortion debate is probably not relevant, and you do have a duty - to your own professional ethics and to the students who’re paying you to teach - not to use your privileged position to push a particular political paradigm, especially given that the power imbalance between teacher and student makes it difficult for a student to effectively argue against you.
Argue with them all you want - but do it outside class, where the power imbalance isn’t so pronounced.
This is a novel argument, and a good one to get people to admit they haven’t thought about it, but I question where it leads. Really, there are only three possible responses, and none of them actually move the conversation forward.
First, they could (and most likely) will go blank and say they never thought about it. Thing is, you haven’t flipped their thinking to “oh, abortion shouldn’t be illegal,” they’re still stuck thinking it has, just that they never thought about punishment. This leads them to joining one of the two following answers.
They could say a woman should receive jail time. While this is useful in letting you know what kind of asshole they are, it also doesn’t move the conversation forward. At this point, you’re not discussing whether abortion should be legal or not, you’re discussing whether a woman should receive a murder or manslaughter sentence, which is an interesting legal quibble, but even if you manage to get them to admit that they think women deserve life sentences for fetus-murder, they aren’t going to change their mind. These are not people with an excess of compassion and empathy, remember. They actually believe in retribution and general deterrence, even in spite of historical evidence that it doesn’t work. I’m sure you could lead them to say that a few hundred or thousand women should be put to death so that it will deter other women from obtaining abortions. But all you’ve done is get them to prove that they’re assholes.
Finally, they could say that women shouldn’t receive jail time - this is the most likely response, and it’s the one we’ve heard before. They say that the doctors should go to jail, but not the poor, misled women. They even talk about attempted suicides, as noted above. Again, you could probably lead them to say that pregnant women who are not overjoyed about their condition should be placed in community Birthing and Re-education Centers. This argument may work on a few of the female protesters, but maybe not - they don’t think that they’re insane, just the women who choose abortion. Again though, you’re not getting them to change their thinking about abortion being legal or illegal, you’re just arguing about what the punishment should be for it.
I don’t see any way in which this argument leads to someone agreeing that abortion should be legal. Anyone, help me out?
I got into an argument with an anti-abortion “libertarian” yesterday, who, had I used the “should women go to jail” argument would have happily said yes. His main argument - one we’ve heard over and over - was that women should face the “consequences” of their “risks”: that if birth control is 99.9% effective, then they’re accepting a known .1% risk and like a losing gambler, should accept their loss.
So, I led him around to finally making (and agreeing to) two categories of allowed abortion and not-allowed abortion… abortion was to be allowed where someone didn’t voluntarily accept the risks (such as rape, or unforeseen medical problems) and wasn’t to be allowed where they did (such as failed birth control). And then I pointed out that birth control can fail due to manufacturing defect, or that antibiotics can prevent oral birth control from working, and that while someone may believe they’re facing a .1% risk, they’re actually facing a 100% risk, and this should place them firmly in the “didn’t voluntarily accept the risks” category. It would be just as wrong for a casino to cheat a gambler, taking the almost 50-50 odds on red on roulette and making them 0%, and that if it were him at the table, he’d be justifiably upset, and that it was immoral to hold someone responsible for involuntary, unknown risks. This actually worked. Mind you, it would only work on the “libertarians”, not on people who believe in a fundamental right-to-life-for-blastocysts.
Theaetetus — because a lot of these women have themselves had abortions, or know someone who has had them. Ask them if they know anyone who had an abortion, an if so should they be in jail. Explain that there are no “extenuating circumstances” that would have gotten them, or their sisters, or their friends out of jailtime, or community homes, or whatever, and that their little “oopsie, ‘but this is different’” logic won’t stand up in a court of law, because every woman has her own reasons for getting an abortion, and having it be illegal (particularly with the threat of jail time) isn’t going to decrease the need for the procedure.
As for the people who believe that it’s perfectly acceptable for women to go to jail, ask them if it’s ok for them to die… to get the death penalty. If they say no, point out that women tend to die a lot more when abortion is outlawed. If they say yes — ask them what charges should be brought against a woman who miscarries — involuntary manslaughter? I mean, there’s no doubt about it, when a woman miscarries, her body is ejecting the baby. It may not have been intentional, but this results in Dead Baby and should be accounted for legally.
Whatever works — as long as there are fewer abortions, I’m happy.
Oh, so you’re for comprehensive sex education, then? Tubal ligations and vasectomies for anyone who wants those, right? Condoms and EC in a plethora of vending machines that are easily accessible even to teenagers? No pharmacy in America can ever refuse to fill a birth control prescription? Family planning services free to all? Insurance must cover all contraception, even the installation of IUDs, or male birth control? Oh, and giving more opportunities for women to make decent wages so that if she does want children, that she can take care of them? That her career or schooling doesn’t suffer because she’s pregnant? Or support for women who’ve been abused, so that they don’t have to rely on their abuser?
Because that’s just the tip of the iceberg on how to reduce abortions - there are so many other ways to reduce abortions other than outlawing them, that if you only consider outlawing it, you suffer from lack of reality and/or creativity.
In other words, to reduce abortions, you should want to give women full and equal rights.
The law enforcement aspects to illegal abortion bother me. My grandmother had 9 miscarriages over the course of her marriage, good Catholic lady in the 1940s trying to have babies. In this brave new world, is she going to be investigated for possible homicide every time?
@ #40: Well, as long as you’ve established that you don’t think women are human beings. Easy position to have when you aren’t one. I hope to god you don’t have daughters, though I’m not naive enough to believe that some poor woman hasn’t married you, the victim of propaganda that tells women we have to settle for men who hate us.
God, you do this for a living day in and day out, and still, the shocking lack of value some men put on women’s lives will astound you.
Shorter bitter men who show up and scream about fetuses on my blog: We will only get one shot to breed and we will not be denied an heir!
That’s a good one. Will definitely use it. The miscarriage = involuntary manslaughter is a good one too.
Not sure how well that one will work - these aren’t people with a great grasp of history or statistics. They believe that putting people in jail provides an effective deterrent (which is why we now have 1 in 100 adults in jail), and ignore all evidence to the contrary. Additionally, the argument that illegal back-alley abortions are more likely to cause death fits nicely into their deterrence and retribution philosophy - it would be another deterrent, convincing some women that it’s better to just have the baby.
There’s another option I just thought of, too, and it’s a horrible one - they could say that women should pay large fines if they get an abortion. Essentially, this would limit it to rich people, something they’ve never had a real problem with.
Well, that’s only reasonable, right? And while we have no problems with oral birth control per se, if it fails and an egg is fertilized, then continuing to take birth control for the first month or two can severely damage it at its most vulnerable, so we’re going to have to outlaw birth control. Oh, and require every woman consider herself pre-pregnant, not drink or smoke, take vitamin supplements, and undergo monthly pregnancy testing so that we can be sure when pregnancy starts. You know, for freedom.
Seriously, you get that impression off so many anti-choice men, like their plan to get married and have kids was basically banking on the off chance someone will stupidly fuck them and then have to marry them because the law says she’s got no choice. And the feminists, with all our talk about women’s right to choose, are depriving them of their major opportunity to never have to do housework again.
Bellatrys, thanks for the summary. What you’ve said really drives home why it’s important to note that 60% of women who have abortions already have children, so the idea that they just don’t know about the joys of motherhood is incorrect.
It’s also important to point out to fence sitters that, using the anti-choice movement’s logic about how women who have non-procreative sex can’t be really enjoying it, but are just dupes, then contraception must also be banned for women’s “own good”.
However, the number one thing that reduces the abortion rate is contraception. Ergo, all those anti-choice groups that also oppose contraception’s legality actually are working to make the abortion rate go up, an astounding gap in logic that nonetheless doesn’t bother the willfully stupid.
But I’m not sure that the dumb girls waving bloody fetus signs thought about it much at all.
They believe that putting people in jail provides an effective deterrent
…except you can’t put someone in jail before they’ve committed the crime. So, are they just going to pre-emptively throw every pregnant woman in jail lest she try to seek an illegal abortion?
And pay for housing and prenatal care? I think not… No, better to simply punish a few women extremely harshly as an “example” to the rest.
Sheesh.
The only way out of the pro-life logic merry go round, for me, who, yes, did worry about later term abortions causing pain and suffering to an innocent, was the realization that the anti-abortion approach *does not work.* It hurts women, often kills them, and increases abortions. I wanted to be pro-life to decrease suffering; I am now pro-choice because that is the only true way to do so.
It is a comforting thing to take refuge in the moral purity of “individual rights begin at conception” but that is because it avoids all the messy, painful, confusing bits of reality that pregnancy actually involves. (and a great deal of science besides).
It is not possible to draw a nice, bright line between mother and fetus. They are, for all intents and purposes, one being during pregnancy, and only the mother is capable of making decisions. Furthermore, as she is actually a full human being with legal rights, to cripple or remove her ability to make decisions that will affect her life in all aspects because she is pregnant is clearly morally wrong. By definition, it condemns all women who will get pregnant to second-class status.
Nothing is more effective at reducing abortions than equal opportunities, contraception and education.
Pregnancy belongs to women because their own bodies belong to women. The presence of a fetus does not change that fact. Trying to reduce abortions via laws rather than via contraception and choice is like trying to prevent obesity via mandatory feeding tubes and food rations instead of teaching kids the food pyramid and how to exercise.
…except that punishment rarely serves as a deterrent to people who are desperate. If you’re starving, the threat of getting your hand cut off isn’t going to stop you from stealing bread to eat. If you’re trying to keep your husband from beating up your kids, the threat of jail isn’t going to stop you from shooting him (if that’s what you think it will take)… and if you’re pregnant and desperately don’t want to be because you can’t afford it or will suffer abuse or ostracization (is that a word?) because of it, it’s better to take your chances and risk jail if succeeding means you’ll get out of a lifetime of punishment.
If you can believe it, I’ve actually gotten people to reconsider their opinion on abortion. The secret is to keep bringing it back to the woman or the man in question.
You know, this debate always confuses me. Well I should clarify, the pro-lifers side of the debate confuses me. I’m a biologist, went to a high ranked college, and not a single one of my professors ever talked about abortion or any of the biological aspects of it directly, we were simply expected as decent biologists in training to be able to form an informed opinion on the subject, and so I did.
People who shout as loud as they can that life starts at conception, show an amazing lack of knowledge about basic biological principles. Life didn’t start at conception, both sperm and egg were alive before conception. Were the two gametes viable outside of the very narrow conditions of their immediate environment and biological purpose? No. Does that make them any less living? No.
Life is life. However, this doesn’t make it a human. Will the fertilized egg become a human at some point…sure, if a huge number of biological and environmental conditions are met. Is the zygote human life from the start? No more than the egg or sperm were. They all have potential, but as of the moment of conception that’s all it is, potential.
Abortion isn’t bad, it isn’t wrong from a biological or, in my opinion, from a moral aspect. It’s a woman’s right, to decide what to do concerning the mass of human cells in her uterus. I’m a guy, I understand that I have no say in the matter. If directly involved as the former owner of 23 of the 46 chromosomes, I may have an opinion, but I will damn well keep it to myself unless asked by the only other person involved and the only person to have a say…the Woman.
Abortion isn’t killing a human being, it’s terminating a mass of human cells. And it’s a woman’s choice whether she has the procedure or not.
An Abortion opponent above said they wanted abortions reduced to zero. I don’t want zero, I’d like something close to zero, but not for the reasons he stated. I’d like to see real sex education in school, real and readily available contraception for both genders (I’d love to see a male version of the pill, it’s got to be possible), and just general improvements in the standard of living for everyone. Those steps alone would reduce the abortion rate. It will never be zero, contraception isn’t 100% and there is the medical requirements of the woman to take into consideration (as well as the cases of rape and incest), but still, if we actually cared about people, and made sure that everyone was treated fairly, and education, and had a decent standard of living, including medical care, we might be able to reduce the abortion rate for good reasons.
I don’t know, I ramble I guess… well there is my opinion for what it’s worth.
“…except you can’t put someone in jail before they’ve committed the crime. So, are they just going to pre-emptively throw every pregnant woman in jail lest she try to seek an illegal abortion?”
You CAN put someone in jail (or more likely commit them) if they are “a danger to themselves or others”.
It would be extremely easy for some fundnut to decide that the “full human being” in the woman (currently cleverly disguised as a blob) is in danger.
If the Cheney/Bush administration has taught us anything, never underestimate just how far ideologues will go in pursuit of their dream/nightmare/utopia/dystopia/white-whale…
MikeEss: I’m just a simple hyper-chicken from a backwoods asteroid, but aren’t there charges that have to be brought before you can put someone in jail–so even if there’s a credible “danger to themselves or others” aren’t there charges that go with that, like conspiracy etc?
I am a woman who can’t use hormonal birth control for medical reasons, and I’ve had a condom break on me when I was a teenager. Regardless of my political opinion, I would never be able to go through an abortion (I freak out just getting a finger prick for a blood test at the doctor), and I am aware of the very negative consequences getting pregnant would have for me.
Therefore, in my sexual relationships I stick to oral/anal (with a condom)/manual sex. It isn’t the ideal solution (athough I still have a lot of fun), but the cost/benefit analysis says that this is the best one for now.
Sometimes I wish I could consider abortion an option so that I could have the sex I wanted, knowing I had an out. But when it comes right down to it, I just can’t do it. That doesn’t mean abortion should be illegal, but it does mean that PIV sex is a gamble that certainly does have bad conseqences if you don’t want to have a baby or an abortion.
I wish there was an on/off switch for my fertility.
Yes, but they don’t get this. These are the same people who advocate the death penalty for almost every crime, because it scares them so it must scare everyone else, and people always think about all the potential ramifications before they do something.
Protective custody… you can hold someone for a “limited time” in the case of a “credible threat” to cause harm to themselves or others. And that’s so poorly defined that I’m sure some jurisdictions would try to stretch it to nine months in a breeding center.
Well, I’m just an unfrozen caveman computer programmer…
I believe the charges can be brought by the community/state/etc. on behalf of their citizens, which would naturally include The Blob. And, of course, I could be wrong.
The Yoo “Torture Memo”, the rightwing nuts on SCOTUS, the “Unitary Executive”, “Signing Statements”, etc., have left me believing the legal fabric in this country has holes the size of supertankers in it.
I don’t have much faith anymore that reason will win out over ignorance, malice, and Koolaid-flavored ideology…
Mighty Ponygirl: not really, if you are considered to be a “danger to your self or others” you can be detained and placed under observation. It’s the rational behind involuntary psychiatric holds and admissions.
And with the administration we have now, I’m with Mike, I wouldn’t put it past them to try and claim that wanting an abortion, could be considered being a danger to “others” and therefore should be detained.
Nonsense.
I’m not pushing a particular political paradigm. I’m pushing awareness of the distinction between personal beliefs and political agendas, and awareness of the logical and moral incoherence of a set of received ideas. Students can argue all they want: it’s a wonderful tool for getting them to see these differences themselves. If you think that logical coherence is a political paradigm, you’ve spent too much time watching Fox.
Damn, the concern troll really did “win” in this thread, that’s really sad too. Maybe he sucked in the last thread, I didn’t see it, but reading this one on its own he came off as “trying to get a real answer” (with only a tad too much of the armchair quarterback) and he managed to make the regulars look like “screaming close-minded liberals”. Ouch, that right-wing frame survived mostly intact.
Maybe in the future we could just point the concern trolls to a form letter-style post similar to this that has all of their standard lines in it with links to more detailed essays. Something like:
And then after that we can ignore them.
Uh, No. From someone who works at Planned Parenthood.
Just no. You are, entirely and apparently unapologetically, wrong.
So, stop it.
Damn, the concern troll really did “win” in this thread, that’s really sad too.
Well, in the sense that a three-year-old throwing a tantrum “wins” by getting his parents to ignore him.
You may want to read the other thread and find out why all of us who already encountered nope have no interest at all in engaging him — he argues dishonestly and then tries to claim that he “won” on the splitting of the thinnest hairs you’ve ever seen.
i am so very sad that troll number 2 didn’t answer the question about forced vasectomy.
i needed a hearty laugh.
The one true vegan, But basically, the law of the land as it is now is that pregnant women are forced to carry to term in their 2nd and 3rd trimesters.
Uh, No. From someone who works at Planned Parenthood.
Just no. You are, entirely and apparently unapologetically, wrong.
So, stop it.
Well I really am ignorant of this, and that was my understanding, but if you can explain how and why I am mistaken, I really would be grateful.
Thank you.
Not to be too wide-eyed and naive, but … yes, if you’re in danger to yourself or others — do they really throw you in jail ? I know that our CJS is really f-ed up in how they treat the mentally ill, but if you’re actually considered to be so completely mentally distraught that you could harm yourself or others, is it legal to put someone in jail? Doesn’t it hold in the fifth amendment that you are entitled to due process in our justice system?
I guess this does open up another venue for quizzing the anti-choice. Should getting an abortion qualify as a felony or a misdemeanor? If only a misdemeanor — should murder be a misdemeanor, since fetus killing = murder? If a felony — again, not only back to the jail sentence, but there’s that whole slew of “after release” that a woman would have to deal with: she will find it harder to find a job because she’ll be required to check off that box on her application because she’d been convicted of a felony. Lack of money/a stable job is one of the primary reasons women seek abortions, so convicting them of a felony will probably make them MORE LIKELY to need an abortion in the future, not less.
In the United States, abortion is legal, even in the third trimester, to protect the life or health of the mother. There are no restrictions that I know of on second trimester.
Do you live in a different country? We can examine the laws there, too, if you’d like.
I think you mean Carhart v. Gonzales.
Love the blog.
Yes, but it’s not “jail” per se, it’s a hospital with protective custody areas. Think tied to the beds. There are also suicide watch areas in jails that have cameras, round the clock observation, and no shoelaces or blankets that could be used to make nooses. ‘Cause there’s nothing that gets a person feeling like they want to live like a jail cell with no blankets.
Believe it or not, the argument around this is that they haven’t been charged with a crime, and the rights of due process only attach then.
I’m not really sure they’d have a problem with women being forced out of the workplace…
The fetus is exactly the point, and the mother’s “rights” are irrelevant. My main priority is to prevent that baby from being dismembered. My secondary priority is the mother’s political rights, the mother’s health, the mother’s life… All of this is a political position — a matter of opinion. It’s not that I am a lower life form than you “pro-choicers;” I just disagree with you and operate from fundamentally different premises and moral priorities.
So your premise it that a fetus’ life is always worth more than the mother’s. Just out of curiosity, what if it’s a female fetus? After all, once it’s born, she’s going to turn into one of those fetal vessels without any rights anyway, so why would it be wrong to abort a female fetus? Does a female fetus have rights until the moment of her birth, and then those rights are taken away? If she starts off with no rights because she’s female, why would it be wrong to abort since you have two entities with no rights anyway?
I think you mean Carhart v. Gonzales.
Love the blog.
I have lots of things to say, but in the interest of not bloviating as much as usual (and to tend to the small sick one in my care) I’ll just answer nope:
Yes. I believe a woman should have the right to terminate her pregnancy at any point. That’s right, I am full-bore “abortion on demand” for the whole nine months.
I’m a mother, so I do know all about the consequences of sex and the process of pregnancy.
But here’s the thing: being a woman, I’m aware that women are human beings, not second-rate, mentally-challenged walking wombs.
I simply cannot imagine a woman going through 6, 7, 8 months of pregnancy and then deciding on a whim “You know what? I don’t want to be pregnant anymore. To hell with this, let’s go to the abortionist!” That’s a strawfeminist.
Second trimester abortions happen mostly for two reasons: 1. regulations and restrictions placed on first term abortions, or 2. genetic testing done after 20 weeks determining Down Syndrome, or less often, other genetic defects.
“Abortion-on-demand” gets rid of #1.
When women get third trimester abortions, it’s b/c something tragic has happened to the fetus during development–no brain, severe brittle bone syndrome, fetal death. These are wanted pregnancies, but bad things happened and–oddly–these women believe they have a right to health and to preserve their right to future reproductive ability.
This is STILL a long post–aren’t y’all glad I edited?
I’m not really sure they’d have a problem with women being forced out of the workplace…
The leadership, sure. But the groundlings might realize that the sole-breadwinner model doesn’t exactly fit reality (even if they wish it were otherwise).
Gladly. Dispelling ignorance is my job. And actually don’t take it personally. There’s a lot of intentional obfuscation in the media, and some accidental, out there preventing people from understanding these laws with a certainty.
The only thing that has been outlawed, pertaining to the termination of a pregnancy, is ONE VARIATION of a third-trimester abortion, a particular type of dilation and extraction.
Other types of abortions are still available in the third trimester.
If some states have restrictions on second-trimester abortions, i’ve never heard a breath about it. Illinois certainly does not.
We DO, however, restrict chemical abortion (RU-486 and its ilk) to the first trimester to reduce complications. At 8 weeks, most clinics will require a patient to have a D&C (dilation and curettage) procedure, which is outpatient surgery.
Now where’s that rainbow star thingy from “The More You Know”?
Ponygirl: Usually if it’s a psychiatric reason you’re a Danger to yourself or others, they don’t through your in jail. Generally you’re forcibly admitted to the hospital for a stay of up to 72 hours for evaluation, if it is determined that your are a legitimate danger, the stay can be extended. This is used for people who are suicidal or thought to become violent. They’ll admit you for as long as they feel it will take to bring you back to stability, through medication or removal of the issue that caused the mental break.
It isn’t a criminal justice matter usually, usually it’s because someone is mentally unstable or suicidal. I think Mike is saying that he wouldn’t be surprised if Bush and Co. make use of the law in other aspects of life.
Oh, to clarify in my previous comment: when i say “We do restrict chemical abortion” WE = Planned parenthood and many similar clinics.
This is based simply on the fact that a larger fetus, though honestly at 8 weeks it’s still ridiculously small, is more difficult for the uterus to expel on its own than a first-trimester tiny cell blob.
RU-486 abortions after 8 weeks are basically more prone to not work, requiring extra intervention–whereas the surgical option’s pretty foolproof.
“I’m not really sure they’d have a problem with women being forced out of the workplace…”
I’m sure they wouldn’t have a problem at all. Fortunately, Margaret Atwood provided a handy solution:
(from the wikipedia entry on The Handmaid’s Tale):
“Unwomen are sterile women, widows, feminists, lesbians, nuns and politically dissident women — all women who are incapable of social integration within the Republic’s strict gender divisions. They are exiled to “the colonies”, areas of both agricultural production and deadly pollution, as are handmaids who fail to produce a child after three two-year assignments.”
A place for everyone, and everyone in their place…
If Troll McTrollpants loves this idea of Fetal Rights Uberalles so much, why doesn’t he/she go to ElSalvador? Right, go take care of kids there who have been orphaned because their mothers were forced to die because their doctors would be prosecuted if they saved their lives? Go see the consequences of extreme Catholic Church interference in what is supposed to be a secular state. Go see what sort of death, mayhem, and suffering results from such an absolutist and ill-informed death affirming stance.
Oh yeah, the pwecious widdle fetuses died anyway.
OK — so, we’re accepting that if a person is a threat to themselves or others, they go to a hospital and are forcibly restrained.
The antichoicers are firmly in the belief that this is necessary to ensure that this is a necessary evil to prevent baby killing.
So, if a woman finds out she’s pregnant, at what point do we make the decision to strap her down for 9 months because she might sneak off for an abortion?
If she’s unmarried?
If she’s poor?
If she has a history of genetic anomolies in the family?
If she’s got a health condition that the pregnancy could exacerbate?
Naw, you’re not trying hard enough, Mighty Ponygirl.
See, if all the uppity women left the workforce, then there’d be fewer workers. More jobs available than workers! More demand than supply!
Salaries would go up, enabling men to provide for their chattel.
for reals, you know.
“I think Mike is saying that he wouldn’t be surprised if Bush and Co. make use of the law in other aspects of life.”
The Soviet Union made great use of “psychiatric hospitals” as a method of controlling political troublemakers. Since America v2.0 seems to take many Soviet techniques as inspiration for our own repressions, it wouldn’t surprise me to see this arrive here too…
If it were up the the anti-choicers, they’d probably do it if the person showed even the hint of rational and independent thought (that’s rational by the popularly accepted definition, not what anti-choicers use).
I swear, the arguments they use are completely crazy.
Likewise. From another reason (as if one is needed), the law is also pragmatic, and laws should be made that work. It is unworkable to have a vague limit on abortion based on some metric of ‘when a fetus can feel pain’ or somesuch, because it’s unmeasurable. Further, any limits have to have exceptions built in, because there are extreme circumstances - life of the mother being the easiest example. So a law that states that life begins at birth is much more workable than one that states it begins at some arbitrary, unmeasurable point earlier with exceptions for situations A through G.
Thank you, one true vegan, that was educational. Googling further, Guttmacher says,
In the more famous of the two decisions, Roe v. Wade, the Court declared that a woman has a constitutionally protected right, in consultation with her physician, to terminate a pregnancy free of state interference or intrusion, at least in the early stages of pregnancy (defined loosely as the first trimester of gestation). In the second trimester—or more specifically, prior to the viability of the fetus—the Court ruled that states could impose only those regulations that were reasonably related to the protection of the woman’s health.
The Court acknowledged that after fetal viability, the state has acquired a “compelling” interest in “potential life” and could prohibit abortion altogether “except when it is necessary to preserve the life or health of the mother.” Viability was set as the “compelling” point “because the fetus then presumably has the capacity for meaningful life outside the mother’s womb. State regulation protective of fetal life after viability thus has both logical and biological justifications.”
So I stand corrected about that, and I sincerely thank you for explaining. (Also, I suspect that may be news to some of those in this thread since no one till you brought it up.)
I think my argument still stands though with a bit of a fixup. So instead of putting my question in terms of trimesters, let’s just put it in terms of fetal viability (which I think makes much more sense than trimester anyway.)
Is it a consequence or a punishment that the state can force women to carry their baby to term after fetal viability?
I think it’s just a consequence. Ithaqua considers it a punishment. Amanda has never had the balls to answer.
MikeEss: It’s sad, that so many things that, just a decade ago, I would have said worrying about was just being paranoid…now, I actually consider it a possibility that could actually happen.
Caren,
I appreciate your answer, but that still isn’t the answer to the question I asked.
If the state prevents you from abortion on demand in the 2nd and 3rd trimester as my question originally stated, or after fetal viability as Roe V. Wade actually decided,
Is your being forced to carry the fetus to term a consequence, or a punishment?
“So, if a woman finds out she’s pregnant, at what point do we make the decision to strap her down for 9 months because she might sneak off for an abortion?”
Excellent question. I would assume it would depend on the woman’s history, and any previous pregnancies.
“If she’s unmarried?”
Well, sure. Can’t take a chance some feminist will talk her into doing something wrong. Of course, she will be forced to give up the child to the State to be raised, educated, and placed in a job/military…
“If she’s poor?” - Not so clear. It depends on whether the social conservatives see being poor as the greater sin. They might require mandatory abortion followed by sterilization…
“If she has a history of genetic anomolies in the family?” - No. All have a role to play in society, no matter what their problems are…
“If she’s got a health condition that the pregnancy could exacerbate?” - If it’s God’s will that the vessel die, so be it…
The biggest problem we pro-choicers have is taking seriously the idea that it could really be that harsh if the anti-abortionists take power. I don’t think there’s any question that if they were in a position to have complete control over sexuality and reproduction (which is really what they seek), they would be as harsh or harsher than we can conceive.
The Handmaid’s Tale could be made to look pleasant in comparison…
Enforcement is the defining element of punishment. There is no way to get around that unless you want to pretend words don’t mean what everyone means by them.
What I mean by forced is that the state can rule it illegal for an abortion to take place.
So when the Supreme Court says the states have a compelling interest and can make that abortion illegal and thus force you to carry the abortion to term (or if you’re lucky/rich get to a different state if you can) is that a consequence or a punishment?
Read my post #93. Basing a law off a vague, difficult to measure, and relatively arbitrary test is impractical and impracticable. Further, it requires exceptions to be built in for the life/health of the mother. Not having these exceptions dooms a certain percentage of women to death - and with no possible justification, since the fetus is dead, too.
Your hypothetical question includes no exceptions. Therefore, the state forcing women to carry a fetus to term necessarily condemns some women to death, a death that can be easily prevented. Therefore, this is punishment, not a “consequence”.
Further, “consequences” are only reasonably enforced if a person knowledgeably accepts them. It is unjustifiable and immoral to force someone to perform a fraudulent contract. It is likewise unjustifiable and immoral to force someone to perform a contact entered into under duress, misrepresentation, or material mistake.
The “consequences” you point to here are almost always the result of a material mistake or misrepresentation. If we wouldn’t, as a society, force someone into involuntary servitude under a contract that should be voidable, why would you argue that we should force women into involuntary servitude in a similar situation?
Why did the second troll not answer the forced vasectomy question? It was le awesome, I scrolled down all the way looking for a response. I mean, if no price is too high to prevent abortion, no rights too sacred not to be trampled in the service of life, that plan is BREEEELIANT. Why the fundies no promote? why why why why why why why?
For some reason I have this vision of a “mothers-to-be”
concentration campresort, where all women found to be pregnant are mandatorily sent upon diagnosis that they are pregnant. Theseconcentration campsresorts (there would have to be more than one) would be fully equipped to provide all the needs of a pregnant woman throughout her pregnancy. Food, shelter, entertainment, and medical care all fully provided at taxpayer expense. A guaranteed 9-month full ride for all pregnant women.Provision would also have to made for postnatal care for some period as well, because we don’t want to have all that taxpayer money wasted by having the kid die within a few months, right?
Are the anti-choicers prepared to push for these
concentration campsresorts? (And the tax increases to pay for them!) Because otherwise they’re just insisting on another unfunded mandate based on ideological dogma, which is what Conservatives continuously berate Liberals for advocating.“…that plan is BREEEELIANT. Why the fundies no promote? why why why why why why why?”
‘Cause they think it would turn us into a nation of girly-men who wouldn’t stand a chance against the IslamoCommunoFascistoLibrul plot to destroy freedom and democracy…
“I don’t think there’s any question that if they were in a position to have complete control over sexuality and reproduction (which is really what they seek), they would be as harsh or harsher than we can conceive.”
For example, El Salvador, where abortion is illegal even to save the life of the mother.
If any anti-choicers are still reading this thread: is this the kind of labial police state you want?
Is it a consequence or a punishment that the state can force women to carry their baby to term after fetal viability?
This has been answered at least 15 times on this thread, Nope. The problem is that you seem to think “agreeing with you” is the only viable “answer.”
It’s a punishment. Pregnancy, not CHILDBIRTH, is a consequence of sex. Childbirth is ONE possible consequence of pregnancy. Abortion can be another consequence of a pregnancy.
Removing someone’s ability to cope with their consequences as they deem best is a punishment. Period.
I’ve said several times that I am assuming exceptions for health of the mother. So assume the law fits your needs for exceptions.
But if you don’t fall into those exceptions, and the fetus is past viability, the state can apparently force you to carry the fetus to term. Consequence or punishment?
Further, “consequences” are only reasonably enforced if a person knowledgeably accepts them. It is unjustifiable and immoral to force someone to perform a fraudulent contract. It is likewise unjustifiable and immoral to force someone to perform a contact entered into under duress, misrepresentation, or material mistake.
The “consequences” you point to here are almost always the result of a material mistake or misrepresentation. If we wouldn’t, as a society, force someone into involuntary servitude under a contract that should be voidable, why would you argue that we should force women into involuntary servitude in a similar situation?
If I understand what you are saying, that was my point back in the old thread.
I compared Amanda’s insistence that carrying a fetus to term was a conservative’s punishment with her insistence that forcing a man to pay child support for 18 years for a baby he never wanted and wanted terminated was merely a consequence and not a punishment.
As for me, I’m pro-choice in the same way I suspect most Democrats if not most of America is. Safe, legal, and rare. Once the fetus is past viability, assuming the pregnancy does not threaten the mother’s life, and assuming the fetus is in good health (and trying not to encourage eugenics) and is not expected to have Downs or similar illnesses,
Then yeah, I guess I am saying that abortions should be illegal, which basically says that yes, the woman is in involuntary servitude to the fetus inside her. How long is that involuntary servitude? It seems to be about 3-5 months? And I’ll acknowledge that. But I don’t think that’s a punishment. I think that’s a consequence. And I think it seems more like a “guardian role” or “fiduciary responsibility” or something like that.
Past the point of viability, I think science IS on the side that the fetus can feel pain, can respond to stimulus, and is probably a thinking human.
I think making abortion illegal past viability is a natural consequence of pregnancy and not punishment for being pregnant.
I am not sure what makes this question so hard for people to answer here.
Why the fundies no promote? why why why why why why why?
because secretly they fear (and largely correctly) that the only way a woman will put up (and out) for them for prolonged periods of time is if they can knock them up and keep ‘em broke.
Just like possession of crack cocaine.
It’s neither. Making something illegal is utterly meaningless. It’s the punishments that result from illegal behavior upon arrest and conviction that give the laws meaning. Otherwise they’re just ink on a page, to cite the cliche’. The state declaring abortion illegal will not, repeat, will not magically end abortion. Just as making possession and use of crack cocaine illegal has not magically ended the use of crack cocaine.
You are living in a fantasy land where passing a law makes something so. It doesn’t. You need to win the philosophical argument that abortion is morally wrong regardless of circumstance if you truly want to stamp out abortion. You are fighting the wrong fight. And you are losing it.
So one true vegan,
If you think it’s a punishment (and with no data, I suspect most of America would disagree with you), then
It’s a punishment. Pregnancy, not CHILDBIRTH, is a consequence of sex. Childbirth is ONE possible consequence of pregnancy. Abortion can be another consequence of a pregnancy.
How come forcing a man to pay for 18 years of child support for a baby he doesn’t want, and for a baby in which he used contraception that failed, and for a baby in which he told the mother long before viability should be aborted, how come THAT is a consequence, and not a punishment? How come that is not involuntary servitude for a contract that should be voidable?
.That one is kinda important. And if the fetus doesn’t die, the infant outside the womb often does, because, well, no mother. That particular troll got me more pissed off that usual, because he was saying that, if he could, he would have used force to make sure that my spouse died and that our son (from a subsequent pregnancy) was never born, all to protect the “rights” of a clump of cells that never would have survived to term. Stupid and evil.
“Oh, deluded pro-choicers! Can’t you just see that if you just give a way A FEW MORE of your rights, everything will be so much better? Rabid conservative monkeys will be THRILLED with just those few…they definitely won’t come after the whole kit n kaboodle.”
“hey…why the anger? I’m ONE OF YOU! Can’t you dopes see that?! And if you were more like me [read, at all] then I’d be even MORE one of you!”
gah. it burns.
Also, I suspect that may be news to some of those in this thread since no one till you brought it up.
Well, no, it’s because most of the commenters here are intelligent enough to do their own homework before they run around all “spoon feed me!!11!!!!spooon feeed me!!111if you don’t spoon feed me I winz teh internets cuz you are stoopid!!!111.”
“…because secretly they fear (and largely correctly) that the only way a woman will put up (and out) for them for prolonged periods of time is if they can knock them up and keep ‘em broke.”
I strongly suspect they are correct in this belief. nope’s presence here (and Bismarck’s on the other thread) only lend more evidence to support this theory…
liberalrob, I think you need to find someone else to fight with.
I am pro-choice.
(I think enforcement is that doctors know they can lose their license and possibly go to jail, just as if they misuse their ability to prescribe drugs….)
muahahahahaha you think you have me, sucka. but you don’t.
Because you are trying to hide a link in the chain of events and think i won’t catch it.
the chain of consequences is best illustrated in a diagram, and alas i can’t do one here. but basically:
consequences of sex: a) pregnancy b) no pregnancy
consequences of PREGNANCY: a) abortion, b) childbirth
consequences of childbirth: a) a baby.
consequences of existence of baby: a) child support,
b) you are a deadbeat and suck.
ergo,c/s is a consequence. if we forced you to pay child support but denied you access to EMPLOYMENT, THAT would be a punishment.
Got it? Doubt it.
(and personally? I think men SHOULD be allowed to opt out…IN THE FIRST TRIMESTER, when the woman has the quickest access to all her options. NOT when the kid is three years old and you get bored and bratty.)
Punishment. The state is forcing you into involuntary servitude.
You even accept this:
Congratulations, nope. You have taken a morally indefensible position - state-mandated involuntary servitude, something we even refuse to force murderers into, under the 8th Amendment - and are defending it. This runs counter to the ideals of the United States, counter to the Constitution, and counter to the ideals of all thinking people since the abolishment of slavery.
You defended involuntary servitude. I’m not sure why you think you even speak the same language as the rest of the people here.
Testing… testing. 1. 2. 3. testing. Is this mike on? Slow server or maybe there is some other reason my last response did not post?
So when you’re talking to a woman who believes that women should be forcibly prevented from having abortions, ask her how comfortable she would be with people she didn’t really know making the determination if she were a danger to her fetus.
frankly, people who say child support is “indentured servitude” while the woman (who’s, uh, actually RAISING the kid) gets off scot free…
need to have a foreign object lodged forcibly in their noses.
“Slow server or maybe there is some other reason my last response did not post?”
Maybe the spam-blocker or the comment system finally decided to pull the plug on you. I wouldn’t blame them if they did…
Strange posting is working. Anyway liberalrob, I think you and I agree. We are both pro-choice. The rest of that comment has been lost in the t00bs.
Theaetetus: I think that’s the position the Supreme Court took, isn’t it? I suspect that’s the position of most Americans too, don’t you?
I think there are often times when we’re in involuntary servitude for some portion of time.
Once you’re in the Army, you’re not getting out because you changed your mind. Consequence, not punishment.
Once you’ve signed a contract, you can be forced into all sorts of things against your will. Including employment (ask various artists who “owe” an album or movie or book to publishers they detest.
Lots of people think that paying income tax that goes to pay for our war in Iraq constitutes involuntary servitude. They have no means to leave the United States. They have no ability to not work. They are forced to work and simultaneously pay for war.
Anyway liberalrob, I had a great answer for you, but apparently the t00bs went beep beep beep.
To me, the most bewildering aspect of nope’s reasoning is that making it illegal to abort past the term of viability would inevitably require MORE, not fewer, men to pony up for 18 years of child support.
Since that appears to be his primary grievance against the system, I cannot for the life of me understand why he is arguing in favor of it.
Then you have no qualms about making it the law of the land that women who become pregnant are stripped of their inalienable right to personal liberty. There are many people who feel that stripping anyone of their personal liberty is anathema. And there are many who forget or don’t know that we have a long history of doing just that to women and minorities.
They are tired of having to answer it every couple of weeks when someone new shows up and starts arguing positions they have long ago debunked. This is a feminist blog. There is a neverending stream of antifeminist trolls coming in just to stir things up, and the people here are to a greater or lesser degree passionate feminists; so when someone new shows up and starts disagreeing with the hostess there’s going to be some pushback. It’s that way at any advocacy site. As a rare poster here (and as an insufficiently feminist white male) I get the same treatment. Just keep it civil, say your piece and go on. If you get censored or told to fuck off, so what? It’s a blog. Find another. Start your own.
That’s because you don’t have a uterus. That’s why you can so coolly describe nine months of pregnancy with all of the possible health complications, plus childbirth or a c-section, as a “guardian role” or “fiduciary responsibility.” Ask a woman who has been through that whether she would consider it a punishment to be FORCED to go through it against her will. See, you and your little troll friend can sit back and ponder these super-interesting questions as a rhetorical exercise, but for women, it’s REAL, it’s not theoretical. You’re talking about real life physical pain and suffering that women would be forced to go through (not to mention the financial, social, etc. suffering). So, basically, STFU.
No, completely wrong to both questions. Most Americans do not believe in involuntary servitude, and the Supreme Court is on record against enforcing involuntary servitude. Sorry, no. You just can’t make this argument, because it’s flat out wrong.
… and the reason it’s flat out wrong is that you don’t understand the definition of involuntary servitude. You can’t simply “change your mind” to get out of a contract, but you also can’t be bound to a contract that you entered into under a misrepresentation or material mistake. That is what you’re arguing, and several hundred years of legal history says flatly, no.
Again, you’ve taken a morally indefensible position - involuntary servitude, or forcing someone into an unconscionable contract and preventing them from exercising their legal right to void it. There is no excuse for this.
dreamweasel: the dissonance is because the anti-child-support forces KNOW their position is, morally and legally, indefensible. They realize they won’t win, so now they just want other people to suffer, because they’re angry.
“Fine, bitch! Go ahead and make me pay for the kids i father. But you better not think YOU get to STOP HAVIN’ EM, either. Happy constant pregnancy!”
stop by the MSN comment boards some time. they have a regular anti child-support troll on there by the name of Demonspawn. The above is more or less his logic: since I have to (oh noes!) pay for my children, i’m entitled to do anything (up to and including poisoning a woman i’ve impregnated) to DEFEND myself against this horrible, fetal intrauterine foe!
Nope, you are not pro-choice if you think that YOUR choice as a man trumps the choice of the one who is bearing the risks of pregnancy.
Pro-choice means CHOICE, not “I can force her to have an abortion” or “I can choose not to be responsible for not wearing a condom”.
Your “choice” in the matter ends where her body begins.
I’m not arguing for or against abortion.
I am asking Amanda and you others to be consistent.
If it’s a punishment to force women to carry a fetus to term, how come it is only a consequence to force men to pay child support for babies they did not want, used protection against, notified the mother they did not want in time for an abortion, …
Cathy Young addressed this in a post here
Basically, I think Amanda is once again playing fast and loose with language and snark in order to make her arguments fit her conclusions.
Karen DeCrow, former President of NOW, has said:
“if a woman makes a unilateral decision to bring pregnancy to term, and the biological father does not, and cannot, share in this decision, he should not be liable for 21 years of support … autonomous women making independent decisions about their lives should not expect men to finance their choice.”
oops, cut off. to continue:
“but since i realize that, in this Woman-Controlled Universe of Hell, doing so will only land me in jail, i will instead work to ensure every woman on the planet is as miserable as I am (and by projection, as ALL males must be).”
…and for those who don’t believe there are nuts out there who want to shut it all down: Sadly, No…
pay child support for babies they did not want, used protection against, notified the mother they did not want in time for an abortion
HA!
If i thought you were describing even TEN PERCENT of the cases i see every week, you MIGHT have a point.
More often, the boyfriend or husband is trying to coerce their GF/wife OUT of the abortion, “c’mon baby, that’s MY SEED. you can’t kill MY CHILD.”
How often do i have to counsel young women who don’t think they have the right to Demand condom use? Believe me, if there’s protection used, 80% of it is used by the female only.
And how often is the guy right there for the whole pregnancy, only to bail once the kid is there, real, noisy, and expensive? Too f*cking often.
No dice, kid. I’ma second that “fantasy world” charge someone leveled above.
shit. uh, close ital tag after “in time for an abortion”….sorry.
If any anti-choicers are still reading this thread: is this the kind of labial police state you want?
Of course! Otherwise, they might get in trouble for sniffing the panties of women they don’t know. If we have that kind of police state, they’d be able to do it under cover of authority.
You can’t simply “change your mind” to get out of a contract, but you also can’t be bound to a contract that you entered into under a misrepresentation or material mistake
But you can. Courts rule all the time that men that find they are not the biological father of a child they pay support for are not allowed to stop paying support. And yes, that occurs even if they were knowingly and fraudulently told they were the father.
Ms. Kate, no one is saying the father can force the mother to have an abortion, or that the father can force the mother to not have an abortion. And we’re also discussing cases where contraception may have been used, but failed.
Raging Red: it’s not nine months, it’s “past fetal viability” and in cases where the mother’s health is not at risk.
This isn’t a “fight,” it’s a discussion. I don’t do fights.
No, you aren’t, and if you seriously believe that you are then you are self-deluded. You just got through explaining to us that forcing women to carry pregnancies to term is not punishment, it’s “consequence” (of getting pregnant, I assume; which quite clearly leads back to Amanda’s position that it’s all more about controlling sexual freedom than defending life- if she hadn’t had sex, she wouldn’t have gotten pregnant and faced this “consequence”). You have to admit that your “consequence” is functionally equivalent to “punishment” (for having sex and getting pregnant). Look at it this way: you’re advocating punishment for those who try to avoid the consequence, right?
The pro-choice argument is that it’s a woman’s right to choose what she does with her body. You explicitly denied that right in the case of pregnancy. You are not pro-choice.
frankly, people who say child support is “indentured servitude” while the woman (who’s, uh, actually RAISING the kid) gets off scot free…
need to have a foreign object lodged forcibly in their noses.
Hey, everyone knows that raising a child for 18 years is simple, quick and easy. Those women who ask for money are just being greedy and keeping all of the money for themselves because diapers, clothing, and food are free to everyone who asks!
nope, you’re not pro-choice. You’re pro “do it my way because that keeps me from feeling squicky.”
That is not exactly a choice for anyone but you.
’nuff said.And we’re also discussing cases where contraception may have been used, but failed.
So if the woman is using birth control and gets pregnant anyway, as can happen to 1 out of 100 women who use the Pill perfectly, it’s “Too bad, so sad, shouldn’t have been born with a uterus”?
Rob, we’ve been through this. Read through the older thread.
Yes, forcing a woman to carry a fetus to term, AFTER the fetus has past viability, in the case where the pregnancy is not a health hazard to the mother is not a punishment. It’s a consequence.
I think that’s how the Supreme Court has ruled, hasn’t it?
(Regarding right to choose to do with her body, I agree with that 100%, it’s why I disagree with Amanda on her demand the government force mandatory gardasil injections into prepubescent children against their will.)
They’ve waived the ability to void through the other party’s reasonable and justified reliance. Don’t try to argue contract law with me, Sparky. If you want to get out of paying child support, you must get the paternity test done prior to starting payments.
I answered this at #129 above. You aren’t allowed to simply disregard posts you can’t refute and cherry pick the ones where you can make some tissue paper argument.Courts rule all the time that men that find they are not the biological father of a child they pay support for are not allowed to stop paying support. And yes, that occurs even if they were knowingly and fraudulently told they were the father.
Let’s see some cites, ‘cuz this sounds like typical MRA chrome plated bullshit.
Really, all this typing ‘cuz you can’t use a condom? Pathetic. You do realize all your civility just makes you look like a pedantic dweeb, considering your main point is “Fuck those kids.”?
So if the woman is using birth control and gets pregnant anyway, as can happen to 1 out of 100 women who use the Pill perfectly, it’s “Too bad, so sad, shouldn’t have been born with a uterus”?
My guess is she gets an abortion as soon as she finds out she is pregnant before the point of fetal viability.
Past fetal viability, assuming she is in good health, she has the kid, and then gives it up for adoption.
Kind of sucks for everybody. EPT kits are pretty cheap and should probably be made cheaper.
Nope is still throwing a temper tantrum? “Bullshit is true because I scream it really loudly and pitch a fit like a 3-year-old!” Good god. I can’t even bring myself to read it. Can anyone let me know if he’s openly lying so I can just ban his ass already? I won’t play host to misinformation.
Well, thanks for entirely missing my point (or ignoring it).
Once you’re in the Army, you’re not getting out because you changed your mind.
If you think that because you’ve ejaculated into a woman, you own her contractually, then you’re going to learn some hard lessons, dumbass. If you think that having sex with a woman makes her your legal property for 10 months, you should state that up front, and not be devious with women about your intentions to imprison her. The Army doesn’t lie to people about what they’re getting into, you know. You have to sign a contract and everything.
But of course asking you to be truthful appears to be like asking gravity to take a day off.
As for the child support whine, the idea that women have a right not to support actual, living children is a myth. If a woman just tosses a baby out with the garbage or refuses to feed it, that will get her a murder charge. Men are held to the same requirements of child support as women, and it’s this—having to have equal responsibility—that makes the man-babies whine about child support. God forbid they be required to wipe their own asses without a woman doing it all for them, too.
No one requires men to support fetuses, just children. Your argument makes no sense. Men and women have completely equal rights and responsibilities in any case. We’re all required to support children that are ours, and we all have the right to control our fertility. I fully support a pregnant man’s right to terminate, though I suppose that’s not going to come up.
First paragraph above was SUPPOSED to be a blockquote from the odious ‘nope’.
Sparky? Well Theatetus, you know I responded to your 129, because in your prior comment to me, you responded to the post I responded to 129 with.
But hey, I didn’t realize we were in a court of law, cause I’m just a layman, and while of course I defer to you in how the law has judged, I don’t think you get to tell people to suck your massive lawyer cock when you’re not in a court of law.
Eric, you can use google as well as I, but just ask Theatetus above, she has basically conceded the point saying that men can’t do that, and they should have gotten the paternity test BEFORE starting payments, and that the mother’s reliance on the man’s payments trumps.
So yeah, there are definitely cases where the man has been tricked into child support, discovered only later on that he was not the father, and the courts told him to suck on their massive lawyer cock, he should have gotten a paternity test and not trusted the mother.
But here’s your cite: http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0209/p01s01-usju.htm
Church Ladies: I have to get to work. Good luck on your getting abortion rights throughout the entire pregnancy. Just be honest with the American People and you will get what you deserve.
Oh hey, Amanda’s back.
Well no one is talking about 10 months Amanda, we’re talking about the 3-5 months past the point of fetal viability as decided in Roe.
If a woman just tosses a baby out with the garbage or refuses to feed it, that will get her a murder charge.
Right, but of course women can give their babies up for adoption, often in the hospital immediately after the birth. And many states have Baby Moses laws where the baby can be dropped off at a fire station with no consequences to the mother.
In many cases, the mother can give the baby up for adoption and the father is never notified of this, EVEN if the father is known.
I really do need to get to work.
Pepcid AC, Amanda.
See how you have the luxury of being totally flippant since you don’t have a uterus, nope? Nope, you don’t.
Has it occurred to you that the fact that you’ve repeatedly referred to the women here as Church Ladies might be garnering you some hostility? Or do you just not care, because you’re so obviously a shithead?
You’re doing it wrong./facepalm
But of course asking you to be truthful appears to be like asking gravity to take a day off.
Amanda, I am genuinely curious. Dan Rather is well known for his ability to come up with statements like this. Molly Ivins too. If you ever wanted to write a post about what it may be about Texas that encourages this ability, that would be kind of neat.
(That said, Dan Rather and Molly Ivins had loads of integrity….)
Actually, nope, as an aside, I’m honestly curious. You believe I’m a woman, but then refer to my massive cock, in a derogatory way. Is this some sort of penis-hostility on your part? Are you so hostile to women because, in fact, you hate the fact that you’re male? Tell me, what was your daddy like, growing up?
Yes, forcing a woman to carry a fetus to term, AFTER the fetus has past viability, in the case where the pregnancy is not a health hazard to the mother is not a punishment. It’s a consequence.
You have your head firmly up your ass as regards agency.
Pregnancy is a possible consequence of sex. In that the woman is an autonomous agent, she can and must consider and deal with that possibility if she shooses to have sex. Dealing with it can include contraception, abortion, or choosing to bear the kid.
A fetus is not an autonomous agent.
FORCED prgnancy has nothing to do with the woman’s agency. It asserts that the whim of the legislature trumps the woman’s right to decide what happens to her body.
Pregnancy is a consequence of sex. FORCED pregnancy is not a consequence of sex; it is a punishment imposed on a pregnant woman.
Do you understand the difference, or are you going to continue to be deliberately stupid?
Nope, I’ll ask you this:
In your perfect world of optional male responsibility, at what point does a man get to declare that he doesn’t want the kid and it’s all on her?
Exactly what point, I’ll add.
Why do I ask? Because it sounds to me that you think a man should be allowed to abandon his responsibility at any time during a preganacy at which a woman may terminate that pregnancy.
So, say a woman is six months along and the child is found to have birth defects that will result in expensive surgical interventions and/or lifelong disability. Legally, she can petition to have an abortion at that time.
But if she doesn’t, can your “theoretical pro-choice male” then withdraw his support and say that if SHE chooses to complete the pregnancy, he won’t support the child because she *could* get an abortion at that point and he doesn’t want to pay?
Explain exactly how you would think that would possibly be acceptable, without resorting to your standard MRO arguements. (Oh, but he’s not trying to force her to have an abortion. Yeah. Right.)
I must say I take perverse joy in watching this trollfight. I’ve heard a lot of good arguments come out in slammng nope that wouldn’t have got aired otherwise. Good job, folks.
No, not jail as such. A psych ward in a hospital. Under no circumstances are you charged with a crime simply for being on psych hold, although you can be charged with a crime in addition to it if you actually endangered someone, broke a restraining order, etc. But merely for having a plan to kill yourself? No.
The vast majority of psych holds are over within 72 hours, and you can often be discharged sooner for good behavior; one has to jump through flaming hoops to get a person held longer than that if they are really ill. You don’t even get put in restraints unless you are a danger to other people on the ward. Which is why comparing getting an abortion to attempting suicide is just flat-out silly. So what are they saying, that “murdering” a fetus is worth 3 days in the hospital, maybe less? Women automatically used to get that long in the hospital just for delivery.
That’s another thing I don’t get. All these people yelling about how they just want to save a fetus’s life. In my opinion, from purely anecdotal evidence, a lot of abortions that are done for none medical reasons, are due to the Mother feeling that she [and the father if he’s still in the picture] can’t provide the baby to be a life it deserves.
If the Anti-Choicers want a quick and easy way to reduce abortion rates that wouldn’t be opposed by Pro-Choicers, here it is. Universal Health Care, a Parental Leave system like the ones in Europe.
Sure, there are a lot of abortions that happen because the Woman doesn’t want to have a kid (right then or ever, it doesn’t matter), and that’s fine. However there are people having abortions even though they do want kids, but feel like (and rightly so) they couldn’t ever manage to provide for one. And that’s fixable. But no, Anti-Choicers don’t really care what happens after the birth, as a poster above said, They’re more “Pro-Fetus” than “Pro-Life”
My guess is she gets an abortion as soon as she finds out she is pregnant before the point of fetal viability.
Assuming, of course, that she finds out she’s pregnant before the point of fetal viability, which is not quite the slam-dunk you seem to think. You are aware that some women have blood spotting that appears to be a period throughout their pregnancy, correct? And so you are also aware that the spotting is most common in the first trimester, which means it’s very possible that a woman might not realize she’s pregnant until she’s past the viability stage.
So if — as happened to my sister-in-law’s friend — the woman only finds out that she’s pregnant six months in because her doctors finally think to give her a pregnancy test despite the fact that she appears to be having periods, again, your answer is “Too bad, so sad, shouldn’t have been born with a uterus.”
Hmmm, not sounding so cute, actually.the mother’s reliance on the man’s payments trumps.
Wrong.
Very very wrong.
The child’s reliance on the parents’ payments trumps.
What you are paying is called “child support” for a reason - 2 parents either (a) made the child, or (b) at some point were financially and/or physically supportive of the child and born children’s rights to support trump your rights to disclaim financial responsibility.
To reiterate, it’s about the born child, not about a man’s or a woman’s financial “rights” to disclaim said born child.
If, to use your example, a man at one time supported a child as his own, then the court will compel that man to continue to support that child even if (a) the relationship with the child’s other supporting adult ends, and (b) the child is not biologically his.
Why?
Because of well-settled public policy in the law that the child deserves to continue to be supported, no matter who sired it / bore it by those who were in fact raising it / responsible for it / what have you.
If supporting adults (men or women) were permitted by law to disclaim any and all financial liability for their children, wanted or otherwise, who then supports those children?
Taxpayers.
And that goes against public policy at this time in the law.
we’re talking about the 3-5 months past the point of fetal viability as decided in
RoeCasey.but of course women can give their babies up for adoption, often in the hospital immediately after the birth
If all the forced birthers, you included, would adopt all of the children currently up for adoption and all the children currently living in foster care, the bleatings about teh bebeees might be a little (but not much) easier to bear.
However, I don’t see mass adoptions by the forced birthers occurring at present.
Wow… You learn something new and mildly disturbing every day.On a lighter note, one of the comments from one of the other sites the original story was posted gave me an idea.
The next time I see a pro-life brigade out and I don’t have anything pressing that needs to be done I’m going to find the nearest store and buy posterboard, string, a magic marker, and as many condoms as they have or I can afford. Then I’ll make a sign that says “If you really want to reduce abortion, use a condom”, hang it around my neck, stand in a place where anyone who sees the prolifers also see me, and quietly hand out condoms to anyone who passes.
Maybe I’ll accept donations to go buy more condoms.
So if — as happened to my sister-in-law’s friend — the woman only finds out that she’s pregnant six months in because her doctors finally think to give her a pregnancy test despite the fact that she appears to be having periods, again, your answer is “Too bad, so sad, shouldn’t have been born with a uterus.”
I’m saying that’s really sad, but it is a consequence and not a punishment. That’s based on the consensus that the fetus is past viability and is basically a thinking human being.
If you wanted to move to Tokyo for a great job and couldn’t find someone to give your 12 week old puppy too, it wouldn’t be legal for you to just kill the dog.
These are consequences not punishments. As I said above, EPT is relatively inexpensive, about $10 per test. If I as a man need to purchase condoms to express my responsibility, perhaps men and women having sex should be purchasing EPT kits too. It would seem $10 every month should make sure there are no unknown pregnancies.
Teac, the one person we KNOW is not the father of the child is the person you want to make pay for the child. Children already are supported by the taxpayer. The mother can figure out who the father actually is (that should not be too difficult), or she can support the child on her own if she does not want the child to have any contact with its father, and she can probably go one AFDC or welfare. Why should the ONE person absolutely known not to be the father be forced to pay? Why should a person brought into the payment relationship BY FRAUD be forced to continue that payment relationship?
However, I don’t see mass adoptions by the forced birthers occurring at present.
I did, however, see a really disturbing whine on a message board the other day about how this woman was infertile and reeeeeeeally wanted to adopt, but “couldn’t”
why?
not enough white newborns available.
at that point i barfed and left the thread.
Wow… You learn something new and mildly disturbing every day.
Imagine how my poor S-i-L’s friend felt. “You know that persistent heartburn that wouldn’t go away that we prescribed three different medications for? Turns out you’re actually six months pregnant. Congratulations! Please don’t sue!”
lol, i notice nope’s “ohsoimportant job” seems to have vanished….
mom’s letting you play on the basement computer a little longer before you have to go do the dishes, huh?
we’re talking about the 3-5 months past the point of fetal viability as decided in Casey.
Interesting. Thank you.
Um, since I am not calling you a baby-killer, since we are both pro-choice, I think it’s reasonable for me to ask you not to refer to me derogatorily as a forced birther.
I am after all, just arguing that Amanda’s and your all’s insistence that this is a punishment and not just a consequence is nonsense, especially when compared to how Amanda and you all treat men with regards to child support.
nice to know you pretty much consider fetuses to be equivalent to fully born puppies…
when you come back to reality land, give us a call. No, don’t bother…we’ll call YOU.
The One True Vegan
Yeah, I finished masturbating to pregnant milf porn and now I’m back. With your logic, I can only assume you’re home and surfing instead of creating natural wooden dildos while your generous sugar mommy is at work.
Or maybe I drove in to work, and surfed a bit to see how the Church Ladies are doing.
If you wanted to move to Tokyo for a great job and couldn’t find someone to give your 12 week old puppy too, it wouldn’t be legal for you to just kill the dog.
Actually, it is legal. You may have to shop around for a vet willing to do it, but you can have an animal humanely put to sleep for pretty much any reason you please. You can’t beat the puppy to death with a baseball bat in your backyard, but you can take it in for professional euthanization.
As I said above, EPT is relatively inexpensive, about $10 per test. If I as a man need to purchase condoms to express my responsibility, perhaps men and women having sex should be purchasing EPT kits too. It would seem $10 every month should make sure there are no unknown pregnancies.
So I assume you’re on board with having Romania-style pelvic exams of women every month to find out if they’re pregnant or not? After all, there’s really no other way to be sure — over-the-counter pregnancy tests aren’t even close to infallible. Maybe you could just mandate that every woman of childbearing age have a blood test every month to see whether or not she’s pregnant. If your main concern is that men are being forced to pay child support for children they don’t want, why would you have a problem with mandating that women get tested every month and have the results forwarded to their boyfriend or husband?
nice to know you pretty much consider fetuses to be equivalent to fully born puppies…
Yeah, that’s an old fashioned logical fallacy and a nice way to twist words. If someone’s analogy is accurate on some levels, but fails at other levels, pretend you don’t understand how it works, and instead go to the worst possible interpretation and insist that’s what was meant.
But yes, apparently the Supreme Court considers that fetuses past the point of viability can be considered by the state to be equivalent in some ways to full born puppies. They need to be cared for, treated humanely, and cannot be killed even if it inconveniences the mother or owner.
“So I assume you’re on board with having Romania-style pelvic exams of women every month to find out if they’re pregnant or not?”
Well naturally. That blob is just TOO important to take a chance…
Answer the question, Nope.
In the dreamworld of your longing, at exactly what point in a pregnancy is a man allowed to bail out of all responsibility for supporting a child?
So I assume you’re on board with having Romania-style pelvic exams of women every month to find out if they’re pregnant or not? After all, there’s really no other way to be sure — over-the-counter pregnancy tests aren’t even close to infallible. Maybe you could just mandate that every woman of childbearing age have a blood test every month to see whether or not she’s pregnant. If your main concern is that men are being forced to pay child support for children they don’t want, why would you have a problem with mandating that women get tested every month and have the results forwarded to their boyfriend or husband?
You’re not just shifting goal posts, you’re switch games and playing fields completely.
Sexually active women should consider getting EPT tests once a month so that they can get an abortion prior to the fetus being viable. That should give them four tests or so and give them plenty of time for the abortion. I suspect EPT tests are fallible, but that taking four in a period of four months should be pretty reliable.
That will keep the women from having to face the consequences of finding they are pregnant after the fetus is viable.
Someone up above asked and I forgot to answer when the man can determine he doesn’t want to be a father. Interesting question. My best suggestion for now is some reasonable period like two weeks. Perhaps shorter in those cases where a doctor says an abortion must occur within less than two weeks. Presumably the women also has a reasonable, but short period of time where she must take verifiable steps to notify the father.
I can see that nope is continuing to pursue the “words don’t mean what people use them to mean” tactic. Help us out a little nope, give us your definition of consequence and then of punishment. Especially the latter since your usage seems to indicate that punishment doesn’t really exist.
Sorry about that Ms. Kate, I forgot to answer, but I hope I just did.
Say, I like it here where all sorts of people can demand I answer their questions. Now. Immediately. But so few people want to man up and answer mine. Nice.
My, how simplistic. You really think that is workable? If so, perhaps you should look into courses in biological science.
And what about the father who is on board, but then doesn’t want to be responsible for a special needs child?
Again, reality is vastly more complex than “two weeks”. Explain, exactly, what you would like the legislation to look like. I am assuming you have thought about it beyond “whah whah I have to pay myyyy moneeee” at some point and about how you would put this into law, nope?
I think I did D, in the older thread that Amanda had to run away from. If you google consequence punishment you can find some interesting articles describing each and the difference.
The first link isn’t bad:
http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-the-difference-between-punishment-and-consequences.htm
Or you can just ask the other members of the congregation to help explain to you why men paying child support is a consequence and women carrying fetuses to term is a punishment.
Ms Kate asked: “…at exactly what point in a pregnancy is a man allowed to bail out of all responsibility for supporting a child?”
To which nope answers: “Someone up above asked and I forgot to answer when the man can determine he doesn’t want to be a father. Interesting question. My best suggestion for now is some reasonable period like two weeks.”
nope, I think you’re the one who needs to “man up”. If you gave a REAL answer to the question, it would almost certainly be something along the lines of “as soon as I ejaculated”, or “when I climbed into bed with her”, or “when I stepped out of my car and walked into the bar”…
Again, reality is vastly more complex than “two weeks”. Explain, exactly, what you would like the legislation to look like.
Beats me, I’m no lawyer, I’ll leave that up to the lawyer cock monsters like Theatetus.
Maybe something like:
Upon learning of her pregnancy, the women shall have a period of no longer than two weeks in which to make a reasonable and significant effort to notify prospective fathers. A man, upon being served a notice of pregnancy, shall have two weeks in which to notify the mother of his choice of accepting or severing parental rights. Eventual parental rights will depend on a post-natal paternity test.
But like I said, my lawyer’s penis is more of an innie, so I’ll leave it to you.
Sorry, nope. Men don’t get an extra right to avoid caring for actual children.
I’m sorry that you think men should have more rights than women. But this is democracy, and patriarchy is unfair.
Now, you can quit threadjacking or you can be banned. I’m sick of your insanity.
That’s odd, another post seems to have vanished.
Anyway Ms. Kate, instead of retyping that post, yes I think it’s reasonable, no, I am not a lawyer, basically the two parties have a legal responsibility to notify each other within some reasonable amount of time after pregnancy is detected. And that any paternity is determined after the baby has been born.
If a man decides he wants to be a father, once the two week period has past, and if he turns out to be the father, I guess he’s stuck.
Well, lunch is over, I got to get back to work.
Enjoy your afternoon Church Ladies.
If people are demanding I answer their questions, how can I be threadjacking?
And how can I be threadjacking when you explicitly created this thread to describe me as an idiot playing word games between consequence and punishment?
I’m sorry that you think men should have more rights than women. But this is democracy, and patriarchy is unfair.
Assertion is not argument. What are you talking about?
But I do need to get some work done. (I saw a sex positive feminist in the parking lot, so your work is not done!)
“We live in an age characterized by the maxim “If it feels good do it, regardless of the consequences.” ”
Like starting a war in Iraq on false pretenses?
I’m curious why you keep referring to my cock in a derogatory sense when you also believe I’m female, as you said above. Do you secretly hate the male genitalia, that you’d use it as an insult? Is there some sort of self penis-hate going on? Tell me, what was your daddy like when you were growing up?
nope, I’m honestly curious why you keep referring to the cock in a derogatory sense, particularly where you believe I’m female as you said above. Do you believe that the male genitalia are insulting? Do you have a secret hate for your own and are jealous of women? Tell us, what was your daddy like when you were growing up?I…am laughing so hard that tears are streaming down my face. That is the funniest thing I have read all day.
You know what happens when you assert. You make an ass or e and rt.
It refers to your coming in and displaying your weapon and demanding I respond to certain points and that I can’t make that argument and blah blah blah.
You wield your law degree just like you claim that men in the patriarchy wield their penii.
And you want to make sure everyone knows your penis is larger than their penis.
Basically you’re engaged in a dickfight.
I’ll refer to you the other thread with regards to your need to play e-psychiatrist. You may want to ask yourself why you feel so inadequate that you feel the need to bully people in a forum with your massive lawyer cock.
Women can’t engage in dickfights? Who is the sexist now?
Also, nope, I’m curious about your chosen label of “church ladies” for the women here. Considering that you’re arguing against choice, against modern medicine, and against risk-free non-procreative sex… whom exactly is the church lady in this group?
Theaetetus, I think there’s a post stuck in the moderation queue or something explaining about your massive lawyer c**k.
If someone can fish that out, I think it explains all.
Here are you Church Ladies:
Basically you’ve taken feminism, a good thing, and recapitulated Church Lady gossip and judgment in it turning modern feminism into a pile of hypocritical, paranoid, judgmental, nonsense. A bad thing. Jumped.the.shark.
Enjoy the video.
And clearly as I’ve stated over and over I am pro-choice. I support Roe V. Wade and Casey. Since I support this, since I haven’t made one argument against making abortion illegal, how can you claim I am arguing against choice?
Is that how you would honestly refer to any feminist that agrees with Roe V. Wade and Casey but who doesn’t think that late term abortions should be legal if the health of the mother is not threatened?
I’m afraid Theaetetus won’t be able to respond, as he’s left for law classes.
And yes, it IS a monster.
nope, nobody understands your trolling doublespeak, and nobody really wants to. Please to be getting fucked by a large dog.
Or we could go with the forced vasectomies. Much easier, plus we wouldn’t have to adopt your “take a pregnancy test once a month” plan either — just one snip and it’s all taken care of!
Also, you said earlier that when a fetus reaches viability it’s a “thinking human being.” Um, no it’s not.
Oh my fucking aching ass, to have a dollar for every time nope brings up child support! Bonus money for the lawyer…
Teac, the one person we KNOW is not the father of the child is the person you want to make pay for the child. Children already are supported by the taxpayer. The mother can figure out who the father actually is (that should not be too difficult), or she can support the child on her own if she does not want the child to have any contact with its father, and she can probably go one AFDC or welfare. Why should the ONE person absolutely known not to be the father be forced to pay? Why should a person brought into the payment relationship BY FRAUD be forced to continue that payment relationship?
First, lowercase “t” for teac thankyouverymuch.
Second, you seem to be enquiring into legal concepts. I and others here are attempting to illuminate some of them for you. If you do not wish to understand these concepts, fine - but stop acting as if our explanations are our personal positions. Frankly, I disagree with many SCOTUS decisions and rationales in this particular area. That doesn’t stop the fact that their decisions are the law of the land - and we are trying to explain them to you.
In that vein, who said I “want to make [X] pay for the child”?? I’m telling you the law.
Third, really? “Children already are supported by the taxpayer”?? All children? Howso? There is case law on the issue of non-biological parents being compelled to continue supporting children who, by word and / or deed said persons held out the child as their own. This is a concept grounded in the law of contracts. See: Wright v Newman.
Finally, as to your last question in the above quote, I said nothing about fraud and have not, nor do I at the moment intend to, number one. And number two, that hypothetical person is forced (hey! is that a punishment? Or is it a consequence of having supported the child or of having participated in the creation of the child?) to continue paying to support the child because, as I stated above, the LAW will look to those who actually and in fact DID support the child regardless of biological or legal adoptive relationship because THE CHILD’S RIGHTS TO SUPPORT outweigh (or “trump” to use your term), in the LAW (not in my own personal opinion, let’s be clear on that; my opinion on the matter is immaterial) any previously-supporting adult’s “rights” to not support that child s/he had previously supported.
What “ONE person” are you talking about?
Really, we can certainly argue the merits of any given legal position or law. But don’t impute personal positions to me or others when we tell you what the law is if we don’t say, “And I fully support this.”
I do not agree with all of Casey’s holdings. I find them paternalistic and firmly entrenched in entitlement (the presumption that a 24 hour waiting period is not an undue burden on a pregnant woman’s quest for an abortion, for example, shows a complete lack of understanding for the plight of poor women in remote areas who may not have unfettered local access to such services).
I was wrong; he’s got stock in the company! D’oh…
Well nope, I wanted your definition because your usage doesn’t seem in keeping with other common usages or definitions out there. The link you provide doesn’t explicitly define the two terms, so I’ll have to go from context. For them, consequences seem to be any and every event that occurs due to an action, except those that can be labeled punishments. While punishment seems to be an imposed negative event in response to an action except in some ill defined circumstances, such as the homework instance where forcing to do the homework isn’t punishment. Why it isn’t is not clear from their usage, though they seem to indicate it is because of prior obligation.
So by this usage, your question of a forced pregnancy seems to indicate it is indeed punishment, unless it somehow fits the same scenario exception as the child doing homework. Of course, that would require a premise that a woman has a prior obligation to bring the pregnancy to term, which isn’t going to fly here.
Now the child support. Here we do have a prior obligation, as pointed out already here, so that would mean it is excluded from the punishment category.
If these definitions don’t fit your own, then you’ll have to actually provide your own.
Trolls are more fun to whack around the room than balls of yarn- whee!!!
I am after all, just arguing that Amanda’s and your all’s insistence that this is a punishment and not just a consequence
I have “insisted” neither one way nor the other.
Anyway Ms. Kate, instead of retyping that post, yes I think it’s reasonable, no, I am not a lawyer, basically the two parties have a legal responsibility to notify each other within some reasonable amount of time after pregnancy is detected
If you’re not a lawyer (or a law student past 1L), then perhaps be wary of saying who has a legal responsibility to do anything of the sort unless you can provide some sort of authority for such.
Perhaps you meant “moral responsibility”? That could more reasonably be argued…
Um, since I am not calling you a baby-killer, since we are both pro-choice, I think it’s reasonable for me to ask you not to refer to me derogatorily as a forced birther.
and since I’m not calling you a fleshy mammal, and since we are both human, I’d ask you to refrain from calling me a mutant space frog. Even if I have gills, bug eyes, leathery skin, and come from the planet Zorbulox. Because I have SAID that I am human, even despite all contrary evidence based on every specific example, that means I AM human and you must respect me as such.
We’re all the same, right? We breathe the same methane, put on our pants 3 legs at a time. If you prick us, do we not explosively decompress and enter a chrysalis regenerative stage?
Karpad wins.
Say, I like it here where all sorts of people can demand I answer their questions. Now. Immediately. But so few people want to man up and answer mine. Nice.
Nope…
Almost all of the questions you raise are, in fact, answered. You simply choose to ignore the responses or dismiss them because you don’t agree with them. An answer you disagree with is still an answer.
The issue of fathers (and mothers!) being forced to care for a child isn’t exactly comparable to the issue of being forced to bear a fetus to birth. As long as the child is going to exist, *someone* needs to take care of it, which is a complication that makes the the issues of freedom a lot more sticky. You *could* (indeed, you did) argue that a fetus can, at some late stages, feel pain, albeit almost certainly less than an adult cow in a slaughterhouse (are you a vegetarian, incidentally?), but the whole issue of viability is only tangential to the original point of this post, that being that the position held by some social conservatives that women who get pregnant (at all, mind you) should bear that fetus to the point of birth in order to face the ‘consequences’ of their sex is essentially an endorsement of punishment for certain sexual behaviors. Setting aside the somewhat stickier issues of late term fetuses, do you agree with this?
Also, your response to Mnemosyne’s response to your point about puppies was in very bad taste. You *weren’t* making an analogy - or if you were, it was a very bad one. An analogy is a rhetorical device where one draws a comparison between to otherwise different situations to illustrate a point, *not* to make one. What you did was to try to establish a *precedent* (we handle this situation in this way - we should handle this similar situation in a similar way for similar reasons). Pointing out ways in which the precedent is not similar to the situation at hand is an entirely valid way to argue against its use.
Nope, is being a “father” really just being the owner of the penis that produced the sperm? No wonder you are all about your ‘right’ to keep ‘your’ money.
If a man has been a part of a child’s life and actually taking his responsibilities as a father like a man he’s more than a paycheck.
It’s *that* relationship and the support that goes along with it that a man can’t walk away from, even finding out his penis isn’t the proper penis.
Teh baybee is innocent, ya know! It’s not it’s fault that the father didn’t get a paternity test up front when he had the chance. And no, ‘forgetting’ to get a paternity test isn’t an excuse to ditch the child. Not getting a paternity test and then being liable for *continuing* child support is a consequence.
As for the consistency issue, will you please stop claiming to be pro-choice? You have already said you believe abortion should be illegal (b/c we all know pregnancy is a MINOR inconvenience that any woman can do standing on her head, and it never has lasting physical consequences for her body either.)
From your other postings, it’s pretty clear that you think women should get abortions if the man involved doesn’t want a baby (or else run away and take care of it without any support from him). That’s giving choice to the MAN, not the woman. It’s only allowing him to choose what should happen to the woman’s body.
Men and women are equal. Pregnancy is a consequence of sex and childbirth is a consequence of pregnancy. Scary, eh? Much nicer when women had to deal with it and men could just walk out scot free at any point.
Fuck your 2 weeks, too. You don’t want to pay child support? Don’t put yourself in a position where you might get someone pregnant; i.e., get yourself sterilized, only have sex with other men, or go celibate. Otherwise, you have to deal with the consequences of knocking up a human being–you can’t simply force her to have an operation against her will and you can’t walk away from a child.
And double fuck you for granting an abortion exception in your draconian system for Down Syndrome.
I am pro-choice. I support Roe V. Wade and Casey
OK, and once more with feeling:
THEN YOU ARE NOT PRO-CHOICE, DEAL WITH IT.
And double fuck you for granting an abortion exception in your draconian system for Down Syndrome.
oh yeah. i meant to call that one out too. you crossed the line out of “just an ordinary asshole” territory when you included that. into “scary asshole I’m happy I’ll never actually meet.”
karpad, you sexy thang you!
Who needs Chantilly Lace with you around?
I’m coming in a bit late to this discussion, but I just thought I’d offer an English major’s thoughts:
In a living language, the meaning of a word is what the majority of the language’s speakers accept. You can’t just make up your own definitions (well, you can, but if you want to use it to communicate with anyone, you have to convince other people to accept your definition), but meaning isn’t fixed, either. It can change with time or situation. I point to the words “gay” and “queer” and rest my case.
In other words, you can point to a dictionary all you like, but what really matters is context - how the word is being used.
The dictionary definition of “consequences” is value-neutral. However, I’ve never actually heard it used that way (except maybe in legal documents). I’ve only ever heard it used in the sense of “facing the consequences” - that is, facing the punishment or unpleasant results of one’s choices.
That’s clearly how Sean Hannity is using it when he characterizes our modern age: “If it feels good, do it regardless of the unpleasant results that may come of doing so. ”
In the most value-neutral of senses, pregnancy is a possible consequence of sex. When an anti-choicer talks about abortion allowing a woman to avoid the consequences of her actions, they’re simply wrong according to the value-neutral, dictionary sense of the word “consequences”. In that sense, abortion is simply a way of dealing with the consequences of her actions.
However, in context, by common usage, the anti-choicer is saying that the woman is avoiding the unpleasant results of her actions (a judgment call, but one that a woman seeking an abortion probably agrees with) - more specifically, based on the obvious disapproval anti-choicers express when they says such things - she is avoiding an unpleasant result that the anti-choicer believes she should be required to face because that is what her actions have earned.
In other words, a punishment.
Oh… phooey. Everyone played with teh troll too much, and now it doesn’t talk or move or nothing. And it’s starting to smell bad…sigh.
Can We Has New Trollz, Pleez??
he managed to make the regulars look like “screaming close-minded liberals”
Not really.
nope came in here with “gotcha! neener neener!” scrawled all over him.
You know, as annoying as trolls are, what would we do without them? There’d be a dozen or so posts saying “yup” or “I agree” and that would be it.
Instead, some obnoxious idiot shows up, and we make dozens of posts countering his or her insanity, making arguments and points that we never would have made otherwise, all to the benefit of the lurkers.
A troll is the irritant in the oyster shell without which there could be no pearl.
“an unpleasant result that the anti-choicer believes she should be required to face because that is what her actions have earned….In other words, a punishment.”
Really? That’s a punishment? If I use a credit card to buy something, and then the bill comes, I’m being “required” to “face” an “unpleasant result” (paying when i’ve already got the item) because “that is what [my] actions have earned.”
That’s not punishment. It seems more like a rational system of choices and consequences. Governments take away choices–not paying, threatening your creditors–all the time. They definitely do so if people think a particular choice is unethical.
The government makes you pay under the threat of punishment–same way it makes you obey the speed limit–but that in itself is not punishment.
By the way, did anyone notice that Amanda’s chief explanation for about half of women being pro-life is that many of those women are dumb, and yet she doesn’t like Carhart because (according to her non-lawyerly reading) she thinks it says that the many women who have abortions are dumb. That contradiction is….odd.
“By the way, did anyone notice that Amanda’s chief explanation for about half of women being pro-life is that many of those women are dumb, and yet she doesn’t like Carhart because (according to her non-lawyerly reading) she thinks it says that the many women who have abortions are dumb.”
Amanda. Never. Said. That.
Those women may be under the influence of anti-choice propaganda, but that doesn’t make them “dumb”.
Misguided? Deluded? Naive? Unable to put themselves in another woman’s shoes? - sure…
First of all, your analogy is backward - the purchase does not “earn” you the bill, the bill “earns” you the purchased item, which is usually a positive thing.
But to continue the analogy anyway: if the bill is too high for you to pay all at once, you have choices about how to deal with the situation: you can pay in installments, you can return the item, you can go to a credit agency, or even declare bankruptcy.
To continue the analogy further, anti-choicers want to take away the options to return the item or declare bankruptcy, and they certainly aren’t going to set up any credit agencies. If you aren’t struggling for the rest of your life to pay off your debt, you’ve escaped the consequences of your actions.
In fact, if you try to return the item or declare bankruptcy anyway, it’s debtor’s prison for you.
Make sense now?
Oh yeaz! New trolls!
No, Amanda’s explanation of pro-choice women has to do with the patriarchy and the different choices women make to survive in the system.
You’ll see it in critiques of Caitlin Flanagan or MoDo–they’ve discovered they can make a lot of money by selling the patriarchy ideal.
When you ask forced-birth folk what the jail term for women should be, they usually go blank. They haven’t thought it through. That’s stupid, but also understandable as pregnancy and female control of it goes directly against the patriarchy.
She’s not saying that forced birth supporters are stupid, per se, she’s saying these particular women are being stupid, although they are capable of educating themselves and performing consistent and logical thoughts. They haven’t thought it through, but they are capable of thinking it through.
They may still come to some unpleasant decisions about women, but they are capable of thought.
interesting how paying a bill is equivalent to pregnancy in your example, especially given the MRA desire to avoid child support.
Caren- never doubt the power of Louise!
Have fun and try to share…
So say we all.
By the way, Jeff, I have to ask: if a pregnancy is the “bill” a woman has to pay for having sex (that’s the “purchase”, right?), exactly whom does she owe this debt? The man? He’s the one she made the “exchange” with, after all, but if she’s pregnant, I have to assume that he went home happy, too. The fetus? What “purchase” has she made from it that she owes it the use of her organs?
It’s a marvelous gift, of course, but if we’re talking in terms of purchases and debts, it seems usuriously expensive.
Yeah, dumbass. But men are just as dumb, so there’s no reason to give them legal rights to control our bodies under the theory that they know better. We’re all dumb, but men are double plus dumb about the inner workings of women’s bodies, not having them. So the default control goes to the actual owners—remember them? Women?
Fuck, man, the stupid is taking over my blog. Leave. Please.
I was shocked, *shocked* I tell you, when I found out that half the population is below average.
Shocked!
I guess you missed my point above, because you actually CAN have a dog euthanized for your own convenience. It’s perfectly legal to do so. So are you saying that third-trimester abortions should be allowed because we’re allowed to kill puppies if we want to?
Actually, I’m not.
Your premise is that a woman is completely responsible for her own pregnancy, and that if men are going to have any responsibility — like child support payments — that means that they should be allowed to have control over the pregnancy.
Let’s say that we adopt your “two weeks” model. What do we do about men who accept the responsibility and then renege? Do we get to pursue them for child support payments?
What about men who change their minds after your two-week period? Are they SOL? Because, under current case law, they are not, so you’d be removing rights that biological fathers have right now.
Of course, after the father won the above case, he then proceeded to leave his wife with the child and move in with another woman. Should he pay child support since he was the one who brought the case in the first place and then changed his mind?
Upon learning of her pregnancy, the women shall have a period of no longer than two weeks in which to make a reasonable and significant effort to notify prospective fathers. A man, upon being served a notice of pregnancy, shall have two weeks in which to notify the mother of his choice of accepting or severing parental rights. Eventual parental rights will depend on a post-natal paternity test.
Personally, I wouldn’t WANT child support from a guy who wanted nothing whatsoever to do with my kid. I mean, someone who resents writing out a check to pay for his share of the diapers, food, and clothing (child support is NOT alimony) while I do ALL the work and cover the lion’s share of expenses (or would not offer to help out in some other way if he was too destitute to afford to write a check) is not someone I would actually want in my or my kid’s life in any way, shape, or form. Plus I have this strange belief in bad money cooties.
But then, I live in one of the 15% of US counties that has abortion services. Yep. Fifteen percent. That’s it, dude. Not everyone has such free and unfettered access to shmishmortion. And if your honey is under 18, she might not have it at all if she doesn’t feel like she can tell her parents without getting the crap beaten out of her. (Bear in mind that your one-night stand might well look much older and be sporting a fake ID.) Also, if she does not realize she is pregnant until the second trimester, an elective abortion then is going to be WAY more expensive and require hospitalization, which is unlikely to be covered by any health insurance known to humankind. So if you want her to terminate then, you’d better be willing to cough up a few dozen benjies to help out.
But if all those objection were removed…okay, if that’s how you want it, would you, then, be willing to have absolutely NO contact with your child until the age of 18, when the child alone can unilaterally determine whether or not he or she wants anything to do with you, and to never identify yourself to anyone at all as the child’s father, ever — not even if your kid becomes rich and/or famous? If they’re nothing but unwanted garbage to you, then you don’t ever get to hit them up for a loan or use them for a reference, either.
And Karpad? Spit-take of the week.
I guess you missed my point above, because you actually CAN have a dog euthanized for your own convenience. It’s perfectly legal to do so. So are you saying that third-trimester abortions should be allowed because we’re allowed to kill puppies if we want to?
Actually, I’m not.
Your premise is that a woman is completely responsible for her own pregnancy, and that if men are going to have any responsibility — like child support payments — that means that they should be allowed to have control over the pregnancy.
Let’s say that we adopt your “two weeks” model. What do we do about men who accept the responsibility and then renege? Do we get to pursue them for child support payments?
What about men who change their minds after your two-week period? Are they SOL? Because, under current case law, they are not, so you’d be removing rights that biological fathers have right now.
Of course, after the father won the above case, he then proceeded to leave his wife with the child and move in with another woman. Should he pay child support since he was the one who brought the case in the first place and then changed his mind?
“You know, as annoying as trolls are, what would we do without them? There’d be a dozen or so posts saying “yup” or “I agree” and that would be it.”
Well, you know how reasonable people can disagree? There is a line between trolling and debating, and giving trolls the boot doesn’t translate into shutting down anybody who isn’t 100% on board with the post or other commenters.
There can be value in debating with those who are arguing entirely or all but entirely in bad faith, but it’s usually just a complete waste of time. Arguing with someone who’s at least using both hands to type may not accomplish anything or educate anybody, but it stands a much, much better chance.
perfect song for nope
http://www.mp3s.pl/download/15822/The_Sweethearts_-_End_Of_The_World
nope April 3, 2008 at 10:57 pm
While I think that the majority of society wants abortions to be safe and legal, I suspect your view that 2nd and 3rd trimester babies should be abortible on demand and that forcing women to carry them to term is a punishment is a very very minority view, even among feminists. It’s one thing to abort a mass of cells without neural tissue or a functioning brain, but I think most people feel very differently about aborting 2nd and 3rd trimester fetuses due to this thing called science clearly showing all sorts of aspects of life and responsiveness to touch, sound, and other stimulation. “
Well, a lot of things can have “all sorts of aspects of life” but that doesn’t mean all things are equal. Afteral we do eat a lot of living things right?
ie. which then you are going to demand but this living things is “special”. Unfortunately they are not. I would demand that you produce evidence that these living things is special.
I think essentially, feminism argument is correct that since embryo does not possess ability to sustain and articulate itself outside the mother’s body. Then only the mother can have the right to speak.
Any sensible person would insist that state has no right over a person’s body.
nope April 4, 2008 at 2:51 pm
Sexually active women should consider getting EPT tests once a month so that they can get an abortion prior to the fetus being viable. That should give them four tests or so and give them plenty of time for the abortion. I suspect EPT tests are fallible, but that taking four in a period of four months should be pretty reliable.”
well, leaving practicality aside. That every women can have such access to exams, etc etc.
On what ground can you insist that the basic functioning of a person body’s should be regulated, if it doesn’t concern you?
I mean what’s next? passing law forcing people to brush their teeth? We can’t even pass law stopping people to smoke and drink. And those are clearly harmful to society.
Here is a big question for Nope,
if in a hypothetical situation, one can produce unlimited number of embryos, are you going to define all of them as complete human? Say, somebody developed an advance bio-reactor.
This is not as far fetch as you think.
The suspicion becomes, do you really have some misplaced perception that embryo is equal to a person, or is this really a question of authoritarianism running amok?
I think in this hypothetical situation, you really have to put weigh more on an actual person’s “free will” right?
I don’t get that either. It would seem to indicate that nope wants to punish women. Force them to have babies with no support - that’s not punishment at all! I suppose that’s what happens when your friends break out the Sharpies after you’ve passed out from drinking.Fuck, Sporkey- that actually DID happen to me a gazillion years ago! Fortunately a cousin was at the same party and after I was labelled with Peter Frampton lyrics all over my back, he found me, chucked me over his shoulder and I awoke at his place 12 hours later.
NEVER EVER WORK 11-7 AND START CHUGGING JACK DANIELS AT 8AM on exhausted, empty tummy…
Found out all I ever needed to know about consequences and punishment!
“…after I was labelled with Peter Frampton lyrics all over my back…”
“Doooo, youuuu!
Feeeeeeel like I doooo!”
Frampton Comes Alive!
I was in high school when that was all the rage…
Have you considered an IUD?
My wife was in the same situation. She couldn’t take hormonal birth control and wouldn’t have an abortion.
She got a Paragard IUD. It’s safe, hormone-free, and about 99.4% effective at preventing pregnancy.
The upfront cost can be pretty high. (About $550 for her) However, since it lasts for up to 10 years, it is one of the cheapest forms of birth control over the long run.
louise -
I see pictures of people who’ve done crap like that to passed out people. That almost makes me want to add it to my list of “dealbreaker” questions, because the more I see of it, the more I think “Wow, I would never want to get drunk with people who might do that to me”. It just seems so unnecessary and cruel. I would rather someone be passed out than starting fights. Of course, it does make me wonder if it’s part of the douchebag culture, of which there are many, many more indicators than attacking passed out people with cling wrap and Sharpies, such as getting mad that EEEEEEEVIL women can not only chose not to have an abortion, but also get child support without becoming a man’s property.
What? No bunny videos?
XXIX.15
If you find that you are being worsted, you can make a diversion—that is, you can suddenly begin to talk of something else, as though it had a bearing on the matter in dispute, and afforded an argument against your opponent. This may be done without presumption if the diversion has, in fact, some general bearing on the matter; but it is a piece of impudence if it has nothing to do with the case, and is only brought in by way of attacking your opponent.
At the time, I was living in that house with 3 other people; moved out within 2 weeks of that incident on the day I found one of them had spray-painted CUNT all over my car.
Because I had caught them doing lines of coke and threatened to call cops the night before. Couldn’t prove anything… so I just LEFT.
MikeEss, it was “I want you to show me the way”.
KL, the concern troll did not win in this thread. Here’s why: in order to get a real answer, you have ask a real question. And “nope” very deliberately did not do that. What he asked was instead, as he very well knew, an unanswerable question*, to which he knew he could recieve no good answer. Then he put on this huge performance of having been wronged. Mountebank. Creep.
Never accept people like nope at their own valuation.
*It was unanswerable insofar as it had to do with women’s feelings about whether they were being exposed to “consequences” or to “punishment” by being legally required to carry a pregnancy which had passed the 1st trimester to term. Feelings are not quantifiable. Not to mention that the whole discussion involved a definition of terms and that the participants in the discussion never reached any agreement about what the definition of those terms should be.
“nope” sensed the potential for a rat’s nest and, and as a rat, was naturally driven to make the most of that potential. That’s all.
As it happens, John, these premises (and trying to force others to live their lives based upon your allegedly non-emotional ‘political opinion’) DO make you a lower life form. Nice try, though.