[In response to a pro-choice video, Alethea addresses the desperate effort of people to find strained excuses to control women’s decisions.]
Alethea H. “Crocoduck” Dundee — 4 August 2012 at 5:26 am
I’ll tell you why I hate those hypothetical near-birth abortion scenarios. It’s not that they’re stupid, or that they never happen, or even that there’s a real world problem of them encouraging the antichoicers to think of this nonsense as a real thing. All of which are true, too, and seriously annoying. But not why I get the white-hot HATE.
The hate is because the hypothesizer is just so damned keen to find some way, some very very special exceptional circumstance, in which it’s OK to remove my bodily autonomy. It’s very much like asking me when is rape OK.
Never? Really never? Ok, supposing she were the last fertile woman on earth… Or maybe there was a ticking time-bomb nuke and raping this woman would totally prevent it because a secret code has been tattooed on the inside of her vagina by some crazy mad supervillain in invisible ink and only your special semen can reveal the antinuke codes…
Awww c’mon, pretty please, surely there must be ONE situation in which a woman can be reduced to a piece of livestock?
NO. FUCK OFF. IT IS NEVER OK.
Why are you being so meeeeean to me for just asking?
Why are you so damned insistent on finding that one special circumstance when it’s morally OK for you to do something horrific to me? Why is it so unacceptable to you that I have bodily autonomy in all circumstances? NO, there isn’t a circumstance that makes you the rightful owner and master and torturer of me.
Just stop it right now.
I wish more people would understand this. Thanks, Alethea. This is the one that I voted for.
Just as blood donors have the right to stop the procedure for any reason at any time, so, too, must women have the right to terminate a pregnancy for any reason at any time. If you’re the only candidate donor and the patient will die without your blood, it is still your right to refuse to make the donation and let the patient die. Such is obviously the case with pregnancy.
Now, I’ll acknowledge that there are certainly circumstances in which I think the noble sacrifice is the proper course of action, or that those who forego sacrifice should feel shame and the pain of a guilty conscience — but that’s for the donor / woman to live with, and to decide if it’s better to live with a guilty conscience than to risk the consequences. I’ll also add that I personally can’t imagine any pregnancy worth dying for, but that I know others feel differently.
I’m not an OB-GYN, so let me state right up front that the hypothetical I’m about to present may have no bearing on reality. IF AND ONLY IF there are circumstances in which in a late-term pregnancy a C-section has risks for the woman comparable to that of an abortion, then I would consider it reasonable to require a C-section in such cases. And that is the sole extent to restrictions on access to abortion that I would even theoretically consider civilized.
Here in Arizona, and I’m sure elsewhere, we have designated safe harbors, such as fire stations, where anybody can drop off a newborn with no questions asked. Why that right should stop before birth it utterly beyond me.
Cheers,
b&
Yes! Congratulations, Alethea. That was a great comment and it will be brought out in the future to slap the clueless with, of course.
This comparison of “when would it be ok to rape” vs “when would it not be OK to abort” is bogus, a strawman of low quality.
Pregnancy is about delivering another life, rape doesn’t relate to that in this case at all.
The moment the fetus is ‘viable’, the woman’s choice is now between life (giving birth) and death (abortion). In almost all other situations, the latter choice is punished by law.
Ben Goren:
Uh huh. And I’m sure you’re aware that ‘safe harbor stations’ are absolutely useless in the U.S., as a woman can still be tracked down and prosecuted for using one.
Also, for the umpteenth fucking time, a ‘safe harbor station’ is not a fucking answer to an unwanted pregnancy. Jesus Christ. Actually you can take your whole comment and shove it, dear.
@ absolute #4 who obtained his law degree from a crackerjack box
You do not demonstrate much knowledge of law or case law. In an effort to save oneself, no one has an affirmative responsibility to save other people. Nice if they do, but not murder if they don’t or don’t try. Peace officers, firefighters, paramedics by the nature of their jobs and as a consequence of the oaths that they must swear have such an affirmative responsibility.
Presently in the U.S. a legally performed abortion by a properly trained medical professional is 3 x safer than carrying a pregnancy to term. Also, BTW, the infant and maternal mortality rates in the U.S. are higher than all other industrialized countries (and some non-industrial ones). Do you not consider that a form of murder? If not, why not? These are demonstrably preventable deaths?
By your reasoning, if you oppose the provision of a national health care system which has demonstrated lower infant and maternal mortality rates, you are guilty of murder.
Are you legally obligated to feed every hungry person you come across? By your reasoning your choice is now between life (feeding the person) or death (letting them starve). Why or why not and how is this different from your appeal to an over-arching principle of law you think exists?
BTW we skeptics understand the founding principles of the enlightenment, that abstract comparisons (such as in your post and this one) prove nothing, but can serve to illustrate an idea.
No it isn’t.
No, ‘delivering another life’ is what birthing is about.
Oh, so you’re one of those idiots a la Akin, can’t get pregnant from a rape, eh?
You are a prime idiot, aren’t you? Cute, putting viable in scare quotes so you can attempt to weasel about when it comes to a definition. Well, you can’t play that game here. If a fetus is incapable of surviving outside of a uterus, it’s not viable (in the way you’re using the word).
The woman’s choice is a matter of remaining pregnant and carrying to term or terminating that pregnancy. Full stop. It’s not murder no matter how much you wish to paint it so.
Fixed.
This “abortion of a perfectly healthy fetus gestating in a perfectly healthy woman after viability just because she feels fat” thing? Never happens. Just doesn’t. Third trimester and late second trimester abortions are performed because something goes horribly wrong and the fetus’ mother would rather have an abortion than bring it to term and watch it smother slowly. Or because she has a second fetus that is still living and she wants to get the dead one out with the least danger to it. Or the pregnancy is slowly destroying her liver and blood but the fetus is nowhere near the age at which it would be able to live outside her uterus. Or the pregnancy is causing her to seize and the fetus has no chance of survival any time soon.
All examples based on 100% real cases that I’ve either seen or have read in case reports or have been at morbidity and mortality conferences where they were discussed. Yeah, the M and M conference was about a case where the abortion was not performed.
Let’s not mince words. You mean the comparison between
“when it would be ok to rape”
and
“when it would be ok to force a woman to keep a pregnancy against her wishes”
The answer to the question “When is it OK to not abort?” is obvious. When the pregnant woman doesn’t want an abortion.
@Caine, Fleur du mal
You were not honest enough to include Ben Goren’s entire comment so I’ve done it for you.
But I’m not suggesting that your take your comment and shove it.
SOMEbody didn’t read or comprehend the OP.
Congratulations to Alethea, and congratulations to the authors of the other comments as well. They were all spectacular.
@Ben Goren #2
Really? Even if the fetus has a severe deformity that would result in it being born dead, or dying after a very short and painful life? Even then you would consider it “reasonable” to require a C-section?
The problem with trying to make rules and laws that cover such things is that there is always something that is never considered, and that lack of foresight causes problems for people in unique circumstances that are bound by laws which were painted with large brush strokes.
I linked to this in the original post where Alethea left her excellent comment, and I think I’ll do it again. This is what can happen when people who think they know better over-ride the agency of the woman in question:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angela_Carder
Oh, and:
Are you sure about that?
(Cue “” inanity…)
How does that change anything about what Caine said, steve? Here’s a clue: It doesn’t.
But I’ll take the high road, unlike yourself, and assume that you aren’t dishonest but simply didn’t put on your reading glasses. Did I out “look at how superior I am” you, now?
@absolute
Really? It’s bogus? You didn’t seem to think so when Alethea first made this comment. Why, looking at the thread for the OP, your response seems to have been this:
Linky for ease of verification:
https://proxy.freethought.online/pharyngula/2012/08/01/the-only-abortion-argument-that-counts/comment-page-2/#comment-421091
Why the sudden change of mind, absolute?
Steve Oberski:
I wasn’t being dishonest, you asshat. I saw Ben Goren’s little qualifier, which, if anything, made the rest of his comment even more idiotic and condescending.
Perhaps you should be questioning why, after reading Alethea’s comment, Ben Goren still had to go out of his way to find one qualifier after another as to when it’s okay to contravene a woman’s right to bodily autonomy.
Forced to have sex against my will
vs.
Forced to give birth against my will
Seems like a legit comparison to me.
@anteprepro
My understanding of Ben Goren’s comment was that he was not proposing a safe harbor station as an answer to unwanted pregnancy as indicated by the part of the comment that was deliberately and dishonestly elided.
Bullshit. Wrong. A complete fucking lie.
We kill all the time. We kill through inaction, we kill through laziness, and we hire and train people specifically to do so. We fucking love killing.
Except when it happens because a woman wants to terminate a pregnancy. Then its all some sort of moral quandary.
Fuck off. You’re bullshit.
The moment the fetus is ‘viable’, the woman’s choice is now between life (giving birth) and death (abortion). In almost all other situations, the latter choice is punished by law.
Actually, it’s not. There is a court decision that sets just the opposite precedent in a very similar situation. McFall versus Shimp. Look it up. Incidentally, bone marrow donation is considerably safer than pregnancy.
@Caine, Fleur du mal
I’m willing to concede that you are not dishonest, just incompetent.
I’ve recently heard pro-lifers now make the argument that smoking, drinkin, doing drugs or otherwise harming the fetus should also be acceptable if abortion is. I can’t decide whether it’s more or less ludicrous than their usual attempts, but it seems to be something new. Has anyone else heard that?
Uh huh. Goren just brought up safe harbor stations because…?
You aren’t too bright, Steve.
No, he isnt. I’m intensely curious what is motivating him to be so obtuse.
Obvious concern troll gotta be obvious and concerned would be my guess.
Right now, there are thousands of soldiers around the world killing each other. When should a soldier be able to kill another? When the other shoots first? What if his gun jams, and no bullet is actually fired, so the first soldier isn’t actually in danger? What if the other soldier is a conscript, an unwilling participant? What if xe’s a civilian? Working in a munitions factory?
You like to explore the boundaries of ethics? There you go. There’s a whole fucking realm of killing you can take your little “My First Philosophy Kit” and have at it.
@steve oberski
I’m not speaking for Caine, but my reading of Ben Goren’s comment made me wonder why he would bring up “safe harbor” laws in the context of a discussion about abortion.
“Safe harbor” laws do nothing for women who don’t wish to be pregnant. Those laws are for women who have already given birth.
Abortion is for people who do not wish to be pregnant, for whatever reason.
Adoption/safe harbor is for people who do not wish to be parents.
Roquetin:
It’s old news. Lifers did get laws passed in many a state (here in the U.S.), where a pregnant woman can be refused when it comes to being served alcohol or refused the sale of cigarettes, etc., on the grounds of it may harm the fetus. Now, some of those laws were overturned and in cases where they still stand, most employees ignore them, but there are always assholes ready to stick their noses where they don’t belong.
Ben Goren’s comment is right there at #2.
Anyone can go read it and make their own decision about what Caine didn’t quote.
Thanks for your help, though, steve.
@Caine, Fleur du mal
I read it as just as a woman should not be forced to compromise personal autonomy after birth so it is before birth.
Ben’s just as relevant as ever.
Adjunct Molly with simplification and clarification clusters.
Caine, Fleur du mal wrote:
Ease off there, and read the whole post.
My point most emphatically was not that women should be forced to continue a pregnancy just so they can abandon the newborn — quite the contrary. My point was that, since women already aren’t forced to care for newborns, they shouldn’t be forced to care for fetuses, either. There’s no legal requirement that a woman care for a living, breathing baby, so a legal requirement that she care for something less than that is absurd.
As the saying goes, Christians believe the right to life begins at conception and ends at birth. I’m just demonstrating that yet another way.
mythbri wrote:
Apparently, I didn’t preface my post with enough disclaimers.
Alethea brought up the favorite whipping post of the anti-choice movement, the late-term abortion of a healthy fetus for elective non-medical reasons. My point is that, even if we grant the anti-women people their premise, prohibiting abortion in such cases is only reasonable if there are delivery options no worse for the woman than abortion. I’m not an OB-GYN, so I have no idea if such scenarios exist. I know there are serious risks associated with a C-section (and of course with birth), but there are also serious risks associated with a late-term abortion. If and only if those risks are comparable — and, again, not being an OB-GYN, I have no clue how those risks actually add up — would it then become reasonable to favor the one over the other.
And, of course, these decisions belong in the hands of the woman and her physicians, possibly guided by her family and friends. Obviously, any physician who thought that there was less risk to the woman by aborting than delivering who failed to recommend abortion would be guilty of malpractice, but the reverse is also true.
My point is all about the principle of your right to swing your fist ending at the tip of my nose. And a fetus, even if one buys into the bullshit nonsense about Jesus infecting blastocysts with souls at the moment of conception, is doing nothing but swinging its fists at everything in sight. It has no rights in the matter save those the woman chooses to grant it. However, in this one never-happens contrived scenario, the roles can hypothetically be reversed, if and only if a healthy fetus can safely be removed from the woman with no more risk to the woman than with a procedure that would prove fatal to the fetus.
One last disclaimer: there should absolutely be no law dictating this sort of decision, only medical ethical guidelines. Physicians are already well equipped to handle matters of life and death — or, at least, they damned well better be. A medical review board is all that’s needed for those never-in-a-lifetime cases that fit this hypothetical scenario.
Cheers,
b&
Oh, don’t mind this, it’s just a harmless little though experiment.
The “Ticking bomb scenario” which has never had a proven* instance of happening in reality has justified torture. It started out as “just a thought experiment.” These thought experiments are particularly dangerous in the hands of grossly dishonest people.
*footnote: there have been many claims by “intelligence sources” (we know how reliable they are) but no documented, proven cases. If anyone knows of any, I would really like to know the details, full-citation, please.
If we follow this line of thought, the anti-abortion groups ought to be financing research into safe, effective live foetus removal techniques in order to save as many foetuses from destruction as possible. The fact they do not is quite telling. It’s almost like their agenda isn’t about saving cute widdle babies, and more about punishing women for having sex without proper approval (from a father, husband, etc). Funny, that.
Fuck this idiot noise with needles on. None of this crap is a solution to an unwanted pregnancy.
End of story.
Until those morally bankrupt ignorami put their money where their mouths are, I’m not going to bother.
@Caine, Fleur du mal
Just so there is no misunderstanding, it seems to me that you deliberately and deceitfully elided that comment with the intention of distorting it’s meaning and you should be called out for this reprehensible behaviour.
Yeah, cuz that’s totally in Caine’s character. And stuff.
Caine, let me be explicit: I fully and unequivocally support a woman’s right to determine if and when to terminate a pregnancy for any and every reason, right up to the moment of delivery.
I’m trying — not very successfully, apparently, at least not in your case — to make the point that, even if we grant the abortion rights opponents’s equivalent of the ticking time bomb scenario, the proper response is an indication in a hospital’s ethical standards policy that, in cases where, in the presiding physician’s opinion, delivery (by whatever means) of a healthy fetus poses no more risk to the woman than abortion, the preferred course of treatment for ending the pregnancy should be delivery.
And I’ve repeatedly made the point that even the hypothetical scenario basically never happens, and that I don’t know how the relative risks would stack up with today’s available medical procedures. That’s why I’ve been careful to be explicit that all these choices belong in the hands of the woman and her physicians, with the same oversight from a medical review board that you’d want for any other serious medical matter.
I understand that abortion rights are an emotional matter, and I fully agree that abortion rights should be unassailable.
All I’m doing is pointing out that, even in the most extreme example the anti-women crowd can come up with, the proper answer isn’t to ban abortion or even anything vaguely remotely like that, but for physicians and their patients to wisely choose the best method of terminating the pregnancy, while still keeping the health and safety of the woman paramount.
Cheers,
b&
‘Ok, supposing she were the last fertile woman on earth… Or maybe there was a ticking time-bomb nuke and raping this woman would totally prevent it because a secret code has been tattooed on the inside of her vagina by some crazy mad supervillain in invisible ink and only your special semen can reveal the antinuke codes…’
I love that analogy.
Yeah, I got your intent, Steve. I’m not the one with an intelligence deficiency.
Congratulations Alethea!
Ben Goren #2:
Shove the backdoor shaming up your fucking ass. We don’t want to hear it.
Ben Goren #43:
The fact that you are attempting to raise scenarios in which it is ‘okay’ for you to shame women who get abortions, or attempt to say that it is somehow ‘okay’ to force a woman to carry a term to give birth, means that NO, YOU DON’T.
Oh, for fuck’s sake.
Here, let me do a bit of tone trolling.
When somebody writes things like, “I fully and unequivocally support a woman’s right to determine if and when to terminate a pregnancy for any and every reason, right up to the moment of delivery,” and “There’s no legal requirement that a woman care for a living, breathing baby, so a legal requirement that she care for something less than that is absurd,” and especially when that person’s first comment in the thread is, “Just as blood donors have the right to stop the procedure for any reason at any time, so, too, must women have the right to terminate a pregnancy for any reason at any time,” you really, really, really, really, really don’t want to let loose with a full-on flame-thrower blast at a hint that that person might personally find the thought of aborting a healthy fetus disturbing.
I mean, really.
Here I am, repeatedly and emphatically stating complete and total support for a woman’s right to choose to terminate a pregnancy, in any and all circumstances, even in those cases where I wish she wouldn’t choose to terminate the pregnancy, and all y’all can do is tell me to anally rape myself?
This post of PZ’s celebrating Molly’s emphatic and eloquent pro abortion rights is, essentially, the online equivalent of an impromptu abortion rights demonstration in the town square. If I had passed by such a demonstration, picked up a sign and joined in, and subsequently been verbally harassed the way all y’all’re harassing me here and now, do you think I’d ever voice support for abortion rights again?
Yes, of course. I’ll continue to support abortion rights privately in the voting booth. But why on Earth should I want to do so publicly, if all it’ll get me is this type of bullshit?
Talk about Not Helping ™.
b&
It doesn’t need to be included in medical ethics because no woman is going to carry the fetus around for six months or more unless a live baby is also her preference. Therefore, any time this is relevant, it will already happen. All that adding it would do is create the potential for stupid and cruel attempts to prevent women from aborting fetuses with very limited chances survival with a good quality of life – such as ones that are severely disabled, or right on the boundary of viability.
Any actual benefits from your suggestion would also be gained by ensuring that doctors fully inform their patients of the range of treatment options, with the attendant benefits and risks. Something that’s already part of medical ethics, but mysteriously doesn’t always get applied to women, especially when it comes to reproductive health.
So how about you go work on that, instead of pontificating about when it really is okay to stop us controlling our own damn bodies?
Ben Goren, like you said, your hypothetical almost never occurs in real life, and is instead a favorite coded argument of anti-woman pro-“lifers” to sneak in acceptance of the idea of abortion restriction into a debate, which is invariably followed by disingenuous attempts to expand the scope of restrictions, once the idea of restrictions itself has been conceded.
So we do not concede it.
Did you miss the entire saga with current thunderdome inmate joey?
In real life, the number of situations where either abortion or induced birth are both equally indicated, where both, in the absence of restrictions from law, could be chosen, is virtually zero.
1. In the case of a near term viable fetus, induced birth is almost always safer for the woman than any abortion technique currently available (you are talking extracting around 20lbs of material from the uterus at this point). Thus in this scenario abortion is virtually never even an option that requires regulation at all.
2. Nearly all near term pregnancies are WANTED. Women generally aren’t inclined to endure 9 months of the physiological stresses of even a normal pregnancy just for kicks you know. About the only likely scenario where an UNWANTED pregnancy makes it to the viable near term fetus stage are ones where the woman was PREVENTED from getting an abortion earlier. And the proper solution to that should be self evident.
So the reality of late term abortions is simply this: they are almost exclusively used for non viable or severely deformed fetuses or due to a medical emergency wherein induced birth is not possible, no other option exists to save the woman’s life, and consequently the fetus is already doomed regardless. They are almost all WANTED pregnancies that are coming to a traumatic and undesirable end. What women and their doctors need in these cases is as much flexibility as possible with respect to the options they have available to them in such a difficult time. The LAST thing they need is restrictions imposed on their options by some distant authority, or to have their situations made political hash of for partisan purposes.
I’m not raising any scenarios; the one under discussion is the exact same one that’s the topic that Alethea was discussing.
And I have never, not even once, hinted that I think a woman should ever be forced to carry a pregnancy to birth. I have explicitly and repeatedly stated that a woman should have the right to terminate a pregnancy at any point up until delivery, and that the only question should be the content of a hospital’s medical policy with respect to this never-happens scenario regarding the ethical concerns in determining the method of terminating the pregnancy.
All I can conclude from this is that you’ve got a serious martyr complex, such that you’d much rather enjoy your rightful indignation than elicit the support of somebody who has, time and time again, expressed opposition to all legal restrictions on abortion.
What the fuck do you care about my own squeamishness with regards to abortion, so long as I’m willing to stand with you to ensure it remains legal and handled by the medical profession? Do you really prefer your rage to abortion rights?
God damn.
b&
Ben Goren, you know that post up the top there? The one we just voted for for a Molly? The one that complains about the desperate need to find a circumstance, any at all, in which it is okay to override a woman’s own choices about her body?
That is what you are doing, right now, in this thread.
Go read it, carefully. And don’t come back until you’ve understood what it is saying.
And in most scenarios of emergency threat to the woman’s life, the physiological compromise that the woman suffers invariably produces untreatable fetal distress (the fetus being still dependent on maternal support), such that by the time the abortion actually physically occurs, the fetus is dying or already dead.
jefrir and Amphiox, I am in total agreement. The scenario that Alethea described virtually never happens, and plain ol’ ordinary medical guidelines are already appropriate for dealing with it. I’ve even made that point explicit: “Obviously, any physician who thought that there was less risk to the woman by aborting than delivering who failed to recommend abortion would be guilty of malpractice, but the reverse is also true.”
At this point, I am at a complete loss to understand the rage being directed against me, other than what I’ve already posted that some vocal abortion rights supporters apparently have a hyperactive martyr complex.
Sorry, I just don’t get it. I’d have thought that those who support abortion rights would be happy to have others express support for abortion rights, but that’s apparently not the case.
b&
No you don’t, you fuckwitted douchebag. If you did, you wouldn’t be arguing against Alethea’s comment, you know, the one which won a Molly. You’ve been arguing against it from your first comment and all you’ve done since is continue digging.
I don’t give a damn if you dig yourself silly, but spare the rest of us your tired, stupid pile of shit. How about you get together with Steve Oberski instead? He seems dazzled by your shit.
The problem with your squeamishness is that you felt the need to inject it into a thread about women’s rights to control their bodies, rights which are in genuine danger.
If that squeamishness is unimportant enough that you can overcome it to support our cause, then why was it important enough to mention here?
Everybody leave Ben Goren alone! Can’t you see he’s an ally?
In Oregon we have laws against parents starving their children to death. We have laws against fuckwit christians allowing their children to die from lack of medical care. Why? Because there really are people stoopid enough to do both of those things. Holy shit this one is a twit.
I’m sorry, but no. I’m not. Haven’t once.
Each and every time, I’ve reaffirmed that a woman always has the right to terminate any pregnancy, right up to the moment of birth, and that any decisions about if and when to terminate should be made by the woman and her physician. I’m doing so again in this post. I’ve discussed factors that should be considered when making that choice, but I’ve never once even hinted that that choice should ever ultimately belong to anybody but the woman with the help of her physicians.
If you really, honestly, truly think that stating that somehow equates to me wanting desperately find a circumstances in which it is okay to override a woman’s own choices about her body, then I ain’t got nothin’ for ya. Go fly a kite or something, or at least take some remedial reading comprehension classes.
b&
So, you’ve posted a bullshit moral scenario that you admit makes no actual difference in the real world, and you’re confused about why people are angry?
Your squeamishness is causing you to fight against womens’ autonomy via rationalizing and coming up with all manner of stupid scenarios to justify bad actions.
You are not willing to stand with us. Your “squeamishness” is not so innocent – you don’t like abortion and you’re more comfortable on the side of no abortions because it makes you feel better. Fuck you and fuck your “squeamishness”. It ain’t about you, Cupcake.
Me, I prefer my rage with abortion rights, thank you very much. You’re the exact type of person who tends to make those of us firmly on the autonomy rights side all ragey.
Idiot.
Because I’m making that point that personal squeamishness should not be the foundation of law.
Jesus Christ, how hard is this? Every single post of mine has been, a variation on the theme of, “even if you grant the anti-abortion crowd their concerns, women should still have the right to terminate a pregnancy.” And all y’all can do is snip out of context my references to those concerns and make it seem like I’m using those concerns to justify legalizing rape and forcing the victims to kill themselves by bearing the resulting diseased dead fetuses to term.
Never in my life would I have thought that expressing support for a woman’s legal right to choose at any time to terminate any pregnancy safely in the care of a physician would somehow get me ripped to bloody shreds by abortion rights supporters.
What the fuck is worng with you people? It’s like the only thing that’d make y’all happy would be if I were to perform oral sex on women while they were undergoing an abortion.
b&
Jesus Christ, Caine.
In each and every post I’ve made on this thread, and I’ll do it again right here and now, I’ve stated that I fully support a woman’s right to terminate any pregnancy at any time.
And now you’ve gone and turned that around into me being an absolute abolitionist?
What. The. Fuck?
Fine, but do you really think a few angry voices can out-shout the supportive but squeamish masses?
It’s your right to choose your battles just as much as it’s every woman’s right to choose the course of her pregnancy (there, I did it again), but I gotta say, all-out no-holds-barred fighting with those who want the same laws as you do isn’t very smart.
In fact, it’s even stupider than anything I’ve ever heard come out of the mouth of any creationist, ever.
Cheers,
b&
Bem Goren:
Then why did you bring up “safe harbor” laws (which are never respected) in your first post?
Here, Ben, let me help undo this terrible thing.
What a cogent and well-conveyed position! Straight to the point, as well.
I already addressed that. Safe harbor laws establish that there’s no legal obligation for a woman to care for a newborn, so it’s absurd to have a legal obligation for a woman to devote even more care at far greater risk to a fetus with even less of a claim on humanity.
You know? As I originally wrote?
Really, is it too much to ask people to read to the end of a two-sentence paragraph?
b&
Okay, I’ll grant you that one.
So let’s move on. If you’re such a wonderful ally who supports a woman’s right to choose in any circumstance, why this?
Last time I checked, saying that someone should feel ashamed for exercising a right is not tantamount to support for said right. Why should one feel ashamed for exercising their rights? Should I feel ashamed for exercising my right to free speech by publicly saying that Santa Claus doesn’t exist because of all the little kids who have been raised to believe the Santa myth?
Because birth is one-time irreversible process that actually results in a baby, verus a fetus. But then, any person with a basic understanding of biology understands that distinction. You are too stupid to acknowledge what happens.
Setar:
Oh hey, that’s just incredibly relevant to a woman’s right to bodily autonomy, don’t ya know. Yep.
:eyeroll:
First, I’ve only ever used my squeamishness to emphasize the fact that squeamishnesses such as I have, and which are very common, can in no way be used to justify restrictions on a woman’s right to choose if and when to terminate a pregnancy. Had you an ounce of reading comprehension and understanding of even the most basic points of rhetoric, you’d understand the importance of making people understand that the fact that they themselves are squeamish doesn’t give them the right to dictate what women can do with their bodies, and you’d appreciate the benefit to be had from somebody admitting to such squeamishness still repeatedly and emphatically supporting a woman’s right to chose if and when to terminate a pregnancy.
But then there’s the rest of your response.
Do you really think that abortion rights would have even the slimmest hope in our society if all men remained silent on the matter?
Is that actually your goal — to get us men to shut up, to stop voicing support for abortion rights, even those of us who support abortion rights despite the fact that we think abortion can be icky?
If so, then what the fuck are you smoking?
If not, then what the fuck are you doing unleashing the flamethrowers on me?
Again: what the fuck?
b&
No, but Ken Ham should be ashamed because he exercises his right to free speech by publicly saying that Behemoth was a dinosaur.
And, again, because I know exactly where this is going:
No, I don’t think that each and every abortion should be a source of shame — the exact opposite, in fact. The only sorts of instances I can think of where shame would be warranted would be in those same never-actually-happens-in-the-real-world contrived scenarios that abortion rights opponents like to trot out, such as the one that Alethea herself was discussing. Yes, if you’re one of those never-really-happens women who get an abortion because you don’t like what it does to your waistline, you should be ashamed of your actions.
But — and here’s the point that Caine especially is going to ignore — those mythical vain women who want abortions for cosmetic reasons should still have the right to have abortions.
So, what? Am I supposed to say that I’d be all happy and smiles and cheerful giggles if I knew of a woman who got an abortion just to lose weight? Or am I supposed to say that I think she made the worng choice, but that it was still rightfully her choice to make?
And let’s even say that you wish that I would go for the first option. Which of the two do you think is the most rhetorically effective, especially in today’s political climate?
b&
What the fuck is with you. You haven’t said anything coherent since you started. Your and societies squeamishness is irrelevant. Only the woman, her problem, and the doctor are. All else is bullshit. Like your attitude and posts. First rule of holes, when in over you head as you are, shut the fuck up.
Ben Goren,
I know this is starting to feel like a pile-on, but I hope you’ll take this into consideration anyway.
“I think abortion is icky/wrong, but I support it anyway” doesn’t get anyone any cookies. It’s judgmental and that’s something women really don’t need, since we live at the time when they are facing those judgments all the fucking time already. It also gives a bit of ground to those who want to deny a woman’s right to choose. You see it as saying “finding abortion icky is no reason to ban it”, a pro-lifer (unless accusing you of lying about finding it icky) will see it as “aha! he admits abortion is wrong”. And that’s not helping us.
I would suggest that you keep the part “but I find it icky” to yourself.
Sort of like I would suggest to anyone saying “I support equal rights to marriage, but I think gay sex is icky” to keep the last part to themselves. (Actually no, I would tell them to fuck the fuck off, as I am tempted to tell you, but I’m trying hard to be charitable.)
And your little bottom sig is sign of your vanity and ego. Think about your ego before you try to impose it on this group. It isn’t happening.
Wonderfully said. Right on target.
To be honest, I’d like the whole superset of these arguments to die in a fire. You know the ones. “Okay, but even if we accept for the sake of the argument that action X is bad, wouldn’t it be okay in situation Y?” where X is some atrocity or another and Y is some situation that is as horrible as it is far-fetched.
You know what? How about we worry about situation Y if and when it ever occurs, and try to focus on the actual situation at hand, which is that action X happens all the freaking time entirely in absence of situation Y? Because I think that’d be really good, if we could do that.
Having that said, it’s downright amazing how often action X is either rape or enforced pregnancy.
Wow.
Okay, I give up.
Y’all can have your Pyrrhic victory.
I shall stop, at least in these and similar circles, expressing my opinion that all women should always have the legal freedom to choose to terminate any pregnancy at any time for any reason, regardless of whatever personal objections others might have.
Congratulations, the pro-choice chorus is now one voice quieter. And, I daresay, most likely, a great many voices softer than it by rights should be.
Cheers!
b&
Ben Goren #73:
No, Ben. Ken Ham should be ashamed that he is grossly wrong. Not that he is exercising his free speech in a certain way, but simply that his beliefs are wrong. But he has not been convinced of that and until that happens he has as much a right to voice his beliefs as we do ours. If he is convinced he is wrong, and is ashamed, he should be ashamed for being wrong, not necessarily for speaking his beliefs. The two are very different things.
Strawmanning your “allies” is not going to help your credibility or ally status.
Ergo, NEVER, BECAUSE THOSE SCENARIOS NEVER HAPPEN AS YOU YOURSELF ADMIT. They are nothing but an attempt to open a back door for the pro-lifers to argue that there is some sort of limit. They are no different than things like waiting periods or mandatory ultrasounds or legislated term limits or parental consent or anything like that.
And when you bring these up and legitimize them, you’re holding the back door open wide. Being vague and then retreating to “okay fine all those scenarios are impossible anyway” is no better than vaguely claiming god exists and then saying “oh it exists it just created the universe and then went off somewhere else where we can’t know anything about it”.
Ben #78:
Yes, because you squick-niks are so so very important that your leaving will destroy our cause!!!!!!!
[citation needed] — but you lovely “centrists” never have any to support your bullshit false balance, so I’ll just be happy to see you stick the flounce.
Ben Goren,
Anti-choicers come up with these straw-scenarios so that they could cry Gotcha! when people like you agree that those cases are morally wrong. If there is anything you’re supposed to do then it is to not take the bait. Why get drawn into discussing morality of a straw-scenario? It is in no way useful to you, but it gives ground to people on the other side of the argument. You have agreed that there exists a situation when you are against abortion (even if you think a woman should be allowed to have it, you are against it), the ridiculousness of the situation being long forgotten at this point.
I don’t know what you’re supposed to do, Cupcake. A decent human being who is firmly pro bodily autonomy would refuse to argue such a dishonest, moronic, obvious strawcritter.
A decent human being who is firmly pro bodily autonomy will argue on solid ground that bodily autonomy is not subject to hypothetical flights of fancy which are pointless and poisonous.
Ben Goren,
This is an asshole move.
In the beginning, I didn’t really understand what you were being attacked for so I didn’t want to get involved. But then you started digging. I’m not sure if I misunderstood your first post (probably, since the other option is that everyone else misunderstood it), but your subsequent ones definitely confirmed people’s accusations.
And this one… Misunderstanding or not, you don’t suddenly decide not to speak up for something you believe in just because people it concerns were rude to you.
Do you care about a woman’s right to choose? If you do, no Caine in this world telling you to fuck yourself should be able to “force” you to suddenly change your mind!
Whenever I hear an alleged supporter of choice give the bullshit Ben Goren has today, I really do question whether they are real, or a Concern Troll.
The signs point to yes.
One of the reasons, Ben Goren, which I already tried to explain, is simple.
You are parroting a favorite anti-choice talking point. You are echoing the abortion specific variant of the racist code-slur. That collection of words that when considered out of context appear politically correct, but in the actual context in which it is used is understood by those listening to it to convey veiled racist intent.
And rhetorically the abortion specific equivalent of the Intelligent Design Wedge Document.
This is the meat of Alethea’s Molly comment. Whether you knew it or not, this argument you have been making is an argument that states that sometimes it is ok to violate a woman’s bodily autonomy by restricting abortion. It doesn’t matter how “reasonable” you make the rationale for it sound, what it does is WEDGE into the discussion the idea that violating a woman’s right to bodily autonomy IS OK.
And of course the next step after getting the WEDGE in is to expand it. If you can come up with ONE “reasonable” reason that makes violating a woman’s bodily autonomy ok, then you can come up with two. What about a fetus that’s viable but slightly disabled, like with Down’s Syndrome, or spina bifida? Shouldn’t we protect them too? Don’t we believe in protecting the disabled? What about a 30 week fetus that could survive with some intensive medical care? What about a 25 week fetus? Hey look, here’s a new neonatal care breakthrough! We can now support 22 week old fetuses in the NICU. What about them?
And on and on.
I will give you the benefit of doubt and not suppose that you intended this, but your position enables this argument.
It is a WEDGE to make it seem acceptable to concede that “sometimes” if we just have the “right” reason, it is ok to violate the bodily autonomy of women.
We do NOT concede this.
It is NOT ok.
Want to know what I say?
“I’m extremely happy that someone this callous, mentally unstable, and irrational is not, after all, in danger of becoming a parent.”
Why didn’t YOU think of that, Ben Goren? Huh?
Beatrice:
Oh, it’s not about me having such power, Beatrice. It’s about shaming me into silence and submission. Bad Caine, Bad! Of course, Ben Goren is a firm ally of women, oh my yes, so he’d never, ever…
wait.
Well, I hit refresh once, and it turns out I WAS being too generous to Ben Goren.
If this is all that it takes to make you abandon the cause, Ben Goren, then you NEVER WERE AN ALLY, at least not a reliable one.
To use a Godwin-able metaphor, you and your ilk are about as reliable as allies as the Romanians and Hungarians were to the Germans at the battle of Stalingrad, “allies” either incapable or unwilling to hold the line, whose failure results in you being enveloped and destroyed.
In other words, worse than useless.
Ben:
If I’m reading you correctly, you’ve come up with a theoretical scenario where it is maybe, possibly, remotely OK to place restrictions on abortion.
Full Stop.
No.
There is _no_ situation where overriding the autonomy of a woman is morally or ethically justified.
None.
****
Even _if_ a C-Section* is necessary, even if that baby could be dropped off at a safe harbor, you’ve still decided _FOR_ the woman what should be done. It’s not even theoretically civilized, because you’re still not granting the woman full bodily autonomy. You’re creating a _possible_ exception to overruling a woman’s desire based on someone deciding what’s best for her health. Doctors can recommend that she get a C-Section to save her life. Friends and family can do the same thing.
Even in your hypothetical situation, the only person who should get to decide to have a C-Section is the woman .
*an imminent threat to the life of a woman is still not a justification to deny her full control over her body.
(BTW, I’m aware that you’ve said you fully support a woman’s right to choose. Creating a situation where it could theoretically be possible to deny women bodily autonomy-whether or not _you_ are the one telling her no-contradicts your support for women’s right to choose for themselves.
If you truly support a woman’s right to choose, there is NEVER a situation-real or imagined-that justifies denying her that right.)
Setar, it never helps any cause to viscously attack those who’re 95%+ in agreement with said cause. Letting the perfect be the enemy of the good, especially in such spectacular fashion, is a superb way to ensure self-defeat.
Had you, Caine, jefrir, and the others followed PZ’s three strikes rule and Beatrice’s model, you might have persuaded me to stick with the “abortion rights are sacrosanct” part of my argument and ix-nay the “even in the face of all arguments against it” part. Or maybe not. We at least could have had a meaningful discussion on the best strategies to hold back the full-on Christofascist Rethuglican attack on reproductive rights being mounted right now by Senator “shut that thing down” Akin and his buddy the VP candidate. And it’s even conceivable you could have persuaded me or others that this is a cause worth more attention than a random blog post.
But it’s just not worth it. I’ve got other battles I’d rather waste my time on, and I’d really rather not associate myself with people whose first instinct is to tell somebody who repeatedly affirms a woman’s right to choose, regardless of the circumstances, that the best thing he can do to support abortion rights is to anally rape himself with sharp objects.
b&
Oh shut the fuck up Ben. Seriously. Fuck right off.
And why the fuck should any woman be ashamed even if she did get an abortion for her waistline? You can’t hold this view unless you think there’s something fundamentally morally wrong with abortion. Because if you don’t there’s nothing to be ashamed of.
I hate people like you.
And you know, Ben Goren, that there are lots of people who are supporters of abortion rights who might find the idea of abortion “icky”, just as there are people who support the idea that people should be allowed to have malignant brain tumors removed who might find the idea of brain surgery “icky”.
How do we tell if these people are true, reliable allies? They are the ones who don’t make a big deal (ie no deal) about their personal “squeamishness”.
It just ISN’T RELEVANT.
Unrestricted access to abortion for all women in all circumstances is IMPORTANT AND NECESSARY.
There are lots of important and necessary things that some people might find “icky” or feel squeamish about, personally. The fact that this may be so, HAS NO RELEVANCE on the fact that they are important and necessary.
It does not need to be mentioned.
Amphiox:
Yep. I know a lot of women who would not ever abort, as they feel it’s wrong on a personal level, however, they are ferociously pro-choice and don’t bring up their personal feelings on the matter.
Ben Goren,
Oy! I’m very flattered about getting mentioned, but there is a teeny tiny hole I see there.
If you consider my comments worthwhile, why didn’t you discuss them?
Also, I’m sensing some anger from you, but that in no way excuses your discontinuing interest in women’s human rights. We kinda find those pretty important. It’s pretty fucked up that you and your ego stop finding them important the moment you get insulted and angry.
That must have been some fierce support we had from you since it took all of… 5 hours and 10 minutes for us to lose it.
Amphiox, lots of people are squeamish about the sight of blood, even to the point of fainting. I know from personal experience that any conversation about donating blood is quite likely to include a comment to that effect.
Everybody (except the Jehovah’s Witlesses) still thinks blood donation is a good thing, even if unpleasant, and a number of those who are really, really troubled by it still go through with it anyway in all sorts of circumstances.
And they often do that not merely despite, but because of the discussions about it. And they discuss their squeamishness because squeamishness over blood donation is real, and a significant factor in the decision to donate.
Make of that what you will.
b&
Ben:
Like Beatrice, I was initially confused by the responses to you. I read what you wrote, and couldn’t figure out where you were going wrong. Reading the responses to you and re-reading your post again I finally realized where the problem was (I think my confusion is due to being unfamiliar with this particular anti-choice tactic; many of the others here are far more familiar with them, so they can spot them a mile away-either that or maybe I just fucked up and wasn’t reading for comprehension; maybe some of both; either way, that was my bad).
If you truly want to be an ally…
If you truly believe that women have 100% bodily autonomy, no matter what…
Put aside your frustration at peoples’ responses and think about how you’re coming across now.
“I used to be a pro-choice ally. I used to think that women have full bodily autonomy. NOW a situation has arisen where people have gotten angry at what I’ve said and I’m rethinking my position.
Now, I’ve decided because people are mad at me, I’m not going to speak up for a woman’s right to choose here or in similar circles. I no longer feel this is a fight worth having.”
This comes across as placing your hurt feelings above the importance of fighting for/speaking up for women’s rights.
Is that *really* what you want?
Actually, both examples are false equivalence.
Ben Goren wasn’t talking about being squeamish about abortion in the same sense one is squeamish about blood or brain surgery. He was talking about the morality of the act, not finding the act icky because of hospital/doctors/blood/invasive procedure.
Oh, I still fully support women and their right to choose.
I’m just not going to make a point of it, at least not on Pharyngula and like-minded places.
Actively campaigning for abortion rights was never something on my radar, but neither have been all sorts of other things I’ve gotten swept up in over the years. But can you blame me for imagining how gun-shy I’d be if an acquaintance casually asked me to go to a rally or the like?
I’d basically have a three-fold choice: just go and risk running into Caine; try to suss out if people like Caine will be present in significant numbers (or even if the acquaintance is like Caine); or just find some excuse to be elsewhere.
Considering this right here is my first personal experience with the vociferous pro-choice crowd, you damned well better believe that it’s going to take a lot of less-incindiary encounters before I’ll go with anything other than option 3.
b&
There’s another option, Ben. Learn something. Introspect.
Are you a liar? Are you suffering memory-loss? Do you not know how to write? Was it some kind of clever parody of a dude who didn’t bother to understand the OP and who’s here to give us all his desperately-needed man-wisdom about what women do with their own bodies?
And then there’s this:
Great bit of rhetoric there, b&. All you’re doing with an abortion is dropping the fetus off. Same thing, really. Anti-choicers will eat that up.
Saves me blabbering in far too many paragraphs.
Oo, that’s a difficult one. Let me see…
How about: “Because it’s morally right to do so”?
Squeamishness about giving blood (anyone can do that)
vs.
Squeamishness about abortion (women only)
You’re expressing unease about a procedure unique to women, and also comparing it to a procedure that is accessible to both sexes. Not only are they not the same thing, one of these things is sexist and one is not.
Do you realize how pathetic and creepy this is?
Beatrice:
Which is the meat of the matter. Ben Goren puts his squeamishness above bodily autonomy, and in favour of moronic back door hypotheticals and slimy tactics like bringing up safe harbor stations* when the point of Alethea’s comment was that there is never a good reason for these crap hypotheticals.
Goren is free to be squeamish over a medical procedure he will never, ever have done all he likes. What he needs to do is to shut the fuck up about it and figure out that it has fuck all to do with a woman’s right to bodily autonomy.
*Which not only have zero relevance to abortion, they are no such thing – not in the states, anyway. Women who have used them have been tracked down and prosecuted for abandonment. And once again, they are not a solution to an unwanted pregnancy.
Talking point: ‘You’re losing allies by pointing out that they’re not being good allies’.
Attempts to exploit: Sense of social cohesion / belonging
Most similar abuse tactic: Invoking friendship
Talking point: I’m Better At Your Principles Than You
Attempts to exploit: Fallibility of memory, sense of consistency
Most similar abuse tactic: gaslighting
Then why are you still here complaining at us? You said in your previous post that you were done.
I smell a concern troll.
Because, for one thing, IT WAS NOT YOUR “SUPPORT” OF ABORTION RIGHTS that got you into this “bullshit”. It was your parroting of a classic ANTI-CHOICE coded stealth argument.
As well as your remarkable inability to heed the first rule of holes.
There BG goes with more Concern Trolling. If you support choice, you support choice to the world, no exceptions. That is what a supporter of choice does. Personal squicks are kept personal and private.
Pro-choicers also know facts from fiction. Fact: abortions done after viability are for fetal deformities, fetal death, or to save the life of the woman. If they are exceptions, you prove it with solid and conclusive evidence. That also means you have every right and responsibility to question those hypotheticals from the anti-choice fuckwits that ignore the facts. They don’t like being challenged to supply real evidence, as it destroys their scripts.
It’s also morally right to join the Peace Corps or spend my weekends with Habitat for Humanity or even toss a C-note to Doctors Without Borders every now and again. I’ve only done one of those three, and I don’t at all feel guilty about not having done the other two.
Some battles are worth going out of your way to fight, but one in which those who ostensibly want your help do so say “hello” telling you to “fuck right off” and “fuck this noise with idiot needles on” and so on most emphatically isn’t one of those battles, no matter how noble it may be in the abstract.
Sorry.
b&
FFS, Ben Goren. You were doing exactly what Alethea was criticizing in her post: concocting stupid and impossible scenarios where maybe the woman’s bodily authonomy can be violated, so once it’s stablished that it can, more violations can be snuck in.
We aren’t having any of that.
Before you start whining that it’s just a “test of ethical boundaries”, do you think we haven’t seen a billion trolls before you use the “thought experiment” defense? Guess what, it makes your non-argument even more insulting. It makes you sound like a callous sort who treats a matter of life and death to real women like a little mind game.
We aren’t having any of that.
All you need to do is stop saying stupid things, and we stop calling you stupid. You have a choice, you can stop with the fuckwittery and try to learn something… or keep digging. Keep in mind, though, that deciding that women shouldn’t have full rights as human beings because people were rude to you reflects poorly on yourself, not us.
IF AND ONLY IF there are circumstances in which in a late-term pregnancy a C-section has risks for the woman comparable to that of an abortion, then I would consider it reasonable to require a C-section in such cases.
There is in medicine a standard way of dealing with situations where there are two possible procedures which are equally safe and have essentially equal outcomes: tell the patient the risks and benefits of each procedure, explain that they are essentially equal as far as overall risk and benefit, and let the patient decide what to do. Why should abortion be any different?
Also, I’m not an OB, but this scenario sounds unlikely to me. When is major surgery ever safer than an equally effective less invasive option?
Ben:
I don’t think you’ve quite sussed out why people are mad. You’re frustrated at the response you’ve gotten. I get that.
Have you tried to figure out *why* you’ve gotten that response?
Think about Josh’s recommendation above. Think hard on this.
You professed to be supportive of a woman’s right to choose. You said so repeatedly.
Yet you created a hypothetical situation where it *might* be possible to deny women that right.
You created a situation (or wedge) where it could be remotely possible to deny a woman the right to make choices involving her body.
Why can you not see how that would come across to people?
It pisses people off to see anyone create a scenario-real or imagined-that denies women the right to bodily autonomy. It’s even more egregious when you continue to say you’re pro choice, but contradict that with your never gonna happen, but maybe it possibly could situation.
Again, the problem is that there is absolutely *never* any situation where anyone gets to override the decisions a woman makes for her body. Ever.
Once you understand that…
Once you get that…
Then you’ll see why people are mad.
Don’t throw in the towel just yet.
You made a mistake and pissed people off (and then doubled down). It doesn’t have to stay that way. There is nothing wrong with admitting that you fucked up. You can be (and were) wrong.
I think the main reason I’m trying to get through to you is I think the potential for you to be a true ally still exists.
People have come to Pharyngula and said some stupid shit. Some have doubled down. Some of them never accept that they made a mistake and storm off angry. Some of them *do* accept that they fucked up and they apologize.
You know what happens?
In time (once a little time has passed) some of them feel welcomed here.
Dianne:
As someone who has had an abortion and had major surgery, I’d opt for the less invasive option every time. The abortion? Piece of cake, no hassle, no fuss, no agonizing recovery. The major surgery? Aaaugh, ick, no, please, never ever want to do that again, no.
If one must be viciously attacked, then pray that it is also a viscous attack.
At least then you ought to have a better chance of running away.
Oh, and if you’re still there, Ben Goren, I hope your squeamishness and confusion will not prevent you volunteering to have instead of me the minor surgery I’ll need on my arsehole where my haemorrhoids are beginning to present problems. Cause thereof? Giving birth, yes, but giving birth forty-two and a half years ago.
You see, Ben, women know about such things. Doctors know about such things. Yet somehow you believe that the situation requires you to tell them both how to think and how to act, even to be involved in writing the protocols for every hospital. With at least two medics involved in the discussion above and trying to help, you still you blundered on like a piece of earth-moving equipment on acid.
Please, for all our sanity, say nothing more on this subject until you have something new to say.
You know, I love how people have even pointed out that Ben’s doing exactly what Alethea’s post was denouncing, and Ben still somehow doesn’t get it. You’re not an ally, Ben. Whether you’re even being honest — whether you ever were an ally — is now in question.
Choose your next words carefully, for they may be your last.
Tony:
Goren isn’t new to Pharyngula. Used to post regularly at Pharyngula Sciborg.
Ben Goren,
oh yes, I see how highly you value this particular battle.
You keep asserting that you defend a woman’s right to choose, right before trying to sneak a scenario where this right can be overriden. You’re doing the abortion equivalent of the people who preface racist statements with “I’m not a racist, but…”
One wonders if the militant Femistasi drove him away.
(Oh, whoops, he hasn’t said exactly that, so I can’t say it even though it’s what’s implied by his and every other little but-I’m-an-ally tantrum.)
Caine:
Ah, my thanks.
Knowing that, however, kinda makes things look worse.
Maureen:
I ♥ you so much.
vaiyt @120:
And yet he doesn’t even acknowledge all the times people have pointed this out.
Somehow Ben is oblivious to this very simple truth.
Either that, or his frustration at this situation is clouding his ability to see that truth.
Setar:
He wandered off before that. What I remember most is the 3 day argument over his former sig ‘line’, which was more of a paragraph, which was appended to every fucking post. He pointlessly argued the same shit over and over in favour of keeping it and eventually agreed to drop it in favour of the shorter one he now uses. /derail
Caine,
Which was the reason I tried giving him benefit of the doubt.
It seems to have been a waste.
The problem with hypotheticals is that once they leave reality, they enter the land of sophistry where fast talking, changing defintions mid argument, and using vague words like “life” as code words come into play and dominate the argument.
Which I why I always challenge the hypotheticals for realism. If it isn’t realistic, why worry about it. Dismiss it as unrealitic, hence unworthy of even debating the issue. A moot point.
Way to keep up the libelous strawman parade.
Care to count the number of times in this here thread that I’ve explicitly written that I fully support a woman’s legal right to terminate a pregnancy at any time for any reason? Even after the Horde has unleashed the full power of all its flamethrowers at me for having the unmitigated gall to explain my personal reasons for doing so, personal reasons that all y’all yourselves find icky? Even after being told that it’s not enough that I’ve reached the same conclusion, the conclusion that abortion rights are sacrosanct, but that I must also come to that conclusion in a specified manner or else I’m some sort of MRA misogynist who wants total control over a woman’s body?
Do you people even read anything, or do your eyes simply glaze over at the first sign that somebody is addressing your opponent’s point, even if that person is addressing said point in order to dismiss it?
Clearly the latter, which is why this isn’t even a semblance of a rational discussion.
Y’all may come to conclusions diametrically opposed to those of that whole “ftbullies” MRA crowd, and I’ve generally reached the same conclusions as y’all…but you’re supporting your conclusions in exactly the same reprehensible ways as them, and it’s shameful and disgusting.
You really should know better.
Yes, this is concern trolling. It’s also a long-time outspoken antitheist, a lifelong liberal, and a card-carrying member of the Green Party telling y’all that you’ve got serious problems, problems that I’m starting to think are likely to give a bad name to issues (not just women’s rights) that I care passionately about.
Grow the fuck up, already. You’re better than this, you’re better than them. Or, at least, you should be.
b&
Tony, vaiyt, I should say that I’m personally much more in favor of comparisons to creationism and the Wedge Document than I am of comparisons to other social justice spheres. We need to out this shit as ridiculous full stop, but more importantly we also need to point out that these tactics are shared by denialists and apologists of every stripe, not concepts exclusive to social justice discussions.
Yep. It’s not worth fighting for because it’s not all about him. Not much of an ethic, but it’s reliable.
Ok, that’s it.
I’ve tried to reason with you.
I tried to give you the benefit of the doubt.
Over and over, you’ve doubled down.
Over and over, you’re say you’re Pro Choice, yet over and over you bring up that same goddamned stupid ass hypothetical scenario where abortion access could maybe be justified.
I don’t know if you’ve read the reasonable responses *I’ve* given you. It sure doesn’t seem like it. I thought you were worth the effort, because I wasn’t initially invested in this conversation the way the other members of the Horde were.
Now?
You’re not worth it.
You can’t even accept that you’re at fault.
You refuse to accept what’s been clearly put in front of your face.
You continue to insist the problem is with everyone else, even when others who are not pissed off at you try to explain to you why you’re wrong (and even those that *are* pissed at you have tried as well).
I don’t know how to reach you.
I no longer care to try.
Fuck you.
Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls (#127) wrote:
But what about the slippery slope argument? If we can’t invoke those, then before long the entirety of society will slip into .
Women/minorities shouldn’t have rights. Why? Because slippery slope, and then the entire universe gets destroyed.
Sure, we could do that. How about the number of times you said you don’t?
Setar:
Y’know, I can imagine just how unamused Alethea will be about that when she sees this crap smeared all over her Molly comment.
Ben Goren,
Irony. Irony. Irony.
You had those comments of mine. You had others saying very similar things. Recently, I see it was Tony, but there were more.
Did you read those or were you too blinded by the anger to consider any argument that wasn’t discussing the slight against you?
You even say that you wouldn’t have changed your mind about vocally supporting pro-choice arguments if people followed “Beatrice’s model”, but apparently those comments of mine which were written in a way oyu approve off weren’t enough for you to engage me into a conversation about it. You just kept on and on about how we drove you away and how you won’t waste any more time on supporting women’s human rights because of us.
Oh, sorry, you will still support them. Quietly. In your head.
Want me to tell you how much that is wroth to me?
Another reason could be that one side of the “discussion” is engaged in a 15 post long temper tantrum.
That should be: … society will slip into <insert horrible disasters of choice here>.
I should preview my comments before posting.
hee hee hee.
Have to admit I’ve never liked Goren since the first time I noticed his nym he was calling me a misogunist. And I’ve argued with him over at Coyne’s a couple of times. His little sig makes me crazy (more than Louis’s because of the cute factor)–though it used to be much more elaborate, with lines and favorite quotes. (The ampersand represents the treble, or G clef; he’s a trumpet player.) I see that here the ‘Cheers,’ got abandoned pretty quick.
Look at those mistakes. Tpyos shall be please with me.
Yes. Please do.
Please list all the posts in which I’ve indicated that a woman should not be the one to choose when to terminate a pregnancy.
Not the ones in which I’ve indicated scenarios in which I’d rather she didn’t, but the ones in which I’ve actually written that somebody other than the women should be the one to make the final decision.
Not the ones in which I’ve urged that standard medical ethical guidelines be employed by her physician in counseling her when to make that choice, but the ones in which I’ve actually written that somebody other than the woman should be the one to make the final decision.
Not the ones in which I’ve explained reasons for coming to my conclusion that a woman’s right to choose must be preserved, even if you vehemently disagree with my reasons or think I should publicly express different reasons, but the ones in which I’ve actually written that somebody other than the woman should be the one to make the final decision.
If all y’all’re going to crucify me, at least have the decency to acknowledge that you’re crucifying me for something other than failing to support a woman’s right to be the ultimate arbiter of what happens to her own body.
b&
Huh?
You don’t know what “concern trolling” actually is, do you?
Yes indeed Ben, you care so passionately about women’s rights that you’re going to stop advocating them because Pharyngula commenters were rude to you. That’s real commitment, that is.
You can assert that all you want. Your attempts at sneaking violations to that right via contrived hypotheticals say otherwise. I’m not buying it.
BUT THOSE ARE THE ONES WE ARE HAVING ISSUE WITH.
If you think there are scenarios where women shouldn’t have the right to terminate a pregnancy, then you definitely DON’T think the woman should always be the one to choose.
Ben #140:
Scenarios that are so unrealistic that the intent behind them is no different than the Discovery Institute’s Wedge Document, as you have been told.
If you’re giving up and no longer trying to be an ally, why the fuck are you still here complaining?
I guess this must be part of what you don’t understand. Why do you assume your preference of whether a women gets an abortion or not matters? Unless it’s your pregnancy, or that of a loved one asking for your opinion, your “rather she didn’t” will be seen as unwanted interference. It’s an incredibly patronising attitude to take. That’s one of the reasons people are telling you to stop.
If you can’t understand the difference between absolute belief in a person’s right to do something and expressing a preference that said person doesn’t always exercise said right, then permit me to introduce you to Voltaire:
If the only people who fought for our First Amendment and other rights were those who were in lock-step agreement about what should be said and where one should assemble and which newspapers should be published and which gods to worship or not, then we’d never have gotten those rights in the first place.
Damn, people. Did everybody sleep through high school civics classes? Where the fuck does this shit come from?
b&
On a semi-random note, I’m now thinking of the self-identified conservative I ran into on the Atheism+ forums who made a topic wondering if conservatives would be accepted because it seemed so full of liberals.
Rather than discuss the issues where we would have a problem with them, they simply wanted to be reassured that we wouldn’t have a problem with them. They wanted a seat at the table and they didn’t want any inconvenient discussions about how their political ideology relates to social justice that might cause deep rifts between liberals and conservatives.
Always the same with regressives, isn’t it? Whenever they say something problematic, the issue is never what they said, it’s that us liberals won’t accept them.
Almost as if they’re trying to use this to drive a wedge into liberal movements and open up the possibility that regressive crap might be acceptable…
Ben, there’s little to no evidence Voltaire ever said that. He would’ve probably agreed with its sentiment, however.
No one has silenced you, so this invocation of Voltaire is a bit misplaced. Maybe you should try complaining about political correctness instead. You won’t get much sympathy with that either, but…
Ben.
You’re being asked to go a little further, to understand the implications of your beliefs more thoroughly, to decide where you really, actually stand on this. Anybody can say “I support women’s rights to choose”, but if you ALSO hold the concept in your head “but I will judge you as being bad if you use it”, or “but it’s icky and disgusting and wrong”, or “you’re a selfish bitch if you do it”, then you do not, in fact, support those rights. Not really. You’re just saying you won’t actively stand in their way.
You’re being asked two distinct things: first, if you really support it at least enough not to actively undermine it. The language you use IS undermining it, because you’re saying the exact things anti-choice groups seize upon to show that people support THEM. It’s the wedge that was described earlier. If you support bodily autonomy at least a little, you’re being asked to not speak about it in such a way that you aid and abet the people who would take that autonomy away, because when you do that, you’re actually hurting the cause rather than helping.
Second, you’re being asked to examine your beliefs. Why do you think it’s so icky? Why do you think there are circumstances where women shouldn’t be able to make that choice, or that the choice to abort would be a terrible one? (note: not that it is a different choice than you would make in the circumstance, but that you think she made a choice that was wrong). You’re being asked to recognize that you don’t, in fact, fully support bodily autonomy, because you still think there are situations in which someone else knows better than an adult woman what’s best for her and her life. It would be nice if the result of recognizing that would be for you to alter your position to full support, but at least recognize where you yourself stand.
That wasn’t Voltaire. It was his biographer.
And he mentions First Amendment. It’s not the gotcha for everything and anything. Really. Just throwing it randomly into a comment won’t make the comment make sense.
Also, a lot of people explained what’s wrong with your delving into moral judgements of totally made up scenarios that happen only in minds of anti-choicers. Read it.
Ben, your use of this quote in comment #147 is utterly laughable considering that you earlier stated that Ken Ham should be ashamed for exercising his right to free speech because he happens to be defending beliefs that are not true.
Until you criticize me in a most viscous and hurtful manner, at which point I will shrug my shoulders helplessly as the King’s goons haul you away.
vaiyt:
Oh, but see, what he was doing with that hypothetical situation was imagining a world where it might be justifiable for *someone else* to deny a woman the right to an abortion.
He’s trying to weasel his way out of saying that *he* thinks a stupid fucking, virtually impossible situation could happen where it would be reasonable to deny women full bodily autonomy.
Newsflash Ben:
The fact that you’ve created this imaginary scenario in your head-which involves a decision made by someone other than you- does NOT excuse you from bearing the responsibility for coming up with the stupid ass fucking scenario in the first place.
****
Ben:
Oh you poor martyr.
You’re not being crucified.
You’re being called out for that stupid situation you created where denial of abortion *might* be possible.
And I love how you neglect to admit that some people *have* tried to reason with you.
But no, you’re too caught up in your fucking martyr complex and feeling like you’re persecuted. You *want* to feel special. You *want* people to feel sympathy for you. You don’t want to admit that you’re wrong. You don’t want to show weakness.
Carlie:
I think it’s more than clear where Ben Goren stands. Between the ‘safe harbor stations’ at the beginning, the hypotheticals and ‘ooh, icky’ in the middle and that lovely bit about “what if medical science progresses to where the fetus can be safely removed and brought to term outside the host*” crap, it’s quite clear that Ben Goren would be much happier in a world where abortion wasn’t allowed. He just doesn’t want to say as much.
*Don’t even want to get started again on what utter crap that one is…
Irrelevant if you have concerns. Which is why you are being treated like the shitty concern troll you are playing. If you weren’t playing the concern troll, you would have shut the fuck up on your concerns after you were first called on them. The are MOOT POINTS, as they don’t happen.
Yes, I linked to both wiki and the urban dictionary. He appears to be a classic case of concern trolling. Appears to be supportive, but has concerns and/or considerations we haven’t thought about (har). I still don’t think he is truly pro-choice. Or he would know how to handle his concerns and keep them out of public domain.
You know how there’s like no elective abortions late in pregnancy and those done are usually to save the mother? How elective third trimester abortions are a pro-coathanger bullshit argument?
The thing about these “but no 6 month pregnant woman has an abortion because she doesn’t want the baby, it’s to save her life.”
I can totally see it happening, this 6th or 7th month elective abortion. I live in AZ and if I ever get pregnant again, I want an abortion. My chances of actually getting one? Damn near zero. In so many states, it is damn near impossible to get an abortion now with all the hoops one has to jump through now because of the pro-coathanger side. Even if you have the time and get through all the hoops in time to have the abortion, there’s still the money problem. The money problem is much larger for those in a state with one abortion clinic, especially if that clinic requires more than one visit.
I can see it happening – being 6 months pregnant against my will unable to get a legal abortion and trying it the Backalley way. I can see it happening to so many women across the country.
Because the Backalley Lifers are winning. They want you forced into the alley, to higher risks, to death.
We’re loosing because of so called “squeamish allies” who won’t unequivocally support abortion no matter the term, no matter reason.
You think you are being “reasonable” and “better than us and them”, Ben Goran, but you are neither. You are not listening, not being an ally and are actually giving the pro-birthers an inch to wiggle in. There is no hypothetical, no scenario where any woman should be forced to have a child she doesn’t want, no matter the reason.
If you can’t support an elective 7 month abortion, you are not ally. You are not pro-choice.
Pro-fucking-choice no matter what choice they make, it’s their decision. Fuck your squeamishness. Why not be squeamish over women dying in allyways?
The thing about allies is, you can’t claim being an ally. Those women, those minorities, those gays, lesbian, bisexuals, transsexuals, etc are the ones fighting for their rights. It’s their fight, and they get to choose their allies. “Claim” that you are an ally all you want, that doesn’t make you one.
carlie:
I hope you have better luck getting through to King Martyr, Master of Fuckwittery.
(Oh, and my reference is not a tu quoque, because in that comment Ben is displaying the exact same problem with freedom of speech as he is with the right to choose. He just expresses it directly rather than through a wedge statement.)
Voltaire, really?
Ben, you have the right to say whatever inane platitudes you want. We also have the right to say they’re inane platitudes. Do not confuse disapproval with censorship.
Nope, sorry. Flame me all you want, but I most emphatically will not give up the right to say, “You must be the final arbiter to make your own decisions, even in cases when I disagree with the decisions you make.”
Once again, I absolutely support a woman’s right to choose if and when to terminate her pregnancy.
But don’t you dare tell me that my hypothetical disagreement with some hypothetical woman’s choice equates to me denying or even attempting to deny her said choice.
And, yes, we’re now solidly moving into First Amendment territory.
Even though I will often but not always agree with your choice to terminate a pregnancy, I will always affirm your right to do it legally and safely in a well-run modern medical facility. Hell, I’m in full support of Medicare for all, so that even means that I’ll gladly pay (a fair share of my taxes) for you to have the procedure done.
But that doesn’t mean that you have the (social, as opposed to Constitutional) right to tell me to be happy about the minority of cases where I disagree with your choice, and it sure as hell doesn’t mean you can shut me up should I desire to express any such disagreement.
Yes, absolutely, by all means, get that abortion. In every instance I’ve personally known about and in the majority of scenarios I’ve heard, it’s the least-worst thing to do. And please, please, please, have the procedure done safely and in accordance with best medical care standards.
Just don’t insist that I be happy about it.
b&
It’s not Voltaire. It’s never Voltaire.
(There needs to be a meme for this.)
#2
“require”: against the law, or is not required?
#36
“prohibiting”: against the law, or is it not prohibited?
This is definitely not making a moral case in full support of abortion rights. Maybe your position isn’t consistent. Have you considered that?
This implies you don’t fully agree with the cause others here have been defending. What don’t you fully agree with? See above? Or do you read your own posts, and could you retract them, after realizing you misspoke or said something which others misinterpreted? Or is there no way you could ever say anything wrong?
…except in the case of this situation which will probably never happen, but I just feel the need to mention it-oh and I wouldn’t make the decision for the woman, but someone else will, so that frees me up from robbing the woman of her autonomy…
Damn that hole keeps getting deeper.
Ben Goren,
YOu know what? Don’t be happy about it.
As long as you keep your judgment to yourself, I don’t give a fuck. The moment you utter it, you are harming the cause you claim to support.
Still the concern troll Ben Goren. How do you stop concern trolling? Either lose the concerns, or shut the fuck up….Your choice cricket, choose wisely.
@ Ben Goren;
In your post @ 90 you say;
But a big part of the problem with someone who is ‘95%’ in agreement with such a fundamental proposition as ‘women have the absolute right in all cicumstances to bodily autonomy’, is that the five percent disagreement in question can easily prove vital. As an example – what good would an ‘ally’ to those who oppose racism be, if that person said;
“I agree 95% with your position. Racism is totally wrong. Having said that, I do believe that white people have larger brains and as such are somewhat smarter than black people; and this should be reflected in educational and employment opportunities. But its OK, because black men have bigger penises”
Or an ‘ally’ to those who oppose homophobic bigotry who says;
“I agree 95% with your position. Homophobia is of course wrong and I oppose it. Having said that, I belive that AIDS originated within the gay community, and that as such homosexual sex must be viewed as a potential public health risk and treated accordingly.”
Are these kinds of ‘allies’ really going to do anything but harm to movements that oppose bigotry?
To bring this back to your posts on abortion, @ 73 you posited a hypothetical about a woman having an abortion to reduce her waistline, and you wrote;
By your own admission, such a scenario is so unlikely as to be ridiculous, but you still bring it up as an example of a case where abortion is morally objectionable – where a woman’s right to bodily autonomy should be only grudgingly granted, and with a heavy sideorder of social stigma and pseudo-moralistic judgement of the kind that has always been used to police those behaviours of marginalised groups that the patriarchy finds offensive but that aren’t directly restricted by law.
This plays into the hands of those anti-choices who like to use just such ridiculous scenarios as part of a ‘wedge strategy’, where they get people to agree that there are extreme (to the point of ludicrousness) scenarios where abortion might be considered immoral, and that as such women should be denied their bodily autonomy in the name of some notional ‘greater good’, and from this position they then try to expand the principle to apply to an ever wider set of scenarios of hypothertical ‘immoral’ abortions, until such a point is reached that they are able to render access to abortion so difficult that society arrives at a de facto ban.
You are (whether consciously or unconsciously) contributing to this type of discourse when you place such qualifications on your support for the idea that women’s bodies are in all cases their own, and don’t belong to state, society or church.
In this kind of case, even when you agree 95%, this is still not enough – that 5% disagreement is critical, and it renders you into the kind of ‘ally’ who is, even if their intentions are good, often more harmful than someone who is openly and adamantly opposed to abortion rights.
And then there is you post @ 78;
Here you clearly place your personal hurt feelings above the fundamenatal human rights of women. You find storming off in a huff more imprtant that recognising the personhood of over 50% of our species. Is it any surprise that people are questioning your sincerity in claiming to be an ‘ally’ when your behaviour demonstrates that you place so little importance on the idea that women are entitled to bodily autonomy, that you are threatening to abandon discussing the issue entirely simply because you weren’t lauded for being ‘95%’ in favour of the idea that women are more than living, ambulatory incibators?
Ben Goren,
And read the fucking explanations about not engaging anti-choicers and their stupid made-up cases. Jesus. This thing has been repeated to you at least twenty times.
JAL:
Word.
Your post is my first in the September Molly nom list.
How the hell did I miss *this* gem?
Really Ben?
In addition to trying to find one situation where abortion access could justifiably be limited, you’re also adding that women should be ashamed because they want an abortion? The reason doesn’t fucking matter.
Did you wake up today and decide to toss rationality out the window?
Are you trying make a case for PZ to start awarding Non-Mollies? This bullshit you keep digging makes you a prime case for such an award.
Do you go around saying things like:
“I support gay marriage but would prefer not to hear about the icky sex, and that there are no quickie marriages”
“I support transsexual rights but don’t want to know the icky details. I don’t want to hear the woman I like used to be a man, maybe they should wear stars so everyone knows what they are getting?”
Do people go around telling you when they prefer you not to be human? That’s what is going on here. It’s not the same people telling you to shut up. Are you a woman getting rape and death threats because they are a feminist in an effort to shut them up? Then, no, people telling you to shut up and fuck off this thread is no hindrance on your rights (after all, you clearly are still posting here), and it’s not us telling you “we prefer you to stop being human, now it’s inconvenient and makes us feel icky when we torture you”.
If you are so privileged, so blinded to not see the very big and important distinction here then, well, FUCK OFF.
Women’s services dropped 93% in one Tennessee county in the last year.
I’m not saying you should be happy. I’m asking you to examine why it is that it doesn’t make you happy. What, really, is the reason for that? What is it that makes you think that’s a bad decision to make? Is it rooted in thinking that she deserves the punishment for what she did, that she isn’t worth as much as the fetus she’s carrying, or what?
for any newcomers to the thread, I’ll see if I can quickly sum up Ben Goren’s arguments in point form:
“Require” was a poor choice of words, insofar as it would imply a legal requirement. A moral requirement, but that’s between the woman, her physicians, and her conscience.
So long as we’re playing hypotheticals, let’s move this to Star Trek so there’s no chance to confuse it with reality.
If a woman could walk into a doctor’s office where they had a transporter, and the fetus could be safely and painlessly transported to an artificial womb, with no more chance of harm to the woman than an ultrasound, then, yes, at that point I’d concede that it’s reasonable to place the life of a fetus over a woman’s inconvenience at undergoing such an imaginary not-gonna-exist-for-centuries-if-ever procedure. Especially considering how such a magical faery-tale procedure would be far less risky to the woman than any of today’s abortion procedures.
No, that’s me expressing support for a woman’s right to choose, even in circumstances where I’d make a different choice, even in circumstances so outrageous that I might myself choose to express my dismay at her choice.
nms, you forgot -not Voltaire!
Pure win.
But nms, Ben might get mad and decide he only wants to be 65% in support of women’s rights because you’re so mean…
Ben:
Did the woman decide for herself that she wanted to undergo the procedure (just walking into the doctor’s office doesn’t count as deciding)? Or is the doctor forcing her to lay on the table while the procedure is performed?
How can you keep denying bodily autonomy to women?
You’re disagreement is hurting the pro-choice side, you moron. These hypothetical, these icky pictures and procedure details, these squishy hear the heart beat and see the tiny fetus sonogram shit is how the pro-birthers work. It’s how they win. It’s why I, and indeed the vast majority of women, cannot or have trouble getting a legal, safe abortion.
You are not helping us, you are helping them. And yes, really in this case, it’s us vs them. If you aren’t with us you are against us.
You’re the only one who wants to fucking play hypotheticals. Read Aletha’s OP again.
Ben:
The other thing you’re continuing to do…
You’re dismissing the women in this thread who are telling you that you’re NOT in support of a woman’s right to choose.
You’ve offended quite a few people in this thread, and absolutely refuse to budge on your position, despite the objections of the very women you say you support!
In your little private world, it’s more important to believe you’re right instead of accepting that you’re wrong.
You know those comments I asked you to read? Those multiple comments made by multiple people, they all said that we don’t want stupid hypotheticals.
Anti-choicers use ridiculous hypoteticals and every time people like you join, you harm the pro-choice side.
But WHY don’t you agree with their decision? What do you think you know that they don’t? What is it about their decision that you think is wrong?
I’m tempted to insist that you tell me when you stopped beating your child prostitute before answering that.
The scenario, obviously, involves the woman deciding to terminate the pregnancy. Not the doctor performing some bizarre eugenics experiment on her against her will.
I mean, seriously? After all the times I’ve posted that I think a woman should have the right to decide if and when to terminate her pregnancy, and to do so in a safe medical facility and be given the full respect of medical ethics standards, you somehow think I’m suggesting that doctors should now star performing involuntary abortions on their patients?
All y’all’re even farther out in bizarro land than those MRAs who think an anti-harrassment policy means you need a form signed in triplicate before shaking somebody’s hand.
b&
Ben Goren #174:
What would you say to a woman who did not feel ashamed for making such a choice?
Victim shaming by any other name is still just as wrong.
–
–
(Hey, if you get to mangle Voltaire, I can fuck up Shakespeare.)
Because it’s moral to have immoral laws? What kind of fucking position is that? Are you conceding the whole fucking argument to anti-choicers or not?
It would depend on the context and her reasons for having an abortion, of course.
In most cases, I’d probably at least keep my mouth shut, and maybe even muster up some pretend support. Actually, of course, in the overwhelming majority of cases, I wouldn’t even know about it in the first place so there’d never be any reason for the topic to be discussed in the first place.
If it were a Barbie doll, in all the classical pejoratively stereotypical meanings of the term, and she had the abortion for cosmetic reasons, I may well tell her that I think much the same of her pride as I do of Christians who take pride in fantasizing about how they’ll get a chance to fondle Jesus’s intestines a la Doubting Thomas after they die.
b&
Another hypothetical? A woman has a right to demand that the foetus be removed from her body in whatever is the safest, most effective way of doing so. What happens to the foetus is of little consequence. If it can be saved, by all means do so. But making saving it a legal (or moral) imperative, you’re making the anti-abortionist argument for them.
But again, why do you think your opinion matters? It’s incredibly narcissistic of you. Is the woman who gets an abortion because she doesn’t want stretch lines a worse person than the one who gets one because pregnancy would interfere with her education or career? How about the one who’s fed up with waking up feeling sick? How about the one who decides she can’t afford to support a child? How about the one who decides they hate children? How about the one who has a family history of children being born with bad deformities and doesn’t want to go through that? How about the one who was raped by a family friend since age 8, and has become pregnant at age 13? How many Gorens units do each of these rank, and why? As other have said, this is incredibly paternalistic of you.
Nobody here has said that. Now you show you are an MRA fuckwit on top of being anti-choice? As I told you earlier, choose wisely. You chose unwisely…
Morality and the law are only tangentially related, and neither necessarily have anything to do with wisdom.
It should be legal to drink wine or beer or whisky, and, as far as I’m concerned, there’s no shame in doing so. It should also be legal (even though it isn’t) to use other substances, and again without shame.
It should also be legal (and is) to abuse alcohol or other substances, and it is, at least in the case of alcohol. And, even then, considering how much substance abuse is a result of failed attempts at self-medication for undiagnosed or improperly-treated mental illness, shame is still not appropriate.
A vanishingly small few take pride in their self-destructive excesses. They should still have the right to do so, but that doesn’t mean that their actions are moral or shameless.
b&
Apparently you don’t know what the word requirement means.
No woman should feel ashamed for having an abortion. No matter what term she’s in or what reasons she has it. Hell, you don’t even need a reason to have an abortion. This is the reason why counselors in abortion clinics talk about every woman giving them a laundry list of reasons why them must have an abortion. Fuckfaces like you making them feel ashamed.
If you wouldn’t say it to a woman’s face, think about this. You are saying it to a horde full of women now.
Never mind the reasons why women go to look like Barbie, the pressure from society from “icky objectors” like you. I bet you do fat shaming don’t you? I bet you are all “Being fat is your choice and fine but I’m still going to tell you how disgusting you look to me”. Like anyone gives a shit what you find icky.
Quoted For Paternalism
What should her conscience be telling her? Is it something different than the choice to use a condom, or to use the pill, or to use an IUD? What should she be weighing, other than whether or not she wants to be pregnant right now? What moral decision is there? Is it only ok if she feels terrible about it afterwards?
Again, why don’t you agree with their decision? What is it about their decision that you think is wrong?
Ben:
At no point in this little scenario do you even *mention* that the woman has chosen to have the procedure.
You assume it’s obvious, but it’s not.
Without you adding more details into your stupid scenario, there’s no way for anyone to know if the woman walked in for, oh I don’t know A CONSULTATION.
Moreover, you also mention that you would concede that the fetus’s life is more important than a woman being inconvenienced.
What concession is being made if she’s not being forced to go through this procedure?
If she’s not being forced then how is this hypothetical situation analogous to any real world situation?
Hell, if she’s not being forced, how is it similar to your first hypothetical “women might not be allowed to get an abortion” scenario?
Aside from all that, why the fuck are you interested in creating these special exemption possibilities?
If you’re such a staunch supporter of women you wouldn’t be trying to come up with situation like this!
Fuck. Did you even read Alethea’s post?
Here:
In your stupid ‘transporter’ scenario, if nothing is violating a woman’s bodily autonomy then it’s even more asinine a hypothetical than I thought (because then it’s not relevant to a discussion about full bodily autonomy).
If it *is* violating a woman’s autonomy then it’s fucking wrong.
Ben Goren #187:
… I was quoting where you were talking about the moral requirement. Do not take my statement out of context in order to pat yourself on the back for the ally status you’re using as a shield.
So the next time she wants an abortion, for a “legitimate” reason this time, she’ll be afraid that because of her previous decision people will assume that she had this one purely for cosmetic reasons as well.
You have a serious empathy deficit. Fix it.
Ben Goren #190:
In practice. In theory, they should be strongly related, and we need to work to make our practices better.
“Our practices are always going to be imperfect so there’s no reason to do better” is standard, regressive, anti-SJ boilerplate. We don’t want to hear it any more than we want to hear your fucking wedge statements.
You’re not an ally. You never were an ally if you think that this lazy bullshit is okay.
Oh, and I see now you’re comparing actual people to fetuses. Or, at least, implying it by bringing up alcohol, the effects of which can make one a danger to oneself or others.
-sigh- and people wonder why we say “believing one superstition opens the door for other falsehoods to creep in”.
I am quite overwhelmed. I woke up feeling tired and grumpy and out of sorts and now there’s this! Thank you so much!
I so rarely say more than a couple of posts on the feminism wars, because it just makes me so angry and my blood pressure doesn’t need it. But sometimes you just have to spit the dummy.
Now to read the comments. Are we fighting the trolls on rape culture or abortion, I wonder?
I don’t want to have a baby because I want to keep my body looking the way it is.
I don’t want to have a baby because I want to keep my career on the same track it is.
I don’t want to have a baby because I want to keep my lifestyle the way it is.
I don’t want to have a baby because I want to keep my family the way it is.
Are all of these the same type of pride that you detest? Why or why not? Would you rank them? Why? Do you agree that other people can prioritize things differently than you do and not feel bad about it, or do you think everyone should have the same priorities you do?
The Catholic Bishops are trying to get a law passed that allows the administrators of hospitals affiliated with the Church to gag doctors who work in their Emergency Rooms so they won’t inform women who have been raped that Plan B exists, remove from the services available tubal ligations and vasectomies, forbid doctors from following best practices and administering RU-486 to end ectopic pregnancies, and turn their backs on women who need medically necessary abortions because of pregnancy complications or incomplete miscarriages and let them die.
For many of us, these are not ‘just thought experiments’ but instead literally the life or death of our mothers, sisters, daughters, wives and friends. Your insistence that how you feel about their individual decisions is relevant and your claims of a free speech right to shame them if they don’t meet your standards is just really — arrogant.
vs.
Can you not see that Alethea’s describing exactly what you’re doing?
Amazing how many times I have to make this point: whether or not I agree with a woman’s decision to terminate an abortion, no matter what I think of her reasons for her choice…the choice still needs to be hers to make.
What the fuck do you care what I or anybody else thinks of what some random schmuck like me thinks of a woman based on her reasons for choosing an abortion? All that matters is that he has the legal and safe option to do so.
Even if every single person on the planet thought that abortion for any reason was the ickiest and most shameful thing possible, it still needs to be safe and legal.
Utterly bizarre how a bunch of alleged abortion rights supporters are doing their damnedest to convince me that how abortion makes me feel should be the basis for law and the standard of medical care.
Remind me again why people who claim they want abortion kept legal and safe are telling somebody who wants abortion kept legal and safe that what he really wants is the reign of the coat hanger?
b&
I said weakens the argument there, not negates. And it does so by questioning the motive, rather than the point. It’s an interesting perspective and I accept it as valid critique.
As for the point, your last stand is always an absolute morality statement – “it is never ok” type of statement. This means the discussion has stopped, and to me this is universally bad.
Apart from the people who switched off thinking (connecting Akin to my post), people who cannot function without insults – those can instantly be ignored, only dianne stood her ground. Well done and thanks for the response.
Bodily autonomy seems to make a strong case in this whole argument. Well, when the fetus is viable, the argument for bodily autonomy may as well apply to it. It’s not dependent on the woman anymore, therefore you can at least say it’s no more of a parasite (since you seem to like cancer and virus analogies) than a hostage.
At this point, the only difference between the fetus and an infant is its location, outside or inside. I would advise not to base your morality on that property, because that slope is actually slippery.
As for the comparison to giving or not giving blood, there is no connection between the donor and the recipient – at least not in a scenario I think you’re describing.
I don’t know about the law in your country, but for example witnesses of accidents are obliged to help, even if they didn’t cause them and don’t know the victims. Now that’s a pretty loose connection, but it already changes the perspective with regards to law.
But, before you cut the quote here to make your case easy, that’s only one way of looking at it. The other, and the more important one, is of course the fact that not giving blood is an omission of action, while terminating the pregnancy is an act, and those are not treated the same by law.
(I bet someone in a spark of genius will try to say that abortion is omission of giving birth and so it’s not an act, yeah, just like murder is omission of continuity in life)
I missed this earlier. You realize that for every woman on this planet, including all the ones participating in this discussion, these are NOT THOUGHT EXPERIMENTS? These are political positions that are directly linked to whether they will be able to have adequate health care when they need it. Engaging in something just for the lulz as a “thought experiment” when it actually affects the lives of others is extraordinarily callous at best.
Because I’m curious as to whether you actually believe that women are humans with the same capacity for thought that you have. I’m wondering if you really think that women can be trusted with their own decisions. Because all of those “random schmucks” like you are the ones who provide support and cover and power for the extremists who are vocal and in a position to do something about it. Because I am optimistic enough to think that, if people confront their own deep-seated prejudices, that they might actually be able to change them.
Because you haven’t convinced us you want abortion kept safe and legal. DUE TO CONCERNS, AND MORAL IDIOCY.
Now, why should we consider you the equivalent of me, who supports a woman’s right to bodily integrity up to birth? There is no way until you LOSE THE CONCERNS, OR SHUT THE FUCK UP ABOUT THEM. I have no concerns, or if I do, I don’t talk about them as they are MOOT POINTS.
Nope, because birth is an irreversible one-time process with many changes. Only a fuckwitted absolute thinker would not understand that.
How could I possibly state, in every post in this thread, that all women need to have the choice in every pregnancy if and when to terminate, if I didn’t think that they had full capacity to make such a decision?
And how could you possibly conclude from me stating that I don’t agree with every decision everybody else makes that I therefore think that all women are incompetent?
And how could you and the others in this thread not understand, from your own personal experience at having people automatically assume your own incompetence, how enraged somebody might get who, after repeatedly stating full support for the rights of women to be the final arbiters of what happens to their bodies, that he’s actually arguing for the exact opposite, based on some bizarre and unspoken assumptions that somebody who addresses the common reasons offered in opposition to abortion rights actually agrees with those reasons, especially when all he’s done is refute said reasons (even if his refutations haven’t been the refutations you’d use yourself)?
Talk about lack of empathy.
b&
But you icky objectors are shaming women out of abortions they want. Shaming them out of the ability to get safe, legal abortions.Icky objectors are the reason why so many pro-birthers are wining with their “hear the heartbeat and see the fetus” shit, that is meant to shame women out of abortions.
Your objections, your moral shaming of women give rise to the same result as the pro-birthers. Look at all the laws and hoops women have to go through because of this “Abortion makes me feel icky and women make terrible decisions so they need to have all this to make the moral choice” bullshit you are spouting.
I give a shit about women and the results. That’s why I’m pissed at you for this bullshit.
Still concern trolling Ben Goren. Either lose the concerns or shut the fuck up. Or we know by your prima facie evidence you aren’t pro-choice. Welcome to reality, which disagrees with your morality.
For the last time, nobody’s personal distaste or other reasons for disliking abortion, mine or anybody else’s, can possibly be a valid reason to remove from women their right to terminate a pregnancy at the time of their own choosing in a safe medical facility in accordance with all the latest-and-greatest medical standards.
I’ve written that in every post in this thread, and every response has been to accuse me of wanting to restrict access to abortion.
Somebody here really, really, really doesn’t get it.
Abortion should be safe and legal, no matter what personal feelings people may have, even if you wish those people didn’t have those personal feelings.
Maybe if I repeat it a few more times?
Oh, why bother….
b&
Not even equivalent, jackass. You lack empathy for all women who make decisions you don’t like. I lack empathy for jackasses like you who are hurting women.
Ben, you’re setting up strawwomen, and I’m not sure if you’re purposely misunderstanding.
Set aside your “I support the legality of abortion” opinion that you keep flogging over and over and over.
Go back to your opinion that sometimes, women are wrong to make that decision. You’re saying they’re wrong about something that affects them and their lives, wrong about the most personal, individual kind of decision they can make. Do you understand the amount of hubris it takes to believe that? To think that you know better than they do what the morally “correct” decision ought to be in the context of their own lives? That is absolutely saying that somehow, their decision-making is deficient. That they can’t possibly understand the circumstances and consequences of actions in their own lives as well as you can, that you are a better arbiter of what their decision ought to be. What do you think makes you better at making that decision than they are? There is a HUGE difference between “if I was in that situation, I wouldn’t make that decision” and “that is the wrong decision to make in that situation, and I think she’s a bad person for making it”.
Here’s an example of where you damned well feel shame, even though you clearly won’t.
This is a lie so transparent even a liar-for-Jesus Creationist would be ashamed to utter it.
Fuck off, y’all. Society deserves better advocates for a woman’s right to choose than any of you.
b&
Right. Because our laws don’t need to be good, obviously. What’s good is shaming people. So as long as you can do that (you know, hypothetically), I’m sure you’ll be a great ally.
At least twice a day. Broken clocks and all that.
What empathy are you showing women with your concerns? Or lack of shutting the fuck up?
Gee, whyshould we empathize you with you, a male, unless you are a MRA who expects women to do what you say. You need to set an example. Empathize now, and apologize for you fuckwitted concerns.
Congrats Alethea. Ben has been a demonstration of how valuable your Molly comment is.
Whether you want to restrict it or not, you are helping that happen. The result is the same, your intent doesn’t mean shit.
Fuck pro-birthers and their icky objector allies.
–
–
(Yes, that means you.)
Oh the irony, it burns.
Still asserting that you’re right and everyone else is wrong, huh?
Still unable to accept that your creation of hypotheticals is exactly the problem Alethea’s post is talking about.
Still unable to understand that expressing “ewwww that’s gross” in discussion of abortion undermines your assertion that you support women’s rights.
Still unable to accept that you’ve offended women with your remarks.
QFFT
–
–
(Sorry, I jumped in troll stomping and didn’t even say congrats first)
Ben:
The act of expressing your distate or other reasons for disliking abortion is the *very* problem.
Jesus flipping Christ. Ben you take on board no criticism at all. You don’t reflect at all. What is it fundamentally about abortion that makes you reach for reasons it would be wrong? What is that?
Ben:
That’s a fucking lie.
You’re contributing to the anti-choicers with your stupid hypotheticals. You’re helping to perpetuate the environment that’s hostile to women’s health.
The creation of these “what if’s” contributes to efforts to undermine the bodily autonomy of women.
Seriously, Ben. Quit avoiding the point that what you’re doing is, at the very least, enabling a wedge strategy.
No liar-for-Ben-Goren’s-ego, you should be ashamed of your concern, and apolgize for voicing them on what should have a a congratulatory thread for the Molly winner. You are a proven liar and bullshitter, and I treat everything you say with the skepticism it deserves. Look for the self-serving-bullshit first. And it is always there.
Hey BG, you prove me right with every attempt to defend yourself. Get over your ego, and shut the fuck up.
Ben,
Your argument has been inconsistent. Your use of the words “require”, “prohibit”, and “shame” are tells. You don’t seem to realise that abortion means the termination of a process, not the product of the process; else you wouldn’t have mentioned the star trek.
If you are an ally, why not argue that no-one else has a greater say than the pregnant woman? No matter what circumstances?
Winning with Ikcy and how Icky Objectors are being swayed to erode women’s right by outlawing bad abortions.
Icky’s helped with the Partial Birth Abortion bans as well.
The star trek *hypothetical*. Gah!
*grumble* stupid typos *grumble* That was suppose to be winning with icky.
Isn’t it funny how Ben just keeps dodging all the hard questions?
No, Cupcake. Society deserves people who happily think and act like women are full human beings, capable of thinking, making decisions and knowing what is right for them. Society deserves people who stand 100 percent behind bodily autonomy, no reservations.
I’m one of those people who is a poster child for abortion. My mother was pregnant with me in 1957. Abortion was illegal. She wanted one but was too scared of dying to go through with a back alley abortion.
It would have been much, much better for all involved if she’d been able to abort without fear of dying. Certainly would have been better for me, ‘I’ simply wouldn’t have existed. That way, I wouldn’t have ended up unwanted and thrust into an absolute nightmare which will be something I get to deal with until the day I fucking die. This is the sort of thing which happens when society is filled with judgmental assholes like you, Ben Goren. People who value their particular morals and their squeamishness over the quality and value of other people’s lives. This is why you get nothing more than a Fuck off, Cupcake from me – because you value your idiocy more than the lives of women everywhere.
No, his ego is so big he can’t admit he is wrong. But he is frequently wrong. Maybe if he lost his sig and just went on the log-in nym it would help his humility. Nah, nothing would help.
Echidna:
Yeah. That’s scraping the bottom of stupid barrel.
Ben, why do you keep ignoring my question? I’ve asked it several times now, and I haven’t even used any bad words or called you any names.
I sick of these motherfuckin’ ickies on this motherfuckin’ thread.
The next time someone tells me it’s just the tone, not what I’m saying, that causes a bad reaction. . .
Congratulations Alethea, this was the comment I was going to vote for had I got off my backside and voted for a comment.
Sobering to see already how germane it was.
Come sit by me Josh, I have walnettos and sangria to share.
Abortion is a medical proceedure beween
a woman and her doctor. No one else unless
she allows them. The religios nut cases who
are anti abortion are the same ones who want
to have as many kids as possible, thereby making
a larger pool of nutcases. Religion has no place in
forming any medical proceedure and any physician
that won’t do a proceedure for a patient like this
should not be allowed th practise medicine.
If you don’t like abortion, then don’t have one.
Apply your misguided opinions and quirks to yourself,
but not to anyone else.
WARM FUZZIES FOR YOU!
Ben Goren @ 203;
The trouble with this position is that there is more to the social calculus here than just the state of the law itself. Even if the law guarentees access to abortion, there can be other factors that can exact a high price upon any woman seeking to exercise that legal right.
@ 187 you wrote;
(Emphasis added)
So we aren’t dealing with a personal outlook on abortion’s notional rights and wrongs – here you say that you ‘may well’ approach a woman who has had an abortion for reasons that you (as a man who will never undergo the procedure yourself) consider to be immoral. You feel that – while still accepting her absolute legal right to abortions services – you have the right to pass public moral judgement on her actions; to shame her.
As JAL: Snark, Sarcasm & Bitterness points out @ 209, even where the law provides access to abortion, it is quite possible to create such a prevalent social stigma around the procedure that women will not feel able to exercise that right without incurring an unacceptable social cost to themsleves and their families.
The kind of toxic pseudo-morality that you you appear to be advocating here, that would find it acceptable for society to judge women for having abortions for the ‘wrong’ reasons, would simply function as a soft power means of limiting abortion access, and would contribute to the kind of social discourse that would create a favourable environment to attempts to place extra hurdles in the path of women seeking abortions, such as the requirements for medically unnecessary transvaginal ultrasounds that have already entered US law in some States.
A law that guarantees a notional right to abortion is all but worthless if the established social mores are such that this right cannot, in practical terms, be accesseed by large numbers of women. It would be like passing a law that established a legal right to freedom from any religion being imposed on the citizen by the government in a society where the dominant culture is such that anyone who doesn’t follow the most popular belief system is forced to live as a social pariah, and the law requires such people to undergo state sponsored, non-denominational ‘morality training’ to stop their godless/false faith ways leading them into evil:- it would be little more than an empty gesture.
humm
Carlie, that might come off wrong. Don’t let it. It wasn’t meant at you.
Before I forget, congratulations Alethea on your fantastic post winning the first ever neo-Molly. It was much deserved, and your comment clearly covers an important topic, as this thread demonstrates.
Yeah, what Gregory Greenwood said.
I got it, Rev. :)
Ben has followed the typical “concern troll” path:
1) Seemingly agree with the main point
2) Express concerns that undermine it
3) Refuse to “get it” when confronted, arguing non-responsively, and repeatedly, using the same, eventually inane, rebuttals
4) Claim persecution
6) Ignore hard questions. Answer easy questions. Divert.
7) Repeat ad nauseam
8) When supper time arrives, flame out. Tip off: “Fuck You” replaces pseudo-polite nonsense.
To do:
9) Gather up the most curse word laden responses for inclusion in subsequent whine-thology.
Look for his you-shoulda-seen-what-they-done-to-me post, coming soon to an anti-FTB blog near you.
eggmoidal, you speak the truth.
eggmoidal @ 246;
I think you are right on the money here. He does seem to tick every last box on the concern troll bingo card.
I found it particularly interesting that Ben Goren complained about people being mean to him, and yet when both Carlie and I addressed him in posts that contained no swear words or insults, he ignored both of us.
Carlie:
Mmm, so did Nerd, who called classic concern trolling upthread.
BG is squeamish about the morality of abortion, not just the bloody ickiness of it. Otherwise, there would be no more relevance in mentioning it than the ickiness of any other type of surgical procedure. So the now out-dated defense of abortion, that there is no person there to consider is operative in his mind, or conversely, the current-school defense of life, fetal right-to-life is operative. For him it’s just the clash of the two moralities, one the right-to-life and the other body autonomy that determines course of action. He states repeatedly that body autonomy trumps right-to-life all the way to birth, but if he’s honest, I think he’s going to have to admit that toward end-term he considers them comparable moral pressures.
It’s kind of like in the violinist scenario, if you suddenly wake one morning tubed to the violinist, you have a very strong right to demand being disconnected. Now suppose the violinist is dying in a hospital and medical records show that a patient in room 101 has cells that can save her? A quick cheek swab is all that is required, yet patient 101 refuses. BG still supports 101’s decision but says 101 should feel some shame by it, and he has personal disdain for 101. In the real-world case, right to body autonomy begins high on the graph, and stays there, though I’m not sure how sure BG is about that. Right-to-life begins at zero. Moving right on the graph, right-to-life makes a step discontinuity upward at viability and then another huge increment at “personhood” (whenever that is). Somewhere on the graph the two lines meet, and at this point BG says (fatefully) why not opt for life? and everyone else tells him to STFU, that discussing what he thinks and feels at this point lends ammunition to the opposition.
I understand what BG is saying — or maybe I’ve got him all wrong!? On the other hand, I agree with everyone else that I don’t see the utility of raising the thought experiment and the potential hazards inherent in doing it.
I agree with BG that there are two separate and conflicting moral arguments, right-to-life and body autonomy. Pro-choice has all but abandoned addressing right-to-life because body autonomy has entirely subsumed it–to the point that even discussing non-personhood is now perceived as a bogus defense of abortion, or even worse, a subversive back-door pro-life strategy. Recall the abortion post a few weeks back by PZ where someone couldn’t quite stomach his stated opinion that personhood has no bearing at all on legal abortion, even if it were established beyond a shadow of a doubt that the aborted fetus is a person. This is the analog to saying that under no circumstance should the violinist ever be given any consideration. The person went on to say, not to worry! fetuses are not people in any scientific sense, so we’ve dodged a bullet.
I tend to think (and I realize I’m probably going to get flamed for this) that unwillingness to address the personhood question has almost become a form of movement-endorsed obscurantism, and I suspect this is a mistake, since I think continued involvement in it could be a huge win for pro-choice, though I understand the inherent risk of lending credence to pro-life arguments.
Gregory Greenwood:
Which was after he ignored Beatrice and I when we did the same…
Hell, going back to Mythbri@15 to find Ben ignoring someone who wasn’t mean and didn’t use profanity or insults…
He seems keen to focus on those responses that *do* contain insults and profanity.
****
eggmoidal:
Oooh, I have the answer to that (I got bored and checked).
huntstoddard is still under the delusion we care what it thinks. If it thought. It, like Ben Goren, has an inflated opinion of itself dear lurkers. Laugh at its idiocy. Teal deer fuckwittery is its speciality, with a kumbaya irrantionality for an ending. Never mind it can’t evidence its way out of a torn wet paper bag with a book of clues, a map, and a GPS.
There is no right to life in the sense that anti-choice fuckwits use the term. Right to life is being against some being executed. What they mean is force birth, by making the woman a slave to the fetus. That isn’t right to life. That is slavery.
Well, on the bright side, Ben Goren has managed to vividly demonstrate exactly why Alethea’s post is deserving of the award, and, simultaneously, helping to generate a number of potential candidates for the next Molly!
Though you may not read this far down, Alethea, congratulations on a brilliant and essential post.
Anyone else reminded of Joey by Ben Goren?
Dang, forgot my manners. Congratulations to Alethea. The invitation to your Molly initiation is being sent by Pullet Postal Service™. *starts an extra large batch of grog*
First off: Congrats to Alethea! By far the best comment I’ve seen about bodily autonomy and abortion in a long fucking time. *high fives!*
To Ben Goren (and I suspect huntstoddard, but I can’t be assed to read the tl;dr mess at 250):
Guess what? Your stupid fucking hypotheticals are directly aimed at me– not in the same way as the other women here (who absolutely should not be dismissed and I’m incredibly pissed that you think these thought experiments are more important that their lives/livelihoods), but because I am currently in my eighth month of pregnancy. Let me break down a couple of my objections for you, ‘kay?
1) Because of assholes like you who feel about late abortions, if I need medical care that will endanger my fetus, I can be denied that care. “Conscience clauses” exist to pwotect doctor’s (and Catholic hospital’s) pwecious fee-fees, but actually put my life at risk. Isn’t that just fucking awesome?
2) You are saying right now in this thread that my only importance is carrying this fetus to term. That whatever happens to me, it is important to consider my fetus before you waste any consideration on what I want &/or need.
I know that there are many people that happily rank my fetus’ wellbeing above my own, but everytime I’m reminded of it, I feel like I’ve been sucker punched. Obviously, I’m not a person who can make her own rational choices. Oh no, I’m a brood mare.
Alethea, your comment is wonderful. This sentence: “Why are you so damned insistent on finding that one special circumstance when it’s morally OK for you to do something horrific to me?” says it all. Thankyou.
Audley:
*Clenched Tentacle Salute*
huntstoddard #250:
“Icky” refers to that very squeamishness.
Wrong. If you don’t have bodily autonomy, you don’t have final say over what happens to your own body. Anyone else is allowed to come along and alter your body in any way, even if it means you die. No bodily autonomy means no rights at all, not even life.
Take your sophisticated bigotry and shove it.
Due to my own idiocy I’ve been thinking a lot about these issues lately. I’ve been trying to find a personal situation that might be analogous on a small scale to what women face in the world at large.
The best I can do (I hope to hell it’s not just more mansplain’):
I’ve on occasion walked into a bar and ordered a drink to only then realise that this is a far rougher place than I had anticipated. The other patrons displayed all the signs of macho aggressive tribalism and some of them were watching me, perhaps judging me for signs of deviance from their norms.
This is an incredibly tense situation to be in. There’s no way to tell who’s a real threat and who is simply indulging in idle curiosity. There’s no way to tell which rules of masculinity they will choose to enforce should I deviate from them. Dare I ignore the sports playing on the tv? Do I meet the stares, or ignore them? Must I laugh at vulgarities overheard or can I pretend to not hear? And so on.
That climate of implicit threat is similar to the one that women live their daily lives in. Sure men have it too, patriarchy hurts everyone, but the rules are not as narrow and the consequences of deviation are generally not as severe for men. Well, for those perceived as being hetero, cis men anyway.
Women are constantly being judged for their compliance to ever shifting rules of what it means to be female. And in this climate you have people like Ben above. To go back to the bar, his comments are like overhearing someone speculating about who needs to get the shit kicked out of them. I wouldn’t matter if I didn’t fit into any of their hypotheticals, I’d feel threatened.
Hell, this even happened to me. I once had the delight of sharing a bar with a bunch of neo-nazis. Their constant, deliberately loud conversation about how Jews needed to be treated was very intimidating to me, despite not being Jewish.
Hypotheticals like Ben’s are unnecessary threats to the rights of women regardless of how likely they are. They maintain and even add to the climate of fear that our society uses to keep women in their “place”. The fact that he can’t see this makes him a douchcanoe of the highest order.
Setar, huntstoddard is a sexist douchecake of the worst kind who will take any response whatsoever as a signal to wank all over a thread. Encouragement isn’t needed.
This thread is showing just why this post deserved the Molly. Congrats, Alethea, and may one day your message be unnecessary.
Ben, see this quote?
It applies to you. Don’t fucking talk about empathy when you don’t seem to have any for women.
“Setar, huntstoddard is a sexist douchecake of the worst kind who will take any response whatsoever as a signal to wank all over a thread.”
Nice. If I said something comparable, I would of course be banned.
“Wrong. If you don’t have bodily autonomy, you don’t have final say over what happens to your own body. Anyone else is allowed to come along and alter your body in any way, even if it means you die. No bodily autonomy means no rights at all, not even life.”
The right to life part is usually applied to the fetus, but taking what you wrote at face value you’re still just saying that bodily autonomy trumps right to life. That’s a good argument, but it’s not usually presented that way, since not only is right-to-life not mentioned as a conflict, it is totally erased as even a possible consideration. Not only is body autonomy heralded as the overriding morality, but the only moral player on the stage. I don’t exactly understand why. It’s almost like defeating the counter argument isn’t enough. It must be entirely obliterated from the record as a consideration by some act of doublethink.
FossilFishy – Hugs because you deserve them. :)
huntstoddard
Nope. That’s not the way it works here.
https://proxy.freethought.online/pharyngula/2012/08/06/the-new-rules
also
If you type
<blockquote>paste quoted text here</blockquote>
this will result.
It will make your comments easier to read.
It will not help you make sense.
I think the hypothetical in Ben’s presentations was really a diversion not all that relevant to what he was really arguing. If you drill him on it (i know, language is fun), which probably won’t happen at this point, I think you would find that his argument really amounted to the classic right to life argument based on moral squeamishness about late term abortion, the nature of emergent fetal person-hood, etc. The same stuff that has been hashed and rehashed about a billion times. Ben reaffirms his allegiance to body autonomy, but the thread of right-to-life consideration never really leaves his argument. Maybe if he reappears he can confirm or deny this.
PZ allows morons to spout bullshit to the enth degree, it amuses the Horde. Pray, do carry on.
Please. Don’t be dense. That was an insult based on a male sexual act, compounded by the implication that it would be public. It would be considered verbal harassment, particularly by the caprice of PZ, which is Rule 1.
No, you disingenuous ass. I said in no uncertain terms that “right to life” (which I would argue is itself moot) does not exist without right to bodily autonomy.
This reading of my post is so bad, in fact, that I’m at a loss as to how it’s not a strawman.
That would be because, as I just explained to you, if you don’t have the right tell people to stop messing with your body (bodily autonomy) they have every right to do so even if it means you die. The moment you have the right to tell them to stop, you are asserting your bodily autonomy.
You could start by reading my post through an objective lens rather than applying this bullshit about some “conflict” involving a right that can’t exist without the right it’s supposedly in conflict with.
That’s the reverse state of affairs, but by starting your response with a strawman and ending with projecting you’ve opened and shut your own case. Go away, troll.
[meta]
huntstoddard:
The irony is palpable.
Women don’t masturbate, metaphor is literalness, and posting a comment in a blog isn’t public?
(Please. Don’t be dense.)
It would be laughed at, since it would not be an appropriate reverse characterisation were you to write something comparable.
(Relevance matters)
Crap. Does that mean we have to stop?
er, that’s why we’re here. We stuff our corsets and season our catfish with caprice.
Happens all the time with the tone patrol. It’s because of the core thesis of all his posts, which I extracted through sophisticated analysis, and will present to you now:
“Me me me me me me me.”
John Morales,
Let’s just drop it. I don’t care about the damn insult, certainly not enough to deal with your gibberish.
Setar,
Yes, I don’t understand what you’re talking about. You’re constructing this conjunction between human body autonomy and right to life as the first being necessary for the latter. Don’t see how this helps your case. Actually it seems to destroy it. It’s like a throwback to the old “but fetuses have body autonomy too” gambit, favored by pro-lifers, but I’m probably not getting it.
Why John, there you go dealing in gibberish.
Silly me, I’ve never seen you do this before.
Amazing.
You’re fucking-A right you’re not getting it.
John – I forgot the :D. Keep dealing out the gibberish. Add caprish and butter to finish.
[OT + meta]
Patricia, :)
—
To , I quote the omphalos of Alethea’s puissant post, the which was judged Molly-worthy over all other entries on that round (worthy though they were) because it refers explicitly to body autonomy:
If you’re going to quote the omphalos, you mind if I speak to my penis?
you mind if I speak to my penis?
not at all. I’m sure you practice all your conversational skills by doing so anyway.
[meta]
, so, your penis is the center (the nub, the pith, the essence, the kernel and—indeed— the very substance) of your existence?
<snicker>
@Setár, #162:
Meme generated: http://memegenerator.net/instance/26422238
It’s not a mere construction, it’s a fucking fact. If you don’t have the right to tell people “stop” with regards to your own body, they can do as they please even if you die.
“Right to life” is moot. It only exists as a very small and specific subset of the right to bodily autonomy. And when you start arguing that it’s okay to violate bodily autonomy in any case, all cases — even “right to life” — can be subjected to the same scrutiny.
Any “conflict” you attempt to bring up between the two is nothing but bullshit.
No, you aren’t, because the response to that one is simple: you can’t claim a violation of rights when the “violation” would stop you violating another’s rights. The fetus is violating the woman’s bodily autonomy by residing there sans consent, ergo it’s up shit creek without a paddle as far as its rights are concerned.
Yes, but it can’t read nuclear codes, it told me so. It went “I don’t read nucular codes,” and I went “oh crap, my penis is George Bush,” and it went “you misunderestimate me,” and I went…
But hell, why am I telling you this? You quoted the omphalos and nobody even paid you to do it! Amazing. That’s really…something.
if you talk to your penis, you will only inflate its ego.
So, let’s just play out the little scenario. So, a bunch of doctors hoover over a pregnant woman, talk over her head and then, instead of offering her options, they decide what’s best for her, or best for the fetus who’s just more important than she is, because, duh, who cares about her opinion?
And if we carry on, we then have a bunch of people seizing an unwilling woman, strap her onto a table, knock her out (or, even better, give her a PDA so she can totally witness what’s happening), ripp open her body to which she never consented and take out the fetus. Then you sew her up again and let her deal with the wound, the scar and the fucking PTSD.
Apart from those cases when you decide they should be…
Lie, because in your first post you came up with a scenario in which you would like to force a woman into an option you would prefer.
So, you think that women should have the right to do that, but they should feel very ashamed of it because it’s actually wrong to do so? Yes, that really sounds like support.
No, you should just shut the fuck up because you’re not that woman.
Oh, and if that vain woman exists who has the abortion to lose weight, would you be happy with that person to care for a fetus on whom she can inflict severe damage?
What a wonderful ally you are. You would just withdraw your support from the rights of all women because some of them were mean to you on the internet.
That’s the kind of ally we can really do without.
Try a bit more shaming. Yeah, if we lose our reproductive rights it’s totally our fault, of course, we deserve what we get. Tells how much you really care.
Bitches ain’t shit but you’d be willing to treat them like 3/5th of a person if they gave you cookies.
So, you’re refusing to accept the validity of an argument because it wasn’t pesented to you the way you would have liked it to be?
Yes, how adult of you.
Actually, I would find the presence of Caine and people like her to be a big plus, especially as a fertile woman of childbearing age.
Somebody call Rome, the saviour has returned! Crucify you, my dear. And we’re the ones with the victim-mentality.
If you still can’t understand why your posts were stupid, wrong, pro-life shit and plain old insulting women as sensible human beings, that’s your problem.
[meta]
, I quoted the crux of the OP, which you have studiously ignored in favour of wanking about your hypothetical arguments and your penis.
(I grant it’s kinda hard to attempt to dispute the indisputable)
In this particular case obviously the Supreme Court appears (or at least appeared) to agree with you since as far as I know, this is the basis for Roe v. Wade. As a general point of law (disclaimer: I’m not a lawyer) I’m not sure about that. For instance, the “right” to freedom of association has been determined to violate other civil rights (in America anyway). So, analogously, you can’t claim a violation of civil rights when the “violation” stops you from violating the right of free association, which has been determined to be false, and most people, but certainly not all think this is correct. Really, it seems to boil down to which right is more important, so I’ll have to think more about the idea that right to life is subordinate to body autonomy.
Above and beyond that, I personally agree with the body autonomy argument not out of any ranking of rights, but because I think rights apply to adults to a far greater extent than to fetuses, if they extend there at all. I suspect you probably agree with that, but I don’t want to put words in your mouth.
I’d like to summarize what was wrong with Ben’s comment from the very get-go:
the opening statement of Ben’s overarching belief that “women have the right to terminate a pregnancy for any reason at any time” conflicts with his hypothetical, where the only REASON to construct the hypothetical in the fist place is if one actually does NOT agree with the statement laid out in the first paragraph.
Ben, what people have noted here is a gross inconsistency in your thinking.
the rest was you getting defensive about people noting that your positions are inconsistent.
I’ve seen you comment on Jerry’s blog for years. You typically do much better at presenting your thoughts clearly there.
why the fail here?
Really, it seems to boil down to which right is more important, so I’ll have to think more about the idea that right to life is subordinate to body autonomy.
you actually should re-read the decision in Roe V Wade.
seriously.
what it simply boils down to is where to define exactly that there IS a right to life.
in the end, the decision is entirely arbitrary. In Roe, they developed the trimester system as a compromise proposed solution.
if you look at their reasoning for doing that, it will inform you immensely.
myself, I find post partum to be a more natural and easily defined place to define that there now exists a “right to life”.
I find it much easier to defend that the trimester system.
you can take your little “My First Philosophy Kit” and have at it.
noted and stored for future punning.
:)
I will do so. I admit I don’t understand R v. W very well, so ignore that part of my comment. (as if you’re not going to ignore it all, right?)
Do you really think that abortion rights would have even the slimmest hope in our society if all men remained silent on the matter?
ROFLMAO
FUCK.
YES.
seriously, even YOU have to admit that this is a dumb thing to say.
I admit I don’t understand R v. W very well
it’s not just important because it set the legal standard. The discussion between the judges involved in making the final decision is worth reading in and of itself. It was remarkably well thought out for the time and pressures involved. I can’t think of any case that has been before SCOTUS in the last 20 years that was as well considered.
what’s more, it is, for the most part, very readable. You don’t even need the “cliff notes” version.
It’s a key piece of reading for most biomedical ethics courses, in fact.
Ben later backed off the word “require” and amended it into an agreement between doctors and a woman, but I’m guessing the first wording was something of a literal Freudian slip. I guess there’s supposed to be some kind of team huddle, just as long as the outcome is not abortion. Of all the things he said, this was the most confused, and I suspect, the one he wished he hadn’t. I actually wish he’d stuck to his guns. At least he would have gone down in a hail of bullets. It would have been interesting. On the other hand, maybe I’m wrong and perhaps he really did misspeak.
I’m guessing the first wording was something of a literal Freudian slip
quite possibly.
we’ll never know, because he will now go back to Jerry’s blog, where people play with nerf bats instead of guns.
Ben is an intelligent guy, but it is all too easy to be overwhelmed in defending yourself, thinking the attacks are personal here, instead of defending your thinking and ideas, which is what counts.
you want the horde to stop biting your face off?
speak.
clearly.
It sure is. I wished I had payed more attention to my head and thought things out in that class instead of clinging to gut feelings and not wanting to get into anything with my teacher or classmates. My gut feeling was wrong and was really only there because that’s how every one told me I was suppose to feel about abortion. I mean, I even had a baby, how could I support abortion late term?
Boy, do I hate the essay I wrote on for abortion in that class. I was totally icky weeble wobble abortion is fine until viable stage. Bleh.
True, but you also have to survive to that point. The people who are here just to goad you into a misstep you have to be willing to give the middle finger to without undue nastiness. Supercilious jerks you must be willing to play with. The one-line insults you must be willing to toy with, and serious inquiry you must be willing to engage. After all that, perhaps something constructive emerges.
Yawn, HS, what do you hope to accomplish here?
Are you making any progress toward that goal?
If not, why are you still here?
Inquiring people want to know.
No essays were involved, but I held that belief at some point too. At least we were capable of listening, learning and admitting we used to be wrong, unlike some people.
My personal belief, personal belief, is that abortion should be at will until 8 months, and then after 8 months, should only be in the event of health issue, either with the mother or the fetus.
But no matter what my own personal belief is, I would NEVER, EVER, assume that I have the right to force my own belief on another person.
Plus, to be fair, the practical results of a policy of “on demand til viability, then with some restrictions” tend to be pretty much the same as “on demand til birth”, at least if well written and enforced. Morally, and as a basis for resisting later restrictions, the latter is better, but practically it rarely makes a difference.
And this is because of what bothers me about all these dumbass hypotheticals: They all assume that women are really, really stupid. Because we’re totally going to stay pregnant with an unwanted child for eight months for no good reason, and then abort at the last minute. Or be pregnant with a healthy wanted child, and then, when there’s a problem, choose the option that results in a dead child when an option resulting in a live child is available for the same level of risk.
I mean honestly, how fucking stupid do they think we are?
Why the arbitrary figure? If you’re going to move more than two steps in this board game you need to at least present some argument for why that number is significant and not any other. Even the ancients had their bogus ruminations on quickening Unsurprisingly, even that seems to have had a male priority.
Why aren’t you actually presenting what you think and defending it like a responsible adult would? Criticism of others is cheap and trollish.
For example, I believe on abortion on demand until birth. But under present laws here in the US, that means once the fetus is viable, only to save the life of the woman and for fetal deformity/death for third trimester abortions. Put up or shut the fuck up SH.
*headdesk*
Jessie,
So that should in the first sentence isn’t a “should be legal“?
*sigh*
Have you read anything we have written in this thread about how harmful this little belief of yours is?
It would be great if you cared to read the thread before sharing your beliefs.
Read the damn thread!
absolute, @#204:
However, the fetus is still inside the woman and has to get out somehow. How is the question. There are always several possibilities and for each case some are more indicated than others. They don’t all carry the same risks for the woman, and forcing the woman to the undergo a medical procedure that carries more risks to her life and health than other alternative procedure, doing this against her will, is still violating her bodily autonomy. In some cases you’d be forcing her to risk her life against her will. Because of a fucking fetus. It’s wrong.
Also, which is the most appropriate medical procedure for any particular case is something that has to be decided on a case by case basis. Legislating this stuff like you want to do is irresponsible. And I’m not just thinking about consequences to the mother’s life and health, but also about the fetus. Viability is a tricky question (and again, case by case basis), and making the wrong decision may have serious implications to the health and well-being of the fetus once it is born. You can’t ask the fetus whether it prefers to take the risks of a premature birth (and risk great suffering as a result, possibly a short and painful life) or not, so you have to ask the mother. Because, who else?
So what? It still is a choice between life and death (all you’re concerned about, am I right?), and the law doesn’t punish people for not donating blood when people are dying due to a blood shortage.
But if there must be a connection: organ donation? Does the law punish people for refusing to donate a kidney to a dying relative (including son or daughter)?
Yes, and forcing someone to make a call to an emergency phone line (or make sure somebody already has and help is on the way) has precisely the same moral implications as forcing someone to donate a kidney or carrying a (almost always problematic and life-threatening in the late-term abortion cases you like to bring up) pregnancy to term.
Oh, wait. It doesn’t. It isn’t fucking comparable. It isn’t even comparable to blood donation, let alone to giving birth.
And apparently you know it. Geez. Why did you type all that if you already knew it would be so easy and trivial to address?
But, especially when death results*, both actions and omissions of action are treated as crimes, when your bodily integrity, health, and life aren’t at stake. That’s important. And that’s the case with carrying a pregnancy to term, it is always a risk for the mother. People are usually not liable if they acted or failed to act in order to avoid risking their lives/bodily integrity. Actions, omissions of action, whatever. It’s irrelevant. You’re not forcing people to stop by and call an emergency phone number here, you’re forcing people to run risks they don’t want to run, to do things with their body they don’t want to do, to undergo medical procedures they don’t want to undergo. It’s fucking different, and the comparison is fucking offensive.
*The death of a human person, I mean. Worrying about the death of a fetus the way we worry about the death of a person is stupid, and I hate that you still seem to be playing around with the “what if fetuses were conscious and wrote poetry” scenario laid out on the original thread Alethea made the awarded comment, without making clear you’re doing so. So fuck you, reread Alethea’s comment and shut the fuck up.
Jesse:
Obviously, you don’t realize that at 8 months, major medical intervention is required to keep a preterm infant alive. At 32 weeks, an average fetus is ~4 pounds– in other words, if I were to squirt out DarkFetus today (the begining of the 33rd week of my pregnancy), there’s no way I’d be leaving the hospital on Tuesday with a happy and healthy infant in my arms.
Viable≠healthy or ready to be born.
You know what’s extra special? Waking up this morning to find that despite what I said last night, my bodily automomy is still being weighed against my fetus’ so called “right to life”. Bah. Keep on ignoring the pregnant lady in the room who is directly effected by the stupid late abortion hypothetical, she obviously doesn’t count, anyway.
How classy.
Random thought that occurred to me after reading Audley’s comment: The whole “what if a woman decides to abort for no reason when the contractions are 5 minutes apart” scenario depends on a couple of assumptions:
1. Women are entirely irrational creatures who are inclined to do things on a whim without considering the consequences.
2. Women are completely without empathy or compassion.
3. Women have no understanding of pregnancy.
4. Doctors are also irrational and immoral creatures who will perform an abortion during labor for no good reason without any consideration of the consequences.
Because if we think that women and doctors are, in general, rational creatures with compassion and understanding then we would assume that women would only get abortions late in pregnancy if there was a really good reason for doing so and doctors would only perform the abortion if they were sure that having the abortion was the will of the patient and the laws against late term abortion would be unnecessary and utterly ludicrous.
Dianne:
Number 3 on your list hits really close to home. It’s assumed that 1) pregnancy is this magical process that happens to us that we are in no way involved in (up until the moment we decide to terminate, natch) and 2) because men can’t really understand what it’s like to be pregnant (or have a late period/pregnancy scare) that for some reason, we can’t either. (And although I’m sure woman have trotted out this senario, I usually only here it from Concerned D00dz.)
Audley, it was this sentence that started me on the train of thought above: “You know what’s extra special? Waking up this morning to find that despite what I said last night, my bodily automomy is still being weighed against my fetus’ so called “right to life”.” Because implicit in the statement is that SOMEONE ELSE who is not you must weigh your bodily autonomy versus the fetus’s right. That assumption only works if one assumes that you (and any pregnant woman) are stupid or immoral. Otherwise it’s simply an endlessly stupid question. And laws banning it make as much sense as a law banning people from removing their own appendixes when they don’t have appendicitis would: it’s just something that won’t happen and no sane person would even worry about.
dianne,
The assumption that women are stupid and irrational also goes a long way toward explaining the laws currently on the books that limit access to abortion.
Mandatory counseling and waiting periods? A woman who wants an abortion can’t have carefully weighed her options and decided that termination of her pregnancy was the best course of action. No, it’s obviously because she hasn’t thought things through properly, the silly thing. So we need to lecture to her and make her Sit And Think About What She’s About To Do, and maybe some sense will sink into her fluffy pink ladybrain.
Mandatory ultrasounds? They’re needed because a woman wanting an abortion obviously hasn’t realized that pregnancy will result in a cute, precious baby. So we need to make her see the fetus and hear the heartbeat to make sure that she knows that.
#306 @Nightjar, good post, you’re giving me a hard time :)
I would like to comment on Ben’s struggle to express his squeamishness towards some special cases of abortion.
You state that merely raising personal objections is detrimental to the cause, or even is the root of the problem.
You equate that with the laws that may or may on be passed as policy. Or say that it’s OK as long as he keeps them to himself.
Isn’t this the same approach you despise in religious people? Because you’re acting somewhat like them, which has been mentioned with regards to Atheism+, or rathe PLUSatheism in general.
And I apologize I keep saying you, but I really have a hard time speaking to specific people here, since you’re all backing each other with the same views.
Dianne,
Right on. Woman are totes stupid AND immoral, otherwise we wouldn’t need teh menz pointing out the scenarios when exercising our right to bodily autonomy is wrong. I obviously can’t be trusted, I’m just a silly laydee.
*eyeroll*
Jessa,
The thing that slays me about the mandatory ultrasounds* is that early in the pregnancy the fetus doesn’t at all look human– it looks like a goddamned lima bean, for Christ’s sake.
I’ve had a (medically necessary) transvaginal ultrasound at 7 weeks, so I’ve seen first hand the little squirming booger inside me. Trust me, my reaction was not “OMG, look at the baybee!”. It just goes to show how really fucking out of touch these people are.
Sorry, sorry. Not mad at you at all, just frustrated that we still have to talk about this shit because a number of people refuse to understand what the OP was about in the first place.
*Besides the whole “a woman should be able to decide what is put in her own body” problem. But whoops! She’s too stupid and immoral to decide what’s right for her in the first place. We need lawmakers to take us by the hand, like children, otherwise who knows what will happen?
Ever stop to think your views are WRONG? There is that. They are.
Yes, absolute, how very terrible of us to point out that stupid and irrelevant philosophising can have actual consequences in the real world. How thoroughly unreasonable.
How could we not realise that some guy’s ability to make up really dumb hypotheticals with no relevance to reality is far more important than our bodily autonomy.
Audley:
Just this week, a Facebook friend of mine posted a photo of what they claimed was a healthy baby that was delivered at 12 weeks. A quick Google search revealed that the baby was actually a resin sculpture. So yeah, I think that the anti-choice propaganda has been very effective at misleading people about fetal development.
Bonus fun: when I pointed out that the photo was a fake, I was called a “baby-killer” by one of FB friend’s other friends. Good times.
With regard to Audley, dianne and Jessa’s discussion about how society seems to treat women as if they are somehow incapable of making informed, rational decisions about their own pregnancies – I have noticed that all these ‘concerned doodz’ seem to perpetually want to dehumanise women.
Women are forever treated as if they can understand nothing, least of all their own bodies, and must be prevented from exercising any personal agency that might compromise their notional function as sex dispensors/ambulatory incubators. As a result of this mindset, concerned doodz divide the female members of our species broadly into two categories:-
1) ‘Non-functional’ women – this covers sexually immature children who must be protected form the perils of the world – particularly any dangerous signs that they may be thinking for themsleves – and women who don’t conform closely enough to the dominant dood-approved model of sexual attractiveness, or who are beyond child bearing age or are infertile, and so should be ignored entirely unless they get ‘uppity’; because if a woman is neither a living sex toy nor functioning as an ambulatory incubator, what good is she, amiright?
2) ‘Functional’ sexually mature women who cannot make rational decisions about their own bodies (for some reason – the dood-logic here never makes any sense), and so must primarily be protected from themsleves – from the notional inability of their pink fluffy lady brains to handle anything more complex than gossip magazines and picking out a nice shade of lip gloss, that naturally means that they cannot be trusted with any important decisions, like what should happen to their own bodies when they are pregnant. Afterall, they might choose to abort the child, thus wasting some dood’s ‘sacred seed’. I mean, can you imagine any thing worse…?
So there you have it – to doodz like this, women are either sex toys/incubators, or they are proto sex toys/incubators, or they effectively don’t exist at all. And this from the same doodz who get so angry when their pwecious fee-fees get bruised by someone telling them what utter misogynist jackasses they are. And why? Because to these clueless doodz, a woman’s bodily autonomy is of no important when set against those oh-so delicate man fee-fees (IMPORTANT).
I hate the fact that I share both a gender and a sexual orientation with these bigoted idiots. Cis/het blokes like me have a lot to answer for.
dianne, your comment reminds me of a very good post about abortion called Do you trust women? I read this when my views on abortion were changing, and it really pushed me over into the total “it’s the woman’s decision, full stop” viewpoint. It’s really worth the read.
Excerpt that Ben really needs to read:
Jessa,
I’ll have to see if I still have the pics from that first ultrasound– I’ve been meaning to scan them for months now but just haven’t gotten around to it.
One has to wonder why the anti-choice brigade even bothers with shit like that any more, since it’s so damned easy to debunk.
Gregory,
You nailed it: because of our status of being moist holes/incubators/invisible, we are not deserving of full rights because we’re not to be fully trusted (the same way children can’t be fully trusted to make decisions for themselves).
I’ve always found Ben Goren to be a thoughtful and intelligent poster. What the fuck happened to him? Did he get bitten by Abbie Smith?
Audley,
I had to dig through my Facebook feed to find the thread, but here’s the source of the picture.
By their logic, you’ve gone through 20 unnecessary weeks of gestation.
Re ultrasounds: I think the ultrasound requirement might backfire. The fetus which would eventually become my daughter looked like a figure 8 on the first ultrasound I had-and that was a transabdominal u/s, not even an early transvaginal. Embryos and early fetuses just don’t look like babies.
Thanks for that, carlie.
And this:
Audley Z. Darkheart: My name is Legion, for we are many @ 319;
Your post has made me realise that the attitude of these doodz is even worse than I realised – they really do think of women as being akin to children, as people lacking the capacity to make rational decisions, while at the same time viewing those self-same women as the ‘sex class’, which adds a whole ‘nother level to the creepiness of it all.
They are effectively saying that they believe that women cannot think for themselves, but it is totes OK to stick their pee-pees into them in any case, because only the man’s judgement matters. It is scant surprise that so many of them think that consent isn’t really a big deal, especially when trying to secure it from people they clearly view as non-sapient brood-mares would totes ‘ruin the moment’…
I am beginning to see a very clear link between these anti-choice characters and rape culture. Afterall, if these gits think that women cannot be trusted to make decisions about their own bodies while pregnant, then why would they take the judgement of women with relation to consent any more seriously?
*lightbulb*
Gregory:
Yep, that’s exactly how I feel every time this comes up– like a child. You wouldn’t let a child make their own medical decisions without a parent signing off on it, would we? Same thing with adult women.
Yep. To play on the “thought experiment” theme, imagine the type of laws that the government would pass regarding women if the prevailing image of women were that they had the physical bodies of adults, but the reasoning capability of young children. And then compare these laws to the actual ones that have been proposed or recently enacted.
carlie @ 325;
Yes, it makes a horrible kind of twisted sense, doesn’t it? Getting into the head-space of those creeps is an unpleasant experience, to say the least.
——————————————————————
Audley Z. Darkheart: My name is Legion, for we are many @ 326;
With men – who will never experience either pregnancy or an abortion procedure – in loco parentis. The sick part being that these deeply misogynist, immature jerks actually see themsleves as the responsible adults charged with ‘protecting’ women and teh poor unborn babbies from those pink fluffy lady brains(TM). Though, oddly enough, ‘protecting women and unborn babies’ in this context always bears a strong resemblance to maintaining male privilege…
—————————————————————-
Jessa @ 327;
It is downright scary that the organs of state are still so easily subverted to the cause of keeping women ‘in their place’ as sex toys/incubators. Some of the new laws being enacted and proposed are simply horrifying, and it is clear that, if they get abortion banned, the anti-choicer’s next target will be contraception.
Someone stop the world. I want to get off.
—————————————————————-
hyperdeath @ 320;
Wait – this is a contagious strain of misogynist arsehole-itude? We will soon face mindless hordes shambling down the intertoobs moaning “
BraaaaaaiiinnnsWhat about teh meeeeeeennnnz!”Its the
zombieMRA Apocalypse! Remember everyone – pack your shotguns (always the zombie/brain dead misogynist hunter’s best friend), and aim for the head!:-P
Gregory:
You’re a bit behind on the Draconian News from the States.
There isn’t a ferocious push towards banning abortion now, the various laws which have been enacted in most states, along with closing most clinics down has effectively banned abortion for the majority of women. Between the mandatory 3 day wait, mandatory ‘counseling’ from bogus clinics, mandatory ultrasounds, travel time, needed time off and money, a majority of women no longer have abortion as an alernative.
The war on contraception is not new and it’s been ongoing for decades. Many states have voted in ‘conscience’ laws, which allow pharmacists to refuse providing plan b, and in some states, such as South Dakota, a pharmacist is not obliged to carry any type of birth control at all or can refuse to sell it, no reason needed.
Much of contraception is not covered by insurance and a majority of people in the U.S. don’t have insurance anyway. There’s a massive fight, politically and legally to see that contraception is *not* covered, but of course, vi@gra is covered.
Many hospitals in the U.S. are religion based and at those hospitals, there are moves to prevent any sort of contraceptive help, refusal of dealing with ectopic pregnancies, etc., much of this was detailed by crowepps in #201.
It’s always been incredibly difficult for young women to obtain certain types of BC, such as an IUD. Many states still refuse a married person a sterilisation unless they obtain the consent of their spouse, etc.
It’s a fucking mess here.
Jessa
One of my favourite things with forced birthers is to link them to this picture and ask them if they consider that a full human being, equal in moral standing to the mother and even more imporant than her bodily autonomy.
Usually the answer is a passionate “Yes”.
It’s an elephant.
Deep and honest thinking, to be sure. But there most certainly is. If the woman in question is being assaulted by a politician you happen to like. In which case she can be crudely propositioned, defamed, raped etc. and you will bend low to polish the boots and kiss the backside of the offender.
See above. It’s okay – to you people – when it’s a politician you like doing the raping.
*sigh*
Oh? Why don’t you tell me, Frank, clearly and explicitly just what rape I’m condoning by which politician, okay? No fudging, no fapping about and don’t come back with a stupid screed comparing something to rape.
Frank,
Is this the Clinton nonsense again? How about you shut the fuck up until you’ve got a well thought out point.
Those people in your head? They’re not real, and you don’t need to write on a blog to talk to them.
Oh, look! Another wibbertairian asshole.
Audley:
It had better not be, because no matter what little problem Frankie has with any given politician, I do not like stupid, fuckwitted assholes saying something they don’t like is rape.
I see Frankie’s projecting again.
Very bad habit, projection. Rots the brain.
Worse than cigarettes.
*sidesteps the steaming pile left by frankboyd*
To follow up on Caine @329, one of the recent favorites of the anti-choice crowd are T.R.A.P. laws. These laws impose extra regulations on abortion providers that are not imposed on other medical clinics. Proponents of these laws say that they are trying to improve the quality of patient care, but their real purpose is to shut down abortion clinics by imposing bizarre regulations that pretty much no abortion clinic could meet.
Considering his history, you will be waiting a long time.
Another thing about all those “hypotheticals” is that the woman in them (if she gets a face at all) is always somebody very unsympathetic. Somebody whom you’ll never be, you’re not that kind of person.
It’s the party girl who just can’t take the effect on her size 0 anymore who wants the non-medically indicated late term abortion.
It’s not the mother of three whose husband has just taken off, whose mortage has been called in and who’ll lose the measely job she has if she stays pregnant any longer.
It’s Slutty McSlut who can’t decide who fathered the pregnancy because she fucked the whole football-team in one night, not the girl who didn’t notice that her slightly runny poo meant that the pill was no longer protecting her.
Divide et impera.
Find an absurd enough example that will lose the support of some people and you have cut them off from the crowd of pro choicers. An another one, and another one, and another one until there are no more pro-choicers left. Ben, if you’re still reading this, that’s why people are angry at you.
Well it does look like a lot of you are in love with Clinton, and being both a sexist liar and an alleged rapist, one would think his credentials are forever stained in this community.
The lower head – the upper one has nothing in it.
frankboyd:
There are 2 questions I hope you can answer:
Who is the politician?
Who is the commenter defending this rape?
Compared to your lying and bullshitting without evidence? Your credentials are zero without citations, including the above bullshit which *POOF* is dismissed as abject fuckwittery from a fuckwitted idjit.
You probably love an economic model you can’t prove works…
Your brain is malfunctioning, absolute.
Frankie pontificates obtusely, as ever. Audley and then Caine query in passing whether this a particular one of his obsessions. So far, no opinion expressed. And then suddenly you have us all in love with Clinton.
I look forward to the moment when you are once again coherent enough to explain to me what this has to do with the price of soap or with anyone’s bodily autonomy. Note: I am not holding my breath.
Giliell:
When it comes to hypotheticals, Ben’s specifically, what bothers me the most is the Magical Thinking™. It’s all a *handwave*, it’s *magick!* It’s absolute shit and I can’t stand it when someone like Ben insists on indulging such crap and wanting other people to get lost with him in magic land.
While any instance of argumentum ad Star Trek makes me want to pound heads, it is a good indicator of just how far removed from reality the person is and how much they are invested in magic.
Yeah, fine, we can *magic* (future tech, ya know) the fetus out of a woman. So, assuming the woman is okay with this, and doesn’t care about having a sprog out there, rather than obtaining the abortion she actually wanted, where do the *magicked out* fetuses go? Who takes care of the teeny preemies? Who is paying out that enormous amount of money for each one? Who is taking responsibility for them? Who is adopting them (especially in light of the fact that adoption laws are incredibly strict and there are hundreds of thousands of kids waiting to be adopted as is)? And so on.
These *magic!* scenarios are so godsdamned removed from reality is simply isn’t funny. Every single one of them also conveniently removes agency from the woman. She’s not a human being, she’s not a thinking creature, she’s nothing more than the container of the precious fetus.
*spits*
We seem to be in bizarro world. I can’t recall anyone here ever saying anything that could possibly justify such a claim. But then, we do know absolute is an absolute idiot.
Seriously, frankie and absolute, if you want to discuss politicians (and derail this entire thread), take it to the fucking [Thunderdone]. We’re not putting up with your bullshit here.
Caine, Fleur du mal @ 329;
Bloody fictional hell-trope – you’re right, I didn’t realise that it had already gotten that bad over in the US. We are some years behind you lot (perhaps that should be ahead of you lot) over here in dear old Blighty, but even we have our anti-choice fundamentalist crowd who periodically pop up to try to restrict abortion access (and even occasionally taking a sideswipe at the ‘immorality’ of contraception), usually while having the strong smell of copious quanitites of $$$ about them.
Odd, that…
——————————————————————
vaiyt @ 344;
The specific type of ‘head’ you aim at naturally depends upon the particular type of disease-ridden, malodorous scavenger you happen to be dealing with…
Caine
Oh, but that’s when they succeed in building some more Datas, only that this time they’re female-looking and programmed to be just mummies, nothing else, they’ll never want another life than raising a dozen transporter-babies at a time, making cookies, wiping their little shitty asses (do you think they could create transporter diapers that just remove the shit?) and helping them with their homework.
See, because everything works fine in Star Trek. And that’s why we can just force women to play along on planet earth.
Giliell:
:Snort: I think you have just nailed down the complete magick scenario.
Why does this strike some people as a sort of utopia? Seems very dystopia to me.
Caine:
I can’t understand what point he’s trying to make [with the transporter stupidity]. His first hypothetical scenario creates a situation where he believes a woman’s right to choose could be overridden.
The Star Trek what if creates a situation where a woman willingly* agrees to teleport the fetus out of her body.
How does his Star Trek scenario support his view that it’s possible-however remote-to override a woman’s right to choose? The first hypothetical robs the woman of the right to choose.
The second hypothetical shows that the woman is the one who makes the choice.
Damn, after I re-read all that, I realized he’s worried about the FETUS in both cases.
*When he first proposes the idea, he did not indicate-despite his assertion that it was obvious-that the woman was willing to submit to the procedure.
Caine:
Ah yes. Languishing in the foster care system until they’re kicked out onto the streets at 18. Sounds *magical* to me.
Tony:
Yes. It’s pretty much all he was worried about. That was clear from his first post, which included the safe harbor stations for no good reason.
Shorter this entire thread:
Abortion is okay as long as teh menz agree with the timing and reasons. A viable fetus is the same as an infant who has been born at term. Also, Bill Clinton.
Pretty much off-topic but an association with the Star Trek thing.
I think it was Heinlein who used future technology to make chilbirth somewhat less, uh, laborous. Wait until full dilation and then point mom the right way and do a quick push on the gravity pedal. I might be making up the catcher’s mitt.
And speaking of quality of life, in the news from Florida:
absolute,
Well, you’re giving me a fucking hard time too.
It is not pleasant to have to constantly defend my right to my bodily autonomy in the face of whatever contrived and farfetched hypothetical scenario you idiots manage to come up with. It’s especially not pleasant when there are so many people out there who want to effectively treat me as an incubator who stops having a say in what happens to my body as soon as I have consensual sex (though the “consensual” part seems to be optional for some pro-lifers) and for one reason or another get pregnant as a result.
The fact that you guys just keep trying and trying and trying to come up with ever more contrived and farfetched hypothetical scenarios, no matter how many women ask you to STOP, shows an enormous lack of empathy.
I don’t see why Alethea was so upset. The person was just asking for one instance, no more, in which to reduce her to a piece of livestock. Common courtesy would indicate that one submission, for form’s sake entirely, would be in order.
According to Bishop Olmstead of Phoenix, there is no instance whatsoever in which the woman shouldn’t be considered merely a disposable container:
crowepps:
Says it all, doesn’t it? She’s not a woman, she’s a mother. She doesn’t have a life, but only mere existence. Mm hmm.
Curious how “You should rather die than ______ *” always seems to concern women. Kinda shows how much a woman’s life is worth to these people.
*abort/”let” your virtue be taken by rape
Crowepps,
And of course
murderingletting awomanmother die of a preventable/treatable medical condition is totes okay because she’s not a really really real person, right?Wait. DarkFetus is female– do we cancel each other out?
I think the right-to-life ranking is man/boy > male fetus > female fetus > woman/girl. So I think she out-ranks you until she’s born. *nods*
Well, how do you call a cow who doesn’t produce calves and milk anymore?
Beef.
So, if the bitch’s too stupid to spawn, don’t waste a good man on her for the rest of her life, let her die and he can start all over with a new one (Yeah, he can have half a year or so to sob over his lost investment or so)
No, fetus still beats woman. It’s only once she’s born that she stops mattering.
I’ve commented on someone trying to undermine your position by refering to your – and pz’s for sure – reverence towards Clinton. I did not make this sageway, but I did find it interesting. FTB spends a lot of time and energy inventing insults for whoever opposes them by merely presenting hypothetical scenarios, yet you seems to have a short memory with regards to someone who is the prime example of what you stand against.
No, no, no. jefrir and Jessa are right.
Silly Audley, thinking she’s as important as a fetus. *shakes head*
So, iow, you’re a useless derailing troll. We knew that.
silly bitches, objecting to being reduced to axolotl tanks by dudes who just wanna wax hypothetical. This stuff doesn’t have real world consequences, you silly bitches. Audley? Who’s Audley?
Wait.
Bill Clinton was a rapist?
Huh.
Never knew that.
I wonder if any individual who believes that is true could provide some evidence of its truth.
Gee, a liberal politician who was hounded by the Gingrich congress. Not making your case. But then, you never do. We are aware of Clinton and his warts. But at the end of the day, he beats any rethuglican for president who kept who may his pants zipped due to his politics. That is how bad the rethuglican policies were and are now even worse.
Oh, and Absolute, you have never shown any conclusive evidence that a fetus is more of a human being than the mother. In case of tie, the woman wins every time as her personhood is not in doubt. The fetus isn’t even fully human until it is born and living in the human environment and breathing air. You are the one with the hypothetical scenarios, not reality.
FTB?
You’re clearly not arguing honestly.
Looking back through this thread, the only blogger from FtB even involved in this post is PZ-and he wrote the OP. FtB isn’t some massive groupthink/hivemind. It’s a collection of bloggers.
If you’re referring to all the posters at Pharyngula, well, you certainly weren’t correct there either.
So who are you referring to when you say “FTB”?
I’m also curious how you’d feel if a hypothetical situation were created where *you* were forced to undergo a procedure against your will. It’s not about the fetus. One of the fundamental rights we all (yes, even despicable people like you and frankboyd) have is bodily autonomy. That means decisions involving our bodies are decided by the individual. Not by someone who thinks they know what’s best for someone else.
Illuminata:
Damned if I know. I’m just a DarkFetus incubator.
Take the off topic Clinton talk to Thunderdome. Thank you.
Alleged. Read about Juanita Broderick.
The only sworn evidence Juanita Broaddrick ever gave was an affidavit saying nothing happened. At other times she said, yes, Clinton did attack her and her sworn affidavit was a lie given under pressure. Obviously one or the other of her assertions is a lie, but considering the amount of money and power behind the various attacks on Clinton, I wouldn’t take a bet either way.
I’ve commented on someone trying to undermine your position by refering to your – and pz’s for sure – reverence towards Clinton.
iow, no, you are completely unable to explain how it has any relevance to rational people whatsoever.
you HAVE made it quite clear it makes perfect sense to YOU, however.
git.
+1
When do we get to ditch Caine for violating the rules quite flatly?
Oh, Crissa. Crissa, Crissa, Crissa. Almost 400 comments about abortion and women’s rights, and you drop in just so you can try to snipe at Caine. One would think that in of itself might be a derail, another data point in being inane and repetitive, and therefore an example of breaking several of the rules, might one?
yes, go report on her immediately.
in fact, I suggest you spend all your time in the immediate future trying to get Caine tossed from here.
I expect you will be too busy to comment.
Funny how no link was supplied. Almost like it doesn’t exist…And absolute is a total liar and bullshitter, as if it wasn’t, LINK.
Crissa:
Oh Cupcake, I suggest you save time by tattling to PZ directly. His e-mail address is right there on the front page in the sidebar. You never know, you might get lucky!
Still no evidence for anything by Absolute. What a waste of electrons. For example Evolution Occurred. That is how one shows evidence.
Watch out, you’re getting boring. I said read up on her case and make your own mind. It’s her words against Clinton’s, so she wins by default unless you’re blindly in love with him.
You should be grateful Monica Lewinsky had that dress, as you’d be ignoring her now just as you ignore the other cases.
, this post is about why people raise hypothetical near-birth abortion scenarios and Alethea’s Molly-worthy comment about it.
(And even were your claims anywhere near on-topic, they’d still be utterly wrong: Ms Lewinsky stated: “This was a mutual relationship, mutual on all levels, right from the way it started and all the way through.”)
Funny how no link was supplied. Almost like it doesn’t exist…And absolute is a total liar and bullshitter, as if it wasn’t, LINK.
it doesn’t matter if bill clinton raped his bloody mother. IT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH ANYTHING IN THIS THREAD.
stinky cheese bait is … stinky.
Dear Anti Abortion Freaks,
I would just like to remind you that, due to the benefits of Evil Science, I have had a working donor uterus strapped to each arm. I am using these to simultaneously gestate multiple foetuses (created using only Christian donor sperm and eggs, blessed by priests and carefully tattooed with the web addresses of at least three Men’s Right Activist websites). These foetuses are then aborted at regular intervals and sacrificed to Cthulu (why go for the lesser of two evils?).
Inspired by the late, great Bill Hicks, I am also smoking cigarettes whilst I do this. Just to piss off the non-smokers amongst you as well.
Please wake up to the fact that women are people, and over-riding their autonomy based on your arrant misogyny is A Bit Naughty (a quaint British euphemism for “seriously criminal”). An unborn foetus is not equivalent to a sexually mature woman, and any system in which a woman’s right to determine how her own body is used is attenuated is exactly as the excellent Molly Worthy comment from Alethea (CONGRATS!!!!) describes: identical to asking that woman when it is okay to remove her right to bodily autonomy when it comes to rape.
If this is troublesome for you to understand, I have a queue of very large, chemically en-hornified genetically modified super gorillas with massive Tabasco covered strap on dildos who would like to explain to you the value of bodily autonomy. They have been engineered to continue until the point has really been…and one so hates to use terms like this…hammered home.
Thank you for your time, please enjoy your hair.
Louis
As several people have said, the stuff about Clinton is a derail, and should be taken to Thunderdome. As a monitor, I’m emailing PZ about this now.
chemically en-hornified
does viagra work on gorillas?
I just gotta know.
Ichthyic,
Given its mechanism of action and the ubiquity of guanylate cyclase and PDE5 receptors in erectile tissue, I’d be surprised if it didn’t work in other primates, but then IANA Biologist, so I’ll give that a cautious “yes”.
Louis
P.S. I would have to look to see if there were tests in non human primates. I don’t think there were if memory serves.
Except Thunderdome isn’t an offtopic area, it’s a no topic area.
OK, frankboyd and absolute: One thing we have determined is that you two are dishonest, stupid trolls. I do not revere Clinton — I think he’s an amazing politician. I think the same thing of Reagan. Both were too conservative for me, but at least Clinton also had the benefit of intelligence.
Since we’ve established now that you’re both lying assholes, I could just ban you…but I’m going to let you two play in the Thunderdome and nowhere else. Start making your idiotic comments anywhere else, then I’ll ban you.
It’s an all topic area. Only someone without literacy would think otherwise.
We’ve already determined that absolute is an idiot. That just confirms it.