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A handmaid at Park Street
By adamg on Fri, 05/17/2019 - 6:02pm
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If you want to change minds about killing babies
If you want to change minds about killing babies, your message should be less... ummm... pathetic.
I am kind of on the fence with this whole abortion thing from a legal standpoint. Ethically, prepared to be shunned by me. Whats going on in Alabama is activating my legal radar for some reason though.
That photo there only serves to lend credence to the notion of the crazies running the asylum is truly a bad thing. I looked up current fascist movements on the wikipedias and none seem to exist anymore. Cuckoobirds.
Shunned by you?
When can we start?
I would also like my name
I would also like my name added to the list.
If you are worried about "killing babies" ...
Perhaps you should work toward a world where:
Mothers have free access to prenatal care
Parental leave is supported
Well baby visits are supported
No child goes without food or education
Birth control is widely available
Health care is widely available
Parents raising children with disabilities are fully supported, including respite and hospice care
The lives of women bearing children matter enough to save
Another fight for another time
Or I can just vote against abortions whenever the opportunity arises.
Like my OP stated, I am on the fence for the legality. Throwing work at someone for your pet causes is not usually the way to win people over.
I do not think I am ever going to regret voting pro-choice at this rate. I understand your angle and appreciate you laying that all out honestly. Good luck with it. I understand Venezuela is big into all that sort of stuff. Maybe you can grow along with them as they succeed in all that stuff and bring it all to the States.
You and your mindless ramblings are crazy
It's mind boggling how you incorporate buzzwords like Venezuela into this inane rant. Conservatives have really lost their minds.
Add another one to the list...
The crazy religious fundamentalists who are pushing these draconian law changes actually start giving a shit about babies once they're born, rather than saying, "Well, you're on your own. Just don't be a burden to my wallet. And be ready to go to war for me when you turn 18".
Free stuff or death! Sums up socialism quite well.
Good job Swirly. Keep honing that argument.
On the fence why?
It's an open and shut case. If you don't have a vagina, and didn't inseminate hers, then why is it business of yours?
Because
Half of all aborted babies are male.
In China YMMV.... err.. YKMV
oh, great
so you're going to step up to take care of all those Persecuted Male Babies you "care" so much about?
Because it is all about the babies, right? And not your existential terror in the face of women who are able to make their own decisions.. right?
I will fight
I will offer help to stop their persecution. Who is persecuting them?
These things often have slightly simpler solutions than me adopting 300,000 children every year. Make that 600,000 a year. Why do you think I only care about male babies?
So how many unwanted male
So how many unwanted male babies have you personally fostered or adopted to further your agenda?
I think Louis C K's sketch
I think Louis C K's sketch about abortion does a great job of illustrating how reasonable people on both sides of the abortion debate cannot see eye to eye on the issue.
Yikes
Let's maybe not invoke louis ck in a discussion regarding women's agency over their own bodies, holy christ
right?
holy crap, talk about tone-deaf, living under a rock.
except, its totally appropriate because it says about all it needs to say about him and his perspective.
That's not a great line of argument
I am a committed supporter of a woman's right to choose.
But this line of argument always bothers me. Here's why:
Imagine it's 1860. You are arguing that slavery ought to be illegal. Someone on the other side says to you, "If you are not yourself a slave and you do not own slaves, then why is it business of yours?"
How do you answer?
and that's disingenuous
because, and I know this is difficult for you, but a fetus is not a person.
try repeating it. a fetus is not a person. a 6 week clump of cells is not a person.
It's not difficult for me in the slightest
It's not difficult for me in the slightest. I do not believe that a fetus is a person.
But I recognize that some other people do.
And I also, having, you know, read a couple of books 'n stuff, understand that assertions about whether a fetus is or is not a human being are, by their very nature, neither verifiable nor falsifiable and cannot be decided by logic or science.
Which, unfortunately, makes my belief that a fetus is not a human being, no matter how earnestly I believe it, no more or less valid than someone else's belief that a fetus is a human being.
Do you vote against fertility
Do you vote against fertility clinics destroying unused embryos? Clinics typically attempt to create 5x the embryos they can use per client. If the clinic is successful in creating the embryos, and if implantation is either achieved quickly or the procedure is cancelled (both are common), many embryos will be left over.
Do you vote against the destruction of those embryos? If not, why not?
Ain't seen
Great question but I have never seen the issue at the forefront of any voting opportunity.
I would opt for donation rather than destruction. I co-owned a few. I donated them.
Most clinics have an "end
Most clinics have an "end date" for donated embryos. Depending on how long the embryos had already been preserved at the time it/they become available for donation, any unimplanted embryos will be destroyed or used for very necessary scientific research anywhere from a month to a year later.
Of course, you could pay out of pocket to keep them frozen if you think destroying embryos is immoral.
Do you shun people who do not donate?
And, I'm curious: how do you know if someone has been party to an abortion so you can shun them?
EDIT: Of course, none of the above is about the legality, but it's possible you'll see it arise sometime. Divorce cases have already raised questions of whether an embryo is property or a person.
A Tennessee court found that an embryo was a person & awarded "custody," but, lucky for you, that was overturned by a higher court.
I say "lucky for you" because it's quite easy to imagine that if in vitro embryos are treated the way Alabama wants to treat in utero embyros, the number of them will skyrocket; already, the number donated embryos greatly outstrips the demand for them.
If it happens, then you, capecoddah, could be hit with paying out of pocket to keep those embryos frozen indefinitely. And with a flood of donated embryos, yours may never be "adopted" so you could be paying that for the rest of your life.
http://www.abajournal.com/magazine/article/contentious_battles_between_c...
I don’t understand the
I don’t understand the message. What am I supposed to make of a little white lady dressed as an alternative nun with a sign that reads “we won’t go back”. Adam, being the wicked smart progressive mind you are, can you enlighten my inferior self?
Now, now, don't get down on yourself
Just because you have been living in a cave for the last few years and have no idea what "The Handmaid's Tale" is about or why some people might feel it's particularly relevant this week. Happens to the best of us. Fortunately, there's a quick fix: Find a public library (if you're in Boston, good news: Every neighborhood has one!), walk right up to the nearest worker you see (just look for a desk with somebody sitting behind it) and ask for help in finding a copy of "The Handmaid's Tale." Find a comfortable chair (many libraries these days are equipped with chairs for patrons) and start reading. When done, ask the librarian where there are some public-access Internet terminals (I'm assuming you never bothered with a smart phone in the cave, what with the connectivity sucking in there and all), go to a site called Google, type "Alabama" in the big box right up top and hit enter.
I get it's from the Handmaid's Tale.
The people wearing this costume are acting as inverse nuns, yes? Whereas a nun represents the seven virtues these red nuns represent the seven vices. That's what I think anyways when I see them.
I guess this replaces the slut walks that used to occur on the Common.
So you haven't actually read the book or seen the series
Oh, well, have fun at the Louis CK show, I guess.
Wow dude
Don’t even try to learn. The book is about evangelicals running the country with their own version of Christian sharia law. It’s implied nukes were involved so many women aren’t fertile. The women not connected to powerful males are forced to either provide domestic chores, die in forced labor, or be handmaidens - the “lucky” few who are still fertile. They’re forced to be impregnated by the Christian males in power for them and their wives to raise - biblically ok as a handmaiden was used when Sarah (I think) was too old. It used to be considered a dystopian look at the future should the religious right wing take over (written during Reagan’s regime, when the GOP first started pandering to them for votes). Now it looks like it’s about next Wednesday. Look it up. Then look up racist roots of the anti abortion lobby while you’re at it.
She failed to convinced me
I will continue to use wood and wire hangers even if they are more wasteful than plain wire hangers.
And plastic hangers are for peasants.
Partial slavery?
By legislating that a woman is legally required to bring every fetus to term, the state declares that a woman's body is under control of government while she is pregnant.
The only way to justify this control is to declare that government has an interest in controlling a woman's body while she is pregnant. Basing that on pregnancy at what point can the government justify control over a woman's body? After conception or before conception? If the interests of government is based on continuing the population then to be legitimate in its control of a woman's body the state has to declare that all potential pregnancies - whether before or after conception - have to be "protected." In other words unless a woman is not able to conceive her body should be regulated by government as long as she is capable of giving birth.
Anyone who paid attention know that is a theme of The Handmaiden's Tale. That government has a right to have control over a woman's body.
I would not be surprised if women who support government having power over their bodies don't actually comprehend how that is a step toward slavery where government is the master.
Complete paranoia
Does your right to live begin when you're born? Does it begin at the point when you would survive an early delivery?
You abortion nutters have deliberately forgotten that the woman is not the only person in consideration here. If she can decide at 9 months minus 1 day she wants an abortion because girl power, why not let her keep her options open until the kid turns 18?
Roman makes an excellent point
I hereby move that we extend the deadline to decide on the viability of offspring to whatever his age is plus 1 day, and then show his mom the corpus of work he's responsible for on UHub.
He actually does mke an excellent point
I don't happen to agree with his point, because I don't believe that a six-week-old fetus is "a baby" entitled to protection under the law, but his point stands nevertheless.
And "viability" is kind of a slippery test. You could argue that a fetus 22 weeks after conception is "viable" because extreme intervention could keep it alive outside the womb. You could also argue that a baby six weeks after birth is "not viable" because, left on its own, it will die within a day, or sooner depending upon the temperature.
Neither science nor logic are going to resolve the abortion divide.
not really
Alternatively, by legislating that killing a fetus is illegal, the state is declaring that a a fetus is a human being entitled to protection under the law.
Alternatively, the control can be justified by saying that the government has an interest in the well-being of the fetus. By the same logic that allows the government to punish parents for failure to feed and clothe and otherwise care for a six month old baby, a government that considers a fetus to be a human being entitled to protection under the law can punish a woman for willingly killing that fetus.
I happen to support choice, so I don't accept the arguments that a six week old fetus is a person entitled to protection under the law or that a pregnant woman is therefore legally required to carry every pregnancy to term, but at least I acknowledge that those arguments are not insane.
Politics and strange bedfellows
There are plenty of people who are hell-bent on controlling women's sexuality and women's reproduction. Motivated by this objective, they want to ban abortion, irrespective of whether or not they give a shit about the well-being of the fetus or baby.
There are also plenty of people who believe that human life begins at conception, and that abortion is murder. Motivated by this belief, they, too, want to ban abortion, irrespective of any desire to subjugate women.
If you don't acknowledge that the second group exists, if you denigrate them by accusing them of belonging to the first group, or if you dismiss their position as insane, you're not going to get very far with your line of argument.
(No subject)
This is pretty good.
This is pretty good.
The say the left can't understand the right. This is proof
Almost every line on that chart is either a strawman or some other form of mischaracterization.
I'll single out the one about welfare for single mothers. Your chart claims it's about placing the consequences of sex squarely on the woman. That would be true in isolation. However it's not a policy that exists in isolation. Time was, if you knocked up a girl, her daddy would get his shotgun and make sure you did the honorable thing. Didn't need no laws for that.
But now that we have laws, it should be obvious that some of them are there to hold men accountable for their actions. Rape is a crime. Failing to support your kids, at least monetarily, is also frowned upon in most jurisdictions I can think of.
Our laws are meant to also hold men are responsible for the consequences of their behavior. Claims to the contrary are dishonest.
you can't be even handed here
Sorry to break it to you, but the "there at reasons on both sides and we have to listen to them because they are equally valid" perspective is what got us here in the first place.
Those of us who support women's healthcare (especially you know, women, who really are the only ones who have any place or right to legislate on this issue) understand that we are under no obligation to meet anyone in the middle, to bow to radical religious doctrine, or to give in to those who want to.control us just because we have to "be fair".
The responsibility lies with those in the second group you mention. Even if they really and truly believe that life begins at conception, that's their problem and they have no right to take over public discourse, enact legislation based on extreme religious views nor are they entitled to special treatment.
The responsibility lies with
They have no right to take over public discourse and they are not entitled to special treatment, but they have every bit as much right as anyone else to participate in the political process.
I'll ask the 1860s question again: You're in 1860. You're arguing against slavery. Someone on the other side says, "If you are not yourself a slave and you do not yourself own slaves, then butt out of the discussion because this does not concern you." How do you respond?
and ill repeat the answer
Its a disingenuous question based on false equivalence.
Slaves were people deprived of their rights under a larger socioeconomic system based on perceived superiority.
Groupings of cells dependent upon the mother are not people. One was a matter of economics and equality in society at large. The other is a matter of healthcare and bodily autonomy.
Whoosh.
When does that group of cells become a person? Conception? Implantation? Heartbeat? Neural activity? Viability? Birth? Ability to survive without hourly parental intervention? Thrice daily intervention? Ability to procure own food and shelter?
You better hope it's not the last one, otherwise it would be open season on anyone whose rent is paid for by mommy and daddy. Even if it's just a little, just until junior gets discovered ot published or finishes his 10 year PhD in the perverted arts.
You're missing something important here.
Sez who? Yeah, you and I may believe that, but the people on the other side of the argument believe the opposite. Simply vigorously asserting that we have it right and they have it wrong does not make it so.
Doesn’t follow
If they are people, then they should be afforded all sorts of rights beyond not being terminated by the person they’re dependent upon for life.
Oddly, that’s not what is being argued for though. They want to decide solely the question of termination rights but none of the others.
They aren’t consistent in their arguments, they aren’t able to provide evidence of viability, and they aren’t arguing from any scientific principle. They have a single binding belief that if it’s conceived then you can’t terminate it. That has more to do with having little regard for the mother than it does with having high regard for the fetus.
Just because people hold a strong opinion doesn’t mean they can’t also be wrong.
fine, I´ll put it another way
not just dependent upon, but literally part of the physical body of another person.
and once they can decide what we can and can't do with our bodies thanks to the presence of a zygote, they can then move to decide how we should eat, if we will be able to work, who we can associate with, what kinds of doctors we can see, etc.. because they'll be able to argue (out of a "sincerely held belief" that we just have to take seriously if we are to "be fair") that the product of our ovaries is indeed more important than we are.
until it's born and requires education and healthcare.
nah, screw being fair. I do not care about their beliefs. They can choose to have all the kids they want following their beliefs.