Brontoforumus Archive
Discussion Boards => Thaddeus Boyd's Panel of Death => Topic started by: Detonator on September 12, 2008, 05:25:40 PM
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To reiterate:
On abortion: I believe an abortion should cost 2,000 dollars, flat rate, no matter why or what.
So you're actually pro-choice?
1: I'm pro and con. I believe it's wrong, but wouldn't bother trying to tell others not to do it. The 2,000 bucks should go to pay for the prison system. If she can convince others to think the same way, I'll vote for her.
I think many people misunderstand being pro-choice as being strictly "abortions for all!". The point is that you don't want to ban it. This is something the supreme court could do with more conservative/Catholic judges. I guess it just might not matter to you because you never plan to have one, but I'll let you elaborate. Would a ban on abortions bother you?
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Abortion is awful and traumatic and I wish that nobody in the world would ever want or need one. However, if wishes were mashies, I'd be pissing gravy.
If abortion is made illegal, people are not going to stop having abortions. They will start getting unsafe abortions, either from unlicensed doctors, or with the help of well-meaning friends, or even all by their lonesome. And there is an excellent chance that they will die. It sounds ironic, but it is necessary to the sanctity of life that abortion remains legal; only then can it be well-regulated.
All that said, preventing the need for abortions is of paramount importance. An abortion should come free with a heapin' helpin' of education on the subjects of birth control and other women's health issues. Quality condoms should be given away like candy to anybody with functioning genitals.
The classical Catholic idealists who promote "pro-life" and "abstinence-only" education are infuriatingly ignorant. Yes, we all wish that the world were perfect. However, instead of coming up with laws for your fantasyland, let's come up with actual solutions that will really save fetuses from the hose.
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Abortion is awful and traumatic and I wish that nobody in the world would ever want or need one. However, if wishes were mashies, I'd be pissing gravy.
If abortion is made illegal, people are not going to stop having abortions. They will start getting unsafe abortions, either from unlicensed doctors, or with the help of well-meaning friends, or even all by their lonesome. And there is an excellent chance that they will die. It sounds ironic, but it is necessary to the sanctity of life that abortion remains legal; only then can it be well-regulated.
All that said, preventing the need for abortions is of paramount importance. An abortion should come free with a heapin' helpin' of education on the subjects of birth control and other women's health issues. Quality condoms should be given away like candy to anybody with functioning genitals.
The classical Catholic idealists who promote "pro-life" and "abstinence-only" education are infuriatingly ignorant. Yes, we all wish that the world were perfect. However, instead of coming up with laws for your fantasyland, let's come up with actual solutions that will really save fetuses from the hose.
FLAWLESS VICTORY!
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Abortion is awful and traumatic and I wish that nobody in the world would ever want or need one. However, if wishes were mashies, I'd be pissing gravy.
If abortion is made illegal, people are not going to stop having abortions. They will start getting unsafe abortions, either from unlicensed doctors, or with the help of well-meaning friends, or even all by their lonesome. And there is an excellent chance that they will die. It sounds ironic, but it is necessary to the sanctity of life that abortion remains legal; only then can it be well-regulated.
I'm pretty sure this is why abortion was unbanned in the first place
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I share Kazz's sentiments, pretty much. There's also that issue that the anti-abortion types seem to tiptoe around.
What happens if she gets pregnant after being raped? :sadpanda:
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She should have the choice, obviously, but the question becomes who pays. If rapebortions are free, you'll have girls falsely accusing their boyfriends in order to avoid the bill. And as we all know, it is nearly impossible to defend oneself against a rape charge.
So... abortion insurance? :shrug: I'm too tired to think this through.
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What happens if she gets pregnant after being raped? :sadpanda:
Than she can have the kid and keep it, or put it up for adoption. The kid didn't rape her, why should it die just because she doesn't feel like having it?
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Wow. Sora thinks abortion should be legal except in cases of rape. That's a new one.
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Wow. Sora thinks abortion should be legal except in cases of rape. That's a new one.
I don't keep an opinion for more than 5 minutes without changing it ::D:
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She should have the choice, obviously, but the question becomes who pays. If rapebortions are free, you'll have girls falsely accusing their boyfriends in order to avoid the bill. And as we all know, it is nearly impossible to defend oneself against a rape charge.
So... abortion insurance? :shrug: I'm too tired to think this through.
But then you'd have a lot more boyfriends in jail because they raped someone! Or prisons would be even more overcrowded than they already are! :ohshi~:
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the kid should die because everyone except for the kid is worse off if it lives, and it has no feelings to hurt.
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the kid should die because everyone except for the kid is worse off if it lives, and it has no feelings to hurt.
In that case the girl having it should die too for the exact same reasons. :ohshi~:
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Abortions for whoever wants them. No taxes to inflate the price. Tiny american flags for everyone else.
I like Kazz's idea of free sex ed classes with the procedure, too.
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There's so very much that could go wrong with the whole "government-set fixed-price for abortions" that it's probably best not to ever go there. I don't entirely disagree with the spirit of the idea, but it's untenable.
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Abortions for whoever wants them. No taxes to inflate the price. Tiny american flags for everyone else.
I like Kazz's idea of free sex ed classes with the procedure, too.
Okay, hold on, this just made me think of something that really pisses me off, no trolling or nothing. I'm not going to pay for some stupid young cunt to get her baby killed just because she was too retarded to use protection or keep the dick out of her. I say young because Any girl over 21 will pay for it herself via health insurance, but kids get it for free, so fuck that. Unless it won't be covered by any state-provided medical plan, it should be illegal so I don't have to pay for it. :profit:
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the kid should die because everyone except for the kid is worse off if it lives, and it has no feelings to hurt.
That's some conjecture there. Do we judge the availability of abortions by its effect on the lives of others? I think the mother is the only one who matters in this case, and it should be entirely up to her to judge whether the procedure is for the best.
And when do humans gain the ability to feel? I'm of the opinion that there should be a cutoff on non-life threatening abortions, once the fetus could survive outside the womb (and is no longer just a parasite inside the mother). I'm sure developmental neurologists could help us out on the cognitive abilities of fetuses, should we leave it up to them to decide, or use their studies to decide for ourselves what's least reprehensible to allow?
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Okay, hold on, this just made me think of something that really pisses me off, no trolling or nothing. I'm not going to pay for some stupid young cunt to get her baby killed just because she was too retarded to use protection or keep the dick out of her. I say young because Any girl over 21 will pay for it herself via health insurance, but kids get it for free, so fuck that. Unless it won't be covered by any state-provided medical plan, it should be illegal so I don't have to pay for it. :profit:
What you're suggesting is, basically, we're going to let anybody buy abortions "health insurance" except for the cross-section of the female population who unite "young" with "poor"? Basically, the people who can least afford to support an unwanted baby--the ones who would most benefit from the availability of abortion--are the ones you specifically want to deprive of that option?
Sounds like you want to wind up drowning in poor people!
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it should be illegal so I don't have to pay for it. :profit:
fuck you and your tax dollars. ::(:
Actually, how much does the average abortion procedure cost?
edit: also what newbie said
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Current law seems to* guesstimate state-by-state about how late in a woman's term a fetus suddenly turns into an unborn human, and sets laws based on that. It's not perfect, especially seeing as how you never know exactly when the term started, but it's a sight better than a lot of the alternatives that have been offered. Personally I'd like to see it boiled down to having a qualified - perhaps even specially licensed - professional make the call on whether the fetus is externally viable or not. As it stands now you're basically relying on a specialist anyway to judge how long the term has been, and depending on his or her professional standards they could slide the number either way.
There seems to be a terribly complicated set of parameters in place to determine whether or not the procedure is publicly funded or not, and I've got mixed feelings about that. I disagree with a lot of what Sora just said but I do feel it ought to be treated like any other insured surgery, but that blocks out a lot of lower-income people who honestly tend to have the most compelling reasons to get it done. I like to encourage abortion whenever possible - not exactly because I'm a baby-killing monster, but, well, if you really want me to go into it again, ask me. Anyway putting a monetary barrier in place isn't going to help anything at all, but I don't advocate treating it any different from, say, a heart replacement in the end.
Perhaps it would be best to reclassify abortion from 'elective' to 'urgent'. Once you get past the semantics of it, it makes more sense - it's not like you can put it off until next year.
* It's a little tricky to get solid information on.
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Abortion is awful and traumatic
This line of bullshit needs to die. The most common emotion women report after abortions is relief.
Just because abortions aren't snap decisions doesn't mean they're horrible things.
She should have the choice, obviously, but the question becomes who pays. If rapebortions are free, you'll have girls falsely accusing their boyfriends in order to avoid the bill.
Really? REALLY?
That's kinda like the argument that if gay marriage were legal, crooked businessmen would get married so they couldn't be forced to testify against each other. It sounds like you're just making up the most absurd scenario imaginable.
no trolling or nothing [...] stupid young cunt [...] baby killed [...] too retarded to use protection or keep the dick out of her.
And that is "no trolling" in what conceivable fucking way?
Any girl over 21 will pay for it herself via health insurance
In addition to everything Newbie already said about how stupid you are, it also bears noting that many health insurance plans don't cover the pill.
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She should have the choice, obviously, but the question becomes who pays. If rapebortions are free, you'll have girls falsely accusing their boyfriends in order to avoid the bill.
Really? REALLY?
That's kinda like the argument that if gay marriage were legal, crooked businessmen would get married so they couldn't be forced to testify against each other. It sounds like you're just making up the most absurd scenario imaginable.
This is from Texas, where IQ is Room Temperature on a good day, so take it as you will, but I saw multiple times where the girlfriend would accuse a boyfriend of rape to avoid the most absurd things. The worst was where the girl and her boyfriend skipped a test to screw, and the girl tried to call rape to get excused for the absence. (The logic was that if she wasn't being raped, she would have totally been there to take the test)
So I can totally see Kazz's scenario. People turn into horrible creatures when it comes to money.
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How multiple is multiple? I know it definitely happens, but I'm not entirely sure (or unsure) that it happens with enough regularity to justify framing the law around it.
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In the 3 and a half years I was in high school, I heard it happen about 8 times.
If we add to it stuff heard "From a friend" and not "stuff I heard directly from Teachers' mouths", it increases to 30~ish
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Okay, hold on, this just made me think of something that really pisses me off, no trolling or nothing. I'm not going to pay for some stupid young cunt to get her baby killed just because she was too retarded to use protection or keep the dick out of her. I say young because Any girl over 21 will pay for it herself via health insurance, but kids get it for free, so fuck that. Unless it won't be covered by any state-provided medical plan, it should be illegal so I don't have to pay for it. :profit:
What you're suggesting is, basically, we're going to let anybody buy abortions "health insurance" except for the cross-section of the female population who unite "young" with "poor"? Basically, the people who can least afford to support an unwanted baby--the ones who would most benefit from the availability of abortion--are the ones you specifically want to deprive of that option?
Sounds like you want to wind up drowning in poor people!
In these United States, working any minimum-wage job and saving 10% of your $$ can lead to a comfortable (relative to global environments) life. Poor people beget lazy people is what you're implying here.
yor welcum thad
The original question: I would support a ban of abortion. Murder's never justified. Rape-victim mothers should have a network of adoption families they can get in contact with, preferrably something they have to pay to use so we the people don't have to. A hundred bucks isn't too much to pay a company to find a loving home for an unwanted child, nor is a couple of grand from the recieving family.
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Rape-victim mothers should have a network of adoption families they can get in contact with, preferrably something they have to pay to use so we the people don't have to. A hundred bucks isn't too much to pay a company to find a loving home for an unwanted child.
Nice idea, untenable. Adoption rates are unacceptably poor as it stands right now. Forcing a new wave of children into the system will not help either the system or the children.
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The problem goes back to kids having sex too much! Damn kids.
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The problem goes back to kids having sex too much! Damn kids.
We were just talking about rape victims. Care to elaborate?
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In these United States, working any minimum-wage job and saving 10% of your $$ can lead to a comfortable (relative to global environments) life.
What about relative to just the other civilizations that have indoor plumbing?
The original question: I would support a ban of abortion. Murder's never justified.
So tell me about basic. I hear they teach you how to make flower arrangements.
Anyway, you're ignoring the "making it illegal won't stop people from doing it" point. I bet if someone brought up gun control, you would mysteriously suddenly remember it!
Rape-victim mothers should [...] pay
So, okay. Let's see if I can summarize your personal ethics.
A rape victim terminating her pregnancy is an evil act...but making her carry the child to term and then PAY to have it put up for adoption is the sort of thing a decent human being does.
Okay then!
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Not quite such a pretty picture as you might wish, but the world's rough, and we're all just animals. We've got to do what's best for the majority to ensure the best minority rules (those bastards).
Ideally I'd make the rapist's family pay. They raised the little shitstain.
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So does the fact that abortion rates have gone down drastically since Roe vs Wade enter into you thought process? Not to say legalizing made it go down, but it clearly bears out the the abortion rate is unrelated to its legal status.
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If abortion is made illegal, people are not going to stop having abortions. They will start getting unsafe abortions, either from unlicensed doctors, or with the help of well-meaning friends, or even all by their lonesome. And there is an excellent chance that they will die. It sounds ironic, but it is necessary to the sanctity of life that abortion remains legal; only then can it be well-regulated.
I completely and totally disagree with the premise that just because something is illegal and people choose to break the law it's the law's fault for being there.
Laws were made to be enforced. Lawbreakers don't get victimized by the laws, they victimize themselves by breaking them.
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So does the fact that abortion rates have gone down drastically since Roe vs Wade enter into you thought process? Not to say legalizing made it go down, but it clearly bears out the the abortion rate is unrelated to its legal status.
Birth control made that happen, not Roe vs. Wade.
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Griswold was 8 years before Roe.
This is that thing where you make baseless claims without bothering to hit Google. I'm going to warn you to stop it.
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@Thad:
If you're talking to me:
I meant that the decrease in abortions was due to increased birth-control use and not the legalization of abortions.
If you're addressing someone else:
Nvmd.
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:facepalm: Griswold is the case that legalized birth control, Guild. Good God, could you at least TRY to keep up?
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I completely and totally disagree with the premise that just because something is illegal and people choose to break the law it's the law's fault for being there.
Laws were made to be enforced. Lawbreakers don't get victimized by the laws, they victimize themselves by breaking them.
Laws are a means to and end, not the end itself. Stupid laws should neither be obeyed, nor enforced.
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See also Martin Luther King's "Letter from Birmingham Jail" (http://coursesa.matrix.msu.edu/~hst306/documents/letter.html).
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I don't see it as a matter of fetal life. I think that's irrelevant. What it ultimately comes down to is rights, and I see the "right to life" as a more general "right to control over one's own body".
Maybe a fetus is human enough to have a right to life, maybe it's not. Doesn't matter. Even assuming it does, that right does not get to supersede the mother's right to control her own body. If a woman is pregnant and decides to stop being pregnant, at whatever time and for whatever reason, then she should be able to do so. And unless medical technology will allow for birth to occur right now, without significant mental, physical, or financial strain on the mother? Then abortion has to be an option, it has to be readily available, it has to carry no significant financial burden to obtain, and it shouldn't have any "have to take a sex ed class" strings attached. It's the women's choice, nothing else factors into it.
I'd also be in favor of full public funding for abortion. It is good public policy, and in the state's interest, to not force anybody to birth a child they don't want.
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Abortion is awful and traumatic
This line of bullshit needs to die. The most common emotion women report after abortions is relief.
Just because abortions aren't snap decisions doesn't mean they're horrible things.
Yeah. It's like a therapeutic massage. I personally know several women who get knocked up monthly, just for the abortions. I hear it's quite relaxing.
She should have the choice, obviously, but the question becomes who pays. If rapebortions are free, you'll have girls falsely accusing their boyfriends in order to avoid the bill.
Really? REALLY?
That's kinda like the argument that if gay marriage were legal, crooked businessmen would get married so they couldn't be forced to testify against each other. It sounds like you're just making up the most absurd scenario imaginable.
That marriage thing is a clever one... if polygamy were also legal, you could have the entire Mafia get hitched.
And, yes, I'll confess to watching too much Law & Order: SVU. That being said, I didn't make this up. If Google News would come up with anything unrelated to Sarah Palin when I put in the words "rape" and "abortion," I might have been able to give you examples. Suffice it to say, and you don't have to believe me, I've heard about this sort of thing before, and not just anecdotally or on TV. But I'll admit that it's uncommon, and I probably shouldn't have brought it up as an argument. I was tired.
I don't see it as a matter of fetal life. I think that's irrelevant. What it ultimately comes down to is rights, and I see the "right to life" as a more general "right to control over one's own body".
Maybe a fetus is human enough to have a right to life, maybe it's not. Doesn't matter. Even assuming it does, that right does not get to supersede the mother's right to control her own body. If a woman is pregnant and decides to stop being pregnant, at whatever time and for whatever reason, then she should be able to do so. And unless medical technology will allow for birth to occur right now, without significant mental, physical, or financial strain on the mother? Then abortion has to be an option, it has to be readily available, it has to carry no significant financial burden to obtain, and it shouldn't have any "have to take a sex ed class" strings attached. It's the women's choice, nothing else factors into it.
<guild> If she had controlled her body in the first place, she wouldn't need the abortion. </guild>
Seriously though, there's a good reason that sex ed classes should be part of the package. Abortion should not be used as a method of birth control, the way condoms are. The ultimate goal here is for every pregnancy to be intentional. Is such perfection attainable? Doubtful. But it's dumb to give up trying to educate people.
I'd also be in favor of full public funding for abortion. It is good public policy, and in the state's interest, to not force anybody to birth a child they don't want.
When did we start talking about China?
This goes back to my education angle. If people stop having unwanted pregnancies, they'll stop having abortions, and this stops being a problem. Cases of rape, obviously, excluded.
Let me just add here that education doesn't stop at "wrap the wiener." I've posted at length on the topic of motherhood before, and how some women have babies for extremely stupid reasons. A good program would make sure that intentional pregnancies are also responsible ones.
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attn everyone not as well-informed as Thad: stop posting or i'll come to the next pyokon just to shit on your faces.
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Why shouldn't abortion be used as a method of birth control? Or, more specifically, why should the law step in and mandate that it not be used as a method of birth control? If someone prefers a series of minor outpatient surgeries to condoms or hormonal medications, why should the law be telling them they can't? What public interest is served?
I don't think the ultimate goal is for every pregnancy to be intentional. That's impossible, and irrelevant. The goal is, and should be, for every child carried to term to be wanted. And the corollary to that is that if a child is unwanted, it shouldn't be carried to term, and nothing should be forcing pregnant women to carry an unwanted pregnancy to term. Restrictions on the mother, like "Can't get an abortion without sitting through a sex ed class", are just obstacles getting in the way of terminating unwanted pregnancies, just like laws mandating parental or spousal notification.
Education is good. Education should be somewhere. Requiring a class before you get an abortion isn't where it should be. And educated people can, and do, still make irresponsible decisions, or do not want children, and there is no 100% method of effective birth control in sex. If you think abortion ought to be viewed as a last resort, that's fine, but you can't mandate that.
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ok i'm done with this thread
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I'd also be in favor of full public funding for abortion. It is good public policy, and in the state's interest, to not force anybody to birth a child they don't want.
When did we start talking about China?
... we didn't. Where does China enter into it?
Attaching a financial burden to abortion means that there will be women who are forced to carry to term a child they don't want, because they can't afford the procedure. It's economic discrimination. See also: Harper v. Virginia Board of Elections. (http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/historics/USSC_CR_0383_0663_ZO.html)
... or don't, whatever.
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we both think we're right. we're just going to repeat our arguments over and over. i don't feel like it. my stance is already posted.
i guess i'll just say that nobody should be denied an abortion for financial reasons, just like any other hospital treatment.
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Of note. China has one of the most rapidly aging populations in the world thanks to the one child policy.
I agree with TA that an unwanted child should not be carried to term, but I have trouble understanding how he can so easily hold abortion along side condoms or the pill as a valid form of regular birth control.
I don't think abortion should be made illegal because it's totally unrealistic to try to stop abortion that way, and it'll only make criminals out of women who are already probably in a pretty rough place.
Maybe I'm mis-reading TA's position, in which case :derp:
But it seems to me that even if it's a pre-human in your view, it's still better to not kill than to kill.
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Wait wait wait.
Is Kazz arguing for the possibility of generating more kids? 'cause that's what it sounds like.
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Abortion is awful and traumatic
This line of bullshit needs to die. The most common emotion women report after abortions is relief.
Just because abortions aren't snap decisions doesn't mean they're horrible things.
Yeah. It's like a therapeutic massage. I personally know several women who get knocked up monthly, just for the abortions. I hear it's quite relaxing.
Why shouldn't abortion be used as a method of birth control? Or, more specifically, why should the law step in and mandate that it not be used as a method of birth control? If someone prefers a series of minor outpatient surgeries to condoms or hormonal medications, why should the law be telling them they can't? What public interest is served?
ok i'm done with this thread
Kazz, you're thinking about this in black-and-white terms. You think that if abortion is not a horrible and traumatic experience, then people would get them all the time because they're lazy. You're in favor of stigmatizing abortion, but you haven't really told us why (besides that it's the norm of society).
Let me set you straight. You can not judge whether a woman should be forced to carry her child to term. No one can except the mother herself. You're against legislation banning abortion, that's good, but you can't get mad when you don't agree with every circumstance.
And for fuck's sake, no one is recommending that abortion replace birth control: your goal of no unwanted pregnancies is ideal to us, too. All we're saying is that abortion should not be some demonized taboo for when that birth control fails.
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My Sensical thoughts on abortion and rape:
In the instance of rape, abortion should be free and encouraged.
My Crazy thoughts on abortion and rape:
Abortion should be mandatory in the instance of incest.
Convicted rapists and those convicted of repeated domestic abuse should be sterilized, as an act of crime prevention as such things commonly spring violent and criminal behavior in children.
If a pregnancy is suspect of producing a child infected with AIDS or another serious incurable illness that can potentially be spread to others, it should be aborted.
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:facepalm: Griswold is the case that legalized birth control, Guild. Good God, could you at least TRY to keep up?
I know.
Your interjection was off-topic.
Would it be redundant to say "And irrelevant?"
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we both think we're right. we're just going to repeat our arguments over and over. i don't feel like it. my stance is already posted.
When I do this people assume it's concession because I don't announce it, I just stop talking. I think that's why Thad thinks I'm joking so often. It's actually a really nice ability to have.
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Yeah. It's like a therapeutic massage. I personally know several women who get knocked up monthly, just for the abortions. I hear it's quite relaxing.
The thing is I'm starting to believe that some people actually believe that. Get this: Abortion is always - always - a product of circumstances. Yeah, the most common circumstance is ignorance, but there are plenty of others. The main thing to get is that it's not just some form of after-the-fact birth control. It's rare for a woman to want to get rid of a child she's carrying just because she didn't plan on it. There has to be some factor involved - poverty, age, or some other situation that precludes the ability to care for the child - before a normal woman would consider it. Accidental pregnancies by themselves rarely lead to an abortion - hell, I'm willing to be that about half of you were accidents. I'm almost certain I was (my parents will tell me otherwise, but knowing what was going on at that time... let's just say "I don't believe that.")
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i don't even know where I said anything that Det said I said.
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i don't even know where I said anything that Det said I said.
Well clearly you're just missing the subtext in your posts. :wat:
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Please, then, tell me where I pegged you wrong.
Abortion is awful and traumatic
This line of bullshit needs to die. The most common emotion women report after abortions is relief.
Just because abortions aren't snap decisions doesn't mean they're horrible things.
Yeah. It's like a therapeutic massage. I personally know several women who get knocked up monthly, just for the abortions. I hear it's quite relaxing.
What are you trying to say with this? What point are you trying to make? Are you refuting Thad's data with your own gut feelings? I'm assuming you're being sarcastic here, am I wrong?
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- It's rare for a woman to want to get rid of a child she's carrying just because she didn't plan on it.
What? Did you spend years surveying women outside clinics we don't know about?
- There has to be some factor involved - poverty, age, or some other situation that precludes the ability to care for the child.
I'd like to introduce you to humanity. Humanity, this is Brentai. He's a nice kid. Brentai, this is humanity in general. They're selfish and capable of horrible things.
Show me a girl who got accidentally pregnant and I guarantee you she's considered abortion. I'd be willing to bet that, with the de-stigmatization of abortion today, it's the number 1 reason girls go through with one. "I just didn't plan it."
No other factors need be involved.
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Abortion is awful and traumatic.
But girls feel relief afterwards!
BUT THEY STILL DON'T LIKE DOING IT!
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I'd be willing to bet that, with the de-stigmatization of abortion today, it's the number 1 reason girls go through with one. "I just didn't plan it."
No other factors need be involved.
It's nice of you to inform us how all women think. :facepalm:
First off, no woman is going to use "I didn't plan it" the sole reason behind getting an abortion. It has to be "I didn't plan it and I don't want it/can't deal with it."
Secondly the stigma against abortion has changed in the last 50 years, but I wouldn't say it's lessened. More people used to get abortions when it was illegal, and while a certain portion of people have little to no stigma about it, there's also a very large group of people that never cared about it before that have a huge amount of stigma about it and are making a huge issue out of it. So I wouldn't say it has been de-stigmatized.
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Yeah. It's like a therapeutic massage. I personally know several women who get knocked up monthly, just for the abortions. I hear it's quite relaxing.
:strawman:
Abortion should not be used as a method of birth control, the way condoms are.
:strawman:
attn everyone not as well-informed as Thad: stop posting or i'll come to the next pyokon just to shit on your faces.
Stop it, I'm blushing.
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...I don't think you really wanted to say that in full context there.
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I want one more person to chide the previous poster for thinking they know how women think, and then within a sentence go on to talk about how women think.
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NOT VERY WELL
ba dum tish
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As far as I'm concerned, until you can breathe on your own you're just a tumour with eyes.
This is the thing though: it really doesn't matter how you or I feel about abortion. Outlawing it will only make things worse. We were supposed to have learned this in the fucking 30s, when Prohibition created organised crime.
It's been stated here several times, but women will continue to have abortions, no matter what. It's up to each individual to decide whether it's the right choice; the only thing the law can decide is whether you get to have it done in a clean, safe environment, or whether you have to get a coat-hanger out of the closet.
I also believe that heroin should be legal. I don't want to start filling my veins with the white witch, but it would mean a lot fewer people shooting up with LEAD.
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I just don't have any idea what people think my opinion is anymore. I thought I was being pretty clear, but apparently I'm history's greatest monster?
Then FUCKING TELL US instead of feeling so superior because you're misunderstood (which means people can't prove you wrong).
All I can gather so far is:
1. You don't think abortions should be illegal.
2. Ideally, abortions shouldn't happen.
This is fine, I don't disagree with you. The problem arises when you start labeling abortions as "awful". What makes you think this, and what do you have to support this? Instead of suggesting that we want abortions to replace condoms (really fucking stupid, abortions don't prevent AIDS), please tell us why we should feel it's "awful and traumatic" without guessing how women should feel when getting one (Thad mentioned actual data when making his "relief" post, what have you done?).
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I want one more person to chide the previous poster for thinking they know how women think, and then within a sentence go on to talk about how women think.
NOT VERY WELL
ba dum tish
With limited input like that, you're going to get a whole lot more of what you're asking for.
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I think abortions are awful because you're killing a human fetus, sucking it out, and throwing it away, and if you don't find that at least a little horrifying, fine. I'll even admit that I might be a hypocrite on this point because I'm going to eat a steak for dinner and God only knows what was done to the cow it came from. It's just my own subjective feeling. If women aren't actually traumatized by the experience of an abortion, good for them, but color me surprised.
TA was the one making the argument that some women would prefer having a "quick outpatient procedure" to using condoms. Sorry for finding that ridiculous.
And as a final note, even though I'm going to catch shit from every direction for this, Thad didn't cite any data or link anywhere, he just said they're mostly relieved. If that's the case, FINE.
Fuck's sake, I'm sorry I said that abortions are "awful." Would it have been better if I said they were "gross"?
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I want one more person to chide the previous poster for thinking they know how women think, and then within a sentence go on to talk about how women think.
NOT VERY WELL
ba dum tish
With limited input like that, you're going to get a whole lot more of what you're asking for.
Yes, that's kind of the point. Or is this your roundabout way of asking me to comment on the issue?
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TA was the one making the argument that some women would prefer having a "quick outpatient procedure" to using condoms. Sorry for finding that ridiculous.
It was just an example, not the basis for his argument (or any of ours) as you suggested.
So you don't like abortions being used that way (personally, I don't either), but does that mean we need to legislate against it? I'll say it over and over again: it's entirely up to the mother.
If you don't think abortion should be legislated against in any way, then we agree and are just disagreeing on personal viewpoints of abortion (this is okay, but makes the debate pretty meaningless. how gross we find abortion is entirely subjective).
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Of course I don't think it should be legislated against. I thought that was the first thing I said. It's got to stay legal if it's going to stay safe.
I don't even think it's wrong. Not in any moral sense, anyway. It's just a generally terrible thing to have to do, and I feel bad for the women who go through with it. (Apparently I shouldn't?)
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Well really, who has to give data to say abortions are awful anyways? Putting your dog down because his ridden with cancer can be the right thing to do, but it's pretty awful!
Sure, a woman will feel relief. She has just escaped a huge life altering situation she probably was not ready for -- but I have not yet to meet a woman who has casually forgotten about the baby she aborted or not thought about what it could of been. Abortions suck, anyone who thinks otherwise are out of touch and just going by numbers.. as opposed to say, speaking with women who have had abortions?
Again this has nothing to do with legality nor would it ever stop me from taking part in one. But lets not lie to our selves here, having to get an abortion, besides in the case of completely psychotic women, is a pretty shitty situation to be in.
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That's why I only sleep with completely psychotic women.
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Well, legislation does not have to ban abortion to be against it.
An abortion should come free with a heapin' helpin' of education on the subjects of birth control and other women's health issues.
Seriously though, there's a good reason that sex ed classes should be part of the package. Abortion should not be used as a method of birth control, the way condoms are.
These quotes suggest you are in favor of mandatory sex-ed classes for women receiving legal abortions. This would be legislation, even while it keeps the abortions legal. Of course the information should be available to anyone who wants it, but making it mandatory no longer makes it "free".
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how gross we find abortion is entirely subjective
With that in mind, when enough people's subjective experiences agree, the result changes social policy and "morality" (not in the sense freely interchangeable with "ethics"). If I had less homework to catch up on, I'd start a general morality topic, as it might get us to the core of this bullshit without wasting time on satellite issues.
For my dissertation research, I made up stories about people who did things that were disgusting or disrespectful yet perfectly harmless. For example, what do you think about a woman who can't find any rags in her house so she cuts up an old American flag and uses the pieces to clean her toilet, in private? Or how about a family whose dog is killed by a car, so they dismember the body and cook it for dinner? I read these stories to 180 young adults and 180 eleven-year-old children, half from higher social classes and half from lower, in the USA and in Brazil. I found that most of the people I interviewed said that the actions in these stories were morally wrong, even when nobody was harmed. Only one group—college students at Penn—consistently exemplified Turiel's definition of morality and overrode their own feelings of disgust to say that harmless acts were not wrong. (A few even praised the efficiency of recycling the flag and the dog).
This research led me to two conclusions. First, when gut feelings are present, dispassionate reasoning is rare. In fact, many people struggled to fabricate harmful consequences that could justify their gut-based condemnation. I often had to correct people when they said things like "it's wrong because… um…eating dog meat would make you sick" or "it's wrong to use the flag because… um… the rags might clog the toilet." These obviously post-hoc rationalizations illustrate the philosopher David Hume's dictum that reason is "the slave of the passions, and can pretend to no other office than to serve and obey them." This is the first rule of moral psychology: feelings come first and tilt the mental playing field on which reasons and arguments compete. If people want to reach a conclusion, they can usually find a way to do so.
I'm not big on partisan writing/science, but there's some interesting stuff in that article and a couple of the replies (reached by clicking [Continue...] at the bottom).
That's why I only sleep with completely psychotic women.
Redundant.
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Detonator:
First of all, I never said "mandatory," but I understand how one would think I implied it, so I won't raise a fuss.
If reducing the need for abortions isn't a priority, screw the education. But if we're actually concerned about reducing unwanted pregnancies (which I think we should be), we should give condoms away. Lots and lots of condoms. By the fucking bucket. In fact, the bucket should really be labelled "Fucking Bucket."
That's 90% of what I mean by "sex ed" anyway. It's basically "Use this, for fuck's sake."
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Did any of us give any indication that we didn't want a comprehensive sex education program in addition to abortions?
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Apparently, that's a controversial stance!
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Did any of us give any indication that we didn't want a comprehensive sex education program in addition to abortions?
Apparently, that's a controversial stance!
Did any of us give any indication that we didn't want a comprehensive sex education program in addition to abortions?
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Yes! You did! Six posts ago!
At the very least, you implied it as much as I implied that such education should be mandatory!
CAN WE AGREE YET?!
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And as a final note, even though I'm going to catch shit from every direction for this, Thad didn't cite any data or link anywhere, he just said they're mostly relieved. If that's the case, FINE.
Maybe I don't like having to dig up links every single time we have this conversation (http://brontoforum.us/index.php?topic=9.msg16806#msg16806), you ASSHOLE.
"Oh! Oh! I can't remember what happened two months ago and Thad didn't repeat himself enough!"
Jesus Christ. Guild is contagious.
Fuck's sake, I'm sorry I said that abortions are "awful."
Er, the word I was objecting to was pretty clearly "traumatic".
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Yes! You did! Six posts ago!
At the very least, you implied it as much as I implied that such education should be mandatory!
You said abortion and education should come as a "package", that's how I misunderstood you. Please give me a specific quote that implies I'm against education.
These quotes suggest you are in favor of mandatory sex-ed classes for women receiving legal abortions. This would be legislation, even while it keeps the abortions legal. Of course the information should be available to anyone who wants it, but making it mandatory no longer makes it "free".
I thought this was specific enough to differentiate between mandatory education to get an abortion and preventative education which ideally would be done before unwanted pregnancies occur. Though you were accusing us of this long before this post.
And for fuck's sake, no one is recommending that abortion replace birth control: your goal of no unwanted pregnancies is ideal to us, too.
Okay, so I didn't come out and speak in favor of education explicitly in this regard, but I thought it would be clear enough.
CAN WE AGREE YET?!
:wrong: Not until we can actually understand each other!
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Just as a note, just because they feel relieved, doesn't mean it wasn't traumatic, especially in the long run. Finally not having to deal with a stressful situation like an unwanted baby could make getting pushed down the stairs a relief.
Granted it'd probably be a lot less so if we further decreased the social stigma.
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American Psychological Association study: Abortions Unlikely to Cause Depression. (http://www.usnews.com/blogs/on-women/2008/08/15/abortions-unlikely-to-cause-depression.html)
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Thats all good and nice, but that doesn't dispute anything. You don't need to have a mental illness to be hurt by by something. Women are generally very good and at coping, even with things like daily beatings. Women 'get over' abortions, but it rarely leaves them. I speak from experience with these women and seeing strong women tear up as they open up about it. Thats not the type of information you get form studies like that. Hell, you can hardly study something like that as it takes trust to get them to open up in the first place. It's not debilitating, it doesn't cause mental illness but the whole thing just sucks.
This discussion is sort of a moot point, as I don't think any study is going to make me question my experience in this matter.
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I'm just posting to point out that I really don't have an opinion about this issue.
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I'm just posting to point out that I really don't have an opinion about this issue.
THAT IS UNACCEPTABLE WE MUST ALL GET ANGRY
:MENDOZAAAAA:
THAD IS A POOPIE HEAD
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I FEEL GREAT!
::D:
I LOOOOOOOOOOOVE BEING ANGRY
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We can play anecdote-versus-anecdote all we want. The women I know who've had them didn't get teary.
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Perhaps you aren't rubbing their tummies the right way to obtain arcane lore.
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My observation is that any event, given sufficient emotional weight, can cause various kinds of mental trauma. It seems to me that it would be difficult to determine empirically whether there is any additional, more directly physiological cause to link abortion and depression. But I'm also inclined to suggest that it wouldn't matter even if it did, as it wouldn't change the basic morality of the situation (whatever that may be).
That is, I find it difficult to imagine an interpretation of the issue of abortion where such relative trifles as the inclination of would-have-been mothers toward pathological sadness are the deciding factor of its legality.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYCMxD4pylM
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And as a final note, even though I'm going to catch shit from every direction for this, Thad didn't cite any data or link anywhere, he just said they're mostly relieved. If that's the case, FINE.
Maybe I don't like having to dig up links every single time we have this conversation (http://brontoforum.us/index.php?topic=9.msg16806#msg16806), you ASSHOLE.
"Oh! Oh! I can't remember what happened two months ago and Thad didn't repeat himself enough!"
Jesus Christ. Guild is contagious.
Common denominator: My winning personality!
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My observation is that any event, given sufficient emotional weight, can cause various kinds of mental trauma. It seems to me that it would be difficult to determine empirically whether there is any additional, more directly physiological cause to link abortion and depression. But I'm also inclined to suggest that it wouldn't matter even if it did, as it wouldn't change the basic morality of the situation (whatever that may be).
That is, I find it difficult to imagine an interpretation of the issue of abortion where such relative trifles as the inclination of would-have-been mothers toward pathological sadness are the deciding factor of its legality.
^^^ This. Particularly the last bit. If I had anything left to say, Bongo said it. I'm hella pro choice. But it seems to me to always be a difficult, lasting choice that isn't to be taken lightly.
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And as a final note, even though I'm going to catch shit from every direction for this, Thad didn't cite any data or link anywhere, he just said they're mostly relieved. If that's the case, FINE.
Maybe I don't like having to dig up links every single time we have this conversation (http://brontoforum.us/index.php?topic=9.msg16806#msg16806), you ASSHOLE.
"Oh! Oh! I can't remember what happened two months ago and Thad didn't repeat himself enough!"
... what the fuck did I do to deserve getting called an asshole?
Sorry I made you link the data you were citing in a conversation where it was relevant. For the record, I fully fucking believed that you had such data, I just wanted to see it. Sorry I didn't go look for it myself. I should have recalled the content of a post from two months ago in an unrelated thread.
You win. Abortions aren't traumatic. Okay? I was wrong.
I seriously consider you one of my better friends on here, Thad. I'm trying really hard not to come off like an ignorant fuck-up with bizarro opinions. What did I do to piss you off so much?
Det, I'm sorry we misunderstood each other. Whenever I say "sex ed" I really mean "free birth control." I really have no problem with making that mandatory. Staple the condom to her panties if you have to. I didn't intend to penalize abortions in the way that someone under 21 has to attend an alcoholism seminar every time they come within spitting distance of a beer, or anything.
Here's your post that confused me.
These quotes suggest you are in favor of mandatory sex-ed classes for women receiving legal abortions. This would be legislation, even while it keeps the abortions legal. Of course the information should be available to anyone who wants it, but making it mandatory no longer makes it "free".
For whatever fucking reason, I basically misread this entire post, believing you were playing Devil's Advocate for a stance that I didn't hold. Of course we both want comprehensive sex education, the question was whether or not we wanted to force people to take it, and apparently we thought we differed on the subject or maybe not. I'm too exhausted to figure it out or care, and it doesn't matter anyway.
I dunno. I'm so fucking tired of this debate. Whatever you guys want to do with abortion is fine. I'm honestly sorry that I ever tried to talk about it here. My opinion has officially been dragged outside and shot.
Thad's going to get pissy because I don't want to play anymore, but I hope he won't mind if I want to leave this one alone.
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Abortion is sort of like weeding.
People-weeding.
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Friday, lyrai, marsdragoon, other girls on the boards: What do you think about abortion, honestly? (I ask because you're girls)
Does the idea frighten or worry you? Would you ever get one assuming you became spontaneously (magically) pregnant and had a good reason to?
Everyone else:
Shut the fuck up about this question. It's just a fucking question, and nobody's twisting anyone's arm to answer. Jackasses.
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I think anybody who wants an abortion should be able to get one, but obviously, it shouldn't be your only form of birth control (which some people seem to think is perfectly acceptable because they are crazy fucks). I know that if I ever got pregnant, I'd get an abortion, because there is no way in hell that I ever want to have a child, and if I did ever want one, that's what paying a surrogate is for. I'm not scared of them just because they're kind of dangerous sometimes--lots of things are dangerous and stupid, but having a baby would be a hell of a lot worse than an abortion in my opinion.
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Obama to lift ban on funding for groups that provide abortion services overseas. (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/7847651.stm)
Note, this ban even extended to groups that merely provided information on abortion.
The Miniature American Flags Act of 2009 is also slated to come across Obama's desk next week.
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He's my favorite president ever ;-;
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He's already the baby-killin'est! He's got my vote for life!
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There was a ban on just providing information? That's great, because we all know how well abstinence-only education works... dammit, can't find that story about the dumbass Floridian teen who drank bleach thinking it'd work as birth control.
This is probably a little over-reaction on my part, but banning the distribution of information strikes me as kind of Orwellian.
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There was a ban on just providing information? That's great, because we all know how well abstinence-only education works... dammit, can't find that story about the dumbass Floridian teen who drank bleach thinking it'd work as birth control.
This is probably a little over-reaction on my part, but banning the distribution of information strikes me as kind of Orwellian.
A ban on government funding of the distribution, not the distribution itself.
It's still information control, but in a different way.
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On the topic of abstinence only education; I think one should have the right to be taught about themselves in a merely instruction-manual sense. Abstinence only education is tearing out those pages of the manual. PEOPLE NEED TO KNOW WHAT HAPPENS AFTER "INSERT ROD P INTO SLOT V"!
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you get a B, lose all your T and M, and hate your L
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Alternative: AIDS
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On the topic of abstinence only education; I think one should have the right to be taught about themselves in a merely instruction-manual sense. Abstinence only education is tearing out those pages of the manual. PEOPLE NEED TO KNOW WHAT HAPPENS AFTER "INSERT ROD P INTO SLOT V"!
I don't think they skip the consequences of sex, they just skip the "use contraceptives" part so that the consequences they teach are unavoidable.
I might be wrong, though.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RGc2qVuxS1g
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http://jezebel.com/5853887/un-recommends-everyone-stop-telling-women-what-to-do-with-their-bodies (http://jezebel.com/5853887/un-recommends-everyone-stop-telling-women-what-to-do-with-their-bodies)
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The report also declares it Officially Messed Up when a woman is prosecuted for taking illegal drugs or drinking during her pregnancy, because it's her body and the state has no right to it.
This is a part that I have a problem with, because this directly affects the life of another unless the woman does go through with an actual abortion.
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Well, if she's taking illegal drugs she's liable for that whether she's pregnant or not. As far as drinking...well, I'm inclined to agree with you (provided you can prove that she knew she was pregnant; drinking during the first few weeks shouldn't be prosecuted), though perhaps simply taking the child away is sufficient punishment.
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Yeah, helping create a retarded orphan is certainly a fitting punishment for their parent.
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The report also declares it Officially Messed Up when a woman is prosecuted for taking illegal drugs or drinking during her pregnancy, because it's her body and the state has no right to it.
This is a part that I have a problem with, because this directly affects the life of another unless the woman does go through with an actual abortion.
Having an abortion also directly affects the life of another.
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As far as drinking...well, I'm inclined to agree with you (provided you can prove that she knew she was pregnant; drinking during the first few weeks shouldn't be prosecuted), though perhaps simply taking the child away is sufficient punishment.
Yeah, helping create a retarded orphan is certainly a fitting punishment for their parent.
so you can decide to deflect the post based off one line
I see you've managed to bring it down to a quarter of a sentence. Kudos.
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Baby, you can disregard what I'm saying from a word if you'd like.
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As much as I feel a person's own reproduction is their own business, I could see a case made for an untrained or unassisted abortion being so risky to the child bearer's life that it could be criminal (in the same way that attempted suicide is prosecutable).
But...
Slippery slopes and whatnot.
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Eh. I can say that something maybe shouldn't be illegal while also thinking that someone is a terrible fucking human being for doing it.
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You can't really have it both ways. Either she's fucking with another human being or she's fucking with her own body.
The corollary here is that if you make abortion illegal then you must also make it illegal to smoke or drink during pregnancy, since that would be giving alcohol/tobacco to a minor.
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The report also declares it Officially Messed Up when a woman is prosecuted for taking illegal drugs or drinking during her pregnancy, because it's her body and the state has no right to it.
This is a part that I have a problem with, because this directly affects the life of another unless the woman does go through with an actual abortion.
Having an abortion also directly affects the life of another.
In the case of an abortion, there is never the life of another to affect. Drinking and doing drugs won't stop the thing from being born (well, not in all cases), but it will likely have an extreme negative impact on the thing's life after it is born.
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A fetus is a living human organism. Whether you consider it a person is up to you, I guess, but it is alive.
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Split. If someone can find the earlier abortion thread (we DO have an earlier abortion thread, right? (anybody who says Jail gets a posting ban.)) feel free to merge it.
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Done.
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...eeugh. Maybe we should have kept it split.
I just want to say I still stand by my "Anybody who is considering an abortion should immediately go out and get an abortion" stance. Especially in light of OVERPOPULATION BEING THE NEW SCARY THING FOR HALLOWEEN WHOOOOO! (http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2011/10/111028-seven-7-billion-people-population-earth-world/)
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I don't think overpopulation is the problem. The earth could comfortably support a population many times higher if we were able to allocate resources more effectively.
The problems are greed, carelessness and income inequality.
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Overpopulation isn't scary until everyone starts turning into zombies.
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I don't think overpopulation is the problem. The earth could comfortably support a population many times higher if we were able to allocate resources more effectively.
The problems are greed, carelessness and income inequality.
So the problem isn't the people, just the effect of having people.
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Pretty much. But I believe that people and societies are are slowly improving as time goes on, and we'll eventually reach that utopian state.
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After we destroy ourselves? Sounds about right.
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Imagine there's a condescending comment here, maybe with the phrase, "adorable naivete."
EDIT: Shit. Mars beat me to it with an actually cynical response.
ORIGINAL CONTINUES:
I dunno if I'd go so far as "utopian" myself, but... Yeah.
Getting Better- The Beatles (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jk0dBZ1meio#)
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After we destroy ourselves? Sounds about right.
http://www.npr.org/2011/10/29/141801929/u-s-dismantles-the-biggest-of-its-cold-war-nukes (http://www.npr.org/2011/10/29/141801929/u-s-dismantles-the-biggest-of-its-cold-war-nukes)
Edit: Okay, after actually reading that article, it's kind of scary.
"In the 1990s, the United States was dismantling at a rate three times the rate of today," he said. "Partly that's because we were not refurbishing a lot of weapons and extending their life spans. And now we have a plan, just the next 10 years, we're supposed to be extending the life, the longevity, of roughly 2,000 strategic, high-yield nuclear weapons."
The U.S. still has some 1,800 strategic warheads deployed, a thousand on land- and sea-based missiles that could be launched in 12 minutes — and another 2,500 in reserve. These are the warheads that are being refurbished and that have slowed the dismantling process.
"At the rate that we're dismantling now, which is around 250 or so weapons per year, a weapon that is ready to be retired and be destroyed may not get to Pantex for actual dismantling for 10 years, because the queue is so long."
How long is that queue? Poneman would only say it's a goodly number. Other sources say there could be as many as 4,000 bombs in warehouses awaiting destruction.
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After we destroy ourselves? Sounds about right.
http://www.npr.org/2011/10/29/141801929/u-s-dismantles-the-biggest-of-its-cold-war-nukes (http://www.npr.org/2011/10/29/141801929/u-s-dismantles-the-biggest-of-its-cold-war-nukes)
Edit: Okay, after actually reading that article, it's kind of scary.
"In the 1990s, the United States was dismantling at a rate three times the rate of today," he said. "Partly that's because we were not refurbishing a lot of weapons and extending their life spans. And now we have a plan, just the next 10 years, we're supposed to be extending the life, the longevity, of roughly 2,000 strategic, high-yield nuclear weapons."
The U.S. still has some 1,800 strategic warheads deployed, a thousand on land- and sea-based missiles that could be launched in 12 minutes — and another 2,500 in reserve. These are the warheads that are being refurbished and that have slowed the dismantling process.
"At the rate that we're dismantling now, which is around 250 or so weapons per year, a weapon that is ready to be retired and be destroyed may not get to Pantex for actual dismantling for 10 years, because the queue is so long."
How long is that queue? Poneman would only say it's a goodly number. Other sources say there could be as many as 4,000 bombs in warehouses awaiting destruction.
Your tiddlyweek bombs! They do not scare me! (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsar_bomba)
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I think humans are naturally inclined towards apocalyptic thinking, and that as a result of this people massively overestimate the damage and likelihood of a nuclear war. Which isn't to say that it wouldn't be the worst thing to ever happen to man kind and that it isn't more likely than I'm comfortable with. Still, I think natural extinction events are much more likely to push mankind to the brink rather than man-made ones.
Also I more or less agree with Caithness that things are getting better on a long enough timeline. No reason to think tomorrow will be better, but eventually things will be better. I think we see things as getting worse because we're less tolerant and more aware of the things that aren't okay than in the past.
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Split. If someone can find the earlier abortion thread (we DO have an earlier abortion thread, right? (anybody who says Jail gets a posting ban.)) feel free to merge it.
I think there IS an actual Abortion thread in Jail/Guild Hall that got jailed because Guild guilded it.
Wait, are you threatening to ban someone who mentions that thread, or someone who calls Jail an abortion of a thread. Because I took it to mean the second.
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Generally, I do agree that things are getting better over the long term and that even a massive extinction event would leave some survivors who would eventually rebuild some semblance of society.
But I would like to point out that if you're on the ascending slope of a very gradual and very long-term bell-curve, then of course things are going to look like they're always getting better. Which is just to say, we don't generally appreciate what "long-term" really is.
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Accounting for the heat-death of the universe is generally considered cheating.
Unless you'd like to make a contract...?
(http://i1115.photobucket.com/albums/k545/cthulhuchan/kyubey.jpg)
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Jesus Christ we've switched gears AGAIN.
Rather than go through the tedious process of splitmerging one more time I just came up with a quicker and easier solution.
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Accounting for the heat-death of the universe is generally considered cheating.
Unless you'd like to make a contract...?
(http://i1115.photobucket.com/albums/k545/cthulhuchan/kyubey.jpg)
Only if it's not payable until said heat death >__>
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I still need to watch that.
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Me too.
Hey, we could watch it together.
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Perhaps as some sort of remedial program?
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A fetus is a living human organism. Whether you consider it a person is up to you, I guess, but it is alive.
A sperm is alive too. Again, the trouble with this debate is that slippery-slope arguments are pretty much unavoidable.
I think humans are naturally inclined towards apocalyptic thinking, and that as a result of this people massively overestimate the damage and likelihood of a nuclear war.
I think it was a Stross post I read a few months back that posited we'll never see nukes dropped again simply because of the cost involved. You want to kill a few thousand people, you can do it just fine by hijacking a plane.
The other key difference between WWII Japan and modern powers is that, well, as you may have noticed, 9/11 didn't result in an immediate surrender, it just pissed us the hell off. You can make "the terrorists won" arguments for various subsequent infringements on our rights, but I don't think anyone can really say that bin Laden got what he wanted.
Unless what he wanted was to be shot in the face.
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I'm trying to frame this in a way so that I don't catch a facefull of Thad for it, but it's kind of a tiring exercise so I'm just gonna be upfront with it.
The scale of the Hiroshima bombing to 9/11 is at least 25:1 just in the immediate death toll. I think it's rude to the Japanese to compare the two directly.
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Since I was paraphrasing Stross's post, I've gone ahead and dug it up and will quote him directly:
There's one group of people who might still want to acquire nukes for a practical purpose: "terrorists". (Scare quotes intentional.) But I think this is a paper tiger. Terrorism isn't an existential state, it's a tactic. People employ it in order to achieve political ends. Nuclear weapons are difficult to make because they require extremely exotic materials that the existing manufacturers keep under armed guard. As the Hamburg Cell of Al Qaida demonstrated on 11/9/2001, you can achieve equivalent damage using much simpler tactics. The collapse of the World Trade Centre buildings released about as much gravitational potential energy as a one kiloton nuke, and killed roughly as many people. But the 9/11 atrocities also demonstrated the limits of the terrorist spectacle: like Douhet's mass bombardment of cities from the air, terrorism doesn't make the target population quake in their boots and plead for surrender, it mostly pisses them off and stiffens their spines.
No, clearly the two are not directly comparable, for a myriad of reasons which he largely covers in the post. That the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were a unique moment in history and we'll never see their like again is the point.
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fuck a malthus
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Ok, that's fair. I admit that it's difficult to acquire full context at work on a phone, but if I let that stop me from posting I wouldn't be able to
maintain my postcount participate in discourse at all.
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I think it's also notable that the cost of developing a nuke is so high that generally only first world countries have been able to develop them, and our present international economic system is such that there's an extremely strong disincentive against any first world nation attacking another. Even with North Korea, they might be able to create a handful of nukes at extreme cost to themselves, but they can't really use them. If they did the international military action that would be united against them would probably be like nothing we've ever seen.
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Yep.
MAD is the major reason the Cold War stayed cold. And nuclear war's a damn sight less likely now than it was then.
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I do agree with you guys, for the most part. MAD is relevant, as is the potential collective rage of the global community if a rogue state lobbed a nuke at someone. Disarmament is accelerating in part because nukes are damned expensive to maintain and cannot be used in any practical military sense, except for the ultimate extreme. Hell, it's been commented on at length that the very nature of war has changed recently, to a situation where maximum application of force is usually the worst move (which runs counter to the last several millenia).
The only thing I'm just not comfortable with is any claim that the world's advanced nations will never ever again enter into a truly knock-down, drag-out, tooth-and-nail fight. Maybe MAD staved things off last time, or maybe it was just fatigue/reflective wisdom from WWII. I suppose we'll find out eventually.
Of course that's an easy statement for me to make, because I'm talking about stuff that (probably, hopefully) won't take place until well after we're all dead.
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The only thing I'm just not comfortable with is any claim that the world's advanced nations will never ever again enter into a truly knock-down, drag-out, tooth-and-nail fight. Maybe MAD staved things off last time, or maybe it was just fatigue/reflective wisdom from WWII. I suppose we'll find out eventually.
If we have 2 advanced countries go to war again I think it'll be because we've had a colossal world wide economic collapse and that the countries involved would be fighting over things like water and food, in which case the 2 countries wouldn't really be advanced anymore. There's a lot of really shitty things about globalization, but one really good thing is it makes war against insider members really really undesirable.
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Crises over food and water would be bad, but a war fought over such crises would be an order of magnitude worse. I think if things were on the way to totally collapsing, you would see the war well before things actually hit bottom. I mean, by definition any such Giant Space War would have to be fought before the collapse was complete.
Climate, food supply, demographic issues are mostly growing worse, though the problem is very very manageable for now and the decline is incredibly incremental (it may even be reversible, if we get our shit together).
There's also a possibility that internal unrest in large powers will precipitate nasty things (I could also go about a possible friction-inducing social shift akin to the original introduction of Communism/Fascism, or the Reformation/Counter-Reformation, but I think it's kind of bullshit for me to argue about imaginary potential social shifts with no evidence for it at all).
Never underestimate people's ability to forget war's real impact after a long peace - or the capacity for stupid little bullshit things to spiral way out of everyone's control until events overtake everyone.
Anyway, I'm not disputing the points about globalization etc. The above stuff is just me throwing points out (those paragraphs don't even flow into each other very well). I agree that general wars area lot less attractive for a major power than they've ever been; "Greed will save the world" and all that. I'm just saying that a) it's not impossible and b) "not impossible" does not mean "a 0.0000000000000000000000000000001% chance".
The species has had a globe-spanning war about once every 75-125 years for as long as such conflicts have been possible (about 350 years, though some would argue for 450), and we've been beating each over the head with rocks for millennia before that. Wouldn't be the first bad habit we'd found was hard to break.
Maybe we really have turned a corner. Maybe our own mortality has sobered us up (a little). But I don't think we can say that for sure until quite a bit more time has passed.
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The species has had a globe-spanning war about once every 75-125 years for as long as such conflicts have been possible
That sounds about right. It only takes a generation or two to forget just how awful war can be.
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How did you take a topic about woman's rights and change it into waterworld in like two pages?
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75-125 years over a 350-450 year period is enough variability that I'm not sure I actually buy the argument. I don't think remembering how terrible war was has anything to do with preventing the next war. If it did then WWII wouldn't have happened, or really any of the wars since WWII. If anything I think war begets war, as once you decide that war is a legitimate tool to solve one international problem it's put on the table for any problem. The only way war stops in when the population/infrastructure finally drop to a point where war isn't feasible at all.
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Arguably, you can go back about another 300 years or so if you replace "globe-spanning war" with "all out war between the most powerful nations on the globe". Beyond that conflicts were generally smaller, but endemic and constant (of course they were endemic anyway, until recently).
Also, WWI and WWII being treated as separate wars is a product of recent memory and historical convenience. Maybe they're not the exact same war, but they're two episodes in the same series.
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Which is why they are both called World War #
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Population Density (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bc/Population_density.png)
oh, populations have exploded in the past two-hundred years or so? couldn't be because industrialized agricultural production means we can feed that many people now
seriously you guys fuck a malthus
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Yes, war is one of the "natural checks' that Malthus said would reduce population, but that's not the source of my war arguments. I don't think anybody here is arguing for a Malthusian view.
Personally, I do believe that there's an upper limit to the number of people you can cram on a given land area, but I don't think the most relevant limitation is food anymore. It probably isn't even water, either. The real limits are social and mental. And population density is a very minor part of my views on why humans go to war.
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I'm personally a fan of youth bulge myself
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Pervert
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I'm personally a fan of youth bulge myself
Yeah, I agree there. The male/female selection bias in some places exacerbates this too.
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I'm personally a fan of youth bulge myself
Yeah, I agree there. The male/female selection bias in some places exacerbates this too.
:suave:
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For those keeping score, "youth bulge" refers to the tendency of societies blessed with more men ages 15-29 than they can gainfully and peaceably marry off/employ to end badly if unable to inflict those 15-29ers on somebody else.
See: the Crusades, the modern Middle East, China in about 15 years
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India fits in there somewhere as well (http://kite.mapboston.org/2006.01.21-India.pdf) if I'm understanding this correctly.
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Moving on back a bit:
Well, if she's taking illegal drugs she's liable for that whether she's pregnant or not. As far as drinking...well, I'm inclined to agree with you (provided you can prove that she knew she was pregnant; drinking during the first few weeks shouldn't be prosecuted), though perhaps simply taking the child away is sufficient punishment.
My point in saying that was, of course, that even terrible parents generally do not want their children taken away from them, and find such to be a horrible, traumatic experience.
Case in point: the couple who decided methadone was a good treatment for their 2-year-old's toothache (http://blogs.phoenixnewtimes.com/valleyfever/2011/11/jennifer_campos_giving_2-year-.php) and who have been on the run from CPS out of fear of their children being taken away.
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The corollary here is that if you make abortion illegal then you must also make it illegal to smoke or drink during pregnancy, since that would be giving alcohol/tobacco to a minor.
Just realized that the Mississippi Personhood Amendment (random relevant news link (http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2011/11/mississippis-personhood-amendment-a-challenge-for-moderate-conservatives/)) would actually make this hard law rather than pedantry. Can't wait until somebody realizes that you can start prosecuting for this.
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The corollary here is that if you make abortion illegal then you must also make it illegal to smoke or drink during pregnancy, since that would be giving alcohol/tobacco to a minor.
Just realized that the Mississippi Personhood Amendment (random relevant news link (http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2011/11/mississippis-personhood-amendment-a-challenge-for-moderate-conservatives/)) would actually make this hard law rather than pedantry. Can't wait until somebody realizes that you can start prosecuting for this.
There was actually a case in Oklahoma were they tried to prosecute a woman for first degree murder because she had a miscarriage and she was taking heroine. Problem is drug use was unrelated to the miscarriage and they tried to push through the prosecution anyways.
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The corollary here is that if you make abortion illegal then you must also make it illegal to smoke or drink during pregnancy, since that would be giving alcohol/tobacco to a minor.
Just realized that the Mississippi Personhood Amendment (random relevant news link (http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2011/11/mississippis-personhood-amendment-a-challenge-for-moderate-conservatives/)) would actually make this hard law rather than pedantry. Can't wait until somebody realizes that you can start prosecuting for this.
Yet the proponents, when shown this argument, simply decried it at reductio ad absurdum and acted like that meant that no one would actually implement/enforce such laws because it would be 'absurd'!
:facepalm:
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Well, yes, I don't expect them to apply logic, humanity or even the basics of the Surgeon General's Warning to an issue that's never been more than fundamentalist dick-waving. I expect them to suffer for a few years under the regime of a government whose only revenue is through litigation until they either start begging to have the shit reformed, or anybody who's worth a damn just leaves Mississippi to rot.
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no one would actually implement/enforce such laws because it would be 'absurd'!
Of course, which is why it will only be used to opress people at random, much like copyright laws.
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At random? Don't be absurd. They'll use it often enough for political expediency, but sparingly enough to seem random.
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At random? Don't be absurd. They'll use it often enough to rile up the base, but sparingly enough to seem random.
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Mississippi is voting on whether or not a fertilized ovum counts as a "person." (http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1111/67738.html)
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if anyone ever posts "every sperm that's wasted" ever again I will shoot ketchup out of my eyes
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Oh Friday, please don't burn us.
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Insane Personhood Amendment does not pass. (http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-250_162-57321126/mississippis-personhood-amendment-fails-at-polls/)
It's good to know that there's such a thing as too backwater fundamentalist crazy for backwater fundamentalist crazies.
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Never in my life did I think I'd have an opportunity to say "Way to go, Mississippi".
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Should be noted that a non-significant number of people speaking against the bill in Miss. were abortionists arguing that pushing the issue would backfire on them once the Supreme Court got involved. So the cynical side of me wants to say the bill failed not because anybody there believed it was wrong, but because it wasn't sneaky enough to get past the Fed.
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Pretty much, though I'd say it's more because it's too broad -- it would have denied medical treatment to pregnant women with cancer, banned a number of birth control pills -- basically the public realized it wouldn't just punish the "bad" people.
Similarly, Arizona's first attempt at a gay marriage ban failed because it would have denied benefits to unmarried straight couples. Two years later they came back with another version that closed the loopholes and it passed.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/08/health/policy/sebelius-overrules-fda-on-freer-sale-of-emergency-contraceptives.html?_r=1 (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/08/health/policy/sebelius-overrules-fda-on-freer-sale-of-emergency-contraceptives.html?_r=1)
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Never entrust women's health to a fucking Kansas politician.
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A discussion on self-induced abortion and the criminalization thereof. (http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/article/2011/12/06/abortion-is-legal-so-why-is-self-abortion-care-crime)
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http://thinkprogress.org/health/2011/12/08/385145/obama-backs-sebelius-decision-to-limit-availability-of-plan-b/ (http://thinkprogress.org/health/2011/12/08/385145/obama-backs-sebelius-decision-to-limit-availability-of-plan-b/)
:facepalm:
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http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/08/health/policy/sebelius-overrules-fda-on-freer-sale-of-emergency-contraceptives.html?_r=1 (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/08/health/policy/sebelius-overrules-fda-on-freer-sale-of-emergency-contraceptives.html?_r=1)
Fourteen Senators demand an explanation for this bullshit (http://franken.senate.gov/files/letter/121311_Letter_to_Sebelius_Plan_B.pdf)
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http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/08/health/policy/sebelius-overrules-fda-on-freer-sale-of-emergency-contraceptives.html?_r=1 (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/08/health/policy/sebelius-overrules-fda-on-freer-sale-of-emergency-contraceptives.html?_r=1)
Fourteen Senators demand an explanation for this bullshit (http://franken.senate.gov/files/letter/121311_Letter_to_Sebelius_Plan_B.pdf)
And I'm sure that the approval ratings for those 14 senators shot way up/down on something very close to party-line division.
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And I'm sure that the approval ratings for those 14 senators shot way up/down on something very close to party-line division.
...how many of them do you suppose are Republicans?
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Some Quick Thoughts on "Until Abortion Ends" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yeno9kiGRuI#ws)
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Yeah! And until abortion ends, I'm giving up babies!
get it
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throw me a couple, friday. christmas is coming up and i have nothing to make for christmas dinner.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=wYOR8P2aWns# (http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=wYOR8P2aWns#)!
I didn't know states were banning contraception! And what's the big deal anyway? Hey, look over there.
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http://www.thefrisky.com/2012-02-15/virginia-advances-anti-abortion-fetal-personhood-and-transvaginal-ultrasound-bills/ (http://www.thefrisky.com/2012-02-15/virginia-advances-anti-abortion-fetal-personhood-and-transvaginal-ultrasound-bills/)
>:(
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Fortunately these groups are also in favor of programs to help support the mothers of these unwanted children and, failing that, adoption agencies and foster care. Right? ...Right?
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So they proposed one law declaring a fetus a person, and then another law regulating a procedure that kills a fetus.
Taken together the bills seem to imply that killing a person is not a crime as long as you can see the victim first.
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http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/oklahoma-senate-approves-anti-abortion-personhood-bill-article-1.1023622 (http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/oklahoma-senate-approves-anti-abortion-personhood-bill-article-1.1023622)
Apparently the language in this bill is bad enough that it could ban some forms of birth control. Guess it's time for a vasectomy!
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According to an American paramedic I talked to, it's normal to give women ultrasound before an abortion in order to determine if a manual evacuation is necessary.
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"Oh god, it's too late to abort! Everyone, get out of here! She's gonna blow!"
nurses pouring out of the hospital
patients shuffling out on walkers
those too sick to escape left behind
three floors of the hospital are destroyed.
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MEANWHILE AT MARVEL!
(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/3923260/pg14.jpg)(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/3923260/pg15.jpg)
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O hey, cross-post from Kabba-buge?
Great little segment on the Daily Show where Stewart once again deflects a Godwin:
http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/mon-february-13-2012/the-vagina-ideologues---sean-hannity-s-holy-sausage-fest (http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/mon-february-13-2012/the-vagina-ideologues---sean-hannity-s-holy-sausage-fest)
Could you summarize for those of us not in the USA?
Huh, is it blocked outside of the US?
In regards to the birth control controversy, Sean Hannity conviened a panel on Fox on the subject of contraception. Was proported to be a diverse panel, with Jewish and Catholic and White and Black men, but predictably zero women.
Very quickly, Hannity drives the conversation to "Is there a war now, on religion?" to which a catholic priest immediately answers "There certainly is!" It clips away, then when it comes back Hannity asks "How many of your would be willing to go to jail for this?" About three quarters raise their hands. A priest goes "If I'm asked to do something that goes against my conscience, I'd better be willing to die for that!"
A guy on an msnbc discussion panel then drops the Godwin in relating this contraception issue to the rise of Nazi Germany, saying that "In the beginning, it starts really really small", another guy quotes Martin Niemoller's "During the Nazi era in Germany, I didn't speak up when they came for the communists, because I wasn't a communist"
Stewart points out that Hitler never "started out small", going on about the incident that put Hitler in jail, then Mein Kampf's popularity, then the public 1932 shootings by the browncoats of his political opponents, then the massive yearly Nazi gatherings. And so forth.
Stewart basically goes on to talk about how Christian conservatives claiming religious prosection here cheapens actual religious prosection that happens in egypt and china and elsewhere in the world today. He finishes with "You've confused a war on your religion with not always getting everything you want."
Also I guess this should be in the abortion thread, huh.
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http://www.thefrisky.com/2012-02-15/virginia-advances-anti-abortion-fetal-personhood-and-transvaginal-ultrasound-bills/ (http://www.thefrisky.com/2012-02-15/virginia-advances-anti-abortion-fetal-personhood-and-transvaginal-ultrasound-bills/)
http://www.wjla.com/articles/2012/02/virginia-personhood-abortion-bill-passes-senate-committee-72947.html (http://www.wjla.com/articles/2012/02/virginia-personhood-abortion-bill-passes-senate-committee-72947.html)
well shit
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Well, it's not a law yet. It still needs to pass a full Senate, which has twenty members from both parties.
Of course, the Democrat party is relatively diverse and its members have a wide range of beliefs, whereas the Republican Party is some sort of horrifying hive mind monster. So all it'll take is one Socially Conservative Democrat to fuck this up.
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Looks pretty well dead.
The measure, which would require women to get an ultrasound before having an abortion, was headed for the law books late last week. But over the course of nine days, it became clear that the legislation’s sponsors didn’t realize one key fact — that for an ultrasound to determine the age of a fetus, as mandated by the bill, it would usually require a vaginal probe.
In other words, the people insisting that a fetus is a human being do not have a basic understanding of fetal development. This may come as a surprise to...them, and nobody else.
The Daily Show segment was one of those few cases where there's no real humor to wring out of a story; it just made me angry. Particularly the clip with the smug prick saying these women have already made the choice to have something inserted into their vagina. How does the question "What if they haven't?" not even occur to these sons-of-bitches?
Anyway, looks like it's over. Course, you can expect it to come back as a version that mandates that women get a non-invasive ultrasound that doesn't actually work. Which is still bad and stupid, but at least it's less rapey.
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What's the SOP during the consultation phase anyway? I'd assume the doc would want some kind of noninvasive picture for himself so s/he would know what the hell to expect before putting anyone on the table.
I still support these mandated procedures in a way, because they imply a tacit legality for the whole operation, and the conservatives only end up hurting themselves every time they try to Jane Crow with them.
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You know the Republicans are going to far on birth control legislation when Pat Buchanan calls them out on it (http://thinkprogress.org/health/2012/02/24/431937/pat-buchanan-republicans-contraception/?mobile=nc).
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Wonder if it's a Robertson-type "You shouldn't say that out loud or you'll lose" stance.
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Looks pretty well dead.
http://maddowblog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/02/28/10532065-virginia-rolls-ultrasound-bill-forward (http://maddowblog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/02/28/10532065-virginia-rolls-ultrasound-bill-forward)
twenty-one to nineteen.
>:(
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Oh COME ON
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The Be-Shamed-Out-Of-Having-An-Abortion bill is now law in Virginia. (http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-57392796-503544/virginia-gov-bob-mcdonnell-signs-virginia-ultrasound-bill/)
:bam:
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http://www.progressohio.org/blog/2012/03/senator-turner-introduces-legislation-to-protect-mens-health.html (http://www.progressohio.org/blog/2012/03/senator-turner-introduces-legislation-to-protect-mens-health.html)
In lighter news, Ohio State Senator introduces legislation to force men to receive counseling prior to obtaining prescriptions for impotence medication.
On the one hand, what the hell?
On the other, :hugoweavinggrin:
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A very good essay from an OBGYN about why doctors should simply refuse to follow the transvaginal ultrasound law, because any other interests are secondary to not raping their patients. (http://whatever.scalzi.com/2012/03/20/guest-post-a-doctor-on-transvaginal-ultrasounds/)
The world of feminist blogging disagrees, argues that those women should just take one for the team. Specifically, one rape. Because other people potentially being denied abortions in the future is worse than you personally being raped, so just man up and take your rape for the good of everybody. (http://pandagon.net/index.php/site/comments/why-civil-disobedience-isnt-the-answer-in-this-case)
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This just in, TA paints all feminist blogs with the same brush. More on this story as it develops.
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I don't feel like giving a pageview to a flamebait article, so what's the content of that blog post, without hyperbole?
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While it's always theoretically possible that doctors who do this will get away with it, the result if they get caught will not be that they generate outrage in a complacent public and get the law changed. No, they're probably just going to get their license stripped, and be unable to perform legal abortions. Which is what anti-choicers want. They would be delighted if doctors refused to obey the law, and could be stripped of their licenses. Giving the oppressor what they want most in the world isn't effective action. It is, in a word, counterproducitive. The reason anti-choicers pass laws like this is, I believe, they know that women will jump through any hoop to get rid of an unwanted pregnancy, and they want to maximize the pain and suffering of the whole ordeal. Pro-choicers should take that knowledge and realize that depriving women of safe, legal providers is about the worst possible thing you could do under these circumstances. Yes, a non-consensual procedure is a horrible thing, but if you look at the choices women make, not being able to get a safe, legal abortion is more horrible.
It is, without hyperbole, saying "Other women in the future potentially being unable to get abortions from this same doctor is worse than you being raped right now, so just take the rape for their sake."
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without hyperbole
(https://bhlspectrum.wikispaces.com/file/view/inigo.jpg/31546251/inigo.jpg)
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TA, she seems to be making a very good point there.
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http://www.feministe.us/blog/archives/2012/04/03/planned-parenthood-and-tucker-max/ (http://www.feministe.us/blog/archives/2012/04/03/planned-parenthood-and-tucker-max/)
Apparently Tucker Max tried to donate $500,000 to Planned Parenthood as a tax break and a way to improve his image. They declined, because, well, it's Tucker Max, so now he's got his publicist bitching them out on Forbes.
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Also, just in case you thought the anti-abortion laws couldn't possibly get any worse, Georgia's here to up the ante. (http://unicornbooty.com/blog/2012/04/03/georgia-gop-rep-floats-bill-forcing-women-to-carry-aborted-fetuses-to-term/)
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...
that
why
what is wrong with these people
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So.... the idea is to kill everyone who ever has an abortion by septic shock?
*clears throat*
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No, this already happens to some poor women. My boss has an old friend who at early twenties was forced to carry her dead fetus to term because it posed her no physical threat and a still birth was cheaper than removing it by other means. No physical threat sure, never mind that the experiance was so devistating that she never tried to have kids again.
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I'm actually getting a little bit concerned for the safety of these politicians' families. They're laying out a pretty obvious course of fuck-you for the first person to go truly apeshit around them.
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Shit like this is why I'm actually GLAD that Texas' state legislature is a PART TIME JOB. Here's where someone interjects and tells me that's how a lot of state legislatures work.
Like, very part time. If I recall, it's like 120 days out of a term, with options to extend if Uncle Rick determines if it's necessary. According to the government professor I had for the required state/local government class, the reason that part of the state constitution was written that way was to keep the legislature out of the common man's hair.
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http://www.feministe.us/blog/archives/2012/04/03/planned-parenthood-and-tucker-max/ (http://www.feministe.us/blog/archives/2012/04/03/planned-parenthood-and-tucker-max/)
Apparently Tucker Max tried to donate $500,000 to Planned Parenthood as a tax break and a way to improve his image. They declined, because, well, it's Tucker Max, so now he's got his publicist bitching them out on Forbes.
When you're trying to argue that you desperately need federal funding to continue operating as an organization, refusing a huge donation on the grounds that the guy is a pretend asshole mostly bullshitting on the internet is kind of fucking stupid.
"I'm sorry, Mr Maddox, but we won't accept your donation to Children's Hospital because you called some kids stupid as a joke on a website."
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He also stipulated that they name a clinic after him, so no, they didn't exactly just pitch a fit because they don't like him.
Though one can make a surprisingly reasonable argument that they really *should* go ahead and put his name on a building. "Because people like Tucker Max really exist" is a pretty damning argument for contraception in general.
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http://thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/tennessee-miscarriage-about-to-be-murder-after-legislature-passes-bill/politics/2012/04/24/38401 (http://thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/tennessee-miscarriage-about-to-be-murder-after-legislature-passes-bill/politics/2012/04/24/38401)
seriously, what
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Remind them that that would make Rhett Butler a murderer and see how conflicted they get.
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The impression I got from Talking Time's reaction was that it would make Scarlet O'Hara the murderer.
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Oh. Well they'd be okay with that, then.
Because she's a woman.
(Also, Scarlett O'Hara is a horrible person. But that's rather beside the point.)
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GOP State Rep - We have literally stopped abortion in Mississippi (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IsM4n8DeSi0#ws)
They're like, 'Well, the poor pitiful women that can't afford to go out of state are just going to start doing them at home with a coat hanger.' That's what we've heard over and over and over.
But hey, you have to have moral values.
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You left out the part after that where he tried to blame black people for his stupid remarks.
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Video DCMA'd by the GOP.
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:lol: Man, if that's not proof of DCMA takedown abuse, nothing is.
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Because if there's one way to be CERTAIN a story will go away, it's having a YouTube video removed under spurious copyright claims.
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DMCA, not Defense Contractor Management Agency. Derp.
I work around the DCMA on a regular basis.
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http://thinkprogress.org/health/2012/06/14/499961/as-punishment-for-opposing-anti-abortion-bill-male-michigan-house-leader-bans-two-female-reps-from-speaking/ (http://thinkprogress.org/health/2012/06/14/499961/as-punishment-for-opposing-anti-abortion-bill-male-michigan-house-leader-bans-two-female-reps-from-speaking/)
:disapprove:
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I believe that means they don't have to pay taxes any more.
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On one hand, introducing troll legislation and making incendiary comments is usually a pretty good reason to ban a congressperson from speaking on the floor. However, considering the legislation they were trolling and the argument being (and always having been) about equality and women, I think maybe the michigan house needs to examine their decisions a little better. This is already a circus in the liberal blogosphere, if national news takes some time to do a story on it this is going to be very embarrassing for them.
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On one hand, introducing troll legislation and making incendiary comments is usually a pretty good reason to ban a congressperson from speaking on the floor.
You'd be surprised how often this happens.
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I was mostly just playing a little bit of dangerously devil's advocate. I'd like to pretend that a body that is supposedly the height of professionalism is civil enough to recognize when somebody is too uncollected to be part of the proceedings, but the reality is that they just told her to shut up because they didn't want to hear a woman speak.
I think the faster we get rid of mccarthy-era congressmen the faster shit like this will stop cropping up in government. Fuck old people.
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Here's the thing, though - dismissing it as a "troll argument" is missing the point completely, or rather, tripping right over it without even recognizing it.
Literally this is the womens' way of saying, "Guys, this is what you're talking about doing to us." And instead of hearing it out, the men just gagged them. The women didn't get to silence the men when they were talking about the same damned thing.
I am definitely not a fan of petty bullshit in politics and I'm not afraid to call people out on it, but really, this is what women have been reduced to now: trying desperately to show people how one-sided this argument is about who gets to tell who what they can and can't do with their own genitals.
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It's mostly this that gives any benefit to the doubt:
. “I’m flattered that you’re all so interested in my vagina, but no means no,”
Which, while fucking hilarious is pretty goddamn inappropriate. But then again, so was telling a senator to go fuck himself, and nobody censored Dick Cheney. We're 100% in agreement on this. I'm really just discussing for the sake of discussion at this point.
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So am I, in case that wasn't clear. I think we've shifted the topic to "When is inappropriate floor behavior actually appropriate?"
The discussion itself usually is a sign that things have really broken down as far as civil discourse is concerned.
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So much for that bipartisan feeling of approaching civil discourse when Gabby Giffords was shot. You know, two years ago?
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I guess someone needs to shoot more government representatives then?
Convene the people's committee!
[/incrediblybadtaste]
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http://firstread.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/08/01/13070876-republican-likens-contraceptive-mandate-to-pearl-harbor-911 (http://firstread.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/08/01/13070876-republican-likens-contraceptive-mandate-to-pearl-harbor-911)
:painful: :facepalm:
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Kansas is angry a doctor aborted a ten year old's baby that was caused by an uncle raping her. (http://www.addictinginfo.org/2012/08/09/kansas-doctor-under-attack-for-not-forcing-ten-year-old-rape-victim-to-give-birth/)
For the complete cocktail, the 10 year old's mentally disabled as well.
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My wife and I shared outrage about this last night. I get that the abortion debate is only going to remain relevant to the electorate as long as the right is making mountains out of molehills, but I think they need to choose their battles better than fighting the abortion of a raped ten year old mentally disabled girl aborting her incest baby.
This should be the kind of outlier where they're pointing to this case and saying "Hey, we're not against ALL abortion!" and propping themselves up as being totally reasonable. Yet, somehow, they do entirely the opposite. And these people want to run the country.
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That's because you probably have a hard time understanding an anti-choice fundie and can't see how this doctor killed God's beautiful gift to that child.
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I was going to make a poor taste joke but I can't. I just fucking can't. Fuck everything about this.
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I get that the abortion debate is only going to remain relevant to the electorate as long as the right is making mountains out of molehills
The opposite. They only stand a chance as long as they emphasize vague, hypothetical, rare, and/or probably-imaginary situations. They start emphasizing shit that actually happens and they're dead in the water.
This should be the kind of outlier where they're pointing to this case and saying "Hey, we're not against ALL abortion!" and propping themselves up as being totally reasonable.
But they're not.
The fundamentalists who are driving the abortion debate, the ones who actually think that the most important threat facing America is a 1973 Supreme Court decision that women should have control of their own bodies (also: gay marriage) -- this is what they really believe.
The parental notification stuff, the "no driving across state lines", the tighter restrictions on when a woman can get an abortion, the ridiculous "partial birth" debate -- all those are window-dressing, death-by-a-thousand-cuts things. "No abortions, ever" is what these people really want; it's not an exaggeration or a strawman.
I'm not saying a majority of Republicans feel that way, but it is, absolutely, a mainstream position in the Republican Party.
Anecdotally: I've known some crazy pro-lifers. Been friends with some. "It's absolutely terrible if a woman is raped, but it's not the baby's fault" is a common refrain.
What you have to understand is, they believe that abortion is literal, not-hyperbolic, actual baby murder.
Framed in those terms, you can see where they're coming from -- I don't think anyone would advocate killing that baby if it were actually born. The problem is that they consider a zygote to be exactly the same thing.
And that's the thing -- that may be a mainstream position in the Republican Party, but it's certainly not a mainstream position in America. Even among people who declare themselves pro-life, the vast majority are immediately willing to make exceptions for rape, incest, and the life of the mother. Drill it down from there and you can probably get most people to agree that if the child is severely deformed or unlikely to survive and giving birth will do permanent damage to the mother's health, that's good justification too. And from there, most people can reach common ground and start talking about ways to make abortions less common and less necessary.
But there's a fringe -- and a very loud, influential one that is a MAJOR force in driving Republican policymaking -- that won't concede any of that shit, that believes zygotes have souls and abortion is murder.
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"It's absolutely terrible if a woman is raped, but it's not the baby's fault" is a common refrain.
I wonder in the hypothetical stance how the debate could be changed if say, there existed a really good foster care/orphan care system? Health of the mother and birth of the severely deformed would still come in to play, but delivering normal children to a good chance at a life might strengthen the argument against abortion. Of course, such systems don't really exist/are horribly overburdened? Or as the saying goes, defend the poor unborn child until it's born and then fuck it for wanting handouts.
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I wonder in the hypothetical stance how the debate could be changed if say, there existed a really good foster care/orphan care system?
Very little, from the perspective of the anti-choice crowd, because their argument relies on the assumption that such a thing DOES exist. "Put the baby up for adoption" is their answer to everything, as if every baby up for adoption immediately winds up in a good home.
The last time I pointed out to an anti-choicer that people usually do not adopt minorities, the disabled, or children above a certain age, her response was to grab me by the throat and start choking me. I am not kidding.
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Violence is the last refuge of the etc
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You know, as vocal as the anti-choicers are about hating abortion, I blame some of the losing ground in the culture war on liberals. They've constantly been taking the "But what about rape and incest" bait and helping to define abortion as something that is a Bad Thing. As such they find themselves often tripped up trying to justify why we should allow a Bad Thing. This is something that the fundie right is really good at, which is allowing their framing of an issue to become the dominant one. See also how they trip people up with the "Being gay is a choice" argument, which is still not a valid reason to prevent gay marriage.
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For what it's worth, I have a friend (same one who is a young earth creationist, for those of you keeping score) who I've been able to make headway with on a lot of issues (the 6000 year old earth bit included, she now admits the "possibility" of evolution) but I have been able to make exactly zero headway with on the Abortion debate. None. Abortion, to her, is child murder, and that is the end of it.
Of course, she doesn't want to end welfare and is actually for more social aid programs so
But yeah. People get into their brains that abortion is baby killing, and that's pretty much impossible to argue against except by saying "a zygote isn't a baby" "yes it is" END OF ARGUMENT
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I find the argument becomes hollow once they decide that baby killing is right out, but doctor killing is perfectly all right. I mean, if no circumstance, no matter how horrible can justify the murder of a baby, how is it that there is any act can justify the murder of a doctor? Oh, that's right, because they're full of shit.
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Babies have a chance to learn to bow down before Lord Jesus; doctors have denied Him and are therefore lower than swine.
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Jesus doesn't much care what you do, so long as you acknowledge him as the only path to heaven, and has no opinion on abortion. Even if he did, as mentioned, he doesn't actually care. As long as you give him the savior nod, baby killer and doctor killer will walk hand in hand through the gates of paradise.
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Once you make it a religious argument, you're on their turf anyway.
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I find the argument becomes hollow once they decide that baby killing is right out, but doctor killing is perfectly all right. I mean, if no circumstance, no matter how horrible can justify the murder of a baby, how is it that there is any act can justify the murder of a doctor? Oh, that's right, because they're full of shit.
I find the argument hollow for the opposite reason.
Suppose there was a place in your town where people murdered babies. Like, no dissembling or anything, people brought their babies in and the people at this place just smacked 'em with a hammer and threw the corpses in the trash. Not a day goes by without a baby being murdered. And you knew about this, and knew that this was all happening with the full sanction of law enforcement. Nobody's gonna do anything about these babies being murdered.
You'd burn that place to the fucking ground.
These people claim to believe that that's what every abortion clinic is, and yet don't show anything near the outrage that they should, were they true to their beliefs.
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That's kind of what I said, from the other direction. As I said in the end, they're full of shit. Either way you slice it they are disingenuous.
Once you make it a religious argument, you're on their turf anyway.
I tend to find that once they make a religious argument it turns out they have no idea what their religion actually says, and it becomes easier to at least outrage and confuse them. This holds true of almost every religious argument.
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Eh, in my experience they just go in to LALALALA I'M NOT LISTENING THAT'S NOT WHAT THE BIBLE SAYS YOU HERETIC/HEATHEN mode. I suppose outrage factors in to that, but the core problem is that you are straight up dealing with lunatic extremists. Reasonable discussion is like five steps away from an effective solution.
Just like "Strict Consitutionalists" only worse.
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Or they bust out the mistranslation/misinterpretation/the old testament/the new testament/revelations/the eye of a needle was an arch in jerusalem argument. Trying to convince somebody that what they believe is wrong when their entire life is structured around the validity of their faith is basically impossible.
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I have no delusion that I will convince them that they are wrong, I just like watching them turn beet fucking red as I fill their heads with what I suppose passes for cognitive dissonance in there.
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You don't use reason and empathy on the brainwashed to change their minds, you use reason and empathy on them to change the minds of everyone else. Every time one of them grabs your neck and chokes you, you win.
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I don't mind religious folk, even very deeply religious folk, but when you get the ones who just make everything up as they go along to justify their particular vision of their faith, it's not even really a religious thing anymore.
I think the key is to recognize that vicious defensiveness of the weak. It's all the difference between say, a hardcore Amish fellow who hears your view and says "Well I don't agree with anything you have to say, so I'm just going to go back to my farm and you stay over there in your sin-filled city." versus say, the Fred Phelpses of the world. This supposed archetypal Amish guy doesn't need to prove you wrong, he just knows.
Which is okay! I'm fine with that!
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You know, as vocal as the anti-choicers are about hating abortion, I blame some of the losing ground in the culture war on liberals. They've constantly been taking the "But what about rape and incest" bait and helping to define abortion as something that is a Bad Thing. As such they find themselves often tripped up trying to justify why we should allow a Bad Thing. This is something that the fundie right is really good at, which is allowing their framing of an issue to become the dominant one. See also how they trip people up with the "Being gay is a choice" argument, which is still not a valid reason to prevent gay marriage.
I understand your point, but starting with "But what about rape and incest" is a reasonable thing to do for two reasons:
1. If the other person says "Not even then" then you have already cut to the part where you know you will never achieve any common ground and can cut your losses and walk away.
2. If the other person says "Well, okay, those are exceptions, obviously" then you've put them on the defensive and can start chipping away with "What about the life of the mother? What about the health of the mother? What about physical deformities?" If you are a competent debater dealing in good faith with a person who has a disagreement but is willing to reconsider, then, at minimum, you will give that person something to think about.
Suppose there was a place in your town where people murdered babies. Like, no dissembling or anything, people brought their babies in and the people at this place just smacked 'em with a hammer and threw the corpses in the trash. Not a day goes by without a baby being murdered. And you knew about this, and knew that this was all happening with the full sanction of law enforcement. Nobody's gonna do anything about these babies being murdered.
You'd burn that place to the fucking ground.
These people claim to believe that that's what every abortion clinic is, and yet don't show anything near the outrage that they should, were they true to their beliefs.
Depends on whether you're talking about people who legitimately believe the "Killing anybody for any reason is wrong, always" line. I've got some pretty serious issues with the Catholic Church's stance on abortion, but the Vatican is at least consistent by opposing wars and the death penalty. (Plus the church's stance on birth control and masturbation, absurd as it is, at least manages to treat potential humans as equivalent to actual humans across the board.)
Now, American Catholics aren't really known for agreeing with the Vatican on most of those subjects. But that's a whole other story.
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Every time one of them grabs your neck and chokes you, you win.
This, so much.
Fundamentalists are the new Pharisees. They're the ones who bugged the apostles about ritually washing their hands, about picking corn on sunday, about sharing meals with prostitutes and other pariahs. They're the ones who threw a man into the gaping maw of the Roman Empire's justice system for daring to say the rich should share their wealth with the poor and that there's no religious precept against paying taxes, even to an occupying military force. Jesus was a walking, talking, universal free health care system, and they killed him.
The antichrist walks among us. He protests abortion clinics, opposes gay rights, and supports war, all in God's name.
If something you say makes a fundie mad enough to attempt to do you harm, physical or otherwise, chances are it should be reassurance enough that you're doing God's holiest work, whether you believe in Him or not.
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In absolutely horrifying news, A teenager denied leukemia treatments in the Dominican Republic because she was 9 weeks pregnant when she was admitted to the hospital has died from her treatable cancer. (http://www.cnn.com/2012/08/18/world/americas/dominican-republic-abortion/index.html?hpt=hp_t1)
In related, silver-lining-to-a-horrific-tragedy news, I imagine that Romney/Ryan's campaign is probably very irritated with this story entering the news cycle right now.
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Trying to make a sarcastic joke here but it's just not coming. Suffice it to say I can't see how the fuck anyone thinks "dead mother plus unborn baby" is a better result than just "unborn baby".
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You can't get pregnant from rape! (http://2012.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/08/todd-akin-legitimate-rape.php)
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It's true, I can't.
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We'll see about that.
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It's always impressive when someone actually manages to say something so totally crazy, disgusting, or just fucking stupid that a major election campaign has to go "Whoa we probably don't agree with that maybe"
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I can't really find it all that funny as long as this line is in the article:
The PollTracker Average shows Akin leading McCaskill by a margin of 49.7 percent to 41.3 percent.
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Well, we'll see how those numbers go now.
And if that still doesn't tip McCaskill over, maybe somebody can get Rush Limbaugh to mock Michael J Fox's Parkinson's again.
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I can't really find it all that funny as long as this line is in the article:
The PollTracker Average shows Akin leading McCaskill by a margin of 49.7 percent to 41.3 percent.
Republicans are demanding Akin quit the race now and the consensus seems to be that Akin torpedoed his chances of a win by saying the stupidest thing anyone has said into a microphone in American politics in the last ten years. The comments are so shitty and controversial that it's going to spin the spotlight firmly onto the abortion issue, and considering that Ryan has said some shitty things re: abortion in the past the Romney camp is trying very hard to distance themselves from Akin. If Obama or a super PAC don't seize on the opportunity to connect this idiot's phrasing with Paul Ryan's voting record, then I just give up.
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Decided to move this over here, even though it could just as easily have stayed in WTF or moved to the Election thread, since both of those are more likely to have crosstalk and since this really is about the abortion debate.
Anyhow, Doctorow, under the delightful headline Whence springs Todd Akin's belief in magic, rape-proof vaginas? (http://boingboing.net/2012/08/20/whence-springs-todd-akins-be.html), links to Justine Larbalestier (http://justinelarbalestier.com/blog/2012/08/20/legitimate-rape-and-other-craptastic-beliefs-from-the-olden-days/) (and Justine, if I butchered your name that's because you inexplicably made the title text of your blog an image so I can't just copy-paste it) who quotes Making Sex by Thomas Laqueur:
Samuel Farr, in the first legal-medicine text to be written in English (1785), argued that “without an excitation of lust, or enjoyment in the venereal act, no conception can probably take place.” Whatever a woman might claim to have felt or whatever resistance she might have put up, conception in itself betrayed desire or at least a sufficient measure of acquiescence for her to enjoy the venereal act. This is a very old argument. Soranus had said in second-century Rome that “if some women who were forced to have intercourse conceived . . . the emotion of sexual appetite existed in them too, but was obscured by mental resolve,” and no one before the second half of the eighteenth century or early nineteenth century question the physiological basis of this judgement. The 1756 edition of Burn’s Justice of the Peace, the standard guide for English magistrates, cites authorities back to the Institutes of Justinian to the effect that “a woman can not conceive unless she doth consent.” It does, however, go on to point out that as matter of law, if not of biology, this doctrine is dubious. Another writer argued that pregnancy ought to be taken as proof of acquiescence since the fear, terror, and aversion that accompany a true rape would prevent an orgasm from occurring and thus make conception unlikely.
So, you know, gross-ass eighteenth-century pseudo-science claiming that if a woman's pregnant she must not have been raped. (Also, she's probably a witch.)
It puts me in mind of what Constantine was saying the other day about how the fundamentalists try to shift the debate to something that doesn't actually matter -- if we're actually HAVING a debate about whether a woman trying to get an abortion was really raped or is just making that up, then yes we've already lost because we're acting as if that matters.
But, thing is, there's no debate. Because when someone even brings up that question in public, the backlash is immediate and harsh, as we're seeing here.
I think this is another case of the religious right spending too much time preaching to the choir and wildly misunderstanding what mainstream opinion actually is.
I'm grateful to Akin for actually saying this shit out loud. A whole lot of Republicans have learned to temper their anti-choice rhetoric and slowly whittle away abortion rights using ginned-up nonsense like "partial-birth abortion". Akin has come out and said what fundamentalists actually believe, which is misogyny with a distinct anti-science aftertaste.
As I said recently, this is a mainstream view in the Republican Party; it may not be a majority but it's a very loud and powerful faction. And it's pretty abhorrent to most of America.
I'm not quite as ready to write Akin's political obit as Shinra is, though. I think this will probably sink him -- it IS the top story on Google News today, and his own party seems pretty unhappy with him -- but it's not a sure thing.
EDIT to add:
Akin apologized Monday for what he called a serious error in using the wrong words when he stated in an earlier interview that "legitimate rape" rarely resulted in pregnancy.
"I was talking about forcible rape," Akin said on former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee's radio show. "It was absolutely the wrong word."
Appearing on former presidential candidate Mike Huckabee's radio show, Akin said rape is "never legitimate."
"It's an evil act. It's committed by violent predators," Akin said. "I used the wrong words the wrong way."
So uh he seems to think the problem is that people thought "legitimate rape" meant he believed that there were occasions that rape was "legitimate" as in "acceptable"? As opposed to, you know, all the stuff that's ACTUALLY wrong with what he said?
Not sure if invoking strawman or sincerely has no idea what was wrong with what he said.
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http://mediamatters.org/video/2012/08/20/huckabee-interviews-akin-to-discuss-distraction/189447 (http://mediamatters.org/video/2012/08/20/huckabee-interviews-akin-to-discuss-distraction/189447)
Some guy named Akin said something about rape not being legitimate.
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He's distracting people from the actual issue by zeroing in on petty semantics.
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Politicians being politicians.
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Hey Thad. I seem to remember you having some sort of begrudging respect for Mike Huckabee.
Yeah, about that... (http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-pn-huckabee-horrible-rapes-created-some-extraordinary-people-20120820,0,7976008.story)
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By the same logic, the Nazi doctors' "medical experiments" provided data on the living human body's reactions to various types of trauma that is still useful today since there are no ethical means to acquire that data in the first place, so I guess it's a good thing nobody stopped the Holocaust before that happened, right?
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Akin explains himself (http://www.theonion.com/articles/i-misspokewhat-i-meant-to-say-is-i-am-dumb-as-dog,29256/)
You see, what I said was, “If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.” But what I meant to say was, “I am a worthless, moronic sack of shit and an utterly irredeemable human being who needs to shut up and go away forever.”
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Hey Thad. I seem to remember you having some sort of begrudging respect for Mike Huckabee.
Yeah, about that... (http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-pn-huckabee-horrible-rapes-created-some-extraordinary-people-20120820,0,7976008.story)
I think he's just trying to tempt people into saying they wish James Robison had been aborted.
I don't. I wish he had been born to a mother with absolutely no means of taking care of him, and then had slowly wasted away as she was repeatedly denied food and medicine for a child she never asked for.
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Hey Thad. I seem to remember you having some sort of begrudging respect for Mike Huckabee.
Yeah, about that... (http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-pn-huckabee-horrible-rapes-created-some-extraordinary-people-20120820,0,7976008.story)
I think he's just trying to tempt people into saying they wish James Robison had been aborted.
I don't. I wish he had been born to a mother with absolutely no means of taking care of him, and then had slowly wasted away as she was repeatedly denied food and medicine for a child she never asked for.
Look, if the teen rape victim couldn't pull herself up by her bootstraps and become a job creator and provider for her child, she shouldn't have been wearing such provocative clothing. The fact that she got pregnant is clearly a sign that she consented, at least subconsciously. The body has ways of shutting that down.
The GOP is doubling down (http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2012/08/20/first-on-cnn-gop-prepares-tough-anti-abortion-platform/) on this now that the abortion debate has entered the public spotlight. Mitt isn't going to make the same mistakes as McCain did - this time when he vows to deny all women the right to choose whether or not to have a child, he's not making any namby pamby exclusions for rape victims, not even if they were raped by a family member, or would die from childbirth.
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and the onion makes us all incredibly uncomfortable. (http://www.theonion.com/articles/pregnant-woman-relieved-to-learn-her-rape-was-ille,29258/?ref=auto)
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Hey Thad. I seem to remember you having some sort of begrudging respect for Mike Huckabee.
Yeah, about that... (http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-pn-huckabee-horrible-rapes-created-some-extraordinary-people-20120820,0,7976008.story)
Well, obviously I find his point of view morally reprehensible but he is actually making the strongest possible argument for it. He's advocating the "no abortion even if you were raped" position on the grounds that you can still love that child and that child can still be special and grow up to be a great human being.
All of which is perfectly true and something to consider in making the CHOICE of whether or not to have an abortion. That's the thing -- only one side here is prescribing a Right Thing to Do for every woman in every case.
By the same logic, Godwin Godwin Godwin
No, it's really not like that at all.
First of all, Huckabee's not advocating rape, he's advocating keeping a child conceived by rape. The equivalent to his position wouldn't be to say "It's a good thing nobody stopped the Holocaust", it's to say "Well, that's fucked up but we may as well use the data they got out of it."
Or it would be if there WERE actually any useful or usable data, but:
Second, let's please not legitimize Nazi torture by behaving as if those "medical experiments" were actual, scientifically-valid medical experiments that anybody actually learned anything from.
The GOP is doubling down (http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2012/08/20/first-on-cnn-gop-prepares-tough-anti-abortion-platform/) on this now that the abortion debate has entered the public spotlight.
Not exactly. That article is dated yesterday, and Akin's remarks were Sunday. This platform did not suddenly spring, fully-fomed, from the minds of GOP strategists who decided now would be a really, really good time to remind everybody where the party stands on this.
It's pretty much the same red-meat-for-the-base shit they throw out at the convention every four years. The fundamentalists get to feel like they're important, the moderates get to go "Oh that's just politics, they're not REALLY going to do all that shit" and are mostly correct, then the convention's over, the candidate tones down the rhetoric, and it's back to the status quo.
They're not "doubling down now that it's in the spotlight", they were hoping for business as usual and for it NOT to be in the spotlight. Akin's thrown a wrench into the works and now Romney's stuck with his typical dilemma of having to condemn the fringe one day and embrace it two weeks later.
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Second, let's please not legitimize Nazi torture by behaving as if those "medical experiments" were actual, scientifically-valid medical experiments that anybody actually learned anything from.
I know it would be morally easier for us if that were the case, but there was some actual medical knowledge that was gained from the experiments.
Most of the information is minor, or only relates specifically to military applications (effects of certain gases on people etc.), but a significant proportion of our understanding of what happens to the human body at extremely low temperatures comes from detailed observations made by nazi doctors as they froze people to death.
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Second, let's please not legitimize Nazi torture by behaving as if those "medical experiments" were actual, scientifically-valid medical experiments that anybody actually learned anything from.
I know it would be morally easier for us if that were the case, but there was some actual medical knowledge that was gained from the experiments.
Yeah. The Pernkopf Anatomy Atlas came under fire after it was suspected that the anatomical illustrations came from vivisected concentration camp victims. And it was a widely-circulated, incredibly detailed book that was required reading for medical students for fifty years.
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a significant proportion of our understanding of what happens to the human body at extremely low temperatures comes from detailed observations made by nazi doctors as they froze people to death.
(http://www.blogcdn.com/www.comicsalliance.com/media/2012/07/xmen10-1343603575.jpg)
The same thing that happens to everything else?
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Doctor John Hayward is a Biology Professor at the Victoria University in Vancouver, Canada. Much of his hypothermia research involves the testing of cold water survival suits that are worn while on fishing boats in Canada's frigid ocean waters. Hayward used Rascher's recorded cooling curve of the human body to infer how long the suits would protect people at near fatal temperatures. This information can be used by search-and-rescue teams to determine the likelihood that a capsized boater is still alive.
According to Kristine Moe's survey in the Hasting Center Report, Hayward justified using the Nazi hypothermia data in the following way:
"I don't want to have to use the Nazi data, but there is no other and will be no other in an ethical world. I've rationalized it a bit. But not to use it would be equally bad. I'm trying to make something constructive out of it. I use it with my guard up, but it's useful."
I really don't want to legitimize Nazi torture, but information was gathered, and though I'm not wise enough to decide whether keeping it or discarding it is doing a disservice to the sum of human knowledge, my gut feeling is that two wrongs don't make a right.
And I know Huckabee isn't advocating rape, but he is advocating forcing women to live with at least one immediate and often traumatizing consequence of that rape (or at least he's defending someone who is advocating that), and said consequence may be one of the easiest to actually do something about.
EDIT: I realize one might say "two wrongs don't make a right" to support outlawing abortion, but considering the harm to the mother, in that case it's really more a process of accepting a second wrong to prevent a worst third one.
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Interestingly enough, Nazi research about sending an ovulating woman to a fake gas chamber was a cited piece of evidence in "The Indications for Induced Abortion: A Physician's Perspective" that is the main recent source for body shut-down claims.
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I did nazi that coming.
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Talking Time is over there.
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First of all, Huckabee's not advocating rape, he's advocating keeping a child conceived by rape. The equivalent to his position wouldn't be to say "It's a good thing nobody stopped the Holocaust", it's to say "Well, that's fucked up but we may as well use the data they got out of it."
Wouldn't it be more like, say, someone getting murdered and buried under a pumpkin patch, and the next year, the pumpkin farmer wins a prize for biggest pumpkin? It's like, yeah sure, the nutrients in the murdered body might have contributed somewhat to the pumpkin's growth, but it was still murder. And that's still discounting all of the work the pumpkin farmer did watering and cultivating his pumpkins and protecting them from deer.
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Except in this analogy your solution is to shoot the pumpkins.
RAPE GOOD is a pretty willful misconstruction of Huckabee's position and I doubt it escapes him that it's a pretty easy one to go for, but his point is more that just because the fetus was concieved by rape doesn't mean there's something wrong with it that justifies abortion.
Because there's nothing wrong with forcing a woman to carry her rapist's child.
Meanwhile, Akin is doubling down on the "I only said one stupid word when I actually meant to say an equally stupid word" (are you implying that a woman can concieve a child through consensual rape?). I take back any benefit of the doubt and now believe he actually believes in something disgusting that's directly contradicted by hundreds of thousands of points of data. Fuck you, fuck everyone who has ever voted for or supported you, and fuck the system that allows you to have any control whatsoever over my life. You are Satan.
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Doctor John Hayward is a Biology Professor at the Victoria University in Vancouver, Canada. Much of his hypothermia research involves the testing of cold water survival suits that are worn while on fishing boats in Canada's frigid ocean waters. Hayward used Rascher's recorded cooling curve of the human body to infer how long the suits would protect people at near fatal temperatures. This information can be used by search-and-rescue teams to determine the likelihood that a capsized boater is still alive.
According to Kristine Moe's survey in the Hasting Center Report, Hayward justified using the Nazi hypothermia data in the following way:
"I don't want to have to use the Nazi data, but there is no other and will be no other in an ethical world. I've rationalized it a bit. But not to use it would be equally bad. I'm trying to make something constructive out of it. I use it with my guard up, but it's useful."
I really don't want to legitimize Nazi torture, but information was gathered, and though I'm not wise enough to decide whether keeping it or discarding it is doing a disservice to the sum of human knowledge, my gut feeling is that two wrongs don't make a right.
My gut feeling tends more that destruction of information is an emotional and often extremist act. Basically this sort of "Lalalala I'm not listening."
People died in horrible ways to obtain that information. If later on someone is saved because of it, no, that doesn't redeem the original act, but the easing of present-day suffering may give some meaning to the otherwise pointless suffering of the past. Instead of wringing our hands about the evil mad scientists, we need to think of the victims.
Which is to say, two wrongs don't make a right, but three wrongs is a lot stupider than one wrong and one right.
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Oh, by "two wrongs", I meant 1)that the data was obtained through those means in the first place, and 2)that it might be destroyed, so I'm sorry if I wasn't clear. I can empathize with those who are reluctant to make any use of the research, but knowledge is knowledge regardless of how tainted its origins are, and I'm personally of the opinion that the data should be kept. I guess I'm just glad that I don't have to make that call in any meaningful way and that my opinion is entirely irrelevant.
Because there's nothing wrong with forcing a woman to carry her rapist's child.
Yeah, that's the crux of it. I don't think anyone would object to the idea that good things may come of powering through torment and horror, but the only righteous course of action is to let the victims decide whether they're willing to pay that price or not, and if they're not, to not judge them for it.
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That is debatable of course, since the viewpoint of the Church is that women who somehow manage to get pregnant (which, I just realized, pretty much means statutory... hey Akin, tell us what little girls who get pregnant can look forward to) basically have a choice between enduring a living hell, or going to actual Hell for performing child murder. The mind of a fundamentalist is not a cheery place.
Since I consider an nonviable fetus as much a human being as what I just threw into the wastebasket, my God's green Earth is much less of an everyday horror. Try it sometime.
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I really am having a bit of schadenfreude at the contortions the Republicans are going through right now to simultaneously convince moderates that Akin does not represent them and reassure fundamentalists that he totally does.
The second and third headline on Google News right now:
Republicans Make Akin Pariah to Blunt Anti-Women Label - Businessweek
Republican Platform Draft Reaffirms Blanket Ban on Abortions - San Francisco Chronicle
If the Democrats wanted to, they could totally play this up as an example of Romney talking out both sides of his mouth yet again. But they're probably better off focusing on the far-right anti-choice angle, because (1) it's less likely to make moderates think "Well he probably doesn't really mean it, he just needs votes from the base", and (2) it reflects badly on the entire Republican Party, not just Romney. There isn't just one election coming in November.
Which reminds me, really should fill out my primary ballot.
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Since I consider an nonviable fetus as much a human being as what I just threw into the wastebasket, my God's green Earth is much less of an everyday horror. Try it sometime.
I, uh, can't help but feel targeted by this suggestion, but for the record, the viewpoint of any Church is not the viewpoint of all Christians, much less my own. In that specific regard, and many others. If the Inquisition came back they'd open the pear as wide for me as for most of you guys. :8D:
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I almost feel like the best move for the Obama camp is to sit back and let the Romney campaign continue to tear itself apart. Anything they say now would just distract people from the actually insane things going on with the Republicans, and give conservative pundits something to pick apart.
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Yeah, it worked out pretty well for them in '08 to basically ignore Palin and just let her keep digging.
Obama actually seems to be backing off the social issues and focusing on the economy right now. Which is probably the right move; he gets to talk about something else while they're still scrambling to get a coherent message out about this. (With a side of "The GOP establishment no longer has any control over the Tea Party lunatcs.")
Meanwhile, Evanier (http://www.newsfromme.com/2012/08/21/another-thing-i-dont-understand-2/) talks about party platforms and how candidates are just expected to ignore them.
I remember when Bob Dole was the nominee, he was asked about an item in the platform that was at odds with his position and he said something like, "I'm the candidate. The platform isn't the candidate." And he said he hadn't read it even though he'd pledged to support it.
No one thought this was odd or an example of a flip-flop or anything. If Barack Obama signed a petition when he was 14 to ban assault weapons, that's taken as a firm indication that he still believes that and is trying to make it happen. But if he deviates from the party platform he vows to uphold this year, no big deal. Same with Republicans. It's just your party's official platform you swore to follow. It's not like it's a Grover Norquist pledge or anything.
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I wasn't addressing you, Zed. Sorry for the confusion.
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I almost feel like the best move for the Obama camp is to sit back and let the Romney campaign continue to tear itself apart. Anything they say now would just distract people from the actually insane things going on with the Republicans, and give conservative pundits something to pick apart.
Ambivalent campaigning's only really good at getting people to stay home.
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I don't mean for the entire campaign, I just mean right now.
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And again, I don't think the idea is that they sit on their hands, it's that they find other shit to talk about while the Republicans stumble over themselves. Obama talking about the price of college WHILE the GOP is trying to play this "JUST KIDDING, DOUG! I'm not kidding, Jemaine" routine is essentially a twofer.
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(http://i.imgur.com/6fs6A.png)
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So the guy that wants to be Vice President of the United States, when asked if rape victims should be allowed by the government to abort their rape pregnancies without being thrown in jail for murder, said "The method of conception doesn't matter" (http://"The method of conception doesn't matter")
There's a million news articles about this, especially given the Todd Akin controversy.
No sign of it on CNN, NBC, Fox, or any of the other places though. They have to devote their article space to talking about Lyndon B Johnson's views on barbecue, and the oldest facebook user.
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Still plenty of time for it. But I wouldn't expect it to appear on Fox.
I really don't think we've heard the last on the subject. It's going to dog the Republicans all the way up to the election. And then pretty much go away for the next two years.
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Via twitter: I'm assuming that Paul Ryan thinks getting viciously assaulted in the face with a baseball bat is just "another form of dentistry".
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So the guy that wants to be Vice President of the United States, when asked if rape victims should be allowed by the government to abort their rape pregnancies without being thrown in jail for murder, said "The method of conception doesn't matter" (http://"The method of conception doesn't matter").
While it is a position I disagree with, it is one I respect. I think Thad even said something about it elsewhere. If you really think the fetus is a human being then of course the method of conception doesn't matter; taking an innocent life won't undo the rape.
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(http://doom.pyoko.org/McCainHealth.gif)
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"I do not believe that just because you're opposed to abortion, that that makes you pro-life. In fact, I think in many cases, your morality is deeply lacking if all you want is a child born but not a child fed, not a child educated, not a child housed. And why would I think that you don't? Because you don't want any tax money to go there. That's not pro-life. That's pro-birth. We need a much broader conversation on what the morality of pro-life is." - Sister Joan Chittister
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Somebody give that nun a goddamned medal.
One big enough to melt down and buy food for orphans for a year. All the orphans.
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According to a retired OB/GYN, things are worse today for abortion providers than they were before Roe v. Wade (http://www.northjersey.com/englewood/NJ_abortion_doctor_turns_from_defiance_to_caution.html?page=all).
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Mississippi takes one step closer to eliminating safe, affordable access to abortion. (http://www.economist.com/node/21562215)
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So... uh, according to Todd Akin, apparently Abortion Providers give abortions to women who aren't even pregnant. (http://www.alternet.org/more-insanity-todd-akin-accuses-providers-giving-abortions-women-who-are-not-actually-pregnant)
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Oh Todd Akin, you are the gift that keeps on giving.
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Yeah I find it harder every time not to go with the "He knows he gets money every time he says something hilarious" explanation.
(Which would make him literally a stand-up comedian.)
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...Except those excerpts are from old CSPAN clips.
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http://www.policymic.com/articles/30925/un-report-classifies-lack-of-access-to-abortion-as-torture (http://www.policymic.com/articles/30925/un-report-classifies-lack-of-access-to-abortion-as-torture)
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But we knew lots of US citizens were willing to accept, condone, or encourage torture since 2001.
I am a little bit surprised that it's specifically female genital mutilation that made the list though.
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God, now I can't not think of an episode of 24 where Jack Bauer violently rapes a woman, ties her up, puts a Plan B just out of reach and then sits down in front of her and quietly says, "Let's talk about where you hid the bomb."
I suspect ratings would top the Super Bowl.
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Emergency contraception to be available over-the-counter, to anybody, without an ID requirement (http://www.npr.org/2013/06/11/190559971/feds-buckle-on-emergency-contraception-age-restrictions), a mere 12 years after it was clearly established that there was no medical or scientific reason for it not to be.
The Bush and Obama Administrations have both fought tooth and nail to delay it this long, but the courts have finally ruled that you can't just go denying a perfectly safe form of medication to people just because it's related to a controversial political issue.
At least, not for more than twelve years.
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What Happens to Women Who Are Denied Abortions? (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/16/magazine/study-women-denied-abortions.html?pagewanted=1&_r=2&hp)
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<---
EDIT: HAHA THATS A BABY EATING JOKE I DON'T HAVE KIDS
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Yeah, that was... really disconcerting there for a second.
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True, but the edit turned out to be pretty damn funny.
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http://www.policymic.com/articles/51141/wendy-davis-filibuster-live-watch-her-13-hour-speech-for-abortion-rights (http://www.policymic.com/articles/51141/wendy-davis-filibuster-live-watch-her-13-hour-speech-for-abortion-rights)
:OoO:
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Her filibuster worked! (At least until the legislation is inevitably reintroduced)
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Hey, so Texas isn't as completely awful as I thought!
Although the whole "call a voice vote at 12:02 and then try to change the official record to say it was taken at 11:58" thing was pretty stupid, especially considering that they did it in front of about 180,000 people who were watching the livestream.
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Every time I look at the article, I can't help but see that woman as the living embodiment of sheer fatigue.
She's a Democrat in Texas. She's won elections, she won the filibuster, but living her life right now must still feel like she's fighting the long defeat.
I mean, just going by that one picture without further reference.
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And now Rick Perry is stepping in to give the Texas senate a second chance to ram the bill through. (http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/lawmaker-undertakes-daylong-filibuster-to-block-wide-ranging-abortion-limits-in-texas/2013/06/25/f80613a2-de01-11e2-bc84-8049224b33e1_story.html)
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Meanwhile, in Iowa... (http://www.addictinginfo.org/2013/06/25/women-in-iowa-must-now-seek-personal-approval-of-republican-governor-to-get-an-abortion/)
Under current policy, the Department of Human Services already reviews claims for Medicaid funding of abortion services, scrutinizing documentation to ensure the procedure was performed in a case of rape, incest, fetal abnormality or to save the life of the mother — the four reasons for which reimbursement is allowed under state and federal law.
That review occurs after the abortion has been performed, when the billing process is initiated.
With the bill’s passage into law, that process likely still will occur. And a final decision will again come after an abortion has been performed. But instead of the final call being rendered by the Medicaid medical director, the democratically elected and politically accountable governor will decide.
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Wisconsin takes Texas' reins and runs with them. (http://www.jsonline.com/news/statepolitics/abortion-providers-vow-lawsuit-as-soon-as-scott-walker-signs-measure-b9948379z1-214375611.html)
The law — signed Friday by Walker in a private ceremony — would cut the number of clinics offering abortions in Wisconsin from four to two, and one of the remaining clinics would have to dramatically cut the number of abortions it provides, according to the operators of the clinics.
"When women don't have access to safe, legal abortions, there are health consequences and women die," said Teri Huyck, president and chief executive officer of Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin.
Backers of the law, which also requires women seeking abortions to get ultrasounds, said they were not worried about the lawsuit.
"We are confident this bill will be held to be constitutional," said Susan Armacost, legislative director for Wisconsin Right to Life.
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This was from a guy I know in another board. It was an only-tertially related response to what was otherwise a long rambling stew of garbage arguments from various idiots, so there's really no context or anything worthwhile from those.
But this post, I liked.
A woman doesn't have a positive right to an abortion. She has a negative right to not be prevented from having an abortion. This right is natural and proceeds from the woman's liberty over her own body, the extent of the dependence of the fetus, the fact that the majority of pregnancies end in termination naturally, the privacy of pregnancy, and that to abort a fetus, all the woman has to do is take poor care of herself, which of course she has every right to do.
In order to prevent a woman from having an abortion who wants to have an abortion, you have to make pretty intolerable violations of a variety of other rights. You see this every day in the harassment, intimidation, assault and fraud that these heinous partisans commit against U.S. citizens every day without adequate punishment.
Abortion bans don't really ban abortion (which you can't ban by its nature), they ban safe abortion. They make abortion more dangerous without deterring it. That's why they are broadly seen by women as anti-woman. They also ban public abortion, which is why conservative, married women might favor them, even though they have more abortions than liberal single women do (the only thing that brings down abortion rates effectively is contraception).
And bans on health providers providing abortions are bans on preventing suffering and saving lives (again, the woman can have an abortion whenever she wants, it's a matter of how much damage it does to her) which why medical professionals using their own moral judgement in deciding who gets abortions is a medical ethics and civil rights issue. You're not allowed to let someone bleed out on the operating table because of their politics.
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http://www.newrepublic.com/article/113917/texas-abortion-bill-2013-how-fight-it# (http://www.newrepublic.com/article/113917/texas-abortion-bill-2013-how-fight-it#)
McDohl, Constantine, Niku, get to it.
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TribuneFest: Anita Perry on Abortion Rights (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LwuxgMj9-MA#)
INTERVIEWER: Your view is: governor’s got it right, the administration has it right?
ANITA PERRY: Well, that’s really difficult for me Evan, because I see it as a woman’s right. If they want to do that, that is their decision. They have to live with that decision.
INTERVIEWER: Mrs. Perry I want to be sure that you didn’t just inadvertently make news. Are you saying that you believe that abortion is a woman’s right — to make that choice?
PERRY: It is not mine. It is not something that I would say for them.
INTERVIEWER: Do you believe that the state is attempting to say for them? And that if the governor and the administration had its way it would say for women that it is not their right?
PERRY: I think it goes back to the states and Texas has decided that no that is not what we want in the state.
INTERVIEWER: But your personal point of view is that it’s a person’s decision within the law to make that choice?
PERRY: Well I don’t really think that’s making news. I mean, I think that yeah, that could be a woman’s right. Just like it’s a man’s right if he wants to have some kind of procedure.
http://go.bloomberg.com/political-capital/2013-10-01/perry-wife-misspoke-about-abortion/ (http://go.bloomberg.com/political-capital/2013-10-01/perry-wife-misspoke-about-abortion/)
“From time to time we’ll stick the wrong word in the wrong place, and you pounce upon it,” Perry told reporters
lol
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Mrs. Perry I want to be sure that you didn’t just inadvertently make news. Are you saying that you believe that abortion is a woman’s right — to make that choice?
Just despicable how reporters pounced on that one word mistake without even trying to clarify it.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/01/us/most-of-law-on-abortion-is-reinstated-in-texas.html?_r=1& (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/01/us/most-of-law-on-abortion-is-reinstated-in-texas.html?_r=1&)
What the tarnation I'm honestly not surprised, Texas
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http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/08/us/pregnant-and-forced-to-stay-on-life-support.html?_r=1 (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/08/us/pregnant-and-forced-to-stay-on-life-support.html?_r=1)
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http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/pope-francis-calls-abortion-horrific-in-toughest-remark-to-date-1.2494277 (http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/pope-francis-calls-abortion-horrific-in-toughest-remark-to-date-1.2494277)
Time's Person of the Year, everybody.
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Well, there was going to finally come a point where you could roll out "Is the Pope Catholic?"
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Surprise, man who's previous comments lined up perfectly with Catholic doctrine shows that the rest of his comments will, as well. Shock. Gasp.
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To be fair, I don't think the POPE is ever going to be comfortable with abortion, not without women priests, and maybe not even then.
I'm more interested in seeing if they're ready to accept contraception.
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"Abortion is bad" and "Abortion must be made illegal" are two different stances though. Most pro-choicers agree with everything he actually has said.
Also, a couple of his statements have clear extra-meanings.
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Well, there's certainly an undertone of "Maybe you guys should think before you act, huh?"
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"Abortion is bad" and "Abortion must be made illegal" are two different stances though. Most pro-choicers agree with everything he actually has said.
Also, a couple of his statements have clear extra-meanings.
Yeah like... isn't that the normal stance on abortion for pro-choice people? I've always thought of being pro-choice as just that. Allowing people the right to chose abortion as one of many option for situations that arise wherein abortion is a viable option. I am not especially jumping for joy at the thought of abortion, but I can think of countless situations wherein an abortion is the safest most humane option for all parties (of course I guess I would lose a lot of people at this point in my argument if they had to insist that a fetus was one of the parties) involved.
Put another way, a week or so ago I spoke about wanting children. I do. However, I can say without the shadow of a fucking doubt that if the choice was someone I loved over some potential baby I've never met or formed a bond with, I'm choosing the loved one every time.
Being pro-choice in my opinion is about just that. The choice. Maybe its the best choice for your situation, maybe its not. Maybe you make that decision and maybe you don't, but at the end of the day, its better to have the choice than not to.
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Rolling Stone article: The Stealth War On Abortion (http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-stealth-war-on-abortion-20140115)
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Stealth War
Jake's Laugh (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qwdFLD7BCuY#ws)
Anyone paying attention to the news can see that the Republicans are attacking safe, affordable abortion.
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Anyone paying attention to the news can see that the Republicans are attacking safe, affordable abortion.
That is some serious CIA top-level espionage stuff there.