(Nothing in this post is written by me; each of the following paragraphs is quoted from a longer essay, which it is linked to).
- Pinko Feminist Hellcat wrote: I am tired of looking for the middle ground, which has nothing but quicksand. I am tired of being reasonable, since in this political climate, being reasonable means elevate the fetus and ignore the woman. Being reasonable gets women who want an abortion shamed and blamed. Being reasonable gets the peanut gallery to examine your situation, pass judgement on you, and decide if you made a worthwhile decision.
- Jack Balkin writes: Siegel argues that exemptions in abortion statutes like those in Roe and Doe demonstrate, often in quite telling ways, that abortion restrictions are deeply tied to stereotypical views about the sexes and about the duties of women: “Whatever respect for unborn life abortion laws express,” Siegel notes, “state criminal laws have never valued unborn life in the way they value born life.” Instead, states “have used the criminal law to coerce and intimidate women into performing the work of motherhood.” “Abortion laws do not treat women as murderers, but as mothers: citizens who exist for the purpose of rearing children; citizens who are expected to perform the work of parenting as dependents and nonparticipants in the citizenship activities in which men are engaged.”
- Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan wrote: The trouble with these particular developmental milestones is not just that they’re arbitrary. More troubling is the fact that none of them involves uniquely human characteristics–apart from the superficial matter of facial appearance. All animals respond to stimuli and move of their own volition. Large numbers are able to breathe. But that doesn’t stop us from slaughtering them by the billions. Reflexes and motion are not what make us human.
Other animals have advantages over us–in speed, strength, endurance, climbing or burrowing skills, camouflage, sight or smell or hearing, mastery of the air or water. Our one great advantage, the secret of our success, is thought–characteristically human thought. We are able to think things through, imagine events yet to occur, figure things out. That’s how we invented agriculture and civilization. Thought is our blessing and our curse, and it makes us who we are.
- Richard Carrier wrote: There is even less to say about the rest of Roth’s arguments. “Every one of us has been a prenate at the beginning of our lifespan,” and every one of us was a sperm and an egg at the beginning of our conception, and every one of us will be a corpse when we are dead. What inbetween creates a person? The brain, and specifically a complex cerebral cortex. Even more specifically, the pattern or program adhering in that structure. Likewise, “The great social movements in history have been those which expanded the circle of human rights, drawing more and more human beings inside the circle. To exclude an entire class of human beings goes against the grain of progress,” is an entirely question-begging argument: for this to have any merit, she must assume a priori that she is right and I am wrong about when a human being exists. And we certainly would not want to extend her argument to the next logical stage: death. After all, that is a “class…to which we [will] all belong” and if we are going to expand the scope of human rights to all human bodies, then that will have to include corpses–and that means in the near future, when we can regenerate brains, death itself would become illegal. Something is amiss.
“state criminal laws have never valued unborn life in the way they value born life.”
And you know why, right? Because unborn life isn’t stained by original sin! As opposed to those of us born folks, who are steeped in sin, especially women. You know, because of Eve, the original sinner.
And that’s why the pro-birth crowd is free to abandon any interest in the child or mother after the birth takes place. Because then they’re just common, run-of-the-mill sinners. The baby goes from innocent to sinner by passing through a woman’s vagina. Interesting, no?
It’s all about enforcement of a particular religious view. If the common religious view in the United States was of “original blessing” instead of original sin, we wouldn’t be having these arguments.
thanks for linking to that sagan/durya essay. i like the methodical way they came to a reasonable compromise on a contentious issue. one of the problems i have with the pro-choice extremists is pretty clearly dealt with in that essay. i know that nothing will ever convince the anti-abortion extremists to any kind of compromise, but i do think that the majority in the middle would be persuaded and comforted by this essay. and i think it would be in the political and practical interests of all pro-choicers to do a little more thinking about the sort of compromise/persuasion of the undecideds-and-uncomfortables in this argument.
third trimester abortions fall into the “icky” area for most people, even if they don’t come out and say it for fear of being screamed at by extremists. and because of framing on the anti side, instead of getting reasonable restrictions on 3rd trimester abortions, we get the absolutely stupid “partial birth abortion” ban, when what we needed was a dialogue and compromise which bans 3rd trimester abortions except for the health of either baby or mother. and then we needed to work on countering the right’s argument that “mental health” would be abused to mean “mental whim”. there are legitimate mental health reasons for women to have 3rd trimester abortions, but i imagine those would be things like your more serious mental illnesses. and i’d always want the option to abort 3rd trimester for babies who would be severely limited in their viability or life after birth. that decision should rest solely with the mother/parents.
but there was so much screaming about “slippery slopes” that the right was able to dominate the discussion and look like the calm and reasonable voice, making the pro-choicers seem like mass mudering lunatics wanting to stick a needle in the brain of every single baby, wanted or not. it was not a shining time for our side unfortunately. i hope we can get to the point where we’re the voice of reason again. most of the country wants roe v wade just as it is: no limits 1st trimester, light limits 2nd trimeser, and more stringent limits 3rd trimester. when framed like that, it’s a winning issue and isn’t compromising RvW.
Stay at Home Dad- I agree with you. I abhor slippery slope arguments because they get in the way of reasonble compromise. I don’t like third trimester abortion by healthy women of healthy fetuses. It is an awful thing to imagine for obvious reasons, and it also makes me angry that women could not exercise the hard won control others have obtained and make a decision in a timely matter. One thing you don’t have in a pregnancy is time to dither when deciding what to do. It’s a time to face facts and do what you have to do, not passively wait around until the only options left are terrible for everyone. It reminds me too much of the women who throw babies in the trash because they just didn’t want to face facts. Abortion or no, pregnancy is a time to face facts- and fast.
I just want to thank Richard Carrier for using “question-begging” as a term of logic rather than to mean “raising the question.”
Here’s a quote from a medical student’s blog, after her first day at Planned Parenthood:
Arms. Feet. A face with eyeballs.
But hey, it doesn’t have a fully functioning cortex, according to the latest rationalization. Kill away!
Sorry, I messed something up. Here’s the quote again:
Just move right along, no need to worry about medical personnel who are “thrilled” to have the experience of dissecting little human faces with eyeballs. No cerebral cortex, you understand. Perfect candidate for dissection, really.
The evil, evil medical personnel! Oh the horror! (I have a rather sick sense of humor) Dissecting a face would be really hard with eyeballs. Give me a nice, sharp scalpel any day ;). And fuck your implied insults against a rather intelligent and responsible sounding medical student (was she supposed to fret and panic when seeing the face? Attack the co-workers? What?). Remember the operative words: From the doctor side of it. A med student is professional on a difficult operation that has some moral implications. Cry me a river.
Maybe a pang of conscience?
Hmh. My experience in “cutting up people’s faces” would be restricted in cutting up (usually) old, people dead by various natural causes as preparation for the pathologist. So no “abortionists guilt” (whatever?) here. But I suppose I could get graphic on details, but what’s the point really? Surgical operations like dissections are rather grisly. That has no effect whatsoever on their morality or lack of it.
Okay, let’s pretend that you’ve made a rational argument. If I’m following you, you’re saying “if it has arms, feet, a face with eyeballs, then it’s alive; the presence or absence of a fully functioning cortex is irrelevant.”
Let’s consider the implications of your argument logically. A statue has a face, with eyeballs. A corpse has a face, with eyeballs. A doll from Toys R Us has a face, with eyeballs. A raccoon has a face, with eyeballs. A Mickey Mouse clock.
All these things have hands, feet, faces and eyeballs. Are you seriously suggesting they all therefore have a right to life?
On the other hand, it’s quite possible for a burn victim to have no recognizable face, no hands, no feet and no eyeballs – but to still be thinking. By my standards, this person is a person, and has a right to life – as great a right to life as you or I – because my standards recognize that the ability to think, to have a personality, is what makes a person a person.
By your standards, it’s not at all clear that this burn victim has a right to life at all. He has a fully functioning cortex, but you seem to find the idea that a cortex is relevant ridiculous. All the standards you suggest are relevant – hands, feet, eyeballs – this burn victim lacks. So is it okay to kill him, in your view? Why or why not?
And when you explain why it’s not okay to kill him, do it without referring in any way to the state of his brain. Otherwise, you’ll be implicitly admitting that I was correct to say that a cortex is more relevant than the eyeballs and hands and feet you’re so concerned with.
Thanks for the bombardment, Niels. Now I don’t have to waste any more time taking anything that you say seriously. Yeesh. Lives there not a rule-yer-lifer somewhere capable of at least thinking up a novel new argument, instead of the customary, gratuitous kewpie-doll-meets-Herschel-G-Lewis scenarios ?
No, Ampersand: A cortex that is fully functioning at the moment is certainly relevant, and since I prefer to err on the side of not cutting up living things, I’d certainly let the burn victim live.
Look, a baby orangutan doesn’t have a “fully functioning cortex” that in any way resembles an adult human being. What if a researcher wrote about how thrilled he was to be cutting out the eyeballs of live baby orangutans. I don’t know if I could “prove” rationally that doing so is wrong, but I’d still think it revolting and sick.
Tuomas: Wow, that’s a great point. Surgeries are often grisly. Why didn’t I ever think of that. That means there’s no difference whatsoever between a surgery that is intended to take out a cancer victim’s tumor, and a surgery that consists of killing someone by dismemberment. Both are grisly, and that’s the only thing that matters.
And the reference to statues, dolls, raccoons, etc., is not “logical.” Those entities are not, and never have been, and never will be, a human being at any stage of a human being’s life cycle. (A corpse was, but — guess what — it’s dead already, and it ain’t coming back.) That’s why if you found an eyeball in your soup, the reaction of the police would be rather different if it turned out to be a human eyeball as opposed to a doll’s.
Finally, if you did find a human eyeball in your soup, I’d find it rather disturbing if the police’s first reaction was to inquire whether the victim had enough brain functioning to be worth protecting, on the theory that if the victim was disabled enough, he/she was fair game for dismemberment (just as you’re saying that dismemberment is fine b/c fetuses don’t have enough brain functioning at the moment).
bean misunderstands me.
i am not for banning late term abortions. i realize fully that these are very rare procedures and always (afaik) done for pretty darn good reasons (mother’s or baby’s serious health issues).
that being said, why fight for something that doesn’t happen? if it is true that the “”woman changes her mind at the last minute and decides to have an abortion at 36 weeks” scenario does not exist”, then let’s concede that point and allow that restriction to be written into law to make the moderates and undecideds “feel better”. if it will win them over to our side, what’s the harm in giving up something that doesn’t exist anyway? it makes the more squeamish feel better and harms no one. to say “no late term abortions of healthy women of healthy fetuses, yes to late term abortions for medically necessary (mother’s or baby’s) reasons.” there’s a winning compromise.
and compromise is needed on this issue. the harder the reproductive rights extremists fight for “any abortion at any time” the more ground we lose. they’re not fighting to preserve RvW, they’re fighting for “principle,” and that can get into deep waters real quick.
just as it’s easy for the majority of people to see the folly of the “it’s a baby from the moment the sperm and egg combine” arguement, it’s easy for most people to see folly of the “it’s just a fetus, a parasitic part of the woman’s body until the moment of birth” argument.
truth lies rarely at the extremes of any issue, but usually somewhere in the middle.
that is my whole point. i’m not some anti-choice shill. i’ve said several times on other threads i’m pro-choice. i’m not some religious shill. i’m an atheist. i’m not “being used” by the anti-choicers. sure, they think that limiting late term abortions is a way for them to get the foot in the door, but it isn’t. RvW has an overwhelming support in the american public, even among republicans. limits on late term abortions might “open the door,” but the lunatic fringe “pro-life” would soon find that there’s a sturdy chain lock of public opinion & existing law to keep the door from opening any more.
SAHD, the Democrats have offered the “compromise” you suggest multiple times. It’s been defeated every time, by pro-life Republicans.
So although it’s true that some of us reproductive choice purists (a label I can happily live with) oppose any abortion bans at all, it’s not true that it’s our opposition that prevents the restriction you’re talking about from being written into law.
I’ve written in more detail on this previously, in this post, this post, this post (see the item about Dick Durbin’s bill), and this post, among others.
sahd, you need to re-read Amp’s thread about PBA again. He explains in great detail why it’s dangerous to have such a law on the books. For starters, it’s vaguely written, and does not specifically describe only abortions that take place near the end of a pregnancy.
You fall into the familiar trap of assuming that the current configuration of “moderate” vs. “extreme” places firm pro-choicers on a pole directly opposite that of firm pro-lifers. Trouble is, that’s crap. Extreme pro-lifers favor forced pregnancy and forced birthing, for everyone. The pro-choicers you speciously cast as “extreme” do not favor forced contraception/sterilization or forced abortion. For anyone.
If you expect real debate, you can’t set up a bogus constructions of opposites and expect feminists to take them seriously. These bogus constructions have been part of the alleged public debate about reproductive rights for so long that far too many people just swallow them unquestioningly. They are wrong. They need to be challenged and removed from the table. They’ve done more than enough damage.
BTW, sahd, do you really think that it was the pro-choice camp that started all this hateful and deceptive foolishness surrounding the issue of late-term abortion. Guess again. That was the extreme pro-lifers, looking –and finding– thanks to shallow faux-debate in a sensationalistic “liberal media” and lack of skepticism from so-called moderates, a wedge issue. They wanted to use it to turn so-called moderates like you against so-called extremists like me. It worked, didn’t it ?
When was the last time that ignoring an enemy really made them go away ?
Ummm… dad dude, you really need to get it through your head that A) I am not an extremist B) You’ve got one hell of nerve lecturing myself or any woman about what is and isn’t worth fighting for–for the simple reason that it is physically impossible (at the moment) for you to find yourself with an unplanned and unwanted baby inside you. Also, when was the last time a pharmacist tried to deny YOU birth control so his precious, all-important “conscience” didn’t need to be disturbed and C) It’s pretty damn hypocritical of you to keep harping on “abortion at any time” when you just got through whining above that this is a divisive stereotype that should come off the table pronto.
Make up your mind. Do you want to continue to play on stereotypes so as to cast yourself and those like you as the One Voice of Reason, or do you want to discard them and get on with the business of helping women be full-fledged citizens and not baby-making machines to be played with by hypocritical guardians of the public morals ?
My rights should not be subject to the views of what “most people” think. “Most people” obsess about Harry Potter and Star Wars, things I have zero interest in. Do I have to feign concern and interest in those things because “most people” like them, too ?
My middle, which you distort by dubbing it “extreme” is as follows: I don’t know what’s best for everyone, and neither do you. My body belongs to me, and I don’t want strangers and would-be moral guardians messing around with it to get their own God-induced jollies. Your body belongs to you, and I don’t presume to mess-around with it so as to get my own jollies.
If that’s “extremism,” we need more of it, not less. It’s being too soft-voiced that’s put the pro-choice movement on the rocks. If you can’t be proud of your beliefs, it’s this that emboldens your enemy and clears more space for him to boom his own voice.
that being said, why fight for something that doesn’t happen? if it is true that the “”woman changes her mind at the last minute and decides to have an abortion at 36 weeks” scenario does not exist”, then let’s concede that point and allow that restriction to be written into law to make the moderates and undecideds “feel better”. if it will win them over to our side, what’s the harm in giving up something that doesn’t exist anyway? it makes the more squeamish feel better and harms no one. to say “no late term abortions of healthy women of healthy fetuses, yes to late term abortions for medically necessary (mother’s or baby’s) reasons.” there’s a winning compromise.
Do you really want to know why? Because of TRUST. I don’t trust the medical community in my city, because many of the physicians here are right-wing pro-birthers who believe that the fetus always trumps the mother, because the fetus’ soul is innocent, whereas the mother’s soul is stained by sin. I could easily envision a pregnant woman with cancer being denied either medical treatment or an abortion because of the harm that would incur to the fetus. Now, it would be difficult and stressful enough for a woman in that position to find a lawyer to fight her case….but more importantly, where is she going to find the time?! If she happens to have a cancer that is exacerbated by the rise in hormones during pregnancy, the clock isn’t just ticking, it’s ticking fast.
You think it’s no big deal to compromise on giving up this right; you will never face this particular situation yourself. Imagine yourself having to beg for medical treatment before a board of physicians, having to justify the worth of your life in order to get treatment for a life-threatening or disabling medical condition. Imagine having those physicans determine that your life, or your health, wasn’t all that important. That you could “wait” a little while longer, or that by engaging in conduct that the physicians disapprove of, that you didn’t really deserve to have treatment. Maybe then you’ll understand. As the law stands now, no physician (or hospital) is going to abort a viable fetus unless there is a serious life-threatening or health-threatening reason. You could say, “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”
There is no compromising with some people. Period. Santorum doesn’t want Durbin’s bill because of the phrase “women’s health”. Folks like him believe that unless a woman is in immediate danger of dying, she shouldn’t have an abortion. Bringing her to the brink of death, as in letting her HELLP leave her on dialysis, and/or with liver damage, and/or with brain damage from a stroke, is A-OK with far too many people. They feel that this is all part-and-parcel of the “curse of Eve”, and they want their religious views enforced even on those of us who don’t share them.
Lemme tell ya about Dick Durbin. He’s a decent man. A compromising fellow. Personally, he is against abortion, but votes pro-choice because it saves women’s lives. He is a member of Blessed Sacrament church here in Springfield, IL. Because of his pro-choice voting record, the former pastor of that church, Kevin Vann, publically stated that he would not allow Durbin to partake Communion. Vann is now a bishop in Texas. There’s the people you want us to compromise with, sahd. You don’t have to compromise much. But some of us women, we would get to compromise with our lives. I’m not an alarmist; I’m not making this up. I read the letters to the editor in the local paper, and many prominent physicians are frequent flyers there, upholding the fetus over the mother every time, and making disparaging remarks about the “women’s health” compromise.
“So choose different doctors, or a different place to live”, you may say. To that, I would remind you of the state of the economy, and the fact that those of us without trust funds to live on have to choose our location on our employment. And most people have a narrow range of choice on physician or hospital, based on insurance restrictions and their earning power. If they even live in a place where physicians are accepting new patients.
I’ll say it again: there is already a middle ground. It is called pro-choice.
Niels:
Ho hum. You tried to use the “let me describe the operation in all it’s goriness and make the people doing look like cold, heartless people who find torture and dismemberment fascinating” and I called you on it. Grisliness isn’t the only thing that matters to me, actually, the grisliness and “ick factor” are completely irrelevant to my morality. Next?
Btw, maybe the reason you didn’t think about it is because you’re a partisan hack who prefers scare stories instead of an actual argument?
first: please do not ASSUME. you do not know me, my family, or my situation. i am probably one of the .001, or whatever the percentage is, of men who have direct experience with this issue from the uterus side of the argument. i’m a F2M transsexual. penis now, uterus many many years ago. when i had that uterus, i had to deal with issues of birth control, it’s failures, rape, pregnancy, “decisions to be made,” and miscarriage. so yes, i do know whereof i speak.
but totally aside from that, i really hate the argument that because i have a penis (detachable or otherwise), i have no right to any OPINION on the issue of abortion. i’ll agree i have no right to enforce by law that opinion on anyone else. but we’re just talking here.
i have a mother, 2 daughters, and a wife. these women are the world to me. so no, a pharmacist may not deny me birth control or whatever, but if you think i don’t worry about that happening to them, you’re wrong. i worry daily for the world that the nutjob right would want to create for my daughters. my wife & i have cut contact with her father because he’s one of these nutcases. i will not have my girls exposed to a grandfather who thinks that they are somehow less than fully human because of their gender.
i saw first-hand the pain caused my mother by a father-knows-best catholic doctor who refused her a medically necessary hysterectomy for years because — even though it would by his own admission kill her to have another child — he wouldn’t remove a woman of “child bearing years” uterus. this bastard put her through 17 d&cs for her problems until she finally nearly bled to death and at last she got her hysterectomy.
it seems, reading on these comments, some people are putting my pro-choice position on equal footing with someone as clearly anti-choice as niels. not exactly the way to win the ‘hearts and minds.’
now if all you’re (generic you) interested in is an echo chamber, where everyone is in 100% agreement, that’s what you’ll get by treating moderates as wingnuts.
i don’t even consider myself a moderate. i’m pretty strongly pro-choice. everyone i know considers me such. i just have a problem with very-late-term abortions done for no medical reason whatsoever. and as far as i’m concerned “medical reason” should be broadly interpreted. now if these sorts of abortions don’t exist fine. i’d just like to rule out the possiblity of them existing. other than that, i think choice should be absolute.
now some direct answers…
at no time did i use the term “Partial Birth Abortion.” i know that this is a false construct of the right.
i don’t think of the debate in terms of a pole, rather more like an ellipse. the ends of this ellipse are filled with a variety of extreme positions, that includes those you describe.
as for whether or not those at the extreme of the choice end are as nutty as those at the extreme of the anti-choice end is a silly argument. there are those i’ve heard on the choice end argue for things that dance closely to eugenics. i don’t take them any more seriously than i would someone who thinks that a woman should be forced to be pregnant at every opportunity from the onset of menses to the onset of menopause. they’re both nuts and not germane to any reasoned discussion.
who started the debate about 3rd trimester abortions doesn’t matter. it’s out there. saying the other guy started it doesn’t make it go away. again, it’s something that more people than you probably realize think about. at least in my aquaintenceship. many of my pro-choice friends who are parents are very reluctant to discuss the unease that 3rd trimester abortions cause them, especially among non-parent pro-choicers. it’s very hard to imagine someone chosing to have a non-medically-necessary 3rd term abortion after experiencing the pregnancy/birth of one’s own children.
i never addressed anyone personally. i would never presume to put anyone anywhere within the range of that theoretical elliptical construct i’ve made. i don’t know that who’s at the ends and who’s not. i’m not “setting myself up as the one voice of reason”. i’m discussing an issue. putting out my opinion on it. i expect others to have differing opinions. some common ground might be found. however, i also know that there will be many people with whom i will have to “agree to disagree.” if someone is advocating for the right of a woman to have an abortion up until she’s in contractions, her water’s broken, and the head is crowning, then i’m going to have to “agree to disagree” with that opinion.
some here say that they believe that the pro-choice movement is on the rocks. i do not. poll after poll shows solid support for RvW as originally written. there is a loudmouthed minority that has everyone running scared. if that minority ever succeded at what they want, this country would no longer be this country in thousands of ways, not just the issue of choice. but we are not yet at that theocracy point yet, no matter how much they want to scare us into thinking we are. they really are a very small minority.
they may “nibble at the edges” (and i’m not denying that there are some very important edges out there–such as parental notification [which i’m against, btw]) but i believe that they will never ever ever succede at getting rid of the heart of RvW, which is the right of an adult woman to have an abortion on demand within the first 6 months of a pregnancy. that’s the biggie. it covers probably at least 90% of all abortions.
oh yeah, and i hate hate hate the term “pro-birth” and “natalists” as a frame. i understand the reasoning behind it: they only support the right of the child to life until it’s born, then they deny it health care, are pro-death penalty, etc etc. but it’s a bad term. just like i hated it when my gay friends called straights “breeders.” it makes us look bad. we call ourselves “pro-choice” because it’s a positive. who’d want to be against choice? we call them “anti-choice”, that’s a good one. but say “pro-birth”, and that puts the whole, “who’d want to be against birth?” argument out there. and natalists, well, most people probably think that has something to do with swimming or nudist colonies. :)
stay at home dad, I didn’t assume anything about you except that you are male. And that does make a difference. Allies are a good thing to have, don’t get me wrong, but let’s get real—allies don’t take the slings and arrows. And “allies” who are only trying to find a kinder, gentler way of getting me to shut up, go home, and forget about human rights—just accept whatever “privileges” that “society” wants to “give” me (or not), aren’t really allies. And you can decide for yourself if you fit in that boat or not. Frankly, I’m suspicious of a guy who has seen his mother suffer from some asshole doctor being willing to place even more power into the hands of physicians than they already have. That sounds kinda close to the old “state’s rights” argument to me; I live in an area where for every physician that thinks “women’s health” actually means women’s health, there are at least two more who think a woman’s health should take a back seat. That women were born to suffer.
And as for the “who’d want to be against birth” argument, lemme tellya—they would! Well, if that birth came from an unapologetic single woman like me. That social shunning that Robert proposed on the other thread is something that many folks in the area where I live believe should be directed against women like me, in order to discourage unmarried women from having sex.
See, I am under no illusion that I have a snowball’s chance in hell of “winning the hearts and minds” of those folks. I can’t imagine the level of hate and bile one has to carry around with them in order to treat total strangers like shit, just for existing. But they’re out there. Oh yeah, they’re out there.
And I really shouldn’t have to entertain their bullshit; not even for a New York minute. I’m sick and tired of being told that my human rights have to wait. This is my bodily integrity we’re talking about here. You know what I want? I want the Equal Rights Amendment. I want the full backing of the Constitution. I want the full backing of the force of law on my side. I’m sick of waiting; I’m sick of having to worry every election day about whether my human rights are recognized or not. I lived around fundies my entire life, and I know, know in my bones that I am not going to change their minds. They aren’t just against abortion, they want to roll back the tide on women, period. This “play nice and wait, pretty please” argument is all played out. It is used on African Americans, it is used on Native Americans, it is used on Latino/as, it is used on Asians, it’s used on gays and lesbians, transgendered folks, people with disabilities, religious minorities…..anyone who has the nerve to insist upon our human rights. And I call bullshit.
Roe isn’t broke. It doesn’t need “fixing” or “tweaking”.
You are asking me to compromise with the same folks who have gotten in my face (as a female electrician) and harangued me (with red faces and spittle flying out of their mouths) about “stealing a man’s job”. That “some man can’t support his family because you’re out here taking his job away from him.” You are asking me to compromise with the same folks who used to teach me in grade school that it’s a waste of money to send girls to college, since they are only getting “MRS” degrees. The same people who even now gasp if my five-year-old daughter happens to bring one of her favorite trucks with her instead of one of her favorite dolls. These are people who don’t understand one damn thing about the spirit of compromise. I know. I’ve been trying to compromise with these fools all my life. No more. I’m done. My back is up, and I’m fighting. I won’t stop. I can’t. My daughter deserves better. And so do yours.
Tuomas — Nothing you’ve said deserves a response.
Ampersand, if you’ve seen the news lately, Howard Dean is saying that there’s no such thing as someone who is “pro-abortion.”
Care to dispute his remarks? It seems that you (and apparently quite a few others) praise abortion as a positive thing for many women in many circumstances.
Niels:
Not even a little one like
Come on, I’ll be just happy ignoring you if you truly intend to return the favor. Let us make a deal (without any insulting last remarks, please).
Uhhh, yeah, pretty much what LaLubu says. Though I don’t have any daughters.
As for Dean, he’s just another neo-lib opportunistic fuckwit, ready to sell his followers out at the drop of a hat. His seemingly mystical power over progressives, including feminists, remains as much a mystery to me as it ever was. Study his record, for pity’s sake. If just delivering the same old platitudes with a different accent is enough to make Dean progressive, I guess all I have to do is learn three or four guitar chords, and I’ll be Wanda Jackson. :p
well, i am male and have always been so, despite biology. my point about the biology was, that i have had to deal with these issues personally, so i know a little more than your average guy about it.
so let me get this straight… alsis & lu are arguing for the right of a woman to abort up until the exact moment of birth. in that case, i’ll just have to disagree with you as much as i disagree with the right wing extremists who argue that human life begins at the moment of conception.
i’m not arguing that you’ll ever win the hearts and minds of those extremists on the other end. you’ll never convince the anti-woman nutcases. i’ll never convince my f-i-l. no point trying. but whether you want to admit it or not, there is a sea of people out there in the middle.
y’all just don’t seem to think that there’s any one in the middle range… close to your point of view but not quite all the way there with you. anyone with less than ideological purity is automatically thrown into the pit with those who would have us living in atwood’s gilead. what you want here is an echo chamber. you’ve made no attempt to persuade me to your point of view.
i’m not a deaniac. i’m one of those who believes there’s not a dime’s worth of difference between the dems and the repugs. especially in my state (louisiana). but that 9c (or even a penny’s) difference is the best we can get. here, we didn’t even get that difference in the last local election we had… i had the choice of voting wildass-nutjob-republican or merely nutjob-republican. having a neo-lib would’ve been at least some kind of choice. most times i hold my nose and vote dem. the one time i voted green (2000 pres elec), well, *that* worked really well (not!).
i would LOVE to see the ERA come back. and i’ll never understand why women voted against it. sure, there was that nifty argument used on the “west wing” that all the rights women need are already there in the 14th amendment. and they probably are. but the entrenched male-superiority crowd needs to be hit over the head with the point by something specific that says, “yes, you idiot, we mean women too!”
i’m also for getting major changes to the AMA on a number of issues, which would help with the medical necessity part. but i don’t have time to get into that now. gotta go take the kids to mawmaw’s house.
later.
Go back and reread my post, sahd. I am not advocating for third trimester abortions on a whim. I am advocating for women’s ability to easily obtain these abortions when their lives or health are at stake. Putting extra barriers in front of women who have developed a serious, threatening condition during their pregnancy will, in practice, kill women unnecessarily. There are still far too many physicians out there in positions of power that are more interested in enforcing their version of morality than in providing necessary health care to pregnant women. And I’d like to remind you that these medical power plays with “morality” play out very differently for poor, non-white, and/or unmarried pregnant women than they do for middle-class, white, married women. AMA rules won’t protect women, because the public has no say in their making or enforcement. That’s strictly for the insiders. I have no voice there, and neither do millions of other women. Look at the disrespect Santorum shows when he makes the statement that “women’s health could mean anything.” No, it couldn’t mean “anything”; it means women’s health. What he is saying is that a woman’s health doesn’t matter. That by getting pregnant, a woman has already tacitly given up her right to ask her physician to protect her health, only her life.
As a single mother, I have first-hand experience with how differently physicians treat unmarried mothers. My daughter spent the first six months of her life in the NICU, and it took me three months and a lot of hoop-jumping to earn the respect that was offered to married mothers on their first day. Oh jeez, the stories I could tell that would make your head swim. Naah, I’m not going to be trusting the medical community to make decisions for me anytime soon.
sahd, you’re all over the place. I really can’t keep up anymore. La Lubu seems to be managing all right. Must be because she actually is a parent, unlike me. :/
One thing I can’t quite let go: If you believe that most Americans are strongly in favor of preserving Roe, why would they be swayed by my supposed extreme views, which do not in any way intrude into their own family planning issues ? I don’t think that I have that kind of power. You yourself go on to say that when you hear from eugenicists or other “loonies,” you just ignore them.
As for my comments about Dean, I made them because Niels seems to think that everyone to the left of Bush holds him up as some kind of gold standard. So obviously if Dean thinks that choice and women are expendable, we should all think so, too. [rolleyes] Whatever the Great White Father says, and all… :/
Bean, I don’t remember a post exactly like that. Could this be one of the posts you’re thinking of?