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

If a fertilized egg is a person…

Jill

masturbation

If a fertilized egg is a person like Mike Huckabee says, can a post-coital woman drive in the carpool lane?


Even more questions from the fabulous Pam. I for one would really like to be able to claim my fertilized eggs as tax deductions. I’ll even send my used tampons directly to Gov. Huckabee as evidence.

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The slightly sick side of me thinks that a campaign wherein women sent their used tampons to Huckabee’s headquarters — because, you know, there might be people on those tampons, and someone needs to examine them and offer a proper Christian burial — would be kind of genius. Unfortunately I’m pretty sure it’s a health risk and there would be some legal issues involved (also, I’d imagine mailing a “person” is illegal). But I still enjoy the thought of asking Huck to adopt all of our fertilized egg tampon-dwelling babies.

60 thoughts on If a fertilized egg is a person…

  2. Fuck claiming the fertilized eggs. I think I should be able to claim all of them on my taxes, fertilized or not. Or at least however many I start off the year with.

  3. hahaha…if you’re sick, great minds think alike, jill…

    but i guess logic rears its head in our fun again…oh well

    but i liked where you were going w/ that…

  4. Put it in a ziplock and then in a biohazard bag and put in a sturdy box. That’s how I send lab draws through the mail and it’s legal. Mark clearly “lab specimens, non infectious” on the outside. I don’t know why it wouldn’t fly; you can throw tampons in a normal trash can so it’s not a health risk.

  7. While this is a great way to protest….I can see the potential headlines now:

    HUCKABEE HEADQUARTERS DENOUNCE BIOLOGICAL WARFARE ATTACK FROM FEMINISTS.

    FEMINIST GRASSROOTS CAMPAIGN INUNDATES MIKE HUCKABEE WITH USED TAMPONS.

    MIKE HUCKABEE DENOUNCES GROSS AND “UNGODLY” ONLINE FEMINIST PROTEST.

    HUCKABEE HQ PARALYZED BY FEMINISTS’ USED TAMPON ATTACK: CHUCK NORRIS APPOINTED AS NEW CAMPAIGN MANAGER.

    GOV. HUCKABEE, CHUCK NORRIS, AND SEVERAL STAFFERS HOSPITALIZED AFTER BEING OVERWHELMED BY ONLINE FEMINIST TAMPON PROTEST.

  9. Oh and … If you miscarry, do you have to report it to the police and have them examine the “crime scene” to see if it was the mother’s fault the fetus died? And if it is determined it is the mother’s fault for miscarrying, does she go to jail for murder?

  11. Like it or not, this guy will be the VP with McCain. McCain has no other options since he’s considered too liberal. He needs Huckabee to use another “Southern Strategy”. The South is worth 168 electoral votes. They’ll be voting GOP for a good while. =/

  12. Hilarious.

    I have a friend who had several months of super-heavy bleeding on the Depo-Provera shot. Her doctor told her she must be overestimating the amount of blood she was losing. She was using a Keeper (Diva, whatever it’s called now), so she saved the blood in a jar and brought it to her doctor.

    We should send jars of menstrual blood to Huckabee.

  13. McCain has no other options since he’s considered too liberal.

    If we’re talking about “Republicans who are more conservative than McCain,” he has LOTS of options besides Huckabee. And Huckabee is certainly not a conservative–more like a populist who’s done too much bible-reading.

  14. Believing that masturbation is murder comes from bad, outdated science. It also conveniently explains original sin. If only Huckabee, or the Pope for that matter, was willing to do a little critical thinking! Check out the Wikipedia article on homunculus:”…the sperm was in fact a “little man” (homunculus) that was placed inside a woman for growth into a child. This seemed to them to neatly explain many of the mysteries of conception. It was later pointed out that if the sperm was a homunculus, identical in all but size to an adult, then the homunculus may have sperm of its own. This led to a reductio ad absurdum, with a chain of homunculi “all the way down”. This was not necessarily considered by spermists a fatal objection however, as it neatly explained how it was that “in Adam” all had sinned: the whole of humanity was already contained in his loins…”

  16. Wow–it would be awesome to bombard Huck’s office with “potential human lives” in the form of used menstrual products. Yep, though, I’m pretty sure it would be an actionable health hazard. Could we send unused feminine hygiene products, though, as a symbolic protest? That might send a message. Environmental issues, of course–what about keepers?

    Tampons painted with red nail polish?

    just thinking out loud here….

  17. SKM, I once did some street theatre (this was the 70s okay, I could probably get arrested now) in which I presented a “Bloody Coathanger Award” to National Right to Life at a State Fair. I was gonna use real blood, but the Yippies warned me you could get charged with passing disease or something for that (they had done it for war protests), so I painted it with nail polish, but the color was really too *bright*–and unfortunately, if you used a darker red you couldn’t see any color at all. And it had to be a wire hanger.

    So I used the bright red, but I felt like it didn’t look bloody enough.

    I was escorted from the premises, but I remembered to yell “Women’s bodies! Women’s choice!” Boos, applause, etc. One of the cops called me a lunatic, but that was it.

    I got my photo in a local RTL newsletter as an “extremist”–I’m proud to say. 🙂

  19. Is sperm a life? NO
    Is an egg a life? NO
    Put them together, YES.
    that’s how Human Reproduction works
    sperm and egg are the potentials for life
    the fertilized egg (or zygote) is when life begins, a chemical reaction changes the egg when the sperm enters, the new life contains chromosomes from both parents and is an entirely new new creature that is unique. Human begins are actually no more than that original cell. We are just a lot more divisions, copies, and specializations to form the human body. Come on this is Middle School Biology and Sex-Ed.
    So Masturbation is NOT murder. If a fertilized egg does not implant it dies (meaning that it was previously alive). It is a natural death, as is a miscarriage. The women isn’t murdering, thats just how reproduction works. Pro-Life people look to protect life from Fertilization to natural death. Further more I think throwing tampons at people would be disgusting. I’m shocked that someone, especially after Pro-Choice complaints against Pro-lifers carrying signs with aborted fetuses (which most Pro-Lifers disagree with and think is sick), would talk about throwing bloody tampons and people.

  20. Ya know what makes me sad…

    this is *such* a brilliant plan. But it would never be implemented. Could we really get enough women to send Huckabee “bloody tampons” in order to make our point heard?

    I believe the feminist revolution is LONG over due to for SOMETHING. ANYTHING to happen.

    Daisy- you are awesome! We need more women like you my age! Where are all the young feminists, and when will we stop blogging and DO SOMETHING?

    (just as guilty as the rest of you, btw. I’m not blaming anyone here. I wouldn’t make it through my work day with our Feministe!)

  21. Ah I see. Adult products of a public school education who weren’t paying attention in biology class when conception was discussed….

    An egg is not a human being.
    A sperm is not a human being.

    But the euphemistic “fertilized egg” (technically, “zygote”) is no longer an egg, and no longer a sperm, but has become a genetically unique individual member of the species “homo sapiens”. In other words, a unique human being.

    Once conception happens it’s no longer “the woman’s body” which is why it is possible to conceive a zygote in a petri dish – otherwise known as “in vitro” fertilization as opposed to “in utero”.

    But you all know the details because you’re all sophisticated, “scientifically” hip people who wouldn’t let ideology blind you to the reality of biology 101 out of convenience, right?

    Science and logical consistency are not your sides’ friends – which is why we get strawman arguments about sperm being people and 13th century concepts of biology as justification for cat calls about Huckabee’s intelligence.

    Fact remains, if the moral principle you use to justify the execution of the weakest and most vulnerable human beings on earth ever gets applied beyond the abortion debate, we’re all doomed because it boils down to the strong being able to abuse the weak with impunity and rights being nothing more than fancy words meaning raw power.

    You’d think women who fashion themselves to be victims of power would understand that killing their own offspring is to become aggressors in their own right. What could be more regressive than a move to strip human rights of any objective meaning?

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  23. But the euphemistic “fertilized egg” (technically, “zygote”) is no longer an egg, and no longer a sperm, but has become a genetically unique individual member of the species “homo sapiens”. In other words, a unique human being. – John

    OK … so then what if the zygote splits and results in (identical) twins. Are they only one human being?

    Anyway, the zygote is still within a woman’s body and entirely dependent on it. If it is not part of the body, therefore it is a parasite. But I shouldn’t use that language as it’ll offend Amy Sullivan

    Still, this whole “when does life begin”(*) argument is a distraction anyway. To say that a woman cannot terminate a pregnancy gives a fetus rights and a pregnant woman obligations we never would otherwise enforce. We do say children have a right to shelter, clothing, food, etc. — and if their parents cannot and will not provide for them, then they ought to make other arrangments (AFDC, for foster care/adoption). In the case of a fetus, what other arrangements can be made?

    Moreover, we do not say children have a right to your organs or blood supply. If your child needs your kidney to survive, there is no parental obligation to give up a kidney (even if that donation will not kill the parent). Imagine that your kid has some disease and you wake up one day and find your kid hooked up to a machine also attached to you so that your kid can get nurishment from your blood and dump his/her waste products into your blood. In the process, you have been injured a bit and moreover to allow your body to accept the machine, you are being given potentially dangerous doses of hormones … you would have a right to rip out the machine, even if that means the kid would die. This is equivalent to abortion — so how come you’d say a pregnant woman is obligated to have her “kid” feed off of her system while anybody else would never have that obligation?

    You do not have a right to essentially be a vampire and live off the blood of another. I do not have that right. It is not “regressive” or “a move to strip human rights of any objective meaning” to assert this fact, is it? So how come to assert that a fetus has no right to live off the very blood of a pregnant woman is “a move to strip human rights of any objective meaning”?

    I think you need to consider what is scientifically real here …

    * An oldie but goodie:

    An ecumenical panel consisting of a Priest, a (liberal) Minister and a Rabbi were discussing the abortion issue and when life begins. The Priest says “life begins at conception”. The Minister says “life begins at birth”. The Rabbi says “nu? when does life begin? life begins when the children finally move out of the house and you can finally get some peace and quiet!”.

  25. Oh, hell. As someone who lives in Los Angeles, I’d almost be willing to give up my right to my body in order to drive in the carpool lane every time I’ve got my period! (Although technically, I should be able to drive in the carpool lane EVERY day, right?)

    Kidding. I’m kidding.

    I think.

    Brilliant idea about the tampons, btw. 🙂

  26. John: Women’s bodies naturally expel zygotes quite frequently. They could well show up on a tampon; the end of a so-called “chemical pregnancy” doesn’t seem any different from the usual menstruation.

    If Huckabee thought through his position, he should indeed be poring over tampons for these expelled cells so as to know when to properly mourn.

  27. John,
    Do you volunteer to be the Official Tampon Inspector?

    *waiting*

    Talk about logical inconsistency…

  28. When those zygotes created in a petri dish can also be developed into an actual human being outside a human body a la Woman on the Edge of Time, then you can talk about how they aren’t part of a woman’s body.

    And John, you are aware that in vitro fertilization involves anticipating and planning the “deaths” of some zygotes, aren’t you?

  29. But the euphemistic “fertilized egg” (technically, “zygote”) is no longer an egg, and no longer a sperm, but has become a genetically unique individual member of the species “homo sapiens”.

    So, John, since you’ve invoked a claim of superior biology knowledge, I have a few questions for you…

    1. If a zygote is a human being, then are monozygotic twins each 1/2 a person? They both formed from a single fertilized egg.
    2. Likewise, is a chimera (person whose body contains DNA from two eggs which merged early in development) really two people as he/she formed from two fertilized eggs?
    3. BTW: The term “zygote” is no more or less technically correct than the term “fertilized egg” if you’re talking about the single celled organism. Once it divides, of course, it is no longer a fertilized egg. Most “unfertilized eggs” are really oocytes. I assume that because of your superior biology knowledge (TM) you don’t need me to explain the difference.
    4. Fertilization is not a single event but a series of events. When in fertilization do you consider the “unique human” to have formed? The fusion of the sperm and egg membranes? The alternation of the egg’s membrane that prevents further sperm from entering? The fusion of the pronuclei? Some other point?
    5. If the joining of egg and sperm is the beginning of life, how can brain death possibly be the end of life? If a single unique cell is a person then a person’s life must end only when the last living cell is dead. Lots of murder going on in transplant units and ICUs.
    6. Furthermore, is it murder to donate blood or bone marrow? You’re sending off little “you”s to someone else and inevitably only a minority of the cells will survive.
    7. Then there’s cloning. It hasn’t been done in primates yet, but that’s a technical problem. Are clones, who were never the sacred little fertilized egg (though they were once later zygotes–see the need to separate the terms?), people?
    8. Then there’s cancer. Cancer is genetically unique and (at least if it is a human cancer) human. Is chemotherapy murder?

    So, can you answer even one of these questions? I’m betting not, but would be pleasantly surprised if you did respond. So few people on either side of the debate look at the biology in a really in depth way. Those that do almost always are or become pro-choice.

  30. And John, you are aware that in vitro fertilization involves anticipating and planning the “deaths” of some zygotes, aren’t you?

    Funny thing about this…

    No zygote can live outside of a woman at all and develop into a baby.

    So much for the “independent human being” argument John is attempting to make. Independent human beings, individuals don’t need to survive by siphoning off the resources of another living person. Could be a reason why personhood isn’t confirred until birth…

    Just saying.

    Frankly, I wonder what John would do if faced with this dilemma:

    A fertility clinic is on fire. John can escape his death and take someone with him. His options are a newborn, or several test tubes filled with frozen embryos. If we follow John’s logic, he would HAVE to save the test tubes filled with embryos – for he would in essence be saving FAR more “individual human beings” than if he wasted his time rescuing a born infant. Afterall – “INNOCENT LIVES” are at stake…

  31. Although technically, I should be able to drive in the carpool lane EVERY day, right?)

    Until you hit menopause, yes. After all, you can’t ever tell whether you’re pregnant or not, since irregular oocyte release can occur (but rarely does) at any time. We’re all “pre-pregnant” you know.

  32. If Huckabee thought through his position, he should indeed be poring over tampons for these expelled cells so as to know when to properly mourn.

    There you go expecting misogynists pretending to be “pro-life” to think. It’s abundantly clear at this point that they don’t do that.

  33. No zygote can live outside of a woman at all and develop into a baby.

    Really, this is just a technical problem. There’s no reason why we couldn’t figure out a way to grow concepti to term in vitro except that no one is interested in doing it. Especially not pro-lifers. It’s probably also quite possible for a man to gestate a zygote/embryo/fetus to term on his intestinal lining (women can: it’s one of the few cases in which an ectopic pregnancy is potentially viable), but when I’ve suggested that I’d be willing to be the PI for such an experiment if I could get a volunteer for the test subject suddenly all the pro-life men go silent. Strange, that. You’d almost think that they weren’t really interested in saving the precious little snowflakes.

  34. After watching a documentary on Tasmanian devils, I am moved to wonder just how different this debate would be if humans were marsupial. Twenty barely-developed Tasmanian devils heading for a Tasmanian devil pouch: four nipples.

  35. Dianne,

    I highly recommend the book “Embryo” by Robert P. George and Christopher Tollefsen. They answer all your objections in post #27.

  36. An egg is not a human being.
    A sperm is not a human being.

    But the euphemistic “fertilized egg” (technically, “zygote”) is no longer an egg, and no longer a sperm, but has become a genetically unique individual member of the species “homo sapiens”. In other words, a unique human being.

    (Sorry about multi-posting on this: once someone appeals to biology and gets it this wrong, I have a hard time turning off my outrage.)

    However, the problem here isn’t even biology, it is logic–or lack thereof. If all it takes to be a “unique individula member of the species H sapiens” is derivation from H. sapiens cells and different DNA from all other cells, then sperm and unfertilized eggs clearly are humans. Everyone knows that gametes (reproductive cells) are haploid, right? But they are derived from adults who are diploid. Therefore, they are genetically different from their parent cells. And they must be different from each other or all full siblings would be identical twins, different only in their age. Thus, by John’s logic, all gametes must be humans and the argument he dismisses as “strawman” holds.

    But of course, he doesn’t believe that. He doesn’t really believe that fertilized eggs or pre-implantation zygotes are people either. Virtually no one, not even the most ardent pro-lifers do. How can I make this claim so certainly? Just look at their actions. If every fertilized egg is a person then there is a serious pandemic going on: 50-80% (estimates vary) of eggs which are fertilized are not implanted and end in very early spontaneous abortion. But virtually no one, certainly not pro-lifers, shows any interest in preventing these deaths. There is no National Institute for the Prevention of Miscarriage at the NIH. There are no national initiatives to fund pre-implantation miscarriage research. There are no private foundations dedicated to preventing pre-implantation miscarriages. There is quite literally no funding available to look into the problem and prevent it. This is inconcievable (pardon the pun).

    If half or more of babies were dying within two weeks of being born there would be a huge outcry and a vast amount of money spent trying to prevent these deaths. Pro-lifers sometimes claim that they are concentrating on abortion because murder is worse than natural death. But can you imagine people saying, in the face of an epidemic killing more than half of newborns “oh, but we won’t worry about it until there is no more infanticide”? Not a chance. Would people say, “but we don’t know why the deaths are occuring so we can’t do anything about it” (as pro-lifers say of the miscarriages)? NO. They’d be clammering for research that would lead to an understanding of why it was happening and how to prevent it. No one likes to see babies die. The amount of money spent on research into childhood leukemia, Hodgkin’s disease, SIDS, neonatal infection, etc and the resources spent treating sick infants in NICUs is far out of proportion to the number of people affected by these diseases because we, as a society feel that it is particularly important to care for children. So why aren’t pro-lifers upset about the lack of research into the causes and treatment of early miscarriage, which kills the “weakest and most vulnerable human beings” (to quote John)? Either they’re unspeakable inhuman monsters who don’t care about children or they don’t believe that a single cell or small, undifferentiated mass of cells are people either. Or both.

    So, John, finding your homeschool education in biology inadequate yet?

  37. Oh I see, so because twinning is possible post-conception, we conclude there is no human individual there? How could there be two or more individuals in that pluripotenial cell if there isn’t at least one?

    You don’t go from nothing to 2 or more individuals anymore than you don’t go from one egg and one sperm to immediately 2 or more cells.

    In other words, at least one human individual is the result of conception. Might be more, but it’s not a skin cell, a bone marrow cell, not a cancer, and not an egg or a sperm but at least one new, completely unique human individual.

    Sure natural processes might result in accidents, deformities, or natural death. Having a miscarriage is not a moral problem anymore than any other accidental homicide is ‘murder’.

    Because WORDS MEAN THINGS. It’s not the same moral thing to accidentally hurt someone as to intentionally hurt them.

    As for the old “it’s the woman’s body because it’s In my body” canard – the fact that conception can occur in a petri dish (not saying I’m “for it” just stating the fact that it does occur) means that human life need not be “in” the woman’s body to begin at all. Naturally the fetus needs a human womb to grow in. But again the fact that it IS POSSIBLE to conceive a fetus in a petri dish, and then implant this fetus in a surrogate mothers’ womb is one more proof that the fetus is NOT “the woman’s body”.

    Again, I personally am not “for” IVF or surrogate mothers, but both are IN FACT possible and this MEANS that human life can begin and develop apart from “the woman’s body”.

    And while there are analogous similarities between a fetus and all other cells (as one would expect) it’s not true that it’s “nothing but” a cancerous growth. (Else, where would human beings come from? The sheer magical will power of the woman???)

    Nor is the fetus any other cell of the woman’s body *(since it has it’s own genes, own unique DNA).

    You may persist in not wanting to be pregnant but your will does not magically change reality. Calling the unique human being “a parasite” does not magically make it “ah, it’s ‘just a parasite'” or a bug, or a blob of tissue, or a non-human individual of the species Homo Sapiens.

    Calling this unique human being a parasite is to make an analogy, not to define it. De-humanizing other human beings though is a prerequisite for victimizing them. It’s how the Whites justified slavery and the Nazis justified the holocaust – by calling their victims de-humanizing names. It’s how Jihadi terrorists justify their slaughter of innocents by calling them “monkeys” or “pigs”.

    Thus you THINK we pro-lifers consider women “sluts” and that justifies your rage. Not at all. A third of pro-life leaders are women who have had abortions themselves! They’re not calling women names, dehumanizing them. They just acknowledge what is going on and wish to spare others from the grief they experienced.

    Dozens of pro-life male leaders were FORMER ABORTIONISTS. We don’t loath them or hate them. We forgive them and recognize that people make mistakes and recognize their efforts to make amends. No one in the pro-life movement is calling for these former abortionists to be killed or further punished. Nor is ANY pro-life group calling for women to be jailed. Losing your own offspring is punishment enough.

    We’d rather women not be thrust in to the dire situation where they feel they must choose death in the first place.

    I wholeheartedly agree we are not doing enough to help women. But then again, we don’t get $300 million in federal tax dollars per year like Planned Parenthood gets. The combined total budgets of the top 5 pro-life groups is scarcely $40 million. And none of them get tax dollars.

    So what – besides giving contraception – that does not work, obviously – does Planned Parenthood do to prevent abortion? To expect the PROVIDER of abortion to really help women choose not to abort is like expecting Cigarette companies to sincerely work to keep people from smoking. They’ll claim they do for PR, but look at their budget and you’ll see the overwhelming % of their money goes to abortion, not prevention or “helping women with free health care, pre-natal care, housing, job training etc.”.

    The baffling thing to me is the rage and hate I see from your side…. death is always the solution it seems. Marriage of course is pooh poohed. So is motherhood. Sex is reduced to pure egocentric enjoyment, and there’s this undercurrent of rage at men, rage at your own fertility, rage at the differences of gender.

    If anyone gets in the way of your whim, the answer is invariably: dehumanize the person, call them nasty sounding names to justify hate and then call for their extermination all while claiming to be victims.

    On the other side, we’re not calling for abortionist’s to be killed or women to be jailed. We’re calling for women to choose life. For men to behave themselves. For rapists to be punished (and not spared by Planned Parenthood), for adults to behave like adults not perpetual adolescents.

    Because we see that long term happiness is not found in your “lifestyles”. If we hated you, we’d be indifferent.

  38. The baffling thing to me is the rage and hate I see from your side…. death is always the solution it seems.

    You utter disregard for women causes rage. Yeah, I get it, you like to cough your total disregard in language that pretends to care. You think we’re fooled. We’re not.

    I mean, seriously, you’d force a rape victim to carry the pregnancy of a rapist, and you don’t understand why no one takes your “I care, really!” baloney seriously?

    Marriage of course is pooh poohed. So is motherhood. Sex is reduced to pure egocentric enjoyment, and there’s this undercurrent of rage at men, rage at your own fertility, rage at the differences of gender.

    Bald. Faced. Lies. All. You’re just reaching for excuses for your misogyny.

    If we hated you, we’d be indifferent

    😆 Did you really think we would fall for that? Please.

  39. As for the old “it’s the woman’s body because it’s In my body” canard – the fact that conception can occur in a petri dish (not saying I’m “for it” just stating the fact that it does occur) means that human life need not be “in” the woman’s body to begin at all. Naturally the fetus needs a human womb to grow in. But again the fact that it IS POSSIBLE to conceive a fetus in a petri dish, and then implant this fetus in a surrogate mothers’ womb is one more proof that the fetus is NOT “the woman’s body”.

    I do not believe anyone here said a fetus is “the woman’s body” perhaps you could show where that was claimed. However what you woefully ignore repeatedly is that a fetus resides in a woman’s body and uses the woman’s body and resources to sustain itself. And if a woman does not want for that to happen – you simply don’t care for you have decided that a woman’s wants are irrelevant. She is to remain pregnant whether she likes it or not, be her health endangered or not. She is subservient to said fetus. Hardly caring for the woman at all.

    Again, I personally am not “for” IVF or surrogate mothers, but both are IN FACT possible and this MEANS that human life can begin and develop apart from “the woman’s body”.

    Fertilization is possible apart from a woman’s body. Gestation, however, is another matter. Are you willing to gestate these “innocent lives”? Are you working on the artificial womb?

    You may persist in not wanting to be pregnant but your will does not magically change reality.

    No, but an abortion sure helps. And regardless of one being safe and legal or illegal and lethal they DO happen. Did you happen to take a look at the pro-life nation of El Salvador? Lots of “saved” feti and lots of dead women too….

    Thus you THINK we pro-lifers consider women “sluts” and that justifies your rage. Not at all.

    Trust me, our rage has a lot more to do with the fact you would rather see us as forced incubators or dead than you calling us silly little names like sluts…

    A third of pro-life leaders are women who have had abortions themselves! They’re not calling women names, dehumanizing them. They just acknowledge what is going on and wish to spare others from the grief they experienced.

    So what? We’ve all had bad experiences in life we have all wanted to prevent happening to other people. Do we outlaw dating because of breakups? Outlaw Marriage because of divorce? Outlaw exotic foods because some people get the shits? NO. So because SOME women have had a rough time of it – NO women should have to have the choice to terminate or not? Well, my abortion was FINE – how does that compute?

    No one in the pro-life movement is calling for these former abortionists to be killed or further punished. Nor is ANY pro-life group calling for women to be jailed. Losing your own offspring is punishment enough.

    LOL…no they just bomb clinics, harass women and send death trheats to abortion providers and their staff and tehir families. Yes – you are all such a compassionate bunch. And when one of you succeeds in killing a clinic worker or physician you all band together and support the assasin. Yes, you all are such lovers of life and freedom…

    We’d rather women not be thrust in to the dire situation where they feel they must choose death in the first place.

    So then why does every “pro-life” group oppose contraception?

    So what – besides giving contraception – that does not work, obviously – does Planned Parenthood do to prevent abortion?

    LOL…so now you’re claiming that contraception doesn’t work? Proof please.

    To expect the PROVIDER of abortion to really help women choose not to abort is like expecting Cigarette companies to sincerely work to keep people from smoking. They’ll claim they do for PR, but look at their budget and you’ll see the overwhelming % of their money goes to abortion, not prevention or “helping women with free health care, pre-natal care, housing, job training etc.”.

    Your post is getting even funnier as you go on…so do post evidence from planned parenthood that the “overwhelming” amount of money they get goes to abortions.

    The baffling thing to me is the rage and hate I see from your side….

    OH THE IRONY!

    Marriage of course is pooh poohed. So is motherhood. Sex is reduced to pure egocentric enjoyment, and there’s this undercurrent of rage at men, rage at your own fertility, rage at the differences of gender.

    LOL…I’m married, a mother and love my husband. You’ll have to do A LOT better than that.

    On the other side, we’re not calling for abortionist’s to be killed or women to be jailed.

    Now you out yourself as a liar. Apparantly you haven’t been paying attention to your causes activists.

    Because we see that long term happiness is not found in your “lifestyles”

    How would you know since you don’t live our lives or walk in our shoes?

    You presume a lot as an individual man to know so much about so many – and about pregnancy, a condition you will never endure.

  40. Nor is the fetus any other cell of the woman’s body *(since it has it’s own genes, own unique DNA).

    Sigh. So does the sperm, so does the egg. So does a cancer cell. This is really one of the stupider arguments for considering a fertilized egg a person. I’m very glad you dropped the “I’m so superior and know so much more about biology than you do” line, because it’s pretty clear that you don’t know much.

    How could there be two or more individuals in that pluripotenial cell if there isn’t at least one?

    How can a sperm and egg result in an individual if neither of them contains one?

    So, why does the pandemic killing over 1/2 of “babies” (aka zygotes) not bother you in the least? Are you an inhuman monster who doesn’t mind babies dying or are you going to admit that you don’t really think that they’re babies?

  41. Again, I personally am not “for” IVF or surrogate mothers, but both are IN FACT possible and this MEANS that human life can begin and develop apart from “the woman’s body”.

    Actually, what it means is that fertilization is one of the more trivial parts of reproduction. It’s so simple we can do it in a petri dish. We can’t support an embryo or fetus until birth or replace even the last few months of gestation with anything like the efficiency of nature, but fertilization we can do because it’s just not that hard and not that important. Implantation is a much more important steps, biologically–relatively few implanted zygotes fail, whereas most just-fertilized eggs will die. Infertility because of an inability of sperm to penetrate egg is rare. It’s just a trivial step in a long process that leads, if all goes well, in the end, to a person. But it’s just one step. Ovulation, ejaculation, implantation, gestation, not to mention courting are all steps in that process as well. Pointing to any one of them and saying that human life* starts right there is just silly and denies the reality of the complex process of human reproduction.

    But speaking of failures of sperm, have you ever heard of the hamster egg assay? It is a test for the relatively rare cause of infertility of sperm being unable to penetrate eggs. The assay is essentially what it sounds like: stick the suspect sperm in with a hamster egg and see what happens. If it works and the egg is fertilized is the result human or non-human? Usually the egg, whatever it is, dies, but sometimes it divides into a zygote…the usual step then is to toss it out quickly before it can do something we don’t want to think about too much. But is that right? Is it murder to kill a human fertilized hamster zygote?

    *Life, of course, began in the precambrian and all life has come from other life since.

  44. Is it murder to kill a human fertilized hamster zygote?

    *Lol* excellent.

    In his long winded rambling, did he ever answer the scenario of the burning building and saving either the actual infant or the frozen embryos?

  45. Not to mention the fact that if an egg is fertilized in a petri dish, and implanted in a woman, it is because she wants it there.

    Of course since John is against IVF, he probably wants all leftover eggs implanted in women, against their will, since it is a unique human individual, but us nasty feminists won’t have to worry about, since they will only forcibly implant in married women(hey, they’re married and having sex, so they must be ready for any baby that comes along, wanted or no), and no nasty feminists are married or even have children.

    /snark

  46. In his long winded rambling, did he ever answer the scenario of the burning building and saving either the actual infant or the frozen embryos?

    No and he never will – just like he has avoided all references given to him about El Salvador and that unfortunate woman who died because a fetal activist at GWUH felt the rights of a fetus needed to be considered ad nausieum in light of a womans cancer treatment (forgive me her name escapes me).

    John knows that saving the infant would be the correct thing to do and he would opt to save the born child. But in admitting so he exposes himself as the hypocrite that all anti-choicers are in that they really DO NOT see zygotes/embryos/fetuses as equal to that of born people. For if he did, he would HAVE to rescue the embryos from destruction – the “innocent lives” of many should not perish for the sake of just ONE.

  47. Check me if I’m wrong here: according to Pastor Huck, moving away from the “traditional” concept of marriage is bad bad bad because there has “never been a civilization” that deviated from it and survived. And yet, we should now change the very definition of individual life that has never been deviated from in all of human history from birth to some nine months before. So, should we add nine months to Huck’s age?

    A consistency. Gotta love it.

  48. What a sad sight of ignorance and hate this site is! Since I need to attend to my blessed responsibilities as a Catholic wife and mother of three (and counting), I won’t waste my time putting precious pearls of the truth before a herd of swine determined to wallow in their ignorance. John tried, may God bless him! But, I will do you one better. I’ll enlist the holiest Lady who ever lived — and Her Son, of course — to help you by praying today’s Rosary for you and those you are leading to earthly misery and eternal hell! If only you could see the beauty of the truth and life, you would cry at the ugliness of lies and death! Ask the women of Project Rachael and Silent No More what pain their abortions have meant to them! And, look at any bookstore’s selection of coffee table books with 3D pictures of unborn babies. How can you not see what is right before your eyes?! In the meanwhile, I’ll help lead my little girls and son to Heaven with me — and before then, to the polls. I’m changing your evil little world, girls, one diaper at a time. May God bless you! KNJ

  49. Once again you are establishing that a woman’s right to physical sovereignty is more important than the right of the human being growing in her womb, even though that person growing in there – while certainly inconvenient to her – is not an unjust aggressor, not the rapist or deadbeat boyfriend, not the enemy, and not in most cases a direct threat to her life.

    And this means you believe that when convenience is concerned, the right to life of a completely defenseless, completely innocent, and completely dependent human being doesn’t matter.

    I’m asking you to consider how unfair this is to that person who isn’t to blame for their being created in the first place.

    I’m also asking you to consider the moral implications for this principle that convenience is more important than someone else’s life, because such an attitude or belief will not stay put “in the woman’s body”. It’s already jumping the wall into areas of post-natal care for severely handicapped, for spouses/children with respect to people in their care in euthanasia decisions (where the care-givers make the “choice” to terminate with the person being killed not having any say and their “choice” made for them).

    Instead of couching this moral attitude in a “well, sure the fetus is a human being, but my bodily integrity is more important than their life” many of you assert that the thing in your womb is not a human being until you want it to be a human being, or until it’s clears the birth canal – and then WHAMO – magically become “a human begin”. As I’ve mentioned before, that bit of euphemism and dehumanization as a prelude to murder has preceeded all the great evils of our past 150 years where a subgroup of human beings are first denigrated, then dehumanized, and then “liquidated”.

    Finally, if there was a fire and I had a chance to save either a born infant or a handful of IVF tubes I’d make the same moral decision a triage nurse makes in an Emergency room: which person stands the better chance of survival in this specific situation? It’s not a matter of deciding who is human and who isn’t or who is “better” than the other.

    Most of us would conclude that the infant would because a) those IVF tubes are kept in a fireproof steel chamber filled with liquid nitrogen (an inert, nonflammable gas) and b) even supposing I had the equipment to draw them out they’d still require much higher care than simply grabbing the infant and running. No moral value judgement as to who deserves respect more is needed – the question isn’t “who is more human” but “who is most at risk/who is more savable?

    But I’ll give you a better question – what is more noble and loving – to kill the kid in your womb because you dislike the idea of being pregnant or put up with the real suffering and pain of pregnacy in order to give this little stranger the enormous, unparalleled gift of life?

    What is more heroic and befitting a good, nice, peace-loving person? Killing a child out of convenience or being seriously inconvenienced but letting this innocent person live?

    As for Planned Parenthood’s money – check out their wikipedia page, and follow the link to their own annula report. It’s all there….http://www.plannedparenthood.org/files/PPFA/Annual_report.pdf

    34% of their annual income ($903 Million) comes from GOVERNMENT GRANTS. Now I’m sure you’re OK with that, but the point is, unlike the pro-life movement that offers the alternative to abortion, they get tax money and we don’t.

    So complaining that we can’t provide super health care to all women who need it is sort of like blaming a poor Democratic controlled city for the sorry state of their inner city – they don’t have the money to fix things, even as they seek to make improvements within their humble means….

  50. Hmm, well, I’m willing to compromise with pro-lifers.

    If you find/fund a way to extract live fetuses for the purpose of growth within a lab or someone else’s body with no (or minimal) financial obligation on my part, I’ll go pro-life.

    Rules:

    1. No obligation to fetus after extraction. Nothing financial, emotional, I don’t want to ever see it again. YOU have to find someone to adopt/care for it.
    2. I can do this as often as I’d like at any age of the fetus.
    3. If the fetus dies during extraction it’s not my fault.
    4. You don’t have the right to “punish” me by making it a painful procedure, blackmailing me, making me feel bad, etc.
    5. Keep your hands off birth control.

    Okay, so the last one’s just an added bonus.

    Anyone want to add some rules for this idyllic alternative-abortion solution?

  51. So what – besides giving contraception – that does not work, obviously – does Planned Parenthood do to prevent abortion?

    Well, I’ve been going to PP for contraception for a few years now, and with all the sex I’ve had, I’m happily still not pregnant.

    Contraceptive failure is generally a stupid human error — not taking the pills/shot on the right day, using a condom wrong, and so on. And I’m willing to bet some of the people who “claim” they were using contraceptives when they got knocked up … weren’t. Who wants to admit a stupid human error?

    Also, PP promotes comprehensive sex education. I think that helps to reduce the abortion rate, don’t you?

  52. Marriage of course is pooh poohed. So is motherhood. Sex is reduced to pure egocentric enjoyment, and there’s this undercurrent of rage at men, rage at your own fertility, rage at the differences of gender.

    Go tell that to all the happily married, heterosexual, pro-choice feminists who have kids.

    Like my mom! wwwooohh. 🙂

  53. John, please donate an organ to save a baby. Oh you don’t want to? Too bad, it’s for your own good! Silly boy, you need me to tell you what it good for you!
    Now, go get yourself fixed please fast.

  54. Marriage of course is pooh poohed. So is motherhood. Sex is reduced to pure egocentric enjoyment, and there’s this undercurrent of rage at men, rage at your own fertility, rage at the differences of gender.

    Ahh, this one again. Don’t you guys ever get any new lines? I’d be in a constant rage if you were right, seeing as how everyone in the house but me is male – my husband, my sons, the dog, even the betta fish. Yet, somehow I’m about 20x more pro-choice now than I ever was as a young, childless single. I don’t ever want my children thinking they’re here because Mommy had no choice but to have them.

  56. Finally, if there was a fire and I had a chance to save either a born infant or a handful of IVF tubes I’d make the same moral decision a triage nurse makes in an Emergency room: which person stands the better chance of survival in this specific situation? It’s not a matter of deciding who is human and who isn’t or who is “better” than the other.

    Most of us would conclude that the infant would because a) those IVF tubes are kept in a fireproof steel chamber filled with liquid nitrogen (an inert, nonflammable gas) and b) even supposing I had the equipment to draw them out they’d still require much higher care than simply grabbing the infant and running. No moral value judgement as to who deserves respect more is needed – the question isn’t “who is more human” but “who is most at risk/who is more savable?

    So with the embryos and baby being equally human and worthy of life you choose to save the born ONE child because it is MORE CONVENIENT and EASIER for you in the long run.

    Uh-huh…now what was that tirade you were on about the convenience of abortion and such? Love how it is more convenient of you to “save” one instead of many when INNOCENT LIVES are at stake. Kinda shoots your points to shit.

  57. Most of us would conclude that the infant would because a) those IVF tubes are kept in a fireproof steel chamber filled with liquid nitrogen (an inert, nonflammable gas) and b) even supposing I had the equipment to draw them out they’d still require much higher care than simply grabbing the infant and running.

    Nice try. Better than most I’ve seen. But not entirely correct, either. The liquid nitrogen wouldn’t survive a substantial fire. If the fire is small enough that the freezer protects the embryos don’t grab either the baby or the embryos–grab the fire extinguisher and put the thing out. Any fire too large for that technique is probably too large for the embryos to survive. Remember, they’ll lose viability if they warm up to -60C. As for point b, I suppose if you’re at an IVF clinic in rural Arizona where the nearest hospital is 500 miles away, that might be a problem, but at any IVF clinic reasonably close to civilization there’ll be people ready to put the embryos in their own -80C freezers pretty quickly. (I’m assuming here that the choice is really between grabbing the baby and grabbing a canister full of liquid nitrogen stored embryos, maybe one being prepared for shipping to the clinic where implantation will be attempted. Because, of course, if you’re envisioning grabbing a couple of vials out of the freezer…don’t do it. They’ll die and you’ll have a serious case of frostbite. As in, a hand endangering case of frostbite.)

    But to give a different scenario, suppose you knew of an embryo that was about to be discarded because it was no longer needed. Would you offer yourself as a subject for an experiment in which, instead of being discarded, the embryo was implanted on your intestinal lining? Because if men can gestate embryos then that doubles the number of potential volunteers to carry IVF embryos that would otherwise be discarded to term. Of course, this is riskier than a typical pregnancy, but you’d have excellent monitoring and quick intervention if something went wrong. I suppose I ought to ask up front though: Suppose something went drastically wrong with you during the gestation. For example, suppose that men’s hearts simply can’t deal with the increased blood volume and you were at serious risk from congestive heart failure. Would you want an abortion or to continue the pregnancy to ensure the best possible chance of getting the fetus to an age at which it could survive with NICU care? And you were planning to raise the kid, right? Not that I’d deny you the option of adoption, of course.

  58. “Once again you are establishing that a woman’s right to physical sovereignty is more important than the right of the human being growing in her womb,”

    yes. A real, living, existing woman is more important. By light years.

  59. What a sad sight of ignorance and hate this site is!

    Run this through the whackjob translator and it says: you’re doing everything right. Please continue!

  60. Marriage of course is pooh poohed. So is motherhood. Sex is reduced to pure egocentric enjoyment, and there’s this undercurrent of rage at men, rage at your own fertility, rage at the differences of gender.

    The irony and the sadness of this statement is that no one hates men worse than right wing women. Not the most ardent man hating radical separatist feminist hates men the way the sweet little stay-at-home Christian (or Jewish or Islamic), loyal virgin, homemaking wifey does. Because feminists may see men as potential slavemasters and hate or fear them for that–though most feminists eventually get over it and come to see men as individuals, with morality ranging from Hitler to Gandhi. But the little wifey experiences it. She may have “chosen” her lot, but she is not in control anymore and she will, inevitably, hate the person who is controlling her life. Because you can’t help but hate the master, even if you chose slavery yourself. So my advice to John, if he wants happiness later in life, is to drop the pro-life anti-woman nonsense, raise his consiousness a bit, and find a woman (or man) he considers his equal to be his partner in life. Or live alone. Marrying someone you consider your inferior inevitably leads to misery.)

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