Teen Organizers for Choice: Fired Up and Ready to Go
July 19, 2010 - 6:00am (Print)
Some of you may have read my past article on the role of teens at my school in the pro-choice movement; if not, you can check it out here. It outlined an event I organized at my school and how young adults stood up and took action on an issue we believe in: reproductive rights. Young adults really do care about issues like abortion and reproductive rights. Sometimes they just need someone else to help them show it.
I recently returned from Planned Parenthood’s Organizing and Policy Summit (OPS) 2010 in Washington, DC. Before I go on, can I just say….WOW! Five hundred youth and adult advisors from around the country of every gender, age, and economic background all converging on Washington, DC for three days. It was an amazing thing to see and to be a part of. This just continues to prove my point - teens do care but just need someone to take the first step. At the Organizing and Policy Summit in 2009, Cecile Richards, President of Planned Parenthood, issued a challenged to increase the attendance for 2010’s conference. We succeeded. Over 100 more people attended OPS 2010 than 2009; almost 300 of them were youth.
The amazing thing about the whole experience was the unfathomable difference of attitudes about sex, in comparison to what attitudes are where I live. At anytime I could walk into a room and hear three or four discussions about birth control, emergency contraception, abortion, or a variety of other topics occurring at the same time. This was a complete change from living in Pittsford, NY where anything relating to sex is a taboo topic. Having these discussions with other teens was a different experience. For the first time in quite a while I wasn’t told anything along the lines of how God would hate me for being pro-choice. At first the only thing I could think of was The Wizard of Oz, when Dorothy’s house lands in Oz and she exclaims to her dog: “Toto, we're not in Kansas anymore.” That was exactly how I felt, except not being in Kansas was a good thing, and my journey didn’t include any witches or flying monkeys.
One new addition at this conference was the first meeting of Planned Parenthood’s Young Leaders Advisory Board. Twenty of Planned Parenthood’s most visionary young adults (including me!) from 14 different states were selected to take part in this new initiative. I can’t go into the specifics, but be prepared for some fantastic new Planned Parenthood campaigns and initiatives. Having 500 pro-choice youth and Planned Parenthood affiliate staff all together was great, but there was something, or should I say someone, missing. One youth put it best when, in an open forum at the conference, he said: “Where the heck are all the guys?!”
He is completely right. The reproductive rights world as a whole is overwhelmingly dominated by women. This is probably because reproductive rights are thought of, by some, as a women’s issue. They are wrong. Reproductive rights are human rights. With the new Stupak-like health care decision, that bans women with certain pre-existing medical conditions from receiving coverage for abortions, now is the time for men and women alike stand up for human rights. Tell the Obama administration, who put this ban in place (yes, the same one run by the Obama we elected because of his pro-choice beliefs), to reverse that decision here.
Throughout the conference I learned so much and met many inspirational people, including a couple of the amazing people who run RH Reality Check. The entire experience continues to make me feel optimistic about the future of our movement in the long run, but fearful for the next several weeks. In these coming weeks it will be decided if the decision by the Obama administration to ban abortion coverage for women in high risk pools will be upheld or not. It is vital that the pro-choice community as a whole mobilizes and makes sure the Obama administration knows our thoughts by signing the petition. No matter what happens, rest assured today’s teens will be ready to continue the movement when the time comes, I am confident of this.
Please help me with my next article: Did you have a terrible experience in a sex-ed class as a child, or an awesome one? Are you a health teacher who teaches sex-ed? Do you or a teacher you know refuse to teach sex-ed? I want to know about your experiences for an upcoming story on the fate of sex-ed in American schools. Send your story to Max.Kamin.Cross@gmail.com and be sure to include your name and location.
If we are focussed on a situation that only affects women in reproductive rights, then, yes, it is about women's rights.
I don't think he was referring to the numbers, by themselves. I think he was referring to the fact that they actually garnered support from teens who actually thought for themselves, didn't act like lemmings and didn't simply regurgitate what they had been taught. Thanks.
How do you know they were thinking for themselves, or not acting like lemmings nor were simply regurgitating what they had been taught? And how do you know that pro-life teenagers engage in all of the aforementioned?
The difference is that the pro-choice youth are far more well-educated on the issues they stand for.
Ask any youth on either side a rudimentary question on the issue, such as, why do women seek abortions, and you'll get thoughtful answers by the pro-choicers, deer-in-the-headlights from pro-lifers. Ask them if they know someone who has had an abortion, same reaction. How does birth control work, what is the legal status of abortion in your state, and how much does the procedure cost, ignorance on the part of pro-lifers. I know because I have done so.
More young people believe in the tooth fairy than older people, that doesn't mean their beliefs will sustain them through life.
"More young people believe in the tooth fairy than older people, that doesn't mean their beliefs will sustain them through life."
exactly, salty, exactly.
Salty, I can say with a fair amount of certainty that you do not spend any significant amount of time with young pro-lifers. Regardless, where did most of your assertions come from? I ask, because they do not seem to be borne of fact, but rather from what you perceive to be true.
84, you make the same kind of assertions and generalizations, so don't try to act all high-and-mighty by calling someone out...
Just because you don't show up at rallies and make a big hullabaloo in public doesn't mean you don't care, or that you don't quietly exist doing *other* things or working on a more personal level... so saying "pro-lifers" outnumber pro-choicers is simply speculation.
Besides, it's really simple to be about "the babies" and a whole hell of a lot harder to be about women.
Would you care to show me the assumption/generalization I made? In the meantime, you argue that just because the supposed pro-choice masses do not come out in public support of abortion, that it does not mean that they do not care. Even though I did not say anything about not caring, unfortunately for you, the measure of how well a movement is doing is how well they are able to mobilize people to come out in support of their cause, and this is something that the pro-choice movement cannot do-- at least, they simply cannot compare to how well pro-lifers do it. For example, look at the issue of gay marriage. If only a handful of people showed up to gay marriage rallies, one would think to themselves that there is very little support for gay marriage. Conversely, when hundreds of thousands of people show up, it leads one to believe that the gay marriage movement is making progress. Abortion, much like any social issue, is no different. If you fail to get people to come out for your cause, it is a signal that your cause might be in trouble and pro-choicers, in general, fail to show up when it comes to public demonstrations. Are you familiar with the term slacktivism? If not, then you should look it up, for it is what you are trying to relegate the pro-choice movement to. And what I cannot understand is why you bring up other things, because everything pro-choicers do pro-lifers do. We blog, we work behind the scenes, we teach, we educate, we send out emails, etc. Everything pro-lifers do, however, pro-choicers do not do, the biggest of those things being the ability to mobilize at the grassroots level and to get people to come out in droves in support of their cause. To say that pro-lifers outnumber pro-choicers is not just speculation. It is a fact. To say that pro-life youth outnumber pro-choice youth is also not just speculation. It is a fact. To say that pro-lifers dominate at the grassroots level is not just speculation. It is a fact. And there are no shortage of women in the pro-life movement. Contrary to what some pro-choicers want to state about us, we do not hate women, nor do we believe they are worth any less then any other human being. Rather, we see everyone as equal, with everyone deserving the same right to life that everyone else has. Of course, there are disagreements over when abortion is permissible, if it is permissible at all, but we all hold to the same tenants.
Contrary to what some pro-choicers want to state about us, we do not hate women, nor do we believe they are worth any less then any other human being. Rather, we see everyone as equal, with everyone deserving the same right to life that everyone else has. Of course, there are disagreements over when abortion is permissible, if it is permissible at all, but we all hold to the same tenants.
It hasn't been my experience that ProLifers OR ProChoicers all agree 100% with each other and so I think it's a stretch for you to assert confidently what "we" believe. Some ProLifers do hate women, and some do believe women are worth less and that if the fetus cannot be saved without abortion the woman should be left to die without receiving the care that could save her. I do realize there is disagreement over that, however in recent polls a consistent 15% of the general population state that they should be NO abortion for ANY reason with NO exceptions whatsoever, as though the medical procedure itself is always 'evil' and the circumstances requiring it are irrelevant.
That being said, it would be very helpful to conversation if you clarify the tenets which you believe all ProLifers hold in common.
Without digging into old discussions, I recall that one of our previous back-and-forths involved me asking what sort of medical condition necessitated an abortion, and no other possible treatment, at all, is available. As I recall, I still haven't heard what sort of condition would place a medical school graduate, whether an abortionist or a real doctor, in that position.
We still seem to be dealing with an inability to distinguish between trying to keep two people alive, and actively destroying one for the sake of the other.
Your inability to understand this distinction is one thing, but you see that 15% and you drew a line between woman-haters and woman-supporters. That is propaganda to the extreme: "if you're not with me, you hate women". Get real. Nobody hates women - our disagreement is over whether or not the child in the womb is a human being worth protecting and nothing else.
By the way, if there are some pro-lifers out there who EVER want to chime in and tell me that they actually do hate women, think that women should be forced to stay at home, barefoot and preganant, wearing chastity belts until marriage, whatever it is that these people think that we think.... feel free to do so. I'm waiting for ONE pro-lifer to show up and prove crowepps right.
....anyone?
Actually, crowepps listed several instances in which an abortion would be necessary to preserve the life or health of the mother. Just because you don't like the answer you received does not mean you didn't receive one.
We still seem to be dealing with an inability to distinguish between trying to keep two people alive, and actively destroying one for the sake of the other.
If there are two options, one which might help the fetus but would put the pregnant woman at much greater risk, I really believe it should be the woman's choice, after she's gotten honest risk analysis by her doctor. It shouldn't be on a stranger, or politicians, to interfere and tell a woman how much risk she's expected to take.
By the way, if there are some pro-lifers out there who EVER want to chime in and tell me that they actually do hate women, think that women should be forced to stay at home, barefoot and preganant, wearing chastity belts until marriage, whatever it is that these people think that we think.... feel free to do so. I'm waiting for ONE pro-lifer to show up and prove crowepps right.
Misogyny doesn't have to be so blunt. Insisting that it's an obligation, not a choice, to attempt to bring an unexpected pregnancy to term is sufficient to effectively declare women and poor people are second class.
Please show me what pro-lifer hates women. Please show me what pro-lifer believes that women are worth less then any other human being. Please show me what pro-lifer believes that a woman should be left to die without any medical care. These statements are, at best, blatant mischaracterizations of things pro-lifers actually believe or have stated in order to try to make a point that you merely want to be true. Not a point which is actually true. And I do not believe I said every pro-lifer believes the same thing. I actually said the opposite, as there are disagreements over when abortion should be permissible, if it should be permissible at all. What I did say was that we see everyone as deserving the same right to live that everyone else is afforded.
When you write:
What I did say was that we see everyone as deserving the same right to live that everyone else is afforded.
that answers your question:
Please show me what pro-lifer believes that women are worth less then any other human being.
because saying a fertalized egg or a fetus is a "human being" and that society has the right to demand the host women attempt to complete the pregnancy is making women & poor people 2nd class, by definition -- because an unplanned pregnancy is a larger burden on women and poor families than men or families with more resources.
A fertilized ovum, also known as a zygote, is a human being. This is not a matter of beliefs. That is a matter of science. Furthermore, I seriously cannot wrap my head around the notion of how it is better to allow one to kill another, then it is to tell one that they have to care for that who only exists as a result of something they chose to engage in (sex). This is incredibly backwards thinking. We do not kill people off solely because they would be burdens.
A fertilized ovum, also known as a zygote, is a human being. This is not a matter of beliefs. That is a matter of science.
Isn't it funny how anti-choicers see "has human DNA" and read it as "is a human being?" Do you suppose they say things like "My love seat has cats all over it?"
Furthermore, I seriously cannot wrap my head around the notion of how it is better to allow one to kill another, then it is to tell one that they have to care for that who only exists as a result of something they chose to engage in (sex).
Yes, how dare people engage in Shameful Sexual Activity(tm) without paying the consequences!
(Of course, if the woman was raped, then it's not her fault, and abortion is okie-dokie.)
Should I find it funny how you try to mock what I wrote out, instead of making a post of substance? I could, but I do not, as you tried this in the past, and it is just as sad now as it was then. At any rate, I guess pro-choicers only like science when it suits them to like science. Otherwise, you discard it like an unwanted pregnancy. Much to your chagrin, a human zygote is a human being. This is a scientific fact and undebatable (though people will try). As I pointed out in another thread, this is about the time where you will relegate your argument to one of philosophy, and try to conflate the scientific definition of a human being with the philosophical definition of a human being, which is a fallacy. And personal responsibility is, apparently, a radical notion. For pro-choicers, anyway.
And what, prithee, is the scientific definition of a human being?
Human beings are extent members of the genus Homo of the Hominidae family, characterized by erect carriage, bipedalism, speech and higher intellect.
erect carriage, bipedalism, speech and higher intellect.
Ah, and a zygote is bipedal and talks? OOOO--KAYYYeeeeeee
That's the consequence of what I understand you to say when you cite "personal responsibility" in regards pregnancy: women and poor people would (do) have a higher burden, and you're OK with that?
I appeal to philosophy & justice because I don't like being defined as 2nd class; when I'm being told I should accept nature and society's systemic discrimination.
If telling you what you cannot do to another, in this case killing them, because it would unfairly burden you is akin to treating you as a second class citizen, then everyone is a second class citizen, as that is a standard that everyone is held to. Everyone, except pregnant women for some reason.
The only way the fetus can beccome a born person is the woman's body makes the baby's body out of her own flesh, blood and bone. Sometimes. It doesn't matter if the pregnancy is wanted or unwanted, the process is a great burden on a woman's body and sometimes it takes a long time to recover and sometimes the woman's body can't handle it -- and such a burden shouldn't be forced. Consent to sex (if the sex wasn't coerced or forced) isn't consent to pregnancy.
In your simplistic world view, it's OK to put social and legal pressure on women and poor people to "do the right thing" -- which just happens to help preserve the political power of people who support that world view. That world view, please note, developed over millenia, by the people in power patronizing the philosopher's and theologians who supports their views and undermining philosophy & theology that threatened their power.
Much to your chagrin, a human zygote is a human being. This is a scientific fact and undebatable (though people will try).
Maybe it is on your planet. Here on Earth, however, this...
...is not a human being. (Although if you draw a smiley-face on it, it might begin to resemble one!)
As I pointed out in another thread, this is about the time where you will relegate your argument to one of philosophy, and try to conflate the scientific definition of a human being with the philosophical definition of a human being, which is a fallacy.
No, actually, this is where we point and laugh at you, as a prime example of how anti-choice advocacy has turned your brain into mush.
And personal responsibility is, apparently, a radical notion. For pro-choicers, anyway.
And anti-choicers, too! After all, for them, a lack of it means that some innocent, defenseless little human beings don't have the right to live.
Human beings are not defined by the way they look. Since you believe otherwise, though, then explain to me how a human being looks, and how much you have to differ from your accepted look to not be a human being anymore. And I will have you know that my brain is far from mush. In fact, I believe it is as how it has always been.
Human beings are not defined by the way they look.
And I will have you know that my brain is far from mush. In fact, I believe it is as how it has always been.
Oh, I'm so sorry---I didn't know it was a birth condition.
ohhhhhhhh
much cuter than kittens!
So I take it you refuse to answer my question?
So I take it you refuse to answer my question?
No, not really. Just the fact that you asked that question, in all seriousness, demonstrates the intellectual bankruptcy of the anti-choice movement better than I ever could.
Please keep arguing that zygotes and blastocysts are human beings. It makes ridiculing you so much easier!
And one would think that if you could answer the question, you would. But you cannot, so instead you avoid the question. You trying to ridicule me for arguing that zygotes and blastocysts are human beings is as humorous as is a creationist trying to ridicule an evolutionary biologist for arguing in favor of evolution.
You trying to ridicule me for arguing that zygotes and blastocysts are human beings is as humorous as is a creationist trying to ridicule an evolutionary biologist for arguing in favor of evolution.
Isn't it fascinating to watch him, folks?
84, Why should she answer your question? When I answer your questions you say I'm a liar. What's the point?
I love ferrets, OMG they are soooo cute.
"But who will protect the baby ferrets?" Thanks ProChoiceFerret.
Oh, I'm so sorry---I didn't know it was a birth condition.
ROTFLMAO! Good thing I finished my drink before I read this! *grins*
84 Were do I begin? Let's see for starters, Sharron Angle, Flip Benham, Randall Terry, Michael Bray (Army of God), Neal Horsley (Army of God), and the folks at the Genocide Awareness Project. Pro-lifers put fetuses ahead of women's sovereignty and worth.
Abortion is NOT Murder. A Fetus is NOT a Baby. Women are NOT Incubators!
And please show me where any of those people state that they hate women, or that women are worth less then anyone else or that women should be left to die without any medical care. I would think that it would be easy to produce actual quotes of people stating this. I am beginning to think arex was right. You gals and guys merely claim something is true that you want to be true, even if it is not, and then proceed to make all sorts of fanciful claims based on those preconceived notions. Also, could you do without the empty slogans? They are thoroughly unconvincing.
I don't think it fair to expect women and poor people to automatically have a higher burden just because they are women or poor. I answered someone else's question earlier (different website) & saved this example of expecting too much sacrifice from women:
http://www.staphx.org/
Letters from the Pastor, May 17, 2010.
"Every abortion is murder since it constitutes the unjust killing of an innocent life. Thus, it can never be justified under any circumstance. The question might arise, "Isn't it better to save one life as opposed to allowing two people to die?" One thing we must always remember is that no physician can predict what will happen with 100% accuracy. We will never be able to eliminate all risks associated with pregnancy. What we should not do, however, is lower risks associated with pregnancy by aborting children. It is not better for a woman to have to live the rest of her existence knowing that she had her child killed because her pregnancy was high risk." [emphasis added]
That, to me, is a Pro-Lifer saying that it's OK to risk women's health and life if their defective bodies can't sustain a pregnancy. If the woman chooses to make that risk, that's one thing, but catholic hospitals shouldn't make it policy. See an ACLU press release:
"... a worrying pattern of religiously-affiliated hospitals denying emergency reproductive care to patients, as highlighted in an article in the American Journal of Public Health. The article cites instances in which miscarrying women were forced to travel to another facility after religiously-affiliated hospitals refused to terminate their pregnancies, and a woman who was denied care until the moment her fetus' heartbeat stopped, placing her in grave peril. ..."
A Pro-Life Pastor stating that it's "not better lfor a woman to have to live the rest of her existance" knowing she aborted a doomed pregnancy is putting too much value on the hope of a miracle and not enough consideration for the risks to women's lives and health. The cases the ACLU refer to (I've read the journal article) misscarriages were in progress -- septis and hemoraging -- and doctors were not given permission to operate (some did anyway) until the fading fetal heartbeat stopped. In cases were minutes count, Pro-Life hospital administors causing unneccessary delay is anti-woman.
Please notice that he did not say anything about the women dying, nor did he say anything about withholding medical treatment. He said, quite plainly, that it is not guaranteed that a woman will die in childbirth, but that it is guaranteed that a child will die in abortion and that, as a result, they should still provide medical treatment but err on the side that does not involve willingly killing one. Now, the Catholic church does allow actions leading to the indirect death of the fetus in the case where the life of the mother is threatened or if the fetus is more likely to survive if it were removed from the uterus. That is a far cry from what you stated above. The link which explains it is here: http://www.saintbernadette.com/father-pete-blog/120-john-erlich-letter.
Now, the Catholic church does allow actions leading to the indirect death of the fetus ......
you need to inform the Catholic hierarchy then because they seem bent of killing women whose bodies are unable to sustain a pregnancy. Why not start with the Medical Ethics Director of the Diocese of Phoenix, Fr. John Ehrich who wrote this letter ( http://www.staphx.org/ethics_site/pdfs/Medical_Ethics_Director_Statement... )to his congregation last month after a nun was excommunicated for doing PRECISELY what you are insisting The Church allows?
Here is what Father Ehrich says:
The question might arise, “Isn’t it better to save one life as opposed to allowing two people to die?” One thing we must always remember is that no physician can predict what will happen with 100% accuracy. We will never be able to eliminate all risks associated with pregnancy. What we should not do, however, is lower risks associated with pregnancy by aborting children.
It is not better for a woman to have to live the rest of her existence knowing that she had her child killed because her pregnancy was high risk.
Please click on the links people provide, as well as reading the links you provide, before jumping the gun with a response. Not only did you re-provide what I already provided, but it says exactly what I wrote out.
Not only did you re-provide what I already provided, but it says exactly what I wrote out
You're tap dancing so hard that you are incoherent. I've no idea who you're replying to but just in case it was me
the fact of the matter is that the Catholic church believes and that women and little girls whose bodies cannot sustain a pregnancy should die rather than be allowed an abortion. You can call that ethics and moral if you like but I call it institutionalized hatred of women. That sad excuse for an Medical Ethics Director wrote this abomination to justify the excommunication of a nun who had saved a woman's life by allowing an abortion in a Catholic hospital.
You're welcome to tap dance around the distinctions between "direct " and "indirect" but those are distinctions that don't mean anything when women are dying for no other reason than that their bodies were unable to sustain a pregnancy and they were unfortunate enough to end up in a hospital owned by a church that tries to justify it's hatred of women by claiming that their misogyny is what God wants.
Yes, I was speaking to you. The Catholic Church does not assert that women should be left to die. Rather, they assert that nothing should be done to purposely kill the unborn child, and that everything should be done to treat the woman. Pope Pius the XII said it best nearly sixty years ago when he stated
Never and in no case has the Church taught that the life of the child must be preferred to that of the mother. It is erroneous to put the question with this alternative: either the life of the child or that of the mother. No, neither the life of the mother nor that of the child can be subjected to direct suppression. In the one case as in the other, there can be but one obligation: to make every effort to save the lives of both, of the mother and the child.
Solely because you want to construe that position to one of hating women or misogyny or whatever else you want to claim does not make it so.
The Catholic Church does not assert that women should be left to die. Rather, they assert that nothing should be done to purposely kill the unborn child, and that everything should be done to treat the woman.
I'm sorry but in the link I provided the Medical Ethics Director of the Phoenix Diocese was saying that it would be better if the woman in question (and, by extension, all women in her situation) died rather than be allowed an abortion even if the abortion is necessary to save her (our) lives. Thus my suggestion that you take your false claims up with the Catholic heirarchy and start with the diocese of Phoenix. I have no interest in your attempts to pretend that I'm too stupid to understand his remarks. Dead is dead and in this case the death he seeks is entirely preventable.
The Catholic church does not just assert that women whose bodies are unable to sustain a pregnancy should be left to die, the Catholic church claims that this is a moral position which should and, as much as possible, does, inform the way that life and death decisions are made in a hospital. Any decent human being should be alarmed and offended by this claim.
The 'unborn child' in question in this case was a doomed 10 week old embryo. No matter what happened the 'child' would die because the woman's body could not sustain the pregnancy. When you say "nothing should be done to purposely kill the unborn child" in a hospital setting the inevitable result in this case and in many others when a woman is unable to sustain a pregnancy is that BOTH the embryo and the woman will die. Even Fr Ehrich understands this. That's why he very clearly states that it would be better for the woman to die and for no other reason than that her body is unable to sustain a pregnancy.
And that is just one example of why I say Catholicism is saturated with contempt towards and hatred of women. And not just Catholic women but all women.
First of all, I yet again point out that you did not click on the link I provided initially, for if you had you would have noticed that you provided the same article I provided earlier. This is why I scratch my head in amazement when you tell me to start with the person I originally started with. It leads me to believe that you did not bother to click on the link I provided, nor have you bothered to click on the link. Second of all, the Catholic Church does not state that women should be left to die during childbirth. If you do not want to read the link I provided, then at least read the link you provided. It states, and I quote:
Sometimes, however, the actual pathology must be treated prior to the viability of the child and may indirectly cause the death of the child. This situation is altogether different from a D&C, since a D&C is the dismembering and removing of the body of the child. A D&C or D&E in this circumstance is the same as an abortion, since it is the direct killing of the child. There is a significant difference, morally speaking, between directly killing versus allowing a child to die as an unintended side effect of life saving treatment. A similar, although not completely analogous, distinction is made between murder and self-defense. The end result is the same, but the action taken and the circumstances change the way we evaluate the end result.
Where does that say that the woman should be left to die? You say that he he very clearly states that it would be better for the woman to die and for no other reason than that her body is unable to sustain a pregnancy? Well, where does he say this? The fact of the matter is that he does not state this. He does not even insinuate as much. Rather, you read that into his comments in order to come to the conclusion that you already made. Furthermore, you seem to be under the mistaken impression that Catholic hospitals do not perform what you would deem as an abortion to save the life of the women. You also seem to be under the impression that Catholic hospitals let women who come into them die on the table. But both of these assumptions are wrong, and very much so. Let me ask you a question. Can you find me an example of a Catholic hospital refusing to treat a woman suffering from uterine cancer or an ectopic and the woman dying because of it?
A pregnant 27-year old Nicaraguan woman has been refused treatment for metastatic cancer, a result of Nicaragua's draconian anti-abortion law. The law stipulates that women will face prison sentences for obtaining or attempting to obtain abortions, and health care professionals will face jail time for providing women with health services associated with abortions. It also refuses treatment for HIV/AIDS, cancer, malaria, and cardiac emergencies when such treatment may interfere with the life of the fetus.
Dead fetus
In the hardscrabble village of Cuajachillo outside the capital lives a family who believes their daughter was the first victim of the draconian ban. The public prosecutor for crimes against women is investigating whether doctors fearful of punishment even before the newly-passed abortion law had gone into effect stood by while Jazmina del Carmen Bojorge, 18, died from complications to her pregnancy.
Bojorge was awaiting her second child when she and her 5-month-old fetus died this month in a public hospital in Managua. Bojorge's family says they took her to a hospital when she complained of limb pains and weakness. When her condition worsened, doctors say they determined her fetus was dead, but Bojorge went into shock before they could save her.
Ectopic pregnancy
Reyes, a 22-year-old law student, suffered an ectopic pregnancy. The fetus develops outside the uterus, cannot survive and causes bleeding that endangers the mother. But doctors seemed afraid to treat her because of the anti-abortion law, said husband Agustin Perez. By the time they took action, it was too late.
Law student Reyes was one of the three confirmed fatalities. She knew something was horribly wrong, and went with her husband to their small town’s medical center. They were sent to Bertha Calderon maternity hospital, more than an hour away in Managua. There, Perez said, Reyes was given a cursory exam, sent home and told to return the next day.
By that time, the bleeding and cramping were worse. Perez said he rushed her to a hospital in nearby Leon, but after she had an ultrasound that confirmed her condition, they left her bent over and in agony for hours in a waiting room. When a doctor at a shift change saw her condition, she was rushed into surgery. She suffered three heart attacks and an exploratory surgery.
So in order to prove your point, you went to Nicaragua? Perhaps you live in Nicaragua, but I live in the United States. That being the case, could you do what I ask and find a case, preferably in the United States, where a Catholic hospital refused to treat someone and they died?
Just in case you never got the memo, countries like Nicaragua are the epitome of church-states... they can get away with far worse miscarriages of justice, medical or otherwise, because we view them as third world nations that the church runs. The church is limited (somewhat) in their bullshit here in the US due to separation of church and state and because (for the most part) people wouldn't stand to have story after story of dead pregnant women plastered all over the news. But like the case in Arizona, it doesn't stop them from trying. Thankfully, we live in a country where transporting a woman to another facility is at least possible. Hence, fewer deaths from the church's unwillingness to budge on these archaic policies. Women in third world nations run by the church aren't so lucky.
At any rate, I'm fairly convinced you could be publicly flogged with example after example after example and NEVER ACCEPT REALITY. That's okay. Thankfully, most of us aren't here and don't do what we do to convince you.
Abortion is Nicaragua is illegal. One cannot be done for any reason. The Catholic Church does not take that hardline of a stance on abortion. In the same vein that you want to go to Nicaragua to prove a point about abortion being illegal, I can go to South Africa to prove a point about abortion being legal. But if I did, I would probably meet with many angry responses. Therefore, in the interest of simplicity, we should stay in the United States.
Abortion is Nicaragua is illegal. One cannot be done for any reason. The Catholic Church does not take that hardline of a stance on abortion.
Well, yeah, actually it does indeed, and the REASON abortion is illegal in Nicaragua for any reason is precisely because that's what the Catholic Church demanded in return for their support of the present administration. The Catholic Church stated that allowing abortion to save the life of the mother would be used as an 'excuse' to do other abortions and therefore NO ABORTIONS EVER FOR ANY REASON was the only proper law.
In the same vein that you want to go to Nicaragua to prove a point about abortion being illegal, I can go to South Africa to prove a point about abortion being legal. But if I did, I would probably meet with many angry responses. Therefore, in the interest of simplicity, we should stay in the United States.
Even if this were a simple issue, which it isn't, it makes a lot more sense to me to get out of the United States, where the laws have not yet been passed, and take a look at other countries where they have put in place exactly the kind of laws that the ProLife activists are PROMOTING putting in place in the United States.
Doing so easily answers the absolutely vital question: once the laws are changed to be the way the ProLife activists want them to be, what happens next? Looking at those countries, the answers are absolutely clear:
- people still have sex just as much as they ever did
- abortions still happen when pregnancies are unwanted, illegally,
- poor women die during illegal abortions while the wealthy survive
- women pregnant with wanted pregnancies die from complications
- people have 6 or 8 or 10 excess kids they didn't really want and end up in abject poverty
- schools and government social services are overwhelmed and there is no help for children who are neglected, abused or left in ignorance
so many good points but let me just expand on one.
SO, if 84 believes that the church is more liberal on abortion than it actually is, is that because 84 is more liberal on abortion than the church?
84, can you clarify, is the church more hardline on abortion than you are?
You have a knack for misconstruing facts. The Catholic church has no real political power in Nicaragua. The law was not passed because the Catholic church wanted it to pass. The law was passed because the then-president elect or whatever he was wanted to win the election, and signed the bill to win over voters. That is called politicking, and I am sure you are familiar with it, because it happens all the time in the United States. To somehow blame that on the Catholic church is ridiculous. Anyway, I am going to respond to your points.
people still have sex just as much as they ever did
So what? The point of such laws is not to stop people from having sex.
abortions still happen when pregnancies are unwanted, illegally
Laws against murder to not prevent murder from happening. Does that mean that laws against murder should not exist? Of course not. Laws are a deterrent. They exist to drive the incidence of an occurrence down.
poor women die during illegal abortions while the wealthy survive
Huh? The oft stated rhetoric is that if abortions are made illegal, poor women will not be able to afford them. So why would a poor woman die from an illegal abortion she cannot afford? Either the line about poor women not being able to afford an abortion is a lie, or the line about poor women dying from illegal abortions is a lie.
women pregnant with wanted pregnancies die from complications
Explain to me again why this would happen?
people have 6 or 8 or 10 excess kids they didn\\\'t really want and end up in abject poverty
The above is nothing more then blatant lies and fearmongering. The CDC reports that, by 1933, the average family size had declined to 2.3 children, and that was before the invention of the modern day pill.
schools and government social services are overwhelmed and there is no help for children who are neglected, abused or left in ignorance
Why would they be overwhelmed? Are you operating under the assumption that the average family size in the United States would skyrocket to 10+?
The Catholic church has no real political power in Nicaragua. The law was not passed because the Catholic church wanted it to pass.
This is contradicted by the facts:
Most Nicaraguans are Catholics and the Roman Catholic Church was a key backer of the ban - arguing that abortion meant murder, even when mothers' wellbeing was in jeopardy.
And the Church and practically every parliamentarian agreed that the term "therapeutic" was being over-used to cover a wide range of terminations that were not actually medically justified.
Politics and the Catholic Church in Nicaragua by John M Kirk
Guerrilla-priests and liberation theology are not new phenomena in Nicaragua. Ever since the arrival of the Spanish conquistadores, Catholic Church leaders have played a major role in that country's politics. The result, John Kirk writes, is a polarized church, one with a progressive minority at loggerheads with the conservative hierarchy.
http://www.powells.com/biblio/18-9780813011387-0
The bishops are expected to lend their authority to important state occasions, and their pronouncements on national issues are closely followed. They can also be called upon to mediate between contending parties at moments of political crisis. ... No previous Latin American revolution has had such broad religious support as that of the Sandinistas. Even the Roman Catholic bishops openly backed the anti-Somoza movement in its final phases. ...An explosive church-state conflict developed, during which the bishops more or less openly allied with the Sandinistas' political enemies and the FSLN struggled vainly to contain the influence of the institutional church.
http://countrystudies.us/nicaragua/30.htm
The Catholic Church, which has historically played an important role in national politics, (despite the official establishment of Nicaragua as a secular state in 1893) has always staunchly opposed therapeutic abortion. However, therapeutic abortion has stirred increased controversy in the months leading up to the November 5th elections and has been politicized for partisan purposes. The Catholic Church launched a vigorous campaign the end therapeutic abortion several months ago after Sandinista Renovation Movement (MRS) candidate Edmundo JarquĂn affirmed his support for the issue in an interview with a journalist. The Church's campaign has received the support of evangelical churches and the two main parties, the Constitutionalist Liberal Party (PLC) and the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN).
Please, before calling someone ignorant, at least make sure what you are posting actually contradicts the very things they write out. Otherwise, you waste your time and my time in having to respond to you. How you ignored the part where I said that the RCC has no real political power, which they do not, and that the law was not passed solely because the RCC wanted it to pass, I simply do not know. And what about the rest of my post? I was actually more interested in a response to that then what you responded to.
The excerpts and links specifically talk about the enormous political power of the Church and how the abortion law was a quid pro quo for their support of the winner of the election. I am astonished that you are still asserting otherwise. As to the rest of your post, I'm not going repeat what I've already said. Your ideological blinkers make it a waste of my time.
I do wish you would read the things I take my time to type out, as you seem to have skipped the portion about the RCC having no real political power, and also the part of politicking and playing to the voter base (which is a common tactic in every country, especially the United States). It would save us both a great deal of time.
Anyway, it is a fact that anti-abortion laws are not intended to prevent people from having sex. There is not a single anti-abortion law which says people cannot have sex. It is a fact that murder still happens even though murder is illegal. It is a fact that pro-choicers often state that if abortions were made illegal that poor women would not be able to afford them. In fact, it has often been stated by Ginsburg and reiterated on this website. And it is a fact that average family size has been nowhere near ten plus children for over at least a hundred years, and more then likely longer then that. You are welcome to prove any of the aforementioned things wrong, but you will not nor can you, for your original assertions were either predicated on a flat lie, or based on an incorrect assumption.
You not being able to respond to the things I type out does not mean I am wearing ideological blinkers. It means that you cannot throw off the ideological blinkers which, ironically enough, you are wearing in order to admit when you are wrong, which is nothing short of amazing. Your hypocrisy is, frankly, disgusting.
Most Nicaraguans are Catholics and the Roman Catholic Church was a key backer of the ban - arguing that abortion meant murder, even when mothers' wellbeing was in jeopardy.
Politics and the Catholic Church in Nicaragua by John M Kirk
Guerrilla-priests and liberation theology are not new phenomena in Nicaragua. Ever since the arrival of the Spanish conquistadores, Catholic Church leaders have played a major role in that country's politics. The result, John Kirk writes, is a polarized church, one with a progressive minority at loggerheads with the conservative hierarchy.
The bishops are expected to lend their authority to important state occasions, and their pronouncements on national issues are closely followed. They can also be called upon to mediate between contending parties at moments of political crisis. ... No previous Latin American revolution has had such broad religious support as that of the Sandinistas. Even the Roman Catholic bishops openly backed the anti-Somoza movement in its final phases. ...An explosive church-state conflict developed, during which the bishops more or less openly allied with the Sandinistas' political enemies and the FSLN struggled vainly to contain the influence of the institutional church.
http://countrystudies.us/nicaragua/30.htm
The Catholic Church, which has historically played an important role in national politics, (despite the official establishment of Nicaragua as a secular state in 1893) has always staunchly opposed therapeutic abortion. However, therapeutic abortion has stirred increased controversy in the months leading up to the November 5th elections and has been politicized for partisan purposes. The Catholic Church launched a vigorous campaign the end therapeutic abortion several months ago after Sandinista Renovation Movement (MRS) candidate Edmundo JarquĂn affirmed his support for the issue in an interview with a journalist. The Church's campaign has received the support of evangelical churches and the two main parties, the Constitutionalist Liberal Party (PLC) and the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN).
Anyway, it is a fact that anti-abortion laws are not intended to prevent people from having sex. There is not a single anti-abortion law which says people cannot have sex.
But every anti-abortion law ensures that the potential "consequences" of having recreational sex are fully enforced. Which is just the way you like it, isn't it?
It is a fact that pro-choicers often state that if abortions were made illegal that poor women would not be able to afford them. In fact, it has often been stated by Ginsburg and reiterated on this website.
You mean, medically safe abortions. Unsafe abortions are available to anyone with a coat hanger.
And it is a fact that average family size has been nowhere near ten plus children for over at least a hundred years, and more then likely longer then that.
Isn't it wonderful what can be achieved when womens' rights are respected?
You are welcome to prove any of the aforementioned things wrong, but you will not nor can you, for your original assertions were either predicated on a flat lie, or based on an incorrect assumption.
No, they were actually based on facts. I know that you don't have much experience with factual material, so for you it may resemble flat lies or incorrect assumptions at first. But if you do your research (using reality-based materials, natch), you'll find that it all checks out.
And it is a fact that average family size has been nowhere near ten plus children for over at least a hundred years, and more then likely longer then that.
Isn't it wonderful what can be achieved when womens' rights are respected?
And contraception is available.
There's a link to an interesting article on this here:
Conventional explanations for the fertility transition have involved the rising cost of children because of urbanization, the growth of incomes and nonagricultural employment, the increased value of education, rising female employment, child labor laws and compulsory education, and declining infant and child mortality. Changing attitudes toward large families and contraception, as well as better contraceptive techniques, have also been cited.
Of course, making birth control illegal again so we all can imitate the Duggars is one of the goals of the ProLife movement.
Concerning the first quote, indeed, it is. Concerning the second quote, as you undoubtedly have hundreds of waiting examples, could you please provide illustrations of abortions being done en masse via coat hangers? Concerning the third quote, it is nice to see that you agree that women were having their rights respected way back in 1933, forty years before Roe v. Wade. And concerning the last quote, indeed, they were not and they still are not. You are free to prove anything I wrote out wrong with sources of your own. In fact, allow me to make a simple request of you. Please go out and find me anything which shows that the average family size has been near ten any time in the past one hundred years. Or are you going to tell me to do the research when I already have done done so?
Anyway, it is a fact that anti-abortion laws are not intended to prevent people from having sex.
That's not what the propoganda seems to indicate. Most of it talks about how sex should be 'sacred' and how abortion enables "promiscuity" (sex), and how if abortion were illegal again, then people would stop being "promiscuous" (stop having sex) and be abstinent like they're SUPPOSED to be.
Promote abstinence; ban partial-birth abortion
'Allowing abortion services to advertise on TV would then be saying, “Here is a quick medical fix for the consequences of having sex.” That is giving all the wrong messages and is very disturbing.’
Tom Masters, who is involved with several anti-abortion efforts in the region, said there is a deeper message that shouldn't be overlooked. He said he supports Van Zant's bill, but wishes there was a larger emphasis on the teaching of abstinence in schools.
"This is not a political stance. It's become politicized," he said. "The problem is with promiscuity."
http://staugustine.com/news/local-news/2010-02-28/abortion-bill-filed
Until we hold sex sacred again, until we teach our children to value themselves and take responsibility — the issue of promiscuous sex, unwanted pregnancies, abortion, adoption and sexually transmitted diseases will never be over.
Of course, no one denies that rampant abortions are bad, but they have their roots in our liberal and rampant sexual apetite, something that society glorifies.
So, yes, the ProLife side is the side that wants you, and everybody else, to stop having sex.
Even though I have pointed this out to you before, you have a knack for trying to read things into what people write out that are simply not there, and then proceed to draw the conclusion you want to draw out of your mischaracterization of what was typed. Why, exactly, do you do this? As it stands, none of what you quoted even insinuates what you assert it does, nor does it show any anti-abortion law being passed to prevent people from having sex.
It must be really annoying for you when people translate code words like 'promiscuity' and 'abstinence' and 'contraceptive mentality' and point out that the ProLife position most accurately can be described as NOBODY SHOULD EVER HAVE SEX UNLESS THEY ARE MARRIED AND WANT CHILDREN.
That one is indeed a really hard sell and if people realized that's actually the aim of the ProLife movement, your support among young men would plummet.
Where does that say that the woman should be left to die? You say that he he very clearly states that it would be better for the woman to die and for no other reason than that her body is unable to sustain a pregnancy?
In the second to last paragraph of the link I provided Fr Ehrich says:
The question might arise, “Isn’t it better to save one life as opposed to allowing two people to die?” One thing we must always remember is that no physician can predict what will happen with 100% accuracy. We will never be able to eliminate all risks associated with pregnancy. What we should not do, however, is lower risks associated with pregnancy by aborting children.
It is not better for a woman to have to live the rest of her existence knowing that she had her child killed because her pregnancy was high risk.
He wrote this abomination in response to an uproar when the diocese had excommunicated and demoted a nun for the crime of saving a woman's life by allowing her to have an abortion. The woman was 10 weeks pregnant. She had, at most 2 weeks to live if the pregnancy was allowed to continue. The embryo was doomed no matter what. Your Priest says quite clearly that "It is not better for a woman to have to live the rest of her existence knowing that she had her child killed because her pregnancy was high risk" I strongly disagree with him. That isn't "medical ethics", that's hatred of women dressed up as religion.
Even granting him and you the peculiar notion that a 10 week old embryo is a 'person' (which is a belief I most certainly do not share and find absurd) it's quite clear that Fr Ehrich understands that some pregnancies are doomed, that some pregnancies can and will kill women and it's equally clear that his solution to the dilemma of a woman being unable to sustain a pregnancy that is killing her is to not intervene and allow the woman to die along with the embryo. This is what serves the Catholic church and Catholic hospitals for 'medical ethics', the unnecessary deaths of women whose sole fault is that they're to sick to sustain a pregnancy. And not just Catholic women either, you folks seek to force this on all of us.
He does not even insinuate as much.
well, yes he clearly does.
Can you find me an example of a Catholic hospital refusing to treat a woman suffering from uterine cancer or an ectopic and the woman dying because of it?
I don't believe that you or Arex are capable of even dealing with the reality of Fr Ehrich and the situation that prompted his monstrous pastoral letter. We aren't talking about an ectopic pregnancy or of the church refusing to allow a woman chemo and radiation because it might kill her child. In this case we are talking about a case where, according to her doctors, a woman had, at most two weeks to live, her 10 week old embryo was doomed no matter what happened and the Catholic hierarchy in Phoenix decided "It is not better for a woman to have to live the rest of her existence knowing that she had her child killed because her pregnancy was high risk." and excommunicated the nun who authorized the abortion that saved the woman's life.
I can see why you want to change the subject the fact remains, if Fr Ehrich and the Phoenix diocese had gotten their way the woman and her 10 week old embryo would both be dead and that's not ethics, that's misogyny dressed up as religion.
I am fairly sure I have said this before, but I am not Catholic. Anyway, that does not say that the woman should be left to die. I am not sure how you ignore more then half of the letter and only focus on the last two sentences while taking the rest out of context. If you are pregnant and you walk into a Catholic hospital, you will be treated to the best of ability of the hospital without the hospital resorting to abortion. In this case, the woman in question was suffering from pulmonary hypertension. Catholic teaching is that the woman should have had her pulmonary hypertension treated, which was the illness, instead of performing an abortion on the woman. No one knows whether or not the woman would still be alive today if she were treated for pulmonary hypertension instead of given an abortion, but if she was, I doubt you would be trying to make an issue out of the hospital refusing to give the woman an abortion and instead treating her illness. At any rate, it is hard to argue misogyny when the hospital is not denying women medical treatment. They are merely refusing to provide an operation you see no problem with. Anyway, I am still waiting for someone to show me a case of a seriously ill woman walking into a Catholic hospital and the Catholic hospital letting her die. I just want one example. From the way people talk about the Catholic Church, you would think that said occurrences are rather common.
Please notice that he did not say anything about the women dying,
He wrote "It is not better" -- meaning, it's morally better to risk death than to ask for medical intervention before it's absolutely necessary, but how his that defined? A standard of "no direct killing" puts too much risk on the woman's life, especially if there's little hope for a good outcome for the fetus. She's not guarenteed to die, but she might. And the chances, when a pregnancy is in crisis, are higher the longer the delay.
nor did he say anything about withholding medical treatment.
Actually, the Bishop and the Pastor who defended them were saying exactly that. The hospital where Sister McBride OK'd the abordion was in a situation where the doctors thought the pregnant woman needed medical treatment, and the Bishop said they were wrong, and seems to be taking steps to prevent a repeat. Here's an analogy: if a fatal defect is detected well before the crisis happens, an abortion then is maybe as risky as Russian Roulette with a gun that has 200 chambers and 1 bullet. If the defect wasn't detected and she arrives at the hospital in crisis and bleeding it might be as risky as Russian Roulette with a gun that has 6 chambers and 2 bullets. If the ER staff takes time to hook up equipment to find if there's a fetal heartbeat, the gun has 6 chambers and 3 bullets. If they won't operate until the fetal heartbeat stops, that's like playing Russian Roulette with a gun that has 6 chambers and 4 or 5 bullets. If the fetus is almost certainly doomed, I refuse to call it moral to wait for bleeding to start, or to wait for a failing heartbeat to die.
He said, quite plainly, that it is not guaranteed that a woman will die in childbirth, but that it is guaranteed that a child will die in abortion and that, as a result, they should still provide medical treatment but err on the side that does not involve willingly killing one.
that kind of rubric over-values the fetus at the expense of the woman.
Here's the abstract of the article the ACLU cited:
http://ajph.aphapublications.org/cgi/content/short/98/10/1774
When There's a Heartbeat: Miscarriage Management in Catholic-Owned Hospitals
Lori R. Freedman, PhD, Uta Landy, PhD and Jody Steinauer, MD, MAS
The authors are with the Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Sciences and the Bixby Center for Reproductive Health Global, University of California, San Francisco.
As Catholic-owned hospitals merge with or take over other facilities, they impose restrictions on reproductive health services, including abortion and contraceptive services. Our interviews with US obstetrician–gynecologists working in Catholic-owned hospitals revealed that they are also restricted in managing miscarriages.
Catholic-owned hospital ethics committees denied approval of uterine evacuation while fetal heart tones were still present, forcing physicians to delay care or transport miscarrying patients to non–Catholic-owned facilities. Some physicians intentionally violated protocol because they felt patient safety was compromised.
Although Catholic doctrine officially deems abortion permissible to preserve the life of the woman, Catholic-owned hospital ethics committees differ in their interpretation of how much health risk constitutes a threat to a woman's life and therefore how much risk must
be present before they approve the intervention.
-- another example of a pattern of withholding necessary treatment.
It is not better does not mean that the other situation is better, for you are ignoring the possibility that both are equal. Indeed, the former is not what is meant, but rather that it is no more or less desirable then the other situation. See the quote from Pope Pius above. Furthermore, no Catholic hospital has a problem treating any women. If the woman was treated for her ailment, there would have been no issue. The issue was her obtaining a direct abortion. Your example is flawed, for if a pregnant woman shows up at a hospital bleeding, the hospital will operate on her in order to save her life, even if the unborn dies in the process. What they will not do, however, is purposely perform an abortion on her, meaning they will not purposely target the unborn. It is a meaningful distinction, for it shows that the Church does not hate women as is often repeated, nor do they simply leave them to die. They will do everything to save her without killing her unborn child. I am not sure how that correlates to giving one more value then the other, as the standard is applied to both the mother and the unborn child, thus treating them as equally. And the last sentence of what you quoted was important.
It is not better does not mean that the other situation is better, for you are ignoring the possibility that both are equal. Indeed, the former is not what is meant, but rather that it is no more or less desirable then the other situation.
Your need to be right and inability to defend the indefensible has rendered you incoherent. You are babbling.
Furthermore, no Catholic hospital has a problem treating any women.
And yet Catholic hospitals are dangerous places for pregnant women. Here's what the ACLU has to say:
http://www.aclu.org/files/assets/Letter_to_CMS_Final_PDF.pdf
about denial of necessary care such as:
A doctor in the Northeast decided to leave a Catholic-owned hospital after he was
forced by the ethics committee to risk a pregnant patient’s life. The woman was in the process of miscarrying at 19 weeks of pregnancy. She was dying: her temperature was 106 degrees, she had disseminated intravascular coagulopathy,
which is a life-threatening condition that prevents a person’s blood from clotting normally and causes excessive bleeding. This patient was bleeding so badly that
the sclera, the whites of her eyes, were red, filled with blood.
Despite the fact that there was no chance the fetus could survive the ethics committee told the doctor that he could not perform the abortion the woman needed to save her life until the fetus’s heartbeat stopped. The patient was in the
Intensive Care Unit for ten days, and developed pulmonary disease, resulting in lifetime oxygen dependency.
One doctor in a Western urban area described how a Catholic-owned hospital asked her hospital to accept the transfer of a pregnant patient who was in the
midst of miscarrying and needed emergency care because she was septic and hemorrhaging. The patient needed the pregnancy to be terminated to prevent further risk to her health, which the Catholic hospital refused to allow the doctor to do, even though transporting her while she was unstable created additional risks to her health.
In another situation, a doctor working at a Catholic-owned hospital in the Midwest was forced to send her patient, who was 14 weeks pregnant, 90 miles by
ambulance to another hospital to treat a miscarriage already in progress – the patient’s membranes had already ruptured and her health was at risk.
It takes real hatred to justify such barbarism.
One doctor in a Western urban area described how a Catholic-owned hospital asked her hospital to accept the transfer of a pregnant patient who was in the midst of miscarrying and needed emergency care because she was septic and hemorrhaging. The patient needed the pregnancy to be terminated to prevent further risk to her health, which the Catholic hospital refused to allow the doctor to do, even though transporting her while she was unstable created additional risks to her health.
This is one of the cases I was thinking of when I used the Russian Roulette analogy. Unnecessary delay is another bullet in the gun; moving a woman from hospital to ambulence through traffic to another hospital is another bullet. It would have been much safer for someone playing Russian Roulette (84 seems to be treating this as a game) to have 1 bullet in a gun with 12 chambers than a gun with 3 bullets in 12 chambers.
... We can't prove the woman in the Phoenix hospital wouldn't still be alive if the opperation didn't happen. Neither can he prove that she wouldn't have died. The doctors, who were there, were closest to what evidence there was. I think we should trust their judgement.
Your need to be right and inability to defend the indefensible has rendered you incoherent. You are babbling.
Yeah. What other indefensible things do you suppose BornIn1984 would defend?
"Son of Sam was not a murderer. All he did was insert small metal objects into the bodies of a handful of people, a procedure that you are statistically more likely to survive than not. You see, his intent in doing so has been widely misunderstood; he was not a murderer, but an artist, creating artistic masterpieces in the medium of flesh and blood. Artistry has a long and storied tradition, and indeed, some of the best art in existence is controversial and arousing of the emotions. To judge from the publicity surrounding Son of Sam, he is one of the greatest artists who ever lived."
"Jeffrey Dahmer made unparalleled contributions to the field of gastronomy..."
Do you even know what that comment was in response to? Your inability to understand that which I write out does not mean I am babbling. Anyway, you really do need to back up and read my responses. If a woman is sick as her membranes have ruptured, for example, the manual of Catholic hospital ethics committees will sanction approval of a uterine evacuation. There is no Catholic directive stating that she should be denied what you perceive as an abortion, and you are welcome to find it if you believe otherwise. Just to requote what Julie provided:
Although Catholic doctrine officially deems abortion permissible to preserve the life of the woman, Catholic-owned hospital ethics committees differ in their interpretation of how much health risk constitutes a threat to a woman\'s life and therefore how much risk must
be present before they approve the intervention.
If any problems arise, it is at the committee level. Of course, this is still ignores the fact that Catholic hospitals, contrary to what you might believe, will act to assist a pregnant woman, barring abortion unless she is sick and dying. Your contempt for the Catholic Church has already led you to arrive at the conclusion you want to arrive at, that conclusion being that the Catholic Church hates women. This is incorrect, and makes little sense when you consider that Catholic hospitals account for more then 15% of all hospitals in the United States, often times being the only hospital in a community. If they hated women as you assert, the maternal mortality rate should be much, much, much higher then it currently is.
Your inability to understand that which I write out does not mean I am babbling.
No, but you are babbling nonetheless. You understand quite well that this woman would have died had she not been allowed to have an abortion and you've completely failed AS USUAL to respond appropriately to the evidence you're been rather stridently and hysterically demanding.
Anyway, you really do need to back up and read my responses.
I need to do nothing of the sort. I can hardly bear to read this.
If a woman is sick as her membranes have ruptured, for example, the manual of Catholic hospital ethics committees will sanction approval of a uterine evacuation.
What the fuck are you talking about? Do you seriously expect to communicate anything with writing like that? It makes NO SENSE. As far as I can tell (through sheer intuition, mind you) you're saying that if a woman is hemorrhaging blood because she's having a miscarriage a Catholic hospital will perform a D&C. The answer is "No they will NOT if there is a detectable fetal heartbeat.
There is no Catholic directive stating that she should be denied what you perceive as an abortion, and you are welcome to find it if you believe otherwise.
Simple denial in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary looks so stupid after awhile.
Of course, this is still ignores the fact that Catholic hospitals, contrary to what you might believe, will act to assist a pregnant woman, barring abortion unless she is sick and dying.
First, hospitals exist to assist sick people. It's their job, it's why they exist as institutions, it's why they get paid. Second, Catholic hospitals don't CARE if a pregnant woman is sick and dying. they still won't perform an abortion even if an abortion is the one thing that can save the pregnant woman's life. This is as illegal as covering up and enabling the emotional, physical and sexual abuse of children by one's employees.
We've produced all sorts of evidence to substantiate this and you have produced ...nothing but pathetic attempts to dominate the conversation by personally denigrating the women who have been kind and patient enough to deal with your ignorance and arrogance.
Oh and the US ranks 42nd in maternal mortality rates which is to say that 41 other countries (Including Cuba) do a better job of keeping pregnant women alive than the US.
If a woman is sick as her membranes have ruptured, for example, the manual of Catholic hospital ethics committees will sanction approval of a uterine evacuation.
What the fuck are you talking about?
He's revealing his gross ignorance and asserting a flat-out lie, one refuted by everything that Catholics have published themselves and the actual facts.
"Catholic-owned hospital ethics committees denied approval of uterine evacuation while fetal heart tones were still present, forcing physicians to delay care or transport miscarrying patients to non–Catholic-owned facilities."
http://ajph.aphapublications.org/cgi/content/short/98/10/1774
And of course he ignored entirely the fact that if the Catholic hospital ethics committee DOES sanction that 'uterine evacuation', the local Bishop will declare they've excommunicated themselves and get them fired from their jobs.
Dear Crowepps. Read the actual report in its entirety. Then let us see who is lying.
You know what make this so unbearable? The fact that you do not read any of the links you provide, yet you have the audacity to call someone ignorant because they do read. Anyway, you linked to an article by the ACLU. The quotes you referenced were taken from the article found here in its entirety:
http://escholarship.org/uc/item/8dm907hm#page-1
Luckily, Julie Watkins already provided an excerpt from that report, which states that Catholic doctrine officially deems abortion permissible to preserve the life of the woman but that Catholic-owned hospital ethics committees differ in their interpretation of how much health risk constitutes a threat to the life of the woman and therefore how much risk must be present before they approve the intervention.
Read the section entitled overview of Catholic policy, as it is stated there. As it stands, the only person you have made look stupid is yourself, as it clearly states that Catholic doctrine explicitly permits what you view as an abortion in that case. Are you going to say that the article you linked to was wrong? Because that is the only thing you can assert. I wonder what your response to this is going to be.
"What you perceive as abortion"
"what you view as an abortion".
Abortion is a medical procedure and it's well defined. I don't have a different 'perception' of it than anyone else who knows their medical terms nor is my 'view' any different.
What exactly is your own unique view of what 'abortion' means that motivates you to use these weasel words when you mention the word?
The Catholic Church perceives an abortion as anything that directly targets the unborn child. They view that as a moral wrong, but do not have a problem operating on a woman and having the child die as a result of saving her life (direct vs. indirect). This is stated in the report. At any rate, are you going to admit that you did not read the report, and that nothing I wrote out was wrong?
I'm sure it makes the church feel all warm and cozy about how morally superior they are to insist that a woman sacrifice future fertility by having a tube removed or a hysterectomy so they can insist they didn't do a 'real' abortion but instead are covered under the 'oopsie' provision because although the only reason the procedure was done at all was to get rid of that lethal embryo and placenta, they PRETENDED they were there for something else altogether.
To me, that bit of Jesuitical reasoning is downright hypocritical, as is your insistence that you are right because it's written down in the RULE BOOK even though all the different excerpts and links we have put here explain that isn't what happens in REAL LIFE but instead that ethical doctors who care about their patients break the rules or get their patients the heck out of there by calling an ambulance to transfer them or even PUT THESE WOMEN IN CABS AND PAY OUT OF THEIR OWN POCKETS to send them to other hospitals in order to save their lives.
The thing you seem to be unable to understand is that if, as you promote, the Catholic rules apply at ALL the hospitals because all abortion is illegal, there isn't going to be anywhere these women CAN be sent, and the death rate will indeed start to climb.
My interest in this issue is not in 'being right' but saving women's lives.
No, your interest is in being right, for you have done nothing but try, unsuccessfully I might add, to rebuff everything I have written out, going so far as to start arguing against things not typed out. And what makes it even more sad, is that you did not read, and apparently still have not read, the very own study you somehow linked to, which even states that the problem is not the RCC\'s position on abortion, which does not prohibit what you perceive as an abortion if the woman is hemorrhaging, but allows for it. But no. You have ignored this time and time again, no matter how many times I point this out, instead choosing to claim you are right and how I am ignorant and whatever else you can think up, even when you are not right and truly are ignorant of the things you are typing out. So please, crowepps, spare me, for you have proven that you not only adamantly refuse to read anything that disagrees with you, but you blatantly lie and refuse to admit you are wrong even when someone calls you on it.
The Catholic Church perceives an abortion as anything that directly targets the unborn child.
First, the Catholic church does not define medical terminology. The Church makes a meaningless distinction between 'direct' and 'indirect' abortion. It does not allow 'direct' abortions if the 'woman' is a 9 year old pregnant with twins, it does not allow direct abortions if the woman AND the fetus will die in the next 15 minutes. It will allow the (unnecessary) removal of a woman's fallopian tube as a form of 'indirect' abortion in the event of an ectopic pregnancy.
Now you seem to be arguing that because The Church does allow some forms of 'indirect' abortion that any criticism of policies that actually DO kill women are unfair. Do I have that right? And, if so, how stupid do you think we are? Because as hospital policy that does not even BEGIN to be acceptable.
They view that as a moral wrong, but do not have a problem operating on a woman and having the child die as a result of saving her life (direct vs. indirect).
Clearly, clearly 'they' do. That's why we've posted the links. The 'direct' and 'indirect' business is fancy, meaningless tap dancing. And, by the way, it's ALSO illegal if they receive medicaid or medicare funding which they all do.
I view killing women by withholding medical treatment as a moral wrong. Fr Ehrich clearly does not. Please stop insisting that it does not happen, that it's not the policy of Catholic hospitals or that it's justifiable.
At any rate, are you going to admit that you did not read the report, and that nothing I wrote out was wrong?
grow up.
Catholic doctrine officially deems abortion permissible to preserve the life of the woman
Well, gee, why don't we go right to the source:
What are the Catholic Principles of Morality in regard to abortion?
a) FIRST PRINCIPLE: "Any direct attempt on an innocent life as a means to an end - even to the end of saving another life - is unlawful. Innocent human life, in whatsoever condition it is found, is withdrawn, from the very first moment of its existence, from any direct deliberate attack. This is a fundamental right of the human person, which is of universal value in the Christian conception of life; hence as valid for the life still hidden within the womb of the mother, as for the life already born and developing independently of her; as much opposed to direct abortion as to the direct killing of the child before, during or after its birth. Whatever foundation there may be for the distinction between these various phases of the development of life born or still unborn, in profane and ecclesiastical law and in certain civil and penal consequences, all these cases involve a grave and unlawful attack upon the inviolability of human life." Pius XII, Allocution to Large Families, November 26, 1951. (2)
b) SECOND PRINCIPLE: "Every human being, even a child in the mother's womb has a right to life directly from God and not from the parents or from any society or authority. Hence there is no man, no human authority, no science, no medical, eugenic, social, economic or moral 'indication' that can offer or produce a valid juridical title to a direct deliberate disposal of an innocent human life; that is to say, a disposal that aims at its destruction whether as an end or as a means to another end, which is, perhaps, in no way unlawful in itself." Pius XII, Allocution to Large Families, November 26, 1951. (3)
http://www.catholicapologetics.info/morality/abortion/abortion.htm
Instead of grasping at straws, trying to make someone out to be wrong when they are not, and trying to make a point when you have none, click on the link I provided and read the report, especially since you and colleen want to reference it without reading it.
what you perceive as an abortion
Abortion is a well defined and well understood medical term.
Abortion: In medicine, an abortion is the premature exit of the products of conception (the fetus, fetal membranes, and placenta) from the uterus. It is the loss of a pregnancy and does not refer to why that pregnancy was lost.
A spontaneous abortion is the same as a miscarriage. The miscarriage of 3 or more consecutive pregnancies is termed habitual abortion.
Types of abortion are:
Surgical and chemical are the two basic types of induced abortion procedures. Stage of gestation is the factor to decide the surgical procedure. Hysterotomy, Intact Dilation and Extraction, Dilation and Evacuation, Dilation and Curettage, Electric Vacuum Aspiration and Manual Vacuum Aspiration are the basic procedures for surgical abortion. Due to the administration of abortifacient drugs Chemical abortions are done by early induction of labor.Read more: http://www.articlesbase.com/pregnancy-articles/2-types-of-abortions-learn-the-differences-between-the-two--753522.html#ixzz0uSORZTe0
Under Creative Commons License: Attribution
I've had both a D&C Abortion after a 'missed abortion' (miscarriage) and an Electric Vacuum Aspiration Abortion after a 'spontaneous abortion' began (hemorrhage) myself which is why I'm still alive and walking around.
If they hated women as you assert, the maternal mortality rate should be much, much, much higher then it currently is.
They're working on it.
Citing data from the United Nations, Angsioco said 10 women in the Philippines have been dying daily because of pregnancy complications arising from lack of maternal and natal care before, during, and after pregnancy.
“We are closing our eyes, the Church is closing its eyes to the fact that women are massacred,” she said.
Nicaraguan Abortion Ban Increasing Maternal Deaths,
According to official figures, 33 girls and women have died in pregnancy this year as compared to 20 in the same period last year. Amnesty International believes these figures are only a minimum as the government itself has acknowledged that the number of maternal deaths is under-recorded.
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/159264.php
Approximately 600 women die from pregnancy related causes in the United States now -- if the church manages to get what it wants into the law, no birth control/no abortion when fetal heartbeat is present, that can be expected to increase substantially.
Please show me what pro-lifer hates women. Please show me what pro-lifer believes that women are worth less then any other human being.
Someone doesn't need to say verbatim they "hate women" to be a misogynist.
You may want to check out an article posted on this site, "Anti-Choice Woman-hating Goes Mainstream."
http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/blog/2010/05/24/womanhating-goes-mainstream-among-antichoicers
Sharron Angle - Opposes abortion even in the case of rape and incest. The lemon into lemonade is a very anti-woman statement.
Flip Benham, (who I have personally come in contact with as he waved his bible at me and told me I'm going to hell.) A quote from the article Anti-Choice Woman-hating Goes Mainstream, "Flip Benham screeching at women entering a N. Carolina clinic that “Satan will drink the blood of your child!”) But in other, more mainstream quarters of the movement, the heated, and hateful rhetoric of the period immediately after Roe—where women seeking abortion were routinely called “sluts” and “baby killers”
Randall Terry -Founder of anti-abortion group Operation Rescue who led protests against George Tiller's clinic in Wichita, Kansas.
Michael Bray (Army of God), Bray has been called the Chaplain of the Army of God. He was the host of the annual White Rose Banquets. Bray is the author of a book called A Time to Kill, which attempts to give a biblical justification for the use of force against abortion providers. Bray frequently and publicly applauds the use of violence to stop abortion and has been jailed for bombing abortion clinics.
Neal Horsley (Army of God), Horsley was featured in the HBO movie "Soldiers in the Army of God," and hosts the Nuremberg Files website, where he posts the names and personal information of abortion providers. The website has been called a "hit list." Another Horsley website posts photographs and video of patients, staff and physicians entering and exiting clinics.
Folks at the Genocide Awareness Project (GAP) (Who I have also come into contact with. One "pro-life" young man told me never to reproduce. Which I thought has really funny because they are against abortion and some forms of contraception) GAP is very offensive to women!
Please show me what pro-lifer believes that a woman should be left to die without any medical care.
Example, Rev. John Ehrich
"She consented in the murder of an unborn child," says the Rev. John Ehrich, the medical ethics director for the Diocese of Phoenix. "There are some situations where the mother may in fact die along with her child. But — and this is the Catholic perspective — you can't do evil to bring about good. The end does not justify the means."
And if you don't like my "slogans" don't read it, grow up, or deal with it.
Before I begin, let me ask you a question. Who gets to decide what is anti-women? You? Well who made you grand arbiter of women everywhere? Do you speak for women everywhere? Do you speak for women who self-identify as pro-life? No, you do not. Anyway, you have still yet to produce a single quote showing where a pro-lifer states their hatred for women or how they believe women are worth less then any other human being. Not a single quote, and you will not produce a single quote because they do not exist. And because no such quote exists, you can only misconstrue what people do write out to them being anti-women, which is what you were burdened with showing in the first place. You are simply assuming what you want to be true to be true, and then constructing an argument to prove what you already deemed as true to be true. If I were to do the same thing in regards to pro-choice quotes, I am sure I would be swamped by numerous people telling me how I am taking said quotes out of context, but yet this is the exact same thing you do in regards to pro-life quotes. And I do not have a problem with slogans anyone wants to use. I was just pointing out to you that it does not mean anything, nor does it really sway anyone.
I am beginning to think arex was right.
Oh, I get it. You're on this week's shift from the MENZ, who are all huffy because they're no longer in charge, and want to return to having women pregnant and barefoot and forced to tolerate having a substandard male around instead of being able to insist on a partnership between grownups.
Since these threads devolve into insults and nastiness when the 'wimmin' refuse to be patronized, I think I'll just go do something else.
Arex said that I am going to find that a lot of the people on this site say things that they hope are true in order to try and make a point, and I said that I was beginning to think he was right. I have no idea what you are going on about. You should not read things that are not written down.
Those running the Vision Forum (wiki) would seem to be an excellent example of a group of people who like to say they're 'pro-life', but are, quite clearly, driven by religious fanaticism and misogyny. They are Quiverfuls - i.e. they believe in 'biblical patriarchy', wifely submission and so on and so forth.
Here is a blog article discussing the Vision Forum's position on ectopic pregnancy and terminating such pregnancies. Scary, delusional, dishonest shit. The same author then does some number-crunching on her own blog to illustrate the dangerous insanity of the Vision Forum's claims vis a vis ectopic pregnancy. So yeah, quite a bit of this 'we love teh babyeez!' stuff is based on the belief that women have some marginal worth in their capacity to act as incubators, but that's about the extent of it.
The author of the posts I've linked is anti-abortion, btw. I don't agree with her on that, but she's reasonable and sane in this particular case.
As much as I think your question is highly disingenuous I will answer it with a few examples:
Pro-Life Wisconsin only endorses candidates who pledge to work to outlaw abortion in all circumstances—even if a pregnant woman’s life is in danger, or if a woman became pregnant due to rape or incest—and all forms of contraception.
The Catholic Church, USCCB, and Arex himself have argued that it is "God's Will" if women die in pregnancy from a condition that could have been resolved or alleviated by an abortion, even when the fetus itself is either already dead, will die before term, or will die at birth. These pages are full of such discussions.
Sharon Angle recently said precisely these things, and I didn't hear one single peep of protest from anti-choicers.
Dr. Tiller was murdered by fanatics who believed they had the right to kill a doctor who himself was providing medical care for women who otherwise might have died, or whose fetuses had complications incompatible with life.
The entire personhood movement would deny women access to life-saving care.
And the recent push by the far right, aided by the Obama Administration, to deny women in high risk pools coverage for abortion care is yet another example. Are you protesting this?
i think not.
let's be plain and honest here, ok?
Jodi
Really? How many laws have they tried to bring to the table, and how many of them have been defeated by the SCOTUS? Hmmm...? Just as many as there are that have been passed I would imagine. So, ProChoicers have to do very little work to achieve the same results while PLers have to do a LOT of work to achieve them. Why is that do you think? Probably because, like anti-gay marriage right activists, the ProChoice movement doesn't HAVE to do as much work as the opposing side. Derrrrr....
You asSUME ProLifers do everything that you say they do. If the mobilization of your 'forces' rests on that general consensus then you could say that. But, you do not KNOW every ProLifer or even the majority of them, I would hazard to guess, because it would be HIGHly unlikely that you did, so I think you would actually have to provide some cites, then. Just like it would be HIGHly unlikely that I knew the majority of ProChoicers, so I couldn't just say it and have it believed. I would have to provide cites. And I think I do have cites that say that ProChoicers are more often the advocates for pregnancy services, contraception services, other reproductive services under public health care, comprehensive sex ed than the majority of PLers ARE advocates for them, etc, etc....
Sarah Palin is a woman, and, yes, she's a misogynist. Just because one is a woman does not mean they cannot be a misogynist, after all. And, yes, since the majority of the ProLife movement is anti-choice (singular), their goal, in general, is to work towards the removal of a right from women, alone, that ALL humans have, which IS misogynistic, esPECially if and when you want to identify yourself AS a ProLifer.
If you believe that a fetus is of equal value to a woman, that is an insult to the woman. You've just denied that a woman has hopes, dreams, wishes, desires, wants and beliefs and physical, moral, emotional, social, mental and intellectual agency because a fetus LACKS all of those, after all, y'know. And you've denied that, even ontologically, everyone is different, which means, in this case, you've reduced a woman to the fetal stage, once again, making her nothing more than an/a incubator/biological life support.
And actually, with abortion legal, EVeryone has the same right to life. As it stands, now, NO one has the right to co-opt another's organs against one's exPLIcit, onGOing and informed consent, not EVEN to save their own life. Thus, PLers want to grant feoti extra rights, NOT equal rights.
THIS is why I said the ProChoice teens, mentioned here, did not act like 'lemmings', regurgitating everything they are told. They must have understood, or at least attempted to understand, what the issues were actually about. Otherwise, they wouldn't have been at the rally in support of the ProChoice movement and, even if they had been there just because they thought of it like one big party, then it simply would have had nothing to do with the abortion issue, in the *first* place. When ProLife teens 'mobilize', I have yet to see them present anything other than the same, debunked theories that you, yourself, just presented, over and over, again.
1.) You assume wrong. As it stands, there is only one requirement that has reached SCOTUS, iirc, that they threw out initially that has not been reversed, and that is spousal notification/consent laws. On a side note, I am glad to know that you likened the pro-choice movement to the anti-gay marriage movement.
2.) I believe I spoke in general.
3.) All humans have the right to an abortion?
4.) Since you want to bring up moral distinctions, consider the following statement. Since you are, I am guessing, a female, and I am a male, then affording me more rights because we are anatomically different is acceptable. Agree or disagree? That is a bit of a rhetorical question, because you will disagree. So why, then, is a moral distinction you make based on stage of development more acceptable then a moral distinction based on gender? They are both just as arbitrary as the other.
5.) With abortion legal, everyone does not have the same right to life, as the unborn do not have that right unless someone else wants them to have that right. Nowhere else, and for no one else, is this true. You do not have the right to live solely because I think you do. Your right to live is not contingent on what I think in any way, shape or form.
6.) So let me make sure I understand you correctly. Pro-choice teenagers are freethinkers because they were at a rally for abortion, and if they were merely lemmings then the rally would have had nothing to do with the abortion issue in the first place? Then, in the same vein, it stands to reason that pro-choice teenagers are freethinkers because they were at a rally for life, and if they were merely lemmings then the rally would have had nothing to do with the life issue in the first place. No offense, but given what you wrote out above and what I responded to, I do not think you are doing much debunking when it comes to theories.
1. Not according to what other news outlets and this site itself have stated. Btw, I think you need to go back and re-read what I said. I said that they were similar because they were both fighting for something that was already the status quo. Sorry, that's the ONLY way the ProChoice movement an Anti-Gay Rights Movement are in ANY way similar. Otherwise, the similarities all fall between the latter and the ProLife movement.
2. I do believe I was, too.
3. All humans have the right to determine WHO uses their organs and when and how they are used, via ongoing, explicit and informed consent, even WHEN another's life is involved, AS I've stated several times. Or did you not know that the uterus was an organ? That's the only thing that would make sense, unfortunately....
4. Um, moral distinctions. Let's see, a man and woman have the same ability to express moral, physical, emotional, mental, intellectual and social agency and the same ability to express hopes, dreams, desires, wants, needs, wishes and beliefs. So, please tell me what moral distinctions you are referring to, because I don't believe you are talking about anything that I am referring to.
5. Actually, not even anyone BORN has the right to co-opt another person's body, without that person's ongoing, explicit and informed consent, not EVen to save their life. And THAT is the right you would grant to fetuses. If you still believe that everyone born has that right, though, I'll come take your kidney, k'? You don't need two kidneys and I know someone who needs at least one working kidney. And it's far less damaging physically and life-wise, when performed by a medical professional, than pregnancy ever is. But no medical professional will do that. Have you figured out why, finally? Because NO one has the right to life that you would grant to feoti.
6. And ProLifers are the ones who repeat oft-stated statements then have nothing to rebut with, when ProChoicers counter their arguments. VERY much similar to what happened between you and I. They repeat these arguments to themselves, as you, yourself, have done, then offer nothing to counter our own counterarguments, a lack you, yourself, have also demonstrated. If ProChoicers weren't freethinkers, they would have simply regurgitated an already debunked theory, as you, yourself, once again, have done. THAT is what I was referring to. Btw, I want to clear something up, I was not saying that it had nothing to do with the abortion issue, if they weren't freethinkers. I do believe I mentioned something about merely being there to rabble-rouseat these rallies, which has EVerything to do with the abortion issue, but for the other *side*...? Thanks.
1.) Number one, the last case to reach SCOTUS was Gonzales v. Carhart, and that occurred three years ago. Number two, both the pro-life movement and gay rights movement are socially progressive. It is actually quite interesting, and well worth a read (though I doubt you will bother).
2.) You were not.
3.) No one has the right to purposely kill another because they want to, regardless of the circumstances. At least, it is this way everywhere except abortion. Even though I am skipping ahead of myself a little, I have no idea why you use the kidney line, which I have seen you use on more then one occasion. It is a non-sequitur, for by the time a woman goes to have an abortion, the woman is also providing the use of her organ to someone else. Outside of abortion, can you think of any circumstance is which you can take something you have given to someone else, in this case an organ, and have them die as a result? I would be shocked if you could.
4.) If you are going to mention ontology, then this is the kind of debate you will get. Arguing that it is permissible to treat one group differently than another group based on some arbitrary criteria is to make a moral distinction based on the criteria you set up. Anyway, to restate, men are men and women are women. Differentiating the two based on gender is no worse then differentiating two humans based on stage of development, the latter of which you have no problems doing. It is nothing short of amazing, therefore, how you somehow fail to recognize that the ability to express moral, physical, emotional, mental, intellectual and social agency and the same ability to express hopes, dreams, desires, wants, needs, wishes and beliefs have nothing to do with prescribing men certain rights that women do not have. In fact, those are merely distinctions you have made in order to differentiate the born, and only those born who have aged significantly as newborns fail to meet most of that criteria, and the unborn. But they do not apply in the case of men versus women.
5.) No one who is born is connected to someone else via an umbilical cord. Age typically denotes dependency, and the more dependent one is on someone else, the more privileges they are afforded. For example, I as a 25 year-old, cannot make my mother feed me, clothe me or provide me shelter. A 3 year-old, however, can. Such a situation involves giving someone the right that I do not have, yet I do not see you complain about that. In the same vein, someone who is connected to their mother via the umbilical cord is more dependent then someone who is not connected to his or her mother via an umbilical cord. If a 3-year old is able to demand things that I, as a 25-year old, cannot because it is more dependent on his or her mother for sustenance then I am, then in the same vein the unborn should be able to demand things that no born person can demand on account of the unborn being more dependent on his or her mother for sustenance than a born person is.
6.) You have not and still have yet to rebut anything I have typed out and I doubt you will bother to respond to most of what I type out. It is hard to be king of the proverbial mountain when you are standing on a hill.
Outside of abortion, can you think of any circumstance is which you can take something you have given to someone else, in this case an organ, and have them die as a result? I would be shocked if you could.
Oh, I didn't know that a pregnant woman's organs belonged to the fetus! Well, that explains a few things.
You have not and still have yet to rebut anything I have typed out and I doubt you will bother to respond to most of what I type out.
Naturally, since most of it is pointless yammering. Would you say s/he gets at least a C for effort, or do you just not have any idea what s/he's talking about?
Well, it is nice to know that not only are you, A, incapable of reading but, B, incapable of ever making a post of substance. But I knew this months ago when you refused to answer even the simplest of questions asked. Which reminds me, when are you going to get around to explaining to me what a human looks like and how different one has to look from the stated norm to no longer be a human?
But I knew this months ago when you refused to answer even the simplest of questions asked.
Months ago? Why, it feels like only yesterday...
Which reminds me, when are you going to get around to explaining to me what a human looks like and how different one has to look from the stated norm to no longer be a human?
If you can't tell what a human being looks like, and how we tell them apart from things that are not human beings, then you don't need a pro-choicer to explain this to you---you need an engineer to program your circuitry.
For my part, however, I'm pretty sure that this is not a human being:
I am not talking about yesterday. I am talking about months ago, as I said. Anyway, yes, I want to know what a human being looks like and how much you have to deviate from the norm to still be considered a human being. Are you still a human being if you are missing a finger? How about a hand? An arm? Both arms? Both arms and legs? What if they are horribly disfigured or suffer from Wiedemann\'s syndrome?
1. Where, in there, did I ask about cases that reached the Scotus? I was talking about the fact that there are cases that have been brought to the table that people have said the SCOTUS would overturn, if they ever DID become law. And there are SEVeral of those on RHRealityCheck. Thanks.
2. Uh, yes, I was and I think I would know better than you what I was thinking. Or is this just more ProLife misogyny, telling the 'little woman' that he knows better than her what she's thinking? After all, you CAN asSUME that the general ProLife population does what you think it does and not be correct. Which is exACTly what I was saying.... *Faceplant*....
3. I can't believe it. You actually did it (and no, this is NOT a good thing). You played the organ = the fetus card, when I CLEARly outlined that an organ reCIPient and fetus are being compared. Now, please, tell me how an organ reCIPient does NOT get the right to life that you would grant to fetuses. I would be shocked if you could. No ProLifer has ever done it without coming off sounding even more misogynistic, after all. And, look, what's this I see, below (in number 5.)...? Exactly what I stated.
4. If you can't see that there is a difference ontologically between a fetus and a woman while not between a man and a woman, then you really have sunk too far into your misogyny. If there WEREN'T a difference, babies wouldn't have medical decisions made by their primary caregivers, parents wouldn't make rules for their children, laws wouldn't be made centred on one's age (such as legal drinking age, age of consent...), etc.... WHY do you think there is no such difference made between men and women. Perhaps, because, they CAN make decisions the same way? And WHY do you think THAT is? Perhaps because their BRAINS have developed to that point...? NOThing to do with 'moral distinctions'. Sorry.
5. And here comes the misogyny. What's that so many ProLifers like to say? You can't 'punish' (in quotations because, in order to punish someone, there has to be behaviour that can be modified, and a fetus lacks that contingency and no one can be punished with death, for that same reason) a fetus for lack of intent. Why do you all salivate at punishing (and, yes, you are punishing because anything that modifies behaviour negatively IS punishment, whether that is your intent or NOT) a woman, by removing her rights and restricting her sexual freedoms, for the way her uterus develops a zygote/embryo/fetus, she lacks intent in that case, too, after all? Why are you equating two different rights with each other? Please do show me where someone who is dependent upon a kidney to live is afforded the same privileges as a fetus who is dependent upon a uterus to live? Please do show me where a baby who is dependent upon a kidney to live is afforded MORE privileges than an adult who is in the same position?
6. See above. I HAVE rebutted EVerything you've said, you just refuse to acknowledge it. Another example of ProLife 'lemmings'.
1.) You asked, and I quote verbatim, \"how many laws have they tried to bring to the table, and how many of them have been defeated by the SCOTUS?\", to which I pointed out that there is only one requirement that I am aware of that SCOTUS has thrown out that has not since been revisited and instituted, that being spousal notification/consent laws.
2.) I said that pro-lifers do everything pro-choicers do, you tried to tell me that I do not know every pro-lifer, to which I told you that I was speaking in general, to which you replied that so were you. That does not make any sense, as you were not speaking in general. You were speaking about and towards me specifically. There is no need to backtrack now.
3.) I do believe you should try re-reading what it is I typed out. Show me where I said anything about an organ equaling the unborn. That would not make much sense, and would be self-defeating. What I said is that you cannot take something from someone, to their detriment, after you have already given it for them to use. To use your kidney example, if you donate your kidney to me, you cannot turn around at a later date and demand that I stop using it, but this is what you demand in the case of abortion. Henceforth my question which you did not bother to answer. Therefore, I will ask it again. Outside of abortion, can you think of any circumstance is which you can take something you have given to someone else, in this case an organ, and have them die as a result?
4.) The difference between a fetus and someone who is born is location/stage of development. The difference between a man and a woman is a Y chromosome. Your problem is that, on one hand, you argue that because X and Y are not exactly the same, that X and Y should be treated differently, yet on the other hand you argue that even though X and Y are different, they should not be treated any different from one another. That is simply picking and choosing when and where to apply an argument. Anyway, history must not be your strong point, because differences have been made between men and women on the basis of gender. That is the point. Differentiating on gender is fundamentally no different then differentiating on stage of development or even race. These are arbitrary distinctions and things that the person in question cannot help.
5.) Please spare me. No one is stopping the woman in question from using contraceptives nor is anyone stopping her from having sex if she so chooses. She is free to do those things to her content. She is being disallowed from killing another. By the time she is pregnant, she has already reproduced. Anyway, as it stands, you completely ignored everything I wrote out and went off on some weird tangent. You did not even attempt to address a lick of it. Not in the slightest. So let me try this again. The reason your kidney example is non-applicable, and a non-sequitur, is because someone with a failing kidney is not dependent on your kidney for survival. The unborn, however, are dependent on your uterus for survival until they reach viability. Generally speaking, the more dependent one is, the greater protections it is given. This is why an underage child can demand from its parents what an adult child cannot-- because the level of dependency is higher. In the same vein, an unborn child should be able to demand what a born child cannot because its level of dependency is higher than is a born child. Now, please, do not ignore it this time, as I do hate having to repeat myself.
6.) Ignoring large portions of that which people type out and posting the same thing over and over again does not constitute a rebuttal in the slightest. At this point, I do not think even you know what you are typing out.
1. Yep, so thanks for proving my point! I still don't see the word 'reach'. I DO see the word 'try', though, which DOES imply that they weren't actually defeated by SCOTUS. Because they could only be ACTually defeated by it IF they were passed.
2. Errr, what...? I think you are seriously confused. YOU made the assumption that ProLifers generally do everything you say they do. Now YOU are the one that is backtracking. NOW you say that you did NOT make that assumption, after all.... I simply pointed out WHY you can't know that, not EVen on a general basis. Oy....
3. Yeah, because once it is IN their body, it is THEIR organ. I think you should have admitted to my first erroneous assumption. Because I couldn't believe that you were making another even more *foolish* ProLife assumption (which is why I attempted to defend my position against the other one I thought you would have been more likely to make). Which, maybe, is WHY we say a woman can control WHO uses her uterus and when and how it is used, because it is inSIDE her body...? If it always resided, and the procedure always took place, outside of her body, she would have NO say over it, in THAT regard, after all. So simple, really.
4. Do you even know what ontology means? Here I was working on the assumption that you did.... (Note to self: Learn not to assume....) Do you know what difference an XY chromosome makes compared to an XX chromosome? Reproductive sexual function. That's it. And you just equated that with our 'being', or, in other words, ontology. Which means that the only reason the genders are equal in terms of this 'being' is because we ignore that. Here I thought you at least knew that ProChoicers, and the law, had always argued that we are more than our bodies, than our sex. Way to admit ProLife misogyny once again, though... I guess...? Men can rape at will and women can only be mothers and submissive in sex, after all, by that logic. And we have to ignore the presence of that organ that's contained within our skulls, too.
Do you know what difference location makes? Well, when it comes to fetal development, it makes a LOT of difference. Because that is where the *brain* develops. You know, that organ that I was referring to just previous and the one that plays a big part in maturation and physical development.
5. Yep, completely miss MY point and accuse ME of it. It can only be amusing, now, so please do continue. I do believe I said onGOING, informed and explicit. Or are you now going to say that ongoing can only mean what YOU say it means? If I consent to donate blood, get on the table and one second after they start withdrawing my blood, I revoke that consent, that is perfectly legal, they have to stop drawing my blood and I will not be punished for it, even though someone else needs it to save their life. If I get into a car, then get into an accident, for which I am at fault, I do NOT consent to no medical treatment (restoration of one to their former health), simply because it was a *risk* of the first action.
MANY organ recipients DO die because they do not get the organs they need to survive. And the ONLY difference between an organ donor and a woman, in this case, is the WAY the uterus functions (case in point: the attachment of the umbilical cord, which has to attach to the uterus in order for the latter to develop the zygote/embryo/fetus), forcing the woman into the position of opting out if she wants to deny consent to the sharing of that organ. Are women at fault for that? If not, you will grant her the right that everyone else has. If you deny it simply on that basis, which is sexist, then you have also proclaimed it IS her fault. That, simply by virtue of the fact that you are placing restrictions on her, when restrictions are placed on criminal activity ( or something one is at fault for) or criminals (or someone who is at fault for something) themselves. How does the mere presence of a uterus become a criminal activity (or even come close to being something she is at fault for), or make a woman a criminal (or even come close to making her at fault for something)?
If you want to define abortion as 'killing', then you must also define non-consent to organ donation as 'killing'. They are both the same action, after all. One simply requires one to opt-out while the other merely requires the status quo (and how the requirement of opting out, too, deems that a penalty/restriction must be applied, I'll never know). And, indirectly or directly, they both still result in the same thing, the end of life.
Did you seriously NOT know, either, that MOST women who have had abortions either used a form of contraception, had children already or were already married?
Forcing women to have fetuses use their organs against their ongoing, explicit and informed consent penalizes them for something beyond their control, makes sure they know that they are the only ones who can't have sex without fear of reprisal, an action that affects women's behaviour negatively, and tells them that the function of their uteruses are more important than they, themselves, and anything and anyone else (otherwise such a penalty WOULDn't be applied to them alone).
Besides, I think you are the one who wants to grant fetuses more rights based simply on location, referring to what I said above about development.
6. Again, falsely accusing me of ignoring large portions of what people type out, when you are the one who actually did that? I don't believe you read the part, after all, where I compared ontologically similar stages of development to other ontologically similar stages of development and pointed out how your beliefs about privilege did not apply across the board with the same fundamental right? It always fails with the comparison of different levels of fundamental rights because, then, there would always be circumstances where one right has more contingencies than the other, or vice versa. Sorry.
Why do you think I keep posting the same thing over and over, if not for the fact that YOU keep using the same 'rebuttal' in another way AND the fact that you keep missing my point, hmmm...? So, once again you ARE rebutted, but just rebutting that you are fearful to admit to....
1.) Now you really are backtracking, and you know it. So you are telling me that you just threw the defeated by SCOTUS part in there for no reason? Personally, I do not think so.
2.) You really do need to read things more carefully. I said, and I quote myself verbatim, everything pro-choicers do pro-lifers do. Now, if you are trying to tell me that pro-lifers do not blog nor work behind the proverbial scenes nor teach nor educate nor send out emails nor do anything else that pro-choicers tend to do, then you are living in a world of your own design, for you can rather easily look on the internet and notice that there are hundreds of pro-life sites dedicated to doing all of the aforementioned.
3.) So the answer to my question is that you cannot think of a situation outside of abortion where you can take something you have given to someone, in this case an organ, to their detriment? I already knew this, but I was waiting for you to admit as much. The reason you cannot do so is because of the effect it would have on the one you are taking your organ from. Whether or not that organ is in your body or outside of your body is inconsequential and not terribly relevant to abortion being legal. If, for example, the uterus was located outside of the body, you would not argue that abortion is thereby impermissible because you are not dealing with an organ that is inside of the body of the woman. You would argue that abortion should be permissible, because the woman can do with her body as she pleases. But then that begs the question as to just how much can a woman do to her body when allowing her to do so impedes on the life of someone else?
4.) Before you get into a debate regarding philosophy with someone, proceeding to try to patronize them, you might want to make sure that they did not double major in philosophy. And before you try to get into a debate regarding biology with someone, also proceeding to try to patronize them on that point, you might want to make sure that the other part of their double major was not in biology. As it stands, you have absolutely no idea what the heck you are talking about. First and foremost, to relegate the differences between men and women to reproductive function is, well, ignorant to the nth degree. Flat ignorance. Second of all, the brain forms at about five or six weeks and is not fully developed until the the early to mid-twenties, but I am sure you knew that. Third of all, I am convinced that not only do you not know what is meant by ontology, but that you do not know what the heck you wrote out, because I sure as heck do not. The saying if you cannot dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with BS comes to mind. Similar to how you decided to subdivide humans based on stage of development, I decided to subdivide humans based on gender. You then cried foul and said something about the genders being equal in terms of being because society ignores that and went on some tangent about the law and rape. Honestly. You are just all over the place, and it is hard to figure out what you are trying to say, if you are trying to say anything at all.
5.) I did not miss your point, not that you had one, anyway. I ignored it, for not only did it have absolutely nothing to do with my response, but it completely fell back on the non-sequitur which I have pointed out is a non-sequitur two or three times now. I am not going to waste my time responding to something that in no way, shape or form addressed anything I wrote out. You might as well told us about your favorite book. It would have saved you an hour of typing, and been just about as relevant. Honestly. I am talking about dependency, and here you are talking about explicit consent and organ waiting lists. I mean, really Are? Really?
6.) I am going to let you in on a little secret. When it comes to debate, you address the points people bring up. You do not go off on some unrelated tangent, and when people ignore your tangent, accuse them of not playing fair.
Whether or not that organ is in your body or outside of your body is inconsequential and not terribly relevant to abortion being legal.
Well, there's at least one advantage to watching anti-choicers lay out their Alice-in-Wonderland-like logic for why abortion should be illegal---you get hilarious little tidbits like this!
Now you really are backtracking, and you know it. So you are telling me that you just threw the defeated by SCOTUS part in there for no reason? Personally, I do not think so.>>
1. I stand by my PREvious statement where I SAID that defeated by Scotus does NOT mean that it was defeated in the present. Thanks.
<<You really do need to read things more carefully. I said, and I quote myself verbatim, everything pro-choicers do pro-lifers do. Now, if you are trying to tell me that pro-lifers do not blog nor work behind the proverbial scenes nor teach nor educate nor send out emails nor do anything else that pro-choicers tend to do, then you are living in a world of your own design, for you can rather easily look on the internet and notice that there are hundreds of pro-life sites dedicated to doing all of the aforementioned.>>
2. There is no difference. You can only ASSume that everything ProChoicers do ProLifers do, EVen in general. Your comprehension is really starting to deteriorate, Born.
3. And sharing one's uterus (as in... pregnancy...?) is NOT harmful...? Wow. You really did demonstrate your lack of knowledge of biology, didn't you? It is MORE harmful than sharing another organ. Sorry. And I would say the fact that the whole process occurs inSIDE a woman's body, DEFinitely contributes to what makes it more harmful. And that once any one of the organs have been removed, one has no say over what they can do with them. Whether they are outside or inside, makes no difference. Removal of the organ FROM the body, which means detachment..? Thanks. AS I have said OVER and OVER. So, once again, why do you ProLifers base rights simply on location?
4. If your understanding of philosophy is so great, then why have you misinterpreted what I was saying or not provided evidence as to why what I believed you were saying, WASn't what you were saying, then? (Oh, wait, maybe you think your understanding of philosophy is as good as your understanding of biology...? I don't know....) I was saying that YOU are the one who, by virtue of making a distinction between the XX and XY chromosomes, WOULD have to say that sexually reproductive functions are what distinguishes the state of being of men and women.
Yes, I knew when the brain started development and how long it takes for it to completely develop. What does that have to do with consciousness (what I was talking about) and brain development starting during pregnancy (what I was ALso talking about)?
I really don't think you know what ontology means, thus I think you are falsely accusing me of something you are doing, once again. The study of 'being' comes to mind. And, AS I said, stripping values and morals from the equation, thus, leaving us with THIS. Consciousness, awareness and length of life. NOT what you claim it leaves us with, basing men and women's state of being on their sexual reproductive function, then going on to deny you ever said that (which you probably will, again, even though I have pointed out HOW you were doing so.... Typical).
5. So pointing out how dependancy doesn't apply elsewhere, isn't applicable to pointing out how dependancy doesn't apply here. Wow, that's a new one.... Or... is it...? Hmmm.... No. No. It isn't. ProLifers use that line quite often, unfortunately.
6. So, now, that you've let yourself in on the secret, when are you going to start addressing my points, rather than going off an a tangent and/or avoiding them altogether...?
"3. Yeah, because once it is IN their body, it is THEIR organ. I think you should have admitted to my first erroneous assumption. Because I couldn't believe that you were making another even more *foolish* ProLife assumption (which is why I attempted to defend my position against the other one I thought you would have been more likely to make). Which, maybe, is WHY we say a woman can control WHO uses her uterus and when and how it is used, because it is inSIDE her body...? If it always resided, and the procedure always took place, outside of her body, she would have NO say over it, in THAT regard, after all. So simple, really."
If I'm a trained doctor who owns an abortion clinic- perhaps the only one in the country-, am I entitled to disregard, ignore, and refuse services to women who need them simply because I own it, after all is it not MY clinic? Or what if you are terminally ill and I happen to own the only drug that could save your life, but it is my drug and I would prefer that it would be better keep on my shelf that used to save your life. I'm sure many people would say that I have acted wrongly in such a case.
You have a habit of equating a fetus(an organism) with a organ such as a kidney(not an organism, this should be obvious). You also seem to be under the illusion that an abortion does not involve killing. The standard methods for preforming an abortion obviously involve killing the fetus: the fetus dies by being mangled or poisoned in the process of being removed from the uterus.
Before you criticize me for being a prolife/antichoice sexist pig who doesn't have a womb, it should be noted that I'm a supporter of abortion and I think the question of abortion or even for that matter killing in marginal cases such as embryos and fetus do not involve a question of complete bodily autonomy. If the abortion is permissible because of bodily autonomy than so should prenatal harm - you should have no problem with a pregnant women binge drinking, this is clearly wrong I'm sure that even opponents of abortion know and concede that (intentional)prenatal harm is far worse and more seriously wrong than an abortion.
Cassius, I am 100% ProChoice. I believe whatever a woman does with her (heck, what anyone does with their) own body is absolutely acceptable. If she drinks, I am not going to say anything to her, except to let her know that I will always be there to support her and that whenever she wants help I can direct her to or help her find it, as I would do in the case that she needs assistance with the decision to continue or terminate a pregnancy. So, yes, I DO believe it is 100% about bodily autonomy. As you would have seen in the Junk Science AND A Pregnant Woman is not a Meth LAB threads.
And, yes, I would have thought you were ProLife/Antichoice, but NOT because you are saying that abortion methods kill a fetus (since I agree with you. Thanks) but because you have, unfortunately, done what so *many* anti-choicers have done before you. Misinterpreted the analogy that I have already explained... several times, actually. I am equating an organ recipient with a fetus.
Plus, I don't believe abortion kills, NOT because I don't believe a fetus is human life but because abortion terminates the implantation of the fetal pla*cen*ta into the uterus. Do doctors say that a patient was killed because they were taken off of life support? No. They say they were killed due to brain failure, in one manner or another. The latter of which being what is equivalent to asking: Do the methods that faCILitate abortion kill a fetus? Yes.
A clinic is a LOT different from one's body, so, has nothing to do with one's bodily autonomy and by working in a clinic (by *virtue* of doing so) you are agreeing to work under guidelines and rules set forth by an overarching body of legal/medical professionals. Something else you should have seen me state in those other threads....
Besides, from reading your posts I figured you were ProChoice. Although, like I said earlier, the misinterpretation of my analogy might have made me second guess myself.
Just saying, this was my experience.
I went to school with lots of "pro-lifers" and these were the same kids that bought their mom a "thanks for life" corsage and then had sex after school before their parents got home, (or in a car, party, etc.) The same kids that got pregnant, then believed that abortion was ok.
Exactly, rebellious.
Until they're in the situation, it's fine to flap their lips as much as they want. Then, oh, oops. Well I guess in MY situation, it's different....
I don't need to spend any significant amount of time with young "pro-lifers" but when I see them standing in front of the local Planned Parenthood, which is on my bike commute to work, or at other sites with their placards, and if I haven't already done so before, I do stop and ask them a few simple questions about the issue of abortion, reproduction and birth control, and the invariable reaction so far has been utter ignorance.
I, actually, do know many anti-choicers. I was raised one. My family is anti-choice. I went to camps startlingly similar to those shown in the movie "Jesus Camp". It was drilled into me from a small age that abortion was bad. I went to protests to protest something I didn't understand. All I knew was that it was "killing a real baby" and I was, because I was adopted, a poster child for the "alternatives". Well, now I've grown up a bit, become a feminist, left home and gotten married to an awesome feminist man, and have now become pro-choice. I found out adoption hurts women quite a bit, and that abortion wasn't what I was told it was. (I remember it being explained to me as a child as something akin to "pulling the baby out and killing it". So I was very surprised to find out that first trimester abortions were so simple (and most abortions, by the way, ARE first trimester). I felt lied to and confused by what I'd been taught to believe, including abstinence-only education which caused immense shame at masturbating (I thought for sure I was the only dirty girl in the world who did "that") and a complete lack of knowledge on birth control (thank you, Planned Parenthood, for the actual facts when I needed them later).
So yes, I do know many "Pro-lifers". They don't know how to answer my questions, nor do they seem to know the facts. They don't want to do anything to actually prevent abortion (comprehensive education, free contraceptives, EC, etc) or do too much to help out after the babies exist (I went to a CPC to get help for my sister when she had her baby and they said basically just handed me a few free clothes and a list of government assistant websites, I asked for more and they said she'd have to take classes and stuff to recieve free stuff and when I responded she had no way to get to them they said, oh well sorry, but you have to exchange the classes for free stuff). The same lovely sister has abandoned her baby because she doesn't feel like taking care of it now that the "fun" of having a baby is over and she realized it's hard work. But, she always reminds me, "at least I didn't murder my baby!".
So sorry if my view of pro-lifer's isn't that lovely. And I was one, was raised with them, and my entire family still are. I think someday they'll see the truth though, that abortion is not evil, and that it's sometimes a hard decision, sometimes an easy one, sometimes there is regret, most of the time there's not, but that it still should be a woman's choice. And, for the record, I love my family. I hate what my sister's done to my family, making my much older parents re-raise a baby and causing enough stress to kill them, but I still love them. I don't agree with their views at all, but we agree to disagree. HOWEVER, I have done a lot of talking with my parents, and they now see that as "pro-lifers" they don't need to work to make it illegal just because it is wrong to them, and they need to support women in need and support healthcare for all if they truly want to help the situation. I think that's progress!
I'm glad to see so many young people taking up the fight for reproductive rights, educating themselves and making a difference. Keep up the great work!
...that 'guided' is the key word, here, right?
I was slightly confused when I saw the number of more negative comments on this post. In the past I've really only experienced RH Reality Check members as supportive and enthusiastic. A short time ago I was made aware Jill Stanek (an anti-choice blogger) wrote about this post. Check out the whole story at http://www.jillstanek.com/industry-watch/dumbest-people-on-the-planet-p.html and feel free to comment.
-Max Kamin-Cross
Having some haters is just a sign of being super awesome. At any rate, Jill Stanek would hate on herself if she could just figure out a way to profit from it.
Try to not take all of the negativity personal, Max. For those of us who have been doing this for years, the negative and at times hateful responses are just a cost of helping fight for women's reproductive rights. And in my personal experience, the benefits far outweigh the costs. So keep fighting the good fight!
I don't mind the negativity at all, just thought I'd throw the story out there incase anyone was wondering why there were so many anti-choicers commenting.
Don't worry though, I'm not going to let her stop me :)
Jill Stanek can make more money encouraging intolerance and hate than she can nursing. Don't take it personally, but rather, take it as a compliment that your blog post was effective enough to set her off.
If that is the case, then considering the number of blogs regarding pro-lifers on this site, you guys and gals around here must be absolutely livid.
Hey Max,
I wouldn't worry about the negativity and hate from the 'pro-life' crowd. That's what they do when they feel threatened.
Hey Max...
Jill Stanek has a tenuous relationship with truth. And she thinks men who beat women for having an abortion are uber HOT!
Consider the source...and laugh!
You got their attention. You're articulate and smart and they're scared. You have lots of support from the pro-choice community here. Blow-off Jill's bad energy, keep your sense of humor, and stay strong. You have our support.
How sad and low for her.
I want to congratulate you, Max, as well as your peers for taking the initiative to get involved on a political issue. Young people are the present and future of every social movement in this country, and it's important to get active and stay active. I hear and recognize your dedication and efforts and I'm looking forward to continuing to witness what you can accomplish.
Congrats, and all the best!
Max,
You can take the easy way out and let yourself ignore my point (http://ht.ly/2g0EX) by believing the cheap shots abortion proponents here take at me.
Or you can hear what I said. I notice none of them are arguing about the merits of my post.
RH Reality Check is funded by Ted Turner, Max. Jodi, Amie, Brady, and the rest of the staff make their living by promoting abortion. They expend all their energy trying to ensure nothing gets in abortion's way. If they don't promote the pro-abortion agenda well enough, they'll be fired. And so they go all out.
16 years ago the people at RH Reality Check would have been arguing for YOUR death had your mother appeared here in a crisis pregnancy. They would have been disparaging pregnancy care centers that were offering her free medical help, clothes, diapers, and anything she might have needed to bring you into the world. (Watch, they will again.)
Planned Parenthood of America? The last 2 years it has grossed over $1 BILLION in earnings. It is the United States' largest abortion provider. I'm betting most of the adults at the Organizing and Policy Summit were paid staff. They're using you, Max. They could not possibly care about you any further than what you can do for them now. These people would have been more than fine with your death 16 years ago. They would have even made money from it.
Thanks.
Jodi, Amie, Brady, and the rest of the staff make their living by promoting abortion.
Just as you make a living opposing abortion. Your fees for speaking engagements are impressive.
For 16 years YOU have argued for abandoning my mother or me or my daughters or my nieces in cases of pregnancy complications and made money from promoting the 'morality' of allowing women to die from medical neglect.
Compromise in this issue can only be reached by eschewing emotional rhetoric and providing accurate facts on which people can base their opinions. RHrc does a good job of providing scientifically proven facts. You and your organization do not but instead promote myths like "abortion is never medically necessary".
Enjoy your money and your sense of self-importance and your self-righteousness, Ms. Stanek. They were paid for by the pain and sorrow and ill health and deaths among the pregnant women you don't care about.
If you had checked your article in the past several days you would have seen that I am not ignoring your points, in fact I am discussing them with your readers. Jodi and the rest of the fantastic staff at RHRC have a passion for this issue. They are devoted to making sure women’s reproductive rights are not infringed on. Though I cannot speak for them, I’m sure that they don’t make nearly the amount of money that (I’ve heard) you make.
If my mother was not in the situation to raise me I would have rather been aborted then her being forced against her will to give birth.
As for Planned Parenthood’s financial situation: They are a not for profit company that continues to provide medical services to many Americans that would otherwise be left without proper medical care throughout their pregnancy, or even lives.
-Max Kamin-Cross
Let me ask you a hypothetical question, Max. What if, tomorrow, your mother told you that she wanted to abort you, and that the only reason she did not do so was because someone else prevented her from aborting you. What then? Would you lament the fact that you exist? Would you hate the person who prevented your mother from aborting you? If you can honestly answer yes to those questions, then go ahead and be pro-choice. I have a sneaky suspicion, though, that you would not lament the fact that you are alive. You would not curse your existence, nor would you fall into a deep depression. No, you would be grateful that someone else fought for your right to be here today, even if you do not publicly admit as much.
This is why the logic of pro-choicers makes no sense. I have yet to see a single pro-choicer state that they would have wanted to be aborted. Whenever you ask them that question, they usually give a response amounting to the fact that they would not care if they were aborted. But that, in itself, is a cop out, for the same way that someone who is aborted does not care that they are aborted, someone who is murdered does not care they are murdered, as dead people do not have feelings one way or another.
As Max's Mom did have the choice, and chose to give birth, your hypothetical is what makes no sense.
Max is merely defending his Mom's choice.
Do you not know the meaning of the word hypothetical? What his mom did do has no bearing on my question. I want to know if he would lament the fact that he exists if his mom let it be known that she wanted to abort him but was disallowed from doing so, or if he would hate the person who disallowed him mother from aborting him. Actually, that question is of any pro-choicer. I really want to see who is going to come out and actually state that they would be sad that their mothers were forced to give birth to them and that they are alive today. It is a legitimate question, and speaking around it will do you no good.
You see, if it is about defending choice, then it stands to reason that, upon finding out that you exist because someone else was denied a choice, you should lament your existence. Otherwise, you come off as hypocritical.
And he had already answered that question, Born.
If my mom hadn't had an abortion, my brother wouldn't be here. ProLifers would have to lament the fact that he's here, if they were his sibling, if they don't want to be hypocritical, then? Do you see how that works, now?
Besides, to answer your question, yes, I would lament that fact, that my mother was forced to have me.
Pro-lifers are not the one who are advocating for the choice of an abortion. Pro-choicers are. Denying the woman the ability to have an abortion for any reason she wants, or in its totality, is one of the central themes of the pro-life movement, ergo I do not know any pro-lifer who would lament the fact that someone exists because a woman was denied a choice to have an abortion. There is no hypocrisy. The only hypocrisy there could be would be on the side of the pro-choicers, if one were to be happy that they exist today because their mother was denied the ability to engage in something they believe should be a choice.
And you are very sly. I did not ask whether or not you would lament the fact that she was forced to have you, I asked whether not you would you lament the fact that you exist today because of her being forced to have you, or if you would hate the person who is responsible for you being here today.
Let's see, so we have the choice of being a deeply neurotic narcissist in the midst of an adolescent existential crisis or having an immature neurotic accuse all of us of being hypocritical. The horror!And you are very sly. I did not ask whether or not you would lament the fact that she was forced to have you, I asked whether not you would you lament the fact that you exist today because of her being forced to have you, or if you would hate the person who is responsible for you being here today.
I would have figured that you could have done better. It is amazing how quick some of the your responses degenerate into petty insults. In any case, care to entertain the question?
You are aware, of course, that your posts here are layered with insults and attempts to dominate the conversation by with poorly formed and shallow arguments sprinkled with wildly off the mark attempts to denigrate the women you're speaking to? We all understand that your church and upbringing have taught you that denigrating and demeaning women is your right and responsibility but this isn't something that will serve you well in your life as an adult.
If you don't believe me I am more than happy to review the comments section of this thread and select the gratuitous and mean spirited insults you have authored for your review.
In any case, care to entertain the question?
You can't be serious.
Number one, find me where I have insulted anyone. I can, however, find where you have insulted others time and time again. Number two, find a better argument then one which boils down to me hating women. I do not always post, but I have seen you, and others around here, make the same accusation of others no matter the circumstance, no matter the gender of the person posting and no matter what the person in question has posted, and you do it fairly often. And, yes, I am 100% serious.
I never said ProLifers were advocating for abortion. I think you are very confused. I do believe I was likening a ProLifer lamenting the fact that they were(n't) forced to be born (because ProLifers DO advocate for that, OBviously) to a ProChoicer lamenting the fact that their mothers didn't have a choice. Thanks.
I never said ProLifers were advocating for abortion. I think you are very confused.
Although given that they are against contraception and sex ed, and thus doing everything they can to increase the (unsafe) abortion rate, they may as well come out with an openly pro-abortion message...
And, Born, if anything, I would HAVE to lament the fact that she was FORCED to have me, if I wanted to lament her lack of choice. Lamenting the fact that I exist beCAUSE of that lack of choice, would mean I would have to lament the birth of all children of ProLife parents. I don't and as a ProChoice person I don't have to, to not be a hypocrite.
So if a person doesn't hate themselves or lament their existence they're hypocrites? Seriously... what is it with the pro-life crowd needing people to be unhappy and self-loathing?!
So if (hypothetically) my mother was coerced into having me or denied an abortion and I found out about it later... I honestly don't think I'd "lament my life." See, some people look at situations like that and blame or torture themselves when in all reality it's not their fault in the first place. It would have been other people who coerced or denied that choice to my mother... not me. I think if anything, knowing that I was here despite my mother's initial wishes... I'd really consider it a sign to make as much out of my life as possible and start fighting to make sure that no other women were coerced or denied that choice in the future. Trying to make the best of out of a situation isn't really all that hypocritical.
Kind of like the complete opposite of how some "abortion survivors" devote all their lives and energies to hating their mothers and denying other women the choice of abortion.
Number one, no one said anything about hating themselves. If you are not going to respond to the things I do type out, then do not respond at all. Number two, lamenting ones existence does not mean hating ones life anymore then the ability to inflict harm on someone is the same as inflicting pain on them. Lamenting ones existence simply means that you regret the fact that you are alive. Of course, no one alive right now regrets the fact that they are alive, or else they would not be as they would have killed themselves. And that is where the hypocrisy comes in.
If being here despite the fact that your mother did not want you to be here is such a bad thing, then why are you still here? The answer to that question is because you want to be here, and that is irrespective of whether or not your mother was denied the ability to abortion. Indeed, if you found out right now that your mother wanted to abort you, but was not allowed, you would not suddenly regret being alive today, and I can say that with a large amount of certainty. Very few people would. You would be just as happy to be alive today as you were yesterday. To then turn around and argue that the action by which you are only here and presently enjoy the life you are admittedly glad you have to live should be illegal, even though you admittedly are glad someone stopped you from being killed (which if they had not you would not be here to advocate for that which would have resulted in you not existing) is nonsensical and downright hypocritical. It would be one instance to assert that you are not happy that you exist because your mother was denied a choice and advocate for that choice to be a choice (but that would beg the question as to why you are still here if you are unhappy that you exist). It is another entirely to argue that you are happy you exist even though your mother was denied a choice, which invariably led to you existing today, that you somehow believe should be a choice. Of course, the former would not happen as, unless someone is seriously depressed, there is not a single person here today who would assert that they are not glad that they were not aborted, as they would not be here if that was the case (they would have killed themselves). That has nothing to do with you making the best out of a situation. That would you simply trying to rationalize away the fact that you advocate for an action that you would not want to have happened to you, and that you would not hold it against anyone if it was learned that they prevented you from being kill en utero.
Oh, and explain to me why your life matters? I thought it was all about the woman? And on a side note, do you know anyone who has survived an attempted abortion that has grown up as a pro-choice advocate? That is a serious question.
Oh dear... where to start...
Number one, no one said anything about hating themselves.
Lament... regret... bemoan... deplore... loathe... hate... people express "grief" in a variety of ways. Have you decided to narrow your hypothetical to where the only acceptable emotional response is now your understanding or specific definition of lament?
If you are not going to respond to the things I do type out, then do not respond at all.
You mean, if I'm not going to respond in the specific way you want me to respond? Ahhhhh... I see. While I could spend considerably more time dissecting the authoritarian, misogynistic nature of your statement (command?)... I'm instead going to continue to go ahead and respond to the posts I want in the way I want and if you don't like it, you can CHOOSE to ignore them like a big boy... or you can go uck-fay yourself... either way I'm cool. By the way... that was Pig Latin in case you missed it ;) Now where was I? Ah yes...
Number two, lamenting ones existence does not mean hating ones life anymore then the ability to inflict harm on someone is the same as inflicting pain on them. Lamenting ones existence simply means that you regret the fact that you are alive.
I honestly think you're glossing over a pretty big point and at least to me, it's significant. I (hypothetically or otherwise) refuse to lament my life because of what somebody else did or didn't do to somebody else. My life now, as a living, breathing, sentient being is beholden only to myself and those to whom I choose to make commitments. Only sad, miserable people live their lives (or hate their lives... or lament their lives) based on what somebody else did or didn't do 15, 30, or even 60 years earlier... to somebody else. Seriously. I say that both personally and professionally. It's not healthy to define one's life based on the past actions or inactions of others. By the way, there are at least a handful of religious and spiritual ideologies that really push living in the moment... not the past. They also emphasize living your own life... not interpreting your life through other people's. Not trying to rock your world here, just letting you know that some of us... perhaps quite a few of us... just aren't going to respond with what you want to hear... not because we're obstinate or spiteful toward you... just because we don't view the world through that lens and expecting us to lament (however you choose to define it) our existence really isn't within the realm of how we view the world. That's apparently how you view the world. Sorry. <-- really
You also seem to be able to suspend reality and logic while glossing over a significant aspect of this equation... hypothetical or not... if a person were aborted, they would have never had conscious thought or existence. They wouldn't know. ZBEFs don't know what their existence would have been like and 'already been born' people honestly can't grasp what it truly means to have never existed. They can't. Because every interpretation they try to make involves THINKING... something an aborted ZBEF didn't get around to doing. Some people have done their best to approximate... but that really is an exercise in mental masturbation.
But seeing as I love me some public mental masturbation... please let me be the first to tell you... it would be perfectly fine with me (in hypothetical, happy pony rainbow land, where reality and logic are suspended) if my mother had aborted me. Perfectly fine and dandy. BECAUSE I WOULDN'T KNOW. I WOULD HAVE NO FRAME OF REFERENCE BY WHICH TO EVEN BEGIN TO FORM AN OPINION ON THE SUBJECT. I JUST PLAIN WOULDN'T EXIST. I won't "lament" all of the great things I (could/would/should) have done... because NON-EXISTENT PEOPLE CAN'T LAMENT. <-- and I've already covered why I (would) refuse to lament if I exist(ed).
Of course, no one alive right now regrets the fact that they are alive, or else they would not be as they would have killed themselves.
Did that really just type that train wreck? Do you not proof your statements before posting? Because of course NOBODY in the history of the world or existence today has EVER tried to kill themselves... and failed. And NOBODY has EVER sat around miserable unable to bring themselves to that final act... until they do. Ummm...yah. Not buying it. Plenty of people loathe their existences but don't kill themselves. Be it that they fear the afterlife... didn't have access to an effective means... are so physically depressed or disabled they are unable to physically do it... fear messing up the suicide attempt only to end up a drooling, half-faced, vegetable... fear leaving a mess for their loved ones... whatever! Please promise me you will NEVER go into a profession where you're responsible for ANY type of counseling. Please don't volunteer for crisis lines either. Hell, don't write your own get well soon cards for that matter. Actually, just refrain from interacting with people... at least for awhile. Because that was some ignorant shit. Seriously.
I think you almost start to get it here:
Of course, the former would not happen as, unless someone is seriously depressed, there is not a single person here today who would assert that they are not glad that they were not aborted, as they would not be here if that was the case (they would have killed themselves).
OMG WAKE UP!!!! Take a trip down off of privilege mountain for a couple of days. Stop sucking down the kool-aid. Seriously! There are a WHOLE LOT of depressed people in this world... and "depression" isn't the only reason a person might have preferred to be aborted. Although I find it rather interesting that you're very quick to designate any potential exceptions to your stated position as mentally ill outliers... rather than the norm. There is a considerable body of research that points to a more common scenario where women with unwanted pregnancies who were denied wanted abortions go on to "lament," resent, loathe, hate, and abuse those children once they're born. In all of your "hypotheticals", you seem to ignore this component of the human equation... you're soooooo fixated on what the potential (or potentially nonexistent) ZBEF might feel ONCE THEY ARE BORN that you completely ignore and gloss over a very important question... one rather critical to this ENTIRE EQUATION... how would the woman react to being forced to continue the pregnancy and deliver a child AGAINST HER WILL AND WISHES????
(Now I know we're stepping back into the scary world of considering what the woman thinks and wants... but just for shits and giggles let's try.)
Are you honestly just so naive as to believe that she'd just become a super, awesome mother just the moment that child was born? That whatever life circumstance was contributing to her desire or need for an abortion would just magically get better or go away the moment the child was born? That she'd just automatically love that child... a child of rape or incest? A child that she destroyed her health and body delivering? A child that kept her in an abusive relationship? A child with a severe condition that would render her beholden to a lifetime of custodial care? A(nother) child she couldn't afford? A child that would destroy future opportunities she may have had? A child that she did not want? Really?! Really? Are you really that ignorant?
I know it's the PL/AC tendency to forget or ignore those "precious babies" once they're born... because then it's WAY more fun to blame the woman for shitty mothering and being an all around bad human being at that point... but feel free to look back through some of the other blogs here on topics like child abuse and neglect and read up on some of these women and their children. There lots of "fun time" reading if you're so inclined.
You asked a rather interesting question about whether any survivors of attempted abortions grew up to become pro-choice advocates. Short answer, I'm honestly not sure. Long answer, again I think you have ignorantly assumed that the children who survived attempted abortions (READ: the mother straight up didn't want a baby and was actively trying to terminate the pregnancy) somehow lived completely normal lives, were loved by their families, weren't left in abject poverty without hope or future opportunities, and grew up free from mental illness... rather than being so hated and abused by that woman... that in their own hate and loathing and mental disturbance they might do or say ANYTHING they could to get back at her for that hate and abuse... such that they would work to deny ALL women the ability to make those choices based solely on their hate for that woman... and at this point possibly women in general. And people wonder why we talk about misogyny being at the root of the anti-choice agenda :/
Oh, and explain to me why your life matters?
Because I've spent my life working with and for these children... not creating more of them by focusing my life efforts on denying even more women the choice and ability to abort before that child actually exists. And pray tell, share with us all why exactly your life matters?
Typing a lot does not mean you say a lot.
1.) It is not semantics. I noticed how you, for whatever reason or another, ignored the part of my post where I pointed out to you that lamenting ones existence is not the same thing as hating ones life anymore then inflicting harm on someone is the same as inflicting pain on someone. Why? I do not know.
2.) No, what I mean is that you are content to misconstrue what others are actually typing, and proceed to respond to what you want them to be saying, then you might as well not respond, because it is a waste of both of our times.
3.) You would not be lamenting your existence because of what someone did to someone else, but because of what your mother was not allowed to do to you. Those two statements are immensely and vastly different. As a result, the entire hour it took you to try to explain to me the faults of basing ones life based on what someone else did to another has no bearing on what I typed out, since it did not address any point I made. Sorry. Also, just to point something else, you should take heed at the fact that I did not say anything about what the unborn would want. I said that you, right now, would not have wanted to be aborted when you were a ZEF, which is evidenced by the fact that you are alive right now. Instead, and true to form, you did exactly what I said to Max you would do when responding to the following assertion, that being going on about how you would be perfectly fine with having been aborted because you would not be around to know that you were aborted, which is nonsensical because dead people do not care one way or another on account of them being dead. In the same vein, you would have to argue that you would be perfectly fine if I decided to jab a knife through your cranium, for you are dead, and as a result you would have no opinion either way. Of course, in the latter issue, that is not what you would argue. So why would you argue differently in the case of the unborn? To do so would be hypocritical. So thank you for not only proving my point, but thank you for reiterating what I said initially.
4.) Of course people have tried and failed. That fact has nothing to do with my statement, because killing yourself involves trying to kill yourself, and people who do not want to be here will invariably find a way to kill themselves. Or they will change their thought pattern.
5.) Before you tell someone to wake up, you should take your own advice. You, and others minded like yourself, feel obligated to constantly go on about what is best for the mother and what the mother wants, but you seemingly ignore the fact that there are two individuals present. Not one. What is best for one is not necessarily what is best for another. For example, if a woman has a child that she cannot afford to feed, should she be able to leave it in the trash can and run off to Vegas to be a stripper? You would argue not, but why should she not be able to do so? After all, if it is solely about what the woman wants, then why should she not be able to do just that? That child be damned. It is impeding on the what the mother wants. As it stands, you merely pick and choose when and where to apply the argument about the woman allowed to do what is best for her. And what is worse, is that you have no problems arguing that someone should be killed in utero according to the will of their mothers, yet would dare not tell that person you think should have been killed in utero according to the will of their mothers that they should not exist. I know as well as you do that you will not look someone in the face and tell them that they should not exist. You will not look someone whose mother abused them in the face and tell them that they should have been aborted because it would have made the mother happy to do so. You will not look someone in the face and tell them that they should have been aborted so their mother could finish school. You will not look someone in the face and tell them they should have been aborted so that their mother could have lived better then she did, etc. Why not? Because it is a hell of a lot easier to argue that someone should be killed en utero for whatever reason the woman wants then it is to actually to tell that person that they should not be alive today to their face. It is a lot harder to dehumanize someone when you do not have to do it to their face. That is called cowardice to the umpteenth degree. And yet pro-choicers wonder why fewer and fewer people consider themselves pro-choice as the years go by, especially those under thirty.
Anyway, your entire argument is based on assumptions. There are only a few documented cases of people surviving attempted abortions, and barring the ones which died shortly thereafter, in every single one of those instances, those people went on to live, and still do live, productive lives. Of course, you do not care about this. And, to answer your question, people who survive attempted abortions do not grow up to support the action is much the same way that people who are slaves do not grow up to be advocates of slavery, or those who were targeted as a part of genocide do not themselves grow up to advocate genocide against some group. Not because they hate anyone, but because they recognize the effect that action has on someone. It is amazing how you somehow construe that to misogyny. Simply amazing.
6.) And, true to form, I see you missed the point. You, on one hand, say it is about what the mother wants, but then turn around and say that it is about what you want, and that what your mother wanted is irrelevant to that fact. If your mother wanted to abort you, yet she was disallowed, then why is what you want important? Is it not all about what the woman wants? Of course it is not, and it is odd to me how you pick and choose when to make it about the woman and when not to.
