I believe that if a woman becomes pregnant despite her best efforts to prevent it that the product of that pregnancy is a human being who should have the same rights to exist as the mother. Not GREATER rights than the mother. EQUAL rights.

This is not possible.

If you’re opposed to abortion, you demand that a z/e/f be granted greater rights than those of the woman in which it resides and on whose body it battens. Greater rights, in fact, than ANY born human being.

No human being has the right to utilize the bodily resources of another human being without that other’s ongoing consent.

Tell me, exactly WHERE do the committed childfree – those whose doctors REFUSE to sterilize them, those whom the pharmacist denies birth control, those whose tubes grow back after being cut – fit into your view? Where can I live in your world?

And no, no retreating in to “in an ideal world blah blah blah”. We DON’T live there.

Well, unless you give the fetus greater rights than the pregnant woman, the pregnant woman always has the right to decide to have an abortion. Give the fetus all the rights of a human being from the instant of conception if you like – that still wouldn’t give the fetus the right to make use of another human being’s body and labour against her will, not even to save a life.

I suppose one could say that rather than arguing for total celibacy, you’re arguing for total refraining from heterosexual intercourse – which kind of makes your arguments for contraception moot. (Condoms/cling film still necessary for protection from disease, of course.) Which is an improvement, I admit, but I still say you’re indulging in fantasy: most het couples like PIV intercourse, and are not about to refrain from it just because right now they don’t want to have a baby.

Is an orgasm really worth taking an innocent life?

Hell yeah. If a hamburger is worth it (it is) an orgasm definitely is. Of course the vast majority of my orgasms are far less ethically problematical than a hamburger, involving no risk to “innocent life” whatsoever.

Even those orgasms that do involve a risk to “innocent life” are less problematic– I’d rather have a 1% risk (actually of course far smaller) of harming an innocent underdeveloped little fetus on my conscience, than a 100% certainty of having harmed a fully grown cow with a complex nervous system– and don’t even get me started on bacon, which is delicious even though pigs are profoundly intelligent creatures– smarter, more sensitive, more emotionally complex, and more able to feel pain than a fetus, any day of the week. But bacon sandwiches are awesome, and they win out.

Plus, you know, without my selfish tiny-risk-of-harm orgasming, the hypothetical fetus i might hypothetically harm wouldn’t get to exist at all. Who says it’s better from the fetus’s point of view to never exist at all than to float around in a warm salty bath for a few months before dying? We all die after all, and I bet the average quality of life over time for an unborn fetus compares favourably to the average quality of life for human beings that get born. And yet most human beings do not wish that they had never been born. Obviously it’s better from MY point of view to not get pregnant– so I use contraception. But the case that it’s better from the point of view of the fetus to never be conceived, that seems incredibly dubious to me. Certainly it should at least be examined.

Absolutely! I agree completely. As the social norms of these countries include family planning, it is absolutely wrong to attempt to impose the “social norm” of denial of contraception on these countries, just because that happens to be a vote-getter for President Bush.

And, as harsh as it may seem to Western eyes, the governments of those countries must be allowed to dictate the norms of their society.

So the women living in that country mustn’t be allowed to say for themselves what their social norms are – these women are, in your view, owned by their government, and can’t be allowed to decide for themselves what to do? I don’t think it’s just Western eyes that see that view as harsh: I think the women of these countries, whose human rights you dismiss so completely, would see that as harsh. You don’t care about them, evidently – not even to think about what they might think of you.

And what about when those countries do not have functioning governments, or have corrupt dictatorships which do not work for the people, or have outright genocidal governments? No, really, what then? Should the government indeed get to dictate that genocide is the norm because they are in charge? Genocide also generally involves mass rapings — would that also be okay, because they’re the government and they get to decide the norms?

If your answer is “yes” then I have absolutely no time for you and I’m quite sure that this blog doesn’t either. If your answer is “no” I’d like to hear you explain how “private” violence against women is different than “public” violence against women on the morally condemnable scale.

See, I’m entirely in agreement with you that when the West gets involved in other countries’ business, it royally fucks things up. I agree that when it does, it often does so out of arrogance. However, I also believe that there is a way for the West to help people elsewhere to lift themselves up by listening to their needs and assisting them in having those needs met/giving them the resources they need to meet those needs themselves.

To me, it strikes of absolute Western arrogance to assume that women in countries that the U.S. is helping don’t want access to contraception and aren’t already working for access themselves, or that they don’t want violence against them to stop and aren’t already doing what they can to make it stop. And I think that we should be doing much more to provide assistance on their terms. No, the U.S. or any other country should not just barge in and start ordering people around and telling them how to live their lives, but that’s a far cry from saying “fuck it, you’re on your own, ask your government to deal with it and leave my tax dollars alone.”

“Just because everyone has their own ideas about what is evil and what is not, does not mean that we have no responsibility to help each other as we best know how when we have identified that someone else is doing real harm.”

GA, you don’t live in that country. And, as harsh as it may seem to Western eyes, the governments of those countries must be allowed to dictate the norms of their society.

“If your neighbor is loudly and brutally beating his wife, are you going to help? Call the police or step in yourself? I think you would help, or at least wouldn’t disapprove if someone else did.”

GA, of course I can assist. In this country and in this society, our laws allows us to intervene on behalf of others who reside with us and cannot defend themselves. On the other hand, I cannot go to any North African or Middle Eastern country and tell them “your way of life is offensive to my idea of Western morality and sensibility”. I know sounds down right ugly, but it’s the truth. It’s like telling Emeril LaGasse you’re a much better chef then his is.

Because of a certain amount of meddling by outsiders to their culture, Eunice, Mary, Joyce and dozens of others who i KNOW AND CARE ABOUT now have an education and a future and can choose that life if they want to, but they have real options now. Those girls’ patriarchs might wish that organizations like ours didn’t exist, but for the girls in question, every rescued girl I knoe sure is glad.