Lately I’ve been spending a bit of time over at Dawn Eden’s in an attempt to… well, I don’t really know what I’m doing over there, to be quite honest. Dawn is a good writer, and so I suppose I like reading her more than various other anti-choice nutjobs who can barely put two words together. And while she’s a little (or a lot) out there, her commenters really go over the edge. I’ve made a genuine effort to explain bits and pieces of the pro-choice position, but they seem to go in one ear and out the other. And this isn’t just, “I don’t agree.” It’s flat-out not getting it.
Luckily, Bluey the Body Rights Thingamabob is here to help! Thanks, Bluey!
Perhaps next, Bluey can take on statements like these (and the irritating insistence of commenters to use the word “dialogue” as a verb):
Why is this still about women dying? Isn’t it agreed that abortion would probably stay legal if the woman is dying? Why won’t any abortion advocates discuss people who simply had irresponsible sex before marriage? Is it not PC to talk about?
Not “PC,” eh? Huh.
When she choose to engage in sex, she choose to take the ‘risk’ that she might get pregnant.
Even at that. She is not less valuable than the fetus. But for sure, her right not to be inconvenienced IS less valuable than the fetus’ right to live.
Totally. And when you walk into your house tomorrow and I’m camped out on your couch because it’s freezing outside, I’m homeless, and I will die if I leave, I’ll make that same argument right back at you.
Contraception destroys the family in more ways than just chemical. Look back to 1955, when it wasn’t as available. Mom couldn’t just run off, and Dad wasn’t out with other women because there was a chance he’d impregnate them. No AIDS. Less welfare cases. The idea that we can have sex without consequences has clearly been shown to be something we can’t handle as a society, and it clearly isn’t healthy.
Contraception caused AIDS and marital affairs!
How many kids were shooting up schools in 1955? How many teen girls got “loved and left,” and ended up pregnant or with a disease? If you are giong to tell me that the rates were the same as today, you are reading the wrong magazines.
And shooting up!
I responded:
The girls who got “loved and left” got shipped off to give birth, were forced to give their child up for adoption, and were married off as quickly as possible because they were damaged goods. Oh, the good old days!
As for welfare and economics, 1 in 4 families lived in poverty through the 1950s. Women’s financial, social and political gains are very closely tied to our access to reproductive healthcare and an increase in our rights. We can see this today when we look at which states have the greatest restrictions on abortion — they tend to have higher povery levels, lower levels of education for women, and fewer family-friendly resources for their residents. Additionally, the 1950s had a teen pregnancy rate that was twice what it is today — the main difference, of course, being that most of those teenage girls were married. So this whole “kids having sex” thing is really nothing new. But now we’re better educated, better paid, and not forced/coerced into marriage at a young age because “that’s just what girls do.”
I think these are all good things, and this idea of the 1950s as a “golden age” of family is completely false. I have a feeling you won’t agree.
Which is willfully misinterpreted as:
Jill’s suggestion that women must kill their unborn children to advance economically is as preposterous as it is morally reprehensible.
I must have missed the part where I wrote, “Kill babies, get rich!”
And on it goes. You get the picture. I’m glad Bluey is around to help. Be sure to check him out if you haven’t already.
Aw, I like Bluey. And I shall be sure to link to him whenever I need to argue with an anti-choice advocate.
The problem is that the Bluey Argument can’t possibly work if you believe that Innocent Life is more valuable than Uninnocent Life.
The funny thing is that a lot of anti-choice nutjobs believe that abortion really is all about the big money practictioners make. (??) I mean, I can’t read much past seeing the term “abortion industry” because my eyes are rolling too forcefully to focus, but this stuff is all over the place. And I’m totally at a loss to argue against it because it’s so stupid. And anyway, if Republicans are so pro-business, why wouldn’t they support such an efficient and profitable industry? A lot more people are harmed by gun manufacturers than fetuses are aborted by abortion practitioners – why do guns get a free pass and not abortion? I’m so confused.
Innocence, Sara, innocence. Guns kill guilty people. That’s the entire point.
Pregnant woman –> Guilty
Fertilized egg –> Innocent
Innocent > Guilty
Therefore, Fertilized egg > Pregnant woman.
Wow, an encomium to the fifties from a conservative. How unusual.
Did you know that in the fifties streets were paved with a combination of gold and morality, and nobody went hungry because mana fell from the sky thrice daily (and five times on sunday). It’s true, I saw it on an episode of leave it to beaver.
1) Fewer. There were fewer welfare cases.
2) There were also fewer internet startup companies. I’ll leave finding the connection between the two as an exercise for the reader.
There was alot more school violence in the fifties. They just tended to use knives instead of guns.
What was that about “flat-out not getting it”?
To actually analogize to pregnancy, I would have had to invite you into my house. It’s not like that fetus is forcing itself up in there, y’know?
Jill,
I’ve been taking part in that discussion at Dawn Eden’s as well. I think you explained your position very well and I believe I understand what you are saying, even if I don’t agree with you. I know you like using the term Anti-Choice, but I consider myself Pro-Life.
Likewise, I think it’s important to note that not all the commenters over there are over the edge, as you put it. I think there was some reasonable discussion going on. I think there are too many people on both sides of the argument who get too wrapped up in their own words and don’t read what the other person is really saying. Unfortunately, some people are just poor at explaining themselves also, and then there can be some misunderstanding. But I agree that some of the commenters were not interested in your point of view; they just wanted to shout you down.
Are you still there, Jill? I’m having trouble seeing you through that Strawfeminist.
She banned me for my ideas. :(
Apparently she doesn’t like the Free Will argument.
Reguardless if it’s a human/ fetus/what ever, it’s inside the woman, and she is an agent of Free Will. or supposedly.
It’s her choice and no one has a right to tell her what to do with her body.
Anyone who says otherwise, would dictate to the world how they should live. (that is Ahem) antithesis to Democracy.
Straw arguments aside, and all arguing over humanity of this that or the other.
IF we are a true democracy, then they can’t say otherwise.
If we aren’t a democracy then they can dictate it. But there are no straw arguments or arguments that can advocate telling her how to live her life, if they want to coincide with democracy.
It’s one or the other. NOT both.
How can you argue that?
The ’50s were a golden age — if you were a straight WASP male. If you weren’t … not so much.
And why wouldn’t you be over at Dawn Eden’s, Jill? Where else can you see the nuttiness that is Biddy (quote, approximate: “You can’t make someone into a sex toy if you’re not having sex with them!!!”)? Where else would I find people to congratulate me for not aborting my cat?
A few other things that I think Dawn chooses to forget or gloss over:
Divorce was down in the 50′s because of social stigma and lack of economic options for women outside of the home, NOT because of widely-available contraception. Furthermore, the number of women dying from illegal abortions was, I think, much higher. You provide the exact figures.
Moving on, AIDS was first documented in West Africa, an area where state-provided birth-control was nonexistent and homosexuality was (and is still) a social taboo. Sex education and contraception didn’t exist in these impoverished countries, so if you insist on placing blame for the AIDS epidemic, place it on lack of health care resources and information.
To me, Dawn’s arguments seem to consist of the following equation:
Populace informed about sex + Health choices pertaining thereto +Access to contraception= AIDS, death, gay rights.
She’s effectively saying that knowledge and informed decision-making are the root of social evils. She assumes that all people (especially women) are incapable of governing their own bodies, without recognizing that most abortions occurr NOT because of inconvenience, but because of economic constraints, both on the individual and the government. If she really cared about women, and still opposed abortion, you know what she could do? Support plans for universal healthcare and access to higher education, so that single mothers could afford to raise a child that was put there as an unintended consequence of her obeying one of her preprogrammed biological directives.
Banning abortion won’t make sex go away. And it won’t improve ANYONE’s quality of life. Only information and fair access to resources will accomplish that. I wouldn’t object to her arguments except for the way she betrays her own religious and cultural bias, while ignoring the plights of our less fortunate who need those resources the most.
Yeah, I mean it’s not like people ever have sex without intending to get pregnant, or ever have sex against their consent.
None of the above requires the donation of body parts.
And . . . wait. Because I’m not responsible for providing body parts to people who need them, nobody has any lesser responsibilities to other people, either? Because I’m not obligated to provide sex to any guy who tries to rape me, nobody has any responsibility to give food to a starving person?
There’s a huge difference between giving something significant to an unwanted invader and giving something less demanding to a lover, family member, or friend, or giving something much less demanding to someone who’s hard up (and is actually capable of experiencing suffering).
And, incidentally, none of the above “responsibilities” that Dawn thinks rest solely on a woman’s obligation to spend nine months creating a baby she doesn’t want, are required by law to the extent that Dawn favors for pregnancy.
Parents are responsible for their children, but they can be given up for adoption, or custody can be given to someone else if they find such a person, and children, barring the interference of anti-abortion, anti-contraception nutjobs, are generally something one deliberately chooses: one has willingly spent nine months building that child, rather than having an abortion, and most were deliberately conceived.
Children may be responsible for their elderly parents, but I am unaware of any elder-support lawsuits ever being successful, and the government, in one of its rare bouts of wisdom, has created the Social Security system, which supports elders to some extent, rather than legally forcing their families to support them.
A husband and wife make promises to care for each other—they essentially sign a legal contract. And there is no government-mandated charity donation, either.
What makes people do things for others comes from what’s in their own heart. A husband promises to take care of his wife because he loves her. A woman gets pregnant and stays pregnant because she wants to have children. A person might donate money to starving children, or donate blood, or grow a baby that they don’t want so that someone can adopt it, but that’s up to them, and it is not murder when someone declines to support an embryo any more than it is murder when someone dies without a blood transfusion, or when someone starves to death while a middle-class couple in the states spends that much money on the deluxe cable package.
More can be given, at the discretion of the giver, but no one’s entitled to more body parts than the ones they themselves possess. No fetus or embryo or zygote is entitled to my uterus, just as no man is entitled to my vagina.
Gabriel, the analogy would be that you accidentally left your window open a crack, and left the house. You leave the house all the time. Sometimes not for any “good” reason. Sometimes just for fun, in fact. Hey, if you choose to keep leaving the house like that, and you mess up and leave a point of entry, you’re just asking for squatters.
And in fact, pregnancy is caused by sperm forcing themselves up in there. The mindless, persistent little bastards follow biological imperatives to swim upstream like salmon, willfully overcoming obstacles to the best of their ability and working hard to defeat the contraception we create. For folks using a barrier method, an invitation of a penis into a vagina is not an invitation to sperm to enter the womb any more than inviting you in for coffee in my living room entitles you to leave crab lice on my pillow; and I’ll do whatever I can to keep your crab lice of my pillow.
Ha.
Logger: Guilty. Tree: Innocent. Tree > Logger.
Me: Guilty. Chocolate Marshmellow Egg: Innocent.
Ooooh, my welding gloves are innocent—does that mean that I should do my welding bare-handed to spare them?
(And what, guns never kill innocent people?)
You know, cancel the logger/tree analogy there—the tree is surviving on its own and not digging its roots into the logger’s flesh, so nevermind that.
Maybe I should eat my food raw because it’s wrong to microwave an innocent plastic dish?
Ledasmom:
*laughs hysterically*
Thanks for the link, Jill! Bluey was majorly flattered by your nice comment.
Any time you need his help, just wish on a blueberry Pop Tart and he’ll appear to help you teach the slow and dogmatic about body rights.
The egg is not permanently innocent. It will necessarily become “guilty” should it be born. Whether you believe in Original Sin (urp) or just that it doesn’t take any of us very long to do something selfish/mean/sin-like, that egg will lose its innocence. So you can’t use that as a reason to value it over the mother, especially when you’re doing it expressly so the egg can turn into a regular human being, thus immediately negating its perceived “innocent” value.
^Marc– wow. Way to take the moral philosophy tack on fetus rights. Good job, man. I’d have honestly never thought of that :)
And deliberately causing an innocent being to become non-innocent, as deliberately bringing an innocent embryo to term would thus be, has to be some kind of sin.
:::decides against coffee at Thomas’ place:::
Kyra, horribly O/T, but do you TiG? I ask, not because I’m a welder, but because I’m a fan of Build or Bust, and the two women who have tried to build a bike have been pathetic. A woman who can use a lathe and mill and can TiG weld, and has enough basic mechanics to get through final assembly, might have a shot.
Heck, on the couch camping – you can even invite that homeless person over for dinner and feed them – still doesn’t give them the right to camp out in your living room indefinitely. Or your dining room for that matter. Having the right to invite people in is pretty meaningless unless you also have some right to evict them.
Chet, you’ve made a case (if you buy into all that fetus=human stuff) that abortion should be available for those who have been raped or who had sex without intending to get pregnant. But from the personal responsibility viewpoint (which is what Jill was talking about at Dawn Eden’s place), those are the only situations where abortion would be acceptable.
In all other situations, the woman is viewed as having consented to pregnancy. (Keep in mind that, for these folks, the destruction of a fetus is the same as the killing of a human being; they’ll do it, but only reluctantly.) Where a woman consented, they’re not too keen on trading off that life, though, a different balancing comes into play when the life or health of the mother becomes threatened.
Also, many of the folks who think the personal responsibility argument has merit also think that people who have sex while using a contraceptive that carries the risk of pregnancy (like, well, almost all of them) are accepting responsibility for that risk. To extend the analogy even further (maybe we should drop the analogy) it would be as if I had put a 12-foot wall around my house and said to the weird guy (who once inside my house cannot leave for 9 months because he’ll die), “Try and make it over the wall.”
Which is what Thomas was talking about:
Thomas,
1. You’re a damn good writer. And gross, too. Thank you for that.
2. If you know that I have crab lice and you invite me into your house, do you not bear some responsibility if they take up residence? No one can claim that having sex (male-female) will not result in some sperm somewhere; sperm happens, ya? (The obvious exception is sterile men or men who have hade vasectomies; though, they obviously don’t come with the risk of pregnancy.)
Thomas—
Not at present, as I don’t have access to the equipment (actually, currently I don’t have access to much of anythign). Mostly oxyacetalyne, currently, as well as some arc (stick) welding and MiG. I just make the occasional metal sculpture with a rented machine, as a hobby, though I’d love to find a job involving it. I’d want to be actually happy with more of what I manage to make before I try something like a motorcycle, though that is an eventual goal of mine.
I think I’ve seen a small part of one of those episodes of Build or Bust, and agree with your assessment from what I saw.
Dear Dawn:
Your village called, they want their idiot back.
Sweetie, I know you’re trying to be a good Catholic girl but you need a little more experience. If I might be so bold, I suggest you STFU for at least 10 years or so, dear.
While you’re shuttingthefuckup you might check into the statistics of how many U.S. Catholics use birth control and no I don’t mean ‘rhythm.’ Honeypie, I’m old enough to remember the days when sex=fear. Loaded fallopian tubes were generally not considered akin to the rapture by either him or her.
So, dahhhling, if you really want good ole fashioned sex get your guy (if you can find one) to go murder a mammoth, come home, hit you with his club (I’d suggest real hard) and drag you off to his cave. I don’t know how the sex will be but maybe it will jar something or knock some sense into you.
Of course feminists are against this sort of violence, even to you, but since you aren’t one of those nasty creatures you’ll probably dig it.
Dawn’s biggest problem is convert’s zeal.
In my opinion, using an effective contraception method means you’ve made a reasonable attempt to keep pregnancy away. Not your fault if you were unsuccessful. Taking the Pill, for example, is telling your body not to ovulate—it’s not your fault if it refuses to listen once. And using condoms is blocking the sperm—not your fault if it breaks.
It’s like putting a seatbelt on when you drive—it won’t prevent accidents, but it’ll keep those accidents from harming you too much, and no one has any business denying you legitimate medical care based on the fact that you chose to drive, and if you really didn’t want to get in an accident then you shouldn’t have driven.
To require such a huge price as abstaining from sex to go from a 97-99% success rate to a 99.99% or so success rate is ridiculous. It’s rather like a protection racket in that you have to pay and pay and pay—all the damn time—to maintain the status quo.
Nice uterus you got there.
Shame if anything happened to it.
Oh, woot! Look back at 1955, which was perfect because families were formed and kept together by oppressing and limiting women!
If that’s what she means by “contraception destroys the family,” then thank God it’s being destroyed. Yay, contraception.
Hmmm. I’m seeing analogies between the 50′s family and the fetuses we’re arguing about today. Both gain life from women forced to support them against their will.
True, AIDS wasn’t around in the 1950s. Herpes, gonorrhea and syphillis, however, were, which strongly suggests that quite a few people were having pre and extra and all kinds of different sex.
I have a five-word response to anything Dawn has to say about sex, pregnancy, or abortion: “Spoken like a true virgin.”
I’m assuming she is one, since she’s not married, right?
Keeping that in mind, the “sex is better when you might get pregnant” statements make a little more sense.
I lose all respect for people who wax nostalgic about the ’50s. Anyone who would prefer to return to a time where it was legal to treat people like animals because of the color of their skin needs to be put up against a wall and shot.
The ’50s were a time of great superficiality, bigotry, narrow-mindedness and stupidity, and they gave rise to a consumerist, materialistic mentality that has probably done more to destroy society than readily available, affordable, effective contraception possibly could have.
The interesting thing is that the previous generation – the “greatest” generation – would have been appalled by the inane, mindless, keeping-up-with-the-Joneses, Stepford wife crap of the ’50s. My grandmother and great aunts all raised families, had careers, and also were pretty damned interesting, independent, educated women (some self-educated, some university-educated) who could have a conversation about something other than kitchen appliances and casseroles.
Also – this innocence thing – what is up with that? It’s like driving a brand new car off the lot – while it’s parked at the dealer and before you plunk down your money, it’s value is at it’s highest. Ten minutes later, you drive the damn thing off the lot and all of a sudden it’s value plummets drastically.
All that “innocent life” v. the rest of us is a load of horse manure. Besides, a lot of these people are the same people who would happily give a lethal injection to a mentally retarded person who couldn’t possibly have been responsible for the crime he or she committed.
Dawn…a virgin…?
Oh, honey…hardly…
Future loss of innocence isn’t really relevant to their argument (and this is what I believe they are actually arguing). Everyone is evaluated in sin at their specific point of existence.
Yes, but by their same belief system, if that fetus hasn’t been baptized, it has no value anyway – it’s not “saved”.
Bluey’s argument was made more formally in this seminal article by Judith Jarvis Thompson that I’d imagine all the lawyers/law students commenting here have read.
Should be Thomson, not Thompson.
So, because it’s innocent, it’s entitled to have someone help it become sinful?
But Gabriel, I know you might have crab lice. Is it reasonable policy to hold me responsible for your infestation unless I bar you from my home? Or is it reasonable to expect me to take only a limited set of precautionary measures, e.g. you’re welcome to sit at my living room table but you may not lay your head on my bed?
The “personal responsibility” arguments about abortion all start from the premise that requiring abstainence until marriage is a perfectly reasonable restriction. There are at least three good reasons for get off the bus with this argument: (1) as a practical matter, all evidence is that most people will fail this standard, leading to unwanted pregnancies. (2a) it implies a balancing test for exercising bodily integrity, which I reject out of hand the way I reject a viewpoint-specific test for core political speech; and (2b) many of us disagree with the values generally employed in that balance. If the balancing analysis is that abortion is permitted only when one has taken such precautions that the burden of further precautions outweighs the value of the fetus, I disagree with valuing a fetus highly and I disagree as a social consequence with placing significant limitations on sexual conduct.
To return to invitations to my house, then:
(1) we would never dream of imposing a “never leave your home unattended” standard as the necessary conduct to preserve the right to exclude others from one’s home. Most people would fail, and as a result, we would be sentencing much of the nation to having squatters.
(2a) I don’t think that my right to exclude others from my home is dependent on my diligence in defending that right. I don’t accept a “waiver” or “adverse possession” standard to homes or uteruses. If I invite you in, I expect you to leave if I ask you to leave. If I leave a window open, I can still throw you out if you sneak in.
(2b) even if we have a balancing test, I value the right to exclude others from my home very highly, as I do the right to exclude others from my body. We all accept that there are people who die for lack of shelter throughout colder cities in the U.S. every winter, yet almost nobody believes that we ought to be compelled to take the homeless into out private homes — because we place a high value on the right to exclude from our homes.
The “personal responsibility” arguments are very weak unless one agrees with a group of value judgments: that there ought to be strong social controls on sexual conduct such that limiting it to the bounds of marriage is a good thing; that bodily autonomy is the sort of right which ought to be subject to balancing tests based on conduct; and that the fetus is a highly valuable thing. If one already agrees with this, though, the “balancing test” becomes almost indistinguishable from a “just desserts” argument: that controls on sexual conduct are the important thing, and ought to be enforced by naturally occurring consequences such as disease and unwanted pregnancy. That’s why folks like me and Amanda Marcotte keep saying that the folks that make these arguments are all about punishing women for sexual conduct.
If life starts at conception, and part of human nature is that we come with this original sin thingy, then I don’t see why the fetus wouldn’t already be chock full of original sin. Or does the sin show up only on the other side of the birth canal? If life, complete and fully ensouled, begins with conception, then so does original sin. If original sin is not present until birth, then how can a soul be present until then, either?
So the fetus is human and no more innocent than any already-born human, or it’s not human (in the Christian sense, which would mean already endowed with a soul) and therefore no killing (in the sense we use it to refer to killing already-born people) is taking place during abortion.
Which is why this whole “innocent” thing is just a lot of malarky being used by prolifers to play on the emotions and guilt of the mother.
And then they get into all sorts of trouble when they start to guilt the mother with that whole “we don’t really know if they go straight to heaven” nonsense (some of them even still buy into the limbo thing, even though the Vatican told them to cut it out already since that bit of hooey was ditched by the Church ages ago), but then refer to their own miscarried babies as little angels in heaven.
Thomas:
Well said.
Karolena, I think she was a groupie for several years when she wrote music reviews. I got the impression she fucked anything with a dick and a guitar.
NOW she’s sorry, of course.
Thomas,
This is where using an analogy just confuses the issue.
First, a crucial difference between a fetus and a squatter is that the squatters are not dependent on your home for life itself. Nor could you, merely by leaving your front door open, be said to have invited them in.
But rather, the fetus is entirely dependent on the woman. And, no one is saying that the woman “just left the door open.” Sperm does not appear inside the woman as if by magic. Rather, some affirmative acts (excluding rape) must be made by the woman.
Second, the personal responsibility argument does not rely AT ALL on the idea that “abstainence until marriage is a perfectly reasonable restriction.” Here is a rough personal responsibility argument (I’m just making this up of the top of my head):
A woman is a human being.
A fetus is a human being.
Where a human being (A) has caused another HB (B) to rely solely on them for care, the human being (A) has accepted a duty to provide that care.
Therefore, the human being (A) cannot divest themself of that responsibility.
That’s a pretty basic argument. It needs work, but I have class now. NOTICE: no reliance on “abstinence until marriage.”
Also, the argument would be butressed by some premises like:
Human beings are entitled to certain protections, including a right to not be unjustly killed.
[I've got to run, but I'll be back tonight. Good talkin' with you, Thomas.]
Magis,
blockquote>Sweetie, I know you’re trying to be a good Catholic girl but you need a little more experience. If I might be so bold, I suggest you STFU for at least 10 years or so, dear.
So, someone is only allowed to have an opinion if they have so many years “on the job”? I don’t want to speak for Dawn because she is very good at speaking up for herself, but this is a bit arrogant on your part.
While you’re shuttingthefuckup you might check into the statistics of how many U.S. Catholics use birth control and no I don’t mean ‘rhythm.’ Honeypie, I’m old enough to remember the days when sex=fear. Loaded fallopian tubes were generally not considered akin to the rapture by either him or her.
Just because a lot of Catholics are not following what the church teaches does not make them right. One of the core beliefs of the Catholic Church is that the Pope is infallible in matters of morals and faith. I know to non-Catholics, this is (fill in your derogatory adjective here.) Catholics, including me, have a tendency to rationalize behavior. Birth control makes sense, I don’t want to have any kids now, so I’m going to use the pill or condoms or whatever. That may be how I feel, but if I am Catholic, I follow what the church teaches. Your point about sex being feared may have been true a few decades ago, but now it is openly discussed and not feared. The church’s teachings on sex being allowed inside marriage only is not popular, but that’s the way it is.
Very nice imagery. It’s too bad you can’t discuss things without derision and arrogance.
Oh well, I guess I’m through for now. I’ve got to go kill some dinner for my family and then drag my wife back to the house by her hair.
Mark,
Well, now, I can so.
Without the slightest hint of derision let me inform you that the Pope is only infallible when he speaks Ex Cathedra which is very rare. Don’t tell me about Catholic ’cause I are one. Learn about your church.
When I said fear I meant fear of getting knocked up.
But now Mark, sex is only good if the woman might get knocked up? Silly me. I only thought I was having fun.
Actually, many parishes do indeed admonish their newly converted members to sit back and live as a Catholic for some time before they start preaching, especially at the members of the parish who’ve lived as Catholic all their lives and who’ve also lived with many of the negative issues the Church has dealt with over the centuries.
The main reason why I no longer attend a Catholic Church and now attend our lovely Episcopalian Church is because of the nature of recent converts. They have all but destroyed our parish.
Dawn may be technically correct in what she is writing, but she never grew up seeing how the Church’s teachings on sexuality and contracpetion, filtered through the particularly uptight and freakishly weird Irish cultural views on sexuality and women (a cultural viewpoint driven almost exclusively by the Catholic Church, since Catholicism and Irish culture were one and the same for so many centuries) , were responsible for the early deaths of many women, and were also responsible for alcoholism, depression, and a variety of other psychological issues running rampant throughout Ireland and the solidly Irish Catholic communities in the US.
The culmination of the Catholic Church’s teachings in Irish culture was the establishment of the Magdalene laundries. Add to that the seriously sick and abusive treatment many young Irish boys were getting at the hands of the Christian Brothers’ institutions, and you will see why some of us consider Saint Dawn The Born Again Virgin’s preaching extremely hurtful, ignorant, offensive and insulting.
Had Dawn had to watch her mother die because her body had been forced to bear one pregnancy too many, or one miscarriage too many, she might have a slightly different view on things. Or if she’d grown up with a father who believed daughters ought to be silent at the dinner table and only the sons should be allowed to speak. Or if she’d been raised to believe the only purpose she served on this planet was to marry and have children and that to dream of anything else was sinful. And so on and so on and so on.
The problem with Dawn and most of her commentors is that they’re too young to remember when there was no NFP, there was just pregnancy after pregnancy after pregnancy. There was a baby every year and sometimes even two in a single year (as is the case with my brother and I). And then those babies were raised by over-stressed, angry, resentful parents who often took their (understandable) rage out on their kids, or hid it behind alcohol abuse, or sunk into paralyzing depressions. Kids were routinely abused and neglected in these families.
These converts come out of RCIA convinced that they know more, are better educated and are smarter than every single cradle Catholic on the planet. The fact is, many of them are as dumb as posts, have gotten teachings completely wrong, or have brought along a few things from their previous religion and added them to the package.
They also tend to be very legalist in their attitudes. They think because they know all the rules, they are perfect Catholics, but they’ve missed the heart and soul and spirit of the Church – they’ve missed the best of what the Church has to offer and latched on to the easy stuff – memorizing and spouting dogma and doctrine without any real sense of history or understanding of how that same dogma and doctrine has often been the source of great pain and suffering and even evil for the Church, which, btw, is her members, not a handful of dusty old documents, or a building, or a group of dried-up old men who don’t have any first-hand knowledge at all of what they’re asking of people when it comes to marriage and family.
Frankly, I think it would serve Dawn and her readers/commenters well if she’d lay off the chastity kick for a while and would focus more on humility and charity.
Beautifully said, PHLAF.
Our not-so-dear departed Deep Throat was also a late-in-life convert and displayed many of the convert’s preachiness you describe. Which is one thing that made him so frustrating for me to deal with.
Not to mention a lot of the stereotypes that other people in this country have about Irish Catholics.
Gabriel, you’re changing the hypothetical. I started with this:
Affirmative act, accompanied by a screw-up, resulting in an accidental guest. Just like an unwanted pregnancy.
Also, I already talked about squatters who were in fact dependent on the shelter they were in.
But if you’re trying to get away from analogy, try this: under almost every circumstance where one person is dependent on another, that relationship does not actually involve the parasitic use of one’s organs for the benefit of another. That state, which lasts for forty weeks or so, is so uniquely invasive in the human experience that it should only be permitted on consent. (This is, of course, almost a direct restatement of JJT.)
(Also, I reject fetal personhood, and I don’t conflate the mere state of human existence with the rights-carrying being that is a person. I, for example, do not ascribe any right whatsoever to the brain-dead.)
Well, obviously she didn’t, or else she wouldn’t be electing to have an abortion.
I mean we’re not talking about forcing women who want to be pregnant to have abortions; we’re talking about women electing to terminate their pregnancy through abortion. Thus, we know that they have not consented to pregnancy.
Again, the very act of using contraception, and then electing for abortion, proves that the participants are refusing to consent to accept the risk of pregnancy. Your argument (or theirs, or whatever) is false from the premises.
Well, she deleted my question (which boils down to: should parents be legally obliged to donate blood, or bone marrow, or an organ, if their child needs it?), because it was “off topic”, apparently responsibility *before* birth (her post!) is all different from responsibility *after* birth.
My second comment:
I’ve always wondered about this. I see why the forced organ donation scenario doesn’t work properly, but if being a parent (as defined from the moment of fertilisation) gives you this special obligation to give over your organs and stuff to your child (same defintion), why does the obligation end at birth? (Equally, if the woman needs blood tranfusions when pregnant, shouldn’t the man be obliged to provide them if he’s a compatible donor?)
Alas, yet another answer I will never get from pro-lifers.
Shame on you for bringing Dawn Eden back up. I had deleted her out of my “Favorites” and gave her up like the bad habit she was. Now I’m back on her site and my index finger is just itching to bookmark her.
Nooo, I’ve got to to resist the temptation of Satan!
PHLAF and zuzu put it well, she is a misguided convert. I also went through RCIA a few years ago, and was involved with our parish program for a couple of years afterwards. I’ve seen converts come out of the same exact program with totally different takes on what they’ve just experienced. I think alot of it has to do with your past life experiences. I’ve seen people like Dawn who seem like they’ve been on a long hard search to find some institutional control in their lives (she has converted from judiasm, protestantism and now to catholicism?)…they’re looking for an institution to control them and set up rules for them…and they think once they’ve found it, those same rules should apply to everyone else. Unfortunately, what they don’t understand, there is no control, but self-control, and the will is still free. Dawn will come crashing down when she realizes that there really isn’t black & white in the Church, just a lot of grays, and for the most part she’ll still have to make her own decisions and CHOICES, as do others.
To take this out to the absurd conclusion it calls for, and in mind of the house analogy: when I turn on my oven, I know there’s a small chance I could burn the house down. But my primary goal is to have a nice meal. I take precautions not to let the oven burn the house down by cleaning out the oven, not leaving it unattended, etc.
So — by your logic, if my oven sets my house on fire during the preparation of a nice meal, it would be personally irresponsible for me to get out the fire extinguisher or call the fire department because I consented to burn the house down when I turned on the oven?
And if I didn’t want a fire, maybe I should have kept the oven closed and contented myself with cold cereal or takeout.
Zuzu, are you alleging that you eat something other than cold cereal and takeout?
PHLAF, nice comment regarding the way converts and cradle Catholics approach their faith.
Thomas wrote: “That state, which lasts for forty weeks or so, is so uniquely invasive in the human experience that it should only be permitted on consent.”
That is completely compatible with the personal responsibility argument, provided that consent is considered at the time of the sex act. That is part of the difficulty. Does a woman, by engaging in behavior that results in the introduction of sperm to an egg, consent to care for the person that results for 9 months? The personal responsibility folks say “Yes.”
Others have a different approach to consent. For an example of that see Chet’s response immediately below yours, Thomas: “Well, obviously she didn’t [consent], or else she wouldn’t be electing to have an abortion.”
This is demonstrably false, or at a minimum confuses the time when consent occurs. Chet seems to think that a woman can consent or refuse to consent after the act of introducing sperm to an egg. (Again, we’re ignoring the obvious exception of rape, where the woman has no chance to consent at all.) Pro-lifers of the personal responsibility persuasion believe that a voluntary act which results in the creation of a fetus is consent.
There is no “do-over” or revocation of previously granted consent because, post-act, a human life is on the line. This is why the fetus=human being thing is central to this argument; without it, there’s no reason to make subsequent revocation of consent an issue.
zuzu writes: “…when I turn on my oven, I know there’s a small chance I could burn the house down… So — by your logic, if my oven sets my house on fire during the preparation of a nice meal, it would be personally irresponsible for me to get out the fire extinguisher or call the fire department because I consented to burn the house down when I turned on the oven?”
zuzu, I think this is a good analogy, but you’ve missed the point.
Here’s why I think this is a good analogy: if you turn your oven on knowing that there is a chance it will set fire to your apartment and it does set fire to your apartment, who gets blamed for the fire? The answer is: YOU. You caused the fire. But for your actions, the fire would not have happened. You are personally responsible for the fire.
Of course, it would not be personally irresponsible for you to put the fire out–because the fire has no right to existence and it’s destroying all your stuff. That’s where you’ve missed the point. For pro-lifers of the personal responsibility persuasion, the consent is irrevocable. Not because ALL consent is irrevocable (like you tried to claim I’m saying with the fire analogy), but because of this particular situation where the fetus that has been created must rely solely on the consenting woman.
No, I simply think that sperm can meet egg without the woman’s consent for that to have happened.
Which seems obvious, because those are the women electing to have abortions. Again, the fact that a woman would choose to abort her pregnancy proves that it’s possible for a woman to be pregnant without having consented to conception.
Legally? The people who designed an oven that burns your apartment down. Hey, don’t argue with me; take it up with the lawyers. (Though it makes perfect sense to me – people aren’t responsible for the accidental results of legitimate behaviors, merely those unreasonable actions that result in accidents.)
What point have I missed?
The fire has no right to existence, it could destroy my stuff, and it could harm me.
What source of rights does a fetus have? It has no independent right of existence, and it could harm the mother.
I consented to a nice hot meal and knew there was a small chance of a fire despite my precautions. You certainly wouldn’t argue that I had no right to put out the fire because fire is a consequence of having a hot meal. So, what is the difference?
PHLAF, thank you for that comment.
[...] way things used to be. But anything I could say on the matter just pales in comparison to PHLAF’s comment in the Choice for the Kids post, so I&# [...]
I was an adult (albeit a new one) in the 50s, and I just want to say: It was Not That Way. Not.
Ahhh, but suppose human being (A) does all in her power to undo human being (B)’s dependence on her. And suppose she succeeds in undoing every other side effect caused in conjunction with the dependency. At this point, everything would be undone, and human being (B) would be in exactly the same position he or she would have been in if human being (A) had never affected human being (B) in the first place.
Conception brings dependency, but it also brings life. Abortion takes away life, but it also takes away the dependency you were just complaining about. The negative side effects of abortion are exactly equal to the positive side effects of conception. Nothing is being taken away that hasn’t been given in the first place.
Human being (A) is fully entitled to divest herself of responsibility to the point where human being (B) is restored to its original state, prior to human being (A)’s original interference (conception). Only after birth, when human being (B) is supporting its own life, breathing and digesting food and so forth on its own, (because the dependency has already been broken by human being (B), and human being (B) has begun supporting its own existance), would any movement by human being (A) to do anything that deprives human being (B) of life be not only unnecessary for human being (A) to divest responsibility, but also negate the work that human being (B) is doing to support itself.
Embryos and fetuses killed in an abortion would die anyway once removed from the uterus. Their death by human hands is due solely to the fact that there is therefore no point in bringing them out alive, as it would have essentially the same result. Their deaths are no more unjust than that which Nature would have done shortly after removal.
If a cancer patient dies for want of donated bone marrow, it is the cancer that killed them. Those people that cannot survive, die. Right to life means that one’s own attempts to keep living not be interfered with—it does not mean one is entitled to another person’s body if one’s attempts to keep living are unsuccessful.
If I die of cancer, my right to life has not been infringed upon. Unless, of course, there was some medical malpractice or any treatments I was entitled to were otherwise denied to me. If I need bone marrow to live, however, and no one is willing to donate it, and medical technology is unable to compensate, my right to life has not been infringed upon. I do not have the right, nor does anyone else, to be free of naturally occurring conditions incompatable with survival, at someone else’s expense against their will. I do not have the right to anyone else’s body and I’d be a terrible person if I just used it without their permission. They would have the right to expect me to be stopped, and to have me stopped.
VERY well said. I wholeheartedly agree.
Show me a contraceptive that’s 100% effective.
We do the best we bloody well can, under the circumstances. Give us a 100% effective contraceptive, usable by anyone, of comparable convenience to the Pill or IUD’s, readily affordable and available to everyone, whose existance is made known to everyone who might conceivably want to have sex or who might conceivably be raped while fertile, and then you’ll have some entitlement to tell us not to rely on imperfect contraceptives.
Otherwise you’re demanding an unfair and exorbitant price in exchange for the right to refuse to consent to pregnancy. So don’t be surprised when we go to Planned Parenthood where reproductive autonomy is significantly cheaper.
And why isn’t the man equally responsible? Didn’t he engage in the same sex act as she did? Since he is obviously not made responsible, what is the problem with the prospect of the woman seeking the same divestiture of responsibility that the man was given as a freebie?
Negated by contraception, another voluntary act. Passive consent is overridden by deliberate, active non-consent. (It is passive consent because the sexual activity is done for reasons other than conception. Conception is not something the person wants, but is a minor risk that they put up with because negating it completely is not worth the price.)
The purpose of recreational sex is pleasure. The purpose of contraception is to prevent pregnancy. Failures and side effects are unfortunate, but can be legitimately dealt with, and people are entitled to do whatever they can to limit their consequences to what they bargained for, to the extent of negating what someone else gained due to an accident or an unwanted side effect. Not more than negating, but if someone has profitted from their loss, that someone is liable to lose what they’ve gained so that the people suffering from the loss can have its value restored to them.
A person who’s lost their wallet, for example, is more entitled to the contents than a person who’s found it. And even more so, someone who is continuing to profit from someone else’s loss is liable to lose what they’ve gained, so the people suffering from the loss can be safe from losing even more. If a credit card is in the lost wallet, the person who’s lost it is more entitled to report the card as lost and have it cancelled than the person who’s found it has to start buying stuff with it. Naturally, as a consequence, the person buying stuff with a found credit card is responsible for paying for what they’ve already spent.
I’ll have some proof, thank you, before you start using it as an excuse to control my body. And I reiterate that no consent was given.
Last I checked, an accident didn’t carry the same penalty as deliberate arson.
The fire has no right to destroy someone’s stuff. If it depends on that stuff for its existance, tough shit. Likewise, an embryo (and, incidentally, any other human being) might have a right to life, but it does not have a right to another person, and therefore has no right to life at another person’s expense. If it is preserving its life at my expense, I have the right to prevent any future expense from being taken from me, both by the fire and the fetus. It’s entitled to its own body. If that’s not enough, barring charity, it goes the way that all life goes when its own body’s efforts are not enough. That’s life.
No, that’s why fetus=person is central to your argument. As I said above, many of us do not agree that the mere existence of life in a body that is genetically human is a significant fact from a rights standpoint. Terri Schiavo was a “human being,” a living homo sapiens, long after her brain turned to liquid. I do not concede that the body in that bed was a “person” with rights.
But thank you for the concession. It’s good to know that you agree that unless the fetus has the same rights as those of us that are reading this blog, your argument collapses.
You are, in any event, still making the balancing analysis that I said I disagree with: that the reasonable steps one has to take to protect one’s body from a forty-week invasion need to be complete cessation of PV intercourse, and that failing that, the right of the fetus to exist outweighs the woman’s right to decide if another may use her organs. That’s why the house analogy is so valuable: most of us think we can throw a squatter out, even into a howling blizzard; even unto death. Because there is little more personal that who gets to inhabit our home with us. Locking our doors when we leave may be very effective, but the possibility of human error makes it less than 100% effective. We might leave a window cracked. I’ve done it. If the standard is that, no matter how much we reduce the error, once a squatter becomes dependant on us for survival we’re stuck with him, then you are making a policy determination that my right to exclude others from my home is incomplete and can only be safeguarded in the event that I avoid doing something (leaving) that it is unreasonable to expect me not to do.
Go Kyra!