Comments on: Pro-choice and pregnant

By: sara

sara — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 06:55:49 +0000

Hi, everyone! I’m a big hypocrite who makes a lot of disingenuous noise about how women need ‘all the information,’ but I don’t actually want then to have any information other than what I decide they’re allowed to see, because my actual goal is control of women’s bodies and choices!

Also, I don’t really understand what a ‘banning’ is, apparently.

By: AndiF

AndiF — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 22:06:06 +0000

Robert, I will liberally impart the knowledge that you input special characters directly by using character entities which are entered with & + a value + ;. To get not equal, type & #8800 ; without the spaces and get ≠

Full list of character entities here

By: Myca

Myca — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 17:22:48 +0000

(I assume that YOU have to cut and paste, because as a liberal all inequality is evil and if you were to directly type it in, Al Gore would come around to your house and smash up all your carbon-intensive possessions.)

As a pragmatic liberal in the tradition of John Dewey and William James, I just do what works, without becoming locked into a pre-existent ideology that claims to dogmatically teach the ‘one true path’ for getting the symbol.

—Myca

By: Bonnie

Bonnie — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 16:04:24 +0000

Thanks, Mandolin and Myca!

By: Robert

Robert — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 14:40:42 +0000

It comes with being liberal…Actually, it comes with googling ‘does not equal’ and cutting and pasting.

Thanks. Wonder how they input it directly.

(I assume that YOU have to cut and paste, because as a liberal all inequality is evil and if you were to directly type it in, Al Gore would come around to your house and smash up all your carbon-intensive possessions.)

By: Mandolin

Mandolin — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 08:58:27 +0000

Congratulations, Bonnie!

By: Myca

Myca — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 07:39:27 +0000

My wife is pregnant!

Congratulations! How wonderful for you both!

—Myca

By: Myca

Myca — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 07:37:37 +0000

Actually, it comes with googling ‘does not equal’ and cutting and pasting.

I’m just that anal.

—Myca

By: Myca

Myca — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 07:34:25 +0000

It comes with being liberal.

By: Robert

Robert — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 07:06:57 +0000

Hey, how’d you get a not-equals symbol to print?

By: Bonnie

Bonnie — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 04:14:06 +0000

My wife is pregnant!

By: Myca

Myca — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 03:47:12 +0000

Disagreeing with you ≠ libel and slander.

Or actually? You know what?

Fine. It totally does, and we’re all meanies who stomp puppies and hate babies.

Whatever. Christ.

—Myca

By: amba (Annie Gottlieb)

amba (Annie Gottlieb) — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 03:12:25 +0000

Unsubscribing, so feel free to libel and slander me in my absence.

By: amba (Annie Gottlieb)

amba (Annie Gottlieb) — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 03:11:42 +0000

Time to go away and leave you guys happy in your echo chamber.

By: Dianne

Dianne — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 03:09:02 +0000

I regretted my abortion

With all due respect, so what? At one point in my life I deeply regretted having never conceived a child with my then-boyfriend. Does that mean that every woman should get pregnant by every man she is attracted to because she might later regret having missed the opportunity?

Abortion is dehumanizing to all concerned, and if you’re unaware that it is you’ve already been dehumanized.

So in your world unicellular parasites are human and those who disagree with you are not. Nice. Exactly the sort of thinking that allows the “pro-life” movement to bomb clinics and shoot doctors without feeling the slightest remorse.

By: Jake Squid

Jake Squid — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 03:03:19 +0000

Oh, come on now, Mandolin. I am now entirely convinced about the bad stuff about abortion. An evo-psych just-so story is potent shit. As a bonus, the comment overcomes the absolutism of this age - especially that last line.

By: Mandolin

Mandolin — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 01:15:15 +0000

‘Too, in biology there is something called sexual selection. When a woman has an abortion she is, among other things, judging the father, and judging that she does not want to have his child. We understand now that the genetic lottery is full of wild cards, and nurture is as complex as nature, and a father who’s a no-goodnik or even a rapist can father a perfectly wonderful child. But the more primitive or instinctive response is to snuff out the genes of a father you find wanting, and one can see that in a crude way that would have been effective. If nothing else, it would have encouraged males, genetically and socially, to make an effort to offer something more than a brief good time to the potential mother of their offspring.’

god, i hate it when people misrepresent evolutionary concepts they don’t understand.

By: amba (Annie Gottlieb)

amba (Annie Gottlieb) — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 22:39:58 +0000

We don’t talk about this much in this age of absolutes, but the way a woman feels about an abortion often has a lot to do with the circumstances, and the man involved. The way she feels about it also may change with time, or not. Some women, when they have children, realize that the pregnancy they aborted was also a child, and feel pain about it. Others realize that if they had had that child, they would not have had the children they now have and love.

Too, in biology there is something called sexual selection. When a woman has an abortion she is, among other things, judging the father, and judging that she does not want to have his child. We understand now that the genetic lottery is full of wild cards, and nurture is as complex as nature, and a father who’s a no-goodnik or even a rapist can father a perfectly wonderful child. But the more primitive or instinctive response is to snuff out the genes of a father you find wanting, and one can see that in a crude way that would have been effective. If nothing else, it would have encouraged males, genetically and socially, to make an effort to offer something more than a brief good time to the potential mother of their offspring.

I regretted my abortion in part because the context in which I got pregnant argued very strongly in favor of having the child. He would also have been my only child.

This doesn’t contradict my belief that it is far better to strenuously avoid unwanted pregnancy and, if it occurs anyway, to prefer another option to abortion. Abortion is dehumanizing to all concerned, and if you’re unaware that it is you’ve already been dehumanized.

By: Mandolin

Mandolin — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 16:31:36 +0000

Sara Elizabeth: While your perseverance is appreciated — we do like a good show! — alas, it’s time to darken the theater, and let the actors go home. It’s metaphorically late, madame, and the champagne in your slipper is stale.

Please don’t post any more on Alas, good luck with your future endeavors, have fun with your fetus porn, and so on.

By: Richard Jeffrey Newman

Richard Jeffrey Newman — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 15:39:46 +0000

I am not a moderator, but I think it’s time we let this discussion die a peaceful death. Sara, now Sara Elizabeth, has been beating her dead horse over the course of 70 some odd comments, since she re-entered the conversation at #147 or so, and while there have been some interesting ideas that started to emerge from what was being said, including some of the things she started to say…well, I am going to resist all the ironic metaphors that come to mind. I just think it’s time to stop.