In defense of the sanctimonious women's studies set || First feminist blog on the internet

Planned Parenthood = Terrorist Organization

Jill

Planned Parenthood was doing the same accursed thing on 9/11 that the terrorists were doing: Killing innocent people. And just like the terrorists, they’re proud of themselves and consider each death to be something to celebrate. But the terrorists are at least honest enough to admit that they’re killing, and they identify their victims as enemies. PP plays semantic games and dresses up their killing in pretty words about “freedom” and “choice.”

When your idea of freedom is “I get to kill children with impunity” you’ve joined the ranks of evil. Sorry, but that’s just the way it is and it’s asinine to pretend otherwise.


From the rank dumpster otherwise known as The Dawn Patrol comments section. And it doesn’t stop there:

Dawn, the point is that PP keeps on killing, killing, killing, killing. They didn’t plan for months, wipe out a few thousand fetuses, then go back to training camps to figure out how to kill the next bunch of victims. It’s a day in, day out, business-as-usual thing. They’re in the death business as a daily grind. They produce death the way Ford produces cars or ConEd produces electricity.

As far as achieving the end of slaughtering innocents, PP is far, far, far more efficient than the terrorists or the Nazis or the Stalinsts or Pol Pot. They’ve got it to an artform.

I post this only because I think it’s an interesting look into the minds of some so-called “pro-lifers.” Termination of a pregnancy? The exact same thing as a genocide of millions of born, living people! Terrorist attacks on American soil? Not as bad as abortion!

Tell any family member of someone who died on September 11th that Planned Parenthood is evil in the same way that Osama bin Laden is. Tell any Jewish person who lost their entire family in the Holocaust that 5 million is nothing compared to 30 million. Tell any person who survived Stalin’s regime that the evil they witnessed is on par with a woman terminating her pregnancy. Tell Cambodians that they should quit their whinin’ and consider that things could have been worse — they could have never been born.

Really, Christina, tell them. See what they have to say about it.

Because I’ll say this: Fuck you. In my head I have a stream of other words following that, but I’m going to hold back for now. I’ll just say that you are a heinous individual, and I hope that the God you claim to believe in has some mercy on your squalid little soul. You’ll be happy to know that I added a new category — “Assholes” — just for you.

On a lighter note, Dawn Eden and her seriously disturbed cohorts make me feel like this (warning: turn down your volume). via Lauren.

59 thoughts on Planned Parenthood = Terrorist Organization

  1. That, in a nutshell, is my problem with moral absolutism. It makes violation of the principle (innocent life of any kind should be protected) more important than the suffering and death of people who have cognition, memory, and nervous systems. It equates the horrible death of an aware person with the painless extinguishment of a cell. Regardless of your view of the theological state of the cell, a =/= b.

    God values free will so much he gave it, and continues to give it, to human beings despite the things we do to one another. We do we persist in trying to take it away from ourselves?

  2. Projection, pure and simple. The majority of individual acts of terrorism in this country are aimed at reproductive health providers. Shooting at doctors, bombing clinics, running your car into a clinic—these are acts of terrorism by the dictionary definition of what it is, which is strikes against civilian targets in an attempt to intimidate.

    And workaday anti-choicers are complicit. Apparently, the more that a clinic is picketed, the more likely it is to become a target of a terrorist act.

  3. You know, heaping verbal abuse on the anti-choice crowd is one way to go, (and in times of frustration, it can seem like the only way to go!), but it’s really not going to help anything.

    There are a lot of motivations under the anti-choice tent, including misogyny, but I suspect that the motivation functioning in terrorist attacks and rants like the one you quote here is simply a mistake about personhood. These people honestly believe that a 4-week fetus is a person, with just as much right to live as a 2 year old, 20 year old, or 60 year old. Actually, they probably think the fetus has more of a right to live because, having never performed an action, it is necessarily “innocent.”

    If we want people to stop blowing up Planned Parenthood on the way home from church on Sunday, we’ve got to talk them out of this completely insane view of personhood. People have certain features, features that fetuses lack. People are subjective experiencers of life. They feel pain and pleasure. They have psychological continuity: memories of yesterday, plans for tomorrow. The Holocaust was tremendously evil because it was the torturing and killing of entities who feel pain and pleasure, because it marked the abrupt and senseless end of an incredible number of lives. Not lives in the sense of “a beating heart”. Chickens, cattle, and worms have beating hearts. Lives in the sense of a personal narrative, full of pleasures, projects, and dreams.

    Fetuses don’t have that. Fetuses have human DNA, some cells, and in the late term, some young organs. There are even good physiological reasons to doubt that a fetus can experience pain at all, right up until (and even beyond) birth. Fetuses do not yet have that which makes a paradigm human life (the life of a person) valuable. But, these religious wackos are convinced that God injects a perfect little soul into every embryo at the moment of conception (nevermind the problems of twinning and fusion in-utero). For them, that soul is what makes a person, that soul is what make a life valuable. And that soul is getting violently ejected from a fetus whenver an abortion occurs. Of course, this isn’t a problem for those of us who don’t believe in magic little soul-pellets, or for those of us with otherwise reasonable views of personhood. So, how do we bring them around?

  4. Sometimes I’m interested in trying to bring anti-choice folks around. Sometimes — like when they compare abortion to terrorism on September 13th — I’m pretty confident that they’re unbelievable assholes and I don’t want to waste my time trying to reason with them.

    I admire you for trying to talk and reason with them, I really do. And I’ve certainly done the same thing with more moderate anti-choicers. Sometimes it works. Usually it doesn’t, but I agree, in most circumstances it’s worth a shot.

    With people like Dawn and Christina, though, it’s really not. These arguments have been presented dozens of times on both their blogs. They aren’t interested in listening, and from my experience, you can’t force someone to think rationally if they’re determined to stick their head in the sand.

    And believe me, Christina knows exactly how offensive and wrong her arguments are. She just doesn’t care.

  5. I’m not sure that they can be brought around. The only thing I can hope for is to convince them that abortion simply cannot be eradicated through legislation, and that all legislation will accomplish is creating unsafe abortions where fetuses and women die, and that they should concentrate on improving sex ed and contraception so that the number of unwanted pregnancies which occur approaches zero.

    It requires a fairly moderate anti-choicer to get anywhere with these arguments, and I’m not sure whether I have ever succeeded.

  6. I looked at Christina’s blog – there’s a lot of stories about women dying from botched abortions. This appears to be her whole point. I guess one could start a website dedicated to deaths caused by pregnancy to counteract the “argument”. Or you would start a website dedicated to deaths from botched tonsilectomies for all the sense it would make. The whole point of choice in health care is completely lost on these people. It just doesn’t exist in their world.

  7. You’ll be happy to know that I added a new category — “Assholes” — just for you.

    Oh, awesome! I was thinking of adding just such a category today for my Harvey Mansfield post.

  8. Some people are so blinded by ideology that they make their own assumption as to what other people think and feel.

    No, I do not want to see more abortions. I want to see less.

    Plan B is not an abortion pill and you can’t buy it like candy. It costs 30 bucks.

  9. And workaday anti-choicers are complicit. Apparently, the more that a clinic is picketed, the more likely it is to become a target of a terrorist act.

    That’s a slipperly slope, Amanda. There certainly is a possibility that a clinic getting heavily picketed by anti-abortionist will attract a nutjob who believes his way of promoting life is by committing murder. Framing it that way is linking a conservative house wife with a murderer. That’s like saying because our side believes that Bush did a horrible job prevented 9/11 (he did) means we are the same as every conspiracy theorist out there. The right is making that argument and it’s not helping Bush in the polls.

  10. Michael, there were something like 250 anthrax threats called into abortion clinics during the fall of 2001. The nutjobs are out there.

  11. Michael,

    Not only is plan B expensive, but it’s not exactly comfortable. One of my housemates a couple of years ago took it, and was immediately treated to two days of the worst cramps she’d ever had. No one with an ounce of sense and foresight, is going to use plan B as their primary birth control.

  12. I would say it’s not a hopeless cause to try and talk some sense into anti-choice individuals . I was raised in a strict catholic family, went to catholic school, and was taught for as long as I can remember that abortion is murder and evil. I was fed mis-information, taken to pro-life demonstrations, shown bloody pictures (that are often lableled as early term abortions but are actually late term abortions), and since I heard it all for so long I just knew abortion was killing babies.

    Luckily I feel like I have an especially inquisitive mind, and started questioning all the things I knew, and sought out what the other side was saying. In high school I started rejecting all the close-minded and conflicting things I was taught about sexuality. Throughout college I took biology and philosophy classes that helped me to further critically think about the brainwashing of my youth. But most of all it was some of the discussions I had with other people, especially when they gave me straight facts mixed with personal stories.

    I’m proud to say I’m staunchly pro-choice today. But most people either don’t question things they are taught enough, or are simply never exposed to the other side enough in a way that doesn’t make them put up their defenses and block out what they hear. Since I sought out the info myself, some of the defenses were down. I would say not much you write as counter points in a discussion forums filled with anti-choice nutjobs are going to make much of a difference (I know that nothing would ever change my parents minds–even if I was brutally raped they would disown me if I got an abortion). However, the more sensible and undecideds can be changed. Please don’t give up on trying to talk to those who misunderstand. I hate to think that maybe if I hadn’t had a certain conversation, I might still be “pro-life”.

  13. Michael, there were something like 250 anthrax threats called into abortion clinics during the fall of 2001. The nutjobs are out there.

    Agreed. My point is framing the argument. I don’t want to get all George Lakoff, but we need to bring the so-called moderates to our side. The commenter quoted in the post is a lost cause. I’m refering to a Harry Reid-style Democrat.

  14. tiny nitpick: about 10 million in all died in the holocaust,about 6, not 5, million of those were jews.

    anyhoo…

    You know, heaping verbal abuse on the anti-choice crowd is one way to go, (and in times of frustration, it can seem like the only way to go!), but it’s really not going to help anything.

    Fuck you asswipe, you think this is us doing stuff? Did you just come from DKos or something?

    If we want people to stop blowing up Planned Parenthood on the way home from church on Sunday, we’ve got to talk them out of this completely insane view of personhood.

    Ugh, why is there this bizarre belief that you need to talk all of them from the world view, most of the anti-choicers in existence are merely ignorant, rather than batshit insane like christina – and I’d bet her moral absolutism didn’t extend to her pregnancies, they rarely do, it’s crazies like her that phone up the clinics to find a back way in because *GASP*, they’re not like those other women, and they don’t want their buddies to see them getting an abortion, and it’s so incredible that there’s no other clinics in the state she can go to, and can PP make an exception for her?

    And PP does, and these stupid assholes return to the picket line, twice as fervent than before because now they’ve got something to make up for.

    fuck these assholes, they can stare hypocrisy straight in the face and then return to the misogyny the next day and not one neuron fires that might tell them they’re doing something wrong. Reasoning with them isn’t possible: You can’t teach a student who doesn’t want to learn.

    When they come to us, we’ll talk, when they want to learn.

    the rest, the rest we can teach.

    Don’t mistake vocal minorities for the silent majorities we can reach.

  15. As many on this blog and others have pointed out, it’s clear that “anti-choice” is a much better name for this group of people because the sacrament of “life” has very little to do with their intent. If that were so these would be the same people calling for an end to the Iraq war, capital punishment, and for more action protecting the many African children affected by the AIDS virus. But it isn’t about life to them. It’s about control. And nothing illustrates that more than their vitriol about birth control itself. Consistent use of condoms is proven to decrease both disease and unwanted pregnancy. But they are content to pass around phony science telling kids that condoms are only 45% effective, or some similar bullshit. To these people, sex must come with punishment and shame. They take the Genesis verse regarding women and the pain of childbirth very seriously. Conception is a miracle, but the act that precedes it is dirty and bad. Why else do they worship a woman who didn’t even have to do the deed in order to reproduce?

  16. Gee, R. Mildred, ya sure know how to make folks feel welcome.

    Ugh, why is there this bizarre belief that you need to talk all of them from the world view, most of the anti-choicers in existence are merely ignorant, rather than batshit insane like christina

    Yeah, the point that I’d made is that the “merely ignorant” ones aren’t going around blowing up clinics. I’m more concerned with changing their minds than with picking the low-hanging fruit, because I’d like people to stop fucking blowing up clinics. But, I guess that’s what makes me an asswipe. =)

    and I’d bet her moral absolutism didn’t extend to her pregnancies, they rarely do

    You’re absolutely right. People (not just crazy people) have a disturbing tendency to abandon all principles when it is personally beneficial to them to do so. Most otherwise honest people won’t correct a cashier who gives them too much change, even though, if asked, they would admit that they should. Likewise, people who normally think abortion is wrong will still get one if they want to avoid pregnancy, because it’s just so much easier to talk about your morals than to live by them. This is why social conservatives oppose pornography (as opposed to why some feminists oppose pornography): they can’t walk past an adult bookstore without going in. They need a theocratic police state as a supplement to their willpower.

  17. I forget if it was here or at Pandagon, but I remember someone complaining – I think it was Ramesh Ponnuru – that pro-choicers were always trying to push their case so that they were extremists. Then something like this shows up.

    If Planned Parenthood is truly worse than Al-Qaeda, as these people believe, what’s the policy solution they advocate? Prosectuing abortion as murder seems like the start, and certainly it’s not only first-degree murder, but a conspiracy! That means the woman, in many cases her partner, her doctor, attending nurses, and hell, even the staff at the office are complicit in a capital crime. Execute them all! Planned Parenthood must also be a terrorist charity – arrest them all! Throw them into Guantanomo until they give up their full donors list, then round’em up. Rudy Giuliani may have been a hero on 9/11, but he’s pro choice – execute him.

    In short, Dawn, do you believe the United State should execute or imprison the entire population that supports abortion?

  18. Dennis-
    You fell for the “con” your biology and philosophy teachers wanted you to accept instead of noticing the pure biological FACT that once the spermatoon and ovum unite a completely unique DNA is formed in an organism which directs it’s own ontogenisis(sp?). In other words a unique person–distinct from the suppliers of the sperm and ova–and human, not animal. When you want to do something you know is bad, it’s very human to rationalize it. It’s also wrong.

    I quote your post: “There are even good physiological reasons to doubt that a fetus can experience pain at all, right up until (and even beyond) birth”– So you accept Singer’s (the Princeton professor) argument that it should be ok to for mother/parents to kill newborns???
    Do the rest of you on this blog accept this too? Just so I know who I’m talking to.

  19. home from church on Sunday, we’ve got to talk them out of this completely insane view of personhood. People have certain features, features that fetuses lack. People are subjective experiencers of life. They feel pain and pleasure. They have psychological continuity: memories of yesterday, plans for tomorrow.

    Except a lot of anti-choicers will try tell you it is scientific fact that a fetus experiences all of these things. “But they did a study and it proved that fetuses have a memory and feel pain! And even plan for what they will do tomorrow, it’s true, THEY did a STUDY!” Never backing anything up with silly, trvial things like “facts” or “evidence”, but some honestly believe a lot of this stuff. [Not all, of course – this is merely my experience with a few different anti-choicers who were in the “a fetus becomes a baby with thoughts, feelings and memories at 3 weeks” camp.]

    I think it’s important that while we can talk to people on the other side of this issue and try reason with them, they have to be willing to listen. JJ talks about using eduation and research to cut through the anti-choice misinformation, but far too few people raised in extremely anti-choice situations will have this option available to them.

  20. Hmmmm . . . no mention of the so-called “pro-lifers” who conspire and lobby and donate money to put as many “unborn babies” as possible into danger of being aborted, by deliberately attacking birth control.

    Next, are they going to press murder charges on everyone who doesn’t donate blood, bone marrow, kidneys, and so forth?

  21. You know, heaping verbal abuse on the anti-choice crowd is one way to go, (and in times of frustration, it can seem like the only way to go!), but it’s really not going to help anything.

    And it’s fun!

    Although, in the “help anything” category, not to rain on your parade, but the First Law of Fundamentalism comes into play here:

    It is impossible to reason someone out of a position they did not reason themselves into.

    Although that’s not entirely true; there are people who aren’t offered the necessary materials to use reason (i.e. both sides of the story—people form assumptions from the worldview they’re raised in), or it never occurs to them to consider why they hold a certain belief, that sort of thing; the First Law of Fundamentalism refers mainly to, well, fundamentalists.

    Unfortunately, simply telling them that a four-week-old fetus is not a person will not do the trick either. I wish it did, but definitions of personhood are not our strong point.

    What is our strong point, in my opinion, is the bodily-autonomy argument—specifically, why are fetuses, “innocent people” or not, entitled to recieve stolen property and to have property continue to be stolen on their behalf? A legal (or otherwise) prevention of abortion is the stealing of the woman’s body and bodily resources, by either the government or the anti-choicers who make abortion impossible, that is given to said “innocent baby,” and the woman is, besides unable to retrieve property already stolen, prevented from stopping continued thievery.

    I oppose abortion bans for the same reason I would oppose a donor-organ trade that went about stealing organs from living people.

  22. *smiles* Blane, I am a philosophy teacher, so you’re going to have trouble scaring me back into Pat Robertson’s welcoming collection plate with accusations that I’ve somehow been hoodwinked by the wrong authority figures: I do my own thinking.

    DNA isn’t a person. Imagine an intelligent alien. Vastly different genetic structure (possibly not even DNA based), but still a person. The person = human genetic structure identity is a load of bullshit. Persons are defined in terms of abilities and capacities. Fetuses, in this regard, are lesser than chickens.

    To answer your question, I think there’s a lot to Singer’s argument for infanticide. Since I am an ethical utilitarian myself, I think he’s basically correct. However, he and I both think (and you completely fail to notice) that infanticide is, in fact, wrong. See, infanticide really upsets people. A lot. And that matters. Since there’s no strong competing reason to regularly allow people to commit infanticide, infanticide ought to be disallowed.

    Of course, abortion also upsets people, a lot. However, there is a strong competing reason to regularly allow people to have abortions: denying people control over their own reproductive organs really upsets them. Next time you’re picketing the clinic, try talking to a woman on her way in, instead of screaming and throwing shit at her. You can ask “Hey, if abortion were made illegal before you got yours, would you weep from joy or sadness? I suspect she will indicate the latter (if, indeed, you haven’t already scared her out of talking to you completely.)

    And Kyra,

    There’s actually a pretty large body of literature on abortion as an issue of bodily autonomy (with which I suspect you are also familiar, since you hit several of the key points… so I guess I’m just mentioning it for show), and I think it’s kind of dangerous to rest all the hopes of the pro-choice movement on that line of reasoning. Granting that fetuses have some sort of right to life should not be the first move in arguing for abortion rights. The anti-choicer can always argue a tacit consent angle to push through a prohibition with a rape exception. Of course, contraception muddies the water, but the arguments there are very nuanced and the electorate is most likely (I think) to err on the side of “caution” (caution in this context of course means respecting the questionable rights of a fetus over the concrete rights of a woman.)

    However, if pro-choicers argue the “fetuses aren’t people” angle (and I think you can actually build a very strong case for this angle), then the anti-choicers have to show that fetuses are people (or otherwise the bearers of rights) before they can even advance to what you take to be their starting point.

  23. That’s it Kyra…make an honest argument about what you’re doing. Shout it from the roof tops: “If I want to kill my baby, I should be able to, because she’s stealing from me”! But why stop at the one in the womb? Like Pete Singer says (and Dennis here on the blog seems to agree) if your newborn isn’t what you expected it to be, kill it too! Adoption?! Bah, the kid would just end up being abused (or worse, brainwashed) by some fundy republican. She’d be better off dead! Once y’all start saying the same thing about teenagers(and you will), I’ll be ready to jump on the bandwagon-LOL!

  24. why are fetuses, “innocent people” or not, entitled to recieve stolen property and to have property continue to be stolen on their behalf?

    I’m not anti-abortion, but I don’t think this argument is very persuasive, except in the case of a pregnancy caused by rape.

    It’s kinda like saying the people I willingly invite over for dinner are tresspassing and stealing my food.

  25. Some facts that anti-choice idiots love to spout out.

    A six week old fetus has measurable brain waves!

    as a neuroscientist, I love how bullshit this is. Here’s a little rebuttle I found.

    Fetal Brain Waves
    The National Right to Life Committee released a pamphlet, When Does Life Begin, which states that at six weeks, a fetus has measurable brain waves detected by a an electroencephalogram. But using hard-to-pronounce medical terms to gain credibility does not add substance to this dubious claim. Even at 7-weeks into development, a fetus’s brain is the size of a pinhead. Detecting minute brain activity through all the muscle contractions that go on inside a woman’s mid-region is a medically unsubstantiated assertion that has not been published in any peer-reviewed journal.

    This article is simply an example of how anti-choice activists use flawed sources and fallacious information to prove an often medically-unsubstantiated point. For example, Willke, despite outright refutes from The National Cancer Institute, the American Cancer Society, and the American Coalition of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, insists that abortion causes breast cancer.

    But the “baby” has it’s own unique DNA, therefore it’s a human being.

    —so identicle twins who have the same DNA are not unique people??? Having DNA doesn’t make something a human being. I could isolate my own DNA in the lab, cut it up with enzymes, recombine it, and have completely unique DNA, and I would not have a human being in a test tube. There’s a reason 50% of all fertilized eggs fail to implant (for the godbags that say preventing implantation is abortion—your God is the biggest abortion provider out there!!), and another 20-30% of first trimester pregnancies miscarry. Sometimes the completely unique DNA was incompatible with life!!

  26. Dennis –
    So if killing newborns didn’t upset people, it would be ok?!

    And you seem to have an easier time imagining a space alien than the human soul. Talk about failure of imagination!!! So this is what philosophy has come to.

    It is a simply fact of biology that the moment you were conceived, every physical thing about you was determined (sex, eye color, what your voice would sound like, possibly even things like artistic talent) and was encode in your DNA. All that is needed is habitable environment for the stage of development you are in.

    It used to be a commonplace of philosophy that the soul (or mind) was where the knowledge acquired by the physical body interacting with it’s environment was stored. After all, if you cut open my brain, you’d never find that my favorite color is green and that I know all the Counting Crows lyrics.

    So, Dennis, is it a commonplace of philosophy now that the strong (or how people FEEL) decide what’s right and what’s wrong and that the soul doesn’t exist? Also, I hope you notice that all my comments are remarkable free of any reference to God or religion.

  27. Blane,

    Are you an 8-hit die troll, or a 10-hit tie troll? What’s your AC?

    Raging Moderate,

    It’s a bit more complex than all that. I think that better analogies are as follows:

    wanting an abortion after being raped : having a thief blow down the wall of your house with a bazooka, and then refusing to pay for the pizza he ordered from your phone.

    wanting an abortion after having consensual sex with contraception : coming home after leaving your house (locked) to run to the store, and refusing to pay for the pizza a burglar ordered from your phone.

    wanting an abortion after having consensual sex without contraception: coming home after leaving your house (unlocked) to run to the store, and refusing to pay for the pizza a burglar ordered from your phone.

    wanting an abortion after having consensual sex for the express purpose of conceiving: ordering a pizza and not paying (which still might be justified, if it’s not what your ordered… i.e. a healthy fetus)

  29. JJ- Sorry you are wrong. You cannot CREATE unique DNA in a lab. You may alter existing DNA, but it will not be complete, and would be observably incomplete. The only way you can create human DNA that is completely unique is by uniting a spermatoon with an ouvam.
    As for eggs failing to implant, human life can die at any stage in it’s development, for all manner of reasons. The fact that human life is fragile is not an argument to ok killing it.

  31. You cannot CREATE unique DNA in a lab. You may alter existing DNA, but it will not be complete, and would be observably incomplete.

    Did you read that in Genesis? You sure as hell didn’t learn it in a lab.

    In fairness, this point:

    As for eggs failing to implant, human life can die at any stage in it’s development, for all manner of reasons. The fact that human life is fragile is not an argument to ok killing it.

    is a good one. However, failed egg implantation isn’t intended as a justificatory argument for abortion… it’s intended to show that God (if real) is the biggest abortion-provider on the block.

  32. Zuzu, darling, cockroaches have cockroach DNA. Humans have human DNA. The fact that humans have human DNA means they will develop throughout their lives as human, and will never turn into cockroaches or anything else.
    Dennis – What is a 8 or a 10 hit die troll? What is an AC?

  33. A cancerous tumor has its own mutated DNA, right? So obviously we shouldn’t have oncologists perform surgery for people with tumors.

    Dennis, I think I failed my save roll…

  34. wanting an abortion after having consensual sex without contraception: coming home after leaving your house (unlocked) to run to the store, and refusing to pay for the pizza a burglar ordered from your phone.

    Having consensual sex is like being burglarized? I don’t get the analogy (unless it’s the “all het sex is rape” theory).

  35. No, Raging, I don’t think all sex is rape. I guess it is dialectically unfair to preserve the burglar element that far down the list. Maybe change it to pranksters? Still, though, it’s definitely uninvited. (Though, just as with a pizza, one could decide that the fetus is welcome, after all. It’s just that there is no positive obligation to accept it.)

  36. Dennis, you can use a guest analogy.

    Just because you let someone into your home doesn’t mean you have to let them move in and refuse to leave.

  37. Blane, you need to take another biology course, or perhaps just doing a little more reading on the topic.

    It is a simply fact of biology that the moment you were conceived, every physical thing about you was determined (sex, eye color, what your voice would sound like, possibly even things like artistic talent) and was encode in your DNA. All that is needed is habitable environment for the stage of development you are in.

    This is totally wrong. Genetics are responsible for about 50% of your attributes. And, as is easily observable in studies of identical twins, a great deal of what we consider a person to be is not coded in DNA. Research is revealing more all the time about prenatal influences on development; much of our gender and sex seems to be determined by hormones in vitro.

    An emphasis on unique DNA is odd, as it does seem to imply that identical twins are only half human.

    And what does the soul have to do with anything? If I lift the case off my computer I can’t tell that it has all the lyrics to Counting Crows either. Fortunately, I could put the cover back on and continue to use it, which would likely not be true if I cut open your brain. So? What does that have to do with forcing a female to carry a pregnancy to term?

  38. zuzu,

    I have misgivings about the guest analogy, because the guest who was invited in was the penis, and the penis is leaving. The fetus is a distinct entity. Maybe it could be a guest analogy where the guest orders a pizza and then leaves. (Yes, fetuses MUST be compared to pizzas, ALWAYS!)

  40. because the guest who was invited in was the penis, and the penis is leaving.

    Okay, so the guest leaves but he moves in all his belongings (sperm), which take up considerable space in your house and cause you physical discomfort and will change your life.

  41. Well, they are both quite delicious.

    Jill, what a twisted freak you are (that’s a compliment, btw).

    I’ll file this one away in case the “humor is in the eye of the beholder” debate comes up again.

  42. Jill,

    Everything the body needs.

    zuzu,

    Well, the sperm is gone, too, along with the egg, replaced by a zygote/fetus. Maybe the guest leaves, but not before planting Audry II in your front yard, which them promptly eats your dog and begins to grow, and grow, demanding more and more…

  44. I’m not sure how much of this analogy-building is tongue-in-cheek, but I imagine it’s not a great way to win hearts and minds by comparing fetuses to leftover pizza, luggage, and man-eating plants.

  46. I imagine it’s not a great way to win hearts and minds by comparing fetuses to leftover pizza, luggage, and man-eating plants.

    How about comparing them to the little creatures in the Alien movies?

  47. How about comparing them to the little creatures in the Alien movies?

    A better route might be comparing them to the chestbuster in Spaceballs. It’s hard to resist a cute little alien singing “Hello, my Baby.”

  49. Kaethe- What scientific study established that hormones in utero determine whether one has XX or XY chromosomes? That determines whether one is male or female. Give me a citation.

    As for identical twins, it’s not the uniqueness which counts in determining individuality. It’s that the organism directs it’s own ontogenesis (it’s own development). After the fertilized egg divides, each individual twin does that.

    As for your computer, an expert with the right tools (essentially another computer) could find the exact spot on the harddrive has those pesky CC lyrics. So your analogy doesn’t work. Besides, the comment about the soul was a purely philosophical one. If one accepts that human life has intrinsic value, resulting simply from the fact that it’s human, which is a traditional holding of western philosophy, whether one has a soul or not is a moot point in deciding whether killing one’s offspring is wrong or right.

  50. zuzu,

    I think Audry II qualifies as a person. A weird, singing, alien person who eats dentists and flower-shop owners, but a person still. That may seem tangential, but it’s actually relevent to the discussion, because it entails that person != genetically human entity, which is my thesis above.

  51. Blaine – I still don’t get the unique DNA argument. DNA is the blueprint, not the house. If someone burns a blueprint, it is not the same as commiting arson on someone’s home. Even if they torch the blueprint, and the frame, it’s not the same as burning down a finished house.

    As to no religion in your argument – invoking the soul at all, essentially turns the argument into a theological one. There are alternative views that the fetus is ensouled at quickening – and even more that the soul arrives with the first breath.

    My (admittedly religious) view on the matter is that cognition, memory, and intent matter more in the matter of soul than DNA. Hence Dennis’s aliens could well be ensouled, but a blastocyst? Not buying.

  52. So, Blane, does all human life have intrinsic value? I thought we already covered that with the whole lump-of-cancer thing. If there is a difference between a lump of cancer and a lump of blast-/gast-/neur-/pharyng-ula, to you, what is that difference? You’re not arguing that it’s a soul, so what is it?

    Also, chromosomes emphatically do not determine one’s sexual characteristics. Ever heard of hermaphrodites? Or Klinefelter’s syndrome? And there’s one condition I can never remember the name of where the person is chromosomally male but, I believe, the body’s testosterone receptors are out of whack, so she develops female characteristics although she cannot produce ova.

  53. That’s it Kyra…make an honest argument about what you’re doing. Shout it from the roof tops: “If I want to kill my baby, I should be able to, because she’s stealing from me”! But why stop at the one in the womb? Like Pete Singer says (and Dennis here on the blog seems to agree) if your newborn isn’t what you expected it to be, kill it too! Adoption?! Bah, the kid would just end up being abused (or worse, brainwashed) by some fundy republican. She’d be better off dead! Once y’all start saying the same thing about teenagers(and you will), I’ll be ready to jump on the bandwagon-LOL!

    *rolls eyes* Try again, troll. First of all, the “baby” is not stealing, it’s recieving stolen property. I was very specific about that—the people who are preventing the abortion (anti-choicers, the government, whoever) are doing the stealing (or rather, preventing the prevention of more stealing); the fetus is recieving stolen property, to which it is not entitled.

    If some guy goes to a brothel multiple times, assuming that the woman he has sex with is in the business willingly, and it turns out that the owner of the brothel is forcing her to work there, and threatening her if she tells anyone that (i.e. she pretends to this guy that she’s willing), he might be not guilty of rape, but she does not owe him more sex and he is not entitled to it from her. Same premise here—unwanted pregnancy automatically takes resources from the woman and fetus recieves without deliberately stealing, but the woman does not owe it more support.

    If I want to prevent something of mine from disappearing into someone else’s possession, I have every right to do so. If they can’t manage on what they are entitled to (the use of their own body, medical technology) and what they can get from willing donors, it’s not my problem.

    And that ridiculous slippery-slope deal you came up with is your idea, not mine. And it’s repulsive. Grow up.

  54. Granting that fetuses have some sort of right to life should not be the first move in arguing for abortion rights.

    I didn’t grant it, I said (or implied) that it’s irrelevent. Yes, of course, burden of proof is on them regarding fetal personhood. But in the absense of any sort of legitimate consensus there, autonomy (to which the precurser was privacy, in Roe v. Wade) is the most useful argument. What with various government entities defining life as beginning at conception, it’s important.

  55. I’m not anti-abortion, but I don’t think this argument is very persuasive, except in the case of a pregnancy caused by rape.

    It’s kinda like saying the people I willingly invite over for dinner are tresspassing and stealing my food.

    I think what you’ve just said is a very good analogy for an elective abortion by a woman who’s conceived via in vitro fertilization.

    Otherwise, I don’t buy the “consent to sex is consent to pregnancy” argument. That is more like a tresspassing/stealing charge against people who come into your house through an unlocked door and eat food that you have left unguarded while you’re out of the house watching a movie.

  56. As for identical twins, it’s not the uniqueness which counts in determining individuality. It’s that the organism directs it’s own ontogenesis (it’s own development). After the fertilized egg divides, each individual twin does that.

    Actually, that’s an interesting point. (Biologically wrong in some important respects—as Kaethe mentioned, the in vitro hormone balance is seriously important, but let’s ignore that for now). Some time ago, there was this entity in my mother’s womb which was dividing and growing and generally doing… stuff. And after about nine months of that, I was born.

    But what was I doing for the previous nine months? It seems really unlikely that I was dividing and growing and such. I mean, I don’t do that now. When I’m watching a cut on my hand heal, I don’t say, “Wow, fixing all these cells is really taking a lot of my time and energy.” I say, “Neat, look at my body fix itself.” When I put on weight, it’s not because I decided, “Gee, I think I should store some calories as fat,” it’s because my body did some calculations with hormones and chemicals and this resulted in calories being stored as fat.

    In short: there’s this thing that’s my body. And there’s this thing that’s me. And they aren’t the same thing. The fetus seems closely connected to the former thing, and not really connected at all to the latter. There’s no reason to think that it is a person. Fetuses do commonly develop into people—but then, apples commonly develop into shit, yet the latter makes an unappetizing pie. Apart from having human DNA, fetuses don’t exhibit any of the other signs of personhood, so it seems pretty unlikely that they are people. (More likely that they are either empty people-holders or things-which-will-be-people-once-they-are-done-baking).

    (There’s an interesting tangent in here about how I don’t remember the first year or so of life anyway, but then, I don’t remember lots of moments of my life, and all this is related to the communal construction of identity and so forth, but this is already quite tangential enough.)

    Speaking of baking:

    Maybe it could be a guest analogy where the guest orders a pizza and then leaves. (Yes, fetuses MUST be compared to pizzas, ALWAYS!)

    You know, I’m not sure if these pizza analogies are good for me. I just had the thought: “Well, if someone came over, ordered a pizza, and then left, I’d probably just pay for the damn thing and feed it to my roommate.” Which I guess is kindof like extending the metaphor to adoption, except without the nine months of pain, mood swings, massive financial commitment and existential angst, after all of which my roommate probably wouldn’t eat the damn kid anyway.

  57. You know, I’m not sure if these pizza analogies are good for me. I just had the thought: “Well, if someone came over, ordered a pizza, and then left, I’d probably just pay for the damn thing and feed it to my roommate.”

    That’s true, it’s always open to you to accept the pizza. Likewise, it’s open to you to accept the fetus. However, in either case, you’re under no positive obligation to accept it.

  58. And there’s one condition I can never remember the name of where the person is chromosomally male but, I believe, the body’s testosterone receptors are out of whack, so she develops female characteristics although she cannot produce ova.

    It’s called androgen insensitivity syndrome.

    And I’m with zuzu here. “Spermatoon”? Sounds like some sort of cartoon porn superhero.

  59. Maybe I’m just batshit crazy…

    but I feel just about as bad about fetuses being terminated as I do when I spray Lysol on a contaminated counter.

    Just sayin’.

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