New poll/Old poll
The new poll question is up:
Grade John McCain on his presidential campaign so far.
Next week I’ll ask you to grade Barack Obama.
[HT: Bill O’Reilly]
Here are the answers to last week’s poll. Our International friends disagreed with American sentiment on a boycott…
Click on one of the maps below to enlarge to find your personal brightly colored flag:
As always, make comments to either this or last week’s poll here, not on the Vizu website.
Aug.02, 2008 3:52 am |
Polls |
Jill Stanek is a nurse turned speaker, columnist and blogger, a national figure in the effort to protect both preborn and postborn innocent human life.
About the QOTD…I would love to see a poll about who of the commenters here would agree with that statement?
Sheesh. Sick.
I also am commenting on the QOTD! Wow – this is so anti-woman it’s amazing. What’s even more amazing is that this dingbat doesn’t even recognize it as such!
It would be interesting to learn how she came to think like this and what influenced her. Wonder what her family life was like and how many abortions she’s had to date. Then again, maybe not. It’s so early in the morning to make myself sick to my stomach.
Why exactly is it anti-woman?
I think the last part is a joke.
I think an even greater anti-woman statement would be, “The greatest thing a woman could do is give birth.” So all the childless women, Mother Teresa and Elizabeth I included, did reach their full potential?
Sorry, *did not reach
I can’t wait to watch the olympic marathon. I heard a few people already dropped out because of the pollution in Beijing. It’s so amazing to watch them run, it takes so much strength and dedication, years of hard work.
Kind of like parenting.
“The greatest thing a woman could do is give birth.”
I think this is ONE of the greatest things a woman can EVER do, if not the greatest. And I think most women would agree with me. Because when all is said and done, at the end of our lives we do not sit around and talk about our accomplishments as doctors, secretaries or librarians. We talk about our children. Our grandchildren. Not even the angels have this ability to cooperate with God and create a new human being.
Whether you like it or not Jess, women ARE designed to be open to new life and bring forth new life. It is decidely anti-woman to believe and act otherwise.
ANd BTW, Mother Theresa is not less a woman because she was called to be a religious. Mother Theresa acted her entire life to promote life and nurture it even when it was not likely to survive. We also speak of Mother as having many spiritual children. She was one of the most feminine women who has ever lived.
“Because when all is said and done, at the end of our lives we do not sit around and talk about our accomplishments as doctors, secretaries or librarians.”
Do you know how many elderly people have children who couldn’t care less about them? Who just throw them into nursing homes and forget about them in like, two generations? I guess it’s the greatest thing to do if you raise good kids who will care about you and love you two. I know most of you pro-lifers are under the delusion that if you have a child they will be forever grateful that you gave them life and give you security in your old age. That’s just not true for many people though. If the greatest thing a woman can do is give birth to some spoiled selfish brat then I’ll settle for mediocre.
Spoiled, selfish brats are raised to be spoiled, selfish brats. My children don’t owe me a thing. I owe them the opportunity to learn about and care for others. I model for them the love and compassion that I would like them to have for others. Unborn babies, elderly, children with physical and mental handicaps, great grandma and the bully at school. They will learn from me about the preciousness of others. The value of life.
I want them to WANT to visit me in my old age. :)
Oh and compassion for dogs, cats, and hamstahs!! But not above humans.
With all said and done, our children are replica’s of ourselves. Granted we make plenty of mistakes mentoring them through lifes up’s and down’s but the end result is to assist them into becoming functional human beings.
I always said I wish child rearing would come with clear cut directions but every child is different.
I myself was taught early in life to take care of my family. I have instilled the same virtue onto my own children.
Lynn,
Welcome! Hope you come back again. How blessed are your children!
Directions would be nice. Sometimes I think a return policy would be nice too…lol.
Regarding John McCain’s campaign:
Let’s see, so far he’s flip-flopped on torture, and on running a negative campaign.
I would not be surprised any more if he flip-flopped on basic ethical issues like child labor.
Hey hey! Nice to have you back, SoMG. Guess what I’m listening to right now? Don Carlos! Excellent recommendation.
Bobby B, who plays King Phillip II on the recording you are listening to?
Boris Christoff is the best.
Yeah, so I wanted to get that one cause you recommended him before, but they only had a couple choices on iTunes. But it’s Jaako Ryhanan as Phillip II. The thing is, my musical aptitude isn’t mature enough to be able to tell the difference between a great bass (tenor, soprano, alto) and a world-class bass (tenor, alto, soprano), so I probably would enjoy most performances of it equally.
Bobby B: I bet if you ever hear Boris Christoff sing anything you will immediately perceive his greatness. He has a very distinctive tone and unmatched acting ability. He was best known for King Phillip and Boris Godunov.
What opera is Boris Godunov from? Maybe I’ll get that one next with Boris Christoff this time.
An interesting blog I found while I was away:
http://abortionclinicdays.blogs.com/
Patricia, Carla,
I’ve been in Germany the last 2-3 weeks so I haven’t been doing the QOTD’s in a while. I know the Today’s is graphic but I felt that it’s important to expose the mindset of some of these pro-aborts. If you thought that quote was bad, you should see what this evil person said about the Blessed Virgin Mary, it’s so bad I can’t repeat it….
LOL Bobby B., Boris Godunov is a character in an opera called BORIS GODUNOV. (Also a real Tzar of Russia, and often the answer to questions about Russian History on JEOPARDY.) The opera is by Mussorsky, based on a play by Pushkin who was sort of the Russian equivalent of Shakespeare. There’s a recording you can get in which Boris Christoff plays THREE roles: the title role, a pious priest, and a drunken priest.
The story is about how a young monk pretends to be the rightful Tzar, who was murdered by Boris Godunov. Boris Godunov goes mad with guilt.
Yeah, I went to the link of the QOTD and browsed a couple of the commenter’s blogs and that blog as well. I tell ya, I had NO IDEA that there were many people that detached from reality. I mean, they’re so far left, they even hate Obama. They make us all look like moderates I tell ya. And I mean EVERYBODY, even the posters on this blog who are considered more liberal than others. They look moderate in comparison to these nutters. Wow.
Jasper,
I know. I read the whole quote. !!!
I think there’s a video online of Boris Godunov going mad, a concert performance by the greatest bass of the 1980s: the Finnish giant Matti Salminen, who played Hagen and Fafner in James Levine’s superb videotaped performance of THE RING OF THE NIBELUNG from the MET.
Here it is:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GE43OdJZ0sk
Regarding the QOTD: The unborn are not “parasites”. Parasites are by definition different species from their hosts.
To get back on topic:
I for one did vote No on this poll. My reasons for doing so are because President Bush and the US shouldn’t encourage the alienation of countries such as China even more than they already are. I think countries like these need MORE influence from the US and other Christian-based countries. We should see this as an opportunity for change. This can already be seen as more light is being shown on China’s dark culture with such issues like forced abortions being discussed and challenged.
I think boycott is the wrong word.
I disagree with China’s policy of forcing abortions on some women.
However, I am convinced that the only correct response to China is a profound sense of ignorance. China cannot be understood. I’ll post my favorite illustrative story again:
A Reagan-era diplomat asked his Chinese counterpart why Communist countries prohibit their citizens from emigrating to other countries. Isn’t that an unacceptable violation of human freedom? The Chinese diplomat thought for a minute and then replied, “How many Chinese immigrants would you like? Ten million? A hundred million?”
SoMG,
I checked out that blog some time ago. Looks like you’ll feel very comfortable there.
Any stories shared on that blog that ring with you? I found it interesting how some
of the clinic workers were extremely concerned that women wouldn’t get their abortions before their “cutoff” day.
Do you have as much interaction with the patients like these workers do?
SoMG,
WELCOME HOME!!!!!
While you were gone, I played a Nancy Drew game with my daughter on the computer. It takes place in venice. Whenever you want to get from point A to point B, you have to take a Gondola. Then you get to choose which Opera song you want your guide to sing…OMG! They were awful. Like Bobby, I probably don’t have a trained enough ear to tell the difference between really good and GREAT, but I knew enough to know that you’d have shot the computer…lol.
Either way, every time they sang, I thought of you. Glad to have you back. No more porno, kay?
Hi SoMG,
Hope you are well.
I tried to comment on AbortionClinicDays but it wouldn’t let me. What’s the magic word?
“Regarding the QOTD: The unborn are not “parasites”. Parasites are by definition different species from their hosts.”
SoMG, thank you clearing that up.
welcome back.
MK, when directly viewed, everything is lewd.
SoMG,
MK, when directly viewed, everything is lewd.
While that might be true, it’s no good for you.
I mean, that notion sounds grand. But it will get you banned.
The fact that you could, does not mean you should.
Just try to behave…just try to be good.
(((((((((((Elizabeth))))))))))
Too many of the operas I’ve been recommending are nasty. So I’ll recommend three feel-good family operas in which no one dies (although violence is threatened in all of them and there is one mob scene): Mozart’s THE MARRIAGE OF FIGARO which I have recommended before, his THE ABDUCTION (ENTFURUNG) FROM THE SERALIGO, and THE MASTERSINGERS (DIE MEISTERSINGER) OF NURNBERG.
I know of no recording or video of MARRIAGE that does justice to the piece. The closest is conductor Ferenc Fricsay (pronounced Free-shy)’s studio recording with Maria Stader, and there’s a live performance on CD conducted by Hans Rosebaud with Rolando Panerai that’s pretty good. Both suffer from poor casting of the Count. It’s very hard to play the Count; he’s altogether dislikable but it’s important for the audience to identify with him and understand why he is angry. He’s a young man but he must be able to shout. The only singer I can think of who could have fully realized the character is Tito Gobbi, who specialized in playing sadistic, sarcastic, overbearing baritone characters like Jago in OTELLO and Scarpia in TOSCA. He brought his Verdi-capable volume to Mozart as Don Giovanni but unfortunately was never recorded as the Count.
For ABDUCTION, again Fricsay’s recording is the best I’ve heard. Fricsay is so great at Mozart because of the balance he gets in the ensembles. His singers listen to and support each other. And there is no better demonstration of the strength, mass, and skill of the thunderous and fortunately ubiquitous Josef Greindl on record than this. The role of Osmin is only for a very rare type of singer: a power-bass with a resonant low register who is also a deft coluratura singer. Three usually-mutually-exclusive requirements. With such a big instrument it’s difficult to change notes rapidly. The other singers are Mozart-legends too.
The story of ABDUCTION is as light as Cole Porter–a rich guy and his servant have to rescue their girlfriends, who have been captured by Turks after a shipwreck and placed in the Pasha’s harum. This involves playing Bugs-Bunny games with the overseer of the harum, a not-very-observant Muslim called Osmin, who sings several “kill-the-wabbit” pieces. However, there’s no such thing as uncomplicated love in Mozart. Listen to the slow part of the quartet where the heros and their girlfriends get together and the beginning of the near-final love duet (“Ach, du soltest fur mich sterben…”) and the preceding tenor monologue and you’ll see what I mean.
Although MEISTERSINGER is Wagner’s only comedy, it is the second of his operas in which the hero must win a singing contest in order to get the girl, and screws up by singing too ardently about love. The recording of choice is now unfortunately hard to find. It’s a live performance from Bayreuth 1960, published by Melodram and conducted by the legendary Hans Knappertsbusch (known for a style best described by an oxymoron, “spontaneously inevitable”), starring Josef Greindl again, this time in a bass-baritone role (before he had always played the lowest-pitched parts), and Wolfgang Windgassen, one of the most intelligent heldentenors who ever sang Wagner.) As I say it’s hard to find so you might need to go with a different cast. There’s one recording to AVOID: the one with Placido Domingo (who is a great tenor but most definitely not a Wagner tenor) and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau (an outstanding chamber singer who would have been perfect in a different role–the villian, Beckmesser, a flutey, snooty, delicate, overrefined high baritone with lots of falsetto in his tone–but should never have even considered playing Hans Sachs.
The best video performance is James Levines with James Morris and Ben Heppner, who is a true heldentenor and very smart.
Nimbrethil,
Just so you know, you weren’t deleted because of your views. You were deleted because of your last sentence. Here on Jill’s we try to act like we’re older than 4 1/2. You’re welcome to come and debate with us, but be warned. We debate. We are NOT Amanda Marcotte!
Sorry, but none of you are interested in debate either. You have extremely backward ideas about women and put developing fetuses above born persons in importance. You think a woman’s greatest worth lies in her ability to give birth.
How many of you think a man’s greatest achievement lies in his ability to impregnate a woman?
I don’t really care what your reasons were for deleting my prior comment. There is absolutely no point in “debating” with people who have their minds made up that a woman’s primary role should be as a babymachine.
Nimbrethil,
That’s quite a lot of assumptions for someone that’s only been here for all of 6 minutes…
You’d be surprised what some of the people here think.
We have prolifers that would be quite offended by your assessment of them…
But it is your CHOICE after all, whether you stick around or not.
Of course if you have nothing to add to the mix I could see why you’d want to leave. It’s always easier to insult folks and disappear…sticking around to defend your position might be too taxing.
As you wish…
SoMG,
I wish I could see the real thing. You know, wear the dress and heels, drink champagne, maybe rent a limo…
It sounds so upper class! So, do you get these videos at the local video store?
Which one is your favorite? For the record, I’m not a prude, and while I don’t care for gratuitous sex and violence, if it’s key to the story, I have no problem with it. What was the one you were talking about with the supernatural stuff? Are Phantom of the Opera and Les Miserable considered Operas??? So much to learn, so far behind. Teach me O Master…
Nimbrethil,
I just went to your site. How come nobody comments on it??? Might it be your delivery?
BTW, did you know that your moniker was taken from a devout, staunch CATHOLIC writer….miggggghhhhht wanna rethink that…lol
“You have extremely backward ideas about women and put developing fetuses above born persons in importance.”
No we don’t, but it is developing unborn children that are getting killed legally every day in this country.
“We have prolifers that would be quite offended by your assessment of them…”
YES. That would be me.
“You have extremely backward ideas about women and put developing fetuses above born persons in importance.”
That’s a whole lot of generalization. Check out Feminists for Life. We think women deserve BETTER than abortion. We think we have done a grave disservice to women by not allowing them to be who they are.
“You think a woman’s greatest worth lies in her ability to give birth.”
Not necessarily. Though many mothers consider their children to be the greatest part of their lives, noone here is saying that we don’t think women should have careers and succeed. Us pro-lifers don’t want women to have to choose between babies and careers. Abortion is a part of the problem, and not the solution, to this imbalance.
“How many of you think a man’s greatest achievement lies in his ability to impregnate a woman?”
Although many fathers consider their children the best part of their lives, noone is saying they shouldn’t have careers or succeed either.
“There is absolutely no point in “debating” with people who have their minds made up that a woman’s primary role should be as a babymachine.”
Again, a massive generalization. But I could clearly say that there may be not point in “debating” with you, because you have your mind made up about your position. But here we like to open our minds and entertain different ideas. I used to be pro-choice too. We have had some pro-life conversions of pro-choicers, but we have also had some pro-life conservatives start reconsidering their ideas on other civil rights issues, too. Being so closed off to discussion is doing yourself an intellectual disservice. Because isn’t the point of discussing things to understand?
Clear, concise, rational, logical reasoning. Beautiful, PiP. Beautiful.
MK,
Nice try but I get a lot of comments on my blog. It’s fairly evenly split between which posts are public and which are friends’ only, but I have a fair readership. In any case, I don’t go around whoring for blog comments because that’s not my primary motivation for blogging.
As for where I got my moniker from, what’s your point? J.R.R. Tolkien’s books are my favorite works, and my appreciation of his literature has absolutely nothing to do with the man’s religious viewpoints. I’ve heard similar remarks before, along the lines of “BTW, you know Tolkien was a devout Christian, hmmmmmm?” as if that’s supposed to mean something to me, though usually it’s pointed at the fact that I am a Pagan, because apparently there are a lot of people in this world who cannot comprehend why a person of one religion would read works written by a person of another religion. But to get back to the point, I don’t care whether or not Tolkien was a Christian. I am not anti-Christian, despite whatever you might think. The point of my recent blog entries on Christianity is thus: I have no issues with Christianity whatsoever, but I am sick and tired of listening to people use the Bible and Christianity to defend their reasons for being anti-abortion: there are numerous examples throughout the Old Testament that show that God doesn’t care a whit about children either, whether born or unborn. So if you’re going to whine, piss and moan about how evil it is to abort babies, you’ll need to come up with a more reliable source than the Bible, teeming as it is with verse after verse of God ordering or condoning the murder of infants and young children AND babies still residing in their mothers’ wombs.
Nimbrethil,
Do you believe that abortion should be legal up until birth? As you said on your blog?
“whine, piss and moan about how evil it is to abort babies, ”
You’re right, we are being a bit melodramatic in our defense of life. Perhaps we should just flippantly pretend that abortion isn’t killing a human being.
As for the b ible being the only foundation for our arguments…you haven’t been around here much have you?
Sure alot of us our Christians, and sure we’ll talk about our faith when applicable, but we all have a far more thought out reason for being pro-life than simply saying “well the bible says so!”
Believe it or not, most of us have deeply questioned the issue and weighed both sides and found that, shockingly I know, it isn’t anyones right to kill another person regardless of said persons physical location.
Lauren,
I didn’t say that the Bible is the only justification. The relevant blog entry that spurred this “discussion” deals with people who DO use the Bible as their primary, if not sole, justification.
Jasper,
If I didn’t believe it, I wouldn’t have said it. As you point out, that’s what I said. So I obviously believe it.
Abortion. Freely available, on demand. Without apology. No exceptions.
MK, didn’t I already say? You start with Mozart/DaPonte. MARRIAGE if you like family comedy/drama, people hiding behind furniture and dressing up as members of the opposite sex or other members of the same sex but all with the threat of domestic violence or having your life-plans ruined behind it and Mozart laughing quietly at everybody sort of the way Jane Austen does. DON GIOVANNI if you prefer a rich bad guy going around doing mean things to everybody until he runs into something he can’t beat or outwit, sort of a CLOCKWORK ORANGE story but with some of the most beautiful and vocally impressive music ever, especially when the soloists sing together. The best way is to sit and read a side-by-side English-Italian libretto and notice as much as you can how the music interacts with the words. I assure you the pieces reward the effort, even if you go through it more than once.
So, you believe that someone who is 37 weeks pregnant should have the option to kill their child rather than simply deliver it?
This baby was 22 weeks, you can see he has almost full head of hair, should this legal in your eyes?
http://prolifetraining.com/AbortionPictures/22-Weeks.htm
Lauren,
The reality is that the number of women who have late-term abortions is vanishingly small, something like less than 3 percent of all abortions. And of that tiny percentage, ALL of those abortions are performed for health reasons. So I am NOT going to discuss the topic of late-term abortions as if they are performed on a widespread basis, and for “superficial” reasons.
Having said that, why are you asking me something I’ve already answered? Even Jasper acknowledged that his question was unnecessary since my answer is apparent on my blog. So why are you asking the question again? Do you live for redundancy?
Oops.
It’s probably obvious, but the previous anonymous comment is me.
NO, I simply wanted to ensure that this was, in fact, your view. The numbers don’t matter. It could be that one person in the history of time, but the fact that you would support it gives insight into the workings of your philosophy.
It matters not the reason they are performed, you believe that a woman has the right to kill her child rather than simply remove said child. This shows that your justification for abortion can not possibly rest upon the oft sited “bodily integrity”, but rather upon some other combination of reasons.
So, I ask you, why should a woman have a right to kill a child that could be removed without killing said child?
Again, you said that you approve of abortion for “any” reason without apology, so any mention of the likely hood of this scenario occurring is not pertinent to the argument.
Nimbrethil,
3% is 35,000 per year in the US.
the Alan Guttmacher Institute collected questionnaires from 1,900 women in the United States who came to clinics to have abortions. Of the 1,900 questioned, 420 had been pregnant for 16 or more weeks. These 420 women were asked to choose among a list of reasons why they had not obtained the abortions earlier in their pregnancies. The results were as follows:[3]
71% Woman didn’t recognize she was pregnant or misjudged gestation
48% Woman found it hard to make arrangements for abortion
33% Woman was afraid to tell her partner or parents
24% Woman took time to decide to have an abortion
8% Woman waited for her relationship to change
8% Someone pressured woman not to have abortion
6% Something changed after woman became pregnant
6% Woman didn’t know timing is important
5% Woman didn’t know she could get an abortion
2% A fetal problem was diagnosed late in pregnancy
11% Other
Again, why do bring up the fact that it’s only 3%
For those who need to know, the Centers for Disease Contrl has these statistics on abortion. And of course this is relevant to the U.S. The data is from 2003.
http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/ss5511a1.htm
Abortions performed after 20 weeks account for 1.4 percent of all abortions.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0b/USAbortionbyGestationalAgeChart2002.png
If you take a look at this graph, also representing numbers from the CDC (so don’t bitch at me about this being a wikipedia source–it isn’t, the graph merely represents the hard numbers cited from the CDC), you’ll notice that the number of abortions performed diminishes drastically the further along a pregnancy is. Since ALL abortions performed past five months account for only 1.4 percent of the total, it stands to reason that the closer to 40 weeks you get, the tinier and tinier that percentage becomes. So why the hell are we even bothering to MENTION abortions performed at 37 weeks?
And just to put my two cents into this, I think each woman should decide for herself how important it is to have kids.
Nimbrethi, again, we are mentioning these abortions because they go to the heart of your support of “any abortion for any reason.”
But, 37 weeks is an admittedly arbitrary number. We could use any point from viability forward and the question would still apply. Why do you support killing a child who could be delivered alive?
Oh, and to anticipate your objection, a doctor will deliver a child early if the mothers health is at risk. My own son was delivered at 31 weeks after I developed an infection that would have been dangerous to us both. However, my water broke at 23 weeks, and they would have delievered at that point had either of our health been in danger.
Because, Nim, that would mean they’d have to face reality. And if they see my blog, their heads will explode. C’mon, guys, I’m in the mood for some amusement. I’m your worst nightmare. I’m a liberal commie pinko hippie gun-loving feminazi combat veteran.
Oh, and I think in a perfect world she has the right to kill it as long as it’s inside her body. In the real world I’m satisfied with the Freedom of Choice Act: absolute freedom until fetal viability and afterwards a health exception, both “fetal viability” and “health” to be defined at some future time by a series of Supreme Court decisions in which the precedent of Doe/Bolton would be considered but not necessarily replicated.
Nimbrethil,
1.4% is ~ 17,000 babies per year. 4x as much deaths than US killed in iraq since 2003.
Could you answer Laurens question please?
“So, I ask you, why should a woman have a right to kill a child that could be removed without killing said child?”
Ginmar, trust me, my head won’t expload. You fail to realize that some (most?) of us used to be liberal feminists. In fact, some of us still *are* liberal feminists who just happen to oppose abortion. I think we can handle your site.
No, you can’t. YOu can’t be a liberal feminist if you’re anti abortion. Full stop, the end. You guys will happily sacrifice women in your quest to fetishize blobs. So drop the pretense.
Jasper, it’s not a child. And your figures on Iraqi civilian casualties were for last year alone, when Muqtadah al-Sadr let loose his Mahdi Army on the Sunnis and vice versa after the sacred (to Shia) Golden Mosque was bombed. Civilian casualites reached three thousand per month, a hundred a day. Why are you underestimating to deaths of Iraqis?
As I said…Not a child. A thing. A part of the woman’s body.
When you guys start ponying up funding and education for sex ed and condoms, for actual real support of women and their rights, then I’ll listen. But I won’t hold my breath.
Nimbrethil,
Is this a person?
http://prolifetraining.com/AbortionPictures/22-Weeks.htm
No, it doesn’t Nimbrethil, because it convienantly avoids going to the heart of the issue. Bodliy integrity arguments are satisfied by simply delivering the child, so to support late term abortion you must believe that women have rights above and beyond bodily integrity.
You convienantly sidestep this fact by saying that your opinions do not matter, but they do. Your inability to express *why* late term abortions are ok other than to say “shit happens” exposes the gaping flaw to the pro-choice arguement.
Either it’s about bodily integrity or it’s not. Obviously, it’s not. So what are late term abortions *really* about? Think about this for a second without the veil of euphanism and catch phrases. How are you really justifying killing those who could just as easily been born alive?
Simply saying “some people need them!” does not even begin to address the issue.
As for feminism hinging on abortion, that is an entirely different debate, but one that I do find worthwhile. However, for the time being I would rather focus on uncovering your justifications, rather than discussing the wider conclusions of those justifications.
Ginmar,
I was only citing US casualties in Iraq vs. US late-term abortions past 30 weeks. We can add in other countries as well, no problem. Thanks for your service.
My service is valuable to you but I’m not? If I got pregnant, all that would be blown away and my body would not be my own. You would gladly do away with the soldier who served her country to force her into being an incubator. So color me a bit cynical.
Ginmar, you miss the point.
It doesn;t matter what the situation was that led to the abortion, the child aborted is the same. So yeah, the mother could have been as you say, a “whore,” but probably not. But, again, IT DOESN’T MATTER. If you support abortion in situations where the child could have been born alive, you support abortion for reasons beyond bodily integrity. What are your reasons?
Lauren,
No, bodily integrity is NOT “solved” by delivery of a baby. Bodily integrity does not exist when a woman is forced to give birth against her will.
Pregnancy has to be a choice. If a woman doesn’t want to be pregnant, she should have not only the legal right but the practical means of aborting. Saying “oh, she can stop being pregnant by waiting nine months and then delivering” is laughable nonsense.
EVERY person–and a fetus is not a person–has the right to bodily integrity. Men, women, boys, and girls. A woman has the right to do with her body what she damn well pleases, including when she is pregnant and regardless of how far along her pregnancy is.
I am not sidestepping and I am not unable to express anything. Abortion is okay. It is not murder, it is not irresponsible, it is not a sin, it is not immoral. I have stated numerous times that I have no qualms with abortion at ANY week of gestation. It has everything to do with bodily integrity and nothing I have suggested refutes this.
Jasper,
I already answered your question. Stop asking me to repeat myself.
Jasper, the point you’re missing is that I value the Iraqi casualties as well. They are not the enemy. They were people I worked with, grew to like, and then had to watch them die—in appalling numbers. They were just like you, except more liberal. They go to Mosque on Friday, they drink beer–and feel guilty—and they have no problem shaking womens’ hands and making jokes. Why aren’t they included in your casualties?
Right up till the first shot fired in the battle I was, there were Iraqis running up to the gate, shouting, “You have to leave! Get out, get out, they’re coming!” By that time, ‘they’ were already there, but they tried. Their deaths matter. They were already born, though.
Lauren, I speak two other languages and can do simultaneous translation between the two. I have no earthly clue what on earth you’re babbling about, except you keep trying to sneak in the use of ‘child’ for fetus.
I also notice you ignored the whole: birth control, education, and male birth control thing. Tell me, do you hand out condoms and birth control pills? Do you support morning after pills? Do you thikn parental notification laws are a good idea? (Tell that to girls who’ve been forced to notify their fathers—who raped them—and were subsequently murdered by them. Try Spring Adams for one.) Do you actively adopt the children who right now languish in foster care? I’d like answers to these questions, thanks.
Nimbrethil,
how about a simple yes or no answer, it’s germaine to the discussion at hand. Is the baby in that picture a person?
Jasper,
I am not going to answer a question that does not need to be asked because I have already made clear my opinion on the matter.
Nimbrethil, again, you are missing the point. We are not talking about a woman delivering at the end of a full term pregnancy. We are talking about a woman ending a pregnancy prior to term. I gave the example of delivering my son at 31 weeks to illustrate this point.
If a woman decides to have an abortion at 25 weeks, she presumably consented to the pregnancy up until that point. Regardless, at that point she no longer consents to the pregnancy. So we have two options. Option A. abort the child. Option B. induce labor and let the chips fall as they may as to the child living.
I suppose we could simply say that either way we are aborting the pregnancy, but in one case we kill the child and in the other we simply end the pregnancy. Why do you think that a woman has a right to kill a child that she could just as easily (or perhaps even more easily) not kill?
Again, the woman’s bodily integrity is restored regardless of the child’s life status. You still have failed to explain why a woman has the right to kill the child. (And yes, it is a child. The definition of child is: an offspring. Actually, the dictionary goes further than I have and defines child to specifically include a fetus, but I was using the term to denote progeny.)
a fetus is not a person
Abortion is okay. It is not murder, it is not irresponsible, it is not a sin, it is not immoral. I have stated numerous times that I have no qualms with abortion at ANY week of gestation. It has everything to do with bodily integrity and nothing I have suggested refutes this.
you are truly a sad, sad person – you truly have a hard heart.
Ginmar,
A child simply defined is ones offspring. I am my mother’s child although I am an adult.
I used the term to avoid going between “fetus” for the offspring that was killed and “neonate” for the offpring allowed to live. It was used to simplify the conversation.
As to what I am saying, let me again explain to avoid confusion. I will illustrate a hypothetical situation to help you understand.
A woman is 31 weeks pregnant. Her health would be in danger if she continued to term. Her doctor provides her two options.
The first option is that they can induce deilivery of her live child.
The second option is that the woman can undergo an abortion that will kill said child.
Either option will end the pregnancy, but option 1 will end in a live birth while option 2 will end with the same child being killed. Either option will restore the mothers bodily integrity.
If you support abortion for “any reason” you are open to option 2. In order for you to support option 2, you must believe that a woman’s right to abortion extends beyond her simply having the right to remove the fetus from her body.
What is your justification for this?
Lauren,
Nope, no points missed.
Consent to sex is not consent to pregnancy. A woman does not agree to become pregnant by having sex.
If a woman “decides to have an abortion at 25 weeks” the odds are, because I live in reality, not a fictional world where women are fickle, capricious monsters, she was deliberating on the issue for some time. If a woman suddenly decides to have an abortion at twenty-five weeks after previously “consenting” to be pregnant, the odds are that something happened to make her think that having a baby is not the best choice for her situation.
But then, I’m weird in that I don’t think a woman suddenly thinks to herself, on the first day of her twenty-fith week of gestation, “Even though I wanted the baby last night, I’ve decided to have an abortion, because I don’t want to have this baby any more.” Rather, I’m one of those strange individuals who understands that no woman treats abortion as a trivial matter, akin to choosing which shoes to wear with her outfit. If a woman “suddenly” decides to have an abortion halfway or even a third of the way through her pregnancy, then there’s either no “sudden” about it, and it’s an option she’s been considering for a while, or else something happened that made her “suddenly” decide that she needed to have an abortion, even if she hadn’t wanted one before.
Like I said, abortion is NOT a trivial matter like choosing which shoes to wear or what shade of lipstick to apply. No woman makes that decision on the spur of the moment, and if you actually do believe otherwise, then you’ve made it crystal clear just how anti-feminist you are.
Nimbrethil,
Again, I am not accusing anyone of being capricious. In fact, in an attempt to rebute my argument you are actually proving my point.
You are admitting that you believe there are reasons beyond bodily integrity that give a woman a right to kill her offspring.
This is what I have been trying to get at the entire time. You must go beyond the argument of Bodily Integrity in order to justify these abortions. This shows that the pro-choice community is dishonest in portraying abortion as a matter of bodily rights, and undermines any claim made about the validity of late term abortions.
Clearly stated, the justification for abortion handed down by SCOTUS can not be used for late term abortion. So what justification are we using? It is clearly something beyond a chant of “my body, my choice!”
you are truly a sad, sad person – you truly have a hard heart.
Riiiight. And that’s why I donate whatever resources I can to various non-profits that support animal shelters, low/no-cost healthcare clinics, agencies that advocate against violence toward women, support for veterans, food banks, shelters for the homeless…oh, and let us not forget that I am equally opposed to forced abortions…y’know, that whole bodily integrity thing that I believe every man, woman, and child has a right to.
“Rather, I’m one of those strange individuals who understands that no woman treats abortion as a trivial matter”
98% of abortions are for convienance:
http://www.johnstonsarchive.net/policy/abortion/abreasons.html
“I also notice you ignored the whole: birth control, education, and male birth control thing. Tell me, do you hand out condoms and birth control pills? Do you support morning after pills? Do you thikn parental notification laws are a good idea? (Tell that to girls who’ve been forced to notify their fathers—who raped them—and were subsequently murdered by them. Try Spring Adams for one.) Do you actively adopt the children who right now languish in foster care? I’d like answers to these questions, thanks. ”
Sorry Ginmar, I didn’t mean to ignore this part of your post, I just got so wrapped up in my arguement that I forgot about it!
As for birthcontrol- I do not believe in hormonal birthcontrol because it interfers with implantation.
I personally am opposed to other methods of birth control because I believe they interfer with my relationship with God. However, while I think that it has harmful effects, I understand that others have reached different conclusions on this and am not going to fight for it to be banned or anything like that. In fact, I’ve helped friends with birth control issues even if I don’t agree with their positions.
As for parental notification, I think there are horor stories on both sides of the isle. I believe that there needs to be some responsible, accessable adult notified prior to a minors abortion for safety reasons. This could be a judge, or a counselor, but must be someone who would be able to help a girl should she begin hemmoraging at 3 in the morning.
At this point in our lives we aren’t at a place where we feel we could be suitable foster parents and meet all the emotional needs of a foster child. My husband recently went back to school, and I recently had a baby. However, we are very interested in both becoming foster and adoptive parents.
you know what – you hide behind the bodily integrity nonsense! REally! It’s the same old argument as the blob of cells that you guys use to tell women before in the 1970’s -it’s just a little more sophisticated but still incorrect and irrational.
Another lie to cover up the reality of what abortion is.
What is this bodily integrity that you keep harping on N?
Lauren,
I am going to presume that your example refers to a woman who wants to carry her pregnancy to term and give birth to a baby to raise. Objections to this?
Anyway, a woman who has made it to her thirty-first week only to then find out that her health is at risk if she continues. Okay.
So the doctor tells her she has two options: induce an early delivery, or have an abortion.
Given that at 35 weeks, or just a week under nine months, the baby is viable, it is a no-brainer that the woman would choose to give birth, working from the assumption that she’s been pregnant for the past eight+ months because she WANTED to be.
Ergo, your example has no applicability to the real world. It does not undermine my belief in bodily integrity at all. If you want to prove something, come up with a rational hypothetical that would actually apply to a real circumstance.
You keep saying this isn’t about bodily integrity but you’ve yet to provide a plausible reason. It is ABSOLUTELY about bodily integrity and you haven’t invalidated my point yet. Whether or not a woman can have an abortion “or give birth” to restore her bodily integrity is not the issue. The issue is that requiring a woman to do anything with her body that she DOES NOT WANT TO DO violates her bodily integrity. If you say to a woman that she must give birth because ther fetus is viable, and this is not something she wants to do, then you have taken away her right to do what she wishes with her body. You have removed her bodily integrity. Viability of the fetus has jack-all to do with it.
Correction:
I realized just now that part-way through I muddled 31 weeks in the example to 35. My mistake. However, the point still stands, since 31 weeks is just shy of a full eight months.
“I’m your worst nightmare. I’m a liberal commie pinko hippie gun-loving feminazi combat veteran.”
Was gonna say “oh please… been there, done that!” but I see Lauren beat me to it!
“Surgery is never trivial.”
Thats not what the abortionists say, and many women come back for repeat abortions, effective using it as birth control.
“Given that at 35 weeks, or just a week under nine months, the baby is viable, it is a no-brainer that the woman would choose to give birth, working from the assumption that she’s been pregnant for the past eight+ months because she WANTED to be.”
I agree. But let’s just say for the sake of argument that she didn’t want to give birth, she wanted an abortion. Are you really saying here she should be able to kill that child legally?
“It is not possible to be a feminist if you are opposed to abortion. The two are mutually exclusive. The right to bodily integrity is what feminism hinges on. If a woman does not have that right, then for all practical purposes she has no rights, because she has been reduced to chattel. ”
But, only if your definition of “bodily integrity” is based upon the male body. A female-centered definition of “bodily integrity” would be quite different, and indeed, would include the pregnant body.
Nimbrethil, the situation could just as easily be a woman who decides at 25 weeks she no longer wishes ti br pregnant. She would stikk have the same two options regarding the life of her child.
As for bodily integrity, We can not always choose hiw a certain procedure is done. If we are havinga tumor removed for instance, we might have to have it done in ways t hat were unforseen at hte beginning of the surgery. This is accepted, as the ultimate goal is not *how* the tumor is removed, but rahter *that* it is removed. The same is true for pregnancy.
At this point we are not talking about what she wants to do with her body (because we have already established that she will be removing the fetus),but rather what she does to someone else’s body. Regardless of if you think that the unborn have personhood rights, you must surely see that they are indeed another individual. at this point the woman is simply making a decision regarding the life of that individual.
Sorry about all the typo’s in that last bit, I was nursing the baby while typing with one hand.
I’m off to make dinner. I’ll be back later on tonight.
Jasper,
Sorry, once again, I’m not going to pretend, for the sake of argument or any other reason, that a woman would wait until she was nearly eight months pregnant before deciding to abort. It is ridiculous to think a woman in the described situation would choose to abort rather than give birth. I’m not going to contend with absurd hypotheticals to make some bullshit point, I’m going to deal with real women living in the real world and dealing wigh real world realities of life.
A woman who waited that long to abort is a woman who wanted an abortion long beforehand but couldn’t, for any number of reasons, get one.
And I have made clear my stance on abortion numerous times. How many times do I have to keep repeating myself before you stop asking me if I really mean it?
Sue,
What on earth are you talking about? Bodily integrity is the same whether dealing with men or women. I’m not basing my definition on a male model at all, but on the idea that every PERSON has the right to do whatever the hell they bloody well please with their body.
It is ridiculous to think a woman in the described situation would choose to abort rather than give birth. I’m not going to contend with absurd hypotheticals to make some bullshit point, I’m going to deal with real women living in the real world and dealing wigh real world realities of life.
NO it’s absolutely not. This is done all the time. For many reasons. Birth defects, rape, fear of delivery etc.
But your situations are all hypothetical so you can’t just blow them off. OH, i get it, it’s when you want to blow them off or you consider them trivial.
I’m not basing my definition on a male model at all, but on the idea that every PERSON has the right to do whatever the hell they bloody well please with their body.
Nope this is not true. And you know it. A child cannot refuse blood transfusions that would make themselves well again. Besides you are not dealing with your body when you chop up the fetus’ body. It has it’s own blood , dna etc. It is an independent organism.
Lauren,
It doesn’t matter. I don’t CARE what stage of pregnancy it is, if the fetus is viable or not. The viability of the fetus is IRRELEVANT, got it?
You are trying to forcibly create a morality question of right or wrong. In order to do that you are ignoring a crucial point: whether or not the woman wanted to be pregnant in the first place. If a woman is carrying a baby with the intent of giving birth and raising it, if she is then faced, at 25 or 31 weeks or 35 or at ANY point from viability onward, she is probably going to choose induced labor. If a woman hadn’t wanted to carry to term in the first place, however, that raises the question of why the hell she’s still pregnant at 25 weeks.
So there are other factors that must be considered. If the fetus is viable and the woman wanted the baby all along, yes, the odds are she is going to choose to induce eary labor. BUT, if the doctor is competent, he or she will address other relevant questions: what kind of risks is the woman facing if she tries to carry to term? Are there any risks to the developing baby? If she induces labor early, even if the fetus is viable, it will face potential health complications, including death. What are those risks? Just how high are those risks?
And then there will be this consideration: if she continues to carry to term, regardless of the risks to herself, the baby will be even more viable if allowed to develop in utero for a while longer. Should she consider waiting two, three, maybe four more weeks? What will the risk factors be then? What if she disregards her own health altogether and decides to continue the pregnancy to full-term? How does she weight the risks to the baby now versus later, and her health now versus later, in order to make the decision that will yield the safest odds for both mother and child? What if she decides that the risks are too great all around, and the best decision for her to make would be to terminate this pregnancy, mourn the loss of the baby she wanted, and try to become pregnant again on the hope that the next pregnancy will not have the same complications?
The point is that you cannot create a straightforward scenario that does not apply to the real world in order to make a point. There are too many factors involved for it to EVER be as cut and dried as you are trying to make it. And it is for precisely that reason that I insist that abortion must be–say it with me now: freely available, on demand, and without apology. No exceptions.
Nimbrethil,
can I ask you a question? do you like born babies?
You guys have a merry time reassuring yourselves that I ran away in defeat because I “lost” the argument. None of you have any inkling of the realities of either pregnancy or abortion so delude yourselves about my departure however you please.
Well isn’t this just the juvenile statement we are use to seeing from proabort liberals.
No Nimbrethil, none of us have EVER been pregnant on this board! Yeah, right!
As for your departure, you said it, not us!
And BTW, why are you frying fish? I thought you were for animal rights. TTFN!
Bodily autonomy is important to the feminist movement (though not the only basis of feminism). However, I don’t consider abortion to be an issue of bodily autonomy (one reason being–it involves murdering another person).
I consider it an issue of equal rights. Women have the right (like men) to use birth control (that includes hormonal contraceptives) to help prevent pregnancy and regulate bodily function. She has perfect control over her own uterus. She can also have sex all she wants. She has perfect control over her own vagina. Her body is her own. We disagree on this, but when a child is created, it ceases to be just her own body in the mix, and since these circumstances are decidedly unique I think it warrants special consideration.
But when we start telling women, implicitly or explicitly, that they must be exactly like men (e.g. without reproductive function) to succeed in being equal it is broaching dangerous territory. It is denying part of what makes us women. Woman is a definition of the whole, and its true that the reproductive system is only one part if it, but denying a part of the whole woman is to essentially deny the woman herself. Denying life to a separate being that the woman created is destroying the emotional and physical bond of pregnancy that is natural to womanhood. And in no way should a woman be denied any of her dreams or wishes because she is pregnant or mothering, which is something our society simply has to address. Sadly many of these problems are being ignored. I’m afraid too many institutions are getting away with slighting pregnant and mothering women because they are allowed to–after all, the woman should have just gotten an abortion if she had a problem, right?
Another thing to think about- sex selected abortions have done horrible things to women, especially in countries like China where it (among many other things) has created big sociological problems. China is a good example of what we don’t want to become… when women are actually given less choices, instead of more, because abortion is readily available.
I hope you can at least understand a pro-life feminist point of view in this way, even if you don’t agree. I want to share feminism with you in so many other causes-so I feel that you denying a segment of the feminist population is slighting part of our movement. After all, reproductive rights (that don’t involve murder), bodily autonomy, equal pay, freedom from violence, increased workplace rights, human rights, legal rights, etc. are issues we have in common and can work on together.
Nim,
Have you ever had an abortion?
Ginmar,
Have you ever had an abortion?
Carla, what business of that is yours? Oh, wait, that’s all you want to know. “How’s your vagina?” Here’s the rest, which I guess you don’t care about. Like to know about my life? Well, here’s the whole picture: I was born three months premature to a mother who endured 12 pregnancies and had five living children before one died. No anti-choice people showed up to protect her from the Church and my dad’s divine right. I spent six months in the hospital. No anti-choice people were there to pay the bills, which my parents paid for ten years before the doctors finally forgave them. My parents were urged to put me in an institution for which they would have to pay. I was supposed to be deaf, blind, retarded, and partially paralyzed. My mom read to me, talk me how to read, made me do chores and treated me like a normal kid. No anti choice person showed up to help her. She went to work and I went to ballet class before joining the Army. And you know what else? I had lots of sex, and it was great. I used birth control and lots of guys objected and if they did, they were shown the door. It was fun, it was natural, and it was great.
Lauren, if you don’t believe in hormonal birth control, frankly you’re not worth dealing with. There are no ‘problems on both sides of the issue.’ Girls die because their parents are freaky anti choice control freaks who want to punish their daughters or who have impregnated them on their own.
If you truly wish to prevent abortion, you’d be handing out birth control—no matter what the type—on street corners and pressing for real education on the subject. If you hate abortion, then birth control is your ally and your God. So is education and so is female empowerment and male responsiblity. Men are fertile every day of the month; women produce one egg per month, which has a limited time of viability. Male usage of BC in developed countries is twenty percent. There is also the fact that men often compromise womens’ birth control to gain control and connection over women. Oh, wait, that would require you actually do research.
Finally, you ignored the fact that I asked what you did for the abandoned children in this country. Here’s what I’ve done: I am 100% disabled on a VA pension, thanks to my injuries in Iraq, and I have been fostering (unofficially) two girls and their mother. I have also been adopted by a great number of the kids in the neighborhood. I tell them to say “May I?” instead of “Can I?” and I tell them to be quiet till someone else is finished speaking. I teach them to cook and clean house. I make them listen to opera and translate the Italian. I show them Shakespeare. I offer synonyms and sarcasm. I talk to them about history and where they came from. I tell them about Iraq and Islam. I tell them about my mother, and how she spent months in a tuberculosis sanitarium, because nobody gives a **** about poor white trash women. And I tell them they have choices, and that to be a woman and to be a man in this culture is to be human. What do you do with the children around you?
I’m a feminazi bitch, after all, who hates babies and kids, who hates America, who is so far left I probably want communism to take over. Despite the fact that I did seventeen years in the military, fought for my country, was injured badly in its service, and now demand, “Why am I no more than my uterus to some people?” I refuse to be defined by my reproductive choices. I am a former ballet dancer, a daughter of immigrants, a former invalid, a soldier, an interpreter, an interrogator, and a combat veteran. That’s just to start. If you trust me with an M-16 and the ammunition which goes along with it, why do you not trust me with my body?
I ask you again, two things:
1. What do you do for the children already born?
2. If you trust me to protect this country—and in seventeen years, I have been found competant to do this—-why do you seek to define me by my vagina and the traffic therein?
Nim and Gin,
Welcome to the blog!
Indeed, guest appearances are always appreciated.
Before huffing off, I would invite you to stick around for a bit and get to know this motley crew of ours. Don’t know how often you visit, but after awhile you’ll find us to be quite conversational.
Take MK, for instance. She’s a trip. She’s already had two online parties that I know of in which everyone let their hair down and just enjoyed the reverie. The place gets trashed.
And Hal. The man’s got some baggage (don’t you Hal?), but he mangaes to express his pro-choice views with much restraint.
We’ve got regulars here who are prochoicers and we’ve considered them to be online friends. There are times when we want to throw them in the can (in fact, it’s already been done. Just ask Doug) but overall we talk about abortion and everything under the sun. Even opera, for crying out loud.
It gets heated, we fight, we kiss and make up. Such is our kibbutz.
If you gotta go, fine, no hard feelings. Know that the line is open.
Oh, I had to delete a couple of posts because of a few choice words that were in there. Otherwise, they would have stayed up.
Til next time…
Why am I trusted to defend and protect my country but not with my uterus? Why are women regarded as entities who require oversight? Why are the people who are so concerned with what they call babies so uninterested in them once the umbilical cord is cut?
These are the questions that many here avoid.
Why am I trusted to defend and protect my country but not with my uterus?
You want to defend the country with your uterus? Weird, but okay. :)
To be honest, I really don’t care about what you do with your uterus. Have all the freakin’ sex you want to, but don’t take the results of that sex out on an unborn human being if that happens to occur.
Why are women regarded as entities who require oversight?
Who said they require oversight? Not wanting babies sucked down drains means women require oversight? Hmm, good to know.
Why are the people who are so concerned with what they call babies so uninterested in them once the umbilical cord is cut?
They’re not, that’s just what you tell yourself so you can hate pro-lifers easier. I’m a pro-lifer who is concerned with EVERYONE, born and unborn.
Hello again Ginmar,
Um. Why so hostile? I didn’t ask about your lady parts specifically but did ask if you have ever had an abortion. You didn’t answer that question but gave me quite a bit of information to chew on.
Welcome.
Ginmar,
more generalizations. Many of us pro-lifers want what is best for both woman and child.
BTW Gin,
Did you ever go professional with the ballet dancing? Just curious, cause my brother just got done with his stint at the Joffrey Ballet and is now moving onto Milwaukee Ballet, and my other brother just got home from a San Francisco Ballet Summer Intensive. So I guess you could say ballet is in the genes. :)
OMG Liz, did you know my brother is a ballet dancer too??
Gimmar, I’m sorry that you don’t feel that pro-lifers care about women. It certainly isn’t true. A good many of the pro-life women posting here do charitable work to help women and mothers AND the already born children in this world. I know several here who do.
What do I do for children already born and their mothers? I volunteer at a Crisis Pregnancy center where we pay for medical expenses for women’s doctor appt’s (if needed- or refer them to medicaid and doctors who accept medicaid), drive them to and fro to their doctors appts (if needed), donate food, clothing, personal items, etc to pregnant women and mothers to small children. We also provide counseling, and referrals for parenting classes, etc. Another woman who posts here also works at a CPC where they provide the same services.
There are twice as many CPC’s as there are abortion clinics in the United States, donating freely to women and children who need it. I don’t know of a single pro-choice organization which does this. Do you?
“Why am I trusted to defend and protect my country but not with my uterus?”
You are trusted. Does this also mean we have to believe abortion mills should be legal, in order to trust you?
“Why are women regarded as entities who require oversight?”
Who would be overseeing you? Just because we want the abortion mills shutdown doesn’t mean we want to overee you.
“Why are the people who are so concerned with what they call babies so uninterested in them once the umbilical cord is cut?”
That’s not true.
It’s not legal to kill born babies in America today (Obama might otherwise, but the thats a different story), but it is legal to kill unborn children. We think this a grave injustice.
“If you hate abortion, then birth control is your ally and your God. So is education and so is female empowerment and male responsiblity.”
How about female responsibility? I noticed you replaced it with “empowerment”. This unconscienable power has already left America with 49,000,000 dead unborn children, even with all the availabilty of birth control. Maybe it’s time to take a different approach.
Very good posts, Jasper!
I was born three months premature to a mother who endured 12 pregnancies and had five living children before one died. No anti-choice people showed up to protect her from the Church and my dad’s divine right. I spent six months in the hospital. No anti-choice people were there to pay the bills, which my parents paid for ten years before the doctors finally forgave them. My parents were urged to put me in an institution for which they would have to pay. I was supposed to be deaf, blind, retarded, and partially paralyzed. My mom read to me, talk me how to read, made me do chores and treated me like a normal kid. No anti choice person showed up to help her. She went to work and I went to ballet class before joining the Army.
First of all you are living proof of a “prolife” mentality. After all, your parents could have institutionalized you but they loved you and took care of you. Ginmar, no one said life was going to be easy. WHat’s with the anti-choice people. Are you implying your family had no help or just that no person proclaiming “I’m prolife and I’m here to help you!” showed up. This part of your statement is immature and inflammatory.
Your mother and father needed to work out their situation, hard as it was. I wonder if it is as you have portrayed it or if it is your take on it.
And you know what else? I had lots of sex, and it was great. I used birth control and lots of guys objected and if they did, they were shown the door. It was fun, it was natural, and it was great.
Too bad you have grown up with so little respect for your body that you simply threw yourself like a piece of meat to every man who came along. I’m sure they did find it great, Ginmar.
Lauren, if you don’t believe in hormonal birth control, frankly you’re not worth dealing with. There are no ‘problems on both sides of the issue.’ Girls die because their parents are freaky anti choice control freaks who want to punish their daughters or who have impregnated them on their own.
If you truly wish to prevent abortion, you’d be handing out birth control—no matter what the type—on street corners and pressing for real education on the subject. If you hate abortion, then birth control is your ally and your God. So is education and so is female empowerment and male responsiblity. Men are fertile every day of the month; women produce one egg per month, which has a limited time of viability. Male usage of BC in developed countries is twenty percent. There is also the fact that men often compromise womens’ birth control to gain control and connection over women. Oh, wait, that would require you actually do research.
First of all we now know the pill is not the answer to preventing pregnancies. We have a major player in BC now arguing for further stronger measures to prevent unplanned pregnancies:
“It turned out to be Dr James Trussell, Professor of Economics and Public Affairs and Director of the Office of Population Research at Princeton University. Dr Trussell is one of the Mr Bigs of birth control research so the Telegraph was listening carefully when he spoke recently at a conference of one of the UK?s main birth control groups, the British Pregnancy Advisory Service.
“And yes, he certainly was disenchanted with the Pill. ?One in 12 women taking the Pill get pregnant each year because they miss so many tablets,? he lamented. ?The Pill is an outdated method because it does not work well enough. It is very difficult for ordinary women to take a pill every single day.?
Frankly, this is something well known in Britain where pregnancy rates among schoolgirls continue to rise, and thousands of women have three or four abortions. But what does Dr Trussell suggest should be done with these ?ordinary women? who, although he is too polite to say it in so many words, are too stupid to take a pill every day?
Shoot them up with long-lasting hormonal contraception amounting to sterilization — not to put too fine a point on it. ?The beauty of the implant or the IUD is that you can forget about them,” enthused the professor. “If you want to seriously reduce unintended pregnancies in the UK you can only do it with implants and IUDs.?
So now we get to the heart of the matter. The problem is not that the Pill doesn?t work — it does, reducing the probability that any given act of intercourse will result in pregnancy. The problem is that women do not take it regularly enough. But that raises the all-important question: What, exactly, are we trying to accomplish with the Pill?
This is my theory: the Pill has been an instrument in the creation of what author Lee Harris called, in another context, a fantasy ideology.
A fantasy ideology is a variety of utopianism that is not about making a better world, but making its adherents feel good about themselves. The believer is assured that he is one of the chosen, one of the few enlightened ones who truly understands the universe. In the name of supporting the fantasy, the believer is entitled to impose large costs on other people. Indeed, he seldom notices these costs, because he is not checking in with reality on a regular basis. Data fly right over his head.
Adherents of the ideology get to feel good about themselves as progressive, modern, enlightened. They are ever so beyond the tired old ethics that connects sex with responsible parenthood through marriage. Most importantly, believers in the faith that contraception prevents all consequences of sex never have to apologize for any sexual misdeeds. There are no sexual misdeeds, with the possible exception of rape.
It is no wonder that poor Dr Trussell is disappointed. The Pill could not possibly meet the standard of creating a lifetime of harmless and guilt-free sex.
Yet on the road to the society of perfectly controlled reproductive freedom, millions of people?s lives have been ruined. Women got themselves involved in relationships that had no chance of sustaining a pregnancy. Then, they were shocked and appalled when they got pregnant. In their desperation, they turned to abortion. Or they kept babies they were ill-prepared to raise, because they could not bring themselves to have an abortion and no-one encouraged them to consider adoption.
Or, men got themselves involved with women who claimed they wanted no deeper involvement. But then, when they became pregnant, they wanted the child after all. In some cases the woman wanted the child all along, and deceived the man into believing that he was participating in a sterile sexual encounter. Since sterile sex is the new social norm, thanks to the Pill, it is not difficult to convince a man you don?t mean to have a baby.
Men and women alike thought the addition of a condom protected them from sexually transmitted diseases. They didn?t notice when the sexual spin doctors quietly changed the term ?safe sex? to ?safer sex?. Some were na?ve enough to think that the Pill looked after all safety issues, even though it offers no protection against STDs whatsoever.
The true believer in the fantasy ideology of contraception does not look too closely at problems like these. Any problem that cannot be solved by more contraception is not worth considering.
This is why the indefatigable Dr Trussell advocates more aggressive and intrusive methods of contraception. He and his allies must not, at any cost, question their premise that contraception eliminates all negative consequences of sex. They are reduced to sewing more patches over the tattered quilt of an outmoded fantasy ideology. It is not just the Pill that has outlived its shelf life, but the contraceptive ideology itself.
This is from an article by Jennifer Roback Morse, Ph.D. the Founder and President of The Ruth Institute, and the author of Smart Sex: Finding Life-long Love in a Hook-up World.
What do you do with the children around you?
Well, I would tell them about the beauty of love and marriage and family. Of course you cannot do this because you have lived the reality of BC and free sex and it’s not what you thought it would be. It has made you cynical, hard and empty. You got sex but no love. You’ve been sold a lie Ginmar. In my opinion you need a lot of counselling to work through the anger you have shown in your posts.
“I am 100% disabled on a VA pension, thanks to my injuries in Iraq.”
First of all, can I just thank you, Gin? I’d hug you if I could because of the inamiginable sacrifice you’ve made.
In your opinion, and not the media’s, how is our presence over there viewed by the Iraqis?
I’ve read articles by other soldiers that there seems to be a sense of gratitude among your average Iraqi. I don’t get that sense from Mainstream Media.
Ginmar, girls also die when they don’t tell their parents that they’re having abortions and they hemmorage to death.
I can’t wait to watch the olympic marathon. I heard a few people already dropped out because of the pollution in Beijing. It’s so amazing to watch them run, it takes so much strength and dedication, years of hard work.
Kind of like parenting.
Posted by: Jess at August 2, 2008 8:45 AM
……………………………………………….
My son has the Portland marathon coming up. He’s still healing from some torn ankle ligaments. Ouch! I worry about him of course,
He’s hoping to run the Athens Marathon next year as he will be attending school in Europe. I can’t say that I’m not proud of him.
There are twice as many CPC’s as there are abortion clinics in the United States, donating freely to women and children who need it. I don’t know of a single pro-choice organization which does this. Do you?
Posted by: Bethany at August 2, 2008 11:56 PM
………………………………………..
Yes. It’s called welfare. The same place CPCs send women to for food stamps, medicaid etc.
Do your CPCs provide free child care to enable women to get on their feet? How about education? Free rides to work and school?Do they provide medical assistance for babies like check ups and immunizations or is that covered under directions to the medicaid office?
Ginmar,
more generalizations. Many of us pro-lifers want what is best for both woman and child.
Posted by: prettyinpink at August 2, 2008 10:47 PM
…………………………………..
Unless what is best for a woman is to not continue a pregnancy?
Sally,
You must have missed the AND CHILD part of pip’s statement. How is abortion what is best for a child?
Yes. It’s called welfare. The same place CPCs send women to for food stamps, medicaid etc.
Do your CPCs provide free child care to enable women to get on their feet? How about education? Free rides to work and school?Do they provide medical assistance for babies like check ups and immunizations or is that covered under directions to the medicaid office?
Posted by: Sally at August 3, 2008 6:45 PM
Sally you’ve just made the case for why it’s better to wait until married to have sex and therefore babies!
It is also good for women to assume some of the responsibility for these things and also important for the government to try to hold these deadbeat dads up to their responsibilities too, especially the financial ones.
Sally,
You must have missed the AND CHILD part of pip’s statement. How is abortion what is best for a child?
Posted by: Elizabeth (Gabriella’s Momma) at August 3, 2008 7:18 PM
………………………………………………..
Elizabeth, you consider an embryo a child and I do not. Possibilities and actualities are quite different to my experience of life.
Actually, the embryo or fetusor blastocyst or zygote is a child. The fact that you feel the need to use these innocuous medical terms rather than calling them babies or children tells us that you do in fact know they are children. It is the avoidance of the term children and babies that is the giveaway.
Sally you’ve just made the case for why it’s better to wait until married to have sex and therefore babies!
It is also good for women to assume some of the responsibility for these things and also important for the government to try to hold these deadbeat dads up to their responsibilities too, especially the financial ones.
Posted by: Patricia at August 3, 2008 7:26 PM
…………………………………………………
Did waiting for marriage to have children and a man to support all of you, work for you Patricia?
It’s good for women to assume some of the responsibility? Like what? Gestating? Giving birth? Taking care of the children? Financially supporting them? What do you think you can introduce that women aren’t already doing?
I’d love to see groups of protesters hovering around the work places and homes of dead beat dads. A bunch of Will Duffys taking their dogs to dead beat’s front doors and attempting to intimidate men into coughing up child support.
Won’t happen. It’s more satisfying and so much easier to blame women for men’s shame.
I’d love to see groups of protesters hovering around the work places and homes of dead beat dads. A bunch of Will Duffys taking their dogs to dead beat’s front doors and attempting to intimidate men into coughing up child support.
That’s an idea that I can definitely get behind. Good thinkin’ Sally!
Oh, and as per your statement at 7:51 to me, what do you consider an embryo then? Potential child? You and me were both once embryo’s you know Sally, so if it’s not a LIFE, then what is it?
Sally, in only one way would terminating the pregnancy via surgical or medical abortion be “good for the mother and child”- when the children are dead or fatally malformed and/or it becomes a health risk for the woman.
In other situations want to help both mother and child make through it with a good quality of life and with plenty of choices- as long as it doesn’t require murder.
Actually, the embryo or fetusor blastocyst or zygote is a child. The fact that you feel the need to use these innocuous medical terms rather than calling them babies or children tells us that you do in fact know they are children. It is the avoidance of the term children and babies that is the giveaway.
Posted by: Patricia at August 3, 2008 8:02 PM
………………………
Patricia, I had a child when I gave birth. That is a my concept of a child. Your need to apply non specific terminology to the gestational experience is a dead giveaway to your need to justify your dehumnanization of the gestational experience to suit your agenda.
Do you really avoid all exacting language in your every day life?
I’d love to see groups of protesters hovering around the work places and homes of dead beat dads. A bunch of Will Duffys taking their dogs to dead beat’s front doors and attempting to intimidate men into coughing up child support.
That’s an idea that I can definitely get behind. Good thinkin’ Sally!
Oh, and as per your statement at 7:51 to me, what do you consider an embryo then? Potential child? You and me were both once embryo’s you know Sally, so if it’s not a LIFE, then what is it?
Posted by: Elizabeth (Gabriella’s Momma) at August 3, 2008 9:12 PM
………………………………..
Wanna start a feminista movement Elizabeth? You find the funding. Start at your church and let me know how it goes.
What is your definition of a life? A culmination of experience or being biologically posessed of the ability of growth and productivity?
Some embryos are capable of growth and many are not. Those that are not, will never know life. Just as those aborted.
Is an embryo a life? Is a plant a life? Of course. Both are equally incapable of actually experiencing life in their forms of life.
Do others have the right to impose the existance of either upon my property? Nope. Not even if I plant either of them completely on purpose.
Gasp! I overly plant my vegetables and then thin out the weak and less likely to be productive plants. My resources are limited. I also don’t believe in overdrawing my checking account. I don’t spend what I can’t pay for.
You are a smart young woman. You get my meaning.
“Your need to apply non specific terminology to the gestational experience is a dead giveaway to your need to justify your dehumnanization of the gestational experience to suit your agenda.
Do you really avoid all exacting language in your every day life?”
Posted by: Sally at August 3, 2008 11:13 PM
“Wanna start a feminista movement Elizabeth? You find the funding. Start at your church and let me know how it goes.”
“What is your definition of a life? A culmination of experience or being biologically posessed of the ability of growth and productivity?
Some embryos are capable of growth and many are not. Those that are not, will never know life. Just as those aborted.
Is an embryo a life? Is a plant a life? Of course. Both are equally incapable of actually experiencing life in their forms of life.
Do others have the right to impose the existance of either upon my property? Nope. Not even if I plant either of them completely on purpose.
Gasp! I overly plant my vegetables and then thin out the weak and less likely to be productive plants. My resources are limited. I also don’t believe in overdrawing my checking account. I don’t spend what I can’t pay for.”
“You are a smart young woman. You get my meaning.”
Posted by: Sally at August 3, 2008 11:58 PM
With that logic, trying to justify abortion by comparing an embryo to a carrot plant is not dehumanizing?
To clarify my post above @6:45, the first comment of Sally’s was directed to Patricia, and the second was directed to Elizabeth.
Your need to apply non specific terminology to the gestational experience is a dead giveaway to your need to justify your dehumnanization of the gestational experience to suit your agenda.
Say what? Huh? your logic is so twisted it’s actually quite humourous!!! lol And like you DON’T have an agenda!!
In FACT, I am using language that ACCURATELY decribes what is living and growing within a woman’s uterus – and what a woman’s experience IS. Your language is deceptive and dehumanizes the pregnancy, dumbing down the experience to the woman carrying a bunch of cells, maybe human, maybe not depending upon a persons perspective.
Nice try Sally. Get back into REALITY!!
Nope. Not even if I plant either of them completely on purpose.
Gasp! I overly plant my vegetables and then thin out the weak and less likely to be productive plants. My resources are limited. I also don’t believe in overdrawing my checking account. I don’t spend what I can’t pay for.
This has to be THE sickest analogy yet! If your resources are limited, why are you planting in the first place? EVER heard of fiscal restraint!???
Love the eugenics in this analogy too! Lets just get rid of the weak and sickly, because well, they’re not persons, right? Thanks for enlightening us on how you really think, Sally!
We should not abandon our Chinese friends in their time of need (note: “friends” does not refer to the government–just the people). Boycotting the Olympic ceremony will do no good and it will only harm.
Besides, the Dalai Lama is ok with it. :)
Tell you what – 62.3% is close enough for me to declare another great Fibonacci (61.8%) victory!
On grading McCain and Obama, I think there’s going to be many people who will give one an “A” and the other an “F” just by knee-jerk reaction or general political party affiliation principles.
Therefore, I suggest that the middle ratings are where the truth lies – in the B’s, C’s and D’s. Many of the more thoughtful people will give a B, C, or D even though they wholeheartedly support that candidate.
Can we separate our favoritism toward one candidate or the other enough to dispassionately grade them on their campaigns?
I’d say it’s hard to give an “A” or “F” in the first place – seems there’s always quite a bit that could be worse, and that could have been done better.
We’ve got regulars here who are prochoicers and we’ve considered them to be online friends. There are times when we want to throw them in the can (in fact, it’s already been done. Just ask Doug) but overall we talk about abortion and everything under the sun.
Geez, Carder, you are so darn responsible.
Under that level-headed and somewhat hardened exterior, you’re such a sweety.
I give McCain a D-double-minus (it’s too early to issue an F) and Obama a C-minus.