Gotta love “pro-life” medical ethics:
BUCHAREST (AFP) — A medical ethics panel in Romania refused Friday to grant an abortion to an 11-year-old who had allegedly been raped by her uncle, a hospital official said.
“According to the penal code, after the 14th week of pregnancy, termination is only permissible if the mother’s life is endangered or if the foetus suffers from malformation,” said Vica Todosiciuc, head of the Cuza Voda maternity section in the northeastern city of Iasi.
“Having examined the girl, the panel observes that the pregnancy is proceeding naturally and therefore that termination should not be imposed.”
The girl’s parents discovered the pregnancy during a medical check-up two weeks ago after she complained of stomach pains. Police are hunting the uncle, who is said to have fled his home.
“The fact that the pregnancy stemmed from rape was not taken into account by the panel, for two reasons: one, because rape has not been proven; and two, because the penal code does not allow for any exceptions,” Todosiciuc said.
Forcing an 11-year-old rape and incest victim into giving birth against her will: Those are some life-affirming values for you.
Note a couple of things: First, the fact that the rape wasn’t taken into account in part because it had not been proven. Because, you know, the 11-year-old may have had sex with her uncle consensually.
Second, all that matters is whether the pregnancy is proceeding smoothly. Not whether the girl is going to be further psychologically and emotionally traumatized by the forced pregnancy and childbirth. Not whether there should be other factors taken into account — like maybe the little girl. Only: the incubator is doing its job. Even if she’s a baby herself. Even if she’s willing to go through the humiliation and the difficulty of asking a medical review board for permission to terminate a pregnancy caused by an uncle who raped her.
This is why I get so heated about “smaller” battles, like pharmacists refusing to fill birth control prescriptions. It’s a continuum of control and abuse, with women’s reproductive systems as the locus. And no, it is not acceptable. It is not about religious exercise. It is not about letting the market control. It’s not about simple political difference where we can just agree to disagree because we’re all good people here, or where we can discuss reproductive freedom as if it’s just another issue up for legal and philosophical debate.
It is about systematic control of women’s bodies. It is about physically abusing women’s bodies in the name of ideology. It is about a desire to control and harm women so deep that even 11-year-old rape and incest victims get caught in the cross-fire.
And it is about a desire to control and harm so widely acceptable that, pathetically, the only way to really drive the point home is when it happens to an 11-year-old rape and incest victim. An “average woman” isn’t sympathetic enough.
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Seems like this girl didn’t even know she was pregnant, and I wouldn’t expect an 11-year-old to know that. The 14-week logic works!
Absolutely horrid. So apparently Romania doesn’t even have a statutory rape law?
This is pretty much why I can’t stand a lot of “pro-life” rhetoric, the treatment of this child is far more horrid than any abortion.
Why do ya’ll l think having an 11 year old go thru a pregnancy and childbirth is worse than destroying the unborn baby’s life? I really don’t think anyone is out to control the girl or her body (except the horrible man who raped her), I just think Romania’s goal not to kill unborn babies, which is laudable.
The way this seems to work is: a girl child is only a vulnerable, innocent child deserving of protection until she has her first period. Once she has officially entered puberty, with breasts and monthly bleeding, she is A. WOMAN. And once she’s a WOMAN, she loses her childhood status as a precious, precious CHILD — now she has to be a proper virgin wife to some white man, or else, if she gets raped by her psycho-uncle, it’s all her fault.
I am reminded of a saying popular back in my distant youth: “If men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament.”
And what’s wrong with being a proper virgin on your wedding nite?? ( I would expect the same of the husband). Goodness knows that the world would be a better place for ALL if we saved sexual gratification for marriage.
I don’t think anyone here is saying it’s the girl’s fault. The question is to kill the unborn baby or have the girl carry the baby to term and go thru childbirth. Which is worse? I say that killing the baby is.
For all of you that think abortion is the better option, is that so because of the age of the rape victim, or that the pregancy is the result of rape to begin with?
wouldnt giving birth at 11 years old endanger her life? frankly, i had no clue someone so young could give birth without serious risks to their health, i mean, 11 year olds for the most part are still incredibly small people.
At least they’re consistent in their insanity. Allowing this girl to have an abortion would be killing an innocent baby, remember? And killing a potential child is way worse than torturing an actual, thinking, feeling, traumatized little girl.
Allowing this girl to terminate would suggest that’s it’s not really about saving “babies” at all, and then they might have to start looking at the woman’s circumstances, and then they’d have to confront the fact that they’re just using pregnancy and childbirth as a way to punish women for being sluts.
Your last few paragraphs really touched me. Totally hit the nail head-on. My (right-wing nut) father keeps accusing me of identity politics and voting “on one issue” and “selfishly” because I refuse to support anyone who wants to limit by rights to my own body. He just can not grasp that abortion is not some quaint little side issue the media likes to stir up, and it’s not something we can compromise on or “agree to disagree.” It’s my body. It’s my life. Yeah, I’m super selfish for wanting to protect my basic right to bodily autonomy.
I’m from Romania and I have to say that there is no Pro-life movement here. The most used contraception used is abortion (for which we hold the European record rates). It’s more about bureaucratic legalism and the callousness of the medical system (state operated universal health care, not as great as it sounds).
They probably should have bribed the panel as the medical system is famous for it’s corruption.
This is a great example of Romanian rule of law that is seriously flawed. However, as a broad brush example of the “Right to Life” position, it is also seriously flawed. There are many individuals who are opposed to abortion who would side with you in the case of this little girl (self included). Extreme example arguments such as these only rile the already convinced and do nothing to help others see your point of view.
BTW, I also agree with you regarding pharmacists and birth control AND with keeping the choice of abortion legal. Actually, you would probably be surprised at the large and growing number of folks like me who oppose abortion in most cases BUT still think that the government should not interfere with your right to choice. I believe it is an individual and moral decision, not a scientific or legal decision.
I share this only because the simplistic stereotypes and extreme examples put forth from both sides of the debate keep us from ever having a sane and serious discussion of our real differences. I found this story interesting, and appalling. Thank you for sharing it. I hope you do not find my comment out of line. I just wanted to share another point of view on your analysis.
I’m not too familiar with the law in Romania, but did anyone thought of the fact that she’s not only quite young, but most important (and hopefully – considering the already disturbing penal code, they may have other more senseless laws) under-age.
Of course it’s horrible. But if you believe an unborn baby is a life, then ending that life is a horror too. I’m not taking a side here about when life begins, but don’t assume pro-lifers are out to get women. Isn’t it just as likely they’re trying to protect unborn life? How do you know they wouldn’t feel the same way if men could get pregnant too?
This is very disturbing. If there were ever a candidate for therapeutic (for want of a better word) termination, this is the pregnancy for it.
Gah. It’s things like this who give genuinely pro-life ideas a bad name. And by genuinely pro-life, I mean ideas like preserving people’s ability to take care of hte families they already have, the right to contraception to avoid creating an unwanted life and so on.
Cripes almighty! She’s ELEVEN YEARS OLD!!! Giving birth at that age is too young! It’s going to hurt her more than just physically.
Just… buh… cripes almighty, this is nonsense. Give her the abortion and get her some more help, not encourage her along like some baby-making machine.
No body is saying a family can’t take care of itself…I’m saying that killing unborn babies is not needed and is the worst thing you can do, except if the life of the mother is at risk.
Killing unborn babies to avoid ‘unwanted life’ is not the way to avoid ‘unwanted life’! There are other ways! We become the lowest of the low when we discard babies.
Wasn’t Romania ruled in the Communist era by a crazy dictator who forbade abortion on the grounds that the Motherland needed to be populated? IIRC, this guy also made his people freeze and starve rather than take any aid from any froeign source whatsoever.
And before that, Romania was an ally of Nazi Germany. The Red Army broke through undermanned and under-armed Romanian units to encircle the Germans at Stalingrad.
I’ve known several Romanian people, and they were as nice as can be. It’s really a shame they had to live in such a fucked-up country.
** Stop accepting their label! **
“Pro-life” ranters are not pro-life. They are pro-birth. The dogma used to be called pro-natalism. It’s an androcentric, completely misogynistic, demand that no impediment whatsoever on *births* be permitted by law.
What happens to mother and child after birth is irrelevant since the “laws” of nature will then cull the weak from the strong. “Pro-life” is really pro-death — ultimately the western religious death impulse in full cry.
Its victorian pseudo-scientific justification belongs to social darwinism (really, created by Herbert Spencer). However, that’s merely a glosss on western religious demands rooted ultimately in the late neolithic — 6,000 years of god damned male domination, when will it end?
It should be obvious that for fundie and RC alike pro-birth is not pro-life. In fact their ideology is pro-Death — creating disease, poverty and ignorance worldwide through overpopulation, damning safe non-reproductive sex, and blocking responsible medical research.
bipolar2
© 2008
“Actually, you would probably be surprised at the large and growing number of folks like me who oppose abortion in most cases BUT still think that the government should not interfere with your right to choice.”
Why do you think anybody would be surprised by that position? For someone who’s pro-choice, you sound like you haven’t been hearing many of the platform’s arguments.
This is so disgusting I can’t even think of an adjective to describe it. What’s even worse is that there’s already “pro-life”ers on here thinking that swabbing out a few cells from a child’s body amounts to murdering a child. The child being murdered here is 11 years old, there is no other child in the picture, and her happiness, autonomy, safety and dignity are being murdered here. It is quite possible for her to experience health problems because an 11 year old is not fully growth, has narrow hips and not a lot of body fat, she can’t support a pregnancy. It’s so appalling that cells are more important than people.
I’m just about ready to punch somebody right now.
Diane;
It’s got nothing to do with killing unborn babies and everything to do with not endagering another person’s life. Babies are expensive, they cause extensive psychological and physiological changes in everyone around them, and they’re not especially sacred from an environmental stand point (banning abortion in other countries and the necessity for large families in poorer countries has helped push our total world population to unsustainable levels).
On top of that, it’s not your right, or job, to make that decision. Until the first trimester, at least, the baby isn’t a baby, as such. It may or may not grow into a baby. Medically, it’s still in a fragile state that anything could reasonably disrupt it with catastrophic consequences. Things like the 11 girl falling off of a jungle gym. It’s her job to make that decision for herself, and she should be provided all the help (doctors, psychologists, and even priests if necessary) to help her make that decision.
“Discarding babies” is just political baiting. It’s intellectually dishonest and does more to cast doubt on your sincerity than it does to call the pro-choice platform into question. In short, it makes you look like a jerk. We’re not using back-handed statements to call the pro-life position into question, are we? Try to refrain from insulting people you want to convince with a new position.
In the end, though, pro-choice will probably win out. Just like gay marriage is winning out. These things should be controlled by the local social climate, not the state. The state has no business interfering in people’s lives to such a degree. Politics is not the place to make social change; society is.
“Goodness knows that the world would be a better place for ALL if we saved sexual gratification for marriage.”
Could I have a conversation with Goodness? Because I disagree with his/her statement, and Goodness never seems to be around when I actually want to engage him/her in open and frank discussion. S/he always just seems to be making unprovable proclamations from some mountaintop.
if anybody has ideas and wants to do something about this, please contact us. glad to see the news covered by feministe, we translated the post in romanian, too, because it’s really great.
it should be noted that in this particular case the point isn’t driven home for way too many people (like for instance that medical committee) even when it happens to an 11-year-old rape and incest victim. and it’s not really even that it shows “consistency in insanity” as someone commented, but precisely that the desire to control and harm women’s bodies can become SO accepted by society at large, and not just among hardline “pro-lifers”. it’s true that this is particularly surprising in romania, where we have the horrible history regarding abortion rights during the “communist” period… we know very well what the obsessive control over women’s bodies and denial of abortion rights can< mean. but we obviously forget, and very quickly.
I don’t. That’s why I put “pro-life” in scare quotes throughout the post, and usually use the term “anti-choice.” I use “pro-life” when trying to make the point that “life’ has nothing to do with it .
“And what’s wrong with being a proper virgin on your wedding nite?? ( I would expect the same of the husband). Goodness knows that the world would be a better place for ALL if we saved sexual gratification for marriage.”
Yes, that irresponsible 11yo should have thought better before being raped. She was supossed to save herself for marriage!
I hope this child gets as much international attention as polish Agata did and she will get her right to abortion.
bipolar said:
‘** Stop accepting their label! **
“Pro-life” ranters are not pro-life. They are pro-birth. The dogma used to be called pro-natalism. It’s an androcentric, completely misogynistic, demand that no impediment whatsoever on *births* be permitted by law.’
You’re on the right track but the most effective description of the movement is ‘Anti-Choice’. The Anti-Choice movement wants exactly what the title describes. Since we know that the effective use of semantics can shape public opinion, I would suggest this term and try to urge you to make it your venacular and share it with as many people as possible. Seeing ‘Anti-Choice’ protests on the news will garner more Pro-Choice sympathy than seeing ‘Pro-Life’.
If we can convert their movement to become known as anti-choice, the subconcious effect on the viewing mass will work in our favour.
bipolar continued with:
‘What happens to mother and child after birth is irrelevant since the “laws” of nature will then cull the weak from the strong. “Pro-life” is really pro-death — ultimately the western religious death impulse in full cry.’
I’m not sure I understand what concept you are trying to elucidate with this, and how it connects to the issue, although the statement intrigues me. If you could elaborate further I would be most appreciative.
Continuing:
However, that’s merely a glosss on western religious demands rooted ultimately in the late neolithic — 6,000 years of god damned male domination, when will it end?
Patriarchy has done some wonderful things, and many horrible things. I even argue that men are as oppressed by patriarchy as much as women, sometimes more, but in a different way. There is no doubt though, that it’s flaws outweigh it’s benefits.
Finally
It should be obvious that for fundie and RC alike pro-birth is not pro-life. In fact their ideology is pro-Death — creating disease, poverty and ignorance worldwide through overpopulation, damning safe non-reproductive sex, and blocking responsible medical research.
My personal belief is that the anti-choice movement is rooted purely in religious domination as a method of social control. In order to expand the size of whatever major respective cult, forbidding people to terminate pregnancies leaves them in a perpetual servitude to the religious authority as well as ensuring new recruits who can be conditioned to fit the religious beliefs from birth.
That being said, I don’t think the average person that is against abortion has a completely different perspective- no one here would argue that walking up to an adult and putting a gun to his head because he inconveniences you is sane or moral in any way. For the average anti-choice people, they see it as no different than having an abortion.
Anyways, I just wanted to reply to your post because I found it intriguing.
-Keith-
I really feel there is some misunderstanding of the pro-life movement. It isn’t about suppressing women. I want those here hostile to the pro-life movement to understand their argument:
For many reasonable people, the only question in the abortion debate is: when does life begin, and when does the mother’s safety outweigh the life inside her?
Because if it is a life, why would killing it be an option, when we don’t allow mothers with born babies to kill them for making their lives difficult?
In this case, yes, it’s clear that the mother probably won’t survive the pregnancy, so the baby should be aborted. Better to save just the mother than to lose both. And for many of you, a hunk of cells is not a life and there should be no hesitation at all. Feel free to make that argument.
But ONCE LIFE BEGINS, I’d like to think that ending it shouldn’t be a choice. Democrats used the “choice” argument back in the day to support slavery. It went something like this:
Don’t try to control us! If you don’t want to keep slaves, you don’t have to keep them. But we want to keep slaves. Don’t interfere with our freedom of choice.
Does that make the problem clearer?
Mary – what percentage risk would make an abortion acceptable? Should the mother have three out of five doctors opine that she’ll die? Or two and one thinking she’ll just have a survivable stroke? Or a family history of eclampsia and five doctors with five different opinions? How about permanent damage, does that get entered into the equation?
Or to make the point more clearly, all pregnancies are at least a little risky, and none of them come with nice clean labels saying which ones will go south and endanger the mother. The world’s youngest mother was five years old, and survived the birth of her child. I was a twenties, healthy, good family history mother, and under only slightly different circumstances (very slightly), I would not have survived my second child’s birth.
Who should get to make that call if not the woman (or girl), who is the one whose life and body are actually at risk?
No. It makes it clear that you don’t understand the argument very well.
Are you aware that not one national “pro-life” organization in the United States supports birth control? Not one. 100 percent of the worst legislators for children in this country are “pro-life.” The “pro-life” Republican party opposes just about every measure that would decrease the abortion rate and provide aid to low-income families and children.
I do think there are a great many self-identified pro-life people who simply oppose abortion, but want to take common-sense measures to stop it. But that is not the organized “pro-life” position. It is not the position of the “pro-life” legislators you all elect.
No, we don’t. But we also don’t force mothers to sustain the lives of their children using their own bodies, against their will. If your child has a failing kidney, we do not legally force you to hook yourself up to them and perform dialysis with your own body. That’s the difference: In no other situation do we require people to use their own body to aid another, for nine months at a time, against the person’s will and to the detriment of their body, their health, their financial situation, etc etc.
How about this: If a fertilized egg/fetus/embryo/whatever stage we’re talking about is an independent life, let’s just take it out of the woman’s body and let it do its thing. I’m pretty sure that most of those embryos aren’t going to turn into babies.
sighs – Mary/Diane – get your heads out of your ass and get your logic right- WHY does an unborn life hold more value than a LIVING, breathing, traumtized CHILD – who is a victim of RAPE and INCEST.
What are you NOT getting about that equation?
and yes, the “prolife” or as I like to cal it, ANTI-CHOICE fanatics ARE against women- otehrwise they would understand that a child’s life, her already traumatized body deserves NOT to have to deal with birth and the subsequent child that was FORCED on her.
Keeping slaves and abortion are completely DIFFERENT things – and if you want to use such a fallacious argument – the child did not CHOOSE to have sex or get pregnant – someone owning slaves DOES make such a choice.
Get your logic right.
and “reasonable” people – many of us – believe a WOMAN (this case aside as again, the argument is fallacious when you are talking about an adult who had consenual sex and got pregnant versus a rape and incest victim) – has a right to make choices over HER body – as compared to the “rights” of a colleciton of cells inside her.
Jill (Hope this quote thing works):
Yes, pregnancy is a unique situation. And most people do not feel that at one month, three months, or for some even six months, a baby is anything but a parasitic block of cells, and therefore removing it is a choice. But what about after that? Surely you don’t favor eight- or nine-month abortions, even though at that point the babies are still technically parasitic. Why? (If you disagree, we’ll have to have another conversation.) Because by that point they are clearly human, and alive.
That’s legitimate…you, like the Supreme Court, believes that life begins at the point when a baby can survive outside the womb. But this argument becomes difficult when you realize that science is moving very quickly, and within a few years babies are going to be able to be sustained outside the womb at five months, four months, and so on. Are babies that would not be considered alive ten years ago (six month premies) alive today before birth just because science caught up with them? It’s also a problematic argument because it basically says that babies who are lucky enough to be removed from the womb in a place with modern medical facilities are alive, when those removed from the womb in a third-world country are not, even though inside the womb they are essentially identical.
As for “independent life,” I never used the word independent. Most life is dependent on something. No one, I hope, is making the argument that a baby which would be viable if hooked up to a machine is not alive because if you left it on a table it would die. If that were the case many full-term babies, and indeed adults, who need to be hooked up to machines, would be considered non-life.
You make a good point about birth control availability. I don’t agree with denying access to birth control; I use it myself. It is unfortunate that the two positions (pro-life and anti-birth control) often go hand in hand, and I’d like to change that. Please don’t make assumptions about who I elect.
Those are all good, difficult questions. But the fact that they are difficult questions that need hours, years, decades of discussion to figure out doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to answer them.
Do we have an anti-choice bingo somewhere because it looks like Mary has been scoring some points.
I believe human rights, especially the right to be free from physical violence, exist at all stages of life but those rights are unenforceable by the governmentuntil birth. If the pro-life movement was a cultural one and not a legal one it would have FAR more support than it does now. It is at that moment at birth when the rights of an infant are enforceable without the automatic, unavoidable intrusive and unjust infringement of a woman’s right to her own body.
If you think the government can do anything about abortion without criminalizing the reproductive health care of ALL women then you are either ignorant or you just don’t care. Maybe you think you are good and YOU would never be scrutinized by some impersonal medical or governmental authority. That is what is at stake: the choice to avoid getting pregnant in the first place, the choice to give birth in the manner you want. The power to control your own body for all women not just for women who want abortions.
I didn’t see any age for the uncle. It is not unknown for the uncle to be younger than the niece. Regardless though, I am in favor of on-demand abortions at any time before birth.
Did I say that? I don’t recall. In fact, I think I said (see #26) that in this case the baby should be aborted.
You assume that we wouldn’t feel the same way if men could get pregnant. Personally, I would. Also, some in the pro-life movement make exceptions for rape and incest, and some don’t. Both sides have good arguments. The latter would say that a life is a life, regardless of how it came into existence. It’s a difficult one to swallow because of terrible scenarios like this one, but by no means reflects having one’s head up one’s ass, as you say. It simply means that they believe life (with rights to protection) begins earlier than you believe it does.
The “choice” involved here would not be to get pregnant or not to get pregnant, but to end the pregnancy or not to end the pregnancy (or to word it strongly, to kill or not to kill). As I’ve said in an earlier post, whether or not this is a baby at three months, I think the mother’s life is clearly endangered, so triage should come into play: Who do you save? The mother, or no one?
Your “logic” says that this pregnancy is not a life because the girl didn’t choose to get pregnant. I’d rather hear the “pile of cells” argument. A born baby is just as alive whether or not the mother was raped. Why isn’t the same true for the unborn? So your argument should not be that the girl didn’t choose to get pregnant, but that the life she wants to end is not, indeed, a life. I would buy that. I might even agree with it.
See “if men could get pregnant” (above). Other than that, you’re just repeating what I’ve been saying this whole time – the issue should be based on “When does life begin?” rather than “The choice to end life is every individual woman’s.” If you think a collection of cells does not have rights, like I said, up to a point I agree. Where that point lies (three months, six months, nine months, birth) is where I suspect we have different opinions.
Side note: Could we keep the tone respectful?
Huge breakdown of logic there, Mary. You seem to be working off of the logic that the GOAL of abortion is to kill a baby, not to end a pregnancy. And there is a big difference between the two. In the vast majority of abortions, there is no choice but to kill the embryo/fetus if the abortion is going to be performed. There is a way to get an 8 month old fetus out of a womb without killing it. See the difference? So, should a woman have the right to ask a doctor to kill her 8 month old fetus? No. Should she have the right to ask that doctor to induce labor? Sure. I don’t find that to be particularly ethical, but I see no reason why she should not have the right to stop using her body as a host for another life. There is simply a point which the ethics change for how a doctor can allow a woman to stop using her body as a host for another life.
Now, if there is a point at which a 14-week-old fetus can be expelled from the womb without being killed, we’ll talk about that ethical question, and it would be an interesting conversation. But guess what? We’re not there, and I personally doubt a time when we ever will be.
This is one of the flimsiest strawmen I’ve ever seen. You find a pro-choice person who does not believe that an embryo or fetus is alive and you find a person whose ignorance I will laugh at. Of course it’s alive. So what? We kill living things every day, and we judgment calls about what does and does not get to live every day. I’ve killed several ants today. No one cares. If I killed my cat, I’m guessing that many people would be upset. Why? It’s about the value we ascribe to different kinds of life. I personally ascribe more value to my cat than I would to an embryo living inside of me (which, baby killer that I am, I would indeed abort).
The question isn’t about whether or not something is alive, it’s about whether or not it has the right to attach itself to another living being for survival. People have a right to be hooked up to machines to sustain life. They do not have a right be hooked up to nonconsenting people.
In any case, I don’t make a point of wasting my day arguing with someone who puts hypothetical babies ahead of real life actual 11-year-old rape victims, so I’m done.
Well, no, but considering that the article says the uncle fled the family home, I’m guessing that means he’s over the age of 10. Plus, while there are some 10-and-under boys whose bodies produce sperm, a lot aren’t physically able to impregnate women/girls.
I think you’re reaching pretty far with this one. I’m pretty sure that if the uncle was 10 years old, that fact would have been interesting enough to put in the story.
Mary – they are difficult questions. I just happen to think that giving the woman the best information possible and letting her make the decision is the ethical way to go about it. Some women will undoubtedly make decisions I personally consider ill-advised, dubious, or even morally bankrupt. Some will choose to risk their lives when I think they are stark, raving nuts to do so. Some will chose to end pregnancies I wouldn’t have. Making moral calls is part of being a grown adult in this world.
When Bill Napoli himself would grant that child an abortion, and yet you still yammer on about “discarding babies”, you may be too pro-life.
A question I have yet to see answered–why is it murder when a fetus is aborted in via a “morning after” pill, yet I’ve never seen any RTLifer protest the destruction of five to ten fetuses for every attempt to conceive in a fertilization clinic. A fetus is a fetus, true? Yet we never here calls to close down the “murdering” fertilization clinics, where each time a woman is given hormones to make her ovulate a dozen eggs or so at a time, the eggs are fertilized in a petri dish, the three or four best looking are inserted into her uterus and the rest are either dumped in the nearest bioharzard bin or frozen and in most cases, dumped later. Isn’t that also “murder”?
Could it possibly be that we never have this type of fetus-destruction as front page news because only people who can afford $10,000 and more per try are involved? And because the fertilization business is a multi-billion dollar industry with plenty of lobbyists? While most people who go to abortion clinics are working or lower class?
What gives, RTL folks? Why the inconsistency? I’d really like to know……
The uncle is 19 yo.
Being Romanian, I strongly dissagree with balom. There really *is* a “pro-life” [I strongly agree that anti-choice is the appropriate term] movement in Romania, where “movement” means organized activist groups and without mentioning the vast majority of Romanians that are against abortion without being regimented. balom also forgott to mention certain factors like poverty, discrimination or religion that contribute to making Romania the country with the Europe record rates on abortion [I haven't seen any statistics on the matter, but we're not far from it anyway].
Nonetheless, one doesn’t need to bear the “pro-choice” label to be outraged by that panel’s decision…
On the website of the Romanian television that broadcasted the news, some “anti-choice” people commented and said that disagreeing with the little girl continuing the pregnancy is disrespectful towards her parents. Her parents unfortunatelly belong to that class of Romanian people that have neither the financial status nor the knowledge to fight for their child’s rights, so the only thing they said when being questioned about how they felt was: Eh, whether we like it or not… what can we do?! It’s not our decision.
Cara:
Good point. The trouble is, as you pointed out, that competing values (ending the pregnancy vs. aborting the baby) are often in conflict, and for many, the bad of the latter outweighs the good of the former.
Wow, way to end the argument. You pop in just long enough to say your piece, then note that it’s not worth your time to argue with me.
It’s especially charming that you didn’t notice that I’VE NOW SAID TWICE THAT THIS BABY SHOULD BE ABORTED.
The “baby on the table” logic was not a straw man argument. It was a response to Jill’s statement: “How about this: If a fertilized egg/fetus/embryo/whatever stage we’re talking about is an independent life, let’s just take it out of the woman’s body and let it do its thing.” I wasn’t setting up a straw man to argue against; I took an actual example of an argument and carried it to its logical conclusions.
Surprising. Many pro-choicers whom I’ve talked to really don’t believe human life begins until there’s a heartbeat, or the ability to feel pain, or measurable brain function. Is that really ignorance?
And if you killed your baby, most people would be more upset than if you killed your cat. Why? Because babies are *human*. Humans have rights no other animals have, at least from birth. Pro-lifers want to extend those rights to before birth, because they believe that at certain milestones (say, a heartbeat, a thought, or yes, even conception) human life exists, is precious, and should not be intentionally ended – yes, for some, even if that life is dependent on attachment to its mother.
You may disagree, but don’t pretend that pro-lifers WANT eleven-year-old rape victims to have babies. If I like cars, does that mean I like awful car accidents, or drunk driving? Hey, if we got rid of cars we wouldn’t have those anymore.
You happen to value the mother’s right to privacy/autonomy over the child’s right to life. Some people value the opposite. Don’t accuse them of ignorance or cruelty for having a different, entirely supportable, set of values from your own.
Any female under the age of 18 should not be giving birth period. If she wants to and knows all the risks fine but under normal circumstances No. Most women under the age of 14 aren’t even physically CAPABLE of carrying a pregnancy to term and then giving birth. They do not have the resources nor the body mass and condemning (when it is unwilling) them to do this is like going into space naked. Death is certain.
Now I know Mary said that in this case she would recommend abortion but what about other cases? Life began millions of years ago so that argument is moot. Viability for any fetus under 8/9months is not only moot but stupid. A woman IS THE BEST life support for a fetus. We do not understand nearly enough about pregnancy to be able to create a machine that can do the same thing a womans body can, only better. Because frankly no machine can give a fetus the same care and attention that the womans body naturally can (when she consents). I would never advocate hooking preemies to machines if there was anything below a 90% chance of success.
Abortion rights hang a lot on the fact that forcing a woman to become an incubator for an unwanted entity is wrong and therefore are first and foremost about the woman herself, fetus second (if at all). Denial of this fact is detrimental to anyones argument.
I think you’re reaching pretty far with this one. I’m pretty sure that if the uncle was 10 years old, that fact would have been interesting enough to put in the story.
I don’t think he is 10, but I’d just like to know that before we can call him out on statutory rape. If he’s 15 or something, he might even be able to get away with it in many Western countries. Although, on the abortion I would reiterate, if she wants one, she should get one, no questions asked.
I popped in to refute your argument, and the fact of the matter is that I really don’t have the time to argue with you. I assure you that if I spent all of my time arguing with anti-choice arguments, I’d never get a damn post written. Also, I’ve had this argument 40 million times before. So really, this is my last comment on the matter.
I don’t believe that the embryo/fetus/whatever is A PERSON until much later in the development stage. Huge difference there as well that you seem to be missing. An embryo is alive. It’s a medical fact. So are my skin cells. My skin cells are also human. So an embryo being human and alive is simply genetics, but that doesn’t make the embryo a person. And no, I have never, in my life, heard a pro-choice person argue that an embryo is not living. I imagine that it would be ignorance to say that it’s not living, just it would be ignorance to say that a houseplant is not living.
I don’t understand the analogy at all, but clearly they do want 11-year-old rape victims to have babies, or they would not be forcing them to. This really is very simple. They have the chance to keep this 11-year-old rape victim from having a baby that she doesn’t want. They’re not using it.
I will accuse them of ignorance and cruelty all I like. I don’t value a mother’s right to privacy/autonomy over a child’s life, I value any person’s right to control their own body and not be turned into a human incubator more than I value a non-person. We clearly have different standards for cruelty. I’m not imposing my beliefs on anyone else. I’d never force a woman to have an abortion, in fact I’d say that doing so is just as bad as forcing a woman to give birth. It’s heinous. People who oppose abortion do want to force women to give birth. As someone who would probably kill herself before giving birth, therefore leaving you with two dead “humans,” yeah, I’d say it’s cruelty, and no, I won’t stop.
And your argument for your support of this abortion isn’t good enough for me. You seem to think that the 11-year-old’s life is at risk and that giving birth will kill her. (And I didn’t see this anywhere: did I miss it?) So I’m getting the distinct impression that if her physical health were not at risk, you would support forcing this 11-year-old rape victim to give birth. Please correct me if I’m wrong, because I really would love to believe that I am and that you’re not taking such a position.
cara, we’re all just going on the assumption that an 11 year old isnt physically mature enough to give birth without there being serious health risks, or possibly death. theres no documentation as far as i kno that the girl is at any higher of a risk than any other 11 year old, but thats not saying much.
by the way, the “morning after pill” is NOT AN ABORTION PILL – it is still a contraceptive. We can’t lose this fact to the anti-choice spin machine. The morning after pill prevents implantation, it does not force an implanted egg to be expelled from teh body or otherwise interfere with an already implanted egg. the morning after pill is contraception. and anyone who wants to reduce abortions, as well as those who want women to have the ability to make autonomous decisions about tehir bodies. should be in favor of contraception
as was pointed out several times, any truly pro-life movement would be in favor of contraception. Some of the individuals here who seem to call themselves “pro- life” shoudl spend LESS time arguing with pro-choice pro-contraceptive people here on this blog and instead take up the argument in favor of contraception with the leaders and spokespeople of their own so-called “pro-life” movement. If you people really think contraception is a good idea, why do you allow people who speak for the movement (at every level of public debate, at the top of every official organization, and in every elected office) to work against contraception?
most abortions would never happen if there was contraception, a woman-respecting legal system, and political and economic equality for women. So get cracking, “pro-lifers” !
Cara, I think you’re confusing organic with living. Your skin cells are organic. They are not a living organism. Just like a leaf on a tree is organic, while the tree is a living organism. An embryo is a living organism, not part of one, like your skin cells. And it’s human. If not, what is it – a duck?
Try to understand the perspective of a person like me, who considers a fetus a person.
In Nazi Germany, Jews weren’t considered people. A group who DID consider them people tried to protect them. That is how pro-lifers consider themselves: protectors of the lives of people (babies) who cannot protect themselves. That’s why we call ourselves pro-life, rather than “anti choice”. We wish that protecting a baby’s life did not interfere with the rights of the mother, but because biology says it does, we have to make a decision. We have chosen to value the life of a baby more than a mother’s right to rid herself of the baby, and we aren’t ashamed of that.
You’ve created a straw man here yourself. There is no case I can think of when an eleven-year-old would not be at high risk from a pregnancy, so no, I would not support denying an abortion to one, ever. But as age goes up and risk goes down, and if there is good reason to expect a healthy pregnancy, then yes, eventually we would insist on protecting the child, just as we would protect a born child from a living mother who wanted to kill it.
If the baby/fetus is alive, then the logic that we use to try to prevent abortions on healthy adults applies to healthy rape victims, yes. We don’t see it as forcing someone to give birth. We see it as protecting a baby. Just like with the slavery analogy: We don’t see it as forcing people to give up slaves, but as protecting the slaves. It’s much more painful when applied to an example of rape and incest, but the logic holds on healthy mothers: If you can’t kill a baby after it’s born because its mother was raped, why would you be able to kill an unborn baby because its mother was raped? You say, because not doing so makes the mother a human incubator. We say, the good of protecting the child outweighs the bad of her having to carry it.
What’s with the sudden amount of anti-choicers and MRAs logging on this weekend?
Anyway…
“The fact that the pregnancy stemmed from rape was not taken into account by the panel, for two reasons: one, because rape has not been proven; and two, because the penal code does not allow for any exceptions,” Todosiciuc said.
…rape has not been proven? What the eleven year-old girl made the decision to get it on with her uncle? What color is the sky in their world? Why is the uncle fleeing if she wasn’t raped?
And after skimming some of the comments, man I really need a drink.
Yes, it is HUMAN. That doesn’t make it a PERSON worthy of rights. Quibble away, it doesn’t erase the larger point.
Fine: you’d support forcing a 14-year-old rape victim to give birth. Huge difference there. No, I’m not okay with it, and no, I’m not going to change the language around it. You support forcing a child to give birth to her rapist’s baby. It’s a horrible, infuriating thing to do.
Um, no, it was forcing people to give up their slaves. What is wrong with saying that? Nothing. It’s the truth, and it’s a positive truth. Call it what it is. Abortion is killing a fetus. Outlawing abortion is forcing women to give birth. I can deal with what abortion is, so you’ve got to fucking deal with what your belief system is, too. I agree that there is no difference between a fetus that is conceived by consensual sex or by rape — that’s why I support full abortion rights for everyone. So at least you’re consistent. Congratulations. I still find your views repugnant.
I’m guessing that it’s really fucking easy to say that the “child’s” life outweighs the rights of the woman being forced to give birth when you’re not the pregnant woman. Or the pregnant CHILD. Or the pregnant RAPE VICTIM.
I can’t even type anymore, because I’m literally shaking with fury. I don’t know why this shit is getting to me today when I see it all the time, but it is. I’m officially ignoring this thread before I burst into tears at the stress of someone arguing that a five-week-old embryo is worth more than a full grown woman who would rather kill herself with a clothes hanger in her uterus than give birth to a would-be baby.
C.Sykes, your description of IVF is a little…uh…off, but whatever.
For the record, anti-choice nimrods hate fertility clinics, too. Trust me. They yammer on and on about the poor frozen baybees (Google Snowflake Adoption) and the sanctity of life and how creating a child without fucking (pardon, ‘outside the sacred physical whatever of marriage’ or somesuch) is tearing apart the very fabric of society, OMG! So, although they’re hypocritical about many things, and most days I’d like the lot of them to sit on a flaming cactus, you have to give them consistancy points on ART, I guess.
Aaaaaaaaand we have Godwin.
Mary, this article in the British Medical Journal suggests that we have already reached the limits of viability and that it is simply not possible to save neonates under the age of 23 weeks. They compared data collected in 1995-99 to data collected in 2005. From the article:
Conclusions: Survival of infants born at 24 and 25 weeks of gestation has significantly increased. Although over half the cohort of infants born at 23 weeks was admitted to neonatal intensive care, there was no improvement in survival at this gestation. Care for infants born at 22 weeks remained unsuccessful.
WHAT THE FUCK? So… basically in a few years, men can just jack into test tubes that have at least one egg in them and we should just let the “babies” grow
I hate that quote button.
So while Mary is busy arguing semantics (“you can’t say it’s ‘living’, if you use the word ‘living’ then it’s a ‘living organism’ and that means ‘a person’” – yes, sure) and making statements about not being ashamed of chosing “the life of a fetus more than a mother’s right to rid herself of the fetus” and somehow comparing this with social justice movements… there’s an 11 year old girl who is being forced to give birth on top of her rape and incest ordeal, precisely because of the logical outcome of an attitude like Mary’s which privileges choosing the life of a baby over the mother’s rights as a matter of principle!
I don’t really care if Mary thinks that in this case an abortion should be performed (because what Mary thinks is not really all that important in the greater scheme of things) – the point is, following the same kind of arguments that Mary is making, in a country where abortion laws are not even draconian at all (anymore), a team of “specialists” gets to decide that a little girl should be forced to have a baby. They have decided this. Why? Because they can. Because when they’re allowed to care more, as a matter of principle, about the “baby” she’s carrying than about her circumstances and her life, it’s “logical” that she should suck it up and carry the baby. The problem is, the decision is allowed to belong to people who are not directly involved in the situation, who are placed in a position of authority and get to make the calls. This is what happens… But of course it’s people like Mary who struggle against totalitarianism.
By the way, if you check the report, the decision was made precisely because it was ultimately determined by a team of doctors that there will be no harm whatsoever to the little girl if she carries the pregnancy to term and gives birth. How these doctors have decided this is a mystery (and there are dissenting voices), but they have, and that’s why the decision stands. Moreover, within the limits of the law the question of whether the pregnancy endangers the mother doesn’t involve psychological and other issues which would apply in the circumstances of this case (I guess that makes things complicated when you don’t want to think about the mother). And this is what “pro life” ethics really mean.
Lol, that wasn’t what I was advocating. My point was that “life begins at the point when a baby can survive outside the womb” isn’t a good standard of measurement because science keeps changing that point.
Shove your head way into the sand all you want, but you know you’re still forcing someone to give birth against her will. Just face it for the sake of intellectual honesty, and move on.
What a self-righteous and B.S. false analogy. It is interesting that you’d bring up slavery, though, since forced pregnancies (after rape by whites) were popular in that era too.
Do you respect the rights of all organisms to live? How about viruses? How about spirochetes? Why does a human younger than nine months (in utero) have rights beyond these, and beyond those of an 11-year-old girl, whose life is effectively–if not literally, though it’s a possibility given the dangers of childbirth–over once she has that baby? What a weird moral calculus.
That’s where the whole “pro-life” thing goes to pieces, because you don’t really value the right to life of a baby more than the right of a woman “to rid herself of a baby.” You value the right to life of a baby more than the right of the life of a woman. You aren’t “pro-life,” you are pro-certain-lives. An 11-year-old incest and rape victim who is forced to give birth loses her life. Maybe she dies in childbirth; maybe she just suffers for the rest of her life–mentally, physically, socially- from the trauma. But without a miracle, there is not much left for her. You picked one human– an unborn you consider more innocent– over a little girl that you consider more guilty, tainted, less valuable. You decided one was more valuable and deserved life, and the other not.
Why is the pro-choice stance more ethical, seeing as death is also allowed? Because individuals get to make that horrible moral calculus, not third party strangers who value the unborn inherently because of some perceived innocence over non-virgin women.
In your opinion. Some of us think all humans are people.
BTW, we’re not necessarily talking about a five-week-old embryo. We could be talking about a three-month, four month, six month, eight-and-a-half month, embryo. At what point will you stop mincing your words and call the fetus/embryo a baby?
I can see I’m in the minority here at Feministe. Yes, f., many things are decided “as a matter of principle,” though I don’t think I used those words. Objective principles govern many aspects of society, such as age of consent, speed limits, and…pretty much all laws. Noting that a child has been the victim of a tragedy and wishing, subjectively, that her baby is not a human life that can be saved doesn’t make it true. Principles in fact exist so that during the toughest times of life, we can use them to make difficult decisions. What do you want me to say? Unborn babies are alive as long as they’re wanted and loved, and their mother is over the age of x, and the father’s a good guy, that the family has x amount of money to support it? That can’t possibly be true. If you can adjust your principles in order to do whatever you want, whenever, they’re not principles. A life is a life, or it’s not. And if it is a human life, shouldn’t it have at least *some* rights to protection?
And sorry about saying what I think, f. I just *thought* that this was an opinion comment board, and that the only person whose opinion I know for sure is my own. And I *thought* I supported my arguments calmly and respectfully, unlike some people who feel the need to support their arguments by using the word “fucking” as an adjective (not you).
If your point is that I’m being too logical while this poor kid is suffering, I don’t know what to tell you. I’ve done a lot of research on this subject and I’ve been convinced that a three-month-old embryo is a human life worthy of protection. You can throw at me a picture of this poor girl crying, but I can’t throw at you a picture of the baby as it gets scrambled, or show you the love it might have found, the children it might have had, the friendships it might have made, the husband it will never meet, the art it will never produce, the joy it might have pursued. I feel emotion for that loss too. And in the conflict between the loss of one and the loss of the other, logic is all I can rely on.
The argument that because it is a separate, living, human organism we must treat it as a person is flawed.
I can go to the store, buy a dozen eggs, then destroy them however I see fit and for whatever purpose.
On the other hand, I couldn’t just go buy some chickens and mutilate them for fun without running afowl of the law.
The law recognizes the difference between an egg and a chicken. I don’t see what’s so difficult about telling the dif between an egg and a person.
As for a more developed specimen, this thread shows the difficulty of reaching some sort of agreement which would satisfy everyone – which is why I say leave it up to woman (or unfortunately in this and other cases, the child) involved.
BTW, is there any way a fund or something could be setup to pay for the family to take a trip a country with less onerous restrictions?
Of course you’re saying what you think. But you’re mistaken, my point wasn’t at all that you were too “logical” (I personally find a reliance on juggling semantics one of the poorest type of arguments around). My major point is that the logical outcome of your arguments are totalitarian attitudes and measures. (This is usually because the motivation is totalitarian tendencies to control other people’s freedoms.) I didn’t mean at all that we shouldn’t decide things as a matter of principle. I was criticizing precisely your specific “logical” decision to chose the life of a fetus over the mother’s rights “as a matter of principle” (meaning: apriori, anytime, independent of circumstances, starting with conception, or what else have you on the “pro life” side). It’s not logical, it’s absurd. And it’s literally telling women that their lives don’t matter when put in balance – so of course people get mad! Try talking this way to women in Romania who had to go through years of draconian control over their reproductive lives – no access to contraception, imposed natality goals, pregnancy check-ups in the work place, etc. – and for whom getting an abortion meant endangering their freedom and their lives, and they still did it when it was necessary; I think you’ll be glad to get an “f-you”! I can’t know and because I don’t know you I don’t care what motivates you, personally, if it’s totalitarian tendencies or whatever. But I can comment on what your “logic” leads to, how it’s illustrated by this specific case. I could also go into your whole picture of the potential perfect life of an aborted fetus and how if we’re talking about “potential” and “logic,” in fact forcing a girl/woman to give birth will most likely lead to the opposite of a perfect life for the not-so-potential baby, but I’m not really going to bother.
How about when the umbilical cord is cut and/or placenta is detached from Uterus?
I’ve been following this discussion since it started and you, Mary, come across as insensitive, unsympathetic, self-righteous and intellectually dishonest.
Cara did not, by any stretch of the imagination, imply that “not all humans are people”. The point is that not all human tissues are people, much less with rights that override those of the actual people said tissues are attached to. And I think you know that.
Despite the fact that Cara has expressed having a very strong emotional response to your apparent indifference to this tragic (and that’s an understatement) situation, you have responded with more of the same, only this time insinuating that she doesn’t consider all humans to be people. That’s pretty fucking twisted from where I sit.
But I can’t say I’m surprised by your complete lack of compassion. After all, you haven’t been able to muster a single shred of compassion for a and eleven-year-old pregnant rape victim. And don’t give me your I agreed thispregnancy should be terminated bullshit; the way you’ve made your case for that doesn’t come across as compassionate to me at all.
Now go an and post some more of your passive-aggressive, holier-than-thou crap, this time with my name on it. But do so knowing that I won’t be wasting another another minute of my time addressing you.
To Cara (if she’s even reading this): Sorry to butt in. I know you’re perfectly capable of speaking for yourself. I just had to get this off my chest, otherwise I wasn’t going to sleep tonight.
Mary.
Did you seriously just compare fetuses to Jewish people in the Holocaust and pro-life people to those who saved those Jewish people? And then, by proxy, compare pro-choice people to Nazis? Did you?
If you did I swear to the Invisible Pink Unicorn that I am not going to consider anything you say on this thread seriously-because that is fatally flawed logic, and offensive to boot.
Crap-not good a quoting! See comment # 47, which is what I’m responding to.
F., several points.
You’re saying I was arguing semantics because I think a baby is alive, and a skin cell isn’t. That was in answer to Cara’s objection that a skin cell is alive. I think it was a legitimate distinction to make.
Not all laws are totalitarian. Some are necessary. You wouldn’t say it’s totalitarian for me to tell you not to beat your child to death, would you? Even though it’s your kid? I don’t think laws protecting the unborn are totalitarian, any more than it would be an invasion of privacy to keep you from killing your kid in your own house.
It’s pretty clear to me that the draconian laws in Romania were intended to increase the population, not to protect the unborn. They were the result of crazy despots who used terrible methods to achieve terrible goals. I don’t think their system reflects the natural end result of my goals.
LadyTess…if you don’t think a nine-month fetus is really a baby, I don’t know what to tell you. I don’t know what thought process could lead you to think that three inches of birth canal is the defining factor that separates a parasitic alien without rights from a human baby.
You’re absolutely right, and nobody has argued with you. “Unborn babies,” aka zygotes/embryos/fetuses, are alive no matter what the circumstances of their parents. The question is whether that has any bearing on the right of a person not to be used as a walking life support system against her will. The answer is, it doesn’t.
This is so incredibly callous.
See, I feel emotion for the little girl who was violently assaulted by someone she was supposed to be able to trust, had her innocence and dignity brutally taken from her, and now is being legally compelled to give birth to her rapist’s baby by a panel of remote men who not only have no concept of what it’s like to be a raped, pregnant little girl, but who apparently believe she had it coming. I feel emotion for the childhood this little girl will no longer have, the things she could accomplish if she wasn’t being forced into motherhood in fifth grade, the friendships she had which will be forever changed now that’s she’s a pregnant rape victim, the love she could find if rape and molestation hadn’t destroyed her trust and confidence and messed up her concept of sexuality, the joy she might have pursued if she was allowed to be a normal little girl. The fetus means nothing. It has no emotions, no relationships, no CONSCIOUSNESS. I simply boggle at your position. It nauseates me.
I’d have my values that way round even if I did consider a foetus a person. Because this:
… is back to front. Forcing a woman to continue a pregnancy amounts to saying that her body belongs more to the foetus – or to you – than it does to her. And that is the slavery equivalent here.
omfg mary, you didnt just compare a fucking cluster of cells to a holocaust victim. you lose, and you kno who im pretty sure would disagree with you, dr. henry morgentaler, the man responsible for the legalization of abortion in canada, a man who is also an auschwitz survivor. im pretty damn certain he sees no comparison at all between the two. im pretty sure anyone who’s ancestors were slaves thinks your an asshole too.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Morgentaler
Mary, kindly get a clue. No one here, NO ONE, is arguing for the right of a woman to abort an eight-month fetus. It happens, but usually because the woman’s life is in danger, or the fetus wouldn’t survive outside the womb anyway, or is already dead. And those sorts of abortions are already outlawed across the country for all but cases involving the health and life of the mother. Please put that strawman away.
Two other points: First, beginning of life issues, like abortion, is a lot like end of life issues. Science can tell a lot about what happens when, but it cannot tell us when what makes a person a person either enters or departs a being. Do you really want laws forcing you, or your family, to keep a beloved relative (or even you, yourself) on a respirator, or feeding tube, or more extreme forms of life support? Do you really want the State to make those difficult end-of-life decisions for you and your family? Then why in the seven hells would you want the State to make those same sorts of philosophical decisions for women regarding the beginning of life?
Second, no one has a right to use your body for any purpose against your will, even after death. (Okay, family members sometimes get to decide that, but there is still consent of concerned parties involved.) Do you want to compel organ donation? How about blood donation? Or kidney donations, or bone marrow? After all, lives are being lost right this second because of a lack of donor organs. If you are unwilling to compel kidney donations, which take a couple hours of surgery and result in a life saved, how can you possibly justify forcing a woman to nine months of, essentially, organ donation?
The reasons I am no longer like Mary (I once was) are:
1. First, conception from personhood makes no scientific senses. None. A week old embryo is not a baby. It has no brain, or consciousness, and granting it full human rights is a religious, not a valid legal, idea. Period. Also, the vast, vast majority of abortions that are sought occur in the period before a fetus reaches the stage where you could make any argument that it might have a valid scientific claim to be called a person. In addition, “pro-lifers” inability to understand this has resulted in more ethicially difficult late term abortions, not less, as they impose waiting periods and seek to reduce access to contraception and very early term, safer abortions such as RU-486.
2. No matter how justified it may seem, you cannot force a woman to take the risks of gestation and childbirth against her will without robbing her of her full human rights. This is a de facto injustice; the same as forcing a parent to donate their kidney to their ailing child. Morally, it can seem right, but the consequences are that you have saved one being at the expense of another being, one who has a primary claim to their own body. You may condemn a parent who chooses not to sacrifice their body in this way…that’s your right…but you cannot, in a truly free society, force them to sacrifice themselves by the law. Or it ceases to be a free society.
3. Abortion bans do not work. They never work, they never have, and they cause a great deal more death of fetuses and women than free access to abortions, especially if combined with free/easy access to contraception and good sex education, along with increased equality for poor women, those most likely to see unexpected pregnancy as a catastrophe. In other words, if prolifers were truly interested in reducing abortion….they’d be prochoice liberals. They’d be pushing for daycare subsidies and flexible parenting work hours and paid parental leave and all of the things that would make having an unexpected child bearable for all. But they don’t. Why is that, Mary? Is it because you want those sluts to suffer, even if their kids do too?
I want fewer abortions; I want fewer women to need them. That’s why I”m pro choice and liberal, and proud of it.
Hello, I am a troll. NONE SHALL PASS my bridge of unassailable logic.
(Really, we’re having this fecking argument on a thread about an 11 year old rape and incest victim? Compassionate conservatism eh).
if anybody has ideas and wants to do something about this, please contact us.
Raise money to fly the girl and her parents somewhere where it’s legal for her to have an abortion. Romania’s part of the EU so it’s illegal for the country’s government to prevent them leaving the country.
Mary: You wouldn’t say it’s totalitarian for me to tell you not to beat your child to death, would you? Even though it’s your kid?
You know, Mary, it’s more that slightly bizarre that in a thread where you are arguing that it’s only right for an 11-year-old child to be forced through pregnancy and childbirth against her will, after she’d been raped by her uncle, you think you can claim to be taking a stand against child abuse. You’re arguing for child abuse, Mary.
“Some of us think all humans are people.”
And some of us think you’re a prat, with about as much empathy as the pair of socks I’m wearing.
“Prat.” “Get a clue.” “Is it because you want those sluts to suffer?” “NO ONE, is arguing for the right of a woman to abort an eight-month fetus” (see LadyTess who, at 62, said it’s not a baby until the umbilical cord is cut, and furthermore, every ‘parasite’ argument taken to its natural conclusion applies until the pregnancy ends) and finally “asshole.”
There were some good points in these posts that I would have been happy to answer. I was even all excited and ready to write emjaybee the whole political conservative v. liberal re: abortion answer, until the very end when she accused me of wanting sluts to suffer.
But now I’m out. I’ll argue with you all day, but I won’t listen to name calling or hostility. No matter how wrong you think I am, you should keep it civil. If your point is stronger, trust it to win without the shouting.
Mary: No matter how wrong you think I am, you should keep it civil.
Oh, sweetheart. You’ve been accusing the commenters here of promoting child abuse, with the added irony that you yourself are advocating forced pregnancy for little girls. And you think you’re being “civil”? Honeyheart, you are easily the rudest person on this thread.
If there was a fund I would be happy to donate money to save the child’s life, which is exactly what abortion will do in this case.
I love how every time we get a new pro-lifer on here s/he thinks that s/he will gently inform of us his/her “other opinion” and “inform” us of his/her “science”. Except they are very similar: they have underlying beliefs that sex is immoral, that bundles of cells are people, and that everyone else should live in the alternate universe they live in. Then they get frustrated when we don’t gently turn over to their alternate universe and post on their own blogs about how awful we are.
The thing is, it’s hard for normally-thinking people to understand why a bundle of cells is more important than an existing person who is in major distress and needs medical attention (i.e. the removal of rapists sperm cells). It is quite obvious that a bundle of cells is less important than a person. If you’re advocating for 11 year old girls to be forced into pregnancy then yes, we’re going to get frustrated and call you names. Which makes sense, because you’re advocating for something horrific and appalling.
Funny how people tend to quit when they’re losing an argument.
Yep. Even funnier when they blame their opponents for their quitting and simultaneously take one last shot on the way out. You know… everyone here is so nasty, mean and hateful and I’m too good to stay a minute longer in this slum, kind of thing.
Sorry… the holier-than-though crap pushes my buttons every time. Probably a result of being raised by religious fundamentalists. Oh well… I guess the damage could have been worse.
It seems to me that the arguments being offered here for allowing the girl to have an abortion could also be used to show that a girl in similar circumstances that was more advanced in the pregnancy should be allowed to have a very late term abortion–say at 36 weeks. Are you all ok with such a late term abortion in cases like this?
Which arguments, Chad? That claim has already been made and refuted.
At the risk of speaking for everybody on this thread, I think we all would say that the decision to have an abortion resides with the pregnant individual throughout every stage of pregnancy.
If such a person were to terminate a pregnancy at 36 weeks, that is unfortunate and probably not a decision that I would make unless my life or that of the fetus was in danger. However, until such time as I am a pregnant 11 year old rape victim, I really have no ground to stand on- I cannot fathom what she must be going through and I hope she heals from this.
The bottom line is that I am not in control of someone else’s reproductive decisions and I certainly do not want anybody besides myself and my chosen to be in charge of mine. This is why I’m pro-choice.
Oops, sorry–I didn’t read the whole thread before I posted. I had in mind the argument that the psychological well-being of the girl should always be the main concern.
Damn. Don’t you have any reading comprehension? You asked when we consider the fetus to be a baby. I told you I consider it (not everyone shares this opinion) when it is wholly seperated from the mother. I did not say that you could terminate up until you cut the umbilical cord. Its like Karianna A. in post #71 said noone here is advocating termiation at 8-9months, they only happen when death has taken place or is going to happen.
The anti-choice argument turns a woman into an incubator. There is no way around that, once you take it to its logical conclusion. Once you start down the path of “protecting life” (one kind of life, anyway, the life of the woman is never considered – some lives are more equal than others, as we know) you might as well go ahead and ban pregnant women from leaving their house. I mean, some of that stuff out in that street might be potentially dangerous to the life inside them. Why did the shameless hussy cross the road? Why so she could get hit by a truck and kill her foetus.
It is what it is.
And Mary – you have some nerve calling people on this site rude. Comparing Holocaust survivors and slaves to embryos is beyond offensive. Hey, millions of women are enslaved by traffickers around the world today. Many of them are impregnated by their so-called clients. Guess we all know where your sympathies would lie in that situation, you liberator, you.
You assume that we wouldn’t feel the same way if men could get pregnant. Personally, I would.
Don’t laugh. The late William Rehnquist, former Chief Justice of the United States (and the intellectual mentor to such luminaries as Scalia and Thomas), once used that exact argument to justify a health insurance company refusing to pay for pregnancy and childbirth expenses.
It’s really depressing to see how right-wing lunacy has become the norm.
Chad you’ve never been pregnant, have you? At 36 weeks it would be far easier (and most likely safer for the woman) to induce labor or do a C-section than to do a D&C. Every time I hear a faux-lifer make this argument I want to pull my hair out. The argument implies that doctors are so hell-bent on performing abortions that they would put the woman’s life at risk with what would be a very risky and complicated procedure.
How the fuck would you know? You can’t get pregnant. It quite likely won’t be an option in your lifetime, let alone something that can happen to you by chance. You have no idea how you’d react in the event of an unwanted pregnancy, or how that possibility would change your perspective.
This is a point that always comes up that the “pro-life” people always refuse to acknowledge. They are deciding that one life — that of the fetus — is more important than another life — that of the mother. They try to go around and around and pretend the mother doesn’t even exist so they can talk about how they’re only interested in “protecting life,” but that’s what it boils down to: “pro-life” people think that fetuses are more important than born people.
Just once, can’t we get a “pro-life” person willing to admit that, yes, they do consider the life of the fetus more valuable than that of the mother? Because that’s the only way you can look at two supposedly equally valued lives and decide that one should automatically take precedence over the other.
Would you be against abortions if foetuses (foetii?) were purple-skinned, pink-spotted flying monkeys from the planet Thrae?
What do you mean that’s not even slightly relevant?
Some us even think women are.
1. Nobody has to choose between the 11 year old and the unborn baby.
2. The unborn child is a human child…it’s just an issue of level of development.
3. That the child can’t survive without care (just like a postbirth baby) does’nt make it less a human life.
4. that the unborn child has it’s own DNA shows us all that it is not ‘part of the mom’s body’.
5. There has been no issue that the life of the mother would be at risk by giving birth.
6. having an 11 year old girl carry a baby to term and give birth is not ‘torture’.
7. ‘unsustainable overpopulation’ is more a myth than fact…more at issue is distribution (of food, resources, etc.). There are plenty of high density societies that have high levels of prosperity (Hong Kong, Japan, etc.).
8. Abortion is not about control of a woman’s body, since the abortion attacks the unborn child’s body, not the woman’s.
9. no one is advocating that every sex act be procreative…look at our cycles…that alone tells you that our bodies are not designed to conceive with every sex act! It also shows us that we have a built in system to avoid pregnancy if needed.
10. No one said that the girl has to bear a child because she was at fault!! She was raped. No one is saying that women have to bear kids to be punished…..I’m saying that human life is the pinnacle of our existance and to abort for reasons other than the life of the mom being in jeapardy is wrong.
11. People are outraged here in Houston because a highschool girl went into labor and gave birth in a school bathroom and then flushed the child down the commode…killing it. How can we be outraged at this when our society fosters such disregard for human life with abortion?? This is the result of an abortive mentality.
12. When we decide to kill babies or other humans to avoid the cost of their care, we are lost, like we are now. We do not hold human life in the regard that we should. We must find alternatives to abortion. In the US and many other developed countries, there are plenty of people who will adopt this so-called ‘unwanted life’. There IS support for women who are pregnant and do not want their babies, so don’t use that as an excuse for abortion.
13. The unborn baby’s life is NOT more important than the mother’s life…both are of value, so both need life. The 11 year old will not die if she gives birth! With no consensus on her life being at risk, name ONE good reason why the baby must die.
14. Sex is not immoral…it is the way that we procreate…how could we think it’s immoral?? It is one of the greatest gifts you can give your spouse. NOW…sex outside of marriage?? Yes, that is immoral AND the source of so much misery in the world. If society expectation and policy will put sex back into the marriage box, a whole bunch of the world’s problems go away…that is the ideal and the one that we should strive for, not default into the ’sex outside of marriage will happen’ mode that society accepts (in it’s movies, song lyrics, govt policy, school education, magazine articles, parental teaching, family expectations, etc).
15. An unborn baby is not ‘just a ‘bunch of cells’…..those cells have DNA in them that determine it to develop into a full grown person…unlike, a bunch of cells that have the mother’s DNA in them that will develop into, say, a wart, a stomach lining, etc…..DON’T COMPARE THOSE CELLS WITH A MOM’S BUNCH OF CELLS…WE ARE TALKING ABOUT 2 DIFFERENT GROUPS OF CELLS WITH MUCH DIFFERENT DESTINY’S, SO DROP THAT SILLY LINE.
Ah yes, Rehnquist. When I first started law school, a more senior classmate described him as Justice Hide-the-Ball. She was so right.
It’s tedious to see faux-lifers like Diane either lie about the process of childbirth and pregnancy, or display how completely ignorant they are–as if they really thought the stork delivered the little darlings. EVERY pregnant woman is at some risk of injury and death from childbirth. To pretend that an eleven-year-old child isn’t, is the clearest example you can imagine of the faux-lifer believe that life begins at conception and ends at birth.
And, speaking as the mother of an eleven-year-old child, I cannot imagine pretending that gestating and birthing a child would have no effect at all on her health.
Being prolife does not mean I should support paid parental leave, free day care, flexible hours at work, etc. If we have kids, we need to take care of them and the govt doesn’t need to subsidize that task….it’s our job as parents to have the kids we can take care of.
2. The unborn child is a human child…it’s just an issue of level of development.
5. There has been no issue that the life of the mother would be at risk by giving birth.
6. having an 11 year old girl carry a baby to term and give birth is not ‘torture’.
Thanks Diane for proving my point that pro-lifers live in a parallel universe. Even at only a couple of weeks, a fertilized egg is already “a child”. Not in this universe.
In Diane’s world, an 11 year old’s life would not be at risk after becoming pregnant. Because you know, a woman who has just begun puberty can carry a healthy pregnancy. Also, being forced to incubate a rapist’s sperm, being retraumatized every day, not being able to play and socialize like a normal 11 year old is not torture. It’s fun! If that’s not torture in Diane’s world, I’d hate to see what is! You really can’t get much torturous than that.
IT’S NOT A BABY, that’s why. You’re calling a potential human life the same thing as a born infant. There is a HUGE DIFFERENCE, even if you can’t see it.
Moreover, you fail to consider that even if this CHILD is able to carry to term and give birth, that this pregnancy may damage her health, even her ability to later conceive and carry to term other children. To say nothing of the fact that an 11 year old is being forced into motherhood due to a rape. Tell me, Diane, how would you feel if it were you? Would you be joyous and happy? Doubtful!
But none of that matters to you. All that matters to you is that this 11 year old incubator is pregnant and the “baby” must live. The “baby’s” life (even though it is unable to survive at this point outside of the uterus) counts more than the 11 year old who is being forced to carry it to term.
Frankly, in the moral calculus of what should happen here, your calculations FLUNK. You FAIL. Let’s just be brutally honest here: You are in favor of forced birth, and you’ll say anything, do anything, to keep this girl pregnant, because you worship the fetus over the born life. Sick.
1. There is no medical evidence that states that childbirth endangers an 11 year old’s life, much less, this particular girl’s life.
2. A fertilized egg is not potential human life, it is human and it is alive…it is human life. If the ‘thing’ in the girl’s uterus is not a baby or a being, than the girl is not pregnant. The creation of separate DNA at conception marks this ‘thing’ as human life.
3. Pregnancy and childbirth may not be fun for anyone, but it’s discomforts and fact that it is not a ‘joyous experience’ are not reason enough to kill the unborn child…you all have a very loose definition of ‘torture’. If a doctor says that the mom’s life is in danger, that’s a different story. That is not the case here.
4. Forced birth is far better than killing babies.
5. If all of you are concerned about the life of the mom, I guess in most abortions, your objections would be gone, since most do not involve life threatening situations for the mother….right???
???
It’s certainly human, but if you really think there’s no difference between a two-celled organism and first grader, I’m not the one with no respect for children.
That the fetus can’t survive without being inside its host and diverting her bodily resources to itself makes it subject to the decisions of that host. A tapeworm doesn’t have any right to live in my ass, eat my food, and make me sick. The fact that it can’t survive without me is not my problem. Such is the tough life of a parasitic organism. There is a huge difference between being inside somebody and surviving off that particular person’s (and ONLY that particular person–no one else can sustain your life) blood and organs, and needing a diaper change and a bottle.
I really don’t care if Joe Pesci himself crawled into my uterus and made himself at home there. The issue is whether anyone has the “right” to exist at the expense of an unwilling host’s bodily resources. There is no such right–otherwise, hand over your liver under penalty of law, Diane; somewhere, an alcoholic is dying!
No, just her health, sanity, dignity, agency and human rights. No biggie.
You are a horrible person. “Having” anyone carry a pregnancy to term and give birth is a horrific violation of their most basic rights. “Having” a raped child do it is downright sociopathic.
Completely irrelevant. I don’t care if there were five people left on the earth; nobody can take away a person’s right to control their own damn organs.
Apparently you’re unclear on this argument. Abortion (when freely chosen, obviously) IS about controlling one’s body and life. The pregnant woman is deciding how her reproductive organs will be used, and in the case of abortion, she is deciding that she does not want them sustaining a pregnancy. The Z/E/F is incidental.
Obviously no one can guarantee that every sex act be procreative, but anti-choice literature is extremely natalist and clearly regards sex as an unpleasant but necessary means to an end (BABEEZ!!!!). Sex for fun, sex outside of marriage, and sex (even within marriage) that isn’t “open to life” (aka sex with contraception or just sex which one or both of the parties actively hope doesn’t result in pregnancy) whose intent is not to create BABEEZ!!! is condemned. Not to mention homosexuality, a surefire way to prevent abortion. See Catholic doctrine for more info.
The committee who decided this ELEVEN YEAR OLD could not have an abortion said that “rape had not been proven.” Thus, they think maybe she had this pregnancy coming as a result of her own choices. Maybe you don’t really think that women have to bear kids to be punished, but that is indeed the result of anti-choice policies: women are effectively punished with a potentially dangerous medical condition and a lifetime of responsibilities for engaging in intercourse.
That’s terrible. That pregnancy was presumably accidental, and the girl had not told anyone she was pregnant. Apparently this young woman was the second Houston teenager to secretly deliver a baby in a WEEK. Clearly there’s a problem. The whole sad situation seems to me to be less the result of “an abortive mentality” and more the result of inadequate, abstinence-focused sex education, a sex-phobic culture, and a poor parent-child relationship. Many girls who grow up in such an environment have little information about or access to appropriate birth control methods, and due to the abstinence-only curricula and a sex-phobic culture, believe that if they use contraception they’re a slut, since it proves they were thinking about sex and planned to have it. If this girl had had parents whom she could trust to support her in such a difficult situation (which she obviously didn’t, since she thought giving birth in secret and flushing a baby down the toilet was better than saying to her parents, “I’m pregnant”), perhaps she wouldn’t have felt that was her only option, her infant wouldn’t have been drowned in a toilet bowl, and the poor thing wouldn’t be facing a murder charge at fourteen.
Adoption is an alternative to parenting, not to pregnancy.
How about, because the girl its living off of doesn’t want to be pregnant and give birth and, I might add, has a damn good reason? That’s good enough for me.
“Sex is not immoral…it is the way that we procreate…how could we think it’s immoral?? It is one of the greatest gifts you can give your spouse. NOW…sex outside of marriage?? Yes, that is immoral AND the source of so much misery in the world. If society expectation and policy will put sex back into the marriage box, a whole bunch of the world’s problems go away…that is the ideal and the one that we should strive for, not default into the ’sex outside of marriage will happen’ mode that society accepts”
Omg Diane you are so much fun. In one breath, you say “how could we think it(sex)’s immoral?” and in the next, you say “yes, sex outside of marriage is immoral.” Yeah, so, it is immoral to rub one’s body in a pleasurable way, unless you have signed a contract saying you are permanently attached to another person, then it’s ok to rub their body. These people who think it’s still the fifties amaze me. It’s like looking back at my parents’ childhood! Marriage is an institution to make women the property of men and do unpaid labor for them. Sex is when a man penetrates a woman, with or without her consent, without regard to her sexual pleasure, for the purpose of creating new workers to help on the farm and take care of parents in their old age. Oh, wait, this isn’t true anymore. It used to be true, but then a whole century happened! Oops, Diane missed the memo!
In Diane’s world, the source of the world’s problems is that people have sex for pleasure. Yep, kids, you got it, the cause of uneven distribution of wealth, war, genocide, depletion of resources, human rights violations, these are caused by what we do privately in the bedroom! Oh, wait, they aren’t…… but it’s convenient for Diane to think so, because it makes her scary pro-force views sound better. Oh wait, they don’t, they just make her look like an idiot.
Let’s not accept that “sex outside of marriage” happens, because we would want to accept reality, we should rather accept fantasy! So we pretend that everyone wants to get married, that everyone is heterosexual, that no one chooses not to marry, that no one gets divorced, because that way…. well actually I don’t know what we would gain by accepting that. Personally, I like to just believe the truth.
15. An unborn baby is not ‘just a ‘bunch of cells’…..those cells have DNA in them that determine it to develop into a full grown person…unlike, a bunch of cells that have the mother’s DNA in them that will develop into, say, a wart, a stomach lining, etc…..DON’T COMPARE THOSE CELLS WITH A MOM’S BUNCH OF CELLS…WE ARE TALKING ABOUT 2 DIFFERENT GROUPS OF CELLS WITH MUCH DIFFERENT DESTINY’S, SO DROP THAT SILLY LINE.
Yes, drop the silly line that a bunch of cells is a bunch of cells! Diane tells us that a bunch of cells is really….. well, actually, she says herself that they are cells! With DNA! Amazing! And because they are cells with DNA, we should give them more rights than a person! It would be silly not to!
Stay here, Diane. You’re more entertaining than tv.
AHAHAHA. Yeah, if only we had more repressive sexual mores, there would be no war or hunger or illness! Newsflash, Diane–people have been having sex outside of marriage since the concept of marriage originated. These halcyon days where man and wife had sex only with each other and there was no suffering in the world never existed.
So you say, “If we have kids.” Emphasis on the “if”–except with the policies you advocate, it would not be an “if,” as that would imply the people involved have a choice (CHOICE!! THAT EVIL WORD) in the matter. Your policies make children an inevitability, a “when.” “It’s our job as parents to have the kids we can take care of?” Yeah, no shit! That’s why a lot of women have abortions! From the Guttmacher Institute: “Three-fourths of women cite concern for or responsibility to other individuals; three-fourths say they cannot afford a child; three-fourths say that having a baby would interfere with work, school or the ability to care for dependents.” Logically, if you want to reduce the number of abortions, you would provide resources to these women and SAVE A BABEE!!! But no. You support legally compelling people to have children they don’t want and may not be able to take care of, then say, “Fuck you, you’re on your own!” The only nourishment you think a child is entitled to is delivered through a placenta, the only shelter, a uterus. You think a rape victim should be legally compelled to give birth against her will, at great detriment to her physical and mental health, but god forbid one red cent of your tax money goes to feed that baby. That makes absolutely no sense, and is exactly what I would expect.
If someone were to give you nausea-inducing medication every day for weeks, we would call it torture.
If someone rapped you in the pelvic bone with a hammer every time you took a step for months, we would call it torture.
If someone gave you speed and then forbade you to get out of bed, we would call it torture.
If someone deliberately induced hours of involuntary muscle spasms, causing pain sufficient that you couldn’t speak or see straight, we would call it torture.
If someone strapped a forty-pound weight on your front that you couldn’t take off and forced you to wear it for months, we would call it torture.
The only reason these things (all common effects of pregnancy, there are rarer effects that are much worse) aren’t considered torture is because they are entered into voluntarily. Forced pregnancy is very much torture.
(The list for the interested. Morning sickness, Symphysis Pubis Dysfunction, standard treatment for otherwise uncomplicated preterm labor, normal labor, normal pregnancy weight gain)
I think Diane at #101 is an illustration in Epic Fail. She wants to prevent abortions, but apparently has no idea why women have them. Guess what? If I had “paid parental leave, free day care, flexible hours at work, etc”, I’d be far more likely to carry an unplanned pregnancy to term, ‘cuz my husband and I could afford it. And as per the Guttmacher study cited by Bridgetka above, most women have abortions because they cannot afford to raise a child.
I have to admit, the line about there being soooo many willing adoptive families for the hypothetical children of abortion made me laugh. Has Diane never actually heard of how many kids are languishing in foster care because of a lack of families willing to adopt them?
I have a feeling, though, that minor things like facts and women actually saying what they’d need to carry a pregnancy to term instead of getting an abortion won’t make a dent in Diane’s libertarian, forced-birth world view. Nothing says “Small Government” like making sure every female carries every possible pregnancy to term!
(Hey, didn’t they try that in Romania? Didn’t the orphanages full of neglected and abused children shock the Western world once Romania emerged from its communist government? Would even that make a difference to Diane?)
So, Diane, you do consider fetuses to be more important than born people, and couldn’t care less about them once they’re born. I’m glad there’s at least one honest “pro-life” person out there.
Isn’t it fascinating that Diane considers a fetus to be “baby,” but once it’s actually a baby, she couldn’t care less about it?
Not that I think anything will get through the cloud of babble surrounding “Diane”, but this is a useful example of how ignorant faux-lifers allow themselves to be.
We also have the very revealing blather about how the government shouldn’t pay for babies; never mind that government subsidies may enable women who would otherwise abort their babies to give birth.
Diane and Mary are possibly the stupidest fucking people I’ve ever had the misfortune of stumbling upon.
I wish they were aborted.
I am not kidding.
Abortion is population control pure and simple. Too many idiots have kids they can’t bother raising and those children are 90% more likely to grow up to be morons like their parents. It’s a never ending cycle. How much more overwhelmed and understaffed could child protective services possibly get?
When pro-lifers stop carrying on about fetuses and give two shits about kids the thousands upon thousands of children who are abused and neglected by their families and foster care system that’s pathetically insufficient, get back to me.
What about adoption, they say. What about all the kids who are out of the womb who desperately need loving homes and parents who actually take care of them? Why don’t you try helping them? I assure you, they need your help a lot fucking more.
Classic example of anti choice ignorance: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uk6t_tdOkwo
Really? Not to say that they are not killing babies, but a bunch of cells. And yes, forced birth makes everyone happy. What a fascist thinking, Diane!
First, I am NOT the Diane that wrote the above quote. I’m not arguing with myself, really. Second, not the DNA argument again! Unfertilized eggs don’t have the same DNA as the person carrying them. Menstration is murder! Cancer cells don’t have the same DNA as the person from which they formed. Chemotherapy is murder! On the other hand, monozygotic twins have the same DNA as each other. Killing your twin is ok. Chimeric people have different DNA in different parts of their bodies. Removing a diseased appendix is murder if it happens to be a chimeric part, but ok otherwise.
Is it clear yet that the DNA is not the point? Legally, human life ends with brain death. The first brain cells don’t even form until the 8th week. And taking a person with as much brain function as even a 3rd trimester fetus off of life support is considred entirely ethically acceptable. Tom DeLay did it to his father when he lost cortical function in an accident. It is extremely uncertain that a fetus has ANY frontal lobe function at any time prior to birth.
Finally, “its” doesn’t take an apostrophe unless it’s a contraction for “it is.” In contrast to most situations, the possessive “its” has no apostrophe. (Stupid grammar pet peeve.)
I wholeheartedly agree with that. That’s why abortion is the only way out for raped 5th-grader.
Um – I don’t get why everyone was so aggressive towards Mary. Yeah, I know that we can all get pretty defensive about this issue because usually most of the “pro-life” commenters on here are trolls. But Mary seemed to be pretty legit in wanting a conversation. I can understand that a lot of the things she said were annoying but the ad hominem attacks were pretty uncalled for…
(I’m completely pro-choice, btw)
if you really think there’s no difference between a two-celled organism and first grader, I’m not the one with no respect for children. I DIDN’T SAY THERE WASN’T A DIFFERENCE…I SAID THAT IT WAS AN ISSUE OF LEVEL OF DEVELPMENT…BOTH ARE HUMAN LIVES.
Such is the tough life of a parasitic organismANYONE WHO COMPARES AN UNBORN BABY WITH A PARASITE IS NOT REASONABLE. AN UNBORN BABY IS NOT A PARASITE BY ANY NORMAL PERSON’S DEFINITION, SO YOUR PARASITE ARGUEMENT IS LOST. BOTH UNBORN AND POST BORN BABIES MUST BE TAKEN CARE OF AND CAN’T SURVIVE ON THEIR OWN, SO THIS ARGUEMENT IS ALSO LOST. PEOPLE WHO DESCRIBE THE UNBORN AS PARASITES ARE UNHINGED, AT THE VERY LEAST. The issue is whether anyone has the “right” to exist at the expense of an unwilling host’s bodily resourcesTHE BABY DIDN’T DECIDE TO CRAWL INTO THE MOM’S UTERUS. THE MOMENT THE BABY WAS CONCEIVED, IT IS HUMAN LIFE…WITHOUT THE RIGHT TO EXIST, WE HAVE NO OTHER RIGHTS. NATURAL LAW DESIGNED OUR BODIES TO NOURISH LIFE WITHIN IT…IT IS AN ORGANIC FUNCTION OF A WOMAN’S BODY No, just her health, sanity, dignity, agency and human rightsTHERE HAS BEEN NO STATEMENT THAT HER HEALTH, SANITY OR DIGNITY ARE AT RISK…IF SHE MUST DEAL WITH EMOTIONAL DIFFICULTY BY GOING THRU A PREGNANCY, THAT ISSUE DOES NOT TRUMP THE UNBORN BABIES RIGHT TO CONTINUED LIFE. THERE IS NO EVIDENCE THAT THE MOM WILL NOT BE SO EMOTIONAL UPSET THAT SHE CAN’T RECOVER…TEACHING HER THAT KILLING THE UNBORN IS JUSTIFIABLE IS FAR WORSE FOR HER EMOTIONAL WELL BEING THAN HAVING HER CARRY THE BABY TO TERM.Abortion (when freely chosen, obviously) IS about controlling one’s body and life. A BABY’S RIGHT TO LIFE SUPERCEDES A WOMAN’S RIGHT TO NOT BE PREGNANT AND GO THRU CHILDBIRTH. See Catholic doctrine for more info.CATHOLIC DOCTRINE STATES THAT SEX HAS 2 PURPOSES AT THE SAME TIME:TO BE UNITIVE (FUN) AND OPEN TO LIFE (POSSIBLY PROCREATIVE) AND IF THERE IS SERIOUS REASON NOT TO BE OPEN TO LIFE, THEN AVOIDING PREGNANCY IS ACCEPTABLE, USING OUR BUILT-IN NONFERTILE/FERTILE CYCLE TO AVOID PREGNANCY. I DON’T KNOW WHY YOU THINK THAT CATHOLIC DOCTRINE STATES TAHT EACH SEX ACT MUST RESULT IN CONCEPTION….YOU DO NOT KNOW CATHOLIC DOCTRINE. CHECK OUT THE CATECHISM SOMETIME FOR CLARIFICATION. women are effectively punished with a potentially dangerous medical condition and a lifetime of responsibilities for engaging in intercourse.MOST PREGNANCIES DO NOT RESULT IN DANGEROUS MEDICAL CONDITIONS…THIS ONE WE ARE DISCUSSING INCLUDED….AND PUTTING UNWANTED KIDS UP FOR ADOPTION MEANS THEY DON’T HAVE TO TAKE CARE OF KIDS THEY DON’T WANT.more the result of inadequate, abstinence-focused sex education, a sex-phobic culture, and a poor parent-child relationship.OUR SOCIETY GLORIFIES SEX…I’D HARDLY CALL IT SEX-PHOBIC! ABSTINENCE EDUCATIONS IS SABOTAGED BY SOCIETY …ONCE WE DECIDE TO BACK IT UP WITH SEX FOR MARRIAGE MESSAGES IN PARENTING, MUSIC, MOVIES, SCHOOLS, ETC….IT WILL BE EFFECTIVE.BIRTH CONTROL MAKES SEX EASIER TO HAVE AND WILL ALWAYS INCREASE SEXUAL ACTIVITY AND PROMISCUITY RATHER THAN REDUCE PREGNANCIES…THAT’S WHY WE HAVE HIGH RATES OF TEEN PREGNANCY, AIDS, ETC AND ALL THE FREE CONTRACEPTION A SOCIETY WOULD WANT…ONLY ABSTINENCE EDUCATION WILL SOLVE THE PROBLEM, BUT IT MUST BE BACKED UP EVERYWHERE ELSE.Adoption is an alternative to parenting, not to pregnancy.TRUE, AND CARRYING A BABY TO TERM IS AN ALTERNATIVE TO KILLY BABIES.How about, because the girl its living off of doesn’t want to be pregnant and give birth and, I might add, has a damn good reason? That’s good enough for me.THE DESIRE NOT TO BE PREGNANT IS NOT A GOOD ENOUGH REASON TO KILL HUMAN LIFE.
To Bushfire: you are just someone who hates relationships, marriage, etc and is angry at the world for some reason… people have been having sex outside of marriage since the concept of marriage originated. NEWSFLASH FOR YOU….NO DUH! BUT NEVER BEFORE HAVE WE HAD PUBLIC SUPPORT FOR SUCH AND PUBLC INSTITUTIONS, MEDIA, ETC SUPPORTING IT LIKE WE HAVE NOW….BIG DIFFERENCE….THIS IS WHAT IS DAMAGING TO SOCIETY.From the Guttmacher Institute: “Three-fourths of women cite concern for or responsibility to other individuals; three-fourths say they cannot afford a child; three-fourths say that having a baby would interfere with work, school or the ability to care for dependents.” SOME OF THESE STATS ARE QUESTIONABLE….AND CAN BE COVER FOR JUST BEING PLAIN SELFISH…ONCE THAT BABY IS CONCEIVED, THOSE SELFISH CONCERNS ARE SECONDARY. THERE IS PLENTY OF SUPPORT FOR MOMS WHO DON’T WANT THEIR KIDS…STOP SAYING THERE ISN’T. KILLING BABIES CAN NOT BE THE SOLUTION IF THERE ISN’T.
to Tapetum: I’ve been pregnant and those symptoms you describe don’t happen daily nor do they happen they way you describe them. pregnancy has times when it is uncomfortable but it is not torture. to compare to such is silly…you must not know what real torture is. Pregnancy is an organic function of a woman’s by DESIGN, AND THUS, COULD NOT BE CMPARED TO TORTURE. AT LEAST USE LANGUAGE THAT IS HONEST…SUCH AS THAT AN UNPLANNED PREGNANCY IS EMOTIONALLY DRAINING AND DISTURBING AND TO A CERTAIN DEGREE, TRAUMATIC….STILL DOESN’T JUSTIFY TAKING HUMAN LIFE.
Everyone has aptly dealt with most of the points Mary/Diane made – but I would point out one thing Diane said earlier – in fact there IS a great deal of medical PROOF that pregnancy and childbirht IS hazardous to a young woman – not to TALK about a child herself – google it – I’m not going to waste time – but the United Nations has worked tirelessly to educate people in various coutnries to discontinue early marraiges and births for the very REASON that young pubescent bodies are not READY to give birth simply becuase they are able to.
Second, something I might ahve missed but I don’t think has been brought up and to bring the issue back to the country of origin- does everyone FORGET the horrors of the Romanian orphanages? That is what happens when you FORCE women (again, not even considering the reality of forcing children who have ALREADY been traumtized) to have babies they can’t afford, have, support – but then again, pro lifers are great about making women have babies but then not worrying about them after they are born.
Stop yelling. It’s rude. If you want to capitalize individual words for emphasis, fine, but capitalizing whole sentences is a sign of desparation.
As for the argument, by your definition of “human life” the difference between a brain dead person and a conscious person is just “an issue of level of development”. So, should we demand that all people be kept on life support, even when their brains have turned, literally, to mush and scar tissue until the last cell dies? It’d mean no more organ donation so that many living, thinking, self-aware people would die, but who cares about them anyway? Not the “pro-life” movement.
Well, Diane, unless you’re planning on a. helping every single woman who considers having an abortion out by either paying for their medical bills, prenatal care or assuaging any concerns they may have about about carrying to term, or b. adopting every single baby that might have been aborted without your interference, how about you just let individual women make the choices for themselves?
Who are you to tell anyone what to do with their reproductive organs? Can’t you just be all holier-than-thou and pray for the fallen women or unmarried sluts without trying to compel them to give birth?
And to many of us, the term “unborn baby” is an both oxymoronic and an impossibility. A baby is only a baby until s/he is born.
To Bushfire: you are just someone who hates relationships, marriage, etc and is angry at the world for some reason…
Uh-oh, I hate relationships! I guess I’d better tell my longterm partner that we can no longer be together, because apparently I hate our relationship! That will be too bad….
As for marriage, I hate all institutions that oppress women, marriage included. If two equals want to marry for love and have an equal partnership, that is just fine with me, but you can do that without the marriage license, so it is quite irrelevent.
ANYONE WHO COMPARES AN UNBORN BABY WITH A PARASITE IS NOT REASONABLE.
No need to list them again, but there are many reasons why a fetus can be compared to a parasite. Blaming random world problems on people’s private sexual behaviour, apparently, is more reasonable than making actual correlations between two things.
“See Catholic doctrine for more info.CATHOLIC DOCTRINE STATES THAT SEX HAS 2 PURPOSES AT THE SAME TIME:”
Oh, ok. So a patriarchal woman-hating instutution that relies on sexist folk tales for knowledge says so, so I should believe it! I wonder what Catholic doctrine would say about me, anyway? Actually, since the patriarchs who wrote the bible had no idea lesbians existed, I guess they’d have nothing to say. They think I’m just a meat sock to put a penis in and a slave labourer, not a person. But they are wrong.
“BIRTH CONTROL MAKES SEX EASIER TO HAVE AND WILL ALWAYS INCREASE SEXUAL ACTIVITY AND PROMISCUITY RATHER THAN REDUCE PREGNANCIES…THAT’S WHY WE HAVE HIGH RATES OF TEEN PREGNANCY, AIDS, ETC AND ALL THE FREE CONTRACEPTION A SOCIETY WOULD WANT…ONLY ABSTINENCE EDUCATION WILL SOLVE THE PROBLEM, BUT IT MUST BE BACKED UP EVERYWHERE ELSE.”
So a society that completely opposes sex outside of people-buying contracts will not have any unwanted pregnancies? The short answer is no. In years past, when there was no medical access to abortion, people had children outside of marriage and they also had abortions. Increased access to birth control reduced the number of abortions. But facts don’t matter to pro-lifers, only old patriarchal folk tales do!
“THERE IS PLENTY OF SUPPORT FOR MOMS WHO DON’T WANT THEIR KIDS”
Another blatant lie. White middle class women might get support for their kids, maybe. Because they can afford it and they do not encounter racism. The idea that there is lots of help out there is something conservatives need to believe in order to deny actual help to people who need it.
Diane’s June 23rd, 2008 at 8:42 am comment is really too stupid and too incoherent to be worth responding to. Let’s not.
Fine, I’m stating it. She’s eleven – of course her health is at risk from a pregnancy. She’s being forced to carry a rape-induced pregnancy to term – corroborating what her rapist told her about her body not being her own to control – of course her dignity is at risk. Sanity – don’t know, but that doesn’t mean health and dignity stop mattering. Or her agency and human rights, which I notice you didn’t bother to mention.
“And if men struggle and strike a woman with child so that she has a miscarriage, yet there is no further injury, he shall be fined as the woman’s husband may demand of him, and he shall pay as the judges decide. But if there is any further injury, then you shall appoint as a penalty life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise.”
Exodus 21:22-25
So Biblical law doesn’t treat the foetus as a life; the mother’s body is the significant factor.
In your book, the soul enters the body when it takes its first breath.
… which means that an unborn foetus doesn’t have one.
Can’t edit :(
Apparently, since Dianne’s pregnancies were only mildly uncomfortable rather than torturous, no pregnancy is ever torturous.
Glad to know my pregnancies didn’t exist. Nor that of my next-door neighbor. Nor my mother-in law’s.
“And if men struggle and strike a woman with child so that she has a miscarriage, yet there is no further injury, he shall be fined as the woman’s husband may demand of him, and he shall pay as the judges decide. But if there is any further injury, then you shall appoint as a penalty life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise.”
Exodus 21:22-25
So Biblical law doesn’t treat the foetus as a life; the mother’s body is the significant factor.
In your book, the soul enters the body when it takes its first breath.”
What a good point. I haven’t really explored the Bible looking for references to abortion, but this isn’t the first time that the church has made something up that isn’t even supported in the Bible. I wonder how people can be so concerned about the teachings of churchly dudes who spend their lives worshiping the ghost of a dead Nazarene and hating on modern-day people.
It’s not really my point; I was lucky enougn to come across this: http://www.elroy.net/ehr/abortion.html
Maybe it’s just me, but I can’t think of anything more misogynistic than rewarding a rapist by letting him pass on his genes at the expense of the female he victimized. In this case, that female is an eleven-year-old child. That she should be allowed to have an abortion shouldn’t even be in question. It just boggles my mind that it appears that it is.
In the not so distant past:
Plus…
Equalled…
Baby Farming!
Seriously, if you don’t support the kind of programs that would help women and their families birth and raise children who are conceived under less-than-optimal circumstances, how can you call yourself “pro-life”?
Hi guys,
I’m going to be engaging in a little online prochoice debate and wanted to check my facts first; was wondering if any of you could recommend some good sources. For example, I remember hearing that 50% of embryos do not implant, but can’t find a source anywhere.
1. marrige is not a woman-subjugating institution. Some men may subjugate women, but marriage in and of itself does not. Marriage is not about an ‘equal relationship’ but a total giving of self to each other.
2. The Catholic CHurch is not a women hating organization based on folk tales that thinks women are to be used sexually by men.
3. unborn babies are not parasite, no matter you desire to equate the 2.
4. there is support for unwanted babies. Infants are easily adoptable.
5. If the unborn are ‘just a bunch of cells’, so are we…just in a different stage of develpment.
6. I don’t HAVE to help out every pregnant woman and unwanted child to know that abortion is wrong. and by the way, I do participate in charity, but could and should do more.
7. We must come up with alternative to killing the unborn and because we haven’t, doesn’t justify abortion.
8. Sex between husband and wife isn’t a fantasy taht is unreachable….if society embraced it instead of accepting the opposite, our world would be a better place for all…. abortion, illegitimacy, sex outside of marriage, etc will always happen….I’m against the govt support of such practices. Our world is in turmoil due to sexual practices taht go against the common good.
OMG you are the epitome of stupid. I really really hate seeing lines like this. If your drowning in an ocean the ocean is not going to listen to you complain about your right to exist and not let you drown. If your dieing from a brain tumor the tumor is not going to up and leave because you decide you have a right to exist.
Fascinating how Diane thinks that Catholic religious doctrine should be forcibly imposed on all American citizens, even non-Catholics, but gets upset at the very idea that she will then have to pay for the consequences of forcing people to follow a religion that’s not theirs.
If we’re going by religion, Diane, abortion is perfectly okay in Talmudic law. Will there be an exception for Jews who want abortions in your theocracy, or will they also be forced to conform to Roman Catholic doctrine in their personal lives? When does the law get passed saying that everyone has to attend Mass every Sunday? Do the burnings of heretics take place on holy days of obligation, or can the parish priest fire up the bonfire anytime he feels like it?
Diane again:
And I quote Stephen Crane:
A man said to the universe:
“Sir I exist!”
“However,” replied the universe,
“The fact has not created in me
A sense of obligation.”
It’s not the Bible, nor Catholic doctrine, but it pretty well sums up Actual Reality.
And, um, Diane? I hate to break it to you, but I’m married and would abort an unplanned pregnancy tomorrow without any hand-wringing. Rings and pieces of paper won’t convince women to have kids they can’t afford, can’t take care of, or flat-out don’t want.
Unless you have some other point about this whole sex within marriage is the only good sex around (pun intended).
Oh come on, Diane, you came back here and repeated the same blatant lies all over again. I was hoping you would restate them with different wording, at least. Or try to counter one of the many points against your previous posts.
The Anti-Choice replies (more specifically Mary and Diane), with regard to the 11 year old girl raped by her uncle who is now pregnant, are not so surprising as I understand completely and fully (as do others here) that these comments are embedded in “pro-life” sentiment and fundamentalist value sets.
With regard to semantics and changing the perception of language from “pro-life” to Anti-Choice: this is a very good point that is reflective of how conservative groups attempt to assimilate into the framework of (leftist) advocacy and activism in the hope that they will be received within that perceptual framework (ie. finding empathy in Pro-Choice leaning individuals). I also call this attempted assimilation “posturing”–that faux or artificial exterior that is merely a mode for effect. It definitely attempts to represent “pro-life” value sets as “warm and fuzzy” into the Anti-Choice masquerade (for those of you who like the term warm and fuzzy in your relationships, my apologies, please continue to use the term). However, we cannot give up the ghost of the former (pro-life) mindset for semantics (Anti-Choice)–we must speak to both when countering this kind of posturing whether in the blogosphere or in media. Generally speaking, the media is a harbinger of promoting this kind of assimilative and posturing tone in news lines and so, we must remain cognizant of that.
On another note, I am deeply offended by the very existence of having to debate a womyn’s right to choose based on the premise of “life” and “child”. They (as in the state governing bodies) do not legislate men’s bodies in the same accord as they do womyn’s bodies, and yet, we are still having to rely on the state in protecting the rights of womyn from fundamentalist fascists who rely on the patriarchal narratives of a man’s right to “freedom of expression/speech and choice in matters of family, property and enterprise” [emphasis mine].
Women must, unequivocally, have the personal right and freedom as men do to decide their future course and destiny, not just on the matter of choosing to have an abortion but in shaping their lives through a decision making process that is their own regardless of turning to the state for protection. Women are not regarded in state law or policy in the same way that we understand men’s rights and privileges to be in creating their own destiny and personhood. This sort of fundamentalist understanding of men’s rights and privileges leaves no room for women’s self-expression and determination (ie. women cannot determine their course in life without regard for the rights of men [blech]).
To put it simply: Keep Your Fucking Fundamentalist Tripe Off Womyn’s Bodies~!
Diane: Our world is in turmoil due to sexual practices taht go against the common good.
Only a very, very sheltered person could believe that. Or a very stupid one.
We must come up with alternative to killing the unborn and because we haven’t, doesn’t justify abortion.
We have come up with alternatives to abortion: comprehensive sex education, easy access to contraception, and state support for mothers and small children. That you oppose all these alternatives, says clearly that, like most pro-lifers, you promote abortion.
They might unintentionally promote abortion, but what they really favour is taking women’s bodies away from them.
1. The name calling and foul language are not needed….why do people insist on expresssing yourselves this way??
2. I didn’t bring up Catholic anything…was just merely responding to someone else having done so.
3. This is ultimately about a woman’s right to not go thru pregnancy versus an unborn being being allowed to continue to exist and I vote for the later, since pregnancy only lasts 9 months, is not threatening to our bodies (most of the time) and is something that a traumatized woman can recover from….killing the unborn is permanent, deadly and callous.
4. we have comprehensive sex ed, we have free contraceptives in schools, clinics, street corners, emergency packs dropped from helicopters, etc….and yet we still have unwanted pregnancies! Get a clue….put sex back into the marrige box and those unwanted pregnancies drop.
5. mens’ bodies do not carry babies, therefore, abortion legistlation will not apply to them….just accept that legistlation is different for men and women because men and women are different! What a concept! Who said everything must be even steven?? men and women are not ‘equal’ in all ways and that’s OK.
6. I know this next statement will hurt ya’ll a lot, but accept that men and women are complimentary….NOT interchangeable, which speaks more to the heart of the argument here, now, doesn’t it?
Just finished reading all the posts, and I think the reason people like Mary and Diane feel so strongly about fetuses but don’t give a tinker’s cuss about actual born babies (let alone women and girls), is because it’s so much EASIER to “care” about fetuses.
What will Mary or Diane have to do to care for someone else’s fetus? NOTHING. But, creating comprehensive family leave policies, and affordable/accessible day care, etc. — that takes MONEY and WORK. And people like Mary and Diane don’t think they should have to do anything they don’t want to do.
But here’s the rub:
If other women have an unwanted pregnancy, well — people like Mary and Diane get to “argue” demonstrably that they know what those women should do — and hope and pray for a world where those women are FORCED to do what Mary and Diane would have them do. And they back it up with their religious doctrine.
Can you tell I don’t much care for people like Mary and Diane?
You’d like that, wouldn’t you?
“6. I know this next statement will hurt ya’ll a lot, but accept that men and women are complimentary….NOT interchangeable, which speaks more to the heart of the argument here, now, doesn’t it?”
That won’t hurt anyone here, because it isn’t true. The idea that men and woman are “complimentary” is very heteronormative and based on binary sex roles. There are many women out there who could only be “complimented” by another woman, and men who could only be complimented by men. There are also heterosexuals that do not fit traditional gender expectations. There are also people who are neither male nor female and people who are polyamorous, therefore the idea of “compliment” is void.
Diane, saying things that are obviously untrue does not prove your point.
And yet you’re insisting that your personal religious beliefs be enshrined as law and imposed on everyone in the United States, including people who don’t share those religious beliefs. How is that not a theocracy? How would making your religious laws the law of the land and forcing everyone to obey them make us different than Iran or Saudi Arabia or Afghanistan?
(A) I’d love for you to tell me where they still have comprehensive sex ed, because the Bush Administration basically killed it for any school district that needed federal funding. Gloucester High School in Massachusetts decided to stop letting school officials give out contraceptives and — shock! — their pregnancy rate shot up to the point that the principal thought he had to cover his ass by coming up with an unsupported urban legend about why the rate went up.
(B) You’re awfully naive if you think that pregnancy always happened within marriage before the 1960s. The majority of our Pilgrim ancestresses were pregnant on their wedding days. Humans fuck. They always have and they always will. Trying to prevent that is like banning food and expecting people to never eat again.
1. who said that pregnancy didn’t happen outside of marriage in the past?? I’m saying dn’t support it in public policy.
2. I’m not bringing in Catholic anything…I’m saying don’t kill babies as a solution to unwanted pregnancy and having to go thru pregnancy and childbirth is better than killing hte unborn. I never made the statement on religious grounds. And by the way, I’m not bound to the Old Testament, as the new Testament supercedes the old. If you’d like arguements from the New Testament taht support my position, I can give you those, though I doubt many on this site are looking to the new Testament for moral direction. And for info, the Church existed prior to the New Testament existing, so if you want Church teaching in support of my position,I can give that, too.
3.That a small percentage of men and women choose or do not fit neatly into complimentary roles of male and female does not invalidate that male and female are indeed complimentary!
4. Do I have to support a baby to know that killing the unborn is wrong?? NO. As I said, I do support charity that helps in this area, just a matter of info.
Diane says:
June 23rd, 2008 at 5:20 pm – Edit
This is about an 11 year old girl raped by her uncle, not “allegedly” because that would automatically assume that the young girl is not telling the truth, and regardless, and under any circumstance, any desire to abort must remain unquestionable and the sole decision of the womyn and in this case, the child and her parents as they are still her gaurdian. The psychological trauma that has been inflicted and will be with this young girl seems to go over and above your head, Diane.
Diane, what is not OK are laws that deny womyn the same or equal rights, privileges, and freedoms that men have and can enjoy without having their bodies fucking legislated, medicalized, and criminalized. Anatomical differences does not mean or imply the domination and subjugation of womyn in favor of man’s patriarchal grand design in constructing their rights, privileges, and freedoms.
You mean complementary suggesting what each one lacks they make up for in anatomical sex (man + woman = babies [blech])–this argument has been disproven by feminist discourse–and by many lesbians~!
So, get used to it~!
We have comprehensive sex ed? Where! I want to go there!
Diane: This is ultimately about a woman’s right to not go thru pregnancy
Yes, it is. Of course, specifically, in this thread, it’s about an 11-year-old girl’s right not to be forced to endure pregnancy and childbirth. The fact that you think of this 11-year-old girl as a “woman” says it all: so did her uncle. Forcing an 11-year-old girl to endure pregnancy and childbirth against her will is permanent and callous and thoroughly immoral. You promote child abuse, Diane.
we have comprehensive sex ed, we have free contraceptives in schools, clinics, street corners, emergency packs dropped from helicopters, etc….and yet we still have unwanted pregnancies!
No, Diane. In the Netherlands, they have comprehensive sex education, they have free contraceptives and access to medical advice about contraception, and a health care and welfare system that supports mothers and children… and they have about one-seventh the abortions (proportional to the population) that the US has. In the US, Bush has done his best to do away with all that – and, to no one’s surprise, that means you have far more unwanted pregnancies and far more abortions. You promote abortion, Diane.
“who said that pregnancy didn’t happen outside of marriage in the past?? I’m saying dn’t support it in public policy.
2. I’m not bringing in Catholic anything…I’m saying don’t kill babies as a solution to unwanted pregnancy and having to go thru pregnancy and childbirth is better than killing hte unborn.”
There doesn’t need to be a solution to pregnancy outside of marriage, because it is not a problem. What is a problem is the lack of resources that single parents face, and a little bit of community involvement can improve that. Your lack of support for single parents in public policy increases the abortion rate by making it more difficult for people to care for their babies. If you actually cared about life, you would want to help people to keep their babies.
It’s unbelievable how many facts and how much information you have to deny in order to believe that it is morally superior to force pregnancies on people who cannot support them.
Where exactly are you? (No need to answer that if you don’t want to.) Where I live, we have abstinence-only-until-marriage “education” (and don’t even get me started on that), no contraceptives in school, let alone free, and no helicopters dropping emergency packs, though I’m sure it would be welcomed.
1. Killing unborn babies is child abuse and is the worse of 2 difficult outcomes (carrying the baby to term being the oher).
2. How is killing the unborn not child abuse? we are talking killing versus being pregnant…big difference.
3.pregnancy outside of marriage IS a problem and puts the children at risk.
4. resources for kids born to single moms must be addresssed as well, but a perceived lack of them is not reason to justify taking a human life.
5. I support personal accountability and assistance for the poor…I don’t think that companies have to be required to offer free day care (makes it easy for moms to not take care of their own, which is not best for kids), paid parental leave, etc. It isn’t the govt job to mandate these things thru companies or not. If a corporation wants to offer them, great. We do need to help the poor but we do not need govt subsidy of single moms…we need the govt to help get dads to pay and support their kids or go to jail.
6. Human life is a bigger deal than a forced pregnancy! most of you simply don’t value life and that’s why you don’t see that. you support abortion for just about any reason and most happen in circumstances other than a girl being raped. It’s about the right to deny the consequences of immoral sex for most of you…you want the world to have it’s sex any way it wants it and you want it divorced from procreation because in the end, most of you support self satisfaction at any cost and do not see the value in redemptive suffering for the glory of something bigger than yourselves…like the life of the unborn baby. The girls will be over and recovered…she can come back from the traumatic situation and other women who want to abort out of selfishness?? you still support all of that killing, too. When you devalue an unborn babies life, it says something about your own outlook of humanity…we live in a world that values plants and animals above humankind….don’t eat that poor chicken but abort to your heart’s content.
My pregnancies were not exactly torturous. I still wouldn’t force an 11-year-old child to endure pregnancy and childbirth.
Holy crap, I wish I lived in a place where they did helicopter drops of contraception. That would be AWESOME.
I used to work at an abortion clinic, actually. And you know what we did with every client when they left? We gave them info and access to BIRTH CONTROL. Hell, the clinic does a better job of keeping abortions down than the stupid anti-choice, abstinence-only crowd. So who is more dedicated to lowering the abortion rate, huh?
No, the difference is that WE SEE THE WOMAN AS A HUMAN LIFE. She’s not just a pregnancy — she is a person.
In order to believe as you do, you have to believe that a fetus is inherently more valuable that the human life that it lives inside. You have to deny that a woman is just as much of a human life as a fetus.
If only the fetus is a human life, please explain what a woman is.
Can one of the women here please, if you haven’t done so already, tell Diane to shut the fuck up already? It might not go over so well coming from a man. And maybe telling that idiot Diane to shut the fuck up isn’t exactly the feminist thing to do. Forgive me the indiscretion. Maybe I just need to be a better guy feminist. I mean, some people just aren’t teachable or reachable. There’s no way past their unthinking, sheep mentality. There’s no way to break through their ideology with humanity. But really, Diane needs to just shut the fuck up already.
Diane, she’s eleven. Has that sunk into your foot-thick skull yet? She’s eleven. Shut the fuck up already, Diane.
Ahem. I’m Dianne and I’m pro-choice. I think you mean Diane. Incidentally, my pregnancy (singular) was not really up to be being torture by Bush administration standards until the labor started. Ok, I was tired and nauseous for 9 months straight and didn’t gain weight despite having a healthily growing fetus, but that’s not torture, right? Diane or other pro-lifers would happily take low dose cisplatinum for 9 months if they needed to, wouldn’t they? Anyway, once labor started I would have cheerfully exchanged having my fingernails pulled out for what I was undergoing. Having one’s fingernails pulled out is less painful. I can say for sure since I did manage to pull a fingernail off once by accident. (Stupidity happens.) I certainly wouldn’t want to put an 11 year old girl or anyone through that against their will. And the chances that an 11 year old girl wants to go through all that are so low as to be unmeasurable.
Diane: Human life is a bigger deal than a forced pregnancy!
So in your eyes this is 11-year-old girl isn’t even human?
It’s about the right to deny the consequences of immoral sex for most of you
Yeah. It was immoral for this girl’s uncle to rape her. I want her to have the right to prevent at least this consequence of his immorality. You don’t. You don’t even see this living, breathing child as human.
So you support child rape and dehumanization of the victims of child rape. You promote child abuse, Diane.
Unless she dies in childbirth or from illegal abortion. How do YOU know she will come back? Can you predict future? Because I personally know women who never came back to being normal after giving birth and they were not raped 11 year olds.
I’ve been trying to stay calm, and wasn’t going to post to this excellent thread, but Diane’s really got on my nerves. In your last argument about govt. accountability you state all this: “It isn’t the govt job to mandate these things thru companies or not. If a corporation wants to offer them, great.” So it’s ok for govt. to legislate on what a woman can do with her own body, but it’s not ok for the govt. to force some kind of responsibility for it’s workers on a corporation?
Secondly, just got to say something about the whole marriage/bible thing. I know religious fundamentalism is becoming quite trendy these days in various parts of the states, but personally I don’t believe in God. The Bible was written by a bunch of poorly-educated men thousands of years ago, and finalised by a comittee of politicians for their own, very specific political reasons of the time, so citing it as an authority in our lives now is archaic, and frankly insane. Religion is and has been used as a patriarchal mechanism to subjugate women. Diane, if you don’t understand this then I suggest you go and read some of the extremely well-researched feminist writings on the subject. Indeed, my girlfriend is a feminist theologian, with, I can guarantee, far more knowledge of your religion than you possess, she was raised catholic, and she’ll tell you it’s very much about male domination of women.
Somebody way back in the thread (around no. 25 I think) argued that “patriarchy had done some good things”. That’s fundamentally and comprehensively missing the point. Patriarchy, by design, subjugates 50% of the people, and that is a fundamental error of any society.
On a different note, I think you were all a bit unfair with Mary, I mean, she was wrong and that, and said some weird things, but at least she argued coherently and intelligently, and that’s so rare from “pro-lifers”.
My thoughts: a baby, fetus, embryo, whatever, is part of a woman’s body until it’s not a part of her body. A woman has absolute power over her own body, to suggest otherwise, for any reason is to deny a woman her humanity.
And finally, unless Mary or Diane have ever been on a anti-war protest, or at least put as much effort into an anti-war movement as they have into this argument, then all your logic, reasoning, arguments and passionate appeals are irrelevant, and should be entirely disreagrded for the false hypocrisy they are. Show me a “pro-lifer” protesting the real death and destruction of global poverty, disease, inequality and war and I might just give them the time of day.
Why are we even arguing with someone who refers to an 11-year-old child as a “woman” and who thinks that this “woman” shouldn’t be allowed to escape the “consequences” of having been raped by her uncle?
Diane should be reported to Child Protective Services: someone who thinks an 11-year-old child is a woman who bears the blame for a sexual encounter with an adult man is someone who ought not to be allowed near any children.
I’m quite serious.
No body said that the mom is less important than the unborn baby….understand that. What is being said is that if your choices are to compel the mom to endure pregancy and childbirth OR take the life of the unborn, you choose the former because the mom can and will recover from pregnancy and childbirth…it’s very simple. The fact that you all keep try to say than I”M valuing the unborn life over the moms is just your grasping….no one is having to choose between the 2 lives. one is choosing 9 months of pregnancy and childbirth versus taking a life and the former assures taht no life is taken….very simple. Stop making it complicated.
As for the foul mouthed person several posts back….take your curse words and name calling elsewhere….it isn’t nessessary to get so upset….if you get that upset over my posts, you must have some sort of anger problem.
Can someone get Diane the child abuser’s IP address and report her?
Personally, I haven’t told Diane to “shut the fuck up” because she is quite entertaining. She lives in backwards land where everything is exactly the opposite of the way it is here. You know, like a fetus is a person and a child is a woman, but not a human….. the list goes on. The thing is, Diane invalidates herself just by repeating all those lies and contradictory statements.
I wouldn’t want her near my kids either. The enormous value she places on rapist’s sperm cells is so creepy, and the forced birth she’d like to condemn a child to is so incredibly cruel… I don’t know how she can’t see it. Maybe she’s really some sort of performance artist doing a parody of a pro-lifer? I mean, can you imagine having to explain to a tearful child “I’m sorry your uncle raped you, but you must absolutely carry his genetic material inside you until it becomes a baby! This is so important to me!” I mean…. the idea that that is LESS horrific than removing the genetic material is insane.
I wonder if Diane walks on the ceiling instead of the floor in backwards land? As a kid I always wanted to go to a planet with reverse gravity.
“.very simple. Stop making it complicated.”
Except, it is complicated. The embryo and the uterus do not exist in isolation. If they did, I would say, go for it! But the embryo was put there by a rapist uncle, and the uterus belongs to a child, who deserves to have a normal childhood. We aren’t making this complicated. We are point out that it is complicated, and you are making it overly simple.
“No body said that the mom is less important than the unborn baby”
Those may not have been your exact wording, but when you ignore the needs of a rape/incest survivor to care so much about an embryo, you are indeed placing it as more important than the child. Also, calling an 11 year old a “mother” is very creepy. Have you ever met an 11 year old, Diane? They have barely begun puberty, they climb trees, they are learning how to add fractions and read chapter books and they go to summer camp. They also aren’t legally allowed to babysit because they aren’t old enough yet. In fact, if an adult left this “mother” home alone, it might be considered child neglect because an 11 year old isn’t even old enough to be left alone without a babysitter. And you want this person to gestate rapist sperm.
Maybe you can make your display name “The Sane Dianne”?
Diane, does it ever matter what the woman (or in this case girl) wants? Is that ever a factor?
You say that forced childbirth is better than abortion because the woman will survive the pregnancy and childbirth and the fetus won’t survive the abortion.
Okay, I get that, but it’s simply not that simple. A number of things can happen from womb to birth and pregnancy and childbirth are expensive and at least somewhat traumatic to the body.
So what if a woman is dead set against carrying to term? She says, “I’d rather die than birth this baby?” What do you do then? Chain her up and force her to give birth? Let her kill herself and the fetus in order to avoid giving birth?
As we’ve seen in other countries that have illegalized abortion, women don’t just simply submit when their options are limited. They take matters into their own hands and often kill themselves in the process.
Is this an ideal outcome for someone who claims that forced birth is better than abortion?
You don’t seem to understand what you yourself are saying.
By saying that the pregnancy should always be continued no matter the circumstances, you are saying that the woman is less important than the fetus.
Will you at least own up to your own beliefs instead of trying to pretend you have a coherent argument?
About 600 women a year die in childbirth in the United States. That’s the highest rate in the Western world — the rates are much, much higher in developing nations. And injuries from childbirth are extremely common in the United States — one study by the National Institutes of Health found that 43 percent of women delivering had at least one complication during delivery.
So, no, not every woman can and will recover from pregnancy and childbirth, and you’re deluding yourself if you think that childbirth is 100 percent safe and every pregnancy is 100 percent perfect.
Diane, you do realize that not every woman in the world is giving birth in Norway, right? A whole lot of women can and cannot recover from pregnancy and childbirth. Tell 1 in 8 Afghani women that childbirth is something “the mom can and will recover from.” Tell that to the 1 in 16 women in sub-Saharan African who will die during pregnancy or childbirth. Even in the U.S., about 1 4800 women faces a lifetime risk of maternal death. That is not a small number. And part of the reason that Western European nations have such low maternal mortality rates is because they have great health care, which means that women who have health problems can avoid pregnancy in the first place, or terminate dangerous pregnancies. That isn’t an option in a lot of developing countries, and it’s not an option that so-called “pro-life” people want women to have.
So cut the crap about how it’s oh-so-easy for women to recover from pregnancy and childbirth.
This has been fun hasn’t it?
Re: Fundamentalism – If I can toss in a book recommendation here: “The Family” by Jeff Sharlet. I think if more pro-choicers read this book, we’d understand where the crazy forced birthers are coming from….and we might be able to stop them.
Re: “I support personal accountability.” Ding, ding, ding….we have a winner on the privilege wagon. Diane probably also talks about “boot straps” and helping the poor-so-long-as-they-don’t-live-in-her-zipcode. Because we all know that every person in the WORLD or at least the US has access to the same resources that she does. Yup…way to go Diane. You’ve just managed to prove that the only reason you’re a forced birther is because you have no EMPATHY, i.e., you’re a narcissist. Try therapy.
Let me make it even more simple:
females bodies are designed to give birth and as such, this is a normal function of the post pubescent female body. that some die from it (small percentage in any culture when you look at the numbers) does not change this fact….the girl in this situation has not been diagnosed as being in danger of dying if she carries the baby and gives birth.
Females have been having babies and living/recovering without ‘excellent healthcare’ for thousands of years and do a pretty good job of it.
The reality is that you all support for abortion at any time, unlimited and under any circumstances, don’t you?? A female’s right not to finish an already existing pregnancy when her life is not at stake can not possibly be more important than the destruction of the unborn life….it is human, it is life.
“What is being said is that if your choices are to compel the mom to endure pregancy and childbirth OR take the life of the unborn, you choose the former”
Right, and what we’re saying is that neither you, nor anyone else has any right to “compel” a woman to do anything with her body. That’s the point Diane. The reason you think it’s ok to compel a woman to do something with her body, the reason you think that you, your religion, or your government has the right to do that is because of antiquated, misplaced, patriarchal beliefs that the world would be a much better place without.
As is amply demonstrated in your next post:
“Let me make it even more simple:
females bodies are designed to give birth”
NO Diane! The female body was not DESIGNED to make babies. The female body CAN make babies, that doesn’t mean they HAVE to. This is such a fundamental error in logic! And once again, this kind of thinking arises from a male-dominated human history. Diane, I get this, and I’m a man, how can you not understand this?? It is not a woman’s purpose on earth to procreate. A woman’s purpose on earth is defined by the woman herself, not by you, not by her husband, not by the government, and certainly not by some confused, contradictory, ancient texts, written by men thousands of years ago! Wake up!
The reality is, Diane, that you have referred to an 11-year-old girl as a woman, and referred to her need for an abortion because her uncle raped her as her wanting to escape the consequences of immoral sex.
How old is your oldest daughter, Diane? Because if she’s a “post-pubescent female” I don’t think you ought to be allowed to take care of her: you’ve repeatedly made clear you think of her as a woman, old enough to have sex and to be forced through pregnancy and childbirth.
Can someone please report this child abuser to Child Protective Services?
Good news – the girl’s been flown to the UK to have an abortion where it’s still legal. (She was 17 weeks pregnant when they found out: the pro-life “ethicists” delayed her abortion 4 weeks.)
Romanian rape victim, 11, to have UK abortion
This is fantastic news. It’s nice to know there still are good people in the world.
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