{"id":1717,"date":"2005-07-22T00:01:51","date_gmt":"2005-07-22T07:01:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/archives\/2005\/07\/22\/a-few-good-links-about-abortion\/"},"modified":"2015-01-31T16:07:19","modified_gmt":"2015-02-01T00:07:19","slug":"a-few-good-links-about-abortion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=1717","title":{"rendered":"A few good links about abortion"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>(Nothing in this post is written by me; each of the following paragraphs is quoted from a longer essay, which it is linked to).<\/em><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/pinkofeministhellcat.typepad.com\/pinko_feminist_hellcat\/2005\/07\/aboriton_is_won.html\">Pinko Feminist Hellcat wrote<\/a>: 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.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/balkin.blogspot.com\/#112168020525089593\">Jack Balkin writes:<\/a> Siegel argues that exemptions in abortion statutes like those in <em>Roe <\/em>and <em>Doe <\/em>demonstrate, often in quite telling ways, that abortion restrictions are deeply tied to stereotypical views about the sexes and about the duties of women: &#8220;Whatever respect for unborn life abortion laws express,&#8221;\u009d Siegel notes, &#8220;state criminal laws have never valued unborn life in the way they value born life.&#8221;\u009d Instead, states &#8220;have used the criminal law to coerce and intimidate women into performing the work of motherhood.&#8221;\u009d &#8220;Abortion laws do not treat women as murderers, but as <em>mothers<\/em>: 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.&#8221;\u009d<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.2think.org\/abortion.shtml\">Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan wrote<\/a>: The trouble with these particular developmental milestones is not just that they&#8217;re arbitrary. More troubling is the fact that none of them involves <em>uniquely human<\/em> characteristics&#8211;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&#8217;t stop us from slaughtering them by the billions. Reflexes and motion are not what make us human.\n<p>Other animals have advantages over us&#8211;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&#8211;characteristically human thought. We are able to think things through, imagine events yet to occur, figure things out. That&#8217;s how we invented agriculture and civilization. Thought is our blessing and our curse, and it makes us who we are. <\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/infidels.org\/library\/modern\/debates\/secularist\/abortion\/carrier4.html\">Richard Carrier wrote<\/a>: There is even less to say about the rest of Roth&#8217;s arguments. &#8220;Every one of us has been a prenate at the beginning of our lifespan,&#8221; 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, &#8220;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,&#8221; 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 &#8220;class&#8230;to which we [will] all belong&#8221; and if we are going to expand the scope of human rights to all human bodies, then that will have to include corpses&#8211;and that means in the near future, when we can regenerate brains, death itself would become illegal.  Something is amiss.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>(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 &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=1717\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1717","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-abortion-reproductive-rights"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1717","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1717"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1717\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19523,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1717\/revisions\/19523"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1717"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1717"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1717"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}