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This one goes without saying. The “right to life” nonsense only applies to fetuses – they’re perfectly happy to have the child be raised ignorant or damaged, shot at by military weapons in school, to grow up to die in a foreign land serving in the imperial military, or worked to death in a warehouse job. Or, to die in a pregnancy that can’t be terminated. It’s obviously just a nonsensical political position, which makes it particularly disgusting.
Should we all short-term survive that putative Red Wave this November, I think I’ll apply for a grant to develop ways to determine if a newborn experienced ensoulment 40 or 80 days after conception – that will surely terminate all this “transgender” donnybrook.
No doubt the funding I receive will enable me to hire all y’all as lab assistants!
I don’t care whether an zygote/embryo/fetus/unborn is a legal person or not, I care about bodily autonomy.
You really can’t have any rights if you don’t even have the right to your own corporal being.
I was raised Roman Catholic, and tried to be a good little Roman Catholic kid. Sometime in middleschool(?) had that whole debate/controversial subjects bit, and there were a handful of topics to choose from. I remember picking the “abortion debate” one, because, sure, why shouldn’t we be against “killing babies”. So, going though the whole debate/stance/rebuttal process, hit upon that segment where you were supposed to read up on the opposition’s arguments in order to better argue against them. And that was when I first heard about coathangers… did an overnight 180, I think I remember it may have even caused grading issues, but wtf, idk, fukkin coathangers?
A few years later, ended up in a pretty leftist environment in college, realized I wasn’t religious anymore, let alone Catholic, a few years later, realized I was probably atheist. I got kicked out of the classroom in Sunday School a lot (sometimes warranted…), but mostly thought there was some sort of misunderstanding of what they were telling me what the Bible said/what mattered/what I thought. I think the abortion bit was the breaking point for me, I think it was the first time I felt certain that the church had taken the absofuckinglutely wrong stance on this particular issue.
But, still, fucking coathangers? How depraved and broken can you be to read/hear about that, and just be “whelp, ok” with it?
It’s actually even worse than that, because when you look at the stats for antenatal healthcare, neonatal and infant mortality, or maternal mortality, the USA looks like a third world nation. They don’t actually give the least shit about dead fetuses as long as they’re dying from a lack of a functioning medical system, or because of environmental pollution. They only pretend to give a shit about fetuses is when it’s a useful excuse for advancing other agendas.
Before Jerry Falwell, abortion was purely a Catholic issue. Falwell, and his ick, took it up to increase their political power. Link: There’s a straight line from US racial segregation to the anti-abortion movement.
Googling “Jerry Falwell abortion” turns up many more such articles.
ahcuah @ # 4: Falwell, and his ick…
Dunno if that was intentional, but it’s perfect!
I do not think that under Republican rules even embryos have rights per se. Abortion is just an issue to control women and to rile up their base, nothing more. All the inconsistencies in Republican ideology can be explained by two assertions: 1) republican politicians are mostly power-hungry and are cynically abusing religious hokum and other prejudices to gain more power and 2) republican voters are mostly imbeciles incapable of seeing they are being led by the nose.
I think the look at an average Trump voter very strongly supports the 2), the evidence for 1) is, from my vantage point from the EU, more circumstantial.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/Vtj7FS79crY
lasius@#7:
Carlin was a great social commentator. Of course, comedians have always spoken jokes to power, usually at power’s expense. I wonder what he’d be saying about today’s events, hoooooo boy
[Edit: it’s not always the case that comedians hew to the progressive; for example Ricky Gervais, Dave Chapelle, John Cleese, and others I would rather not think of]
Pierce R. Butler@#5:
Dunno if that was intentional
I assume he was alluding to “ilk” and the L key and C key are far apart on the keyboard. Conclusion: not a typo.
Marcus@9. Some puns are irresistible.
How about some abortion advice from a medieval Catholic Nun and Abbess? How damn depressing is it that there are states in “the land of the free” where women have less control over body autonomy than existed in EARLY MEDIEVAL times?
Hildegarde Von Bingen seems to have been a most impressive person, though my mind boggles at the fact that she was literally given to the church as a tithe.
The full article is fascinating, as are the references.
https://daily.jstor.org/abortion-remedies-medieval-catholic-nun/