137 comments in…

178 thoughts on 137 comments in…

1. I like the little slip about “brethren”.

2. Ha… whoops. I’ll fix that.

3. It is, however, likely that the doctor would be brought up on murder one charges for “murder for hire” as the action was taken against the helpless by someone without an emotional connection to the victim.

   I don’t know how it goes in this guy’s state, but here in California, if you hire someone to do the killing for you, you also go up for Murder One. The person who does the hiring is actually considered more culpable than the hired killer, because they’re the one who made the plan and paid the money.

   So if we’re going to prosecute abortion doctors on the grounds that they’re hired killers, the same penalty will have to apply to the woman who did the hiring. Unless, of course, the poster would like wives who hire people to kill their husbands for the insurance money to be able to argue that they didn’t mean to do it, but they were just so emotional at the time, so they shouldn’t go to jail.

4. (italics off?)

   A red herring? Seriously?

   Yes, it’s being used as a debate tactic, which, for some reason, makes some people think the tactic is an underhanded one rather than smart strategy.

   But the fact that the question can be used as a debate tactic doesn’t make it an irrelevant question. It’s extremely relevant. The fact that it’s a really good debate tactic comes from the lack of clarity and consistency found in anti-choice rhetoric, not because it’s so irrelevant as to be beside the point, which is what “red herring” suggests.

   The idea that “… whether or not [one] ha[s] ever thought about the proper punishment for an illegal abortion doesn’t at all detract from the very powerful pro-life arguments [one] make[s]” is only true if the question doesn’t continue to trip you up once you’ve thought about it.

   “The implication of the question is that pro-lifers are ignorant or uninformed because they haven’t thought out what the penalty for abortion should be. It seems reasonable to me that many people haven’t thought about it…”

   Why is that reasonable? I get that people may not have figured it out down to the exact number of days of incarceration, but you’d think, if one is arguing that something is so bad it needs to be criminalized, that one would have at least a vague idea of whether or not the crime is serious enough that jail timeshould be involved.

   And I’m saying this as someone who has argued that certain actions that are now legal should be criminalized. I may not be exact in terms of what kind of punishment I think should be involved, but I know where I think it falls in the criminal spectrum. I have a really hard time figuring out how one would even argue for something being criminalized without this coming up.

   After all, it’s not like it doesn’t come up in anti-choice arguments. That is the point of the question. If you argue that abortion should be illegal because it’s murder, doesn’t that imply that those involved in abortions should be treated as murderers?

5. The hardcore does think women should get jail time when pressed but the middle of the road people who just find abortion disturbing but not fiercely morally compelling would be disgusted by perp walking women who get abortions.

   They tried it in Portugal recently and they found the public by and large did not have the stomach for it. If they want to talk about what punishments they imagine women and doctors should face in this country then by all means proceed. It alienates a good portion of moderates.

6. there are plenty of unplanned pregnancies, but no unwanted babies

   And orphans are just a figment of our imagination…

7. For “red herring” read “a question I don’t want to answer, you big meanie”.

8. But whether or not I have ever thought about the proper punishment for an illegal abortion doesn’t at all detract from the very powerful pro-life arguments I make.

   Can you say red herring?

   Avoiding actually laying out a potential punishment like this is a calculated ploy to keep people from thinking about the issue in anything but emotional terms. It’s easy to say “abortion should be illegal”, but when you start naming specific punishments suddenly you’re talking about doing specific things to specific people. Daughters. Sisters. Wives. It’s a lot more real.

9. Your post was brilliant, Jill. You make a strong point that criminalising women is a highly impractical thing to do (to say the least), and you show up anti-choice inconsistencies and the sheer obvious fact that we do not think of an embryo or fetus as remotely the same thing as a grown, living human being.

   I’m pro-choice. Primarily because I believe women deserve bodily integrity, and secondarily because of the simple science that the brain does not develop until some time into pregnancy.

   However, I do feel like the manslaughter argument makes sense. Killing your neighbour because your neighbour beats you up every Saturday will get you less jail time than killing your neighbour because it’s Tuesday and you feel like it. Getting a hitman to kill your neighbour because you have no other recourse and know that they are very likely to keep on beating you up on a regular basis is also going to get you less jail time than killing your neighbour because you feel like it. Your neighbour beating you up is a violation of your body; a woman with an unwanted pregnancy also impinging on her physical integrity might equally receive a limited extent of mercy. A woman with an unwanted pregnancy resulting from rape/incest might equate to someone whose siblings, favourite aunt and pet kitten were killed by the neighbour in front of them and should not receive any penalty whatsoever. (Of course, the hitman/medical professional would be more heavily penalised in both instances.) Having your fetus killed deserves less of a sentence than the neighbour because you were physically attached to it, but still deserves something.

   Abortion = manslaughter is not nearly as catchy as abortion = murder, but I do think that argument is internally consistent. Assuming that it’s all right to infringe women’s bodily integrity and that a fetus is a person, abortion can be conceptualized as manslaughter under severe provocation rather than murder.

   However, I don’t assume either of those two things. The second is an acceptable personal belief, because that’s pretty much what pro-choice means; the first needs to be the law, because women are people too.

10. This person’s accusation of red herring is in itself a red herring and a way of redirecting attention away from the actual issues.

    Good series of threads, Jill. All of this is so infuriating to me.

11. This is hilarious. All of them are getting all flustered and upset about the assertions made, and then totally fail to answer.

    Pretty telling, if you ask me.

    CHOOSE to be responsible for your actions.

    I’m going to tell you something very shocking. Ready?

    An abortion IS taking responsibility for your actions. *gasp!*

    Of course, not many pro-lifers will accept that. You can’t ‘take responsibility’ unless you suffer somehow. An abortion is too EASY and lets that woman off scott-free!

12. If the woman pursued the abortion with malice towards the unborn, then it would be murder one.

    Who pursues abortion with malice towards the fetus? For chrissakes, women don’t get abortions because they’re angry at the fetus, or because they want to punish it for whatever reason. They get abortions because they don’t want to be pregnant. That, or they’ll die if they continue the pregnancy, or because of fetal abnormality that’s incompatible with life.

    The woman is likely in a highly emotional state

    Ohhh, of course. Those emotional, illogical women! Women who abort are not necessarily in a highly emotional state. Even if they are, so? Aren’t A LOT of murderers in a highly emotional state at the time of the murder?

    All of the other questions are so predictable and asinine: what about cases of incest or rape; what about fertility clinics — All appeals to emotion, not logic. This is the approach that PRO-life folks take time and again: shun logic and try to muddy the waters.

    There, fixed that for ya.

    What sets humans apart from plants? Among other vitalities, a heartbeat. A fetus has, among other vitalities, a heartbeat.

    Humans aren’t the only creatures with heartbeats. Cats have heartbeats; worms have more than one heartbeat! If a heartbeat makes one a more important life form, then worms are even more sacred than humans.

    It is about the baby, not the mother.

    Yeah, we already knew that was your viewpoint.

13. there are plenty of unplanned pregnancies, but no unwanted babies

    And orphans are just a figment of our imagination…

    I think what he meant to say is “there are plenty of unplanned pregnancies, but no unwanted white babies.”

14. there are plenty of unplanned pregnancies, but no unwanted babies

    And orphans are just a figment of our imagination…

    I think what he meant to say is “there are plenty of unplanned pregnancies, but no unwanted white babies.”

15. “As I believe it, there are plenty of unplanned pregnancies, but no unwanted babies. Somebody wants that child.”

    Uh-huh… so… explain the foster care system.

    How naive (or wantonly ignorant) do you have to be to believe that there are NO unwanted babies?

16. However, I do feel like the manslaughter argument makes sense. Killing your neighbour because your neighbour beats you up every Saturday will get you less jail time than killing your neighbour because it’s Tuesday and you feel like it.

    That’s not manslaughter. The argument would really be that abortion is not the highest degree of murder, or that there are affirmative defenses or mitigating factors that make it not so bad. But I’m not seeing how anyone gets away from the ‘hit man’ analogy.

17. What sets humans apart from plants? Among other vitalities, a heartbeat.

    I wouldn’t carry a cat around in my backpack for nine months and let it take occasional nibbles out of my arm, and that has a heartbeat as well.

    I am in favor of a unborn child being able to execute in “inalienable” right to life.

    …I think I need coffee to be able to cope with this one. Or booze. Lots of booze.

18. Actually there is a demand for any race/color infant as long as it is healthy and a newborn. After age 5 it becomes harder and harder to place a child for adoption. Heaven forbid that one of these idiots adopt a child with medical problems or a older child that might come with emotional problems. It’s much better to force women to give birth then deny ’em mental/health care after their child arrives. And believe me I know, as I adopted a little girl with RAD and have been looking into foster adopt. The attitude that Adoption is the cure for Abortion is just insane.

19. What sets humans apart from plants? Among other vitalities, a heartbeat.

    If you put isolated cardiac muscle cells in a petrie dish with appropriate media, they will beat. Is the petrie dish then a person? Or just the cardiac cells?

20. Getting a hitman to kill your neighbour because you have no other recourse and know that they are very likely to keep on beating you up on a regular basis is also going to get you less jail time than killing your neighbour because you feel like it.

    Again, no. You don’t get to hire someone to kill a person that you have a good reason to want dead, because that is premeditated murder. A woman who hires someone to kill her abusive husband may not end up on Death Row, but she is absolutely getting life in prison because it’s not a crime of passion or a neglectful accident that you can claim is manslaughter. You decided that someone should be murdered and you took steps to make it happen. There is no, “But the person I had killed was a terrible person!” escape clause when it comes to murder for hire.

    Has no one here ever watched an episode of “Law & Order,” fer chrissakes?!?!

21. “The attitude that Adoption is the cure for Abortion is just insane.”

    I’ve also noticed that women who give their children up for adoption face a lot of social stigma. A woman who has an abortion, usually keeps it quiet and no one knows, except those close to her. A woman who gives a baby up for adoption, unless they are shuffled off to a baby factory for 6 months, continue their regular lives, work or school, exhibiting their pregnancy. Then, when every person you know, knows that you were pregnant, and the topic of the child will be brought up upon your return to work or school, and you must face the judgements of others.

    But of course these people, despite claims to the contrary, really don’t understand logic.

22. The “adoption not abortion!” and “there are no unwanted babies!” lines would be so much more convincing if pro-lifers/conservatives/Republicans (yeah, I’m lumping them together for simplicity’s sake) put their money where their mouths are. They don’t want women aborting fetuses with severe abnormalities or disabilities. But they’re certainly not advocates for the BORN disabled (unless it involves end-of-life issues).

    They DO NOT support increased funding for children’s healthcare and pre-natal care. They DO NOT support policies that assist parents struggling to raise differently-abled children. They DO NOT support liberal social welfare policies, period.

23. The one attempt to give the “pro-life” answer still didn’t get the law right. “Malice” in the context of crim law with respect to murder doesn’t mean rage or anger or the like — it boils down to an intent to kill. Any woman who has an abortion does so with the express intent to kill the fetus. So the general crime for a woman who finds out she’s pregnant, rationally decides to get an abortion and does so would be accountable for Murder 1 and be expected to do time commensurate with the minimum sentencing guidelines, if applicable.

    The emotional state knock-down from Murder 1 to Murder 2 wouldn’t work with a surgical abortion because of the time it takes to make an appointment, the fact that you can’t get a surgical abortion until, what, 5 weeks into the pregnancy (really only 3 weeks into gestation, with the nutty pregnancy math that backdates to day 1 of the last menstrual period)? If it were possible for a woman to pee on a stick, see two lines, run down to the clinic and get right up in the stirrups, well, then maybe it would be possible, but otherwise there’s too long of a cool down period for a “heat of passion” style defense to make it Murder 2.

    If a fetus is granted full personhood status, it’s only possible that a rape or incest argument would knock it down to manslaughter (or to no penalty) under a theory akin to the battered wife syndrome, but even that would not quite work. With BWS (which probably has a more neutral term these days), the battered spouse has a reasonable fear with respect to a threat to her life, and so it’s a form of self-defense when she kills the batterer during a non-threatened period. That can’t always be said for a victim of rape or incest, as the traumatic event, having occurred, may not be likely to happen again (incest being trickier for these purposes than stranger rape). The self-defense argument doesn’t work, so it would have to be some sort of argument about comparative trauma — but even that would go to the mens rea and not the actus reus (in other words, it would knock down the crime from Murder 1 to something lesser, but not excuse the crime in the same way that self-defense would). The self-defense argument only really works when a woman’s health or life are threatened, in which case it should excuse the crime.

    There are two fairly likely scenarios for states that would make abortion illegal and punish the woman. The first is where they would simply make abortion equal to Murder 1, either providing statutory exceptions for rape and incest (either to except it from being a crime, if the victim complies with certain reporting requirements, or to except it from being murder), or allowing rape or incest to be circumstances that mitigate the crime down from Murder 1. The second is where they make abortion illegal but make a separate statutory scheme for punishment that doesn’t equate it to Murder 1 in name or amount of jail time but does provide for differing amounts of jail time or other punishments based on the circumstances.

    For those of us who support abortion rights, I suspect the latter is actually a more threatening problem, because as long as a woman isn’t punished like an actual murderer, her punishment has a greater capacity for being overlooked by moderates. Plus, once a separate statutory scheme is in place, the anti-choice folks would continue to lobby to have punishments increased until they were the same as those for Murder 1, but by then the only people paying attention would be those not rich enough to go to an abortion-rights state to get the procedure done (who have no real voice in politics) and the polarized true believers on each side. The moderates would go on thinking it can’t be as bad as we pro-choicers say, especially if the anti-choicers would continue to lobby, always wanting to move the goal posts further downfield. In that light, I’d rather they radically overstep their bounds and push for Murder 1 equivalency off the bat, because then it would be clearer where the lines are drawn at a time when people’s attention would be appropriately focused. Five years after Roe is overturned, abortion rights will just be another one of those “little” issues that gets lost among the transitional problems associated with the New Feudal Order.

24. Hey, why not pin it down a bit more for them:

    Mexico City had specified a one to three year sentence for all women who had a abortion. This now applies only to the second and third trimester – is that about right?

    El Salvador – two to eight years – is that about right?

    Nicaragua – up to six years – is that about right?

    Brazil – six to 24 years – is that about right?

    Honduras – up to five years – is that about right?

25. there are plenty of unplanned pregnancies, but no unwanted babies

    That’s funny, because I could have sworn that people give babies up for adoption, and that I’ve read quite a few newspaper articles about babies being found in trashcans, etc. I must have been hallucinating.

26. “The attitude that Adoption is the cure for Abortion is just insane.”

    Speaking of insanity, this is probably not really a surprise, but a number of “pro-lifers” have no concept of the dangers of pregnancy. It’s a cakewalk, they think; it’s literally an inconvenience. It’s not just “pro-life” men who think that. I had a “discussion” on LiveJournal with a woman who felt that since she didn’t know anyone who had had pregnancy complications, it just wasn’t a big deal. A friend of mine told this woman that she (my friend) was too unhealthy to go through pregnancy and labor, and the woman couldn’t have given less of a shit. Not only is there ignorance about how risky pregnancy can be, they don’t care if it is. If you die, then God wanted you to die, end of story. And yet I’m sure they’d defend safety measures for any other aspect of life besides ones involving women and sex.

27. Nah, you don’t get it, EG. Those babies are wanted… by a mysterious *someone out there*. Maybe not by their current hosts or caretakers, but surely there’s just the right infertile couple *somewhere out there* who wants them!

    – how that helps them in the real world is beyond me.

28. Somebody wants that baby…

    That is why my sister and her husband are adopting teenager and pre-teenage siblings THAT NOBODY HAS WANTED TO ADOPT FOR OVER 12 YEARS…

    Sure, everybody wants the baby…

29. “Those babies are wanted… by a mysterious *someone out there*.”

    Let’s not forget that, that “someone out there” better be rich, white, married, straight and of the right denomination of Chrisitianity to even be considered qualified as potential adoptive parents by most agencies.

30. “As I believe it, there are plenty of unplanned pregnancies, but no unwanted babies. Somebody wants that child.”

    Unless it’s brown, or mentally retarded, or has spina bifida, or dwarfism, ….

    And that’s just off the top of my head.

    And I know exactly where annejumps is coming from. I do not have children, by choice, because I have also had five consecutive miscarriages. I am physically incapable of carrying a child to term, and after the last one, the doctor said that another attempt could quite easily be my last because I could bleed to death with another miscarriage. (Don’t feel sorry for me – I am quite accepting of this, and besides, it leaves me more time for the role of the doting aunt, which is all the best parts of motherhood [gift-giving, teaching things like cooking, trips to the zoo, etc.) and none of its worst parts [poopy diapers, cleaning up vomit at 2 AM, colic, phone calls that start “Your child has done..”, etc.].)

    More than once, after explaining this situation, that another pregnancy attempt could quite easily leave my husband not only childless but wifeless, I was told how “selfish” I am, how I just need to “trust God,” how the doctor was probably “lying” to me and I should see another doctor, how it was my *own* “lack of faith” that was keeping me childless, etc.

    Yeah. Sure. I am absolutely underwhelmed by the compassion and understanding shown by “pro-baby” people.

    Needless to say, I don’t discuss my childless state. Now I just look down, put my hand on my belly, and say very softly, “Sometimes, people just don’t have babies.” The look of guilt is *totally* worth it …

31. Jill,
    Are there any abortions you think should be illegal? For example, after a certain time period, for sex selection, or any reason you think abortion should be illegal.

    If so, what should the punishment be for those women who have abortions you think should be illegal?

    I’d also be interested in what other pro-choicers have to say on this because I’m guessing not every pro-choice person here believes that abortion should be completely legal throughout all of pregnancy for any reason, right?

32. JivinJ, I don’t think abortion should be regulated depending on the woman’s reasoning.
    I may think a woman’s personal reason is stupid, or vain, or sexist, but if people have bodily autonomy, they have bodily autonomy, and there’s no pragmatic reason to step in to take that away from pregnant women.

33. Ahh yes, the “pray to God and it’ll all turn out fine” theory. Yes I got that along with the “just relax and it’ll happen naturally” theory. Either way it was MY fault not a medical condition that was keeping us from having children. We also got the “why aren’t you adopting an American baby”, and e-mails promoting adopting snowflake adoption. Isn’t it interesting that everyone, even strangers off the street feel like they have the right to comment on how you start your family. All I can say was adopting from Mongolia was right for us, and our little girl is healthy and happy and we’re crazy in love with her.

    Can’t people just keep their perverted little minds off our private parts?

34. Exactly, Sarah. It’s like, I may think getting a tatoo is immoral (I don’t really) stupid, painful, a waste of time and money (especially considering that skin sags as you get older, ruining the tatoo) but I’m not going to try and push through legislation prohibiting or limiting people from getting tatoo’s… and I’m certainly not going to push through legislation criminalizing the tatoo artist. I’m not going to stand outside a tatoo parlor picketing and protesting them because of my beliefs, either.

    I just won’t get a tatoo (unless I change my mind later and decide I really really want one.) Some people may not like that I think they’re stupid, painful (even though I have NO personal exp with them) and a waste of time/money… but as long as they’re not forcing me to get one, then we don’t have a problem.

    For the Fundies: As to the whole “but it’s God’s will” crap… do you REALLY think God would ensoul a fetus that “He” knew wasn’t going to be carried to term? Do you really think “He” would be that CARELESS, THOUGHTLESS, CRUEL and without FORESIGHT? Isn’t “He” supposed to be omnipotent and everything is supposedly part of “His” “great plan”.

    *Religion drives me up a freakin’ wall, cause it makes no freakin’ sense at all. (and yes I know that rhymes)

35. “Are there any abortions you think should be illegal?”

    Absolutely. Abortions done without the woman’s consent.[1]

    [1] Assuming she is competent. If not, then abortions done without due process including informed consent from next of kin or legal guardian.

36. Damn, SarahMC beat me to it.

    Anyway, Jivin, that’s two so far. Autonomy is autonomy. I don’t like sex selection, I don’t like people aborting because they think the child will be viable but disabled. But it ain’t about what I like, it’s about autonomy.

37. Filipovic’s tone indicates she thinks pro-life folk don’t have enough intellectual honesty to follow the logic to its conclusion. It’s insulting.

    If the shoe fits….I’ve had numerous discussions with pro-lifers who think that the bodily-autonomy argument cuts their way…the inability to reason astounds me.

    Are there any abortions you think should be illegal? For example, after a certain time period, for sex selection, or any reason you think abortion should be illegal.

    No. A woman should have the choice to remove another entity from her body at any time for any reason (even if everyone else on earth thinks those reasons are unkind, distasteful or “wrong”).

38. Are there any abortions you think should be illegal? For example, after a certain time period, for sex selection, or any reason you think abortion should be illegal.

    Am I the only one who finds something weird in the forced-birthers’ conviction that thousands, if not millions, of women would abort their fetus in the 8th month and the only thing stopping them is the law? (Because you are aware that most states currently ban third-trimester abortions, right, JivinJ?)

    It’s like they think that most women have to be forced by law to stay pregnant. Like an average woman in her 7th month is thinking, “Gosh, I’d love to abort this fetus and forget about the whole having-a-kid thing, but it’s illegal, so I guess I’d better have it after all.” It’s a very, very weird POV.

39. I don’t really have much to contribute besides saying that this is a fantastic series of threads and without a doubt, this is the tack that the pro-choice movement should be taking. Republicans live in a dream-world of words without consequence. Force their words into reality and they look like the unhinged lunatics they are.

40. I thought prolifers mostly wanted to punish the eeevil babykiller abortionists burn-in-hell demonspawn (sic).

    Which is to say, I don’t think I’ve seen many U.S. prolifers publicly suggest that the women should be punished. Rather, they tend to take a “batshit crazy” view (as opposed to the “jail the woman” folks, who I classify as an “utterly fucking batshit crazy” view.)

    The batshit-crazy view works like this:

    Something can easily be illegal to supply but not illegal for the user. An easy one might be unlicensed surgery; they’d jail me for performing appendectomies, but they won’t bother you for paying me to remove your appendix. Still, the fact that I can be jailed makes it less likely that you’ll end up getting your appendix removed by a doctor wannabe hack.

    Therefore, jailing only doctors (or whoever) who perform the procedure, and/or charging them with murder, will make abortion less available. this cuts down on the # of abortions.

    As I said. batshit crazy. But I’m guessing that’s why you didn’t get many responses.

41. “Are there any abortions you think should be illegal? For example, after a certain time period, for sex selection, or any reason you think abortion should be illegal. If so, what should the punishment be for those women who have abortions you think should be illegal?”

    Very clever. Turnaround is fair play. I notice no one wants to answer this question either.

42. Mhorag, your story got me thinking yet again about the Gianna Beretta Molla story and the fascination with death-in-childbirth for some of the “pro-baby” folks. I read something recently about a member of a Midwestern fundamentalist sect (who later got out) that one of the older women in her congregation used to talk behind the backs of women who did not have “enough” children and one day said something like “you know, in the old days, women weren’t afraid to die in childbirth.”

    I’m going to extrapolate, but I think it comes down to this: to this mindset, dying in childbirth is one of the best things that can happen to a woman – not physically, but morally/spiritually.

    Think about it. If a woman dies because of pregnancy or birth complications and her baby lives:

    – she has made the ultimate Sacrifice (sacrifice being a HUGE theme for these folks when talking about Christian Motherhood) and died rather than exhibit any self-concern, which they tend to call “selfishness.” (I like to play a game where I count the number of times the words “selfish,” “women,” and “feminist” or “abortion” come up together when reading conservative commentary on any women’s issue). In that way she has performed the ultimate expression of what they like to call the Biblical feminine role. She has sacrificed herself so much there is nothing left of her. Literally.
    – She has brought a child into the world, and in doing so affirmed the idea that the child is way more important than she is, which is a huge component of their argument.
    – This is my farthest reach but I think it has some merit…She dies completely “redeemed.” She will never live on to possibly be a bad mother, or talk back to her husband/rebel against his authority, or have an affair, or seek to end the marriage for any reason (ranging from abuse to simple dissatisfaction.) She has died in fulfilling the perfection of the act of being nothing more than a submissive vessel. That is GOLD to them.

    I’m not saying this is their conscious thought, but I believe they’re so invested in the idea of the fetus being worth more than the woman, that there’s no way stuff like this can’t be in their unconscious minds. I really think there’s something to this, that those people who tell you to go ahead with a pregnancy and that “doctors are lying” must believe.

    Think back a few months ago to the vehement reaction to that man whose wife became unconscious and he chose to save her rather than the 6-week embryo she was carrying. I read him described as “cold” and “unfeeling” on conservative blogs, to choose his wife and not “his child.”

    Now don’t get me wrong. I am not cavalier about terminating because of health/life risks. Being 30 weeks pregnant, having gone through 7 months of pregnancy and gotten this way on purpose and with a loving, supportive partner, if my doctor told me I was going to die if I continued the pregnancy, that would not be an easy decision for me. I would probably be looking for some way around this situation – there would just HAVE to be a way, I would say to myself, that both myself and my baby-to-be could be saved, and if it meant risk or longer recovery to me, as long as it didn’t mean DEATH for crying out loud, I would do it. My personal belief is that I do differentiate between a post-viability fetus and a first-trimester embryo. But personal beliefs really can’t come into the picture when you’re talking about *rights over someone’s very bodily person.* I can’t look at any woman’s situation and feel qualified to say “abortion for thee, but not for thee, you wicked slut.”

    Anyway, good on ya for being a devoted auntie. You’re right, you get to go home at the end of the day. 🙂 I’m wondering how the challenge of 24-hr responsibility is going to affect us. Oh well….onward!

43. The only illegal abortion should be the one performed without the patient’s consent (except in emergency). No one else gets to decide. It’s all about the bodily autonomy.

44. Mnemosyne,
    When did I say I think “thousands, if not millions, of women would abort their fetus in the 8th month”????

    I never said that and I certainly don’t believe it. Please try to avoid making up a position for me.

    I asked if there are any abortions out there (such as say an abortion in the 8th month of pregnancy on a healthy child with a healthy mother) which the pro-choicers here think should be illegal and if women who obtain those kinds of abortions should be punished?

    It appears that SarahMC and Matthew can’t think of an abortion they would make illegal (though they didn’t say anything about length of gestation). No one else has provided any kind of answer.

45. JivinJ:

    I’ll throw my hat in.  I don’t think abortions should be illegal.  I don’t think any abortions should be illegal.  Up with autonomy!

46. Are there any abortions you think should be illegal? For example, after a certain time period, for sex selection, or any reason you think abortion should be illegal.

    If so, what should the punishment be for those women who have abortions you think should be illegal?

    I’d also be interested in what other pro-choicers have to say on this because I’m guessing not every pro-choice person here believes that abortion should be completely legal throughout all of pregnancy for any reason, right?

    I’m not Jill, but I’ll answer this. No abortion should be illegal. The right of a woman to control her body is too important to be taken away because some anti-choicer hasn’t thought about the issue on any level. Women should not go to jail for having a pregnancy terminated at 20 weeks because they find out the fetus has an exposed brain stem and will die painfully upon birth. Sorry, but no cigar.

47. Most pro-choicers can’t think of an abortion they’d make illegal. That’s the point. A woman should have full legal access to whatever reproductive healthcare technologies and procedures are currently medically possible and effective, period. Women will decide for themselves which abortions are too personally distasteful to undergo, and they won’t have them. The law need not be involved at all.

48. But I am amused by your incorrect assumption that both sides are equally stupid, ignorant and thoughtless. Nope, only yours.

49. JivinJ,

    In case you’re looking for someone to answer that:

    Q (you):Are there any abortions that should be made illegal?

    A (me): No, none at all.

    Followup Q (you, I predict): Really? What about _______? (insert your favorite scenario here, a.k.a. ‘1 minute before a full term healthy delivery’)

    A (me): None at all means “none at all.”

    Followup Q (someone, possibly you): Do you mean you want people to abort healthy birth-minus-one-hour infants?

    A (me): No. I don’t want it. But it shouldn’t be illegal.

    I’ll let you write your own followups to that one.

50. My sister had her fetus removed at 8 months because she didn’t want it inside of her anymore. Know why? It was fucking dead. And she still had to go through induced labor and birth to get it out, which resulted in serious physical harm to her. Could dolts please dispense with the uninformed medical scenarios and deal with the real world? They are exactly the reason anti-choicers should stay the hell out of other people’s medical treatment and decisions; they have no clue what they’re talking about.

    Is there a woman’s health care provider that the anti-choice crowd wouldn’t imprison? Har har. :: rolls eyes… towards the Tablian ::

51. I’m sure there aren’t too many instances where a woman would put off having an abortion for that long, but I’m sure it has and does happen due to circumstances like, for example, money, or perhaps situations have changed to make it unfavorable for her to raise a child or for the child to live, etc.

    But you know what? If she did make that decision, then she should be able to have that abortion. Although, at 8 months, I’m pretty sure the baby, given special care, would be able to survive and be given up for adoption at that point, so maybe it wouldn’t even be an abortion, but an induced labor? That would probably be what would have to happen (again, just speculation because I am in no way a doctor or a lawyer…) because at that point, you’d have the option of keeping the baby alive.

    Although, there have been a number of stories in the news and elsewhere where a woman actually does not know she’s pregnant until she’s giving birth. If that can happen, then I am sure that women can also find out that they are pregnant around that 8-month timeframe as well, and should absolutely be given the choice of whether or not to remain pregnant.

52. It sounds like they are not going to outlaw abortions on any grounds JivinJ. Which is probably the position of pro-choicers who believe that women make their choices on reasonable grounds and not just for the fun of doing things.

    And please look up sarcasm.

53. Jill has had 1 comment out of 137 that will answer.

    Jivin has had 13 out of 20.

    Jivin, if your point was, “Pro-choicers are just as thoughtless and unwilling to think about their stance as anti-choicers,” then you failed to make it.

54. Are there any abortions you think should be illegal?

    An abortion done without the patient’s consent (except in a life threatening emergency where the patient is unable to give consent) should be illegal. And it is. It (and any other medical procedure performed on any patient against his or her will except in a few very unusual circumstances) is known as “assault”. The punishment for such should be the same as for any other assault.

    An abortion performed under unsafe circumstances or in a manner not consistent with standard of care medicine should be illegal. And it is. It is known as “malpractice” and should be punished accordingly.

    I’d be ok with restrictions on abortion after the 24th week of pregnancy if certain criteria were met. It’s biologically extremely overly conservative and ethically inconsistent in a society which does not force organ and tissue donation, but I’d be ok with it as a Realpolitik compromise if and only if the following were true:
    1. Exceptions were made for situations in which continuing the pregnancy would endanger the mother’s life or health or the fetus was malformed.
    2. Abortion was readily available, inexpensive or free, and unrestricted in the 14 weeks.

55. I never said that and I certainly don’t believe it. Please try to avoid making up a position for me.

    If you don’t believe it, then what’s the point of banning late-term abortions? After all, if responsible women who want the child won’t abort, and only irresponsible or irrational women who would abuse the child anyway would abort a perfectly healthy fetus, why ban them?

    The only answer is that you somehow think that a large number of women would abort their late-term fetuses on a whim. Otherwise, it would be so rare that it wouldn’t even need to be handled by the law.

56. It cracks me up that someone actually said, “Well, I don’t know, but not knowing doesn’t make my arguments less powerful!!” lol. What idjits.

57. to this mindset, dying in childbirth is one of the best things that can happen to a woman – not physically, but morally/spiritually.

    But I don’t want to die in childbirth. I hate washing clothes.

    Seriously, as someone who would have died in childbirth without modern medical care, this is not a trivial problem or a minor fear. Dying in childbirth is painful and terrifying. It is in no way a good death. Ever. And the claim that women didn’t used to be afraid of dying in childbirth is pure donkey turds. Haven’t these people ever read any 19th century literature? Women have always been afraid of dying in childbirth, there just didn’t used to be much that could be done to prevent it so they dealt with the risk and the fear however they could.

58. And on the adoption front, maybe some people don’t feel comfortable putting their kids up for adoption because of assholes like this person, who adopt kids so that they can bilk child welfare agencies out of money and then abuse the kids.

    Port St. Lucie police say she held the children like prisoners in her home, often handcuffing them together and not allowing them to use a bathroom. The children, who now range in age from 15 to 27, told police they were never allowed to attend school, see a doctor or a dentist and were barely fed.

    snip

    Authorities say Leekin used various aliases, addresses and fraudulent documents to receive up to $2 million in subsidy payments from the New York City Administration for Children’s Services.

    snip

    Some of the adults suffered serious handicaps. One is blind and mumbles. Another can barely walk or stand. None appeared to have more than a fourth-grade education, police said.

    Adoption can be a great option, and this outlier case shouldn’t dissuade people who want to give birth to an unwanted child to put up for adoption, but it’s not a cure-all for abortion. Not by a long shot.

59. I’d also be interested in what other pro-choicers have to say on this because I’m guessing not every pro-choice person here believes that abortion should be completely legal throughout all of pregnancy for any reason, right?

    I’m sure this has already been addressed (I haven’t read the whole thread), but I absolutely think this. As long as it resides inside my body, I get the final say over whether it gets to stay in there. If that means an abortion the day before giving birth, well then that’s my business. Other than standard medical safety regulations (as with any other kind of procedure), there should be absolutely NO restrictions to any abortion at any time for any reason. Period.

    That does not mean that I would necessarily approve of every single choice to have or not have an abortion made by every woman, ever, but it does mean that I don’t think the government has any business in that decision and it should certainly still be legal AND freely available to her no matter what.

60. Amanda,
    Why would you assume I had some kind of goal of making pro-choicers look stupid with my questions? Projection, maybe? I was actually quite curious.

    I thought, and maybe I was completely wrong, there were some pro-choice commenters at this blog who would think some kinds of abortions (rare as they may be) should be illegal and I wondered if they thought women should be punished for having those kinds of abortions. If everyone here thinks abortion should be legal through all nine months of pregnancy for whatever reason, then so be it.

    Mnemosyne,
    Just because something occurs rarely doesn’t necessarily mean it shouldn’t be handled by law or there shouldn’t be a law against it.

61. JivinJ, the only illegal abortion should be one performed without the patient’s consent, except in cases of emergency or lack of competence.

    And um, Manju? Pretty much everyone who has responded since he asked the question has answered it. Nice try.

62. JivinJ, women who have abortions during the third trimester do so because their fetuses are on the verge of death, or because they are on the verge of death themselves. Why do you think there should be a law against the safest procedure in those instances?

63. Why would you assume I had some kind of goal of making pro-choicers look stupid with my questions? Projection, maybe? I was actually quite curious.

    Ooooooh, you’re a liar, too.

    Look, you didn’t hide your motivations at all. You barely gave it any time and eagerly started to declare victory even though it was clear that we had in fact thought about this issue in a way that you haven’t.

    So, how much time do you propose sending women to jail for if they have abortions, by the way?

64. Just because something occurs rarely doesn’t necessarily mean it shouldn’t be handled by law or there shouldn’t be a law against it.

    True. But I can’t think of any other personal healthcare decisions where people insist it should be covered by law. There are very few medical things that are illegal short of organ-selling. There are legal limits on who can act on behalf of an incapacitated person, but there aren’t many that limit the actions of a rational person.

    If you can decide by yourself whether or not you want a heart bypass operation, you can decide whether or not you want an abortion. Medical decisions should be made by patients and their doctors, not the law.

65. Mnemosyne,
    Just because something occurs rarely doesn’t necessarily mean it shouldn’t be handled by law or there shouldn’t be a law against it.

    Its a bad idea to make policy and draft legislation based on the most extreme and rare examples. It tends to be a distraction from the more basic rights involved.

66. I do not have children, by choice, because I have also had five consecutive miscarriages. I am physically incapable of carrying a child to term – mhorag

    This brings out another point. Perhaps I am misunderstanding something because I actually watch too much Law and Order (if Fred Thompson’s running for Pres, I say the Dems. should think about nominating Steven Hill! 😉 ), but isn’t there a such thing as depraved indifference homocide?

    Consider then mhorag’s case. She has had 5 miscarriages and now knows that she is physically incapable of carrying a child to term. If she were to get pregnant again, the inevitable result would be that a fetus would die. If she were to get pregnant again, if you believe fetuses are people under the law, then wouldn’t she be committing depraved indifference homocide as she would be indifferent to the very high likelihood that fetal death would be the result of any pregnancy of hers?

    And yet the so-called pro-lifers have told her that she should try to have a child and is selfish for not trying to have a child? Am I the only one who sees the contradiction here? The so-called pro-lifers would rather mhago die and be criminally indifferent to fetal life than to take precautions and prevent fetal death? How is this pro-life?

    So to raise a question that a pro-lifer would, with a vengeance, call a “red herring”, how many miscarriages is a woman alloted before it becomes deprave indifference to become pregnant?

67. Its a bad idea to make policy and draft legislation based on the most extreme and rare examples. It tends to be a distraction from the more basic rights involved. – Tom

    OTOH, what can happen in this great big world of ours does happen. Perhaps it’s that good ol’ Talmudic reasoning coming into the picture again, but if the law together with accepted standards of legal reasoning cannot tell you who is obligated to make what kind of sacrificial offering when a mute witnesses an ox goring a pregnant woman, who is harvesting fruit in a sabbitical year, before falling into a pit, then the law and/or the standards of legal reasoning are incomplete. And if the law would compel, even if in some “rare cases”, people to give up life and limb in a situation in which they otherwise would have right to life and limb, then the law abrogates basic rights.

68. Then, when every person you know, knows that you were pregnant, and the topic of the child will be brought up upon your return to work or school, and you must face the judgements of others.

    Not to mention the fact that pregnant women are typically treated as if they were public property. Perfect strangers feel free to ask about the due date, gender, name, etc, some even going so far as expecting the right to feel the baby moving.

    I can’t imagine demanding that a woman take on this additional psychological burden when she knows she’s going to give up the baby for adoption.

69. Amanda,

    Look, you didn’t hide your motivations at all. You barely gave it any time and eagerly started to declare victory even though it was clear that we had in fact thought about this issue in a way that you haven’t.

    I declared victory??? What are you talking about? I asked a question and then responded to a couple of other comments. When did I declare victory? When I said no one else besides two pro-choicers had answered yet (which wasn’t surprising because it hadn’t that long and my original comments was like 30 or so comments in) and no one had said they couldn’t think of an abortion they would want to be illegal? Is that somehow declaration of victory? Geez, you can really take things the wrong way if you project feelings on to people you’re talking to online. Try for a second to imagine I’m not being sarcastic or mean-spirited.

    If you’re interested in my response to Jill’s original question you can find my answer in her original thread here.

70. Mnemosyne,

    If you can decide by yourself whether or not you want a heart bypass operation, you can decide whether or not you want an abortion. Medical decisions should be made by patients and their doctors, not the law.

    OK. It seems you’re not in favor of making any abortion illegal. You can have that position and therefore have no reason to answer the second question.

    But there are people out there in the world (who, I think, most people would describe as pro-choice) who think abortion should be illegal in certain circumstances (such as after a certain time period, because of a certain reason, etc.) and they’re not people who think thousands or millions of women want to abort at 8 months.

71. On the topic of late-term abortions, my opinion is that a woman should be able to evict a fetus from her body at any time during the pregnancy.

    I’m currently 21 1/2 weeks pregnant. If I evicted this fetus (induced, cesarean, whatever), it would be very unlikely to survive. A few weeks from now it would have much better chances. Obviously in the first trimester abortion is the way to go, since the embryo/fetus has zero chance of survival without using the woman’s organs.

72. *stops lurking*

    I thought, and maybe I was completely wrong, there were some pro-choice commenters at this blog who would think some kinds of abortions (rare as they may be) should be illegal and I wondered if they thought women should be punished for having those kinds of abortions.

    JivinJ, if you were trying to find ground for consensus, you might do better to use the word “unethical” than illegal. Are there abortions that I would urge my partner not to have? Sure. They are extremely few and far between, but, for example, I don’t think aborting a viable, healthy fetus that doesn’t threaten the mother’s health is usually ethical. That said, I can’t imagine a situation under which a mother would bring her pregnancy to the third trimester and then arbitrarily terminate the pregnancy. A law banning those abortions would not be worth the paper it was printed on. It would also probably exclude important individualized cases where a third-trimester abortion is a necessary, albeit regrettable, decision. There are also plenty of unethical actions that aren’t illegal and shouldn’t be.

    OK JivinJ, you’ve gotten a bunch of answers to your question. Now, how about Jill’s–how much time? And, more importantly, if no time, why no time? Why should someone who you think willingly engages in murder not be given life in prison?

73. But there are people out there in the world (who, I think, most people would describe as pro-choice) who think abortion should be illegal in certain circumstances (such as after a certain time period, because of a certain reason, etc.) and they’re not people who think thousands or millions of women want to abort at 8 months.

    Really? Because they sure act like it as they run around getting late-term abortion procedures banned. If they realize that women have late-term abortions for the most dire of reasons — the life of the mother or a dead or dying fetus — why are they putting an additional burden on women who have already had to make one of the most difficult decisions of their lives?

    I mean, I know there’s an ick factor, but there’s a pretty major ick factor when you find out that your baby has no brain and the only “life” it has will end the moment it detaches from your uterus.

    Of course, you will never have to face the consequences of the decisions you make on behalf of other people you will never meet, do you? It’s easy to make decisions for strangers without having to actually meet them or talk to them or look at the sonograms. You can just say, “Oh, I find that gross, so we’ll ban it” without finding out why people do it.

74. JinvinJ:

    Sorry for the vitrol aimed your way. Blame it on the Coulterization of our culture. But I think Jill’s point is that the unwillingness to punish the mother is a tacit acknowledgement that the fetus is not quite fully human.

    Now, you could still argue that it is alive, that it will eventually become human and perhaps deserves some protection (i’d leave it up to the mother until viability), but would you acknowledge that it is not fully human at that stage of development?

75. Perhaps it’s that good ol’ Talmudic reasoning coming into the picture again, but if the law together with accepted standards of legal reasoning cannot tell you who is obligated to make what kind of sacrificial offering when a mute witnesses an ox goring a pregnant woman, who is harvesting fruit in a sabbitical year, before falling into a pit, then the law and/or the standards of legal reasoning are incomplete.

    “And it was for this that Rabbi Yonatan was thrown out of the House of Study.”

    JivinJ’s not going to give you an answer, because the choices boil down to a very draconic, unpopular but intellectually honest one (jail, same as Murder One) or an intellectually sack-of-shit dishonest, feel-good pile of claptrap (ooo, the poor thing with her soft li’l lady-brain was led astray by the evil abortionist, and she should get off with a good prayer session!).

76. Seems like a lot of pro-lifers don’t understand how pro-choicers could possibly believe that no, abortion should not be illegal under any circumstances. What they fail to realize is that there’s a difference between actions that are unethical and actions that should be illegal. Just ’cause you don’t think a behavior should be banned doesn’t mean you personally approve of that behavior.

77. “Seems like a lot of pro-lifers don’t understand how pro-choicers could possibly believe that no, abortion should not be illegal under any circumstances. What they fail to realize is that there’s a difference between actions that are unethical and actions that should be illegal.”

    That is a critical distinction in a liberal democracy. But if your reason for believing it is immoral is because it is (late in a pregnancy) a human being, then the distinction would not apply, since you believe it is immoral precisely because it is murder. And this is probably the mainstream democratic party line.

    To argue otherwise would be like saying, “i find slavery personally immoral, but if others want to own slaves, that is their right.”

78. I’m a pro-lifer with a question similar to Jivin J’s:

    Imagine if medical technology advanced to the point where a fetus or embryo could be extracted from the womb and placed in another womb (male or female) or an artificial containment unit without killing it. Imagine that this procedure can be obtained for the same cost and the procedure was no more difficult to undergo than a regular abortion. Finally, there are enough people to adopt these unwanted embryo’s and fetuses.

    1. Would abortion be immoral in this case?
    2. Should abortion be illegal if this were the case?

    If you think the answer to #2 is no, then will you agree that you believe that women have a legal right beyond bodily autonomy. That along with having the legal right to not have an entity in their body, they have a legal right to destroy an embryo or fetus that once resided there? Should this new right have any limits?

    I would enjoy being educated on your thoughts.

79. “No. A woman should have the choice to remove another entity from her body at any time for any reason (even if everyone else on earth thinks those reasons are unkind, distasteful or “wrong”).”

    I used to think that also. Then my cousin aborted three girls because she already had one and she wanted a boy.

    Now I’m not so sure.

80. “Very clever. Turnaround is fair play. I notice no one wants to answer this question either.”

    Two answers within an hour. I am underwhelmed by your ability to read with blinders on.

81. OK. It seems you’re not in favor of making any abortion illegal.

    I’m quite sure we are all in favor of making forced abortions illegal.

82. ““Are there any abortions you think should be illegal? For example, after a certain time period, for sex selection, or any reason you think abortion should be illegal. If so, what should the punishment be for those women who have abortions you think should be illegal?”

    Very clever. Turnaround is fair play. I notice no one wants to answer this question either.”

    Manju; I count 2 clear and direct answers before your own post, and a further 6 after it. Hardly a case of “no one” wanting to answer this question.

    And for the record, another direct answer.

    No abortion should be illegal. When women are given full, honest, accurate and broad information on pregnancy, abortion, motherhood and all their options, they will make decisions based on this information and their own knowledge of their personal circumstances. Whether or not I agree with these decisions is nothing to do with whether the woman should be allowed to make them.

    And as was said above; perhaps rephrasing the question to “immoral” rather than “illegal” in this case would give you a broader range of responses. Personally, I feel that if a woman has known she was pregnant since, say the first month. She knew at the time she did not want the baby. She had access to abortions from that moment. The foetus is perfectly healthy and the woman’s lifestyle could support a child. She lives 10 minutes walk from a lovely, well-run and happy orphanage. She chooses to delay abortion until 8 months and then goes and has her abortion. That I would see as immoral, considering that a; many babies are born and survive at 8 months, b; there is no reasonable reason for the delay. and c; after the delay the alternative options were freely available. Immoral. But I still would not want to outright ban it. For one thing, how likely does such a scenario sound to you?

    BTW I hope no one mineds, I linked to this in my bloggie

83. “Two answers within an hour. I am underwhelmed by your ability to read with blinders on.”

    Well, I thought the clever part was the one about what the sentence would be for a late-term abortion. Either there are no feminists on this site who believe some abortion should be illegal or they don’t want to answer the question.

    If the latter is true, I guess JIvinJ inadvertently supported Jill’s implicit argument: that the fetus is not quite human and to kill it is not murder.

    As for me, I’m pro-choice but have no problem with making the killing of a late stage fetus illegal, though I don’t see it quite like murder, depending on the circumstances. In the most egregious circumstances, I’d give the mother whatever Michael Vick gets.

84. Another important point that no one has brought up yet: there is no statute of limitations for murder. Whatever sentence is passed on women who have abortions, then it is passed on every woman who has ever had an abortion. Twenty years ago? Somebody’s grandma now? Doesn’t matter. Off to supermax with you.

85. Keep digging, Jivin. Didn’t your momma teach you not to lie? You thought it would be clever to turn this around on the pro-choicers and show that we fail by our own standards, and it turned out that your clever idea was actually pretty stupid. Admit it didn’t work, and move on.

86. Kinda going back to some of the earlier comments here…

    A request: would people please stop going on as if being in an orphanage/foster care/etc. is such an awful horrible fate as to make abortion the preferable choice? So my grandfather, now a fairly successful man with a loving family, but who spent several years of his childhood in an orphanage and grew up in poverty, would have been better off dead? Accepting “lower quality of life” of the child as a valid reason for having an abortion is rather disturbing…it seems to imply that people who live in such conditions are less valuable, more expendable.

    Not to say any commenters meant/mean it that way, but that’s what can be gotten out of it.

87. No one said that, Rivi, and you know it. It was all very explicitly in refutation of “there are plenty of unwanted pregnancies, but no unwanted babies. Somebody wants that child.”

    And if something else can be gotten out of it, well, there’s no point in watering down our arguments in a hopeless attempt to avoid misinterpretation by the stupid, or those arguing in bad faith.

88. Either there are no feminists on this site who believe some abortion should be illegal or they don’t want to answer the question.

    You’ve received quite a number of replies that rather strongly indicate the former. Is there a reason that you’re not taking them at face value?

89. I like the disingenuous bit about “supporting women making choices” but believing in a child’s “inalienable right to life.”

    There’s a mental disconnect between the statements. They aren’t connecting the dots. Implicit in the second statement is “…at the expense of the woman and her right to make choices.” They are simply so narrow minded and self righteous that they can’t take responsibility for their own views. Heaven forbid you call them misogynists.

    And I do take pride in being called “pro-abortion.”

    You know, on the bright side of the anti-choice fantasy, I would look forward to abusive men intentionally or unintentionally forcing miscarriages getting charged with murder and suffering the death penalty.

90. So my grandfather, now a fairly successful man with a loving family, but who spent several years of his childhood in an orphanage and grew up in poverty, would have been better off dead?

    Getting this sentiment out of what has been posted can only be done by purposefully reading something into nothing. No one has said that being dead is preferable to having grown up in an orphanage. What has been said is that anti-choice folks are wrong when they act as though adoption is a panacea for abortion, because there is no such thing as an unwanted child. That’s simply not true — there are unwanted children who live in orphanages and foster care.

    There are women who make the choice that, when faced with an unplanned pregnancy, will see adoption as a less than perfect choice when considering that a child may not be adopted right away, will be adopted by an abuser, etc. That fear is not without basis in fact. The question is whether or not that fear should be sufficient to, by itself, justify terminating a pregnancy. I wouldn’t believe it justified, but I believe it should be legal for someone else to make that decision and believe it justified nonetheless.

    As for Trent Horn, I’ll answer your absurd hypothetical with another absurd hypothetical. If, instead of a fetus being placed into an artificial womb, a fetus can be placed into a man picked my national lottery, unaffiliated with the mother or father of the fetus, and such man can be forced to carry the fetus to external viability without any more ill health risks than the average pregnant woman, should he be required to do so upon pain of jail time? Would refusing to carry this fetus be immoral?

91. “If the latter is true, I guess JIvinJ inadvertently supported Jill’s implicit argument: that the fetus is not quite human and to kill it is not murder.”

    If you think that’s an implicit argument, then I think we have a misunderstanding regarding the definition of the word implicit. Or you can’t be bothered to read past arguments before jumping to conclusions. Because the main difference between Jill’s question and JlvinJ’s is that feminists – Jill included (unless my memory is failing me) – has answered that question before. Repeatedly.

    However, one doesn’t actually have to believe that the fetus is not quite human to be pro-choice. One simply has to believe that we have no more right to force pregnant women to carry to term than we have the right to force parents to donate blood marrow to dying offspring. Another argument that has been stated by feminists. Repeatedly. Including within Jill’s initial post asking the question.

92. er – that should be “bone marrow” not “blood marrow” – or just “blood”

    Damn ADD – switching my thoughts in the middle of a sentence without my noticing.

93. Two answers within an hour. I am underwhelmed by your ability to read with blinders on.

    Well, I thought the clever part was the one about what the sentence would be for a late-term abortion.

    When someone says that abortion should be legal at any stage of the pregnancy, it’s reasonable to conclude that they believe the sentence for late-term abortions should be zero.

94. Regarding Trent Horn’s query — the question is still what would have to go on in the “extraction” process. Even in his (?) hypothetical situation there is still the issue of bodily autonomy as it is certainly easier to remove a fetus from the womb if you don’t actually have to worry about keeping it alive in the process.

    Indeed, that is why late term abortions are sometimes the most moral thing to do — if a pregnancy is endangering a woman’s life, even if the fetus would be viable outside of the mother-to-be, the very act of removing the fetus without, e.g., sucking out its brains (which, thanks to the ban on D&X, you can’t do … now you gotta dismember the fetus, which is more of a problem, but still easier than a live delivery … anybody who doesn’t realize this must be awful ignorant about human reproduction and anatomy) is likely to be more dangerous than would be an abortion.

    In cases where the hypothetical procedure could be done with no more stress on the woman’s body (and the extra cost of it would be covered, e.g. by “pro-lifers”) than an abortion today, this pro-choicer would say that indeed regular abortion should be illegal unless the doctor makes the medical decision that this alive-removal is medically problematic.

    We, as a society, can and do (and according to any environmentalist, must) regulate what people do with stuff they no longer want or can have about. If we force people to dispose of waste in a certain way, it’s no skin off of anybody’s back to force people to place their embryos and feti in artificial wombs rather than getting rid of them provided there is no more harm done to the woman than would be done by a regular abortion.

    However (cannot resist pun) it is inconceivable to me that doing this sort of procedure in an early term abortion would be possible (how would you fish out the embryo or small fetus before it dies?) and it would place an undue burdon on women in the later term (why is it that pro-lifers seem to think that a live birth is no more difficult physiologically than an abortion? do they just not ‘get’ human anatomy?). So, given that, even if Trent Horn’s hypothetical arbitrary womb existed, I would reckon in most cases, the right to bodily autonomy would still be an argument for legal abortion.

95. If abortion is treated as “murder”, then for me, the logical outcome of that is that stillbirth/miscarriage could be prosecuted too – as involuntary manslaughter. Or more, if the woman knew there were factors that could cause miscarriage….I think I’ll just stay at the top of that slippery slope and keep abortion legal. 🙂

96. “No. A woman should have the choice to remove another entity from her body at any time for any reason (even if everyone else on earth thinks those reasons are unkind, distasteful or “wrong”).”

    I used to think that also. Then my cousin aborted three girls because she already had one and she wanted a boy.

    Now I’m not so sure.

    If you had found out that your cousin had had affairs with three men in the past three years, would you want her thrown in jail?

    Though, if I may say so, your cousin is pretty low in the morality department, in the non-legally-enforceable way.

97. # Cola Johnson Says:
    …You know, on the bright side of the anti-choice fantasy, I would look forward to abusive men intentionally or unintentionally forcing miscarriages getting charged with murder and suffering the death penalty.

    Careful. You may not know it, but that’s a legal grounding for the prochoice side.

    (basically: who “gets murdered’? people get murdered. Prosecuting forced miscarriages using a crime that requires a human victim raises problems in the is-a-fetus-human department.)

    It’s a good thing to prosecute, though. The trick is to increase penalties in other avenues which aren’t linked to the status of a fetus as person, and/or to expand the current statutes to specifically include feti without adopting a conclusion of humanity. Just FYI.

98. “If you think that’s an implicit argument, then I think we have a misunderstanding regarding the definition of the word implicit. Or you can’t be bothered to read past arguments before jumping to conclusions. Because the main difference between Jill’s question and JlvinJ’s is that feminists – Jill included (unless my memory is failing me) – has answered that question before. Repeatedly.”

    I’ve never heard Jill’s answer. I am curious to know what those feminists who believe late term abortions should be illegal (i think this is clintons, obama’s, and edward’s position) think the sentence should be.

    It’s a clever question. Not sure how much it proves other than to make ideologues back away from their more extreme rhetoric. I suppose animal rights activists who believe meat is murder could be asked the same question.

    But I like clever questions. Kudos to Jill and JivinJ.

99. But they don’t think there will be any need to plot out a punishment. Oh no, they just say “don’t do it” and suddenly everyon stops. Like with sex before marriage. Rather than teaching how to do it safely they say “Don’t do it” and no one does. So why come up with a punishmnet. Just tell women that it’s murder and now illegal and suddenly they’ll all stop. At least in some people’s minds it works that way.

100. Though, if I may say so, your cousin is pretty low in the morality department, in the non-legally-enforceable way.

     I don’t know if I’d even go that far…Suppose she’d had the three girls and treated them miserably because what she wanted was a boy? That’d be far lower in my opinion. At least the woman in question had enough insight to know that she shouldn’t have a kid she was going to hate, whatever her reasons, even if “misguided” is the nicest word I can think of for her reasons for avoiding gestating the concepti in question.

101. I’m going to ask the pro-lifers again about chimeras and parasitic twins. In each case, two eggs are fertilized, but only one baby is born. Presumably one can’t prosecute the zygotes–they’re extremely incompetent minors. But should the women be prosecuted for neglegence or creating an unsafe environment/endangering minors?

102. Unsure, if your cousin didn’t want girls, why the heck would you want a girl to be born to your cousin? I think that’s rather cruel of you. Just because you find her decision making objectionable does not give you the right over other people’s bodies, because you know, women are people too.

103. Hi Will,
     I answered Jill’s question in the original post and linked to it above in comment #69. I’m not trying to create a consensus. I wanted to know if there were any pro-choicers here who thought abortion should be illegal in any circumstances (such as after viability, etc.) and if women should be punished in those circumstances.

     Mnemosyne,
     I’m not sure what point you’re trying to prove or argue. Are you trying to argue that every person who thinks abortions after viability should be illegal believes thousands of women want those kind abortions? I have conversation with a number of people who describe themselves as pro-choice yet still believe abortion should be illegal after a certain point and who aren’t under the impression that thousands of women would try to get those kinds of abortions.

     Manju,
     No, I don’t acknowledge the human fetus is something other than a human being. I actually have a hard time understanding how people can’t accept the growing, developing, unborn child as a living human being. I have more understanding towards “personhood” arguments but arguments that the unborn aren’t human (especially ones which aren’t based in science) don’t really sway me. For example, I can imagine someone not being in favor of jailing people who leave their children in hot cars, but I don’t think the desire not to punish one of those individual in any way proves the children left in hot cars aren’t human beings or that leaving children in hot cars shouldn’t be illegal.

     Thank you for answering my scenario.

     Amanda,
     It must difficult for you to have thoughtful conversations online with people you disagree with if you’re consistently hurling insults at them and creating nefarious motives for them.

     Dianne,
     I didn’t notice your first answer before. In your scenario where there are restrictions on certain abortions after 24 weeks as part of a compromise- would you punish women who break those restrictions? And if so, what would those punishments be?

104. Marcotte sez:

     “The right of a woman to control her body is too important to be taken away because some anti-choicer hasn’t thought about the issue on any level.”

     Well, I guess that would be the whole nut of the issue, wouldn’t it? You really haven’t – now or ever – laid the ethical groundwork for that claim, mostly because it can’t be established, much less by such a “mind” as yours. Because you are easily amused and given to self congratulation, and your mind can only perceive the world in binary, anyone who challenges the above ethical claim gets divided into the stupid and the misogynist, so that you never really have to devote much time to supporting your claim. (Pssst – you’re really not nearly as smart as people on your blog tell you that you are.)

     Now, knowing that you are an abrasive atheist, and knowing that there are pretty much two subsets of legal philosophy in play in contemporary political discussion – Legal Positivism or Natural Law – I would have to guess that you are (to the extent that one can impute to you a coherent legal philosophy) the former. Having settled this, your ethical claim is less than convincing as a basis for law, and consistency yields that you are entitled to the right to control your body no more than the fetus/baby that you seek to treat as a meat puppet upon the whims of your fellow citizens in a democratic government.

     To be certain, your claim sounds a lot like an appeal to some Natural Law, a law above that which is promulgated by men an inuring to you by virtue of some concept of human dignity which you fail to define in those terms because of the necessity of denying the same to the fetus/baby. Politically, your position depends upon an appeal to a common sense of human dignity, which currently is persuasive to your fellow citizens to the point at which they deign to grant the same human dignity to the fetus/baby – you will never pass through this Sylla and Charybdis, but it is quite amusing to watch you – I mean you personally – attempt to do so. It really is a guilty pleasure of mine – like the triumphant effort of Special Olympians.

     QED

     You have no consistent argument, and I tire of you. You – personally.

105. This is in response to Wishy Washy way up the thread. You are not wrong. This is absolutely the fundie perspective on a Woman’s role. From personal experience, I lost my Mom to childbirth 23 years ago. The amount of fundie crap I have had to experience since that horrible day always included the “your Mother made the ultimate sacrifice—you should be proud and grateful to her faith in God!” As I sat there at my Mom’s funeral at the age of 13 with a new baby to take care of and three other brothers and a grieving Father, the preacher said that same thing. That is the day that I decided “their” God was a piece of shit. I may have been a young girl, but I was too damn smart to know that my Mom’s life was NOT worthless outside of birthing children and that it was the same damn mysogonistic shit we are seeing now that made the doctor’s and nurses that day negligent in their treatment of her that caused her death.

     Needless to say, when I got pregnant 5 years later, I had no problem aborting it. I have never nor will I ever bring a child on purpose into this world. I will however continue to adopt children (and teens) and care for those that are already born. Never since that day have I received a bit of help or concern from those that feel the need to tell me how wondeful my Mother was for dying for her child.

     My point is really, that Personal experience will always play a role in what Women decide about their lives. It is not up to others to determine it for them. What ever reason a Woman has for aborting, I will always think that it is the product of how they were raised, what they went through and how much they can handle that is at the heart of their choices. It is not for me to judge, nor is it up to me to use the force of government to dictate morality to them.

     I can also see why a lot of fundies view adopting babies more acceptable than adopting actual little adults. It is more difficult to raise children that already have their own opinions, views and ways of thinking. However, they are “beautiful little snowflakes” themselves, all the way up to adult hood. It can be infuriating and requires a lot of patience. But I will continue to take in children who are older preciseley because they need a LOT of LOVE and patience and understanding once they already have found out how cruel the world really is, and that is just not possible in a fundie’s world view to do for another human being. Without the brainwashing from birth and blind acceptance of their beliefs, there is no reason for them to extend love, compasion or support to another human being.

     Ok, rant is over. sorry.

106. DAS:

     In cases where the hypothetical procedure could be done with no more stress on the woman’s body (and the extra cost of it would be covered, e.g. by “pro-lifers”) than an abortion today, this pro-choicer would say that indeed regular abortion should be illegal unless the doctor makes the medical decision that this alive-removal is medically problematic.

     DAS: here’s another hypothetical situation for you.
     A woman is childfree. Adamantly so. She absolutely refuses to be a mother or a parental figure in any way. She has a sterilization procedure like a ligation or Essure, is on the birth control pill to control painful periods, and uses condoms when engaging in heterosexual sex. Unbeknownst to her, she has three fallopian tubes (yes, this has really been known to happen) and only two of them were cut; and she has PCOS which means being on the Pill actually makes her fertile. She ends up pregnant through sheer chance despite having done everything in her power to avoid it. The zef is healthy. Artificial womb type things are available.

     Why should she be forced to be a mother? She has done EVERYTHING humanly possible to prevent it. (Doctors refused to give her a hysterectomy, because they do, in the real world, frequently refuse this.) Even if someone adopts it before decanting – it still may track her down when it’s old enough. It’s not *just* the idea of pregnancy she hates. She REFUSES to be a mother, both on philosophical principles (overpopulation) and because the idea of being “mommy” is utterly ahorrent on a personal level.

     This is at least as plausible as the idea of artificial womb thingies being available in the first place.

107. Ah hell, Jill, you made me register at HuffPo just so I could leave a comment. See what you’re responsible for?

108. You know, there’s another issue that needs to be discussed and it’s *really* important.

     If a woman avails herself of emergency contraception, *how many* murders is she responsible for? You see, if the Real Live Human Being Deserving Of The Right To Life never attaches to her uterus, *we don’t know if it would have been twins*.

     This is similar to another Very Important Issue.

     If you surgically remove someone’s head, in such a way that you maintain the lives of the cells, aren’t you now responsible for killing *two* people when they both die?

     This is important… prior to there being any brain tissue after fertilization, you have a Real Live Human Being Deserving Of The Right To Life. On one side, you have a beating (or at least “living”) heart, on the other side you have a fully functional (if not functioning) human brain. We certainly agree that if you blow someone’s head off with a shotgun, you’ve killed that person, even if you don’t harm anything below the neck, and All Rational People (since All Rational People are Pro-Life) agree that the presence of a brain is irrelevant (which does explain a lot, when you think about it), so killing the headless body is also murder.

109. Would they really be in favor of this, if they knew it was their own mothers, sisters, wives, daughters?

     They have no idea what they are even talking about.

110. “Imagine if medical technology advanced to the point where a fetus or embryo could be extracted from the womb and placed in another womb (male or female) or an artificial containment unit without killing it. Imagine that this procedure can be obtained for the same cost and the procedure was no more difficult to undergo than a regular abortion. Finally, there are enough people to adopt these unwanted embryo’s and fetuses.”

     Trent: By the time we come up with this technology, if we haven’t also developed a male birth control with 100% efficacy, then I say we criminalize all men who get women pregnant. Seriously, you think humans would really put the time and effort into building holding tanks for emryos instead of doing the much more practical effort of reducing pregnancies? Weird.

111. Seriously, you think humans would really put the time and effort into building holding tanks for emryos instead of doing the much more practical effort of reducing pregnancies? Weird.

     It’s a pretty common science fiction option. Lois McMaster Bujold has some really interesting speculation in her Barrayar series on how a society would develop if you could choose freely between gestating your future child in your body or in a uterine replicator, with various societies ranging from ones that don’t have the option at all to ones that do huge amounts of genetic tinkering, and everything in between. One of her (male) characters from a society where they don’t have replicators is quite flummoxed when he’s presented with a pallet full of them that he is now responsible for.

112. “No. A woman should have the choice to remove another entity from her body at any time for any reason (even if everyone else on earth thinks those reasons are unkind, distasteful or “wrong”).”

     I used to think that also. Then my cousin aborted three girls because she already had one and she wanted a boy.

     Now I’m not so sure.

     Sometimes ethical principles conflict with our own sense of right and wrong. That’s why it is so critical to distinguish between your own moral rules and the ethical rules you’re going to require others to follow. To me this is where the religious right falls to pieces…their morality should be my morality regardless of logic…because *God* says so. Well, God says so is insufficient.

     Personally, I don’t think its a good idea to pierce you nipples. I see pierced nipples and my involuntary reaction is (comically) to cover my own (as if piercings are somehow contagious) But…so what? People have the right to do whatever they want with their own bodies…my personal distaste…absolutely meaningless. Would I do it? Nope. Should I create legal rules prohibiting them from doing all the things I wouldn’t do? Also a nope.

113. Fiction. Yes.

     Bearing on women’s right to choose: irrelevant.

114. “Fiction. Yes.

     Bearing on women’s right to choose: irrelevant.”

     Just like those fantastic flying derigibles with autogyros the Germans keep yapping about – oh wait – the humanity!

     You’re so silly. You do know that incubator technology is sort of an artificial womb already, right? It just needs to get incrimentally more advanced to make this a much more realistic possibility. And you would be even more silly if you don’t think that artificial wombs that could support nascent human life from the earliest wouldn’t impact the actual, off-feminist-blogs abortion debate.

115. The doctor gets charged with murder one-it is, after all, premeditated.
     The woman gets charged with being an accomplice, accessory before the fact, whatever the law is in the state at the time.
     In a world in which abortion was outlawed, I doubt that many women would actually serve time-the punishment would certainly deter nearly every doctor from attempting one.

116. Fiction. Yes.

     Bearing on women’s right to choose: irrelevant.

     Well, yes. Otherwise it’s like saying, “Someday we will have a society like the one in ‘Star Trek,’ so we don’t have to worry about things that are going on now.”

     Still, if you’re a sci-fi person like me, it’s interesting to read speculation about what would happen if women were no longer physically tied down to reproduction.

117. Still, if you’re a sci-fi person like me, it’s interesting to read speculation about what would happen if women were no longer physically tied down to reproduction.

     It is. Although I also think it’s interesting that the more mainstream speculative fiction (such Brave New World) considers this to be a hallmark of their distopias.

118. “Fiction. Yes.

     Bearing on women’s right to choose: irrelevant.”

     Just like those fantastic flying derigibles with autogyros the Germans keep yapping about – oh wait – the humanity!

     You’re so silly. You do know that incubator technology is sort of an artificial womb already, right? It just needs to get incrimentally more advanced to make this a much more realistic possibility.

     And you would be even more silly if you don’t think that artificial wombs that could support nascent human life from the earliest wouldn’t impact the actual, off-feminist-blogs abortion debate.

     What would you replace your “bodily integrity” argument with when a fetus can be nurtured from before when a woman has any significant physical effects arising from the pregnancy, and the procedure to transfer the fetus from uterus to artificial uterus is simpler and safer than an abortion itself? In this case, you would have to make a much more positive argument for why you have the right to prevent this life from maturing without your physical involvement. Viola – the partial birth dynamic is back at play.

119. 5 to 10. There ya go. And quit with the dumbass “who do you save” gotcha line. You save the born child first.

     Hillary and Obama are trapped in a burning building. You can only save one…. your one chance to save the future Savior of the Universe. Who do you save?

     bout as idiotic

120. Manju said:

     As for me, I’m pro-choice but have no problem with making the killing of a late stage fetus illegal, though I don’t see it quite like murder, depending on the circumstances.

     Wait, so you are honestly for taking a woman whose fetus has no brain and legally requiring her to carry it to “term” or face punishment? Even if it might kill her?

     Really??

     I mean, the last pro-life line I’d heard was that we (pro-reproductive rights) “hurt” ourselves by objecting the the banning of the non-medical procedure created by pro-‘life’ people called “partial birth abortion”. I thought it was rather common knowledge that pro-choice included third trimester. 8/

121. The doctor gets charged with murder one-it is, after all, premeditated.
     The woman gets charged with being an accomplice, accessory before the fact, whatever the law is in the state at the time.

     So if a woman hired a hitman to kill one of her born children, she would just be an accomplice, accessory before the fact, whatever? What state do you live in?

     In a world in which abortion was outlawed, I doubt that many women would actually serve time-the punishment would certainly deter nearly every doctor from attempting one.

     In which case sufficiently desperate women would go to unlicensed, back-alley abortion providers or try to do it themselves. And possibly die, or be maimed for life. But that’s okay, the sluts deserve it, don’t they?

122. 5 to 10. There ya go.

     For killing a baby? Damn, and people say liberals are soft on crime.

     And quit with the dumbass “who do you save” gotcha line. You save the born child first.

     So you agree that embryos are not the same as born children? Okay. No more questions.

     Hillary and Obama are trapped in a burning building. You can only save one…. your one chance to save the future Savior of the Universe. Who do you save?

     bout as idiotic

     It’s only idiotic because the likes of you make it so, my friend.

     As to your question, I stand back, let the firefighters save who they can, and vote for John Edwards.

123. You’re so silly. You do know that incubator technology is sort of an artificial womb already, right?

     You do know that incubators are for fully-developed, if premature, babies, right? That “sort of” is a bit of a stretch.

     It just needs to get incrimentally vastly more advanced to make this a much more realistic possibility.

     There. Fixed that for you.

     What would you replace your “bodily integrity” argument with when a fetus can be nurtured from before when a woman has any significant physical effects arising from the pregnancy, and the procedure to transfer the fetus from uterus to artificial uterus is simpler and safer than an abortion itself? In this case, you would have to make a much more positive argument for why you have the right to prevent this life from maturing without your physical involvement. Viola – the partial birth dynamic is back at play.

     True. In that far-distant, Star Trek day when an embryo (by the time a pregnancy has advanced to the point where a woman is carrying a fetus, she’s definitely feeling significant physical effects of that pregnancy) can be transferred from a woman’s uterus to an artificial uterus in a procedure that’s simpler and safer than abortion itself, that will definitely change the debate. By providing women another choice – imagine that.

     Until that day, we deal with the options we have.

     Of course, that raises a question: why aren’t “Pro-lifers” researching, or sponsoring research, into such equipment and techniques.

     Oh. Right. Because then women wouldn’t have to “face the consequences of their actions”.

     BTW – I think you mean “voila”. “Viola” is an instrument, like a slightly bigger and deeper-toned violin. Sorry. Pet peeve.

124. Trent, dear, unless you have signed up to adopt a baby grown in a tub of goo with wires coming out of it, shut up, please.

125. Tony, please give me your credit card number so that when this wonderful technology is possible, it can be charged for the expense of gestating the unwanted embryos of one quarter of the women in the United States (the number who have had abortions). Do you know how much a hospital charges to have an infant in the ICU for ONE DAY.? Do your think this is going to be cheaper? Will the taxpayers want to foot the bill? Should the parents have to? How many possibly could (how many wouldn’t pick up and run to Venezuela if they could)? What about the ones no one decides to unthaw or whatever and take home? Do they ever get destroyed? Isn’t that murder? Isn’t it a more acute moral question as the development becomes more advanced? What about the ones that have visible physical or genetic defects? If you want to be in charge of that taco stand, just don’t stand in my way as I run out the door with the rest of the sane people. And to take the whole thing to it’s final Blade Runner conclusion, what happens when they all break out of their cages and go looking for the evil scientist or stuck them there in the first place. EEEK.

126. Yeah, I’d love to see how things pan out if and when unwanted fetuses are gestated by artificial wombs. The pro-lifers will gladly fork over the necessary funding it’ll take to do so, right? They’ll also adopt them all.

     Not.

127. Well, obviously those incubators would only be available to the richest of the rich… you know, those who could afford it. Cause you KNOW insurance won’t cover it and the gov’ment won’t pay for it either.

128. “Tony, please give me your credit card number so that when this wonderful technology is possible, it can be charged for the expense of gestating the unwanted embryos of one quarter of the women in the United States (the number who have had abortions). Do you know how much a hospital charges to have an infant in the ICU for ONE DAY.? Do your think this is going to be cheaper? Will the taxpayers want to foot the bill? Should the parents have to? How many possibly could (how many wouldn’t pick up and run to Venezuela if they could)? What about the ones no one decides to unthaw or whatever and take home? Do they ever get destroyed? Isn’t that murder? Isn’t it a more acute moral question as the development becomes more advanced? What about the ones that have visible physical or genetic defects? If you want to be in charge of that taco stand, just don’t stand in my way as I run out the door with the rest of the sane people. And to take the whole thing to it’s final Blade Runner conclusion, what happens when they all break out of their cages and go looking for the evil scientist or stuck them there in the first place. EEEK.”

     Within twenty years.

129. Within twenty years.

     That’s a bold prediction. I’m going to take the rhetorical question I asked earlier, and ask it in earnest. Who is developing:

     A) Artificial-uterus technology? Despite what you claimed earlier, there are significant differences from an incubator. The first, and most important, that comes to mind is the need for an artificial placenta. Just having a Matrix-style tub of fluid to float in isn’t good enough.

     B) A surgical procedure for removing an embryo or fetus from a woman that is 1) Simpler and safer than an abortion and 2) Doesn’t kill the the embryo or fetus outright?

     And I’m going to have to ask for some links to primary-source evidence.

130. Tony, how many children do you plan on adopting, if you haven’t already?

131. Note that Tony still hasn’t forked over his credit card number. Tell you what, Tony, plop it down on a vasectomy for yourself, because I think we’ve just found one whacko we don’t want contributing to the gene pool.

132. Here’s the appropriate amendment to gut the legislation: notice shall also be given to the identified father’s wife, if any, and any existing children fathered by the man and the mothers of such children, so long as the father’s paternal rights have not been terminated, any one of which persons or their guardians if minors may return notice of consent or objection to the abortion, which objection, if retuned, shall contain a statement of the objector’s joint assets held with the identified father (including bank account numbers and copies of deeds and stock certificates); a statement of willingness to adopt the child, if born alive, and tender of valid consent to garnishment of wages and other assets for the payment of all pre-natal and post natal care for both the mother and child arising from or relating to the pregnancy, including the exacerbation of any non-pregnancy related medical condition (to accompany the father’s consent to such seizure of his assets). In the event that all of the notified persons do not return a completed form of rejection within the proscribed period, or the father does not successfuly complete an assessment by the state of his fitness for adoption within two weeks, then the abortion may go forward regardless of the father’s objection.

133. Sounds great, bmc90, but I think you’re on the wrong thread.

134. “Note that Tony still hasn’t forked over his credit card number. Tell you what, Tony, plop it down on a vasectomy for yourself, because I think we’ve just found one whacko we don’t want contributing to the gene pool.”

     4828 6357 8947 6584 exp 07/09 (code 004)

     I’ll do anything to save de babies.

135. Jerking our chains doesn’t answer my question, Tony: who, exactly, is working on these miracles of science you’re counting on to change everything?

136. “Jerking our chains doesn’t answer my question, Tony: who, exactly, is working on these miracles of science you’re counting on to change everything?”

     Probably our Gynobot overlords.

137. Now you’re just sulking, and I must say that it’s not very becoming. If you’re tired of all of us being so mean to you, you should just pick up your ball and go home.

138. Hmm, there are 137 responses to THIS right now, ironic.

     I don’t have time to read all of them, but this struck me if it hasn’t been discussed…

     “I reject your assertion that me and my brethren are “Anti-choice.” You have a choice NOT to have sex, and if you choose to have sex, you have a CHOICE to use numerous methods of birth control. Last I heard, a condom while used with a birth control pill had a prevention rate of almost 99%. CHOOSE to be responsible for your actions. An 85 cent condom is asking too much?”

     Aren’t many of them anti-condom too?

139. just an fyi, y’all in another thread (a question for pro-lifers, comment #449), TONY asked “why should the social, political and economic equality of women be compulsory or even desirous?”

     so, therefore and thus, he’s not really a big believer that women are full human beings with individual agency and should be treated as such.
     he also says, further up in the thread, that feminists think that “pre-born babies” (not an embryo, bastocyst or fetus) are “evil totems.”
     arguing wth him, i have discovered, gets into the twillight zone realm real quick.

140. “just an fyi, y’all in another thread (a question for pro-lifers, comment #449), TONY asked “why should the social, political and economic equality of women be compulsory or even desirous?”

     I guess you can’t answer – you have refused to do so. Really, it IS a question – is there some Natural Law claim to equality? Legal Positivism? The French Revolution? What is the self-evident, first principle upon which you rely in asserting your claim for equality?

     You think that you are smart, but your thought fails to pierce an epidermal level, and you obviously can’t give very much of an Apologia for femininsm than “because I want it!”

141. bluefish a, if that is your real name – please take any answer back to the other thread if you expect to play with me.

142. “Now you’re just sulking, and I must say that it’s not very becoming. If you’re tired of all of us being so mean to you, you should just pick up your ball and go home.”

     Um, no – I’m just cowed by the “give me your credit card or shut up” line of argument. I believe that in the field of formal logic this is referred to as the “reductio ad assholem,” referring to he or she who made the argument.

     Try once again, sweetie.

143. oh no. i’m done playing. the evil totem thing clued me in the fact that you’re not quite rational.
     but, in terms of why women want equality in the public sphere?
     not because i want it- but because women are equal to men. we are human, are we not?
     it has nothing to do with me and every thing to do with what is just and right.

144. and don’t call me sweetie. that’s patronizing.

145. *sorry, that you were referring to me.*
     but in a general sense, it’s considered somewhat patronizing to refer to people sight unseen with diminutives.

146. “not because i want it- but because women are equal to men. we are human, are we not?
     it has nothing to do with me and every thing to do with what is just and right.”

     But my question is – since this claim to “equality” is an ethical or moral one, what is the metaphysical system that precedes it? Assuming, arguendo that “women are equal to men” in the sense that you mean it – what ethical system obligates me to recognize this, and causes you to treat me as a heretic for merely questioning it? It is a simple question, really.

     Can we take this to the other thread, so I can shoot you all down with one shell?

147. What Tony is saying is, that because our values stem from basic human ethics rather than an ancient religious text, they are not legitimate. One’s values are only legitimate if they’re based on the arbitrary rules allegedly set forth by “god.” It’s very difficult to reason with people who think this way (is “think” too strong a word?).

148. …and the arbitrary rules allegedly set forth by “god” always state that men are the default human beings while women are secondary, created for the sole purpose of serving the mens. This is a common theme among the Abrahamic religious tradition.

149. “What Tony is saying is, that because our values stem from basic human ethics rather than an ancient religious text, they are not legitimate. One’s values are only legitimate if they’re based on the arbitrary rules allegedly set forth by “god.” It’s very difficult to reason with people who think this way (is “think” too strong a word?).”

     I’m willing to believe that you are ignorant and thus unfamiliar with anything but caricatures of religion, but some educated people may realize that I am asking you to expound upon the moral philosophy independent of religion upon which you base your claims. Quite simple, actually – from where do you derive “basic human ethics,” which, you must concede, is rather nebulous and may permit others who claim to ascribe to “basic human ethics” to say “yes, women deserve equality, but a viable pre-born baby deserves the opportunity to live without extraordinary interference.” So then we would be back at square one, unless you can point me to your moral philosophy.

150. Try once again, sweetie.

     You know, I hang out with theatre people, so having other men call me “sweetie” is neither an unusual nor upsetting experience for me. However, I can’t help but think you would have said something else if you’d known I was male. I think that illustrates bluefish’s point pretty well.

     In any case, while the “give us your credit card or shut up” line of argument may not impress you, that’s not the line of argument I’m using.

     I’m asking for names of people or at least organizations that are working on artificial uteruses and the surgical procedures that remove live embryos from a woman’s uterus in a way that is both simpler and safer than abortion.

151. “…and the arbitrary rules allegedly set forth by “god” always state that men are the default human beings while women are secondary, created for the sole purpose of serving the mens. This is a common theme among the Abrahamic religious tradition.”

     You’re right, Sarah, all of Western history is an elaborate consipracy to get you to do the laundry.

152. Funny that you accuse ME of avoiding questions, when that’s been your M.O. ever since you crawled in here. I mean, eventually we can all GUESS your opinion based on the other things you say, but you sure do waste a lot of time typing long-ass dissertations to get us to that point.
     And are you denying that according to Christianity (your religion), men are the default human beings and women the helpers? You obviously get your values from your religion (and can’t understand how anyone could even have values w/out it); we’re bright enough to put 2 + 2 together.

153. My moral philosophy:

     Nature is all there is.

     The materialist view when combined with the fact that evolution provided us a certain innate psychology, implies:

     [To quote Steven Pinker]

     “Regardless of IQ or physical strength or any other trait that can vary, all humans can be assumed to have certain traits in common. No one likes being enslaved. No one likes being humiliated. No one likes being treated unfairly, that is, according to traits that the person cannot control. The revulsion we feel toward discrimination and slavery comes from a conviction that however much people vary on some traits, they do not vary on these. This conviction contrasts, by the way, with the supposedly progressive doctrine that people have no inherent concerns, which implies that they could be conditioned to enjoy servitude or degradation.”

     This homogeny implies a certain generality when it comes to ethics/morality.
     We all have the capacity to feel pain and happiness. We all want to avoid pain and increase pleasure and happiness. We also all know this is true of one another (the ability to understand that is inherent in our natural cognitive abilities). These facts are enough to provide us a compass for ethics/morality and for meaning to life.

     I find meaning in the fact that I can increase my own happiness and I have the ability to help increase happiness in others.
     I find value in life from the fact that I have a relatively short time of conscious existence. If that is all you think you have, and you do not imagine another life after, you value life more than anything. Your own and the lives of others.

     Many scientists, philosophers and atheist writers speak of an innate “moral sense” in the human species which evolved through natural selection.

     Robert Wright lists a number of traits that combine to make up this natural moral sense:

     Altruism, compassion, empathy, love, conscience, the sense of justice–all of these things, the things that hold society together, can now confidently be said to have a firm genetic basis (The Moral Animal).

     Pinker gave this explanation for the evolutionary endowed moral sense while discussing the dilemma of conflicting self-interests among individuals:

     “…there are reasons to believe that the solution to it–a moral sense–evolved in our species rather than having to be deduced from scratch by each of us after we’ve picked ourselves up out of the mud. Children as young as a year and a half spontaneously give toys, proffer help, and try to comfort adults or other children who are visibly distressed. People in all cultures distinguish right from wrong, have a sense of fairness, help one another, impose rights and obligations, believe that wrongs should be redressed, and proscribe rape, murder, and some kinds of violence (The Blank Slate).

     The alternative to the religious theory of the source of values is that evolution endowed us with a moral sense, and we have expanded its circle of application over the course of history through reason, knowledge and sympathy.

     What would be the right thing to do if god had commanded people to be selfish and cruel rather than generous and kind? Those who root their values in religion would have to say that we ought to be selfish and cruel. Those who appeal to a moral sense would say that we ought to reject god’s command.

     —

     This understanding of human nature is vital in preserving the freedoms of all people. White southerners justified their actions against black people, both while they were slaves and after, by pretending blacks were less than human in order to deny them the characteristics that would make their enslavement wrong. They created stereotyped caricatures of black people to portray a difference in the nature of black people compared to white people. A universality in human nature defines this as clearly wrong, not just morally but also factually.

     We can assume a shared concept of the meaning of life: the pursuit of happiness, both for ourselves and others. Morality is notrelative. Ethics and morality exist in real terms as revolving around this idea: we do not have the right to purposely cause others pain or deny them their happiness and freedom.

154. “Altruism, compassion, empathy, love, conscience, the sense of justice–all of these things, the things that hold society together, can now confidently be said to have a firm genetic basis (The Moral Animal).”

     Altruism and love are, ahem, scientifically proven to be innate? I’d like to see the slide on which the “Scientist” first isolated love and identified its molecular structure. Interestingly, although the transcendent soul is near universal, he didn’t find one of those in his lab, huh?

     You’re simply slipping the rabbit into the tophat yet again, so that you can pull it out and say “ta-daaa” at the appropriate time.

     You see, it is the morality of religion, less a few parts that you don’t like (let’s say prohibitions against homosexuality) by which you judge alleged “evolutionary morality” to determine which of it is “moral.” You simply ignore the parts of the human evolutionary product which are similarly innate – jealousy, hatred, spite, sloth, ambition, dominance – as something else yet undefined and unaccounted. In truth, the “innately moral” attributes seem curiously to be extended to the “in-group” and not the “out-group” (probably called “clans” or “families” in an earlier age) and track social contract theory quite conveniently, wouldn’t you agree, Sarah? So, what you have shown is that people generally treat their families well, and their families treat them well. Fascinating.

155. “And are you denying that according to Christianity (your religion), men are the default human beings and women the helpers? You obviously get your values from your religion (and can’t understand how anyone could even have values w/out it); we’re bright enough to put 2 + 2 together.”

     1. I’m a Roman Catholic, yes. I suppose that qualifies as a “Christian.” Not a perfect one, but yes.

     2. I am unaware of the term “default human being” in my religion. Men generally occupy a different office than women, which is only outrageous if you think that men and women are the same, and that what little girls need is to play with trucks. I was taught by nuns, nearly exclusively, until the age of about 14 or so. Had I known that they weren’t real human beings, I certainly would have brought this to their attention in the service of getting them to, you know, stop hitting me.

156. You simply ignore the parts of the human evolutionary product which are similarly innate – jealousy, hatred, spite, sloth, ambition, dominance – as something else yet undefined and unaccounted.

     I never denied those things. They weren’t relevant to my point. You are clearly operating on a very different plane than I. Perhaps the “morality of religion” generally reflects “evolutionary morality,” rather than the other way around. Ancient religions claimed those morals came from god because they did not yet understand the human brain or evolution. “What is that loud booming noise coming from the sky?” “We must’ve angered god.” They didn’t know about meteorology yet. Now we do. “God” is an outdated concept.

157. They weren’t relevant to my point.

     They were, in fact, contrary to your point – which is why they weren’t addressed.

     Perhaps the “morality of religion” generally reflects “evolutionary morality,” rather than the other way around.

     Or perhaps the Creator endowed humankind with right reason and conscience, permitting the moral development of humanity until such time as it was ready to receive direct revelation. But you’re getting closer – to Natural Law . . .

158. Hey. Coward. Enough with the philosophical discussions that allow you to go in circles forever. Time for facts:

     Who. Is. Working. On:

     1) The artificial uterus that can support an embryo from a point early enough in the pregnancy that the woman has not yet felt any significant physical symptoms.

     2) The surgical procedure, both simpler and safer than abortion, that can transfer said embryo to said artificial uterus without killing it.

     Somebody must be, or your wouldn’t have said that these things would change the debate within twenty years.

     Names. Links.

     You can keep trying to ignore me, but the more you do, the clearer it becomes to everyone watching that you’ve got nothing.

159. BWAAHAHAHAAAAAHAHHAA!!! Burned. ;D

160. You’re right, Sarah, all of Western history is an elaborate consipracy to get you to do the laundry.

     Fuck dude, I thought it was an elaborate conspiracy to enable your mom to leave your dad and abuse you. Now it’s about laundry? My little x chromosome brain is getting all confused, can you please splain to me again about when and how the kill all babies dead and kill them now plot was hatched and slowly took over the universe? Was it gestated in an artificial womb from a zygote?

161. Fuck dude, I thought it was an elaborate conspiracy to enable your mom to leave your dad and abuse you. Now it’s about laundry? My little x chromosome brain is getting all confused, can you please splain to me again about when and how the kill all babies dead and kill them now plot was hatched and slowly took over the universe? Was it gestated in an artificial womb from a zygote?

     I think that it was modeled along the lines of the most successful evil conspiracy of all time – the patriarchy – but without the barbecued meats and cigars.

162. And fucktard, how many children do you plan to adopt?

     I just realized you’re the one who came in here whining about welfare queens scamming you out of all your hard-earned money.

163. Again, you use sarcasm to avoid facing the contradictions in your worldview. Patriarchy is a feminist fantasy but the feminist conspiracy to make women leave their husbands and abuse their kids is real.

164. Again, you use sarcasm to avoid facing the contradictions in your worldview. Patriarchy is a feminist fantasy but the feminist conspiracy to make women leave their husbands and abuse their kids is real.

     Well, Sarah, are you actually going to deny your own existence and that of feministe? Or that there is copious literature from an earlier time in the feminist movement targeting marriage for extinguishment as an “inherently patriarchal institution” and the abolishment of the fault-based regime of divorce law as a means to accomplish this end? You have meetings and symposia and literature and endowed chairs and think tanks. Where is the patriarchy blog? Where was the patriarchy’s foundational meeting, you know, being that patriarchal structures dominated in the West, Near East, Far East, Americas, etc., before significant cultural interchanges between these cultures? Is there a patriarchal grand council? Who is on it? Dracula, Destro, the Pope, Darth Vader?

165. Michael Corleone.

     He must be the titular head of the Patriarchal Grand Council and Bocce club.

166. Shorter Tony: “Wahhhh, I’m no longer legally permitted to own a woman!”

     Psst: How many children are you gonna adopt?

167. Shorter Tony: “Wahhhh, I’m no longer legally permitted to own a woman!”

     Psst: How many children are you gonna adopt?

     Sarah, you should know by now that I don’t need to legally own a woman – they come out of the box properly brainwashed to want to be subservient as per you, and psychologically adjusted to like it.

     I’ve always been open to adoption, Sarah – as a matter of fact, my aunt and uncle adopted five. Apparently, you don’t think that my wife ought to have much say in whether or how many?

168. Stop kidding yourself, Tony. You won’t adopt. You’ll have your wife barefoot and pregnant until you reach your quota of mini-mes.

     Oh, and if women can’t be good mothers while working outside the home, how can men be good fathers while working outside the home?

169. Stop kidding yourself, Tony. You won’t adopt. You’ll have your wife barefoot and pregnant until you reach your quota of mini-mes.

     Oh, and if women can’t be good mothers while working outside the home, how can men be good fathers while working outside the home?

     Of course every feminist can tell me what I will do at some time to be determined in the future.

     Well, I would reiterate the axiom that men and women are different, and that the offices of mother and father are, by nature, different – requiring different committments of time, and are wholly different relationships. But you plum just can’t accept this, Sarah, so it is useless to argue the point with you.

     Sarah – you are not, by chance, a sophomore in college, are you?

170. Tony, the office of motherhood and fatherhood? Is it something you run for? My husband is an RN with a certification in pediatric life support who has already rasied two kids. We are fond of joking that if I had a baby, I could jump on a plane and disappear and he would be fine. It’s true – in fact, he knows a LOT more about babies than I do. Why? Because his genetic code misfired? NO – he was SOCIALIZED by experience. I wasn’t. Anyone can be. He can’t get a baby gestated by himself, but that’s really about all he can’t do. The only “office” involved in parenting is the one society tries to appoint us to, often to the detriment of the talents and interests of the parents, and hence the best interests of the children. Since the industrial revolution, strict gender roles produced a lot of emotionally distant fathers involved exclusively in paid work and a lot of women who had to struggle with paid work they were poorly trained for in order to support their families (men being human have a way of dying, getting fired, and leaving – both my grandfathers did the former – young). Chidlren all need the same things, and if they get them, it does not matter so much from who, certainly not which of their parents takes them to the most doctors apppointments or better understands them emotionally. Know what the biggest predictor of a child’s economic success is? Whether the FATHER goes to PTA meetings. I guess fathers who go to PTA meetings are fairly involved in their child’s life in a way that is rare (my husband practially gets room keys thrown at him when he goes). Matters more than whether the mother stays home, the family eats dinner together etc. Why? I think because parenting is hard and if both people are down in the engine room it is a lot easier on everyone. Remember that not many generations ago, men stayed home too. It was called farming. Men actually showed their kids how they were going to support themselves later in life, disciplined them, and kept them from falling into the hay rick. Men can do it again, and really, they have to. In a post-agriarian econcomy most people are going to have to work for wages outside the home sooner or later (the farmer’s wife was working her tail off, it’s just that now the means of production have moved outside the home – she has to follow), and if we tell ourselves that means women have to do paid work AND 70% of the child rearing and house work also, the more rational among us are going to tend to give up on the kid thing. Thanks for the credit card number, but your limit was reached after I bought the power boat. I’m afraid you don’t have enough credit to even pay for most common fertility treatments (as I know from experience), much less to gestate a child artifically and then even send the tyke to community college.

171. And fucktard, how many children do you plan to adopt?

     Uh, this guys sounds like a protoserial killer or something. You want him potentially adopting girls? Maybe it would help him work out his psychological issues, but I’m envisoning something more along the lines of “This is for mama! You killed my spirit, I’m gonna kill your body, it’s all your vagina’s fault, you made me this way.” Not very encouraging.

172. “Well, I would reiterate the axiom that men and women are different, and that the offices of mother and father are, by nature, different – requiring different committments of time, and are wholly different relationships. But you plum just can’t accept this, Sarah, so it is useless to argue the point with you.”

     I don’t accept it because it’s mythology. What you’re saying is that the role of the father is breadwinner, and breadwinner alone. Sometimes strict disciplinarian. In reality, mom and dad (or mom and mom or dad and dad) can have an egalitarian relationship in and out of the home. The kids learn that parents should share responsibilities, and that relationships are not supposed to be dominator/dominated, but equal partnerships. Why restrict yourself to the role of breadwinner? You think kids don’t crave their father’s attention? Like BMC said, Since the industrial revolution, strict gender roles produced a lot of emotionally distant fathers involved exclusively in paid work and a lot of women who had to struggle with paid work they were poorly trained for in order to support their families…
     Such arrangements are disfunctional and they set women up for disappointment if/when their husbands leave them or die. You obviously think it’s ludicrous that a man might take on the role of SAHD (because it puts him at an economic disadvantage), and yet you insist that women should do so. It’s because you view women as inferior, and less deserving of a wide range of options in life.

     “Sarah – you are not, by chance, a sophomore in college, are you?”

     Um, no.

173. Aw, Tony, honey, don’t be like that. I’m sorry about calling you a coward. Don’t ignore me, baby. Can I please have those names and links?

174. wow. swell takedown, folks.
     i wonder what it would look like if we changed every mention of women and feminism to black people and racial equality in TONY’S posts. that’s always an illuminating trick.
     as for me, i’m going to name my band Evil Totem and the pre-born babies.

175. I was thinking that too, bluefish.

     “Why should black people have the same social, political and economic freedoms white people have?”

     “Black people and white people are fundamentally different. Therefore, it’s imperative that we confine black people to the professions/hobbies/family roles they’re naturally good at and prevent them from doing things they’re not as good at. Black folks excell at sports. It’d be a waste of time for a black person to study law or finance.”

176. “and that the offices of mother and father are, by nature, different – requiring different committments of time, and are wholly different relationships.”

     Um, no.

     My fiance was, well not raised, but fathered by a man who believed his sole responsibility as a father was to work. No quality time, no games of catch, zip, zero, nada. And it sucked. Sucked, b/c it left him abandoned by both his parents, his father cuz he couldn’t be bothered, and his mother, cuz between working full time and trying to care for the house, she didn’t have time for him.

177. Well Aeyrl, your fiance’s mother is clearly the one to blame because she worked outside the home. The dad can’t be blamed for accepting his god-given duty as distant provider.

178. SarahMC:

     And I think it’s funny, but you see child abuse(not just physical) more often from fathers, especially towards daughters, but you don’t see us(abused women as a whole) demanding that men be kept in the same restrictive gender roles. Could it be that we rationally deduce the correct causes of such abuse, and turn our efforts towards rectifying that, instead of blaming the progress of one gender, as the cause of all our ills?

     Probably.

     Imagine, women are more reasonable than men. Who coulda thunk it?

Comments are currently closed.