Republican Governor Vetoes Rape Victims Rights Bill
| April 27th, 2005I’m late posting this story, but Pseudo-Adrianne’s post earlier today reminded me of it.
Earlier this month, Colorado Governor Bill Owens vetoed a bill that would have required hospitals to tell rape victims about emergency contraception.
The bill would not have required hospitals to perform abortions; the bill would not have required hospitals to dispense drugs they found morally objectionable; the bill would have given health care professionals the right to refuse to participate in procedures they found morally objectionable. The bill would only have required hospitals to let rape victims know that the option exists, so that rape victims would have the freedom to decide for themselves.
Amazingly, Governor Owens had the gall to claim that he vetoed this bill to protect people being “coerced by government to engage in activities” they don’t approve of.
The Moral of the Story: When a pharmacist is “coerced” into doing his job by letting people know of their options, that’s facism. But when rapists and right-wing zealot hospitals collaborate to coerce women into unwanted pregnancies, that’s cool.
They really don’t think of women as anything but incubation machines, do they?
April 27th, 2005 at 10:05 am
I’m first! Yay!
This country is starting to remind me more of “The Handmaid’s Tale” every day. I just finished reading that book, so it’s very clear in my mind.
This comment was written by Trish Wilson.Report this comment to the moderators
April 27th, 2005 at 10:21 am
But, but, but….the rapist went through all that trouble to rape her! After all that work, she can’t be going and stopping the pregnancy that results from happening. They are just standing up for rapists’ rights.
This comment was written by Amanda.Report this comment to the moderators
April 27th, 2005 at 10:29 am
Do they really think that most of the women who would have taken EC won’t try to get abortions later on?
This comment was written by piny.Report this comment to the moderators
April 27th, 2005 at 10:31 am
…Never mind.
This comment was written by piny.Report this comment to the moderators
April 27th, 2005 at 11:34 am
“This country is starting to remind me more of “The Handmaid’s Tale”? every day.”
Oh, and when can young fertile women like myself expect to be rounded up and taken maternity camps? That’s how the story goes, more or less, right? The fanatical, conservative Christian Right takes over the country and literally turns women into the incubators they have always viewed the female sex to be? Of course that’s a hysterical outlook on the current situation, but really. With all the things the neocons on Capitol Hill and all throughout the country are doing, ripping up Roe v Wade little by little, how long until we get some overt propaganda from the Rightwing emphasizing a “Culture of Maternity and Natalism” and how “important” it is for women to constantly think of themselves as mere birthing equipment?
“Do they really think that most of the women who would have taken EC won’t try to get abortions later on?”
Don’t expect logic from these people. It’s about controlling women’s sexuality and reproduction. The logical thing would be to strongly emphasize intelligent and comprehensive sex-education (push frequent condom usage, birth control pills, etc) and make contraceptives, even emergency contraception, widely available without hassle or even prescriptions. Get people, especially young people, to be smart about their birth control practices and methods. Yes, include the *choice* of abstinence in the curriculum, but be realistic. People are going to have sex and *gasp* outside and before marriage (and after for divorcees) for reasons other than procreation. You want to reduce the number of abortions every year?….then teach sexually women and men how to prevent pregnancy from even happening, using contraceptives. And let women, definitely rape victims, have easy access to E.C.
But, that’s too logical. This isn’t about reducing the number of abortions. If anything, drive women to desperate and lethal and tragic measures to control their reproduction.
*rant over*
This comment was written by Pseudo-Adrienne.Report this comment to the moderators
April 27th, 2005 at 12:11 pm
What I find ironic about the pro-life - or perhaps more accurately pro-fetus-life - crowd is that, if that fetus who’s life is sooo precious happens to be a girl, the instant she is born, her life becomes meaningless.
Though maybe her life does have indirect meaning, as she may at one point bring more fetuses into the world.
This comment was written by Raznor.Report this comment to the moderators
April 27th, 2005 at 1:21 pm
Do hospitals or police in Colorado not have rape crisis counselors who could do this? Nobody is requiring a pharamcist to hand the drug to a victim, nobody is requiring a physician to prescribe the drug to a victim, the bill would require those treating the victim (who is also a patient) to inform her of the additional potential risks/consequences to the rape and what her options are for testing and treatment as appropriate. This is even worse than pharmacists trying to hide the imposition of their religion on women behind conscience interference clauses (and heaven forbid they have to do a job they accepted knowing it was a routine task to fill valid presciptions that are stocked by their pharmacy). There is no reason for someone to work with/treat rape victims if they cannot separate out their particular moral/religious views in favor of letting victims do what is best for them. For Pete’s sake, EC is meant to delay impending ovulation so it doesn’t occur during the while the rapist’s sperm have a chance at penetrating the zp; it does not cause the endometrial lining to suddenly reject an implanted embryo!
This comment was written by Ol Cranky.Report this comment to the moderators
April 27th, 2005 at 2:00 pm
This is where mothers can make a difference. Inform your daughters they have choices in life. Let them know they are more than machines. The more parent’s do their job properly, the better off the next generation will be.
This comment was written by Angie.Report this comment to the moderators
April 27th, 2005 at 2:30 pm
Whats a “right wing zelot hospital”?
Question
This comment was written by Fitz.What do hospitals do? What is their purpose? What do they exist to do?
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April 27th, 2005 at 3:26 pm
I believe “The Handmaid’s Tale” was referring to the situation in Afghanistan under the Taliban, rather than being intended as a comment on US politics. It was set in the US, certainly, but I understood that to be an attempt my the author to make the plight of Afghan women more real to American readers. It’s easy to look at another country and say “that’s just their culture”. But when you imagine it happening in your own country, to women who look and speak and act like you yourself, that makes it all a little more real.
Certainly it takes on another level of allegory when you look at the apparantly increasing role of the religious right in US politics. And maybe Margaret Atwood had that in her mind when she wrote it. But I take exception to accusations that she was just writing a “hysterical” and unrealistic prediction of what might happen in the US. She was actually writing about a very real situation in which women were truly oppressed, not some futuristic fantasy.
This comment was written by Sarah.Report this comment to the moderators
April 27th, 2005 at 3:26 pm
Duh. Force as many women to become pregnant as possible, of course.
Every patient has the right to make decisions about their course of treatment. These decisions are not free unless they are informed. If hospitals are allowed to keep information about treatment options for women, they are keeping them from making informed choices. This is a violation of their rights. It is monstrously unfair to burden laypeople who have just suffered horrific assaults with the responsibility of researching all options at their disposal, particularly when EC is time-sensitive.
This comment was written by piny.Report this comment to the moderators
April 27th, 2005 at 3:27 pm
Any hospital that refuses to fully appraise a person of all choices available to them due to religious issues.
The moment your religion steps in the way of anothers right to health or choice, you’ve stepped into the realm of rightwing zealot hospital.
This comment was written by Kim (basement variety!).Report this comment to the moderators
April 27th, 2005 at 3:28 pm
I should add, I wasn’t directing my comments particularly at the person who mentioned Handmaid’s Tale above. That just reminded me of a lot of other comments I’ve heard about it, where the word “hysterical” gets used a lot.
This comment was written by Sarah.Report this comment to the moderators
April 27th, 2005 at 3:28 pm
gah - stuck an extra ‘a’ in appraise accidentally. Make that ‘apprise’.
This comment was written by Kim (basement variety!).Report this comment to the moderators
April 27th, 2005 at 3:29 pm
Compelled speech is problematic, as is forbidden speech.
If the legislature passed a bill requiring abortion providers to give the names and addresses of adoption agencies to women seeking an abortion, and the governor vetoed it as being “coercion by government”, would you be outraged? Or would you say “hey, this conversation should be between the health care provider and the patient - the government has no role to play.”
This comment was written by Robert.Report this comment to the moderators
April 27th, 2005 at 3:32 pm
The moment your religion steps in the way of anothers right to health or choice, you’ve stepped into the realm of rightwing zealot hospital.
So if a hospital decides that do to its left-wing Christian views, they will refuse paying patients in favor of focusing on the poor, and as a result my choice to have a procedure done is compromised, they’re right-wing zealots?
That’s absurd. You’re using labels as epithets, not as descriptors.
This comment was written by Robert.Report this comment to the moderators
April 27th, 2005 at 3:51 pm
Bologne. Give me examples of where the situation you are citing is occurring. You know darn well that the people implementing such agenda’s are not on the end of ‘left-wing christians’. You also are perfectly aware of women being refused day after procedures and medications based on religion - and when I say religion, I’m not saying that of the woman getting health care.
This comment was written by Kim (basement variety!).Report this comment to the moderators
April 27th, 2005 at 4:32 pm
I know that there are people with right-wing or conservative views who work to implement their agendas, yes. Is it your serious contention that people with left-wing or liberal views don’t do that?
Sorry, don’t have a real-world hospital counterexample from this country - though doubtless any former Soviet subjects could tell us some hair-raising tales. For some reason, in America it’s the hate-filled Christian rightwing baby-machine fascists who drop billions on funding hospitals.
This comment was written by Robert.Report this comment to the moderators
April 27th, 2005 at 4:34 pm
Every patient has the right to make decisions about their course of treatment. These decisions are not free unless they are informed. If hospitals are allowed to keep information about treatment options for women, they are keeping them from making informed choices. This is a violation of their rights.
So when an abortion clinic doesn’t mention adoption to someone who comes in and asks for an abortion, they’re violating that person’s rights?
Or do women only have a right to hear the side of the story that YOU support?
This comment was written by Robert.Report this comment to the moderators
April 27th, 2005 at 4:38 pm
Robert,
The magnitude and scope of this statement with respect to our individual liberty was not lost on me, but may unfortunately not be appreciated by some on this thread.
This comment was written by dispassionate reader.Report this comment to the moderators
April 27th, 2005 at 5:01 pm
Is it reasonable to think that most women don’t know that adoption is an option, or that a woman who wants an adoption won’t know to ask about available services? Or that there are hospitals with independent gag laws surrounding adoption information? I have no problem with healthcare providers providing, or even being compelled to provide, information on state policies surrounding adoption, and on potential avenues of support for women who want to adopt. In many states, women seeking abortions already must be provided with this information, even though adoption, technically speaking, isn’t something that medical professionals provide or prescribe.
This comment was written by piny.Report this comment to the moderators
April 27th, 2005 at 5:12 pm
Is it reasonable to think that most women don’t know that adoption is an option, or that a woman who wants an adoption won’t know to ask about available services?
Is it reasonable to think that most women don’t know that abortion is an option, or that a woman who wants an abortion won’t know to ask about available services?
Both of these propositions are in fact reasonable.
In fact, the reasonableness of both these propositions is precisely why I generally support neither gag rules nor mandatory informational rules, whether those rules would tend to favor or penalize my own personal point of view. It simply isn’t the state’s concern.
Which, in fact, was the predicate for Governor Owen’s action. The hypocrisy of the pro-abortion position on this seems fairly obvious: “keep your laws out of my uterus”, unless it’s a law that pro-choicers want, in which case the more government, the better.
This comment was written by Robert.Report this comment to the moderators
April 27th, 2005 at 5:12 pm
Anyone care to handicap Godwin? I’m giving it…eighteen hours.
The question of speech, freedom, and duty was tackled in the pharmacists-for-life-discussions. When you join a profession dedicated, in part, to informing the people you serve, you do not have the right to restrict information that they would logically seek first from you.
This comment was written by piny.Report this comment to the moderators
April 27th, 2005 at 5:14 pm
This statement is ignorant on so many levels, Robert.
First of all, “our” side of the story includes adoption. I think adoption is great if it brings a child who needs a family together with loving parents, and I’ve never met a liberal who thinks otherwise.
There is no such thing as a liberal who wants to force people to abort rather than adopt. The urge to use government force to make people reproduce in a certain way exists in the people you vote for; there is no counterpart at all among the people I vote for. That form of facism is something favored almost exclusively by right-wingers in this society.
I don’t think the abortion clinic vs. hospital comparison is very logical; if a clinic does abortions and nothing else, then it doesn’t make sense for them to offer adoption information, any more than it makes sense for an adoption agency to offer abortion information. However, a clinic that provides general prenatal and reproductive care should certainly provide information about all relevant options to their patients.
I have absolutely no problem with a law saying that prenatal and reproductive care service providers have to provide information about all the legal options a pregnant woman has to choose from - including info about adoption. That way, the patient is free to choose for herself, rather than Big Daddy Government choosing for her, as you and your allies want it to do.
What I do object to is it being legal for hospitals to provide substandard care for rape victims, and that’s the current state of the law in Colorado. If I go to a hospital suffering from a blocked heart valve, I don’t want Christian Scientist doctors deciding for me that surgery is immoral and so not even telling me it’s an option; I want them to tell me the options and let me decide the moral issues myself.
No one is saying that a doctor who is pro-life should be forced to perform an elective abortion if she doesn’t want to. But there’s a difference between saying “as a matter of conscience, I can’t perform this procedure; you’ll have to find another doctor” and a decision to decieve the patient by not even telling them about the medical options that exist.
It’s the difference between thinking women are compentant to decide for themselves, in consultation with their own doctors and their own God, and thinking that your God gives you the right to decide for women whether they like it or not. And we all know which side of that question pro-lifers fall on.
This comment was written by Ampersand.Report this comment to the moderators
April 27th, 2005 at 5:15 pm
I’d say yes, but then again, as per my experience, you do get counseling of options in such cases - they do strive to make sure that people are committed to their decision before termination occurs.
In fact it is my contention that I’m unaware of any such thing happening. I would not be so strident as to say it couldn’t or hasn’t happened, but by and large, I believe that liberals do not in fact ‘do that’.
And that’s exactly my point. I on the other hand do have real-world examples of this occurring on the right-wing religious side. And we aren’t talking about the Soviet union, are we? This discussion has been specifically about laws in the United States and things happening in the United States.
This comment was written by Kim (basement variety!).Report this comment to the moderators
April 27th, 2005 at 5:16 pm
The post is about EC. I think it is absolutely reasonable to assume that a rape victim would not know about it, or know about the time-frame in which it must be taken. I can’t remember it off the top of my head. Pregnancy and its potential complications would probably be the last thing on my mind in the period immediately following an assault, but that’s when EC must be discussed.
This comment was written by piny.Report this comment to the moderators
April 27th, 2005 at 5:17 pm
When you join a profession dedicated, in part, to informing the people you serve, you do not have the right to restrict information that they would logically seek first from you.
Since all professions are dedicated in part to informing the people they serve, the logical conclusion of this line of reasoning is that no professional is allowed any moral judgment or individual conscience.
Is this in fact a conclusion with which you agree?
This comment was written by Robert.Report this comment to the moderators
April 27th, 2005 at 5:18 pm
Actually, it’s perfectly reasonable to think that a rape victim might not know about emergency contraception. Lots of people don’t pay attention to the news.
And even if she knows about it, she may not know where to get it if the hospital refuses to help her, or even to tell her the name of another hospital or health clinic she can go to where they will help her.
So you’re saying that the Soviet medical system is a model that right-wing Christians in the USA today are correct to emulate?
This comment was written by Ampersand.Report this comment to the moderators
April 27th, 2005 at 5:18 pm
Robert - adoption isn’t a medical procedure. Nor is it health-related in any way. EC is a safe medical option. Hospital workers are already compelled for ethical reasons to inform patients of all safe medical options to them. That this bill needs be introduced merely reflects the sad state in which we currently find ourselves.
This comment was written by Raznor.Report this comment to the moderators
April 27th, 2005 at 5:19 pm
If I go to a hospital suffering from a blocked heart valve, I don’t want Christian Scientist doctors deciding for me that surgery is immoral and so not even telling me it’s an option; I want them to tell me the options and let me decide the moral issues myself.
Then I suggest you refrain from visiting a Christian Scientist hospital, Barry.
This comment was written by Robert.Report this comment to the moderators
April 27th, 2005 at 5:20 pm
…Or a hospital refusing to tell a PVS-patient’s family that the law does not in fact require them to keep the patient on life support, or refusing to let an elderly patient know about DNR orders. There are a lot of potential abuses here.
This comment was written by piny.Report this comment to the moderators
April 27th, 2005 at 5:25 pm
No, that’s several logical leaps down the line. It’s perfectly fine to refuse to offer or perform a service yourself. I would not require a lawyer to draw up a will disinheriting a client’s gay son. I would never require a doctor to perform an abortion. I would never require a therapist to write a transsexual a referral letter. It is not acceptable to refuse to inform a client of their available options, especially when the client cannot reasonably be expected to know that you’re holding out on them, and when they have retained you because they do not have the knowledge or resources to become independently informed.
This comment was written by piny.Report this comment to the moderators
April 27th, 2005 at 5:27 pm
Actually, it’s perfectly reasonable to think that a rape victim might not know about emergency contraception. Lots of people don’t pay attention to the news.
Yeah. But that wasn’t the question.
The question is, if a woman wants to end a potential pregnancy, is it reasonable to assume that she knows about these things called “abortions”, or not?
I believe it is reasonable to assume that she knows that. And if she does know that, and if the termination or forestalling of a possible pregnancy is something that she wishes to do, then why is it not reasonable to expect her to take the initiative in acquiring the information on how to do this?
And even if she knows about it, she may not know where to get it if the hospital refuses to help her, or even to tell her the name of another hospital or health clinic she can go to where they will help her.
Sorry, I thought that adult women were considered to be able to make their own value judgments and make their own reproductive decisions. Surely the corollary of that is taking the individual responsibility to collect the information necessary to make those decisions in an informed manner.
I have the right to vote, but I don’t have the right to compel third parties to inform me of what the issues are and where the candidates stand. That’s my job.
This comment was written by Robert.Report this comment to the moderators
April 27th, 2005 at 5:28 pm
So, Robert, are you suggesting that unless a hospital is explicitly Christian Scientist in its name, that they refuse to hire Christian Scientists. Like a “what is your religion” question, and if there’s any conceivable case where their personal morals might be contrary to their duties they be told not to let the door hit their ass on the way out? Because otherwise, how will Barry guarantee that his doctor isn’t a Christian Scientist?
This comment was written by Raznor.Report this comment to the moderators
April 27th, 2005 at 5:33 pm
Keep in mind, by the way, that what we’re talking about here is the right of hospital administrators to put a gag on doctors. What the current law in Colorado says is that if you go to a hospital whose administration morally disapproves of EC for rape victims, then even if your doctor thinks that EC is the best thing for you - even if not only have you been raped, but you have other medical conditions that make pregnancy unsafe for you - the hospital adminstration is allowed to order the doctor to shut up, and not tell you your medical options.
Nor is the hospital even required to tell you they’re keeping secrets from you and gagging your doctor. The idea is to decieve the patient by keeping secrets from her, and not telling her she’s not being told the full truth, whether her doctor wants to tell her the truth or not.
That’s what pro-lifers mean when they talk about preserving freedom of speech; they want to reserve the right of pro-lifers to come between women and their doctors and shut the doctors up.
When my father (an ear doctor) talks to his patients, he tells them what the medically appropriate options are. If he decides to keep the existance of a certain type of hearing aid secret from his patients, even when that hearing aid is S.O.P. for the patient’s condition, then he’s going to get his ass sued off for malpractice.
Every patient has a right to hear all the medically relevant options from her doctor. That doesn’t mean that the doctor has to list every crackpot option in the world; but the options not mentioned should be not mentioned for medical reasons. Patients have a right to that. What pro-lifers want is for pregnant women to have fewer rights than any other patient when they see doctors.
This comment was written by Ampersand.Report this comment to the moderators
April 27th, 2005 at 5:34 pm
…You have the right to not see a doctor. But if you go to see a doctor, and they agree to treat you, they are obligated to not misrepresent treatment options. There aren’t any professional voting agents. If there were, they’d be obligated to not lie to you, even by omission. They wouldn’t have the right to represent themselves as professional political information agents if they did.
This comment was written by piny.Report this comment to the moderators
April 27th, 2005 at 5:37 pm
No, that’s several logical leaps down the line. It’s perfectly fine to refuse to offer or perform a service yourself…It is not acceptable to refuse to inform a client of their available options…
Really?
So I’m a lawyer. A guy comes into my office, and tells me that he just finished slaughtering a dozen abortionists at the local Planned Parenthood Clinic. He wants to know his options; the only ones he knows about are facing trial or having a gunfight with the cops, who are closing in. I happen to know that there is an airplane sitting on the tarmac at the private airport across the street from my office, and that the keys are in it. We’re 20 miles from the Republic of Atwood, where abortionist-murderers are welcomed with open arms and there is no extradition treaty.
Is it seriously your contention that it is unacceptable for me to decline to inform him of this option? That I have NO CHOICE but to say “hey, you murdering bastard, why don’t you stroll across the street and take a short flight to freedom?” I can refuse to represent him in court, but I can’t conceal the existence of an option which to me leads to an evil outcome?
The example is extreme for clarity, but the underlying point seems relatively elementary to me: people, including professionals, have the right to decline to participate in that which they consider to be evil. They are not obliged to give people information on how to achieve evil ends. They are not obliged to facilitate wrongdoing.
This comment was written by Robert.Report this comment to the moderators
April 27th, 2005 at 5:39 pm
Not necessarily, no. It is not reasonable to assume that she is fully informed about what abortion is, or what her legal and medical options are.
If a patient has cancer, and knows that it’s a potentially deadly disease, is it reasonable to assume that they know all of the potential effects and side effects of chemotherapy?
There are levels and levels of medical specialization we’re discussing here. Fewer people know about EC–particularly in detail–than know of abortion.
This comment was written by piny.Report this comment to the moderators
April 27th, 2005 at 5:39 pm
Because otherwise, how will Barry guarantee that his doctor isn’t a Christian Scientist?
By being an adult and asking the doctor, “hey, are you a Christian Scientist or other form of nutjob?”
This comment was written by Robert.Report this comment to the moderators
April 27th, 2005 at 5:42 pm
In your example, Robert, the best thing for you to do is to refuse to help the person at all. “I’m sorry, I can’t take your case.”
However, it’s not reasonable for emergency rooms to be allowed to refuse emergency patients.
Not all professions are analogious. I think a lawyer should have a right to look at me and say “I’m sorry, I won’t take your case, I prefer not to work for fat Jews.” If he has a bizarre morality that tells him that working for fat Jews is wrong, then I think he’s a dork, but I think he should have that right.
On the other hand, I don’t think a doctor in a hospital should have the right to refuse to accept me as a patient when I’m brought in after being assaulted. Even if that doctor has a moral problem with fat Jews, by being a doctor working in a hospital that takes emergency patients, he’s given up some rights to pick and choose his patients.
And once I’m his patient, it’s his obligation to give me medically sound advice about my options. It’s not my obligation to think of asking, “hey, are you a crackpot who plans to keep secrets from me rather than telling me the medical options?”
Maybe you ask that sort of question of every doctor you deal with, Robert. But that would make you very unusual.
This comment was written by Ampersand.Report this comment to the moderators
April 27th, 2005 at 5:42 pm
It is extreme, particularly since that lawyer has not agreed to represent that murderer. He would be under no more obligation to assist in an extralegal escape than the flight crew. But he would be guilty of malpractice if he were retained and then failed to fight as hard as possible to get his client off. He would also be guilty of malpractice if he were honest about his client’s potential as a flight risk.
This comment was written by piny.Report this comment to the moderators
April 27th, 2005 at 5:57 pm
In your example, Robert, the best thing for you to do is to refuse to help the person at all. “I’m sorry, I can’t take your case.”?
However, it’s not reasonable for emergency rooms to be allowed to refuse emergency patients.
I agree. But nobody is refusing emergency patients. They’re saying that a particular form of treatment - one of many - is objectionable to their professional and/or personal morals, and that accordingly, they are not going to help the patients with that particular treatment.
And in my hypothetical, if I decide to take the person’s case, I am not required to provide him with any information he requests, despite Piny’s fantasy to the contrary. I can walk him right past the idling plane on the way to the jailhouse, using my professional and personal morals to recognize that he is entitled to a fair trial and a competent defense, but not an extralegal escape.
Health care providers ought to be free to follow their own professional and personal conscience, rather than having the state tell them what they can and cannot say. I have no objection to a requirement that such biases be presented up-front; make the Catholic hospital put up a giant plinth out front that says ‘no abortions, no EC, no nuthin’.
This comment was written by Robert.Report this comment to the moderators
April 27th, 2005 at 6:02 pm
But that’s what the law that Governor Owens vetoed would have done, in essence. It didn’t require anyone at all to actively participate in prescribing EC to a patient. It would, however, had required the hospital to tell rape victims “we won’t help you get EC, we don’t do that here. If you want EC, you’ll have to find some other hospital to help you.”
That’s the law Owens vetoed.
Instead, hospitals in Colorado are free to keep EC secret - and free to keep the fact that they’re not providing their patient with medically relevant advice, secret.
This comment was written by Ampersand.Report this comment to the moderators
April 27th, 2005 at 6:11 pm
By the way, I don’t know if lawyers are required to tell clients about their “extralegal” options, such as an extralegal escape. But even if you’re right about that, the very fact that you’re talking about “extralegal” options makes your example irrelevant.
What we’re talking about in this thread is hospitals choosing not to tell patients about medical options. Not “extramedical,” but medical.
To make your analogy relevant:
If you’re a lawyer defending a client; and if you notice that the police messed up and illegally collected evidence, meaning that you could make a motion to dismiss the case. As it happens, you think such motions are immoral; in your moral opinion, evidence obtained illegally is still evidence and ought to be admissable. (There’s a rational case for that, by the way; if the police acted illegally in gathering legitimate evidence, then the cops in question should be punished for breaking the law, but the evidence itself should still be treated as evidence).
Anyhow, you have a choice of either keeping this (in your opinion) immoral legal strategy secret from your client; or you can tell your client her legal options.
Surely you’re not saying that, as a lawyer in that situation, it should be legal for you to keep your client’s legal options in the courtroom a secret from your client?
If you decide that your higher morality means you should keep his legal options secret from him, then you deserve to be disbarred. She has a right to know his legal options and make that choice for himself. And she can’t reasonably be expected to ask, “do you have crackpot moral beliefs that will lead you to keep legally important options secret from me?”
And - returning from the silly example to the far more serious reality - rape victims have a right to know their medical options, and make that choice for themselves.
This comment was written by Ampersand.Report this comment to the moderators
April 27th, 2005 at 6:13 pm
It didn’t require anyone at all to actively pariticpate in prescribing EC to a patient.
That isn’t true. The law required the hospital to participate in the referral of the patient to a hospital where they could get the EC.
This comment was written by Robert.Report this comment to the moderators
April 27th, 2005 at 6:15 pm
And - returning from the silly example to the far more serious reality - rape victims have a right to know their medical options, and make that choice for themselves.
And I agree. The key words being “for themselves”.
This comment was written by Robert.Report this comment to the moderators
April 27th, 2005 at 6:17 pm
For the record, I would say that the vast majority of women do not have the first clue what EC is, or if they do, they don’t know it’s available in the U.S. I was speaking with a friend last night who was fretting about what to do about broken condoms and I said, “Oh, just use EC.” She didn’t know she could call her doctor and get it.
This comment was written by Amanda.Report this comment to the moderators
April 27th, 2005 at 7:00 pm
Excuse me? The governor vetoed a law that would have required hospitals to let rape victims know that emergency contraception was an option after they went to a hospital for treatment. And, what, she should have taken the individual responsibility to find out about emergency contraception before she was raped? Yes, how irresponsible of her to not have taken the time to research her contraception options before she was raped. In fact, it was downright irresponsible of her to have been raped without using a condom or other birth control device in the first place.
Emergency contraception is not common knowledge, although it should be. And it is a very time sensitive issue. After the woman takes the time to research her options it could very wel be too late. How can you blame a woman not being aware of EC, and the locations in which it was available, before she was raped?
This comment was written by acallidryas.Report this comment to the moderators
April 27th, 2005 at 7:10 pm
Oh, let’s watch — I’m sure he’ll find a way.
This comment was written by Anne.Report this comment to the moderators
April 27th, 2005 at 7:17 pm
I’m not blaming anyone. I am declining to shift the locus of responsibility from the individual asserting a right to people who disagree with the morality of a particular action.
If you want EC, go to a medical facility whose originating philosophy and guiding mission do not reject certain forms of medical intervention as evil.
If you are an adult then be aware of your reproductive options. Take the responsibility that accompanies the right. Know who dispenses what. Make plans. Accumulate resources, both material and informational. Build relationships with others to access things that are not within your own direct power to create or acquire.
Be, in short, an adult. Which includes acknowledging that your rights end where other peoples’ consciences begin. Your rights oblige people to refrain from interfering in your choices. They don’t oblige people to facilitate those choices.
This comment was written by Robert.Report this comment to the moderators
April 27th, 2005 at 7:24 pm
There’s the pro-life, republican view on rape victims, in a nutshell. No mercy, no sympathy, no help; just reduced rights for rape victims to appease the demands of the right-wing extremists who want their religious views forced on the rest of us.
Remember, if you’re being taken by the police to a hospital, and you’re in shock after being raped, it’s still YOUR RESPONSIBILITY to make sure that you’re being taken to a hospital where doctors aren’t under a gag rule forcing them to not tell you about all your medical options. Just because you’ve just been raped is no reason for us to show you even a thimble’s worth of mercy or sympathy; you’re on your own. That’s the Christian way.
I’m sorry to be so harsh, Robert, but your most recent post is appallingly heartless.
This comment was written by Ampersand.Report this comment to the moderators
April 27th, 2005 at 8:05 pm
No woman who becomes pregnant via rape should have to receive a condescending lecture about what she should have done from someone who will never have to worry about being pregnant.
This comment was written by Anne.Report this comment to the moderators
April 27th, 2005 at 8:09 pm
Robert said:
So, I have just been raped. I am injured, bleeding. The police show up. They call the paramedics. They take me to the only hospital in town. That hospital has a gag order on its doctors and other personnel. I am upset, hysterical. I am given a sedative. I am able to answer direct questions put to me, but I am not thinking clearly. I am in shock. But it is still my responsibility to know what questions to ask? I should know to ask about possible STDs. I should know to ask about EC. And if for some reason I am capable of thinking to ask those questions, the hospital, the one with the gag order, is not required to tell me my options or about EC So, how am I supposed to exercise options I am not informed I have?
So, I should make plans for in case I am raped. Perhaps I should carry a little card, like organ donors do? “In the event I am raped, do not take me to the nearest hospital to treat my injuries. Take me to the one 2 hours away that does provide EC.”
Of course, that would only work if I was raped in my home town. What if I got raped while on vacation? I should also reasearch hospitals and what services they provide before I go?
Sounds like I should live in fear of being raped. I should make plans in the event it happens, and plan my activities around the possibility. I should plan on being treated badly afterwards by professionals who are supposed to help me. You know, that sounds awfully familiar.
This comment was written by mousehounde.Report this comment to the moderators
April 27th, 2005 at 8:28 pm
Repeat after me: EC is not abortion, EC is not abortion, EC is not abortion.
It’s contraception. Not abortion. it’s only moraly dissaproved of be people who want to control women’s bodies.
This comment was written by Josh Jasper.Report this comment to the moderators
April 27th, 2005 at 8:56 pm
But it is still my responsibility to know what questions to ask? I should know to ask about possible STDs. I should know to ask about EC. And if for some reason I am capable of thinking to ask those questions, the hospital, the one with the gag order, is not required to tell me my options or about EC So, how am I supposed to exercise options I am not informed I have?
By growing up and taking responsibility for your own life. You have a brain to go along with your uterus, right? You have the ability to read information about contraception and the ability to acknowledge that there are rapists out there and the ability to make plans for contingent events, right? You’ve got the ability to buy four $1 birth control pills and stick them in a baggie in your nightstand, right? You are, in short, a grown up, right?
I am not heartless, nor do I lack sympathy for the victims of this most appalling of crimes. That sympathy, however, does not abrogate the rights of other people. It does not absolve each individual person of the responsibility to exercise their rights in an informed and mature fashion.
Just because you’ve just been raped is no reason for us to show you even a thimble’s worth of mercy or sympathy; you’re on your own.
I have nearly infinite mercy and sympathy for someone who has been victimized by a rapist. I believe they should receive care and compassion and counseling. I do not believe that treating them well overrides the individual consciences of the other 5.9 billion people on the planet. You are conflating “sympathy” with “accepting Barry’s world view as being a self-evidently superior morality”.
Repeat after me: EC is not abortion, EC is not abortion, EC is not abortion…It’s contraception. Not abortion. it’s only moraly dissaproved of be people who want to control women’s bodies.
EC prevents the implantation of a fertilized embryo into the uterine wall. It is an abortifacient. (At least some forms of it work this way; I hear conflicting reports that there are non-abortifacient ECs but I haven’t seen details.) This, by many of us, is abortion, albeit about the most attenuated possible form of abortion. So, EC is abortion, EC is abortion, EC is abortion. There, now we’re functioning at the same discursive level.
You know, the “people who want to control women’s bodies” theme is very rich, coming from folks who apparently want to control women’s (and men’s) MINDS. I don’t want to be involved in your killing of your offspring…so that means I want to control your body. Right.
This comment was written by Robert.Report this comment to the moderators
April 27th, 2005 at 9:14 pm
Sounds like I should live in fear of being raped. I should make plans in the event it happens, and plan my activities around the possibility. I should plan on being treated badly afterwards by professionals who are supposed to help me. You know, that sounds awfully familiar.
Living in fear is futile; pain and suffering are inevitable, and so fearing them is a singular waste of resources. The second and third sentences are what intelligent people do in the face of a harsh world. We don’t live in the republic of ought, we live in the empire of is. And in the empire of is, it is indeed possible that you will be raped, and you should indeed make plans to deal with the contingency - just as we are aware of, and make plans for, any number of horrible things that might happen. Is paying for car insurance “living in fear of a wreck”, or an intelligent creature’s adaptation to a contingent and unpredictable world? Which makes more sense - recognizing that the cop who comes might be more interested in giving us a ticket for driving too fast and thus being emotionally and mentally prepared to handle it as best we can, or expecting that the service people will all be omnicognizant saints who don’t fuck up or have their own issues?
I would hope this does sound familiar; it’s a part of the lecture that everybody blessed with good parents hears when they’re about 13 and start to complain about life being unfair. Yes, life is unfair. Deal with it, or suffer worse consequences for refusing to deal with it - but the unfairness will come whether you prepare for it or not. It really and truly sucks that you (or much less likely) I might get raped, or have been raped - and it really and truly sucks that we need to make plans for that eventuality and/or take steps to try to forestall it or minimize its risk.
But the suckiness doesn’t change the reality. We deal with it, or we don’t, but the reality remains.
This comment was written by Robert.Report this comment to the moderators
April 27th, 2005 at 9:29 pm
“No woman who becomes pregnant via rape should have to receive a condescending lecture about what she should have done from someone who will never have to worry about being pregnant.
I don’t believe that was the intent of Robert’s arguments(correct me if I’m wrong). However, what you are stating is that is alright for the state to force me to provide an option to you that I believe is morally reprehensible.
Furthermore, does the statement ” someone who will never have to worry about being pregnant”, mean that his opinion is meaningless simply because he’s male? Are you also suggesting that male’s should simply remain silent since their opinion doesnt matter because they lack a vagina? If this isn’t the case, please, enlighten me.
This comment was written by Will.Report this comment to the moderators
April 27th, 2005 at 9:54 pm
You favor laws which say that the State, rather than women, decides whether or not women go through with pregnancies. That is controlling their bodies, Robert, whether you want to admit it or not.
Going back to this case, no matter what the law says - even if the law says that every doctor must perform abortion on demand or lose her license- then they’d still have the right to not be involved in abortions (or birth control, or whatever else you folks decide is evil this week). That’s not at issue.
As you know, a significant portion of what I do for my employer is coordinate weddings, 99% of which are cross-sex. What if I decided that, as a matter of deep moral and religious conviction, I cannot assist with cross-sex weddings anymore - not while the laws still discriminate against same-sex couples?
I have that right. No legal power in the United States can compel me to go against my convictions and be the coordinator at even one more wedding. I am entirely free.
However, what I don’t have is the right to keep my job once I’ve decided that I must as a matter of morality refuse to perform my job duties. If I want to make a moral stand, I should be prepared to suffer the consequences.
You talk about “being an adult” - when it comes to defending the rights of hospitals to withhold medical care from rape victims. But when, exactly, will you tell right wing pharmacists to “grow up! Make your stand if you want to - but don’t ask for a special law protecting your job! Taking a stand is meaningless if you think you shouldn’t face any consequences!”
This issue has NEVER been about forcing doctors or pharmacists or any hospital worker to do whatever their conscience tells them to do. There is no slavery in the USA; no doctor or pharmacist, ever, is forced to assist with birth control if they think birth control is evil. No one will shoot them or put them in jail if they resign their positions.
The issue isn’t “will right-wing Christians be free to follow their consciences?” Right-wing Christians are already free to follow their consciences. The real issue is, “will right-wing Christians be free to not do their jobs and get special government protection from suffering any consequences for their decision?”
This comment was written by Ampersand.Report this comment to the moderators
April 27th, 2005 at 10:00 pm
I don’t get this. No one is suggesting that the state force you to do anything. You will not be put in jail if you refuse to do your job. You will not be shot by police.
If I were in charge, the only thing that would happen to you, if you’re a doctor who refuses to tell a woman about her medical options, or a pharmacist who refuses to fill a legitimate prescription, is that you’ll be fired. Or perhaps your license to practice will be suspended.
You’re free to do what you want; no one is “forcing” you. What you’re complaining about is the prospect of being fired for refusing to do your job.
Speaking for myself, I don’t think men should remain silent. (Self-evidently). However, I do think men - and especially pro-life men - should remain somewhat humble and respectful when discussing this issue.
This is America, and we all get to decide on all our laws. Non-farmers get to argue about farm subsidies; non-Jews get to speak out about zoning laws that will have an effect on Saturday morning services; and yes, men get to argue about abortion.
But if you’re a decent person, even if you don’t agree with Farmer John when he states his view of laws about farming, you’ll be a little bit humble and respectful, because what’s only a political theory to you is Farmer John’s life. The same things goes for when Rabbi Sheila speaks about how the zoning regulations will impact her shul. And the same goes for when any women speaks about abortion.
This comment was written by Ampersand.Report this comment to the moderators
April 27th, 2005 at 10:04 pm
You favor laws which say that the State, rather than women, decides whether or not women go through with pregnancies. That is controlling their bodies, Robert, whether you want to admit it or not.
Find somewhere where I’ve written that, and I’ll pay your hosting bill next month. All I’ve ever said is that abortion is wrong.
However, what I don’t have is the right to keep my job once I’ve decided that I must as a matter of morality refuse to perform my job duties. If I want to make a moral stand, I should be prepared to suffer the consequences.
I agree absolutely. As an individual, you are subject to your employer’s policies. (Heck, as a good libertarian, you are subject to your employer’s random psychotic whims.) What’s that got to do with the price of pecans?
Like you, I don’t believe that individual pharmacists should have legal protections for refusing to fill prescriptions against their employer’s policies. (Most of the pharmacy cases I’ve seen have been places where the employer’s policy was to respect the conscience of the individual worker; pharmacists are hard to come by.) So your criticism misses the mark, there. My main concern on this issue has been the question of individual pharmacists who own their own establishment.
In the case of THIS law - you know, the one that you’re outraged was vetoed - there WAS such individual protection - a policy which I am generally in sympathetic disagreement with. It was the EMPLOYER who was required to provide information; individuals who wanted out were allowed to be excused regardless of what their employer said.
So which is it? Do you think employers should have the right to set the policy, or do you think that employees should have the right of individual conscience? Because you’re arguing both sides of your mouth here.
“It’s terrible that this bill, which contains things which I think are horrible and wrong, was vetoed…”
You are an awfully smart guy, but you are so convinced that people opposed to abortion either secretly or explicitly just want to control women and make them incubators and all the rest of it, that it throws your analyses badly off whack. Believing in your opponents’ ineffable evil is rarely a conduit to genuine understanding of what they want.
(But hey, I’ll never have to face the prospect of an abortion, so you can safely ignore me! Of course, by the same logic you yourself should never post on the subject again…)
This comment was written by Robert.Report this comment to the moderators
April 27th, 2005 at 10:09 pm
I don’t get this. No one is suggesting that the state force you to do anything. You will not be put in jail if you refuse to do your job. You will not be shot by police.
This isn’t about individuals, it’s about organizations. Hospitals, to be exact.
If I were in charge, the only thing that would happen to you, if you’re a doctor who refuses to tell a woman about her medical options, or a pharmacist who refuses to fill a legitimate perscription, is that you’ll be fired. Or perhaps your license to practice will be suspended. You’re free to do what you want; no one is “forcing”? you. What you’re complaining about is the prospect of being fired for refusing to do your job.
My job, as you see it.
So I’m in charge, and I decide that part of an artist’s job is to edify future generations, and I decide that the only thing that will happen to you, if you’re a cartoonist who draws things that lead innocent children into depravity, is that your computer and your pens and your paper will be taken away, or perhaps newspapers will be prohibited from carrying your work. You’re free to do what you want; nobody is forcing you. You’re just complaining about the prospect of being fired for refusing to your job, as I see your job.
But if you’re a decent person, even if you don’t agree with Farmer John when he states his view of laws about farming, you’ll be a little bit humble and respectful, because what’s only a political theory to you is Farmer John’s life.
Yeah, OK. So you have some hospital administrators and/or owners who say that they don’t want to provide information about a procedure because they think its profoundly immoral - they think it would VIOLATE their job to do what you want them to do.
So, you going to be respectful and humble about the fact that there are people DOING the job who think that what you want would be terrible?
This comment was written by Robert.Report this comment to the moderators
April 27th, 2005 at 10:13 pm
Ampersand; I agree that one should be respectful when discussing abortion, especially a male. I don’t see how I have not been respectful, and if I have, many apologies.
Alright, lets say the law in Colorado now is that a patient must be informed about EC. I as a doctor feel it’s wrong to promote something I feel is morally wrong. You’re saying that in order to practice my beliefs that I have to either stop practicing medicine, or move out of the state, to another nearby one which may or may not have the same law. Why don’t we just simplify the situation, and leave the government out of it? To quote Ronald Reagan, “the nine scariest words in the English language are, I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.”
This comment was written by Will.Report this comment to the moderators
April 27th, 2005 at 10:24 pm
No, the statement is that it’s all right for the state to force you (healthcare provider) to INFORM me of my options and provide referrals if you are unwilling to provide the healthcare options in question.
This is what happened with me with regards to my current pregnancy, in fact. My family doctor refuses (not moral reasons, but instead litigation reasons) to be the attending doctor for VBAC (vaginal birth after c-section), but if I wanted to try a c-section, she would have provided me with the healthcare providers in the area that would offer me that option.
This comment was written by Kim (basement variety!).Report this comment to the moderators
April 27th, 2005 at 10:39 pm
Except for a large part of the ‘unfairness’ you are talking about is not only that there are bad people in the world who do bad things, but also that there will be a group of people who are legally allowed to keep me from even knowing about my options after I’m so unfairly raped. We have to prepare as much as possible because there’s no guarantee that hospitals and doctors will be there for us, to let us know our options after we’ve been brutally assaulted. I just hope that brain that goes along with my uterus isn’t too terrified and in shock to not think clearly and keep all my options up in the front of my mind. And I sure hope that I have access immediately afterwards to that baggie of pills I put together just in case I was raped.
And, of course, you do support spreading the knowledge of EC, right? Perhaps teaching it in health class so that responsible young women have a chance to know that it exists? Or will it just filter into our knowledge?
Sometimes people have to do things that they disagree with in their professions. Sometimes people face tough moral decisions, and they might have to tell someone about the very existence of something that they hate. Life isn’t always perfect, and your job might put you in a position that you don’t like, where you either have to do something that you don’t think is right or you have to quit. Life is unfair.
This comment was written by acallidryas.Deal with it.
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April 27th, 2005 at 10:54 pm
Except for a large part of the ‘unfairness’ you are talking about is not only that there are bad people in the world who do bad things, but also that there will be a group of people who are legally allowed to keep me from even knowing about my options after I’m so unfairly raped.
Failing to tell you something is not the same thing as preventing you from knowing about it.
We have to prepare as much as possible because there’s no guarantee that hospitals and doctors will be there for us, to let us know our options after we’ve been brutally assaulted.
That is exactly correct. Now generalize it to the rest of life - we have to prepare as much as possible because there’s no guarantee that other people will do the thinking and preparing for us.
This comment was written by Robert.Report this comment to the moderators
April 27th, 2005 at 11:33 pm
So, any time I go to a tax preparer, or a lawyer, or a doctor, I should already know as much or more than they do so I can check up after them and ask the right questions? I am sorry, but if I go to a professional in some field it is because I don’t know the things I need to know. It is because I need them to advise me. And if I go to a doctor in an emergency room after a traumatic event, like rape, I don’t think it is too much to ask that I be given information I need that I may not have researched beforehand.
This comment was written by mousehounde.Report this comment to the moderators
April 27th, 2005 at 11:47 pm
It is when it is part of what most would consider normative care. Telling a woman about EC does not mean she will take it, the person informing the woman needs to provide it, just that there is this medical treatment. One can even add: I believe it is equivalent to abortion, so I don’t provide that care, nor does this hospital (which in at least a portion of the cases a woman was brought to rather than made a decision to go to).
It seems you are treating EC as alternative care; in much the same way I would not expect a surgeon to tell me about acupuncture to treat my carpal tunnel. But there is a difference; EC is normative allopathic treatment. If I went to an alternative health clinic after I was raped, I would expect the right to inquire about options offered to me to prevent what I expect most women would want to prevent: a pregnancy resulting from the rape.
I am not pro-choice, at least not to the level most are here. But I am much opposed to withholding information that a woman might need to make an informed decision, especially after her right to make this decision was stolen from her. (And that would include the all the physical reprecussions of the EC.)
This comment was written by Rachel Ann.Report this comment to the moderators
April 28th, 2005 at 12:05 am
Semi-off topic — Sarah, The Handmaid’s Tale was written in 1985, so it couldn’t have been about the Afghanistan under the Taliban, which came into power in 1997 or so. It might, however, have been about Iran under its (still fairly new in 1985) Islamic Republic.
This comment was written by Julian Elson.Report this comment to the moderators
April 28th, 2005 at 12:57 am
“In fact, the reasonableness of both these propositions is precisely why I generally support neither gag rules nor mandatory informational rules, whether those rules would tend to favor or penalize my own personal point of view. “
From a medical perspective, without mandatory information standards, there is no informed consent. You might very well not support/need informed consent for yourself; still, your MD has a professional obligation to make you/other patients aware of it. Standards of care are not based on personal points of view. They’re based on medical evidence.
“The question is, if a woman wants to end a potential pregnancy, is it reasonable to assume that she knows about these things called “abortions”?, or not?
I believe it is reasonable to assume that she knows that. And if she does know that, and if the termination or forestalling of a possible pregnancy is something that she wishes to do, then why is it not reasonable to expect her to take the initiative in acquiring the information on how to do this?”
Appropriate medical care [in any specialty] is not based on the assumption that the patient knows about [insert meds/procedure/etc. here].
“Sorry, I thought that adult women were considered to be able to make their own value judgments and make their own reproductive decisions. Surely the corollary of that is taking the individual responsibility to collect the information necessary to make those decisions in an informed manner.”
First, rape is not exclusive to adult women; preteens, and teens are also raped. Second, deciding what the appropriate rape treatment should be is not a value judgment, it’s medical care. Third, as a patient, the decisions you make post-rape are in response to an act forced upon you.
“Is it seriously your contention that it is unacceptable for me to decline to inform him of this option?”
Declining to inform a patient of his standard of care options is called malpractice.
“The example is extreme for clarity, but the underlying point seems relatively elementary to me: people, including professionals, have the right to decline to participate in that which they consider to be evil. They are not obliged to give people information on how to achieve evil ends. They are not obliged to facilitate wrongdoing. “
Informing rape patients about EC is not “giv[ing] people information on how to achieve evil ends”. It is giving them information on the standard of care, as per the American College of Ob/Gyn. Medical professionals do not have the right to decline to participate in rendering appropriate medical care to their patients [there are strict rules covering both routine, and emergency situations].
“I agree. But nobody is refusing emergency patients. They’re saying that a particular form of treatment - one of many - is objectionable to their professional and/or personal morals, and that accordingly, they are not going to help the patients with that particular treatment.”
EC is not “a particular form of treatment - one of many”. It is the *only* form of postcoital birth control.
“Health care providers ought to be free to follow their own professional and personal conscience, rather than having the state tell them what they can and cannot say. “
Maybe they ought to [you'd have to deregulate the practice of medicine, and do away with standard of care for that], or maybe they ought not to, but currently healthcare providers have to follow the standard of care. I agree that the state, and politicians in general, should not tell healthcare providers how to practice medicine. But the specialty’s professional organization should.
“If you want EC, go to a medical facility whose originating philosophy and guiding mission do not reject certain forms of medical intervention as evil.”
In cases of rape, the woman doesn’t have a choice of facility. Also, the proper medical intervention/care is not based on “originating philosophy and guiding mission”; it’s based on science.
“If you are an adult then be aware of your reproductive options. Take the responsibility that accompanies the right. Know who dispenses what. Make plans. Accumulate resources, both material and informational. Build relationships with others to access things that are not within your own direct power to create or acquire.”
As I mentioned before, preteens, and teens are also raped. Moreover, so are adult virgin/celibate women. Being raped is not a “right” in the sense that one does not expect it to happen/plan on it happening, thus it is unlikely one would accumulate resources, etc. a priori.
For example, it is possible that one would be aware of the theoretical possibility of having one’s penis severed. According to you, one should make plans, accumulate resources, and build relationships to allow access to optimal post-trauma healthcare. However, it is unlikely one would actually have all the pertinent information handy [ which area hospitals perform the required microsurgery, what that surgery involves, success/failure rates, post-op care, etc.], just in case.
“By growing up and taking responsibility for your own life. You have a brain to go along with your uterus, right? You have the ability to read information about contraception and the ability to acknowledge that there are rapists out there and the ability to make plans for contingent events, right? You’ve got the ability to buy four $1 birth control pills and stick them in a baggie in your nightstand, right? You are, in short, a grown up, right?”
Again, you assume only sexually active adults are raped. That is an incorrect assumption. Moreover, you assume that having a brain to go along with an uterus, having the ability to read, and having the ability to acknowledge that there are rapists out there should equal medical proficiency in the care and treatment of rape patients. Another incorrect assumption. Briefly, you could be a brilliant architect who faints at the sight of a picture of a vaginal tear, and/or your brain’s rational response might be overwhelmed by its trauma response. Having the ability to read is not sufficient; you need to be able to properly evaluate the information. Finally, knowing that there are rapists does not confer any special insight into the proper care of a rape patient.
Furthermore, not all adult women are sexually active [virgin/celibate], or are sexually active but have certain religious/moral objections to using birth control. Just because “there are rapists out there” does not mean all adult women are [or should be] familiar with birth control. For example, I should think it a gross violation of freedom of religion to require nuns to be up on contraceptive options, or to expect them to buy birth control pills and keep them on their nightstand.
[Quick question: could you please provide a link to the $ 4 pack of Preven? I know it's no longer available in the U.S., and all the other available options here are far more costly. A place where EC is available at such an affordable price would be a great resource. Thank you.]
This comment was written by ema.Report this comment to the moderators
April 28th, 2005 at 1:47 am
[Quick question: could you please provide a link to the $ 4 pack of Preven? I know it's no longer available in the U.S., and all the other available options here are far more costly. A place where EC is available at such an affordable price would be a great resource. Thank you.]
I could, but that would be facilitating evil, and thus a violation of my moral code. Nor would I have felt obliged to make you aware of the information, if I didn’t think you already knew.
But seriously, you are right about the price. The commercially-run EC web site that I found (took 0.2 seconds on Google) charges $79 for an EC package FedExed to anyone (outside some southern states, where I would assume there is some legal or regulatory hurdle - which I oppose, by the way).
That is a substantially larger sum, and I acknowledge the difference, and to that extent stand corrected.
I would think that women’s health clinics or other resources would be available to help poor women have access to the drug in extremis.
This comment was written by Robert.Report this comment to the moderators
April 28th, 2005 at 4:16 am
Not providing EC to a rape victim is being an accessory to rape. If your religious beliefs were somehow pro-rape, I wonder if you’d be exempt from criminal prosecution if you acted on those.
This comment was written by Amanda.Report this comment to the moderators
April 28th, 2005 at 4:40 am
Drugs do expire, you know. So, once a year, maybe every January 1st to celebrate the New Year, I should pay $79 to order my EC because I have a brain as well as a uterus (we’ll continue ignore the fact that it’s still illegal to buy without a prescription). Then I should carry it with me at all times (since there’s no reason to think I could get back to my bedside table following a rape in time to take the drug). And I would still be evil for not wanting to bear the child of an angry, violent man, but at least I would be responsible for my own uterus and wouldn’t be inconveniencing a doctor’s moral sensibilities.
This comment was written by hydropsyche.Report this comment to the moderators
April 28th, 2005 at 5:39 am
Amp- if this a duplicate, please excuse- I crashed and I don’t know if it was before I sent.
I’m entering the discussion late, but here are some links that provide information:
http://www.4woman.gov/faq/econtracep.htm
Also info at http://www.plannedparenthood.org:
There is considerable public confusion about the difference between emergency contraception and medication abortion because of misinformation disseminated by anti-choice groups. Emergency contraception helps prevent pregnancy; medication abortion terminates pregnancy. According to general medical definitions of pregnancy that have been endorsed by many organizations including the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and the United States Department of Health and Human Services, pregnancy begins when a pre-embryo completes implantation into the lining of the uterus (ACOG, 1998; DHHS, 1978; Hughes, 1972; “Make the Distinction?” 2001). Hormonal methods of contraception, including emergency contraception pills, prevent pregnancy by inhibiting ovulation and fertilization (ACOG, 1998). Medication abortion terminates a pregnancy without surgery. By helping women to prevent unplanned pregnancies after unprotected intercourse, emergency contraception has the great potential to decrease the rate of abortion. By helping women terminate unwanted pregnancies up to 63 days after their last menstruation, medication abortion is a safe and effective option
Plan B website:
http://www.go2planb.com/section/health_professionals/index.html
Plan B is an easy way to provide EC, but it’s not the only way. There are a number of combinations of regular birth control pills (4-20 pills, depending on the brand) that can be used and have the same effect and are easier to obtain in places that won’t dispense plan B.
This comment was written by Mary A.Report this comment to the moderators
April 28th, 2005 at 6:00 am
Furthermore, does the statement “? someone who will never have to worry about being pregnant”?, mean that his opinion is meaningless simply because he’s male? Are you also suggesting that male’s should simply remain silent since their opinion doesnt matter because they lack a vagina? If this isn’t the case, please, enlighten me.
I thought there was going to be an issue here. What I meant was that it’s very easy to lecture and rationalize and come up with useless analogies when you know you won’t ever have to deal with the possibility of an unwanted pregnancy. To be more clear, I don’t think ANYONE, male or female, should be delivering condescending lectures to rape victims about what they did wrong.
Are we in bizarro world here? I just can’t believe that there are people arguing in favor of this. Would you want this for the women in your family and group of friends? If (God forbid) a woman you know was raped, and became pregnant because she wasn’t given EC, would you basically tell her “Tough shit, you’re an adult and you should have taken responsibility”?
This comment was written by Anne.Report this comment to the moderators
April 28th, 2005 at 6:04 am
EC prevents the implantation of a fertilized embryo into the uterine wall. It is an abortifacient.
No, that’s not true. It can also delay or prevent ovulation, just the same way that an IUD or a standard birth control pill can.
But giving an unimplanted single cell zygote the same rights as a human being is, to my mind, an absurd proposition. If it were true, birth control pill manufactuters would be guilty of mass murder on a scale that made Stalin seem like a two bit mafia thug.
It amazes me how you can pretend to have a logicaly consistant argument.
This comment was written by Josh Jasper.Report this comment to the moderators
April 28th, 2005 at 6:38 am
/drift.
Amp, you’ve been criticized before as persenting a blog to the public that is only pseudo-feminist. I’m not going to particularly take that stance right now, but I am appalled at your blindness to Robert’s manipulation and participation in this thread. What is more important to you: to present topics of immediate to concern to women (rape and the need to abort after rape) or to give platform to a conservative male whose views are all too familiar and are apparently the basis for public policy (hence the very existence of this thread). Robert posts above about speech but does not see how his railroading of threads into the conservative viewpoint is a tactic to divert speech away from the topic at hand and towards an agenda — in this case a moral, conservative public policy.
Debate is one thing, and has its place and purpose. As a feminist, however, I don’t think that the personal agency of women or their bodily integrity is up for debate. It simply isn’t.
With that said, Robert is also trying to paint a “poor me” picture of pharmacists and doctors who apparently won’t have the professional ability to express their private morals. He is willing for the state to interfere with drugs and health care through the Food and Drug Administration and doesn’t seem to mind that private morals might be trumped by the State through this administration. What he seems to be saying, by avoiding it completely, is that he doesn’t want women to compromize the professional expression of anyone’s private morals. It’s okay if other men do it, or if the State does it; but ultimately women, in his mind, should not be allowed to have this kind of power in public policy. The line isn’t really about speech or morals, it’s about women’s decision-making capacity in the public arena.
The State already disregards the private morals of its citizens in the matter of taxes and war; both of which serve to terminate the lives of others. Why is Robert so concerned about the private morals of male pharmacists? Seems petty.
This comment was written by Q Grrl.Report this comment to the moderators
April 28th, 2005 at 6:42 am
And if you have the misfortune to live in an area where those facilities have been shut down by all those “compassionate conservatives”, what? Not to mention that any woman who enters such a facility runs the risk of at best, verbal abuse and harrassment (just what you need after having been raped) by all those wonderful “Christians” who love humanity so much they’ve made it their lives’ work to ensure that women and children suffer entire lifetimes due to unwanted pregnancies.
Everything is just so easy, isn’t it? Not every woman who needs such a clinic has access, for dozens of potential reasons. The bottom line is that your religious beliefs shouldn’t dictate what happens to my body. Full stop.
I’m getting really sick of anti-choice men, comfortable in the knowledge that none of this will ever, ever affect them personally, making all these glib remarks about how easy it would be, if only WE “took responsibility”. If they would worry half as much about ensuring that raping men took responsibility for *their* actions, we wouldn’t have to worry about unwanted pregnancies coming from rape in the first place. But no, it’s just so much easier to target the women, and lecture us about how evil *we* are, and how selfish and “irresponsible” and whatever other rubbish.
The whole philosophy I’m getting from the anti-choicers is basically, “You were stupid enough to be born with a uterus and a vagina, and therefore stupid enough to have the type of body our society most deems rapeable, so just DEAL.”
This comment was written by Crys T.Report this comment to the moderators
April 28th, 2005 at 6:45 am
Also, what Q said, especially this:
This comment was written by Crys T.Report this comment to the moderators
April 28th, 2005 at 6:46 am
I don’t know why people here bother to debate with Robert. He does not debate honestly, and clearly has no interest in doing so.
Intellectual dishonesty = “The manipulation of facts, statistics, truth, intentions, and of words to create an argument or theory that seems reasonable and believable, while the creator or disseminator of the argument knows perfectly well that their argument or theory is both flawed and deceptive.”
Entirely too much space on this webboard is taken up in circular arguments with this poster.
This comment was written by Lizzybeth.Report this comment to the moderators
April 28th, 2005 at 7:24 am
Robert,
You naughty [I assume] libertarian, you.
Seriously now, the ER protocol for rape pts. is 1st dose/full dose STI/HIV prophylaxis, and EC before discharge.
This comment was written by ema.Report this comment to the moderators
April 28th, 2005 at 7:33 am
I’ll debate Robert:
You say uterus bearing members of society are responsible for getting their info about EC, yet are against dispensing that info, even apparently mentioning that it exists and that you are against it, if you were confronted with a woman who might need it. So we’re supposed to inform ourselves, but the information should be withheld from us. You’re not leaving women much of a moral choice, since you’d rather us not know we have a choice.
How do you feel about fertility drugs and treatments? Should hospitals be gagged from mentioning them ?
And here’s something to think about even though you probably won’t: if a woman ever agreed to marry you, or if some poor woman has, she maybe raped one day. You may have to raise the rapist’s child. Put that in your pipe and smoke it.
And FYI everyone- “the Handmaids Tale” was inspired by the Islamic Revolution of Iran in the Mid-seventies. There’s even reference to it in the last chapter. Ironically, the Afghan revolution made the Iranian one look moderate, as will our Ameribanist one, perhaps.
This comment was written by Elena.Report this comment to the moderators
April 28th, 2005 at 7:49 am
“As a feminist, however, I don’t think that the personal agency of women or their bodily integrity is up for debate. It simply isn’t. ”
Excuse me? Since when does a topic suddenly get closed to debate? I’m sorry, but any policy that affects my rights, or will affect the society I live in will always be up for debate. As a citizen, whether or not that child is in your body or not, does not give you the right to have whatever policy concerning it that you deem fit. My parents pay for my food, shelter and clothing, but that doesn’t mean that theyhave full control of my life, and can do anything that they feel like doing with me. The only difference, is that unlike the unborn child, I can stand up for myself.
This comment was written by Will.Report this comment to the moderators
April 28th, 2005 at 8:09 am
Josh:
But giving an unimplanted single cell zygote the same rights as a human being is, to my mind, an absurd proposition.
I’m inclined to agree, at least to the extent that I’m not comfortable obliging you to act in that fashion.
Which, fortunately, I’m not doing.
Q Grrl:
Robert posts above about speech but does not see how his railroading of threads into the conservative viewpoint is a tactic to divert speech away from the topic at hand and towards an agenda … in this case a moral, conservative public policy.
I must be a genius. Even something I don’t know I’m doing is a tactic.
He is willing for the state to interfere with drugs and health care through the Food and Drug Administration and doesn’t seem to mind that private morals might be trumped by the State through this administration.
Actually, I believe that the Food and Drug Administration, while well-intended, is an unconscionable imposition on the exercise of our rights as citizens. I object quite strongly to private morals being trumped by the state. However, since the Food and Drug Administration DOES exist, and since the majority of my countrymen and women do not appear inclined to return to a limited Federal regulatory apparatus, I am of course going to advocate that the tool of the state be used in ways that I find congenial.
What he seems to be saying, by avoiding it completely, is that he doesn’t want women to compromize the professional expression of anyone’s private morals. It’s okay if other men do it, or if the State does it…
Could you please provide some attestation or indication that I actually make this dichotomization based on gender? I don’t believe that I do; if I do, then I want to correct the inconsistency in my own thinking.
Crys T:
If they would worry half as much about ensuring that raping men took responsibility for *their* actions, we wouldn’t have to worry about unwanted pregnancies coming from rape in the first place.
I support the death penalty for rapists, and asset forfeiture and transferrance to the mother in cases of a pregnancy and a resulting child. Do you?
Lizzbeth:
I don’t know why people here bother to debate with Robert. He does not debate honestly, and clearly has no interest in doing so.
This is a fairly serious charge. Do you have evidence that I debate dishonestly, or is this just an unsupported ad hominem?
Ema:
Seriously now, the ER protocol for rape pts. is 1st dose/full dose STI/HIV prophylaxis, and EC before discharge.
THE protocol? Or A protocol? There are an awful lot of hospitals that don’t follow that - in fact, that say it’s wrong. The choice of articles seems tendentious.
Elena:
And here’s something to think about even though you probably won’t: if a woman ever agreed to marry you, or if some poor woman has, she maybe raped one day. You may have to raise the rapist’s child. Put that in your pipe and smoke it.
I am well aware of it; my wife and I have already discussed it. As people who are aware that choices have consequences, we have thought out the ramifications of many of our beliefs. Some of them are uncomfortable. Raising the rapist’s child is a duty in which we would try to find joy. Since we don’t believe in inherited guilt, we hope that we would be able to love and cherish that child as we love and cherish the others.
This comment was written by Robert.Report this comment to the moderators
April 28th, 2005 at 8:21 am
I don’t support state-sponsored murder for anyone or for any reason, no. I also don’t support condemning the female victims to nine months of torture, possible serious health threats which may include death, and a further lifetime of pain and suffering just because she was chosen by some violent creep to be his victim. The measure you support are far from “just” and in no way humane, especially for the women involved.
This comment was written by Crys T.Report this comment to the moderators
April 28th, 2005 at 8:21 am
So because you might not mind raising a rapist’s child, no one else is supposed to mind either? And if they do, tough shit?
And Will, are you saying the idea of bodily integrity for women SHOULD be up for debate, or just that you don’t like being told you can’t debate something? I really hope it’s the latter, because that I could at least kind of understand.
This comment was written by Anne.Report this comment to the moderators
April 28th, 2005 at 8:24 am
“Excuse me? Since when does a topic suddenly get closed to debate? I’m sorry, but any policy that affects my rights, or will affect the society I live in will always be up for debate. ”
Your rights don’t trump my body. Get used to it. That’s not a part of the social contract that this citizen agrees to.
And it’s not a “debate” if historically my body has been seen as a public commodity for male consumption. So, I haven’t closed a debate.
If you don’t like the idea of providing abortion after rape, you sure as hell better back up mandatory physical castration of male rapists. I’m sick of boys “debating” what piece of my body they have a right to.
Better yet, let’s just castrate those males who don’t seem to offer much to the gene pool, under jurisdiction of the State, and as defined by the State. Then we won’t have to worry about unwanted pregnancies. And yes, I mean this. If we can dissect the female body into categories of utility, we better fucking be able to do the same to men. Testicles and sperm are of absolutely no social value to me. Chop ‘em all off, I say.
This comment was written by Q Grrl.Report this comment to the moderators
April 28th, 2005 at 8:25 am
I admit I only skimmed this thread, but I’m wondering if Robert acknowledged that refusing to mention EC to rape victims will almost certainly result in more abortions. Women may not know that EC exists, but most are aware that abortion is available.
The only difference, is that unlike the unborn child, I can stand up for myself.
So your mother’s currently carrying you around inside her body? I must say it’s quite a feat that you can type from in there.
This comment was written by Hestia.Report this comment to the moderators
April 28th, 2005 at 8:27 am
“As a citizen, whether or not that child is in your body or not, does not give you the right to have whatever policy concerning it that you deem fit.”
Will explicitly shows that he does not think that women have a right to bodily integrity. My “citizenship” apparently means that I forfeit my body to his “citizenship.”
Suddenly, I have Janet Jackson singing in my head: “So, what have you done for me lately?”
This comment was written by Q Grrl.Report this comment to the moderators
April 28th, 2005 at 8:32 am
I’m really struck by the irony of all this. When we have a thread about rape and men benefitting from rape, men are outraged. When we have a thread about women needing abortion after rape, men are outraged. But yet they don’t see how they benefit from rape. Hmmm.
It’s all about control ladies. If the men can’t control our bodies through public policy, they can count on those bad meanie rapists to control out bodies through force — which they’ll back up with more policy — which they’ll back up with more force, ad nauseum.
Now THAT’s a debate I don’t see them having!
This comment was written by Q Grrl.Report this comment to the moderators
April 28th, 2005 at 8:37 am
What Q Grrl said….
This comment was written by Pseudo-Adrienne.Report this comment to the moderators
April 28th, 2005 at 8:50 am
Obviously, my goal is not to present a platform for Robert’s views. However, one of my goals is to provide a place where views such as Robert’s can be debated, in order to improve my own thinking and my ability to defend my views. In order to do that, it’s necessary to allow people with Robert’s views to post here.
Another goal is to provide a source of hopefully useful commentary, analysis and news for feminists, fat activists, and others. I don’t think that these goals (debate and source for info) are mutually exclusive. Admittedly, the debate aspects of “Alas” may discourage some feminist readers from reading this forum; but it may also encourage others. Besides, the main way I provide information is not through providing information to regular readers (most of whom are already incredibly well-informed on these topics without any help from me), but through creating information that can be found through google and other searches; those information-seekers will not be detered by the presence of debate.
If an ideal world, it would not be up for debate. It would be like the right of women to vote, or the right to an attorney at trial - things that are agreed to by such a broad consensus that there is, outside of purely academic debates, no need to discuss them.
But this isn’t an ideal world. Even if I ban pro-lifers from debating on my threads on this blog (of course, I can’t speak for Pseudo-Adrianne’s threads), that won’t change the fact that there is not a consensus in favor of reproductive freedom in this country, and that these issues are being debated in legislatures and courtrooms and public forums nationwide. Whether we like it or not.
This comment was written by Ampersand.Report this comment to the moderators
April 28th, 2005 at 8:54 am
Robert asks if, under this scenario, a lawyer would somehow be compelled to inform the potential client that there’s a plane awaiting. This example, however, does not present a comparable situation. I am a lawyer, and for very good reasons I am not allowed to advise a client (prospective or otherwise) to engage in illegal conduct, nor may I aid a client in engaging in illegal conduct. Fleeing from prosecution is illegal. If I told the guy where the plane was, I’d be helping him to engage in illegal conduct. Plus, if the guy told me that he was planning to shoot it out with the cops, I’d probably be under an obligation to tell the cops what he was planning to do. He’d have no right to prohibit me from doing so, since a client’s disclosure that he plans on committing a crime (as opposed to the disclosure that he may already have done so) is not subject to the protection of the attorney-client privilege, and as an officer of the court I would be obligated to do what I could to stop the prospective crime of shooting at cops from occurring.
Note that this is a lot different from helping a client who has already engaged in illegal conduct to exercise his legal options.
Neither prescribing nor taking EC is illegal, at least so far. So the comparison fails right there.
This comment was written by nolo.Report this comment to the moderators
April 28th, 2005 at 8:59 am
I wonder if you’ve thought this through? The practical effect of vastly increasing the harshness of rape sentencing would be to make juries much more hesitant to find rapists guilty. So yeah, maybe some rapists would be executed, but many more would get off scott-free.
This comment was written by Ampersand.Report this comment to the moderators
April 28th, 2005 at 9:18 am
“However, one of my goals is to provide a place where views such as Robert’s can be debated, in order to improve my own thinking and my ability to defend my views. ”
And that’s one of the reasons that I come here too. But, when every thread about rape or abortion becomes about Robert’s conservative views, then there is no real debate, nor the spirit of debate. There are a million directions of debate that we could go in, but it seems like the same small circuitous route every time.
you say: “If an ideal world, it would not be up for debate”
I say: I don’t have the time to wait for an ideal world. I am firmly saying: it isn’t open to debate. Which translates to: I cannot find validity in any statements coming from a man who insists that it still is open to debate. Any statements. None. Nada.
There is a fundamental issue underlying all of this: women’s bodily integrity. **If** that is still open to debate, then everything else is just mere speculation and pie-in-the-sky theorizing. If you (read: men) cannot accept women’s rights to their own bodies, what then do you consider the “debate” to be?
This comment was written by Q Grrl.Report this comment to the moderators
April 28th, 2005 at 9:20 am
That is indeed a troubling consideration. I think in the end, though, that we have to make the punishment fit the crime without tactical calculations of the sort you mention. The suggestion of physical castration is appealing, and certainly just, but doesn’t prevent recidivism; you can rape a woman with something other than a penis. I think that preventing recidivism should be one of the main purposes of a criminal justice system, and death takes care of that nicely.
I’m not sure that juries would be that much more hesitant to find rapists guilty, at least in some circumstances; “fry him in hot fat” is my default position and surely I am not alone. We could have a two-tier penalty phase like in murder cases, with the prosecutors deciding whether to seek death or not. That way, in the cases where it’s more he-said she-said and juries would be reluctant to kill, the prosecutor can adjust the requested sentence to something a jury can support. That’s not entirely just, of course, but in an evidentiary legal system you do have to make allowances for some cases being weaker than others.
This comment was written by Robert.Report this comment to the moderators
April 28th, 2005 at 10:13 am
“Your rights don’t trump my body. Get used to it. That’s not a part of the social contract that this citizen agrees to.”
Why do we have the death penalty for murderers? Why in fact is it illegal to begin with? Because you are depriving someone of life. Not only are you depriving that person of their life, you are also depriving everyone who would had benifited, who would have been cheered, and had their lives enriched by that person who was killed. The argument, “how many Albert Einstein’s and Mother Teresa’s have we killed through abortion” applies here.
One doesn’t have a right to kill another human being. Maybe according to you it is occupying space in your body therefore you can do what you please with it. I’m so glad I had a mother who felt differently, otherwise I might not be here. And the same goes for you. I doubt your mother thought you her “property“.
“Testicles and sperm are of absolutely no social value to me. Chop ‘em all off, I say. “
I’m really curious how you think that the human race will procreate minus those organs. Obviously it takes two to create a baby, but those are still rather vital.
“So your mother’s currently carrying you around inside her body? I must say it’s quite a feat that you can type from in there. “
Do I really have to answer that sarcastic blather? Let me put it this way. I’m fortunate that my mother did carry me around and did sacrifice those 9 months. Otherwise I wouldn’t be here, and there wouldn’t a damn thing I could do to stay alive. I am grateful, and recognize the sacrifice that is made. Our society realizes it otherwise we wouldn’t have special privileges in workplace for women who are pregnant. Its part of the social fabric to appreciate that sacrifice, because it affects everyone of us.
“It’s all about control ladies. If the men can’t control our bodies through public policy, they can count on those bad meanie rapists to control out bodies through force … which they’ll back up with more policy … which they’ll back up with more force, ad nauseum.”
This doesn’t seem to be a argument towards abortion at all, merely a diatribe against men in general. Men are not trying to control your body. People in general are against abortion. In fact, I could probably list about 30 women(not men) who agree that abortion is wrong. Please stop trying to make the connection men=evil.
This comment was written by Will.Report this comment to the moderators
April 28th, 2005 at 10:17 am
I don’t think that someone that says this:
“You have a brain to go along with your uterus, right?”
and this:
” I don’t want to be involved in your killing of your offspring…”
this:
“an option which to me leads to an evil outcome?”
and wants women to be prepared at all times for being raped (”the ability to acknowledge that there are rapists out there and the ability to make plans for contingent events, right? “)
- should be debated with at all. I understand Amp’s position but I agree with Q Grrl. I suggest that Robert will be treated as a troll and ignored as such. (Personally I would like to call him worse names but I’m trying to be civilized, as to prove that I have a brain to go with my uterus.)
Great post mousehounde!
This comment was written by Princess of Cybermob.Report this comment to the moderators
April 28th, 2005 at 10:38 am
“One doesn’t have a right to kill another human being. ”
Will — did you pay your taxes this year?
If so you are an: HYPOCRITE.
Or else, you are saying men can kill men, but women cannot decide the fate of the fetus that she is pregnant with.
HYPOCRITE.
So, if you aren’t a hypocrite, then it really, really, does come down to you wanting to control women’s bodies in a way that you are not willing to control men’s bodies. You didn’t even explore the myriad technological ways that the human race could procreate sans men having their testicles still attached to their bodies. Men don’t need their testicles but for a brief amount of time that the State could absolutely legislate. The State could mandate the harvesting and storage of sperm and then mandate physical castration. I see no logical reason that a grown man needs his testicles; especially if he has already fathered one child. Not only could the State manage birth control, but what a handy way to control population!! All we need is a couple of bills passed, and viola! It wouldn’t even be about men’s bodies anymore. We could call it “reproductive rights” or “birth control” or “protecting the not-yet-unborn-child”.
This comment was written by Q Grrl.Report this comment to the moderators
April 28th, 2005 at 10:40 am
Will, a zygote (which is what MIGHT be denied the chance to implant, if EC is administered) is still not a human being, an unborn child, or anything more than a few cells.
Your position on denying rape victims information to (and presumably access if you could) EC is based on an unnkown chance that a rape victim might have a zygote in the works.
By thiss logic, you ought to be denying alcohol to women who’ve just had sex because there’s a chance they might have a zygote in the works, and alcohol might make them less fertile.
I can’t see how this isn’t taking the position that EC is any differnt from “killing an unborn child”, which means that birth control pills are thee same as “killing an unborn child”, as well as IUDs.
These are totaly absurd positions, and you and Robert are taking them on as if there were no reason to argue against them.
It’s also incredibly tacky to take, as paramount importance, the rights of a zygote that might or might not be there, and place them above those of the woman who was raped to be sure that she’s not going to get pregnant from the semen of a man who just raped her.
That, more than anything else, explains how people here get the idea that you and Robert think of them as bood mares first, and human beings later.
This comment was written by Josh Jasper.Report this comment to the moderators
April 28th, 2005 at 11:03 am
“All we need is a couple of bills passed, and viola! It wouldn’t even be about men’s bodies anymore.”
Heh! Good luck with that. A lot of male politicians would choose to keep their dicks and testicles over preserving women’s rights any damn day. If the State would take any serious initiatives in controlling reproduction, they would start with controlling women’s organs first. As people like Robert and Will are all for whether they openly admit it or not. Restricting a woman’s choice is control! No matter how many sob stories about taking care of the children who are the result of rape or so happy your mother decided to continue the pregnancy and give birth to you you put out, in order to create a distraction from the reality of your position.
“The argument, “how many Albert Einstein’s and Mother Teresa’s have we killed through abortion”? applies here.”
How many Hitlers, Stalins, Ted Bundys, Dahmers, and Charlie Mansons, too? Oh yes, by your logic they would have done wonders for our world too.
This comment was written by Pseudo-Adrienne.Report this comment to the moderators
April 28th, 2005 at 11:12 am
Will, I don’t think it’s news to any feminist that there are plenty of anti-feminist and/or misogynist women out there. Most of us know that not all men = evil and not all women = good. Try again.
My mother’s pro-choice, by the way.
This comment was written by Anne.Report this comment to the moderators
April 28th, 2005 at 11:27 am
Q Grrl, I think you have the making of a pretty good science fiction novel there. The removal of the testicles would also have implications regarding male aggression, would it not? Older men, the ones who decide we need to have wars over [insert specious rationale here], would lack testosterone and would therefore be less likely to start a conflict.
Although testicle removal is somewhat harsh. Maybe someone could develop a drug that would nullify testosterone, and then it could be administered with men’s breakfast cereal. There’d be no need for you to tell them that’s what they were eating, of course, if your conscience told you that ‘testosterone is bad, so anything that can be done to counteract its effects is okay.’ Men could still have the children they wanted (assuming they found a woman willing to bear them, of course) *and* there would be less violence in the world!
But, whoops, that would interfere with male bodily integrity. My bad.
This comment was written by Melanie.Report this comment to the moderators
April 28th, 2005 at 11:31 am
Thanks, nolo. I realized that distinction after I’d signed off for the day.
No one is obligated, legally or morally, to inform clients of illegal options. A lawyer can’t be sued for malpractice if he fails to say to his client, “You know that nursing assistant we deposed last week? Who was getting out of her car? The one who heard screams and gunshots and then saw you running out of the clinic? Well, accidents happen, and she is the only eyewitness….”
But we’re talking about a perfectly legal option. A lawyer would be in deep trouble if he failed to give his client the best legal advice, because that’s what he has agreed to provide. The client has a reasonable expectation that his attorney will not lie to him about available courses of action, just as a patient has a reasonable expectation that her doctor will not refrain from informing her of a time-sensitive contraceptive method in a timely manner.
Furthermore, the only reason pro-lifers are demanding these measures be taken is that they know full well that they will prevent women from taking advantage of EC. They know that women, particularly women who have been victimized, will not have the wherewithal to ask for it independently.
This comment was written by piny.Report this comment to the moderators
April 28th, 2005 at 11:31 am
I don’t like the phrase “unborn child”. For a child to be a child, it has to be born. That’s like saying my 13-year-old sister is an “undermatured adult” and should therefore get all the rights and responsibilities of an adult. We draw lines and distinctions (maybe arbitrary ones, but there it is). It is not a baby until it’s born. A zygote does not get the rights a human being, because it isn’t one yet.
And Will, saying that you were grateful for your mom carrying you around is nice. But, if you had been aborted, you wouldn’t be here to feel greatful or sorrow or anything.
This comment was written by Antigone.Report this comment to the moderators
April 28th, 2005 at 11:32 am
My mother has told me that she thought of aborting me during her pregnancy. It never occured to me to be so selfish as to think that decision had to do anything with *me*.
This comment was written by Q Grrl.Report this comment to the moderators
April 28th, 2005 at 12:02 pm
Will … did you pay your taxes this year?
If so you are an: HYPOCRITE.
Um, Q Grrl? Do I really have a choice there?
How many Hitlers, Stalins, Ted Bundys, Dahmers, and Charlie Mansons, too? Oh yes, by your logic they would have done wonders for our world too.
By your logic then, humans then do not posses rights. By saying that there is a possibility they might grow up to be evil, why on earth do we procreate at all if we’re just going to create more evil human beings? And who are you to decide that because they might be evil humans, that they lack the chance to prove themselves?
But, if you had been aborted, you wouldn’t be here to feel greatful or sorrow or anything.
You’re right. I wouldn’t feel anything at all. I would be dead.
My mother has told me that she thought of aborting me during her pregnancy. It never occured to me to be so selfish as to think that decision had to do anything with *me*.
Of course, by your interpretation your mother was just deciding what to with her “property”. Whether to throw it out with the garbage, or let it actually leave her body alive.
I suggest that Robert will be treated as a troll and ignored as such. (Personally I would like to call him worse names but I’m trying to be civilized, as to prove that I have a brain to go with my uterus.)
I believe he was trying to make a point with the statement. Whether or not he took it too far is irrelevant. You should restrain yourself from calling him a troll. All your trying to do is belittle him, therefore in your mind, reducing his arguments as meaningless. Saying it, does not make it so. Let us please dispense with the ad hominem attacks.
This comment was written by Will.Report this comment to the moderators
April 28th, 2005 at 12:13 pm
I would think that castration would be an outpatient surgery, so I’m not sure why it should be labeled “harsh.”
It certainly would be considerably less harsh then our current, non-science fiction belief that young women should be forced to carry to term their unwanted pregnancies.
This comment was written by Q Grrl.Report this comment to the moderators
April 28th, 2005 at 12:20 pm
Yes Will. You have a choice to not pay your taxes. You can claim concientious objector status (not that it protects you from fines or penalties, but it *is* a choice).
You seem willing to dictate your morality onto women’s bodies, yet you are afraid of Uncle Sam. Hmmm.
Thanks buddy.
This comment was written by Q Grrl.Report this comment to the moderators
April 28th, 2005 at 12:22 pm
Of course, by your interpretation your mother was just deciding what to with her “property”?.
I’m not that commenter, but: Yup. I’m not disturbed in the slightest by that idea.
Personally, I would be very uncomfortable with the idea that my mother was forced to have me, with no say in the matter and no bodily integrity.
This comment was written by Anne.Report this comment to the moderators
April 28th, 2005 at 12:43 pm
“Personally, I would be very uncomfortable with the idea that my mother was forced to have me, with no say in the matter and no bodily integrity. “
Convenient that you’re alive to say that. Also rather noble of you seeing as your no longer able to be “terminated”.
“Yes Will. You have a choice to not pay your taxes. You can claim concientious objector status (not that it protects you from fines or penalties, but it *is* a choice). “
First Q Grrl, if I were to stop paying taxes, then it would mean I see something wrong with the current situation. There will always be things that I diasagree with, but I would do more to try to change the situation by being a good citizen and paying my taxes. However, you apparently believe that there are problems and that policies are being supported that shouldn’t be supported. Curious Q Grrl, are you paying your taxes?
This comment was written by Will.Report this comment to the moderators
April 28th, 2005 at 12:45 pm
BTW — the drug currently used for chemical castration is known as Depo-Provera. Apparently, it acts as a form of birth control by preventing ovulation if injected into a woman, and reduced testosterone a lot if injected into a man.
This comment was written by Julian Elson.Report this comment to the moderators
April 28th, 2005 at 12:51 pm
By the way, this talk of castration? Since when did an irreversible removal of an external organ become equated with pregnancy? Last time I checked, no irreversible damage is done through pregnancy…
This comment was written by Will.Report this comment to the moderators
April 28th, 2005 at 12:58 pm
“Curious Q Grrl, are you paying your taxes? ”
No, I have registered as a conscientious objector with the IRS. I allow taxes out of my paycheck for social programs, but I object to the use of my money (and name) to fund US wars.
RE: castration. In my scenario it doesn’t matter the nature of the organ to the body that organ is housed on or within. What matters is the State’s decisions in regards to the utility and social worth of that organ. Kinda like how conservatives view their access to women’s vaginas and uteri (sp?). It makes as much sense to me as your view of my uterus.
This comment was written by Q Grrl.Report this comment to the moderators
April 28th, 2005 at 12:59 pm
Oh, and also, with State involvement, the “damage” of castration would no longer be viewed as damage and our language and legislation would change accordingly. I would imagine that a word like “duty” might replace “damage.”
This comment was written by Q Grrl.Report this comment to the moderators
April 28th, 2005 at 1:05 pm
“Last time I checked, no irreversible damage is done through pregnancy…”
Are you fucking serious?! You don’t know jack-shit about pregnancy do you? Women can develop diabetes mellitus while pregnant. Some women if the pregnancy and/or labor is catastrophic may have to undergo a hysterectomy or they are rendered incapable having any more children. My sister-in-law nearly died in the middle of labor–that would have been irreversible damage because she and the child would have been dead.
Yes, just keep going on and on about pregnancy and labor is so easy and nothing bad could possibly happen. And you wonder why pro-choicers get rightfully pissed off at you anti-choice guys? Clearly, some of you whether willingly or not choose not to educate yourselves about what really goes on or could happen to women while pregnant and going through labor.
This comment was written by Pseudo-Adrienne.Report this comment to the moderators
April 28th, 2005 at 1:16 pm
I would like to mention I made no remarks about pregnancy being a risky and/or painful process. With castration, an organ is cut off. You aren’t going to be putting anything back on.
My sister-in-law went through 9 months of agony during her pregnancy. Imagine it like this, she had morning sickness, three-times as bad the entire term. (Oh and she never once thought about an abortion. In fact, she would be argue even more passionatley than I could that abortion is wrong. Have you had a child Adrienne?) Yes, pregnancy is difficult and life threatening. And if you’ll take the time to go through my previous posts, adrienne, before going off on me, you’ll see that my position on pregnancy is clear. I hold those women brave enough to go through with it in the highest regard.
Now with regards to castration, I don’t see how it would be a moral issue Q Grrl. It makes little logical sense as well. However, if it was my nuts, versus a infants life, I would be more than happy to part with them. And Adrienne, don’t refer to me as anti-choice.
This comment was written by Will.Report this comment to the moderators
April 28th, 2005 at 1:20 pm
I don’t see how my pregnancy could be viewed as a moral issue, Will.
This comment was written by Q Grrl.Report this comment to the moderators
April 28th, 2005 at 1:44 pm
Amp has no problem with me refering to you as anti-choice so I will continue to do so. And no, I don’t have any children as I am nineteen and in college. I’ve never been pregnant before, nor do I intend to have children . Whether or not a woman has children or not does not matter, but to guys like you apparently it does. Is that your definition of a woman? You only admire women who live up to your bullshit standards of womanhood? Oh and not that my body and life choices are any of your damn business, though you’re all for passing legislation that would make it okay for the government to invade the privacy of women, and void their civil rights once they become pregnant. I’ve read through your posts by the way, your position is clear.
This comment was written by Pseudo-Adrienne.Report this comment to the moderators
April 28th, 2005 at 1:46 pm
Convenient that you’re alive to say that. Also rather noble of you seeing as your no longer able to be “terminated”?.
Yes, Will — my mother had THE CHOICE to have me. Get it?
This comment was written by Anne.Report this comment to the moderators
April 28th, 2005 at 1:49 pm
Oh, and the “OMG u aborted Beethoven!” argument is such a poor argument that it’s at Snopes, and no one using actual logic takes it seriously anymore.
http://www.snopes.com/glurge/twoquest.htm
This comment was written by Anne.Report this comment to the moderators
April 28th, 2005 at 1:52 pm
I’m sorry, but these “health care practitioners” refuse to provide information or referrals to those who will provide information on EC to a rape victim because they consider this enabling the sin of contraception (obviously they can’t be claimg a woman is sexually immoral for letting a man rape her) and/or their misguided belief that it’s use may induce sloughing of the endometrial lining containing an implanted embryo or that it has a remote possibility of sufficiently thinning out the currently forming endometrial lining prevent implantation of a blastocyst to cause an abortion (quite the rare and extreme example) completely miss the point and their even bigger and more direct complicity in sin.
If a woman becomes pregnant as a direct result of the rape and conception occurs due to the victim’s inability to obtain information about or access to EC, the “moral health care provider” is directly responsible (100% complicit) for the abortion she obtains. That “healthcare provider” has directly put the woman in the situation that makes her choose to terminate the resultant pregnancy and the sin is therefor significantly greater for that healthcare provider (especially as this scenario that results in abortion is much more likely than the scenario under which they are acting as a barrier to access).
This comment was written by Ol Cranky.Report this comment to the moderators
April 28th, 2005 at 1:53 pm
I can’t imagine any legitimate reason to ask a question like that in a reasonable debate. Unless it’s your claim that there are no women who have had children who are pro-choice, the question is of a completely personal nature, and what I suspect you’re trying to imply by it is nasty.
There’ s a simple rule - don’t try to use the personal or home lives of the people you’re arguing with to score points in a debate. Please follow that rule in the future.
This comment was written by Ampersand.Report this comment to the moderators
April 28th, 2005 at 1:54 pm
Uh, Will, is there even the slightest chance that you will ever be pregnant? I’m guessing not. These policies affect Adrienne on a much more intimate, personal level than you: it’s her body, among many others, we’re talking about. That’s not irrelevant.
This comment was written by piny.Report this comment to the moderators
April 28th, 2005 at 1:55 pm
Sorry, we cross-posted. In future, I’ll refrain from asking Will about his ovaries.
This comment was written by piny.Report this comment to the moderators
April 28th, 2005 at 2:00 pm
obviously they can’t be claimg a woman is sexually immoral for letting a man rape her
Oh, don’t count that out just yet. Or maybe you were being sarcastic….
This comment was written by Anne.Report this comment to the moderators
April 28th, 2005 at 2:03 pm
And in my personal opinion, I’d rather use the terms “pro-choice” and “pro-life” than “anti-choice” and “anti-life”; if you use one, it’s hard to object to people on the other side using the other. In general, it’s more polite to refer to people they way they refer to themselves.
The most technically accurate terms are “pro-banning” and “anti-banning,” in my opinion, but no one uses those terms. :-)
But that’s just my opinion. This isn’t something I’m going to enforce or anything, so y’all use whatever terms you want, within reason.
This comment was written by Ampersand.Report this comment to the moderators
April 28th, 2005 at 2:19 pm
Heh. I’ve been sitting here on my painful nerve in my hip that hasn’t gone away from my last pregnancy, debating whether I should be posting or getting myself around so my husband and I can go to the store to get a maternity belt to avoid the pain that I know is right around the bend with this pregnancy. You see, I’m pregnant right now. This will be my second child, third pregnancy (I terminated my first pregnancy many, many years ago).
Let me, however, go through a list of things that have changed about my body (which I embrace now, but would not have in the first pregnancy).
- Higher risk of diabetes due to 2 diabetic parents and being 34 years old.
- Hip and ankle joint issues that happened from an early release of relaxin, a fluid the body releases to help relax the joints for child birth.
- A scar from the first invasive surgery that I had to care for and be very careful with, which will have a twin since the option of VBAC would be extremely stressful and an ordeal, if I was even successful at it.
- Coupled with the scar, two surgeries where I’m cut open, given a spinal anesthesa (they sit down and give you all the information - kinda like they should with EC no? - about the risks of having something stuck into your spine).
- Increased risk of hypertension due to age and other factors:
“The effects of high blood pressure range from mild to severe. High blood pressure can harm the mother’s kidneys and other organs, and it can cause low birth weight and early delivery. In the most serious cases, the mother develops preeclampsia–or “toxemia of pregnancy”–which can threaten the lives of both the mother and the fetus.”
- Teeth issues due to calcium loss during pregnancy (extremely common!).
… I could go on and on. Suffice it to say, my body is ABSOLUTELY not the body it was prior to having a child, and those changes are ABSOLUTELY not limited to cosmetic changes.
There is SO much more when it comes to pregnancy and how the body is affected, but that I’m sure is a non-issue to anti-choice people. As far as their concerned, it’s like blowing a balloon up over a 9 month period of time that has no health or psychological reprecussions, and that any rights of the body that goes through this are secondary to the cells within them.
Maybe a good form of protest and empathy would be for anti-choice people to run around with a lamprey stuck to their body for 9 months. No, even then it wouldn’t equal the amount of stress a body goes through having a pregnancy.
Also, child birthing can have the effect (especially if you’ve done so multiple times) of decreasing life expectancy.
This comment was written by Kim (basement variety!).Report this comment to the moderators
April 28th, 2005 at 2:22 pm
“Amp has no problem with me refering to you as anti-choice so I will continue to do so. And no, I don’t have any children as I am nineteen and in college. I’ve never been pregnant before, nor do I intend to have children .”
Look, I don’t refer to your side as pro-death do I? No. So allow me my preferred term for my stance as I allow you yours. Is that too much to ask that my stance be referred to as pro-life?
And as for the question, I was bringing into account perspective. I have recieved comments at least twice throughout this strand that as a male I couldn’t possibly understand anything about this situation. I’m merely showing the other side of that argument.
I don’t see how my pregnancy could be viewed as a moral issue, Will.
Well, apparently at least 30% of Americans see it as a moral issue(according to which poll you use) and another 30-40% think its an issue that needs to be changed so obviously I’m not jsut making this up Q Grrl.
This comment was written by Will.Report this comment to the moderators
April 28th, 2005 at 2:25 pm
Amp,
IMO, anti-choice is the most accurate clinical term. This debate is about choice, only in the minds of moralists is it about ‘life’, as it’s been long established (a tradition, you might call it, and we know how conservatives love tradition!) that life begins the day you are born. That’s the date on your birth certificate.
The debate rests squarely on whether people will have the choice to avail themselves of pregnancy termination or the choice will be taken away. I don’t like pandering to people who wish to take that choice away by calling them pro-life, and giving credence to an argument that is accurate only in their moralist viewpoint.
This comment was written by Kim (basement variety!).Report this comment to the moderators
April 28th, 2005 at 2:34 pm
“I don’t like pandering to people who wish to take that choice away by calling them pro-life, and giving credence to an argument that is accurate only in their moralist viewpoint.”
Neither do I.
This comment was written by Pseudo-Adrienne.Report this comment to the moderators
April 28th, 2005 at 2:53 pm
And a zygote that was in the situation of being able to be terminated would say otherwise? Or say or feel or think anything? Or have any ability to be at all aware of its situation? Or care after it was terminated or have or ever had the ability to care? A zygote, a little ball of cells, is not affected by its termination in the same way that I would be were you to shoot me or something I am in total support of a woman not being able to terminate her pregnancy due to her own attachment to it or the zygote or the thought of the zygote or whatever, I’m certainly not saying that a woman is a fool to care about her pregnancy. But to say that somehow the zygote is even able to give a crap about its own existance, and for this reason you should be compelled to carry it to term? No.
Also, to comment on the ‘I’m glad my mom didn’t have an abortion’ line of reasoning: if my mom hadn’t had an abortion when she was in her teens, I probably wouldn’t be here. She’d probably have been done with babies by the time she met my dad in her mid-thirties. So there ya go, two sides of the ‘My mom could have aborted me!’ coin. (Of course, its only because she made these choices that I even exist to care about them. Can’t imagine floating around in a ‘neverborn’ cosmic wasteland getting angry about how she didn’t have that abortion if her choices had been different.)
This comment was written by Rabbit.Report this comment to the moderators
April 28th, 2005 at 3:08 pm
There is SO much more when it comes to pregnancy and how the body is affected, but that I’m sure is a non-issue to anti-choice people.
Yeah. I had (HAD) an online acquaintance who basically felt that pregnancy wasn’t a very big deal, and if you didn’t want to be pregnant, well, you were just selfish, and that was all. When informed of various medical risks and complications, she shrugged them off; she actually said that since she didn’t hear much about women dying in childbirth anymore, it’s not that big a deal. Oh, okay. She also said that there was no way to tell before you got pregnant if you were going to have a pregnancy-impacting condition. Uh. I’ve got a friend who doesn’t intend to get pregnant because she doesn’t have full lung capacity and has a weak heart, but this didn’t faze the first girl a bit. She just didn’t care about medical facts, and that’s not unusual.
Oh, and my mother has had sciatica for 26 years due to pregnancy. Maybe 26 years isn’t permanent enough? Some women become permanently incontinent, as well.
And as for terms, I don’t see a problem with using “anti-choice,” because they are, in fact, against choice. No need to act affronted about an accurate label.
This comment was written by Anne.Report this comment to the moderators
April 28th, 2005 at 3:47 pm
Yep, sciatica is the hip nerve problem I was talking about. My mother has it too, from her own pregnancies. It’s freaking -painful-, sleeping becomes a real exercise in creative body angles when it’s acting up.
BTW, I forgot to mention that chronic headaches go along with the nausea as a common side-effect of pregnancy, as does chronic heartburn. I went through like 3 to 4 costco jugs of anti-acids first pregnancy, and a huge thing of tylenol (can’t take any other drugs). Tylenol barely works though, so I personally end up running around with a mild headache at least 80% of the time. Actually, here’s a list of little things I didn’t know about prior to pregnancy (most just assume nausea):
- Headaches
- Acid heartburn (constant)
- Gas or constipation, dependent on the day, but generally you get to have one or the other.
- Hemmoroids
- Varicose veins that result in the need to wear support hose if you get them (I’m told some women get varicose veins on the labia as well, which is said to be extremely painful - mine thankfully are limited to one leg behind the knee).
- PUPS which is a failure of the body to process liver salts enough which causes itching that is incredibly bad. I mean as in ripping / scarring skin bad. It gets so bad in some women that doctors end up giving them early c-sections.
- Joint pain.
- Ring ligament pain that pretty much makes you incapable of sustained standing and walking without a maternity belt.
- Insomnea coupled with exhaustion.
Those are the ones off the top of my head. Their are tons more, but in my ‘typical and healthy’ pregnancy, I’ve dealt with all those things. Anyone that attempts to portray pregnancy as anything other than life and body altering and potentially extremely dangerous and detrimental to the health of the woman is an absolute fool.
This comment was written by Kim (basement variety!).Report this comment to the moderators
April 28th, 2005 at 4:22 pm
You know, I have just about had it. First, you can’t even grant me one request, (to refer to my side as pro-life), even though I refer to your side as pro-choice. Maybe I will start refering to it for what it is, pro-death. Second, the ad hominem attacks are just really starting to bother me. Have I ever attacked one of you, rather than your arguments? I certainly expected to find a discussion here to be civil, but about the only one who has been civil is Ampersand.
“only in the minds of moralists is it about ‘life’”
mor·al·ist - One who follows a system of moral principles.
mor·al - Arising from conscience or the sense of right and wrong
I don’t know if that term was meant to be an insult, but I personally found it a compliment. And that fact that you find it repulsive, scares me. The only reason we have laws is that people follow a set of morals. Without them, the world quickly falls apart.
Since it is no longer pleasant to post here I ‘ll pretty much state my position, and where I see that everyone disagrees, and leave it at that and maybe add something later.
I believe that abortion is wrong, for the reasons that it is murder. You believe that is a blob of tissue that can eventually be defined as a “human”. We disagree there.
I believe because its murder that it doesn’t matter that its in your body, its human. It should be allowed to live. You think I’m just trying to “control” your body.
I appreciate the sacrifice that women make when they decide to have a child. I only wish that they would choose beforhand whether or not they are going to have that child so that abortion isn’t necesssary. I also know that rape happens, and its unfortunate. I am against having abortion under those circumstances, but wouldn’t want legislation stating that.
Thanks for the discussion.
This comment was written by Will.Report this comment to the moderators
April 28th, 2005 at 4:41 pm
What? This doesn’t make any sense. Either abortion is murder, that is, the killing of a human being that deserves life, or not. If it’s murder, than rape is not a relevant extenuating circumstance–a rape victim’s fetus is exactly the same as every other. Why should those aborting women be treated any differently? Why should they be allowed to commit murder?
This comment was written by piny.Report this comment to the moderators
April 28th, 2005 at 4:59 pm
Gee Will,
#1 you’re conveniently ignoring that the primary topic here is EC for women who have been raped.
Rape : unlawful sexual activity and usually sexual intercourse carried out forcibly or under threat of injury against the will usually of a female or with a person who is beneath a certain age or incapable of valid consent
#2 the implantation rate of a blastocyst under normal circumstances is 40-60%, routine contraception may (or may not) “thin” the endometrial layer developed to the point that implantation is impeded (when ovulation occurs). Implantation is by no means impossible in a woman using hormonal contraception if ovulation and fertlization does occur (the progesterone produced by the corpus luteum can maintain the implantation and prevent menstruation). You’d need to provide evidence that use of hormonal contraceptive significantly decreases the chance of implantation in comparison to the rate of implantation in women not utilizing contraception to be able to substantiate the view that hormonal contraceptives are abortifacients.
#3 EC is a high dose of progesterone (to mimic pregnancy) to delay ovulation duringt he period in which the rapist’s sperm are able to reach and fertilize an ova. If a woman was pregnant prior to the rape, Plan B will not induce sloughing of the endometrial lining and terminate the pregnancy. If fertilization & implantation do not occur after ovulation, progesterone (and, I think, estrogen levels) drop to their lowest during a menstrual cycle and induce menstruation. As I noted earlier, the corpus luteum produces progesterone (and continues to do so for a time post implantation); if progesterone dips below a certain level, the pregnancy will terminate. . .one would think EC would possibly aid in establishing pregnancy if it did not prevent ovulation/fertilization, not induce abortion. [if someone reading this is an OB/GYN or reproductice endocrinologist, please correct me if I'm wrong about this; otherwise, I just don't see how "pro-lifers" can make a claim that Plan B is an abortifacient]
This comment was written by Ol Cranky.Report this comment to the moderators
April 28th, 2005 at 5:17 pm
Why should those aborting women be treated any differently? Why should they be allowed to commit murder?
Because his sense of mercy and sympathy is overriding his sense of morality.
Or, in your terms, as a clever ploy to help us right-wing patriarchs further extend our control over your uterus, punish you for having sex, and strip women of their bodily integrity.
This comment was written by Robert.Report this comment to the moderators
April 28th, 2005 at 5:26 pm
Yes, but why?
He doesn’t seem to have any trouble with that when it comes to women who haven’t been raped, even though pregnancy won’t necessarily be any less stressful for them. If abortion is wrong because it’s murder, I want him to explain why it’s okay for anyone, even a rape victim, to commit murder. I want him to explain why abortion doesn’t stop a beating heart if the pregnancy is the result of rape.
This comment was written by piny.Report this comment to the moderators
April 28th, 2005 at 5:28 pm
I just don’t see how “pro-lifers”? can make a claim that Plan B is an abortifacient
Because it prevents implantation of an embryo as one of its functional modes. It doesn’t always do this, but it does do it sometimes. You are welcome to believe that a person isn’t pregnant until the embryo implants, and that thus the pills can’t be considered an abortifacient. I will be happy to switch terminology, and say that the pills can cause the death of viable embryos if you prefer.
This comment was written by Robert.Report this comment to the moderators
April 28th, 2005 at 5:31 pm
Will,
So it’s bad that we call you anti-choice but ok for you to say that we commit murder? Do you realize that there are women here that have had abortion? Do you feel justified in calling me a murderer?
Don’t let the door hit your sorry ass.
This comment was written by Princess of Cybermob.Report this comment to the moderators
April 28th, 2005 at 5:32 pm
Blame it on B
According to a New Republic article, conservatives across the country have a host of reasons for opposing the emergency contraceptive Plan B:
This comment was written by The Disenchanted Forest.Report this comment to the moderators
April 28th, 2005 at 5:38 pm
If abortion is wrong because it’s murder, I want him to explain why it’s okay for anyone, even a rape victim, to commit murder. I want him to explain why abortion doesn’t stop a beating heart if the pregnancy is the result of rape.
As Will clearly stated, he is not willing to pass a law that prevents a woman who was raped from availing herself of an abortion. He clearly did not state, and clearly does not believe, that the abortion becomes morally right in those circumstances, or that the nature of abortion changes in those circumstances. So your characterization of his statement is based on an intentional or unintentional misreading of his view.
As for why he (or other pro-lifers) might be willing to make this exception, it is a fairly common event in human morality to be forced, or to feel forced, to choose the lesser of two evils. It is wrong to kill a human being under any circumstances. It may be more wrong to let a human being, through my own inaction, do something worse. If I see that guy headed to burn down the orphanage and the only way I can stop him is to kill him, then I might have to kill him in order to act morally - but the killing itself would still be wrong. Similarly, it could be viewed as being worse to ask an unwilling woman to bear the child of her rapist than to end that child’s life. (I don’t think it is, but the argument can be made, and when it is made, it is generally made from pity and sympathy.)
This comment was written by Robert.Report this comment to the moderators
April 28th, 2005 at 5:50 pm
Setting aside the fact that it would be completely impossible to preserve abortion for rape victims and only rape victims:
In your example, the “worse than,” is saving a bunch of other lives. That’s a pretty clear lesser evil: killing one man–a murderer himself–in order to prevent several other murders. But I don’t see how the trauma of a rape victim is worth more than a life–which, if you’ll remember, Will does not at any point distinguish from a child’s life–but the trauma of a woman with an unplanned pregnancy is worth less.
This comment was written by piny.Report this comment to the moderators
April 28th, 2005 at 5:57 pm
So Robert and / or Will;
Should I face charges of murder, as a woman who has terminated a pregnancy? Would you feel comfortable with this scenario?
This comment was written by Kim (basement variety!).Report this comment to the moderators
April 28th, 2005 at 6:02 pm
but the argument can be made
Pretty much any argument “can be made.” That doesn’t mean it’s in any way logical or valid.
The guy burning down the orphanage is going to kill a bunch of human beings. Morally, ending one life is less evil than passively allowing the guy to end many lives.
But where is the counter to “ending a human life” in allowing a rape victim to abort? Yes, you can say that we’re being compassionate and it’s awful, but that’s not a real argument. There is no loss of human life on the woman’s side of the equation.
Will is arguing, in essence, that the anguish of the rape victim outweighs the value of the fetus’s life. That’s not a “pro-life” position. That’s pro-choice; it’s just splitting hairs about which kind of choices are morally acceptable and which are not.
This comment was written by mythago.Report this comment to the moderators
April 28th, 2005 at 6:07 pm
Rape is one form of male intrusion. What Will and Robert are doing on this thread is another. You two are no better than rapists. I feel violated just reading your cruel, uninformed opinions. I don’t understand why no one can see the correlation between this kind of behavior and the same kind of behavior that allowes men to believe they can rape with impunity.
This comment was written by morgan.Report this comment to the moderators
April 28th, 2005 at 6:18 pm
Morgan,
On a prior thread, I stated that to me those attempting to force their will upon a woman with regards to what occurs with her body, and force a woman to physically do something that is unacceptible is tantamount to rape to me. My husband suggested that I make a compromise with the the people wishing to be referred to as ‘pro-life’ - which is an implication that the opposite side is ‘pro-death’, and refer to myself as ‘anti-rape’. I mean really, how can they object to me calling myself anti-rape, right? Just because it implies something about them isn’t my problem now, is it?
This comment was written by Kim (basement variety!).Report this comment to the moderators
April 28th, 2005 at 6:21 pm
Uh, morgan, sorry, but being obnoxious or even bullying on a thread is way different than rape. If you want to say they have the same sense of patriarchal entitlement as men who think they have a right to sex with any woman they want, that’s one thing. But to say that a troll is “no better than” someone who physically violates another human being is a little skewed on the perspective front.
This comment was written by mythago.Report this comment to the moderators
April 28th, 2005 at 6:28 pm
I have to go with mythago on the “no better than rapists” thing.
However, Amanda of Pandagon has frequently framed (and I believe said so early in this thread) the “We don’t want women to know aboutor use EC” crowd as being accessories to rape; she provocatively says that to them, it’s more important that a rapist be allowed to continue to inflict trauma, and have a chance to impregnate the victim, than it is for the woman to attempt to regain control over her life.
This comment was written by Anne.Report this comment to the moderators
April 28th, 2005 at 7:04 pm
Okay I am going to restate my position on rape, even though Robert did an excellent job. I believe it is wrong to abort a child which is the product of rape. I would not push for legislation on this issue, because it wouldn’t pass, and I also believe that those who feel abortion is wrong should first make abortions illegal for non-rape victims.
Now I know I will get a lot of passionate blogs about me saying that abortion should be illegal, but that’s what I believe. What bothers me, is that for stating my position, I’m getting labeled as a ” rapist”. Excuse me?
Kim, I’m not calling you a murderer, even though I would consider you pretty much as one. First, I wouldn’t win any points with in doing so, as the whole point of debate is to try to persuade the other side to accept the merits of your case. Second, since the law currently allows you to abort your pregnancy, my main attempt here on the blogs, is to try to dissuade you from having another abortion. Now, I probably will not be successful. But I do want to try.
As for holding you in a court for murder, in my perfect world that might be the case. I certainly wouldn’t want to say anything here about it. I mean, just look at the reception Robert and I have recieved. For merely stating our views, we have been called rapists, a troll, ignorant, etc. We haven’t responded in kind. Now I know you feel passionate, but that doesn’t reflect well on your position. So, Kim, I don’t really want to discuss hypotheticals right now…
This comment was written by Will.Report this comment to the moderators
April 28th, 2005 at 7:07 pm
Mythago, thank you for referring to my position as pro-life. The courtesy, whether it was intended or not, was appreciated. I still say abortion after rape is wrong, but would not urge legislation for the reasons listed above.
This comment was written by Will.Report this comment to the moderators
April 28th, 2005 at 7:13 pm
Ok, Robert, so I have to ask you a question: why don’t you think MDs, Pharmacists, and what not should be subject to the same stringent standards that you say a raped woman should live up to? Why should they be protected from the consequences of an unfair world? That’s effectively what you are arguing: that doctors should be protected from the unfairness of life and of being adults who have to live with the consequences of their decisions and choices (note: not to imply that a woman chooses to get raped, but just to make clear that this is all part-and-parcel of the “you’re an adult, life isn’t fair, deal with it” argument Robert is presenting). The logical extension of your argument is that doctors should be permitted to commit malpractice and be protected from the consequences of their decisions.
To become a legally accredited and licensed MD in this country, one has to go through a hell of a lot of training and study, not just of the elements of anatomy and doctorin’, but also of the policies, standards, minimum competencies and responsibilities that are _required_ of practicing medical professionals.
Beyond that, when one accepts a job as such a professional, one goes into that with eyes open and of free will accepts these standards, policies, practices and responsibilities of the job and the accrediting agencies. When it comes to being a doctor, the minimum requirement is to provide the necessary information about all legal and medically efficacious options to the patient so that she can make an informed decision about what actions to take. When you take a job as a doctor, you say yes to this requirement. If you then can’t or won’t do it, you can’t do the job…you can’t be a doctor. A licensed pharmacist is required to fill legal prescriptions. When you accept a job as a pharmacist, you accept this requirement. If you then can’t or won’t do it, you can’t do the job…you can’t be a pharmacist.
And you can’t say that they may have been unaware of these requirements and thus can be excused from them. If you are arguing (as you effectively are) that the average woman have the combined knowledge of an up-to-date Ob/Gyn, a medical dispatcher, and a FEMA manager, then the experts in a field certainly must have an equal or better depth of knowledge.
We put all sorts of minimum restrictions on what professionals must know or do to be allowed to perform a job. They have consciously chosen their profession and what that profession requires. The consequence of that choice is that they provide the necessary medical information to the patient. They don’t have to perform the abortion or provide the prescription, but they do have to provide the information. Not doing so is simple and willful malpractice.
And to deny needed medical knowledge to a patient, particularly a patient who through no fault or action of her own is under your care and dependent upon your knowledge and skill, is beyond immoral. It is evil.
This comment was written by SDM.Report this comment to the moderators
April 28th, 2005 at 7:24 pm
Because it prevents implantation of an embryo as one of its functional modes. It doesn’t always do this, but it does do it sometimes. You are welcome to believe that a person isn’t pregnant until the embryo implants, and that thus the pills can’t be considered an abortifacient. I will be happy to switch terminology, and say that the pills can cause the death of viable embryos if you prefer.
Robert: The “Pro-Life”movement claims it can & does prevent implantation, if you’ve read my entire post you’ll see that I have not seen any scientific evidence (or logical scientific reasoning) to support that a high dose of progesterone would prevent implantation - especially if there is a blastocyst with a functioning corpus luteum that is also producing progesterone (which will keep the endometrial lining lush and welcoming) and will continue to produce progesterone if it implants. It’s when the blastocyst doesn’t implant that the progesterone levels will decrease below pregnancy maintaining levels and start menses (the reason there are so many miscarriages in between first and 2nd trimesters is because there is a shift in progesterone production from the corpus luteum to maternal progesterone production - if that’s not high enough a miscarriage will occur).
Inaccuracy of mechanism of action aside, the person who interferes with access to information to prevent the pregnancy post rape because (s)he believes that on the rare occasion that the lining is inhospitable to implantation due to EC and actually facilitates fertilization that most likely would not have occurred had the victim had the information and access to EC is complicit in sin and is a direct cause of any abortion the victim decides to have after the fact. The latter is most definitely an abortion that you can verify has occured, the former is a hypothetical that even “prolifers” admit is at most a possibility. To further compound the complicity, you have actually intentionally facilitated creation of what you consider to be a sacred life that was “murdered” because you wouldn’t allow delay of ovulation to prevent conception under the circumstances due to the slim possibility that inability to implant was related to EC and not natural factors.
This comment was written by Ol Cranky.Report this comment to the moderators
April 28th, 2005 at 7:29 pm
So lemme get this straight, you don’t want to call me a murderer, but you think I am one just the same, but it hurts your feelings that I see your position as akin to rape, and it’s disrespectful to portray my view in that light?
It’s none of your business what comes in our out of my vagina, fella, got it? The only one besides me that has a right to worry about what is going in our out of my vagina is my husband, fella, got it? Even then, the ultimate say is mine, fella, got it? You’re clearly not here to discuss this to learn more about the pro-choice stance with the idea of expanding your own horizons, and this isn’t a board that is dedicated to anti-choice sentiments, but in fact, just the opposite, so don’t even begin to cry foul for people not choosing to deal with your delicate sensibilities with kid gloves. You jumped into the lions den of your own free will, and just like I’d expect to deal with people of your ilk on a anti-choice blog, don’t act surprised or cheated because some of us refuse to tip-toe around your illogical, insulting and invasive arguments.
I’m fairly certain I’ve reprsented the pro-choice side pretty darn well, considering I’m someone in a position of having been through pregnancy and abortion. My refusing to act like a humble woman to pander to your outlandish and reprehensible implications and accusations and consistent sharing of factual and personal and private information for your edification and examination has been far more civil than I personally feel you deserve.
So in closing, I offer you this bit of not so nice advice so you can say that I’ve genuinely attacked you in an ad hominem manner; Why don’t you go to your room, and think about what I’ve said while you wait for mommy or daddy to finish up dinner before retorting again?
This comment was written by Kim (basement variety!).Report this comment to the moderators
April 28th, 2005 at 7:36 pm
Will,
how can you say this:
after saying this:
You haven’t been responding in kind? You are calling us murderers!
This comment was written by Princess of Cybermob.Report this comment to the moderators
April 28th, 2005 at 7:40 pm
Kim, well said. But really dear, why waste your time and energy with these guys? Let these boys piss and moan about being “victims” while exercising their blatant hypocritical tendancies–inherent within their position–by calling us (whether subliminally or even “politely”) “murderers,” then turn around and cry like babies when people call them “pro-rapists rights activists.” They don’t deserve “civility,” nor do they deserve our time and energy. They’ll just have to live with the painful fact that there are pro-choice women and men out there who don’t pander to their bullshit philosophy on life or womanhood.
Piss, moan, whimper, weep all you like boys on how “morally superior” you think you are, if that’s what gets you off. You can’t stop women from taking control over their bodies no matter how much it makes you cringe. Yep, life is unfair boys. You can’t make pro-choice women and men think and act like you. Devastating (and ego-crushing) I’m sure.
This comment was written by Pseudo-Adrienne.Report this comment to the moderators
April 28th, 2005 at 7:41 pm
The hell just happen with that?
This comment was written by Pseudo-Adrienne.Report this comment to the moderators
April 28th, 2005 at 7:41 pm
My point Kim, is that even though I might upset you, the proper thing for a mature adult is to attack the arguments, rather than the person. Since you seem incapable of doing so, I don’t see any point in arguing with you any further. Got it, Ma’am?
This comment was written by Will.Report this comment to the moderators
April 28th, 2005 at 7:45 pm
Atually Adrienne, this was rather fun. I’ve never felt so sure in my beliefs until hearing you “piss and moan” as you so rightly put it. I’m curious though, would you rather just hear people who agree with you all the time? Personally, I would think that would get rather boring.
This comment was written by Will.Report this comment to the moderators
April 28th, 2005 at 7:48 pm
(repeated because I messed up the quotes )
Will,
how can you say this:
“For merely stating our views, we have been called rapists, a troll, ignorant, etc. We haven’t responded in kind. …”
after saying this:
“Kim, I’m not calling you a murderer, even though I would consider you pretty much as one….
As for holding you in a court for murder, in my perfect world that might be the case. …Kim, I’m not calling you a murderer, even though I would consider you pretty much as one.”
You haven’t been responding in kind? You are calling us murderers!
This comment was written by Princess of Cybermob.Report this comment to the moderators
April 28th, 2005 at 7:49 pm
No. Sorry to shoot that view of yours of me to shit, buddy-boy. Differing opinions is one thing. Being a condescending, insulting for the sake of pissing people off, self-righteous–ass, as you have been, on purpose is another thing.
This comment was written by Pseudo-Adrienne.Report this comment to the moderators
April 28th, 2005 at 7:51 pm
Wow.
The original post was about providing EC to rape survivors. We go from that to bandying about the adoption option, humanizing the fetus, and dimsissing the woman. Woman? What woman?
Or in this case, rape survivor? What rape survivor?
I am oh-so-glad that Will and Robert speak out in defense of the doctors and pharmacists whose tender feelings are hurt by the horrible spectre of women getting EC. Why, the very idea of providing such information is just so–so–oppressive! It’s so heartening to know that enforced pregnancy with all of the mental, emotional, and physical trauma is acceptable, that a fetus is so revered, and that the well-being of a girl or a woman is lower than that of a slug.
I-do-not-give-a-shit-about-fetuses. Especially in cases of rape, when a woman does not want to be pregnant. I don’t particularly care if Robert or Will volunteers to draw and quarter the rapists and raise the child themselves. There is another person in this equation, the rape survivor, who may not want to be pregnant at all, period, amen, end of story. A woman who has been violated, whose rights have been violated, whose body has been violated. A woman whose right to control her body was taken away quite brutally, and whose right to regain control over her body (and her life) would continue to be withheld in the name of conscience, or fetuses, or fairness to men, or whatever.
Many of those women are friends of mine. Some may be posting on this thread. And before I hear another fucking self-righteous lecture about the sanctity of life and a dismissal of the real agony rape survivors go through, know this: there is another person affected here, and your dismissal of her is quite telling. Pretty damned misogynist.
Woman? What woman? Oh, just go along and give it up for adoption, it’s just like giving away a pair of shoes, and forty weeks of pregnancy is no big deal. And if the only hospital around is a Catholic hospital that refuses to provide or even educate you about EC, tough shit. You should have known better. You should consider the fetus, which can’t speak for itself, and doesn’t have a choice. Of course, you didn’t have a choice in what happened to you, either, but it’s not like you matter, silly woman. You’re nothing. Now let’s keep talking about the rights of doctors and pharmacists to refuse care, the rights of fetuses, and the rights of men to debate what should happen to those incubators with legs that carry fetuses.
Heaven forbid any rape survivors read this thread and lose their tempers and point out that they have rights as well. Heaven forbid that anyone point out that Will and Robert will likely never be raped, and will never have to worry about being pregnant from a rape. IOW, let’s not mention that someone already had plenty to say about what the rape survivor’s rights were when he RAPED her, and being refused medical information is another statement about her (non-existent) rights. Let’s not acknowledge the fact that maybe a traumatized woman might like to take some control of her body back, that maybe she does not want to be pregnant, does not want to carry and birth her attacker’s child, does not want to put her body through ten weeks of pregnancy with all of the risks that have been pointed out several times in this thread.
You know, because it’s not about the raped woman at all. She apparently doesn’t matter, or even exist.
This comment was written by Sheelzebub.Report this comment to the moderators
April 28th, 2005 at 8:00 pm
No. Sorry to shoot that view of yours of me to shit, buddy-boy. Differing opinions is one thing. Being a condescending, insulting for the sake of pissing people off, self-righteous”“ass, as you have been, on purpose is another thing.
My God, the hat e that eminates from you…passion is one thing…pure all out hate is another. No wonder there aren’t many people who show up here with differing views. By the way princess, and this might be splitting hairs but, all those ad hominem attacks were brought up before I ever said anything to Kim. And Kim asked me what I thought, otherwise I would have never brought it up.
For shame I bring up different views and try to have a debate here, since I am apparently raping by doing so…any logic there?
This comment was written by Will.Report this comment to the moderators
April 28th, 2005 at 8:05 pm
I still say abortion after rape is wrong, but would not urge legislation for the reasons listed above.
Then you are no more “pro-life” than I am.
Excusing murder of a living human being because of the circumstances of that human being’s conception is not “pro-life.”
A truly pro-life person excuses abortion when necessary to save the mother’s life–i.e., in self-defense. “It would be mean to rape victims” is not a pro-life attitude. It’s a wishy-washy excuse for having an inconsistent moral framework.
This comment was written by mythago.Report this comment to the moderators
April 28th, 2005 at 8:07 pm
You know what? I’m sick to death of men debating what I can and cannot do, and what medical care I can expect, even if I’ve been raped.
Your “debate” ignores the central part of the original post–it’s about denying any information about EC to women who were raped.
Their rights have already been up for grabs enough. You’ll just have to forgive me if I shed no tears over your hurt feelings.
This comment was written by Sheelzebub.Report this comment to the moderators
April 28th, 2005 at 8:14 pm
Who said anything about hurt feelings Sheelzebub? I’m just wondering why you can’t be civil, that’s all. Oh, and if you are tired about having men debate about what you can and can’t do then you have a serious problem considering the amount of men in Congress.
Bulletin for all you Women out there: Men are not out to get you. It was men in Congress that voted for every equal treatment of women out there from suffrage to equal treatment in the workplace. We are not your enemies.
Mythago, you want to say that I’m wishy washy. But, if according to your description I’m pro-choice whats the problem? Isn’t that what you want anyway? Wouldn’t everyone around here actually be civil if they found out I actually agreed with them?
This comment was written by Will.Report this comment to the moderators
April 28th, 2005 at 8:17 pm
By the way Willie, before you go and jerk-off a “job well done”……
As a co-blogger I have access to the “moderation of comments” section of this site. I can delete comments if I wanted to. Including a shit-load of yours. But you know what, I DIDN’T FUCKING DELETE THEM! I like discourse. I allowed YOU (and Robert when his comments would pop up, but they usually don’t because he’s a ‘regular’) to spew your very much so, as Sheelzebub so beautifully put it, devaluing of the rape victim/woman’s pain and rights–comments. Occassionally, though rarely, your comments would pop up under the moderation thing and I would ‘approve’ of them. No matter how infuriating they were to me. So no, differing views aren’t a big deal. By the way, this is a blog leaning towards the Left of the political spectrum and is pro-feminist. What the hell were you expecting when you came here?! A pat on the head?!
This comment was written by Pseudo-Adrienne.Report this comment to the moderators
April 28th, 2005 at 8:19 pm
Um, you were going on about hurt feelings, Will, namely, your hurt feelings.
And kindly spare me the lectures to be civil. I am frankly sick to the teeth of the passive agressive pseudo-civil BS I see whenever the subject of rape or abortion comes up. It’s pretty telling that while you wouldn’t stop a raped woman from getting an abortion, you and Robert focus on the rights of the fetus, the doctors and pharmacists, the hospitals. . .anyone but the raped woman. Just ignore her as much as you can.
Not very civil, that.
This comment was written by Sheelzebub.Report this comment to the moderators
April 28th, 2005 at 8:30 pm
“Men are not out to get you.”
More bullshit. Certainly not all of you–not even close. However, anti-choice men (along with their anti-choice Stepford women) who just happen to be on Capitol Hill and in the White House are out to restrict women’s choices and control our bodies. That is going after women. Your ideological buddies, many of whom are male politicians who wield a large portion of power over the rest of us, are our enemies. And the whimpering for civility is bullshit, as that is a tactic used especially by anti-choice folks to silence the other side of the argument.
This comment was written by Pseudo-Adrienne.Report this comment to the moderators
April 28th, 2005 at 8:31 pm
Look Adrienne; If you want to delete my blogs go ahead. You seem pisssed off so I will stop posting on this subject, and I’m sorry to have made you upset. I am sincere in that. I hope you don’t mind if I go and post elsewhere. No I didnt expect a pat on the head. But I have had a discussion like this where I wasn’t called a rapist.
Oh and Seelzebub. Find my statement that “my feeling are hurt”. Which comment did I say that?
This comment was written by Will.Report this comment to the moderators
April 28th, 2005 at 8:43 pm
No. I will not delete your previous posts. I don’t have that power, only Amp does. I will not delete your comments or Robert’s if I happen to see them under moderation. I and Mister Amp (mostly Amp), will approve of them and allow these very heated discussions over feminist/reproductive-rights/cultural/social/political issues to continue. Flame wars are fun, anyway. I will follow Amp’s example as this is his blog really. He invited me to be his co-blogger so I will follow his rules when it comes to controlling comments. The comments of anti-choicers, conservatives, anti-feminists will NOT be deleted so long as they aren’t overtly or just beyond offensive. Amp holds us “Lefties” to the same rules too. And I’ve probably broken a rule or two of his on this thread too, as others probably have.
This comment was written by Pseudo-Adrienne.Report this comment to the moderators
April 28th, 2005 at 8:51 pm
Kim:
Should I face charges of murder, as a woman who has terminated a pregnancy? Would you feel comfortable with this scenario?
Murder is a crime which requires a specific state of mind. If you believed that your fetus was a human person, and if you believed that having an abortion was killing that human person, then yes, you’re a murderer. If you did not believe that your fetus was a human person (a position with which I disagree, but which I recognize is not currently a consensus value in our society), then it’s not murder. (And I suppose that if you believed that it was a human person but that having an abortion somehow didn’t kill that person, that wouldn’t be murder either, but I can’t envision a way that someone could think that.)
Should you be charged? No. There is no law against murdering a human person who has not yet been born, so even if you thought that was what you were doing, you have no legal liability.
Should the law be changed? Probably not. As has been noted elsewhere, there is a right to choose whether the law respects it or not - women can and will abort children that they do not wish to carry. I believe that a changing of people’s hearts and minds is the method that will end abortion, not legal prohibitions on it.
This comment was written by Robert.Report this comment to the moderators
April 28th, 2005 at 8:54 pm
Bulliten for you Women out there: Men are not out to get you.
Will, kindly put that back in the dark hole from which you pulled it. Seriously. I like fish, but I don’t much care for red herring.
Oh, and Seelzebub. Find my statement that “my feeling are hurt’> Which comment did I say that?
Oh no, no direct comment, just a lot of assertions that anyone who doesn’t agree with the majority here is falsely accused of being a rapist or a troll, that we aren’t civil. (By the way, no one said, “Will, you are a rapist.”)
And the civility lectures wear thin after we hear how women who are denied information about EC should have the brains and the responsiblity to get it themselves (the implication being that if we didn’t think to do that after a rape, we were stupid and irresponsible). We were told that providing information about EC was facilitating evil and that EC and abortion was murder. Yet turning the argument around and stating that denying EC aiding and abetting rape (and likening enforcing a pregnancy to rape) is somehow uncivil.
This comment was written by Sheelzebub.Report this comment to the moderators
April 28th, 2005 at 8:58 pm
My goodness, you spend all day drawing comics rather than being on the internet, and look what you miss!
I guess it’s a bit late for me to ask everyone to cool down a little…
Robert wrote:
Sorry I said you felt otherwise, waaaaay back at the beginning of this thread. Frankly, if all pro-lifers felt the way you do about legal prohibition, I’d have very few objections to the pro-life movement. (Not none. But way fewer).
This comment was written by Ampersand.Report this comment to the moderators
April 28th, 2005 at 9:01 pm
What do “Alas” readers think should be done with a thread like this one, by the way?
It’s not a solution to say I should moderate more - I’ve got other things to do (like draw comics or do my job, occasionally). So it’s not always possible for me to be on top of things.
Should I close the thread after it’s become a combat zone? Or do people enjoy the flamefests enough so I should just let the occasional thread be kinda a flamewar and not worry about it?
(And for the record, Will: You’ve given as good as you’ve gotten in this thread. I really don’t think your “I’m such a victim, everyone here has been rude but me” stance is the best one for you to take.)
This comment was written by Ampersand.Report this comment to the moderators
April 28th, 2005 at 9:07 pm
I don’t see how the trauma of a rape victim is worth more than a life”“which, if you’ll remember, Will does not at any point distinguish from a child’s life”“but the trauma of a woman with an unplanned pregnancy is worth less.
Yes, it’s not a logically defensible position. It is emotionally defensible, though.
SDM:
Ok, Robert, so I have to ask you a question: why don’t you think MDs, Pharmacists, and what not should be subject to the same stringent standards that you say a raped woman should live up to? Why should they be protected from the consequences of an unfair world?
As I have said previously, in plain language, I don’t think they should be protected from the consequences of an unfair world. I think that the appropriate locus for the decision as to what information should be distributed by a medical practice, or what kind of medical ethics will rule a medical practice, or what kind of pills a pharmacy should dispense, etc., is the individual business unit, corporation, or hospital board - not the legislature, not the governing bodies of the field, not Pope Benedict, not Pseudo-Adrienne - except insofar as the legislature, the governing body, the Pope, or Adrienne have their own hospital or pharmacy. Because of the nature of medical practice, there are a lot of people who will decline to perform some controversial actions; they should have to face the consequence of their decision. (Which may, and probably should, entail finding employment with someone who has compatible values.)
They don’t have to perform the abortion or provide the prescription, but they do have to provide the information. Not doing so is simple and willful malpractice.
But this is not a consensus value. It does not have the force of law. It is what is being argued, not the premise from which the argument is derived.
The reality is that there are multiple viewpoints on medical issues, most particularly in areas surrounding the creation of life. Although I am a partisan of one particular viewpoint, I recognize that not everyone shares that view. There is a pluralism of intellectual, spiritual, emotional perspectives; my values will not always prevail. Accordingly, although I think my values are correct, I seek a legal regime wherein pluralism is the norm. That is generally going to involve deference to the freedom of conscience of health care providers - in all directions, whether that freedom is going to uphold or undermine my own values.
This comment was written by Robert.Report this comment to the moderators
April 28th, 2005 at 9:57 pm
Will,
I came in on this a little late, but here it is: You wish to be called pro-life, but I cannot in good conscious call you this because you don’t seem to be all that concerned about the life of the pregnant women/rape victim. You seem to be in favor of limiting the options women have avaliable, IE you are anti-choice (or limited choice if you prefer).
Will and Robert,
As it stands, abortion is defined as the termination of a pregnancy. No pregancy, no abortion. EC prevents pregnancy; either prevents conception or in very limited situations, implantation. I cannot see how you can see something that is 32 cells big as life. I kill more cells when I skin my knee: all of them have human DNA in them too. I kill more complex life when I swat a fly.
If a women wants to give over her body for 9 monthes and then give over the rest of her life to being a mother, that is her decision. If she does not, then it is forced labor, and slavery.
We make value choices every day on what someone’s life is worth. If someone is threatning my life and health, I do not hesitate to kill her. If someone is coming at me with a knife, and I had a gun in my hand, she would be dead or severely wounded on the ground. Well, a zygote is a clear threat on my health and my life, so I have no more qualms about getting rid of it than I would a tapeworm.
Also, my mom didn’t have the option of aborting me, and I wish to hell she would have. She and my dad weren’t ready for kids, her life was in serious jeapordy when she had me. All bearing me did was make her less healthy and put a finacial/ psychological/ emotional strain on the family. If she would have chosen to had me, I would be more appreciative of the life she gave me, but she didn’t have the option.
This comment was written by Antigone.Report this comment to the moderators
April 28th, 2005 at 10:05 pm
“Should I close the thread after it’s become a combat zone? Or do people enjoy the flamefests enough so I should just let the occasional thread be kinda a flamewar and not worry about it?”
Up to you, Amp. I’ll admit that I help screw up this thread (that was your post) with my own ‘flames’. This is your blog so, yeah, do what you want.
This comment was written by Pseudo-Adrienne.Report this comment to the moderators
April 28th, 2005 at 11:25 pm
Robert,
“THE protocol? Or A protocol?”
Yes, *the* protocol, as in the standard of care as per ACOG*, and AMA**. [Both ACOG and AMA recommend that physicians treating rape pts inform women about EC, and offer the pt EC.]
“There are an awful lot of hospitals that don’t follow that - in fact, that say it’s wrong.”
Most hospitals that don’t adhere to the standard of care are the Catholic ones; they do that because of ideological, not scientific reasons. Religious dogma is not one of the criteria used to establish/evaluate the standard of care.
All,
Just so we’re clear on the actual medical facts [aka "Just because one believes EC prevents implantation doesn't mean it actually does"]:
“Recently, treatment with either 10 mg mifepristone or 1.5 mg of levonorgestrel has emerged as the most effective hormonal method for emergency contraception…
When summarized, available data from studies in humans indicate that the contraceptive effects of both levonorgestrel and mifepristone, when used in single low doses for emergency contraception, involve either blockade or delay of ovulation, due to either prevention or delay of the LH [a hormone released from the brain] surge, rather than to inhibition of implantation.”
*American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, 242 Educ. Bull. 3 (Nov. 1997).
**American Medical Association, Strategies for the Treatment and Prevention of Sexual Assault (1995).
This comment was written by ema.Report this comment to the moderators
April 29th, 2005 at 5:41 am
Robert
I just don’t see how “pro-lifers”? can make a claim that Plan B is an abortifacient
Because it prevents implantation of an embryo as one of its functional modes. It doesn’t always do this, but it does do it sometimes.
And so does alcohol and stress. So, is having a drink after getting laid the same as taking EC?
. I believe that a changing of people’s hearts and minds is the method that will end abortion, not legal prohibitions on it.
Robert, you’re failing bigtime. I don’t think you’re capable of changing anyone’s hearts or minds here. If anything, you’re firming up my resolve.
Actualy, I don’t think you’re interested in changing hearts and minds unless they somehow end up being little clones of your heart and mind.
If you really wanted to reduce the number of actual abortions (and not failed implantations of a zygote like plan B causes) you’d be out pushing plan B, contraception, comprehensive sex ed, and cheap available contraceptives to every amn womena and child.
I can prove, with actual statistics, that this is what happens in every country and location in the USA where contraceptives, plan B, and comprehensive sex ed becomes available.
It’s not even worht aarguing, it’s as much of a fact as any social science can come close to proving. Sort of like the idea that poverty encourages crime. What I just mentioned makes a noticable dent in abortions and unwanted pregnancies.
You could also push for massive funding for college education for women, because that too puts a huge dent in abortions and unplanned pregnancies.
But that’s not what you are doing. So I’m forced to conclude that you’re either repeatedly trying something that fails to work and exepcting different results, or this is all just part of some ‘have fun debating with the liberal feminist’ fetish of yours, and you don’t give a shit.
I’m leaning towards the alter, ebcause I’m sure these points ahve been made to you before
This comment was written by Josh Jasper.Report this comment to the moderators
April 29th, 2005 at 6:40 am
Oh, the many shades of irony. I went home last night wondering how long it would take on this thread before the calls to “civility” came out. For those of you playing along at home, it might behoove you to remember the three weeks that CrysT and I (and others) argued about the links between rape, male social benefits from rape, and men’s calls to civility. It’s alarming how predictable the pattern is. But this is why I firmly believe we live in (and men benefit from) a rape culture. Rape (and women’s needs for abortion) are theoretical to men, subject to debate, and subject to rules of civility. Rape is a physical reality (as is abortion) that obviously does not fall within male defined paramaters of civility. How could it? I could be civil ’til the cows come home and it would never, never stop a man from raping me — or from trying to take away my right to an abortion.
Will, you say: “Second, since the law currently allows you to abort your pregnancy, my main attempt here on the blogs, is to try to dissuade you from having another abortion.”
What a strange thing for you to do. Wouldn’t it make much more sense for you to support State sanctioned (or even private-choice) castration? A woman does not get pregnant by sex (as evidenced by women becoming pregnant through rape — and as evidenced by all the sex lesbians have together that never results in pregnancy) — a woman becomes pregnant through, and only through, male ejaculate. So, the moral issue of unwanted pregnancy CLEARLY is an issue of a lack of male responsibility in regards to his ejaculate. Had the male not ejaculated into or on the woman there would be no pregnancy. So why all the hand wringing over abortion? Clearly if men were responsible for their bodies and the actions of their bodies we wouldn’t have to put the onus on women for their personal choices. [and see, if we inserted the civility argument into this, I could claim that men are not civil towards women when they don't control their ejaculate, but then moralize what women do as a direct result of male irresponsibility].
You can’t have it both ways Will — a society that praises male ejaculate as the “money shot”, but yet condemns women [calls them murderers!] for having to clean up the money shot.
Don’t like abortion; chop your nuts off.
This comment was written by Q Grrl.Report this comment to the moderators
April 29th, 2005 at 8:48 am
Robert, you continue to misstate the law. I don’t know why, but you do. “I didn’t regard what I killed as fully human” is not an excuse for murder; it does not mean that you were incapable of formulating the required intent.
Yes, it’s not a logically defensible position. It is emotionally defensible, though.
May I assume that, in the future, you will acknowledge the validity of any argument that is emotionally defensible but logically indefensible?
This comment was written by mythago.Report this comment to the moderators
April 29th, 2005 at 9:06 am
What mythago said. Dehumanization is often a necessary component of murder. Manslaughter is when you didn’t have specific intent to kill, isn’t it? Except in cases where no one could reasonably believe that your actions wouldn’t lead to deaths (e.g. driving into a crowded public square). If the law considers what you intentionally ended to be a human life like other human lives, then it’s murder–it doesn’t matter if you hold unorthodox opinions on who is and isn’t fully human or fully alive.
This comment was written by piny.Report this comment to the moderators
April 29th, 2005 at 9:27 am
Will’s absolutely right. Let’s all the women on this thread just take a moment thank Will’s male ancestors for taking the courageous stand that women deserve some say in who leads their country and makes their laws. Down on your knees, girls, and show some gratitude.
Women’s suffrage is eighty-five years old this year. My grandma is older than the right of American women to participate in American politics on the most basic level. And those men in Congress–which is still overwhelmingly male–only voted for suffrage after strenuous activism from women helped to change public opinion. So please don’t use that example to argue that sexism isn’t pervasive.
This comment was written by piny.Report this comment to the moderators
April 29th, 2005 at 9:37 am
Also?
*cough* wage gap *cough*
This comment was written by piny.Report this comment to the moderators
April 29th, 2005 at 9:48 am
I’m always amused by the “Gosh, y’all are rude and uncivil!” crap. I’m supposed to go out of my way to be polite and civil to nosy, ignorant people?
I’m sure one could say “You catch more flies with honey than vinegar” or whatever, but if people don’t think I have bodily integrity, and think that they know better than I the medical decisions I should make (by the way, conservatives certainly seemed to have dropped that whole “Big government out of our lives!” thing), I don’t see why I should bother being nice.
This comment was written by Anne.Report this comment to the moderators
April 29th, 2005 at 11:23 am
Robert says:
That’s all well and good in your (nonexistent) world in which every patient has complete and accurate information about all medical standards and policies, the locations of all regional practicing doctors, hospitals, pharmacists, and their guiding ethics and policies, and is able to choose who to go to and when. Oh yeah, don’t forget that they’ve already planned for whatever contingency and have stocked up on all possibly necessary medicines, in the correct dosages.
But that ain’t the real world (we rely on doctors to have the medical information we need; we rely on electrical engineers to have electrical engineering information, etc. That why specializations exist in the first place). In a totally consensual situation, your oh-so-moral doctor or pharmacist can do whatever they want and, most importantly, the well-educated patient would have chosen to go to said doctor.
But we’re not talking about consent or choice in any form. We’re talking about a world in which a person has been assaulted and raped, is in an emergency situation and doesn’t have the option to choose where she ended up or which doctor she has been brought to. The woman did not consent to be raped and assaulted and needs to know all the medical options. The doctor does not have the right to withhold the necessary medical information (commit malpractice); the pharmacist does not have the right to deny needed medicine (commit malpractice). If their moral beliefs prevent them from doing what is required to help this patient, then they should accept the consequences of their beliefs and quit being medical professionals. Or get a job at Liberty Baptist Quack Clinic.
This comment was written by SDM.Report this comment to the moderators
April 29th, 2005 at 9:39 pm
Mythago, I’m not referring to someone’s opinion, i.e., “I think lawyers are subhuman, and thus it isn’t murder to kill one.” I mean a legitimate belief that the creature being killed is not human - as in the manslaughter example. “I thought he was a deer” is a perfectly legitimate defense to a homicide charge.
If you legitimately believe that what you are killing isn’t human, then it cannot be murder. Your belief may be appropriate, as in the deer hunter with bad eyesight, and thus you cop to a lesser charge. Or your belief may be completely delusional, as in the case of the schizophrenic convinced that all the humans in the world have been replaced by cats with the mysterious power to assume a human shape, in which case you’re locked up for the protection of both you and the community, but are found not guilty of the murder by reason of insanity. But you have to actually believe it, not just state it as an opinion; if the prosecutor finds out that you knew damn well it wasn’t a deer, you fry.
This comment was written by Robert.Report this comment to the moderators
April 30th, 2005 at 5:33 am
Robert:
So others must pay a penalty because someone intentionally states a belief (misguided belief, since there is no reason to believe EC has any abortifacient properties, or is lying for other purposes) that EC induces abortion on rare occasion?
In the context of the original debate, the “healthcare” provider is not only abrogating his/her responsibilties to ensure a patient is fully informed or refer her to someone who will because that “healthcare” provider does not trust her to make a decision (s)he thinks morally correct and is, therefor, putting that patient at higher risk of physical (and emotional) repercussions to her attack. If someone cannot be a healthcare provider in that setting without abrogating his/her responsibilities to the patient, that provider had best find a setting in which (s)he is capable of doing so or find another field altogether.
This comment was written by Ol Cranky.Report this comment to the moderators
April 30th, 2005 at 6:53 am
I’m getting very disillusioned with pro-”womb filling” nutters this week.
I’m at Oxford University, and two days ago, one of the colleges discovered someone has been going through the public condom supply and poking holes in them with needles (after threats to this affect from the CU before Xmas). To stop us committing the “sin” of using contraception. It’s nice to know people have such concern for our souls.
Right, I’m going to go off and become a doctor now, and because of my deep rooted, moral objections to these anti-contraception idiots, I will refuse to treat them for anything life-threatening. I won’t even tell them there is a cure for whatever ails them, because then I’d be aiding them in getting well, and frankly I think the world is better off without them.
Of course, they will support my veiws on this, if they knew about it, since it would be wrong to oppres me by forcing me to do anything to aid the treatment of someone I morally objected to… right?
This comment was written by VK.Report this comment to the moderators
April 30th, 2005 at 8:10 am
Robert, much earlier in the thread:
No, it’s not. “Abortion” is a medical term, referring to the premature termination of a pre-existing pregnancy (when that termination doesn’t result in live birth). Emergency Contraception works in one of two ways, depending on matters of timing and chance: either it prevents ovulation from happening at all, or else it prevents a blastocyst from implanting in the placenta when it reaches the uterus. (Pregnancy — another medical term, mind you — does not begin until implantation.) In neither of these cases is there a pregnancy to be aborted; in neither of them is there an abortion. EC does not cause abortions; it is not, therefore, an “abortifacient.”
You may think that Emergency Contraception has something morally in common with induced abortion; you may oppose it for precisely the same reasons, and so think that there should be a common term to cover everything that you oppose for whatever those reasons are. That’s fine; innovation of that sort is something that competant speakers of the language do all the time. But “abortion” is a term that already has a perfectly good meaning, and making up new meanings for it to inject into public discourse, without making it very clear that this is what you have done, amounts to telling lies about EC in order to try to get people on board with your agenda.
Telling lies is wrong.
Q Grrl said:
Will responded:
When a woman decides what she wants to do with her own body. Women’s bodies belong to them, not to you and not to “the public”. You can keep talking about what other people ought to do as long as you want but you haven’t got any right to demand that a woman listen to what you have to say about it. Period. Sorry.
Great. I think that male anti-choice commentators should be forcibly sterilized and publicly branded with hot irons because of their immoral political beliefs. This clearly affects the society I live in. So let’s debate! Let’s put it up for a vote! You’re not against democracy and intellectual discourse, are you?
This comment was written by Rad Geek.Report this comment to the moderators
April 30th, 2005 at 10:11 am
Right, I’m going to go off and become a doctor now, and because of my deep rooted, moral objections to these anti-contraception idiots, I will refuse to treat them for anything life-threatening. I won’t even tell them there is a cure for whatever ails them, because then I’d be aiding them in getting well, and frankly I think the world is better off without them.
Of course, they will support my veiws on this, if they knew about it, since it would be wrong to oppres me by forcing me to do anything to aid the treatment of someone I morally objected to… right?
VK - You want to treat them during your OB/GYN and Urology rotations during which you can use your morla and religious views to support your right to force abortion and sterilization on them because you don’t approve of their morals and would consider it morally reprehensible for them to procreate.
This comment was written by Ol Cranky.Report this comment to the moderators
April 30th, 2005 at 5:20 pm
Hmm, a “legitimate belief”. Apperently, it’s only a legitimate belief if lots of people believe it and it’s based on a really, really old book.
To me, a legitimate belief needs to have good evidence of cause and effect. You have to show me a clear consequence that has a negative effect on society before you can legislate against it.
This comment was written by Antigone.Report this comment to the moderators
April 30th, 2005 at 5:35 pm
Antigone, you might want to follow the threads a little closer. The “legitimate belief” in question is the idea that a fetus is not a human person.
This comment was written by Robert.Report this comment to the moderators
April 30th, 2005 at 6:09 pm
Women’s bodies belong to them, not to you and not to “the public”?.
That’s true.
The thing is, there are a lot of us who think that it’s also true for the people who are living inside women’s bodies.
I can do whatever I want with my body - up until the point where it impacts someone else’s life. At that juncture, things like ethics and politics and morality and public discussion all come into play, as we attempt to reconcile people’s contradictory rights and privileges in a messy, often contentious, and rarely entirely satisfactory way.
It’s certainly a coherent and defensible point of view that fetuses have no independent existence and no human rights, as such. It’s just not the point of view that most people have adopted. Most people adopt a view that the fetus is a person, or at least a potential person, and deserving of more consideration than the charming “I don’t give a shit about the fetus” expressed by Sheelzebub.
A lot of the people adopting that fetuses-are-important-too viewpoint do, in fact, come down in favor of the woman carrying the fetus having the greater right. They accept abortion reluctantly, as being an unfortunate and ugly necessity, while working to minimize it. (Good for them.) A lot of other people with that view think that the fetus ought to get higher priority than the woman, usually from a philosophical starting point that the most helpless should receive the most protection. (That’s where I’d fall.) A relatively small number do indeed hold the views, in varying strengths, about women’s agency that ardent fetuses-are-worthless proponents ascribe to everyone who doesn’t unequivocally support free abortion-on-demand.
So there’s really very little debate over the question of whether you have agency over your body. Most of us agree that you do.
The question is how that agency should be exercised or constrained when it intersects with the rights of others. And that is indeed a valid - indeed, fruitful - subject for discussion, for women of childbearing years as for every other human on the planet. Agency is not absolute for any human.
This comment was written by Robert.Report this comment to the moderators
April 30th, 2005 at 6:17 pm
nd that is indeed a valid - indeed, fruitful - subject for discussion
Absolutely. I would hardly call catty swipes about “ardent fetuses-are-worthless proponents” fruitful, or discussion, as I imagine you’d say if I suggested “A relatively small number of fetus-hugging woman-haters do ascribe those views to everyone who doesn’t think the Pill is murder”.
I mean a legitimate belief that the creature being killed is not human - as in the manslaughter example. “I thought he was a deer”? is a perfectly legitimate defense to a homicide charge.
A woman who goes in for an abortion, thinking that the doctor is removing a benign uterine cyst and not a fetus, can make that argument. “I didn’t think a fetus was human” is not a ‘legitimate’ belief, from the pro-lifer’s point of view. (What did she THINK the fetus was– a rhododendron bush?)
Only a woman who believes a fetus is not human–say the woman who believes it is an alien creature implanted during abduction by UFOs, and not a baby-to-be–can really raise that defense. Everybody else is going to have to admit that, yeah, they’re clear on this whole idea that the fetus is going to be born and be a baby in nine months, and therefore it’s human.
This comment was written by mythago.Report this comment to the moderators
April 30th, 2005 at 6:31 pm
If women are required to bear children against their will, then women are reduced to slavery, regardless of whether the fetus is a person or not.
This comment was written by Brian.Report this comment to the moderators
April 30th, 2005 at 6:31 pm
Everybody else is going to have to admit that, yeah, they’re clear on this whole idea that the fetus is going to be born and be a baby in nine months, and therefore it’s human.
OK. Then they’re committing murder, at least in the legal-theoretical sense, if not the legal-statutory sense.
This comment was written by Robert.Report this comment to the moderators
April 30th, 2005 at 6:48 pm
No, in the legal-statutory sense. A white supremacist who genuinely and sincerely believes that a black person is a sort of talking animal, not a human being, is not going to be able to plead the “I thought I was shooting a deer” defense. A woman who claims she had no idea that the fetus she was carrying, which was conceived through sexual intercourse with another human and which will be born as a human baby in nine months, was human, is going to have similar results in a pro-life universe. It’s not the same as “I really, really thought that flash of white in the trees was a deer”.
This comment was written by mythago.Report this comment to the moderators
April 30th, 2005 at 9:06 pm
But we’re not in the pro-life universe. The original questioner asked if I thought she should be prosecuted for having had an abortion. Last time I checked, this is still the ordinary universe.
(Yep, just looked in the mirror…no little pointy beard.)
This comment was written by Robert.Report this comment to the moderators
April 30th, 2005 at 10:11 pm
And you responded to the original questioner (me), by evading the question and turning it around on me, rather than answering it straight away.
By the way, the whole ‘human’ argument is really silly. To me, a fetus is a pre-cursor to human life. I don’t eat eggs and think I’m eating a chicken, and I don’t eat caviar and think I’m eating salmon.
Also, the comment you made referring fetus’ as ‘people’ was interesting. You stated “I can do whatever I want with my body - up until the point where it impacts someone else’s life” as your defense against pregnancy termination, but it’s really baffling to me how on one hand you consider a fetus a person, and on the other you can make a comment so rife with hypocrisy. Unless of course you’re willing to state straight up that a the life of a fetus is > woman. You’ve said it in so many words, but I’m curious if you’ll be brave enough to own up to it in plain english.
This comment was written by Kim (basement variety!).Report this comment to the moderators
April 30th, 2005 at 10:14 pm
Argh - I should have added, and meant to add:
If a fetus is a person, according to your logic, a fetus can do what it wants with it’s body, up until the point it impacts someone else’s life (the pregnant woman). I’d say pregnancy is a pretty big impact on a person’s life. I’d even dare say a RISK both short and long term health wise, and in many cases a MORTAL RISK. That’s not pro-life. Not by a long shot.
This comment was written by Kim (basement variety!).Report this comment to the moderators
April 30th, 2005 at 11:15 pm
Given that Robert has said that the belief that fetuses are basically not human/persons is a legitimate and defensible position, given that he has said that he does not personally favor criminalizing abortion at all (much less treating it as murder), and that he recognizes the vaildity of the position that fetuses are people, but that as people they are not free to infringe on their mother’s right of physical autonomy, it seems very strange to accuse him of believing that abortion is murder or that he places the rights of fetuses above the rights of women. Trying to convince him that abortion must be murder also seems a bit pointless and counter-productive.
Robert advocates limiting abortion by convincing pregnant women not to have abortions. Doing so in no way infringes on anyone’s right to autonomy.
Robert also believes that doctors should be allowed to excercise their personal morality to the physical detriment of their patients. On this point, he is clearly wrong. Just as lawyers are required to provide their clients with all legally allowable options (even if they know that their clients are guilty), doctors must be required to provide their patients with (at the absolute bare minimum) full health information (and should probably properly be required to provide all necessary health services).
Trying to prove that Robert is a woman hating monster who believes that women who have had abortions are murderers is probably not worth the effort.
It isn’t actually the humanness of fetuses that is the point of contention, it is the personhood of fetuses. My finger is clearly human, but if I smashed it in a machine press, even intentionally, no one would ever acuse me of murder. People legitimately differ over the personhood of fetuses (with many feeling the fetuses become people at some point long after conception, but before birth). As has also been pointed out (by Robert and by people arguing with him), even if you believe that fetuses are human people, there is still the position of abortion as legitimate self defense (and you can kill in self defense even if the other person was not going to kill you, if you have no option other than killing them).
This comment was written by Charles.Report this comment to the moderators
April 30th, 2005 at 11:54 pm
Robert wrote:
If you did not believe that your fetus was a human person (a position with which I disagree, but which I recognize is not currently a consensus value in our society), then it’s not murder.
So in fact Robert did as much say that to him fetuses are human persons, which then leads to the understanding that to him abortion is murder.
This comment was written by Matt.Report this comment to the moderators
May 1st, 2005 at 12:00 am
The original questioner asked if I thought she should be prosecuted for having had an abortion.
If you believe that abortion is the killing of a human being, then the logical answer is yes, if she intentionally had an abortion, that’s murder.
Some pro-lifers (Amp had a visitor along these lines) try to get around the problem by treating the women who obtain abortions as vaguely stupid, certainly not fully human moral agents. That is, to avoid the PR disaster and personal discomfort of accusing any woman who’s had an abortion of being a murderer, they claim the women didn’t really know what they were doing, they were misled, in any case they’re so very sorry about it now, and the real moral blame goes to the abortionists.
Trying to prove that Robert is a woman hating monster who believes that women who have had abortions are murderers is probably not worth the effort.
I thought Robert and I were discussing Will’s stated position–that is, Will believes abortion is murder, but he thinks some of those murders should not be prosecuted. I don’t believe a logically and morally consistent pro-life view allows one to say “Yes, women who kill their babies should go to jail, unless their baby was conceived through rape, in which case it’s a bad thing but we’ll let them off the hook.”
This comment was written by mythago.Report this comment to the moderators
May 1st, 2005 at 12:09 am
We are talking about a lot of different types of killing here, all of which are treated differently by the law, and for good reason.
There’s murder, the willful ending of a human life. Murder involves specific intent to kill. There are some other kinds of murder, but they are exceptions to the general rule. For example, if you commit an act so reckless that no reasonable person could believe that it would not lead to death, you’ve committed murder. If you commit a crime during which someone dies–carjacking, bank robbery, assault–you’ve committed murder.
Then there’s manslaughter. Manslaughter is the killing of a human being _without_ express intent to harm or kill–it usually involves criminal recklessness. Manslaughter does _not_ include the willful killing of someone you don’t consider to be human. Shooting another hunter because you think he’s a deer is accidental killing, and could be considered manslaughter. But it’s a very different situation than abortion, where you know perfectly well what you’re ending.
There’s also insanity, as in insanity defense. There’s a lot of very complicated case law around insanity, but the general rule is this: an insane person cannot be convicted of murder because they are incapable of knowing right from wrong. A delusional schizophrenic who kills someone under the influence of his delusions. Not a neo-nazi. A belief that certain people are not human or less than human does not count as insanity, and it doesn’t mean that someone with that belief cannot be convicted of murder. An insanity defense is _totally different_ from manslaughter. Someone can have specific intent to kill and still be considered not guilty by reason of insanity.
Self-defense is another completely different concept: when you kill a human being with specific intent in order to prevent harm to your human self.
Abortion is not killing in self-defense, except in cases where the life of the mother is in danger. Women who get abortions are not legally insane, and their belief that the fetus is not human is not sufficient reason to consider them insane. Women who get abortions are not committing manslaughter, because they specifically intend to terminate the fetus.
Women who get abortions are purposely ending the life of the fetus. To the extent that a fetus is a human being with the same rights as any other human being, those women are committing murder. If a fetus is not a human being with the same rights as any other human being, then it’s not murder. But it also isn’t any of the other legal terms we’ve been tossing around–all of them refer to the killing of human beings. The mitigating circumstances for each have nothing whatsoever to do with the personhood of the victim.
This comment was written by piny.Report this comment to the moderators
May 1st, 2005 at 2:44 am
If someone kidnapped you, and subjected you to the various forms of torture which Kim has described (the normal or potential side effects of pregnancy) and planned to subject you to a role of the dice after holding you hostage for 9 months, in which a roll of 0000 would mean they killed you, while a larger range would mean they permanently crippled you, and the only way you could escape from them was to kill them, I believe that your killing them would be considered self defense (they don’t have to be trying to kill you for you to be permitted to kill them in self defense, it just needs to be the only option open to you; in fact, even if they are trying to kill you, the only condition under which killing in self defense is permissable is if it is the only option open). Also, the person who you kill in self defense does not (as I understand it) need to be intentionally trying to kill you. If someone was accidentally backing a steamroller over you, and your attempts to shout out this fact to them were ineffective, and you happened to have a gun, I believe it would be legitimate self defense for you to shoot and kill them if you believed this would stop the steamroller from crushing you.
From this it follows that a non-sentient fetus which is in the process of hijacking your body, and which can not be prevented from doing so except by its death, may legitimately be killed, even if we accept that it is a human person.
This comment was written by Charles.Report this comment to the moderators
May 1st, 2005 at 3:35 am
Mythago,
Will’s position seemed to be a muddle, but I do think that one could logically take the position that a fetus should not be killed unless the damage it will inflict on the woman carrying it is sufficiently dire to balance out its killing.
Therefore, one could have automatic exceptions for life threatening conditions, health threatening conditions, and mental health threatening conditions, with an automatic assumption that having to carry to term a pregnancy resulting from a rape was a serious threat to mental health, and therefore permissable.
One can place a moral and legal value on the life of a fetus greater than zero, and indeed greater than some of the moral and legal rights of a pregnant woman, and still place the value of the fetus’s life lower than other rights of the pregnant woman.
Also, I take Robert’s position on the law to be highly consensus based. If the overwhelming majority of society considered abortion murder, then he would consider laws treating abortion as murder to be reasonable (since under those conditions people who rejected the consensus position would be significantly abarent). However, since many people do not recognize the personhood of fetuses, then he doesn’t think that the law should require people to accept the personhood of fetuses. Since the personhood of fetuses is in doubt, then he doesn’t think that people should be considered murderers for killing something that they believe (possibly accurately, or possibly through legitimate error) to not be a person, even though he thinks that what they are killing is a person.
Since there is no consensus on the question of the personhood of fetuses, it is also not reasonable to consider abortion to be legally equivalent to manslaughter, although I believe Robert would consider it to be morally equivalent to manslaughter.
He doesn’t believe that someone who has an abortion is a murderer, because he does not believe that they acted out of the desire to kill another human person. Since the law agrees that what they have done is not murder, the relavent question becomes how he feels about them as a person, and therefore their intent is relevant. If he met someone who was so deeply anti-lawyer that they believed that lawyers were simply talking animals, and therefore killable for food, he would presumably hold that that person was also lacking in the maliciousness of a murderer (but would agree that they were clearly dangerously delusional, insane, monsterous, and deserving of imprisonment for reasons of public safety). Believing that someone is simply not a person is radically different from normal lawyer haters who believe that some lawyers are lesser people, and perhaps deserving of death. Thinking some people are lesser, and therefore deserving of death, and therefore killing them, still involves murderous intent to kill a human person.
As I said, Will’s position seemed muddled, because he was unwilling to accept the idea that fetuses are sub-persons (who could therefore be killed under certain circumstances), but simultaneously wanted to excuse himself from believing that women who had been raped should be forced to carry resulting pregnancies to term. His absolutist belief that his opinion that fetuses are persons should ideally be enforced as law (even though it is not the view of most Americans) was also disturbing and repulsive, even if it was not intellectually inconsistent (so long as he is not also a fan of other forms of democratic and consensus based politics and law). Robert agreed that this position was muddled, although he felt that it was emotionally comprehensible, and he was also notably less unkind toward his ally’s intellectual muddledness than he is toward his opponent’s intellectual muddles.
Robert’s position, on the other hand, seems to be that he personally believes that fetuses are people, and that killing them is, for him, tragic, but that he recognizes that there is nothing resembling a consensus that fetuses are people, and therefore those who kill fetuses while believing them to not be people do not act with the malice of will that is an inherent part of murder, nor do they act with the insanity of one who defines personhood in gross violation of a strong consensus. Instead, he recognizes that the question of who is right about the personhood of fetuses remains open, and that those who kill fetuses act either from legitimate error, or from a correct position (although he is firmly in the camp that believes they are in error and that fetuses are fully people).
Personally, I believe that fetuses are not people at all (except possibly at some point very late in pregnancy, when they are perhaps some form of sub-person) and that any woman should be free to terminate a pregnancy up until the point of birth. I had a dear friend many years ago who terminated a pregnancy in the third trimester because she didn’t want to have a child at 15, and I fully support her decision and affirm her legitimate right to do so. I am not sufficiently concensus based in my view of the law to believe that the loss of that right (which is almost entirely gone now, and was even then absent in her home state) is acceptible.
This comment was written by Charles.Report this comment to the moderators
May 1st, 2005 at 5:13 am
If women are required to bear children against their will, then women are reduced to slavery, regardless of whether the fetus is a person or not.
Amen to that.
But, may I remind the “it’s murder, but because you didn’t know it it’s ok so you shouldn’t go to jail” people that the post was about Emergency Contraception. To prevent conception and implantation of a blastocyst. At the stage when EC is used, there just is no fetus. No embryo either. It does not exist.
Potential is not actual. If people want to insist to reduce the concept of human person to a potential handful of cells that may or may not even be there, and has not even been implanted yet, and has certainly not developed into anything close to human being, and call contraception murder - then what should we call the actual, not potential, suppression of a born, fully developed and sentient human being of any age? What should we call genocide?
If you believe that a blastocyst that may or may not be there, and even without the need of contraception may not even ever be implanted, has more human rights - from all ethical, scientific, philosphical, religious and most of all legal points of view - than a fully developed sentient woman, then, may we ask, in what way that is “pro-life”? In what way that is not a devaluation of human life? A double devaluation, because you’re reducing the woman’s life to less than a blastocyst, and you’re reducing the very concept of human life and human person to a matter of biological potential contained in a handful of cells that may or may not be there.
No suprise that that view is so often associated with support for the death penalty, wars and disregard for the actual needs of less fortunate human beings in a society.
I can understand that there are moral issues on abortion, not contraception, as the actual fetus - an implanted, developing fetus, not a blastocyst or embryo - grows and becomes more and more viable and may survive outside the woman’s womb if born prematurely. But until that point, the thing-that-may-become-a-baby (may because there can be all sorts of natural interruptions of a pregnancy, so it’s always in the potential until actual birth) *needs* a woman for its development, for actually being able to eventually turn into a human being, and a person in the ethical, scientific, legal sense. Human beings cannot even come into existence without their mother. Not an incubator. A person.
It’s such a convenient way to debate the issue, to focus entirely on the how-many-angels-on-a-pin debate on where life and/or the actual personhood status ’starts’ - ignoring that, for all purposes of commonly established (ie. legal) definitions, it starts at birth; ignoring that science will never be able to tell where something non-physical but conceptual (person, soul) “starts”; ignoring all differences in the gradual development from sperm and egg into actual baby; ignoring the difference between lack or presence of even a primordial brain and nervous system etc. etc.. Meanwhile, the actual being whose actual, not potential, existence and life and personhood and sentience is indisputable under any point of view, is ignored. Let’s pretend she’s not there.
And that’s not a view of women, and of human life in general, that is completely obscene, oh no? No, they don’t really mean they want to control women or think of them in degrading ways, no. They only think of them as incubators and less of a person than a handful of cells.
For those men who hold this view, and also insist on making outlandish comparisons with people killing other humans thinking they’re deer - good luck with that in court - may we ask, to paraphrase their elegant question, do you have a brain attached to that penis?
Bah.
This comment was written by monica.Report this comment to the moderators
May 1st, 2005 at 8:34 am
In order to argue self-defense, you have to have believed at the time that there was a clear danger to your life or a danger that you would suffer significant bodily harm. Most of the time, it’s difficult to distinguish between the two. No one could reasonably be expected to know that someone who abducts and tortures you for nine months doesn’t really mean to kill you. If someone assaults you or invades your home, you may reasonably argue that you believed your life was in danger. But if someone snatches your purse? If you surprise a burglar who takes off running as soon as he sees you? If some guy shoves you while you’re both waiting in line for Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith tickets? Not so much.
Most pregnancies do not result in physical harm or death. If anyone would like to argue that residing in some woman’s womb is itself assault, albeit unwitting, then fine–but bear in mind that you’ve just released the woman from any liability at all. Self-defense means that you haven’t committed any kind of crime.
>>Also, I take Robert’s position on the law to be highly consensus based. If the overwhelming majority of society considered abortion murder, then he would consider laws treating abortion as murder to be reasonable (since under those conditions people who rejected the consensus position would be significantly abarent). However, since many people do not recognize the personhood of fetuses, then he doesn’t think that the law should require people to accept the personhood of fetuses. Since the personhood of fetuses is in doubt, then he doesn’t think that people should be considered murderers for killing something that they believe (possibly accurately, or possibly through legitimate error) to not be a person, even though he thinks that what they are killing is a person.>>
I’m not sure I can accept this argument, although I understand your summary of it. At different points in history, many or most people refused to grant complete personhood to many different human groups. Does that mean that crimes committed against those groups are not murderous? Do they count less? If someone comes from a culture that considers x group of people to be subhuman, is that person less culpable? Does dehumanization not itself constitute malice? Or an intent to end the life of whatever you’re killing?
Part of my quibble with Robert’s argument is his insistence on using “manslaughter,” which is specific and just plain different. The laws on murder in this country don’t recognize gradations of personhood, really, and manslaughter is “not quite murder” for very different reasons. Generally speaking, it means that you didn’t mean for your actions to result in death, or were not aware that they would.
This comment was written by piny.Report this comment to the moderators
May 1st, 2005 at 11:00 am
piny -The laws on murder in this country don’t recognize gradations of personhood, really, and manslaughter is “not quite murder”? for very different reasons. Generally speaking, it means that you didn’t mean for your actions to result in death, or were not aware that they would.
Indeed. Killing is either intentional or not. There’s no legal system anywhere that would recognise as mitigating circumstance the deliberate killing of another person under the conviction they were not a person, whatever they take that to mean. Also, I’m not aware of any laws of any country that would recognise gradations of personhood in that sense. The only distinction is between minor and adults, but in terms of killing, killing a minor is not considered any less serious. Hence, if someone wants to support the idea that emergency conraception is a form of killing, it doesn’t make any sense to argue it should be punished less severely than shooting your neighbour.
It’s just a bunch of insane sophistries. If people are going to call “murder” anything from emergency contraception to abortion, then they’d better be prepared to advocate they should be treated as such. Which in the US includes the death penalty. Giving women a lethal injection for having EC or abortion - how’s that for “pro-life”?
But no, they don’t want to think about the actual logical and legal consequences of using words as “murder”. It’s just done to win hearts and minds, you know.
This comment was written by monica.Report this comment to the moderators
May 1st, 2005 at 2:50 pm
If you (my fellow pro-choicers) really want to advocate for clinic bombings and the assassination of doctors (and perhaps of women who have abortions as well) as the only justifiable course of action for our opponents - umm, well, I’m at a loss for words.
That is what the Everything must be defined in absolute terms means - either there are no ethical implications of abortion, or killing fetuses is so bad that women who have abortions are murderers, and doctors who perform abortions are the moral equivalent of death camp commanders, and killing them is a moral necessity. I have always thought the people who actually believe that to be dangerous and monsterous, so I find it very puzzling that several people here who are pro-choice seem to be arguing that that is the only intellectually honest position for anti-choicers to hold, and that any anti-choicer who hasn’t killed at least one doctor is a fucking hypocrite.
I really do see arguing that anti-choicers really must believe that abortion is murder, and that any attempt on their part to believe that the world contains moral shades of grey is just dishonesty or moral cowardice, to be
1) wrong (why shouldn’t people be able to see complex shades of grey?)
2) foolish (why would you want to convince people to see our side as evil?)
and 3) to lead naturally to the arguments I described above (if they must see everything in absolute black and white, then why not murder doctors?)
Arguing that anti-choicers who throw around the word murder (as Will did) are wandering dangerously close to the clinic bombing camp seems worth doing, but trying to convince him that he is a moral coward if he is unwilling to take the final steps seems, well, counter-productive.
This comment was written by Charles.Report this comment to the moderators
May 1st, 2005 at 2:56 pm
Therefore, one could have automatic exceptions for life threatening conditions, health threatening conditions, and mental health threatening conditions, with an automatic assumption that having to carry to term a pregnancy resulting from a rape was a serious threat to mental health, and therefore permissable.
No, you really couldn’t. As others have pointed out, killing in self-defense is a very narrow justification. You have to have a reasonable belief that you were in danger of death or serious bodily harm, not injury to your mental health.
Again, I’m not jumping on Robert here, who I agree does not buy the ‘abortion should be murder except sometimes’ point of view Will advocates. I pick on Will because viewpoints like his are indeed advocated by many who call themselves ‘pro-life’, but whose view is more akin to the belief that pregnancy is a just punishment for female sexual immorality. There’s really no other rational explanation for saying that abortion is either murder or an unfortunate (but not homicidal) event, with the difference lying entirely on the circumstances under which the victim was conceived.
If people are going to call “murder”? anything from emergency contraception to abortion, then they’d better be prepared to advocate they should be treated as such.
Exactly. This would be wildly unpopular, and that’s why reactionaries dance around it. For one thing, there are an awful lot of pro-life supporters who are women who have had abortions.
This comment was written by mythago.Report this comment to the moderators
May 1st, 2005 at 3:09 pm
Piny,
To answer your direct questions, and to take a horrible historical example, are the British colonizers who hunted the Tazmanian indigenous people for sport less personally culpable than the latest child murdering serial killer?
In my opinion, yes.
Is the total moral culpability of the individual hunters, plus everyone in their culture who supported, condoned, or tolerated their actions greater than that of a child murdering serial killer, yes, absolutely.
If you are taught that those people can be killed for sport all your life, then
1) it requires greater than normal moral consciousness to reject this belief
2) your willingness to kill those people for sport says less about your willingness to kill others
3) much of the evil of your actions lies with those who taught you, and with those who continue to agree with you
4) the appropriate response for me, either an outsider or someone who has thrown off the monsterous teachings of our society, is different than it would be if you were a lone, aberant killer.
If you meet a serial killer, your reasonable response is that this is someone whose personal morality is both monsterous and totally off kilter from expected morality of this society, and you should probably treat them as extremely dangerous, and they should probably be locked up on a public safety basis (and locking them up will noticeably decrease the number of serial killers).
If you go to a country where it is considered okay to kill members of group X, and you meet someone who has killed members of group X, unless you are a member of group X, you can reasonably expect that they probably won’t kill you. Their morality, while monsterous to you, is not monsterous from their society’s morality, and is not aberant and off the rails to such a degree that you can’t reasonably predict how much of a threat they are. Furthermore, imprisoning them will not noticeably decrease the number of group X killers out there. If you want to stop people from group X being killed, you are going to have to take completely different strategies than you would if the killers were socially aberant, and viewing the individual killers as simply guilty murderers will get you nowhere.
Is every person who killed someone in the Rwandan genocide simply a murder? Or are they something else, less personally culpable, but part of a larger and more horrible event? Should they be treated as murderers anyway?
This comment was written by Charles.Report this comment to the moderators
May 1st, 2005 at 3:18 pm
Mythago,
You do have to view fetuses as sub-persons for a mental health exception to be permissable. I agree that Will’s beliefs are a legitimate target for attack, as the belief that abortion is simply murder, but not in the case of pregnancies caused by rape is intellectually and morally dishonest muddle in exactly the way you say it is.
And I can see a point to pointing out to those who recklessly toss aroung the word murder that they are basically in the clinic bombimg camp (although I think they can legitimately argue that they are merely in the “using excessive language recklessly for rhetorical effect” camp, not that Will did).
Somewhere, it crossed over into trying to get Robert to say that abortion was murder, and that just seemed pointless. The exchange in which you kept framing abortion more harshly, until he was willing to say, “Well, yes, if that is the case, then it’s murder,” was just surreal.
This comment was written by Charles.Report this comment to the moderators
May 1st, 2005 at 3:32 pm
The thing is, there are a lot of us who think that it’s also true for the people who are living inside women’s bodies.
Key part being “inside our bodies.”
This comment was written by Anne.Report this comment to the moderators
May 1st, 2005 at 3:41 pm
Somewhere, it crossed over into trying to get Robert to say that abortion was murder, and that just seemed pointless. The exchange in which you kept framing abortion more harshly, until he was willing to say, “Well, yes, if that is the case, then it’s murder,”? was just surreal.
Charles, I wonder if you read the discussion I read. Because it wasn’t about ‘getting’ Robert to confess his own personal views on abortion. Robert was saying that Will’s distinction had some basis in the law, or at least some semi-logical consistency, which it doesn’t. In what way was I ‘framing abortion more harshly’?
I have always thought the people who actually believe that to be dangerous and monsterous, so I find it very puzzling that several people here who are pro-choice seem to be arguing that that is the only intellectually honest position for anti-choicers to hold, and that any anti-choicer who hasn’t killed at least one doctor is a fucking hypocrite.
If somebody claims that abortion is murder, then the only intellectually honest position for them to hold is that a woman who gets an abortion is a murderer. That doesn’t lead you down the road of bombing clinics; it leads you down the road of making abortion punishable by life without parole.
I mean, nobody suggests that the way to end mob hits is to send snipers at all the Mafia hit men, because clearly the people who hire those hitmen don’t know what they’re doing. We all recognize that murderers bear the responsibility for their own actions and should face justice in a court of law.
Extremists don’t go down that road because a) it’s very bad PR and b) what they really want is the rush of being able to smack down The Enemy, wrapped in self-righteous excuses. They don’t really believe bombing a clinic is going to end abortion, but they enjoy throwing the bomb. And the Women Exploited By Abortion types are not, you may notice, turning themselves in and demanding to be jailed. (Now THERE would be a real protest!)
This comment was written by mythago.Report this comment to the moderators
May 1st, 2005 at 4:38 pm
Charles, you’re getting it the other way round - people who call both EC and abortion murder are definitely not thinking in shades of grey. They just throw around a little word like that without actually thinking about what it means. The ‘yes I think you’re a murderer and I would want abortion banned except for rape, but I wouldn’t really put you in jail’ is not a way to incorporate the complexities of reality, it’s just a way to avoid confronting the lack of logic and coherence in considering EC and abortion equal to murder.
It’s called hypocrisy, not awareness of shades of grey.
But don’t worry, no one’s going to start shooting doctors after being called a hypocrite. Come on.
A morally and logically and legally coherent pro-life position, where pro-life is really pro-life in its non-hijacked meaning, would entail first of all support for more information and access to emergency contraception, as well as for all other forms of contraception. Contra-ception. To avoid conception and implantation.
If the concern was really to avoid abortions, everyone who disapproves of abortion would be supporting EC.
If pro-life means elevating a blastocyst, embryo or undeveloped fetus to the status of person and degrading actual female persons to the status of incubators, then that is not the concept of respect for life on which a free lawful society is based.
The so-called pro-life fanatics do not defend life, they fetishise biological matter to the point it becomes magically endowed with sentient properties that are physically not there. That’s turning ethics upside down. Putting a moral agent below the level of a non-moral agent. It’s a total cop out from real ethics. The woman is sentient, has a consciousness and a life, relationships and responsibilities, is capable of feeling, thinking, perceiving, and making a choice - the blastocyst is none of that, so it becomes pure, innocent, a platonic form of life that is perfect because it does not yet exist in the actual world as a person. It never had sex. It never got drunk. It never lied. It never did anything they would reproach, because it has not become anything really human yet. It is in the state before becoming. Isn’t it so much more deserving of support than the pregnant woman who has the nerve to not want that pregnancy? How could she refuse to bring a perfect platonic ideal into this world? If we could only keep that blastocyst a blastocyst forever, then life wouldn’t be so complicated, as none of us would have to make choices at all. All those microscopic embyros, the perfect form of life. They are the last Eden. They are an archetype of humans before the Fall. Without problems, without responsibilities, without free will and moral choices to make. They need to be defended from this cruel world in which women can have the terrifying power to give life when and how they want.
Then, if those mythical cells do get to develop into actual human beings, we’ll just forget about them until they turn 16 and have sex and get pregnant, and it’ll start all over again…
This comment was written by monica.Report this comment to the moderators
May 1st, 2005 at 5:13 pm
mythago - Extremists don’t go down that road because a) it’s very bad PR and b) what they really want is the rush of being able to smack down The Enemy, wrapped in self-righteous excuses
Yes, exactly, like, pretending to be interested in persuading and reducing abortions, and then opposing even information and access to EC… but then coherence was never a requirement for self-rigtheousness.
Charles - if you found that exchange surreal, it was because of surreal answers to a simple straightforward question. The very liberal use of the “murder/murderers” definition for abortion and women who have abortion and doctors who perform abortion is not an invention of pro-choicers. If they want to avoid drawing the conclusions of equating murder with abortion or even Emergency Contraception, then they’d better reconsider that equation.
They know a fertilised egg is not a person; they know abortion cannot be and in fact has never been legally treated as murder; yet they do continue to call it that.
A bit too bloody convenient, don’t you think?
This comment was written by monica.Report this comment to the moderators
May 1st, 2005 at 7:15 pm
Ema, M.D., on EC.
This comment was written by Anne.Report this comment to the moderators
May 1st, 2005 at 8:56 pm
Sounds like Centura is trying to meet women’s health activists halfway.
I particularly liked this bit:
If Catholic hospitals may ignore the standard of care, and treat patients based on religious doctrine, any and all hospitals should be able to do the same. This means we abolish the FDA, and any government regulation of hospitals and the practice of medicine, and allow anybody to set up and run a hospital according to whatever criteria they deem acceptable.
Damn, that would be great!
This comment was written by Robert.Report this comment to the moderators
May 1st, 2005 at 10:32 pm
Robert, i hope you were kidding
I don’t want them to be like, “You should pray for god to make you better” if I go to a hospital.
This comment was written by Antigone.Report this comment to the moderators
May 1st, 2005 at 10:50 pm
Oh, but you see, The Market will make sure such hospitals go under swiftly, or at least swiftly enough that you probably won’t be one of the first few people hurt by them.
(I really *am* going to do the Invisible Hand of the Marketplace costume for Halloween this year, I swear)
This comment was written by mythago.Report this comment to the moderators
May 1st, 2005 at 11:01 pm
Yes, it’s weird to talk about hospitals as if there weren’t usually just a handful at most serving a geographic area.
This comment was written by Brian Vaughan.Report this comment to the moderators
May 1st, 2005 at 11:36 pm
Okay, here is my summary of the part that struck me as bizarre, with post numbers.
Post 196: Robert states that he sees three valid, coherent positions concerning the personhood of fetuses, and their resultant legal rights. In this post, Robert slides back and forth between referring to humanness and personhood, a sloppiness which makes coherent argument difficult, but which makes it fairly clear that his definition of humaness is based on personhood (my finger is not a human, even though it is human).
post 197: Mythago rejects the idea that fetuses could ever be legitimately viewed as non-human What did she THINK the fetus was”“ a rhododendron bush?
post 199: Robert agrees that if everyone must absolutely agree that fetuses are humans in the sense of being people with full legal rights, then abortion is murder, in a legal-theoretical sense, since the actual law in practice absolutely does not recognize fetuses as persons.
post 200: Mythago insists that abortion is murder in the practical legal sense, since everyone agrees that fetuses are human, and intentionally killing humans who aren’t likely to kill you is murder.
post 201: Robert says, Um, yeah in the anti-choice “mirror universe” where everyone agrees fetuses are people with full elgal rights, it is practically murder, but we don’t live in that Universe.
To me, this exchange was bizarre. You, Mythago, who presumably don’t believe that abortion is murder, either (a) because you don’t believe that fetuses are morally persons deserving of full legal rights, or (b) because you believe that the right to protect bodily autonomy is sufficient to justify killing of other persons in defense of that right or (c) becasue you believe that fetuses range from non-persons to quasi-persons, whose rights are non-zero, but not great enough to overcome the right to protect bodily autonomy, are here arguing that fetuses are obviously full persons, and are making no mention of a self defense type exception (which several others here who are clearly pro-choice have actively rejected as a possible argument when I raised it, which I likewise find bizarre). Given this position, Robert agreed that within those constraints, yeah its murder, but that those constraints in no way describe the consensus moral universe in which we exist (thus his “no pointy beard” comment, which any SF geek will recognize as a reference to the evil alternate universe in Star Trek).
Will is long gone in this argument. This is straight up a pro-choicer demanding that a pro-lifer (who is not particularly an anti-choicer, since he is not pro-legal-ban, although he is admittedly not a pro-choicer either, since he is not pro-full-legal protection) agree that abortion is legally murder, and the pro-choicer resisting doing so (because he doesn’t believe that hit is) as much as he can. Or so I read it.
The larger argument surrounding this seemed perfectly valid, and your attacks on Robert for soft-pedalling Will’s position seemed legit to me, but the part I summarized above was just bizarro world for me, and seemed to be leading things down a hole.
The main problem came from Robert mixing the term human with the term person, but since he did so in a manner that made it clear (I thought) that by human he meant person (since he thought it a legitimate postion to say that a fetus wasn’t one), the follow-on argument in which you argued that a fetus was obviously human because it wasn’t a cyst or a rhododendron bush was a bizarre reversal of the usual derailment of abortion discussions in which anti-choicers take exactly the same tact.
Sorry if I was far overly harsh in my response to that weirdness, but it seemed to me that the argument had gone very far off the rails into bizarro world, and that at that point Robert was actually making the saner argument (something I hate to see happen).
This should have been posted back about 219. Things have continued on from there, and this may no longer be apropos, but I thought I’d post it anyway.
This comment was written by Charles.Report this comment to the moderators
May 1st, 2005 at 11:41 pm
that at that point Robert was actually making the saner argument (something I hate to see happen)
Come to the dark side, Charles…
This comment was written by Robert.Report this comment to the moderators
May 2nd, 2005 at 4:03 am
“Or so I read it.”
Charles, try re-reading the discussion in view of that statement…
This comment was written by monica.Report this comment to the moderators
May 2nd, 2005 at 5:54 am
Just so the previous comment is not misunderstood - what I read was a discussion in which someone who brought up the EC=abortion=murder triple equivalence was refusing to acknowledge all the logical, moral and legal implications of that equivalence; the other person was not ‘agreeing abortion is legally murder’, but getting the first person to acknowledge those implications!
What’s bizarro world here to me is the pretence to call someone a murderer without actually wanting the law to reflect that.
Why would anyone call murder - a crime in any legislation - something that is legal (wether it’s EC or abortion), if they’re not prepared to demand it be considered as murder under the law? The only reason is what mythago was pointing out - self-righteous rhetoric. I thought mythago’s point was obvious?
Take animal rights activists - they do believe that vivisection is tortuer and murder and want it banned, completely and thoroughly made illegal, and those who violate that ban punished by law.
You don’t have to agree with that position to see that it is intellectually and morally and legally coherent.
This comment was written by monica.Report this comment to the moderators
May 2nd, 2005 at 6:04 am
… For a clear example of the contradictory use of “murder” only for self-righteous rhetoric, see comment 151:
I’m not calling you a murderer, even though I would consider you pretty much as one.
See the hypocrisy at work?
Here you have an admission that all that ‘yes you’re a murderer but I don’t want to sound like a wacko’ is only for rhetorical purposes:
First, I wouldn’t win any points with in doing so, as the whole point of debate is to try to persuade the other side to accept the merits of your case.
And I thought debate was about stating one’s views clearly and listening to others, but no, it’s all a debating society game for those who never actually have to face the choices they’re talking about.
Second, since the law currently allows you to abort your pregnancy, my main attempt here on the blogs, is to try to dissuade you from having another abortion.
And the best thing is, he really thinks he’ll ‘dissuade’ anyone through the amazing powers of incoherent rhetoric.
But the bizarro thing is pointing that out? That’s just bizarro squared…
This comment was written by monica.Report this comment to the moderators
May 2nd, 2005 at 6:49 am
Robert writes:
But that’s the problem with using the male body as the status quo for all humans. As a male, your body is in entirely different relations to “someone else’s life” in terms of pregnancy, childbirth, and infancy. There is no physical correlation between your male body and the female body that houses, bears, and nutures “someone else’s life”. So why should ethics, morals, and politics assume that a female automatically has the same “natural” (?) relationship to “someone else’s life?”
That’s what I call sexism. Deeply embedded sexism that can’t even recognized the paradigm upon which its ethics and morals are built.
This is also why I say (and will repeat) that there is no debate in terms of women’s relationship to their bodies or their pregnancies. There can’t be a debate; it’s an impossibility. Men can try to frame a debate but it will most assuredly rest on the male-body-paradigm (which certainly makes some morals easier!). But that isn’t a debate; it’s not even an argument — it’s more akin to a compulsive morality that stakes its claims on vast blindness to the reality of the female body.
Yet again, this isn’t so odd I suppose if your entire religion is based on this particular blindness — as told through the “virgin” birth of Jesus of Nazareth. Of course men today can ignore the real, tangible, physical reality of pregnant females! Men have so bought the story of the virgin birth for 2000 years that they can complacently ignore the realities of their own homes, their own beds. Robert can blithely say “We are pregnant” when, in fact, it is his wife who is pregnant. BUT he has an entire religion that backs him up. How convenient. Pregnancy becomes a spiritual mystery (and thus sacred not secular) and men can then moralize the state and outcome of the mystery — all the while ignoring, or moralizing, the female body that is actually pregnant.
Again, no debate.
Not without also tacitly acknowledging that one believes that the female body is a) inferior b) sinful or c) public property. Only under those conditions can a man have a debate about the morality of abortion.
This comment was written by Q Grrl.Report this comment to the moderators
May 2nd, 2005 at 7:45 am
Charles, shouldn’t that say “pro-lifer?”
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May 2nd, 2005 at 10:09 pm
Mythago rejects the idea that fetuses could ever be legitimately viewed as non-human What did she THINK the fetus was”“ a rhododendron bush?
Post 233: mythago wonders if Charles would get more out of this discussion if he followed the context.
I did not ‘reject the idea that fetuses could ever legitimately be viewed as non-human.’ What I reject is the idea that a woman who intentionally seeks an abortion could claim “I didn’t know it was a person” in the same manner that a deer hunter who mistakenly shot a person wearing white mittens would make that claim.
are here arguing that fetuses are obviously full persons, and are making no mention of a self defense type exception
My argument is that if, as some pro-lifers claim, a fetus is a human being, then existing law regarding human beings may produce some results they claim they don’t want, such as preventing a woman from aborting except to prevent her death or great bodily harm (there’s your ’self defense type exception’), and applying existing homicide law to women who obtain abortions, or try to.
I truly don’t get why you feel this is ‘bizarro.’ It’s a very simple argument. If a fetus is a human being, just like a newborn baby is a human being, then laws apply to the fetus just like they apply to a baby.
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May 3rd, 2005 at 12:07 am
My argument is that if, as some pro-lifers claim, a fetus is a human being, then existing law regarding human beings may produce some results they claim they don’t want…”
If this is true, could Congress obviate Roe v. Wade by passing a federal statute defining “human being” in a way that includes fetuses?
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May 3rd, 2005 at 3:04 am
You know what, I’m with QGrrl.
Bodily autonomy wins, hands down.
When I have a fully sentient human person inside my body, utterly dependent on me for the next several months, hijacking my biochemistry, destroying my joints, it is MY SAY what I do with them. Kill them, carry them to term. My choice. Period.
If they aren’t even a fully sentient human person, all the more so.
You disagree with killing people who are inside you, etc.
Don’t.
You’re welcome to try to convince me not to, but sure as hell don’t force me not to.
That I will never be in that situation not withstanding.
Oh, and the castration as a solution to the problem of irresponsible, person-creating ejaculation kicks ass. Beautiful reversal of the bodily integrity question.
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May 3rd, 2005 at 4:24 am
Robert’s parallel between white-tailed deer and fetuses was, as I read it, this:
When you point your gun at the flash of white and brown in the bushes in the middle of the woods and pull the trigger, you have a reasonable guess that you are shooting at a deer, but you can’t know for sure one way or the other. Your expectations based on limited information make your choice to pull the trigger a valid choice. Likewise, when you choose to have an abortion, your limited information (everyone’s limited information) can’t tell you whether a fetus is a person (in anything but a legal sense, where we know absolutely that it isn’t in this country at this moment).
The obvious difference is that after you pull the trigger, you go over and find the woman who was hanging up her sheets, and then you go in front of a jury. When you have an abortion, no simple observation answers the question of the personhood of fetuses. Therefore, Robert thinks that it should never come before a jury (which would be no more capable of answering even the first question “Did you kill a person?” than you were, so really will never get to the second question “Did you mean to?”). He thinks this even though he personally thinks you shot the woman hanging up her sheets, and not the white-tailed deer. He recognizes that you think you shot the white tailed deer, and therefore that you should not be treated as though you had intentionally shot the woman. In fact, since he recognizes that reasonable people are entirely unable to definitively answer the question of which you shot, that the courts should not be involved at all. If no one was definitely killed, then you shouldn’t even be tried for the death of person who may not even exist.
I’m not sure what you see as totally unreasonable and intellectually dishonest about this. Are you sure it isn’t just that he is using manslaughter as a loose metaphor rather than as a legal technical term that is bothering you?
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May 3rd, 2005 at 6:19 am
>>I did not ‘reject the idea that fetuses could ever legitimately be viewed as non-human.’ What I reject is the idea that a woman who intentionally seeks an abortion could claim “I didn’t know it was a person”? in the same manner that a deer hunter who mistakenly shot a person wearing white mittens would make that claim.>>
Thank you. Look–they’re different situations. An aborting woman can claim, “I didn’t know it was a person,” because of an arguably legitimate dispute over the humanity of an entirely unambiguous fetus. A hunter can claim, “I didn’t know it was a person,” because he couldn’t see clearly. His killing was accidental. Hers was purposeful. He would never attempt to argue that the woman in the white mittens was not human, or deserving of life. Equating the two is like equating a man who gives his elderly mother a lethal injection with the nurse who accidentally gives her too much morphine.
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May 3rd, 2005 at 6:27 am
The extension of the analogy doesn’t work either. The hunter in the forest isn’t thinking that the flash of white could possibly be human; if he had any suspicion at all, he wouldn’t shoot. He is acting under the firm belief that he’s shooting at a definitely non-human deer. If he were in any situation where there was a lot of ambiguity as to flashes of white–say, a large and heavily foliaged backyard–and he discharged a gun in the general direction of some woman’s white mittens or cotton sheets, believing that there was a pretty good chance it was a deer, _then_ he’d be guilty of murder.
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May 3rd, 2005 at 12:06 pm
Alright, they are totally different situations, such that no broad analogy can be drawn between the two, not even to the extent of “There are other circumstances besides abortion where people kill things that I beleive are people (and I wish that they hadn’t done so), but I would never say that they were murderers, or want them prosecuted or jailed.”
Why is this so very important?
Also, Piny, are you saying that any woman who thinks that fetuses might be people is guilty of murder if she has an abortion? Presumably not, but it certainly sounds like it. Again, we’re wandering around in Bizarro world, where you and Mythago seem to be arguing that abortion is murder, doing your best to rubbish Robert’s (and my) arguments that it isn’t, and I still don’t understand what either of you think pro-choiceness is gaining from your arguments.
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May 3rd, 2005 at 12:29 pm
It’s not important that those current examples–the hunter in the forest, the hunter in the public park–cannot be compared to this other situation that Robert would like to compare it to? His argument is that, hey, there are these other kinds of killing that we condemn and/or punish but don’t call murder! And my reply is that, hey, they’re totally different kinds of killing! And sometimes, we do in fact call them murder! If I compared killing in self-defense to aborting a totally normal pregnancy, I’d expect pro-lifers to jump down my throat. It would be a stupid analogy.
What I would like is for him to stop making specious comparisons. Why is that not reasonable?
And no, of course I’m not arguing that a woman who thinks a fetus is a person is guilty of murder if she has an abortion. If I believe that my ham sandwich is a person, will I be a cannibal after lunch?
Murder is based on an objective standard of personhood. However, if a woman–or anyone else–believes that a fetus is a person like any other, then she herself should admit her own logical conclusion that killing that person is murder. She should also be willing to penalize the murderer like any other murderer, and exempt the murderer only under the same circumstances as any other murderer.
If that woman–or anyone else–believes that a fetus has some kind of partial or possible personhood, then they can define killing it in different ways than murder. But they still shouldn’t use specific terms that mean something different, morally and legally, especially in an argument about the moral nature of abortion.
What I–and, I think, mythago–are trying to do here is talk about the moral nature of abortion, and the moral nature of pro-life and pro-choice beliefs. That means speaking in clear terms about what abortion is and what it is not. And if one moral argument against abortion is that it is murder or is like murder, then it’s very important to understand “murder.”
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May 4th, 2005 at 8:54 am
When you point your gun at the flash of white and brown in the bushes in the middle of the woods and pull the trigger, you have a reasonable guess that you are shooting at a deer, but you can’t know for sure one way or the other.
If it’s a ‘reasonable guess’ you can expect to be facing a good stretch in jail. “Well, I thought it probably was a deer, might have been a kid in a white hat, but odds are it was a buck” is going to make any prosecutor sit up and pay attention.
As to why this is so very important: Because pro-lifers who call abortion ‘murder’ are setting up a moral house of cards, and proposing to build a set of laws on it. They want to prohibit abortion essentially on whether or not they, personally, think the woman in question was moral. They deny this because they scurry behind the reason that a fetus is a human life, just like a newborn baby, whenever anyone disagrees with their proposed solutions.
It’s very important to demolish that house of cards, and insist that they base the laws they propose on a logically and morally coherent, cohesive framework. It’s very important that we pull back the curtain and show everyone that their pretense to care about Life is a pretense, and does not in any way support the laws they want to force on the rest of us.
And not incidentally, some of them may even rethink their positions when they realize how self-indulgent they are.
(Again, I want to note that I am not talking about ALL opponents of abortion, just the Will types.)
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