Maddow laments that five GOP US Senate candidates are pro-life without exceptions
UPDATE 2:10p: Planned Parenthood CEO Cecile Richards has also received the “not just crazy – truly frightening” news. Click to enlarge…
11:25a: Wow, I didn’t realize this until watching radical left MSNBC host Rachel Maddow’s September 16 rant incredulously bemoaning the “great, unacknowledged, big honking policy issue of this year’s elections nationwide.”
That is, at least 5 Republican, Tea Party-backed US Senate pro-life candidates oppose aborting innocent babies whose fathers are sexual criminals…
This is as it should be, which I’m thrilled to know.
So with Christine O’Donnell of DE newly added to the list, the roster includes Sharron Angle of NV, Ken Buck of CO, Joe Miller of AK, and Rand Paul of KY.
This must have pro-aborts quaking. They have managed for decades to get Americans to go along with 100% of abortions by appealing to their compassion for mothers impregnated by rapists and family members, whose abortions account for no more than 1.5% of all, according to Guttmacher.
Many pro-life politicians, including President Bush, have caved on this point, which is contradictory. Either all preborns are human beings, or they’re not. If they are, they must all be protected.
In fact, abortion protects rapists, particularly friends and family. A prime example would be the imaginary victim Maddow described, a “14-yr-old girl who is raped by your uncle, or by your father.” Even Joycelyn Elders, President Clinton’s pro-abort attorney general, stated pregnancy is evidence of sexual abuse. Abortion destroys the evidence. Who doesn’t think the 1st thing a victimizing uncle or father would do is take the pregnant 14-yr-old for an abortion? Click to enlarge…
Almost every time I write on the topic of rape and pregnancy I refer to this excellent article pointing to the only study ever done on this topic. It found first that 75-85% of mothers impregnated by rape do not abort. Abortion should not be presumed in these cases.
It concluded that mothers who abort their babies following rape are psychologically worse off than those who did not. One reason is abortion is also a violent act; many rape victims reported they felt like it was “medical rape.”
Mothers who did not abort felt they were helping good come from evil and in a sense conquering their rape. Themselves having been victimized, they did not want to victimize their baby.
This is yet another great political development in a year full of great political developments in our fight to protect innocent preborn life.
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.
I can hardly stand to stand to listen to her speak . I just love the way she calls the baby the rapists child , and neglects the fact that it is also the woman’s child .
Come on Rachel “Madcow” (I love that, although I didn’t coin it) Lets just follow that line of thought a little. If its suddenly okay to abort babies because their fathers are criminals then what do we do with the toddlers and pre-schoolers running around whose fathers commit crimes? Can we just kill them too? After all, think of the moms. Who wants to say “My baby daddy is a rapist?” I wouldn’t. Better to have that choice to kill your kid in any situation, right?
Btw, Rachel “Madcow”, a father’s entrance into the criminal justice system does not negate the humanity of his child. DUH.
What would you say to a woman who didn’t want to give birth to a rape pregnancy? I’m serious. Like, “Sorry, suck it up for nine months?”
nagem
What about a rape victim who doesn’t want to be infected with AIDS, or beaten or mutilated? I hear little if any concern expressed for these victims. Somehow abortion makes everything right when a woman is so horribly victimized. If only. If a woman truly had a choice she wouldn’t be a rape victim. Maybe that’s the REAL choice that should be focused on.
I would like to know 1/2gov Palin’s stance on trade w/communist China.China has forced abortions,so every dollar spent on “made in China” goods goes toward paying for abortions
I am so sick of pro-aborts using rape as loophole for this horrific procedure. I was raped; it was horrible. It took me seven years to achieve any sense of normalcy. I am pro-life, completely against abortion, and to use rape and incest to further the cause of killing children is abhorrent. Yes, rape and incest—again, hard cases. This is not what the pro-abortion movement is about. The pro-abortion movement is about healthy women, with healthy babies, making a “choice” about “their” bodies at any point in their pregnancy, for any reason.
Should I have gotten pregnancy from my rape, maybe I would have had a hard decision to make; or maybe I wouldn’t have. Maybe I would have just had the baby. I don’t know. But most women “seek” abortions for superficial, extremely fixable reasons.
Does she even realize how dumb she sounds? Like when she said I dont know what you are supposed to have faith in...referring to what Sharon Angle said. I mean come on, whether you agree or not with the statement you ought to be smart enough to know what she meant. The arrogance with which she delivers her commentary is disgusting and I can only watch a minute or two before I start to gag.
Ask pro-life attorney and speaker, Rebecca Kiessling how she feels about being called
an “exception”.
Also, if rape and incest are so prevalent in our society, why aren’t pro-aborts doing what they can to make women safe??? Why is abortion their only concern? Maybe we should make sure women aren’t raped to begin with. Jeez.
Don’t forget Carly Fiorina from California!!
Feminists speak out against rape and AIDS all the time. I’m a feminist, and I certainly do.
But really, I want to know. You are speaking to a pregnant rape survivor who wants an abortion. What would you say to this woman? I’m not interested in Rebecca Kiesling right now. I want to know, verbatim, what you would say to this woman.
Actually, if you follow their “logic”, you would have to “legalize” rape, too, since “you can’t stop it” and “it’s going to happen anyway, legal or illegal” and “men are injured or killed every year in illegal back alley rape attempts” and “it’s a ‘choice’ and you can’t impose your anti-rape beliefs on others”.
Obviously, they are not going to follow their “logic” because it leads to frightful consequences.
Exactly, Joe. Also, it’s my choice to abuse my child and smack her around if I want. Also, shoplifting—pfft, that should be legal too. It’s my right to have nice things.
Megan, the likelihood of getting pregnant from a rape is extremely low. Again, why are you pushing this issue? 99% of abortions are abortions of convenience, not the result of a trauma or criminal action.
Nagem,
What do you say to a rape victim infected with AIDS? What about her attacker? Do you support the death penalty for him? If not, how do you explain it to the victim facing a very uncertain future?
Nagem, I am not a trained counselor at all, but if she were my friend, my first action would be to hold her and let her cry over this horrendous crime that has been committed against her. (Cry, scream, pound the wall, whatever she needs.)
Then when it is discovered that she is pregnant, I would again, listen to her anger, fears and all the other emotions that may come. Then I would comfort her by telling her she’s not alone, she has me and I am more than willing to help her in any way I can. I would remind her that what is growing inside her is not a blob of cells, but a tiny baby, in fact it is HER tiny baby. Yes, the child has DNA from her attacker, but he/she also has HER DNA.
I would try to help her understand that just because the father is evil, does not make the child evil, and does not deserve to die. I would hope to show her the innocent humanity of HER child.
From that point, I would try to ease her fears about having a baby, economic (by helping her with housing, job training, child care, etc.) educational (by showing her that it is possible to complete your education while parenting) and other fears.
If those are too scary for her, I would lay out how adoption works, both open and closed and walk through those those steps with her, through the pregnancy.
But overall, I would remind her that the baby is in fact, HER baby and has done nothing wrong to deserve death. And I would remind her that the abortion may compound her grief over the rape.
This, my pro-choice friend, is the way pro-lifers think.
Nagem, I am a child welfare social worker. I haven’t come across a case like this (and I hope I don’t. Speaking from a professional standpoint, I would tell her that if she doesn’t want to keep the baby, she could consider adoption, and about the services available to her if she wanted to keep the baby (I read that about 50 percent of rape victims who become pregnant do). If she was still was adamant about having the abortion, I would refer her to my supervisor, as we do have a conscience clause at my workplace. Abortion is legal, but I cannot in good conscience assist in procuring an abortion (and no, I’m not Catholic),
Megan, feminists have been making a big loud stink about sexual harrassment, rape, etc. Yes, we can hear all that. But their solution: abortion. Feminists do everything they can to render men obsolete, to disrespect them, to cast apsersions on every aspect of natural masculinity. Now, how is all that helpful? If you cannot engage men, how can you expect them to help counteract violent crime? You can’t take fathers out of the equation and then expect rape to disappear because you demonize rapists. Rape is a terrible experience. But abortion is not a therapy for it. And we need to work with men to counteract the problem, not treat them as second class citizens.
1% of abortions are because of rape or incest.
1%
I am sure pedophiles love PP.
Nagem
What would you say to a woman who didn’t want to give birth to a rape pregnancy? I’m serious. Like, “Sorry, suck it up for nine months?”
Yes. That is exactly what I would say.
::eye roll::
First off it is not called a rape pregnancy.
Anyone who has been raped has suffered a trauma and needs immediate care and counseling and possibly legal help. Abortion is a secondary trauma to someone who has been raped. Abortion does not cure rape. It does not heal what has happened or make the rape go away. Many women who have been raped and had an abortion describe the abortion as feeling like another rape. Another violation.
I would BE THERE for her through everything and stand by her and offer her what she needed to get through the counseling of being raped as HER baby grows. Adoption is a choice. Women who have been raped and kept their babies speak of what a miracle it is that can come out of something so horrifying.
Oh and Nagem/Megan?
You need to stick to one moniker or you will be banned.
Leslie wrote:
Ask pro-life attorney and speaker, Rebecca Kiessling how she feels about being called an “exception”.
:) You took the words right out of my mouth! All I can add is a link…
Megan wrote:
I’m not interested in Rebecca Kiesling right now.
(*wry look*) Well, that’s convenient. Don’t you think that a woman conceived in rape, and who would have been killed if her mother’s abortion had “gone through”, has anything relevant to say? I think you’re just dismissing her because you haven’t a clue how to answer her. She has more than enough to say about your direct question; go look (link above).
Great response Peg!
God bless you!
Through which doors do you think a sex offender has walked more often? Planned Parenthood? Or a pregnancy care center?
To which charity do you think a sex offender has given more often? Planned Parenthood or a pregnancy care center?
Megan, I know a woman who was date raped and got pregnant. She had her daughter. you’re a FEMINIST huh? Then what about the fact that the “rape pregnancy” produced a DAUGHTER. Ya know, a FEMALE? How should this little girl be punished for the crimes of her father? What punishment suits her crime of BEING ALIVE. How dare she, huh Megan?
My husband and I talked about what we would do if I were ever raped and got pregnant. I know its easy to talk about when I haven’t actually lived through it. I have never been raped. I can’t imagine anything more horrible. It makes me want to cry just to think about it. Horrible. I certainly have so much sympathy for any woman who has to live through something so evil and horrifying. But how does abortion take away the trauma of the rape exactly? It doesn’t. And the unborn baby is a victim too.
I want to know what you would say to all the children conceived from rape verbatim. “sorry, you should have died. Suck it up” Is that what you’d say Megan?
Let me refine my question.
Pretend abortion is completely illegal. Say this is Sharron Angle’s world, or Christine O’Donnell. A rape victim must carry the pregnancy to term. What do you say to her if she isn’t comforted by the fact that “half” of the child is hers? If the thought of having a baby isn’t enough to sustain her through the counseling, physical changes, morning sickness, etc? Do you continue to tell her how much it will be worth it in the end, how “many” women have had abortions after rape and regret it? Tell her she’s clearly suffering psychologically and isn’t in the right mind to make this decision?
I care about this issue because rape happens. One of my best friends in college was date raped. A freshman I knew came to live with me when I was a senior because she had been raped–violently–by a mutual acquaintance. I listened to their stories. I would have been there if they had gotten pregnant and wanted to keep the baby–heck yes, as any friend would have. But they didn’t. They went to the hospital to take Plan B and get rape kits done, immediately. I cannot imagine what it would have been like to discuss their “options” with them under a system where abortion is completely outlawed. It’s painful to think of saying to my friend, “You survived rape, and now you get to be a mother. But you’ll end up loving your baby because it’s yours, just give it time.” How sympathetic.
We all could have been aborted. Rebecca Kiesling’s story doesn’t move me. I feel bad for her all her mother went through.
“I want to know what you would say to all the children conceived from rape verbatim. “sorry, you should have died. Suck it up” Is that what you’d say Megan?”
……………….
Presumably these women had a say in the births of these children, and this DECISION is something to be honored. Did I EVER say that all pregnant rape survivors SHOUlD abort? Rape is a terrible thing, but it would be worse if women never got a say about the outcome.
Of course it doesn’t move you, Megan. Why would it? I’ve never met a vehement pro-abort with a conscience.
You go on about your personal story, but you don’t want to hear Rebecca Kiesling’s personal story? How Me-me-me-me of you. Why don’t you look Rebecca right in the eye and tell her how much better it would be if she were dead, because adding murder to rape is so very therapeutic.
The pro-life movement, by way of its own unthinking and unreasoning ferocity, has aborted itself.
You know, there are REASONABLE people out there who are STUNNED by wingnuts like Christine O’Donnell and SHOCKED by guys like Bill Kristol who say “even though she’s a bit flaky, I’d vote for her anyway.”
Wow, just wow. Look what you’ve become.
You’ve become THEM.
Obama is as much an extremist as Christine O’Donnell is.
“Obama is as much an extremist as Christine O’Donnell is.”
That’s what I’d expect a zealot to say.
“My way or the highway” is the way you people think. It’s all or nothing.
And you’re going to end up with nothing. You’re going to torpedo your own cause because you are incapable of compromise, and that’s what politics is all about.
If you’re not prepared to compromise, don’t expect a political solution.
There is no compromise on abortion.
Proaborts are aborting themselves, MP.
Nagem,
I don’t know what I would say to a rape victim. I’d be equally at a loss for words to try to comfort her if she contracted AIDS, STDs or sufferred from disabling PTSD. Rape is HORRIBLE. Pregnancies resulting from rape are the hardest cases in my opinion, in terms of feeling for what this woman is enduring. However, if a rape victim went out the next day and shot her rapist, she would be tried and most likely convicted of some degree of homicide. We, as a society, have made a decision that you can’t even take the life of the one who raped you. But, by arguing for rape exceptions for abortion, you are saying that the woman should be allowed to kill the innocent life that, like her, had no choice in this situation. It’s abhorrent. So, while “suck it up” is extremely harsh, I think that in some sense, yes, a pregnancy is an outcome of the rape that we as a society can legitimately say has to be endured to the extent that you can’t choose to kill the child. Just like killing the rapist the next day would be much easier and quicker way to achieve justice, we say, “No, you have to wait. You have to go through the years of court dates and trials and possibly parole hearings if/when he is convicted.” It’s not easy and it’s not fair. But nothing about rape is and aborting the baby won’t change that.
“There is no compromise on abortion.”
You can save thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands, but you’re not going to save them all.
If you think you can, YOU are going to be responsible for throwing away the opportunity.
Have a good day.
Abortion in the case of rape or incest is not an act of kindness or mercy – it is a second act of violence. It doesn’t undue the rape and trauma that the woman endured; all it does is end the life of an innocent human being.
Consider: If you were abducted and knocked unconscious only to awake hours later missing one of your kidneys, should you have the legal right to hunt down the person it was donated to (think black market), take a knife, and cut it out of them, killing them? After all, you didn’t consent to donating your kidney to them. Now, compare this to pregnancy by rape: Yes, you are pregnant without consent, but the deed has already been done. The only way to get your uterus back is to kill the fetus who is now growing within you. The analogy stops here however, because unlike a kidney donation that is permanent (you can’t lend your kidney), a woman is only pregnant for nine months. Then she gets her uterus back and the innocent baby remains alive. It is temporary. And a woman is not obligated to raise a child conceived in rape either. She is free to place her baby with a loving, adoptive family.
It should also be noted that the violence of rape parallels the violence of abortion. In the same way that a man puts his own body and needs before the woman’s, the woman who aborts has put her body and needs before her child’s. The rapist violates the woman’s body just as the woman violates the body of her fetal child in abortion. Yet while the woman survived being raped, the fetus will not survive dismemberment.
As to “what does one say to a woman who has conceived via rape” – there is no nutshell answer for this. A woman in such a situation needs to be in counseling to avoid extreme psychological damage such as PTSD. She will need major emotional support throughout the entire pregnancy. Pregnancy can be extremely difficult to endure even when planned and/or wanted; so in the case of rape or incest, the psychological toll could be immense. There are no easy answers as to how to cope. But as has been noted, many women find healing in giving life to their unborn child.
Considering abortion all by itself can cause a lifetime of psychological and emotional suffering, abortion because of rape is a double blow. It will only compound the potential damage a woman must endure.
Instead of one victim of rape, there will be two.
Nagem
September 20th, 2010 at 3:58 pm
You are not the only one with friends who have been raped. That I know of, two of my friends have been through this. One of them is someone I can’t imagine living without. And looking at things in hindsight, the man that attacked her was probably thinking about doing the same thing to me.
Of course rape happens. To speak to us as if you believe we think it doesn’t is stupid and willfully blind. Women on this thread who oppose abortion in these cases have stated they themselves are rape survivors, yet you ignore these posts. And since they have answered the question of what they would say to a rape survivor who is pregnant, I’m going to ask you a question.
Say there is a woman who is raped and becomes pregnant, but she decides to keep her child. The child is born, but as they begin to grow it becomes apparent that this child resembles their father. The woman is tormented. She begins having flashbacks and nightmares. In this situation, is it permissible for the woman to kill her child so that she will be spared this pain?
If your answer is no, and I suspect it is, then you are doing what so many abortion apologists so often do: appealing to a hard case to make a general case. Because the case I cited is a hard one. But if you differentiate between killing a born child that may cause their mother pain versus killing an unborn child that may cause their mother pain, then your point of contention has nothing to do with the mother’s pain, and you are bringing it up only to mask your real position. This is intellectually dishonest.
One of my bridesmaids was raped. She was a virgin. She brought a boy back to her dorm room to make out with him and he held her down and roughly and painfully stole her virginity from her. She was always a “good girl” but after the rape she wouldn’t hang out with anyone, she drank a lot, she started experimenting with drugs. Pot at first and then she moved on to harder drugs. Rape is horrible. How does abortion solve rape again?
Hi everyone. Thank you to those who defended my right to have my life protected, along with the multitude of others who are similarly-situated. I’d just like to add that I also have a page on my site with dozens of life-affirming stories of others who were conceived in rape — http://www.rebeccakiessling.com/Othersconceivedinrape.html, along with a page dedicated to stories of rape survivors who became pregnant by rape — some who are raising their son or daughter (not “the rapist’s child” as Maddow likes to say), some who placed their child for adoption, some who miscarried and some who regret aborting their child — http://www.rebeccakiessling.com/PregnantByRape.html. There are videos of many of our stories too. I encourage you to contact these 100% pro-life candidates and thank them for their stand. Hopefully our stories will be put to good use too and people will feel better-equipped to counter the horrible things that these people say. They think it’s extreme to tell a rape victim that she should be forced to carry her child. Well, I think it’s extreme to tell another living human being that they are garbage, that they were disposable, that their lives were not worthy of protection and that they didn’t deserve to live. They are the ones who are extreme. I’m a woman, but what good is my right to anything if I don’t have my right to life. I was basically saved from a burning building and now, I have the opportunity to go back and save others with no risk to myself, and I’m going to do it! I hope you will too. — Rebecca
I know someone who was raped and had the baby. She put the baby up for adoption. But she still went through the pregnancy and delivery. She’s a happily married woman with children now (no, the person was not me,but someone I actually do know, though).
By the way in terms of the baby being “half” your DNA…my son looks more like me than he does his Dad (my husband)–so, perhaps there’s a little more than just half of me in him LOL
Two wrong don’t make a right. Double negative only works in Mathematics, not when it comes to life.
I barely made it through the video because of Maddow’s horrible reasoning skills, but the PP e-mail made up for it. “They’re everywhere.” Love it. Anyone else feel an overwhelming urge to, say, donate to SBA List right about now?
Seems to me that if it’s a baby then it’s a baby. It doesn’t matter how the child was conceived… Actions have consequences and often we have to deal with the consequences of other peoples’ actions. Life is like that. As the Man-in-Black said, “Life is pain, princess. Anyone who says differently is selling something.”
Either abortion kills a tiny, fully human preborn child or it does not.
Thank goodness that she is not representative of mainstream America.
“Obama is as much an extremist as Christine O’Donnell is.”
That’s what I’d expect a zealot to say.
Actually, your response is far more zealous than mine. I’m socially liberal, and had some faith in Obama at first, but he has turned out to be a ridiculously awful president in every single way. And yes, he IS the most abortion-loving president in history. I didn’t have a problem with Clinton, by the way.
So yes, it’s either a baby or it’s not. We are either people, or we are not. We don’t become people. So either our lives our worth something–ALL of them–or NONE of them are. And again, as a rape survivor, could you please stop using this awful awful thing to further your cause of killing babies? It’s the biggest slap in the face. The rape was horrific; recovering was just as bad. But nothing will shake my pro-life beliefs, nothing. Megan, you don’t care about women who are raped, you only care about abortion. You have obviously heard nothing I said. You only want to make sure women abort their children at whatever cost, for whatever reason.
Rebecca and MaryLee,
Thank you. Thank you for your courage and your heartfelt words and the FIGHT that you fight because you KNOW. You know what this subject means to you and what your own experiences have taught you. Thank you for commenting in an effort to educate others on what you know to be true.
God bless you!
Megan,
I wonder if you have been imagining a What Would I Do scenario in your mind and then projecting your feelings onto others? I mean if you absolutely could not fathom having a baby that was conceived in rape you are making an emotional appeal here instead of maybe googling some REAL stories of REAL women who have been through what you are imagining.
I have never read of anyone who is haunted when they look in the eyes of their child but I have read stories of moms GRATEFUL that they chose life for their babies after rape.
If you have a link to the scenario you typed about I would love to read it. I would think more counseling to help with the trauma of the rape would be appropriate.
Sure. Here are some links:
Survivor of rape during war:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/christine_toomey/article668528.ece
(Some quotations. Jasmina sought an abortion but was denied the procedure.)
“Her pregnancy was very hard,” recalls Marijana Senjak, a psychologist with Medica. “Like other girls and women in her situation, she did not accept that she was pregnant. She somehow dissociated herself mentally from the child she was carrying, and even when the baby was born, wanted very little to do with her.”
But, Jasmina admits, had her child been born male, she would not have chosen to keep him. “Even now, when my daughter gets angry there is something in the expression on her face that reminds me of the one who did this to me,” says Jasmina, her voice trailing off as she lights another cigarette. “I feel like hitting her in those moments. I have to walk away to calm myself. Imagine what that would be like if I’d had a boy.”
Abortion after rape in the US:
http://www.imnotsorry.net/2010/09/05/susans-story-3/
Preparing for birth after experiencing sexual assault (childhood or adult):
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http://www.ourbodiesourselves.org/book/excerpt.asp?id=77
Ford (2009). Stressful events and support during birth: The effect on anxiety, mood and perceived control.
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McFarlane et al. (2007). Pregnancy following partner rape – What we know and what we need to know
And please don’t twist my words to say that I believe rape victims should choose abortion. The articles I consulted all discuss the need to help women gain as much control as possible during pregnancy and birth. Rape survivors experience psychological sequelae, often in unanticipated ways. And yes, birth can be a traumatic experience for women who were never abused if they feel they didn’t have a say in the matter at all.
Lay out the options on the table: parenting, adoption, abortion. Say you’ll help the woman to your best ability. Sure, crisis pregnancy centers can persuade women not to abort if the methods used are compassionate and honest. But to create state-level or federal law that limits the possibility of this deliberation is truly paternalistic, and will leave a lot of women feeling helpless and infantilized.
Also, if I didn’t provide any “real life” examples, it wouldn’t matter. I’m a woman. The women at Planned Parenthood and RHRealityCheck and NARAL are…shock!…not men in female disguise, but women. We’re telling you that abortion prohibitions without exceptions for rape or incest are intolerable. To us, as women (many of whom are rape survivors).
Any woman who wants to hit a child because something in the child’s eyes reminds her of the rapist NEEDS HELP!! How about more counseling to get to the bottom of the anger and rage she is projecting onto her daughter? Your story does not serve as a justification to allow a child conceived in rape to be killed.
Abortion does not heal rape. The fact that you advocate the killing in ANY and ALL situations is intolerable to me as a woman. Are you forgetting about the females that are killed in abortion? You are proabortion, Megs.
It is your opinion that women will feel “helpless and infantilized”(?!)if they are not allowed to kill their children because of rape or incest.
My background is in healthcare but I do not know the current protocol for the immediate care of a female rape victim. Someone who works in ER can answer me, do they give a medication right after rape to prevent conception? How does it work? If it prevents conception I do not see a problem with giving it.
I think an awesome analogy relating the worth of unborn babies, even babies that are a product of rape is the story of the African American experience. The horrific shameful experience of Black slavery, Black women forcibly brought over to America on slave ships, sold to white slave-masters, raped by them and bearing their mulatto children produced generations later Frederick Douglas, Harriet Tubman, Dr. George Carver, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Dr. Ben Carson, etc. The progeny of the African American experience in this country are technically the product of “rape” by white slave masters. When I hear prolifers like Dr. Alveda King, Star Parker, Rev. Harry Jackson and others speak I am thrilled because I realize their ancestors and they themselves would be considered “poster-children ” for abortion. As awful as slavery was the progeny of slaves and their slave-masters through God’s redemptive love generations later produced wonderful people. (Yes I know everyone’s life doesn’t have a fairy tale ending but that doesn’t mean they deserved to be snuffed out before they are ever born). The story of Joseph who was sold into slavery by his brothers and who years later saved his brothers from dying of famine is a story of God’s redemptive love. Joseph who later ruled over Eygpt and saved his brothers’ lives, told his brothers when he revealed who he was “What you meant for evil God turned it to good.” No slavery was not good, rape is not good, racism is not good, poverty is not good but deciding that an innocent child should die because he or she was conceived due of the crime of his or her father is not good either. We do not know the future of that child. It does not unrape the mother. It does not make the innocent child a criminal worthy of the death penalty. Two wrongs do not make a right.
Yes. I would feel infantilized if I were raped and I didn’t have any choice about a resultant pregnancy. Like “you were violated, and now you get to be a mother, bingo, but at least you can access counseling.” No. I would want some say in outcome there. Maybe I’d have the baby, or maybe I’d choose abortion, but I’d be really, really angry if someone tried to make this decision for me, either way.
do they give a medication right after rape to prevent conception?
Depends. I won’t be specific because of the trolls. When a man or woman presents to the ED with an allegation of sexual assault or possible sexual assault, there is a protocol to follow based on the hospital’s policies and state law.
Proaborts trot out sexual assault victims for the sympathy aspect, but the truth is they are pushing to require that EC be dispensed on demand irrespective of whether or not an assault has or may have taken place. Don’t let them fool you, that is their agenda despite their rhetoric focusing on sexual assault survivors.
Exactly, Fed Up. That is EXACTLY what they’re doing. The chances of getting pregnant from a rape are slim—possible, but not likely. And Megan…..the horrible experience of being raped, of throwing up afterwards, cutting my hair all off to desexualize myself, not allowing anyone to touch me for a year and a half, having nightmares, severe insomnia, not eating, not being able to have a normal sexual life for years and years, crying on the bathroom floor…..HOW DARE YOU push this issue to further your sick agenda. Pro-abort women don’t want to help women. They just want to be able to kill their babies and not feel guilty about it. Abortion isn’t good for women, not in any way. To disrupt your body like that during a pregnancy, to have your child torn limb from limb so you can have a life you think you deserve….That isn’t caring for women. It defeminizes women, as much as rape does. It is even MORE grotesque than rape, because it is a mother who decides if her child is worth keeping. I survived my rape, and I flourished, with counseling and through my art. And when I went through a crisis pregnancy with my daughter, I knew that she was a person–A PERSON–separate from me, who had her own little body and her own right to exist. She had a right NOT to be killed. And now she’s growing up so beautifully, and is the light of my life. But my rape taught me to value life at all stages, in every way I can. I didn’t die from my rape; my daughter would not have survived an abortion. I think we all can understand what point you’re trying to make. But I would ask you to really quit it (you and all abortion advocates) because it is disrespectful and disingenuous to rape survivors.
“Disingenuous and disrespectful to all rape survivors.” Hmm, because you speak for all rape survivors? Because women who advocate for abortion access haven’t experienced sexual assault–none of them are making policy based on personal experience?
What about the testimonies I provided about women who chose abortion in these circumstances and were fine? You can put those alongside the horror stories, because it’s “disingenuous” to invalidate anyone’s experience. You made a decision for yourself–how can you try to limit the ability of other women to control their pregnancy outcomes based on how you believe women would feel?
Actually, rape happens a lot more often than people like to think, particularly intimate partner violence, and especially in resource-poor environments. There are few studies showing how many women conceive in these situations, but my guess is that it’s pretty high.
Thank God for EC, but I guess we’re more sympathetic to a newly-fertilized egg than a woman seeking to prevent her entire life from being changed around. But I guess it’s “only a life she thinks she deserves?” It’s one thing to be pro-life, another to be anti-conception. Ugh. Fed-Up, maybe you can find yourself a job with all these new healthcare reform measures. We need someone to grill women at pharmacies seeking EC to make sure they’re purchasing it for the “right” reasons. I’m sure you have a list of qualifications and exclusions already in hand.
deleted comment.
MaryLee,
I’m very sorry you are a victim of rape. I’m glad you found comfort and help and I wish you God’s blessings.
Thank you, Mother in Texas! And I call myself a “survivor” of rape. It took my voice away, so I took it back.
Megan, I speak for a LOT of rape survivors. I speak for a lot of pro-life women, as well. You just can’t let it go, can you? There is no excuse for the pro-abortion movement to use rape (and incest) as talking points, when the point of your movement is to provide women with abortion access at all times, at any cost, for any reason. When I found myself pregnant because of my own indiscretion, and at a very low period of my life, it was pro-lifers who helped me, not the pro-abortion community. They only wanted me to abort, telling me my dreams and my art were more important than the life of my baby. My life didn’t stop because I had a child; I’ve just done things backwards. But I’ll tell you this, even if I had been more “famous” if I’d aborted her, my life would be far emptier.
And if rape happens so often, what are you and other pro-aborts doing to help women NOT get raped? Oh, that’s right, NOTHING. You just want to make sure they abort their babies. You’re not keeping them safe. You’re not educating them. You’re just using them to further your agenda. It was the pro-life community who helped me through my rape. It wasn’t you guys.
So, as I’ve said, on behalf of rape survivors, drop this issue. It is so disrespectful I can’t even get my brain around it. ….There are none so blind….
Mary,
I don’t intend to harass you, and I’m sorry if you were pressured into having an abortion. You have to understand that I’m equally opposed to that as I am to forced pregnancy. Rape certainly doesn’t cure abortion, but neither does motherhood. You are one of many voices and experiences. You can’t silence the others.
And actually, feminists were the first to politicize domestic violence and rape. Many of these women were victims of sexual violence and they demanded that their voices be heard: http://www.sojust.net/documents/radical_feminists.html
Feminists started rape crisis centers. They advocated on behalf of themselves and other victims of assault: http://www.now.org/issues/violence/
…and worked to get better legal protection for women, like the Violence Against Women Act: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violence_Against_Women_Act
…and continue to speak out against gender-related violence:
http://blogs.law.columbia.edu/genderandsexualitylawblog?s=rape
http://femlegaltheory.blogspot.com/
Planned Parenthoods also offer rape crisis services:
http://www.plannedparenthood.org/rochester-syracuse/rape-crisis-service-22607.htm
And you don’t seem to understand that pro-choicers and feminists have also been victims of assault and abuse. We’re not foreign to it–probably why we self-identify as feminists?? So nobody is “using” anybody for their “agenda.” We know what it’s like to be mistreated, and we want to do something to prevent it, and to empower ourselves and others.
No, you don’t. You are just using that as an excuse to further so-called “abortion rights.” Rape and incest are awful things, but they are not the same issue. Why can’t you even understand what I’m saying? Planned Parenthood rape crisis centers! That’s a laugh. Planned Parenthood, just by nature, protects rapists and sexual criminals. No pro”choice” rape center helped me. It was the Catholic church, frankly. They are the ones who had love and mercy and understanding. It wasn’t about “empowerment,” it was about healing. A rape is a violation, and an abortion is a violation too, perhaps more so, because it always ends up killing someone.
It’s absurd. You’ll stop at nothing. Using rape as a loophole for “abortion rights” is despicable. Keep digging that hole, Megan.
An excuse or a loophole, right. Everyone’s out to exploit you, the only rape survivor in the whole world. You can’t seem to understand that there are women who find proposed restrictions that would limit a woman’s decision-making after a rape to be abhorrent. Did you read the testimonies of the women who had abortions in these situations and didn’t consider the abortion to be a violation to their bodies? How about the government interferes some more and tells women they can’t put children up for adoption anymore?
Rebecca,
God bless you and your work, and your family! You’re wonderful!!
Megan,
Forgive me, but you really need to get a grip, here. If you believe that killing one’s unborn child because of a rapist father is okay, then why not think that killing a *born* child because of a rapist father is okay? You’re letting hysteria-level emotions run away with your head, here… and you’re assigning the death penalty to the one person in the situation who’s most provably innocent of all wrongdoing: the baby.
Don’t think the unborn child is a baby? Fine… prove it. But enough with this “I’m too traumatized to let my child live” nonsense. That’s fodder for a good therapist, not for a referral to an unborn child death-camp (a.k.a. abortion mill).
MaryLee,
Forgive me for sounding forward… but I really wish we lived closer, so that I could give you a hug! :) God bless your journey, and your healing… and your zeal to stand up for the truth and life!
“If you believe that killing one’s unborn child because of a rapist father is okay, then why not think that killing a *born* child because of a rapist father is okay?”
I respond with a question: You make this distinction because…?
Find me one pro-choicer who embraces infanticide. The slippery slope argument gets invoked a lot, but it hasn’t seemed to happen yet. Hm..because pro-choicers see that birth pretty clearly distinguishes the rights of the unborn and the rights of the born. If a woman gives birth to that baby, it has a right to life. That’s what we believe. Not seeing many pro-choicers murdering their toddlers.
Thank you, Paladin! I’ve been reading a lot of C.S. Lewis lately and have considered going back to church. But I would be considered a heretic (I believe in birth control, I support gay marriage, etc., I think women should be priests, etc.)…..*sad face*
Megan, I am simply asking you to stop using rape and incest as an excuse for your ridiculous agenda. It is absolutely ABSURD that you would continue to fight with me here. After being raped, I was completely confused. And scared. My last thought was about abortion. But obviously, that’s pro-aborts first thought. Abortion! Everything always comes down to abortion! Not healing, not justice, but ABORTION!
But seriously, when I remember that hell I went through trying to recover from that incident, and when I remember watching my little daughter grow (though she was not the product of a rape, I don’t want to confuse anyone) my pro-life views were solidified. It is either a baby, or it’s not. As I said in another thread, dehumanizing the baby based on functionalism and moral relativism is dangerous ground. To say your born child has more worth than your unborn child is the same as saying “A person who is in the living room is more of a person than someone who is in the dining room.” Pro-aborts don’t murder their toddlers? Well, here’s a medal for all of you. The sad part is, no mother has the right to kill her child, ever. The right to exist is the most fundamental rights. When you start putting degrees of “value” on anyone–especially the unborn, it is a slippery slope. My rights end where another person’s body begins. My daughter had a right to live. And it didn’t ruin my life; having her made it better. It was VERY difficult, but my life is better. Because she exists.
But seriously, because so few abortions are performed on rape victims, the pro-abortion community’s insistence on using it as a loophole makes me throw up in my mouth.
Find me one pro-choicer who embraces infanticide.
Peter Singer of Princeton.
President Barack Obama.
Sen. Barbara Boxer.
Michael Tooley
Mary Anne Warren
:) Kel, you’re fast at the draw! You beat my “Singer” response by 2 minutes!
Megan wrote, in reply to my comment:
[Paladin]
“If you believe that killing one’s unborn child because of a rapist father is okay, then why not think that killing a *born* child because of a rapist father is okay?”
[Megan]
I respond with a question: You make this distinction because…?
All right… if you promise to answer my original question, I’ll answer yours, “on credit”, as it were…
First, *I* make no distinction; I think the unborn offspring of a human mother is a human child, just as I think that the born offspring of a human mother (before he/she grows up) is a child. The distinction is yours, especially since you’re now indignant about the suggestion that your argument supports infanticide. You have no problem with killing an unborn child, and your reasons all seem to orbit around the “freedom” and “duress” of the mother (with nary a bit of concern for the murder of the child); I’m pointing out that your very same reasons would apply to born children, as well… and I’m very puzzled as to why you’re not consistent with your application of your moral principles.
If you really need a technical term for why I brought this up, do a Google search for “reductio ad absurdum”; any argument whose principles lead to nonsense (e.g. logical inconsistencies) must be a bad argument. I’m showing how your stated principles don’t support your conclusions… and that your conclusions must come from elsewhere (e.g. raw opinion, emotion, etc.).
Find me one pro-choicer who embraces infanticide.
See Kel’s answer. See also every last pro-choice blogger and commenter who ever chimed in with support for Peter Singer’s positions. The number is quite a bit higher than zero.
The slippery slope argument gets invoked a lot, but it hasn’t seemed to happen yet.
That wasn’t my point (though: do you really think it’s a good argument to say “It’ll never happen, because I don’t remember any cases, offhand, where it happened yet?” I don’t see how that follows…); I was pointing out that your own refusal to kill born children seems to be a matter of personal taste. You pick and choose which children you’d be willing to have die, and which you would want to protect by law; I’m guessing the two emotional principles of “out of sight (in the womb), out of mind” and “born babies are more cute and attractive” come into play, here.
Hm..because pro-choicers see that birth pretty clearly distinguishes the rights of the unborn and the rights of the born.
Er… no. They hold the OPINION that birth is a “dividing line of rights”–an opinion which is (unfortunately) reflected in the current law of the USA, under Roe v. Wade, etc.–just as blacks did not have a right to life (above and against the wishes of their “owners”) under Dred Scott v. Sanford. You’ll have to prove your case, first, before you can lean on the conclusion, like that.
If a woman gives birth to that baby, it has a right to life.
Well, yes… that’s true… but the child also has a right to life BEFORE the baby is born.
That’s what we believe.
Right. I’m just saying that you’re wrong, that your position is utterly illogical and morally incoherent, and that you haven’t come close to proving your case.
Not seeing many pro-choicers murdering their toddlers.
We didn’t see many mothers murdering their unborn children in eras past, either… nor did we see morally warped professors describing how infanticide is morally allowable, either. That says nothing to your case; it certainly has nothing to do with mine.
Go Paladin! GO GO GO!
*does a dance*
I heart Paladin’s posts. :D lol
:) See, MaryLee? There’s *another* thing you do that surpasses me! According to a friend at college, I dance “like a spastic hippo”! :) And yet, I somehow still feel okay about myself…
Kel: ;) Likewise!
Naomi Wolff said “Of course it’s a baby,” but feels that even though it’s a baby, he still doesn’t have the right to live if mommy doesn’t want him. A lot of pro-aborts admit that the unborn are babies. That’s what is even more frightening. Not just the scientific ignorance and insistence on dehumanization (it’s easier to kill something if you don’t believe it’s a person), but the idea that even if it IS a human, it has no value.
“According to a friend at college…”
Ah, your college, Paladin…
“According to a friend at college…”
Ah, your college, Paladin…
Yeah, that place…
(N.B. to everyone else: inside joke!)
Notice, also, that Megan never offered any sympathy or understanding after I told her my rape story. That’s very telling, isn’t it? My cat has more compassion than that.
Mary, I might have been more compassionate, but you’re effectively trying to silence women who wouldn’t welcome motherhood under all circumstances. Yours is a success story, but your absolutism is dangerous. Rape-related abortions are uncommon (ignoring obvious issues with data collection) in part because policymakers have fought to make emergency contraception part of rape kits. You can’t seem to empathize with women who would not want to deal with a pregnancy in these circumstances, and therefore you undermine efforts to prevent pregnancy at the earliest stages–where people typically have more common ground.
Also, you’re mis-characterizing the pro-choice/feminist movement. Explain the existence of the National Organization of Women? People like Catharaine MacKinnon? Take Back the Night? University rape crisis centers?
Roe v. Wade invoked the 14th amendment, essentially interpreted to mean that no person’s body should be used as a means to an end. This trumps the unborn child’s right to life over the potential interests of its mother not to be pregnant–Roe implies that it doesn’t matter if the fetus is regarded as a “person” or not. But due process also protects the infant or toddler’s right to life and liberty. If you believe this situation is premised on dangerous “moral relativity,” then you choose to violate another principle: due process. If this is the case, then what stops the government from forcing women to abort their pregnancies? From forcing women to become pregnant? For forcibly sterilizing men and women deemed unfit for parenthood?
Also, I’m pretty sure most of you were referring to the Born Alive Infants Protection Act. Did you know that there are already laws in place for the purpose of demanding medical treatment for critically ill infants, regardless of the wishes of their parents? It’s called the “Baby Doe Amendment” and was enacted under Reagan:
(B) an assurance that the State has in place procedures for responding to the reporting of medical neglect (including instances of withholding of medically indicated treatment from disabled infants with life-threatening conditions), procedures or programs, or both (within the State child protective services system), to provide for–
(i) coordination and consultation with individuals designated by and within appropriate health-care facilities;(ii) prompt notification by individuals designated by and within appropriate health-care facilities of cases of suspected medical neglect (including instances of withholding of medically indicated treatment from disabled infants with life-threatening conditions); and(iii) authority, under State law, for the State child protective services system to pursue any legal remedies, including the authority to initiate legal proceedings in a court of competent jurisdiction, as may be necessary to prevent the withholding of medically indicated treatment from disabled infants with life threatening conditions
The law important, but was implemented in a very controversial way. Govt. officials swooped into hospitals at the faintest allegation of abuse, and didn’t turn up anything, but disrupted hospital activity. The Born Alive Act was doomed to repeat Baby Doe’s mistakes–insane govt. overreach, plus it represented a not-so-clever attempt to codify the personhood of fetuses. And anyway, more laws demanding care of sick infants is unnecessary–clinical culture, especially after Baby Doe, demands the highest level of treatment for sick infants. Look into “perinatal palliative care” movements–you’ll see lots of moms-to-be with complicated pregnancies–fetuses with rare forms of Trisomy, say, who are destined to die soon after birth–who want to have these babies and take them home without watching them poked and prodded in the NICU. These women struggle against a medical culture that cannot let a child die without serious intervention. This is the current medical climate we’re in.
These 5 are your political champions? Nobody in DC will listen to a single word they say. The GOP will court them for their voters and to gain control of the house and senate but once the election is over they will become exiled from any logical discussion in DC about any subject. You see how much Sara has been able to accomplish in DC….
Tea Party, The GOP is using you so they do not suffer the same fate as Dems during the Bush V Gore election. Yes Gore did actually win that election but it would not have been in question at all had it not been for the Green Party movement taking vote away from Gore “FYI I can’t stand Gore” it’s already happening in Alaska with the write in vote. Tea Party candidates if elected will be sectioned off and ignored by the GOP and Dems and no one will listen to a single thing they have to say.
Oh how I love a good culture war… It’s Christians against the world because they know better than the rest of us….
Megan wrote:
Mary, I might have been more compassionate, but you’re effectively trying to silence women who wouldn’t welcome motherhood under all circumstances.
Only in your mind, I’m afraid; she said and did nothing of the sort–or do you think adoption has been banned in the USA? Those women who don’t feel able to nurture their child through their majority (in the age-wise sense) are free to offer those children for adoption (to let other women “mother” them, as opposed to killing them).
Yours is a success story, but your absolutism is dangerous.
Forgive me, but you really must not know what you’re saying! Most people find an “absolute” prohibition against murdering innocent babies to be a *good* thing; I’m not quite sure why you disagree. Quite a few “absolutes” in life are good and necessary; only the insanity of moral relativism tries to say otherwise.
Rape-related abortions are uncommon (ignoring obvious issues with data collection) in part because policymakers have fought to make emergency contraception part of rape kits.
Oh, come now! In addition to the fact that “emergency contraception” is simply “abortion pill” by a prettified name (do a Google search on the mechanism by which “EC” works; look especially for the terms “change”, “endometrium”, “implantation” and “hostile”), “EC” is a very new phenomenon, relatively speaking, whereas the rarity of rape-conception is vastly older.
You can’t seem to empathize with women who would not want to deal with a pregnancy in these circumstances,
Why would you say that? I’m positive she feels more empathy than even you could feel, given her history; no sane person suggests that “unless you condone the killing of her child, you can’t have empathy for the woman who is anguished because of the pregnancy”!
and therefore you undermine efforts to prevent pregnancy at the earliest stages–where people typically have more common ground.
Er… “PREVENT” pregnancy? (The issue of genuine contraception is a separate issue, which we can discuss later.) You’re talking about ABORTION–about destroying a child and terminating a pregnancy. Let’s not try to cloud the issue with false terms like “prevent”, in the case, shall we?
Also, you’re mis-characterizing the pro-choice/feminist movement. Explain the existence of the National Organization of Women? People like Catharaine MacKinnon? Take Back the Night? University rape crisis centers?
All of the above started with at least some praiseworthy goals, and all of them–to a greater or lesser extent–sold their collective soul to the pro-death movement, and gave their blessing to the practice of killing unborn children. I see no mischaracterization, here. (I’m not very sure about “Take Back the Night”, on this issue, but it seems to be abortion-tolerant, from what I’ve read.) What started out as sincere and (at least partially) good efforts to defend, protect and help women ended up as a means by which those same women are brutalized in body and soul–through the willing partnership of these organizations and their abortionist colleagues.
I’d also add that the so-called “pro-choice movement” is utterly distinct from the “feminist movement”; but don’t take my word for it.
“Er… “PREVENT” pregnancy? (The issue of genuine contraception is a separate issue, which we can discuss later.) You’re talking about ABORTION–about destroying a child and terminating a pregnancy. Let’s not try to cloud the issue with false terms like “prevent”, in the case, shall we?”
Whoops, sorry for the conflation! The only prevention EC does is preventing the fertilized egg from implanting in the endometrium. Guess I know where you stand on this issue, though I think even hardline pro-lifers would distinguish between the effects of EC and abortion at the tenth week. Tell me, how does EC “brutalize women body and soul?”
And do you think all victims of intimate partner violence hightail it to the emergency room when their abusers rape them, where the rape’s reported, at least for statistical purposes?
And judging from your first paragrah, you don’t seem to understand this thing called nine months of being pregnant. Have you tried being pregnant? It’s rough. Not to mention birth, and the potential for complications…what, do you think women house the fetus in an incubator for nine months and then release a baby into the world? Again, a different principle: use no-body as a means to an end.
Megan wrote:
Roe v. Wade invoked the 14th amendment,
Yes… badly and incompetently.
essentially interpreted to mean that no person’s body should be used as a means to an end.
(??) That’s a rather… interesting interpretation! I don’t see that in the text of Roe; could you give a citation?
This trumps the unborn child’s right to life over the potential interests of its mother not to be pregnant–Roe implies that it doesn’t matter if the fetus is regarded as a “person” or not.
First, you’re flatly wrong on the second point; Roe explicitly says that, if the fetus (n.b. Latin for “little boy/child”) were ever to be shown to be a person, the case for abortion would collapse, BECAUSE (ironically enough) the 14th amendment would forbid the taking of the child’s life without due process of law (Roe v. Wade, section IX, paragraph A); so the personhood of the child matters a great deal. (The court said only that the question was beyond their competence.) Second, you seem to have a naive idea that every judgment by the Supreme Court is completely infallible and utterly moral and good; and I can’t imagine how you could believe that, given that the U.S. Supreme Court also pronounced black people to be “property”–to be killed, tortured, raped, etc., at the pleasure of their “owners”! Dred Scott vs. Sanford said, and I quote:
“[Negroes] had for more than a century before been regarded as beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race, either in social or political relations; and so far inferior, that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect; and that the negro might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for his benefit. He was bought and sold, and treated as an ordinary article of merchandise and traffic, whenever a profit could be made by it.”
(Dred Scott v. Sanford, par. 23 of court’s opinion)
Now… unless you’re prepared to regard this decision to be good, right and morally just, I must ask you to tell me by what means you find Roe v. Wade to be “good, right and morally just”; it can’t be simply because “it’s the law of the land”; so was Dred Scott v. Sanford! It really seems that you think Roe v. Wade is “morally right” simply because of your own personal tastes.
But due process also protects the infant or toddler’s right to life and liberty.
Yes… just as it should protect the same child’s life in the womb. Do you seriously not see that, if our right to life comes from the government, then the same government could take that right away (with the stroke of a pen)? That’s why our Founding Fathers rightly declared that we are endowed by OUR CREATOR (not our government officials–who are just humans, like us) with the right to life. Any court which presumes to dehumanize an class of persons to the rank of “kill-able at will” is not only speaking nonsense, but they’re attempting a grave evil.
If you believe this situation is premised on dangerous “moral relativity,” then you choose to violate another principle: due process.
(??) What on earth are you talking about? That makes no sense at all; how could a criticism of a law be regarded as a violation of “due process”?
If this is the case, then what stops the government from forcing women to abort their pregnancies?
This is ironic: because it is YOU who believe that the right to life, liberty, etc., are bestowed by the GOVERNMENT (whether by legislation, executive order or judicial action), and that the government can take such rights away. For those of us who believe, with the Founding Fathers (who empowered the branches of government to exist in the first place!), that our right to life is inherent in our God-given nature, we are in no danger of mandating the deaths of innocent children in the womb. Your (current) side is far closer to that view.
From forcing women to become pregnant?
Because we know that the right to liberty–and freedom from unjust violation–is God-given, and not simply dependent on the political climate of the moment. If you can find even one case of official pro-life statements in favour of “mandatory artificial insemination”, then I’ll happily apologize and stand corrected.
For forcibly sterilizing men and women deemed unfit for parenthood?
Ah. You mean like Margaret Sanger advocated? Again… I do wonder if you have the sides of this issue quite clear, in your mind; many things against which you’re railing are things which the pro-life movement would fight to (pardon the phrase) the death!
Megan,
“use no-body as a means to an end.”
Is the state of being used dependent on the predisposition of the one who is potentially being used? In other words, if I “want” to be used and someone uses me, am I therefore not being used because I want it?
Megan wrote:
Whoops, sorry for the conflation! The only prevention EC does is preventing the fertilized egg from implanting in the endometrium.
Right. The child dies, at a very early age.
Guess I know where you stand on this issue, though I think even hardline pro-lifers would distinguish between the effects of EC and abortion at the tenth week.
We also distinguish between the effects of 10th-week abortion (tell me: are you in favour of allowing 10th-week abortions? I’m curious why you brought that up…) and shooting a newborn baby with a shotgun; we also distinguish between the shotgun-death of an infant and the dismemberment of a teenager. All of them are different varieties of murder–some “quieter” than others. I’m not sure how this advances any of your points.
Tell me, how does EC “brutalize women body and soul?”
Well… what do you think a typical woman will experience when she recognizes that a pill, deceptively billed to her as “contraceptive”, actually induced a chemical abortion, and killed her newly-conceived child? Most mothers with a working conscience would be devastated.
You’re going a long way toward confirming my hypothesis, actually: your basis for being abortion-tolerant is your own personal tastes, passions and emotions… not your intellect. So long as an unborn child is “out of sight” and “doesn’t look much like the cuddly babies with which you can sympathize”, you give the nod to their execution. That isn’t right, Megan… and I think you know that, at some level.
And do you think all victims of intimate partner violence hightail it to the emergency room when their abusers rape them, where the rape’s reported, at least for statistical purposes?
What possible difference to your point would it make, one way or the other? If a child is conceived, then that child must be protected from being killed. I don’t see why you’d object to this!
And judging from your first paragrah, you don’t seem to understand this thing called nine months of being pregnant. Have you tried being pregnant? It’s rough.
Hm. Are you trying to play the “female card”, based on the fact that I’m male (and cannot get pregnant), and you think you can silence me with such an intimidation tactic… and after your own attempts to decry MaryLee’s alleged “silencing tactics” (which was a nonsensical claim, anyway)? I wonder if you’d use the same tactic with Carla, Rebecca, MaryLee, Elisabeth, and any other pro-life woman and mother on this board (and elsewhere). You’re spouting rhetorical nonsense, Megan; no amount of duress can make the murder of an unborn child morally allowable, any more than the duress of raising a colicky baby (have you ever done that?) justifies infanticide, or any more than the duress of raising a rebellious teenager justifies slitting your son/daughter’s throat in their sleep.
Not to mention birth, and the potential for complications…what, do you think women house the fetus in an incubator for nine months and then release a baby into the world?
No, I don’t think that at all. But… and forgive the understatement… your suggestion that “motherhood is hard, so no one should judge any mother who condones the murder of her child” isn’t the most morally coherent position I’ve ever heard.
Again, a different principle: use no-body as a means to an end.
(*sigh*) Megan, are you unaware that Christianity has taught that for 2000 years? Are you also unaware of the fact that abortion is a primary violation of that principle? You believe that a mother can kill another human being, in order to avoid the trials of pregnancy; care to explain how the (very true and right) principle of “people are to be loved, not used” is satisfied by your abortion-tolerant view?
Yes… just as it should protect the same child’s life in the womb. Do you seriously not see that, if our right to life comes from the government, then the same government could take that right away (with the stroke of a pen)? That’s why our Founding Fathers rightly declared that we are endowed by OUR CREATOR (not our government officials–who are just humans, like us) with the right to life. Any court which presumes to dehumanize an class of persons to the rank of “kill-able at will” is not only speaking nonsense, but they’re attempting a grave evil.
Awesome quote. So, so true.
MaryLee–You’re right. You’re NOT a victim, you’re a survior and that’s wonderful! Keep up the good work :-) Other women need that kind of encouragement.
Megan,
We [pro-lifers] don’t want a death of a conceived child. That baby is a baby from the moment of conception. There’s no ifs, ands or buts about it for us. Apparently egg + sperm only equals “maybe a baby” to you. Hate to burst your bubble but “Maybe Baby” only works in a Buddy Holly song, not when it comes to life.
I reccomend you check out the research of Dr. Chris Kathlenborn: http://www.lifeissues.net/writer.php?ID=kah
http://onemoresoul.com/contraception/risks-consequences/what-a-woman-should-know-about-birth-control.html
http://onemoresoul.com/contraception/risks-consequences/breast-cancer-risk-from-abortion.html
http://onemoresoul.com/contraception/risks-consequences/breast-cancer-abortion-and-the-pill.html
And this article covers emergency contraception. It’s by Lili Code de Bejarano, MD, MPH: http://onemoresoul.com/contraception/risks-consequences/the-morning-after-pill-and-other-types-of-emergency-contraception-myths-and-realities.html
I think anybody can say what they want about abortion in this forum. You being male certainly doesn’t disqualify you. But I suppose you addressed my concern here:
“no amount of duress can make the murder of an unborn child morally allowable”
Actually, it does. An infant makes no immediate, direct claims on the mother’s physical body (someone else can feed the child, or care for its colic). Even if a fetus were conferred with the rights of personhood, the mother couldn’t be compelled to share her organs for its use (under due process), as people can’t be forced to donate blood, or plasma, or other tissues, even when dead. And anyway, personhood isn’t conferred on the fetus because it isn’t physically autonomous…
I don’t think any government is infallible, but I’ve chosen to enter into a contract with a State and not a God–and a State that is designed to protect me from the overreach of organized religion. You are making spurious claims about the absolute sovereignty of Divine Law, given the multiplicity of religions in this country and their different beliefs about Divine Law. Your claim that personhood begins at conception is no more “subjective” than my claim that it doesn’t.
Thanks Mother in Texas, but I’ll take my scientific data without the overt religiosity. I was able to find that meta-analysis for the link between breast cancer and OC use without any spiritual guide.
Megan wrote:
I think anybody can say what they want about abortion in this forum. You being male certainly doesn’t disqualify you.
All right; but I’m a bit puzzled why you asked me if I’d “ever tried being pregnant”, as if that were at all relevant. Plenty of women have “tried” (and succeeded in) being pregnant, and the experience hasn’t moved them to think that having their children (or anyone else’s children) dismembered is now “okay”. I’ve known women who were on absolute bed-rest for 9 months, suffering horribly, and they’re as pro-life as I am. Your comment seems to have been an attempt to fog the issue, I think.
But I suppose you addressed my concern here: “no amount of duress can make the murder of an unborn child morally allowable” Actually, it does. An infant makes no immediate, direct claims on the mother’s physical body (someone else can feed the child, or care for its colic).
Are you thinking about what you’re saying? If what you say here is true, then you’d support a mother’s decision to dismember her colicky baby if she were trapped in a ski lodge for 9 months, without recourse to an adoption agency, baby formula or babysitter! Do you really want to go on the record as supporting that?
If you were to say, “an unborn child makes demands on a mother’s body that are less ‘escapable’ than are the demands of a newborn”, I’d say, “You’re quite right.” But when you go further, and say, “therefore, the mother has a right to have that baby murdered”, I reply, “my friend, you are going insane. No sane and morally coherent person thinks like that.” Babies are dependent creatures, through no fault of their own; they simply *are* (and this condition is *natural*–not some alien mutant infliction upon our race!); this doesn’t authorize them for the death penalty under any sane standard. One might as well say that I have no obligation to help a person who’s burning to death in my own lawn, even while I’m watering the lawn with a hose (since the water is legally mine, of course–I paid for it, fair and square–and no one else has a legal claim on it, by your standard)…
Even if a fetus were conferred with the rights of personhood, the mother couldn’t be compelled to share her organs for its use (under due process), as people can’t be forced to donate blood, or plasma, or other tissues, even when dead.
Just for the sake of argument: why not? Leave the fallible law of the land (which can change at the flick of a pen) aside, for the moment: why do you, Megan, feel that a mother has no obligation to feed and nurture her own daughter, at least until the point where other options are available? I’m genuinely curious.
And anyway, personhood isn’t conferred on the fetus because it isn’t physically autonomous.
Why does physical autonomy rank so highly in your mind that you’d consent to the dismemberment of anyone who doesn’t have it? I’m serious, here: why is physical autonomy so important? My personal theory (which would seem to explain not only your view, but the views of many like you) is the following:
1) Regardless of my sexual activity, I don’t want to get pregnant.
2) If I get pregnant (with or without my cooperation), I want to be able to kill my offspring, which will abort the pregnancy (and allow me to proceed with my other plans without interference).
3) Killing children (or any other persons) is morally (and usually legally) wrong, so I need a pretext by which an exception can be made for my case.
4) If I can redefine my offspring as a “non-child, non-person”–or at least as a person whose dependency is a violation of my rights–then I can argue that killing my offspring will not be morally wrong.
5) I want the freedom to kill my offspring at any point in my pregnancy (social norms don’t quite let me kill that offspring after birth, in most cases, yet), so I need a “definition” which allows me to classify “in the womb” as “non-person”–or at least “unjustly dependent on me”.
6) Neither conception, nor “viability”, nor “detectable brain-wave activity” will allow me to abort during any of the 9 months of pregnancy, so I need an alternative.
7) “Physical autonomy” (i.e. biological connectedness to the mother) is a definition which does not change until birth, at very least. (By the way: you might find a particular comment (http://www.balloon-juice.com/2010/08/18/abortion-and-high-broderism/#comment-1967134) by a fellow abortion-tolerant person to be illuminating, on that point; some believe that abortion is allowable until the umbilical cord is cut, even after birth. That isn’t even talking about Peter Singer.)
8 ) If I use the “physical autonomy” argument (regardless of its merits), I can tell myself (and others) that the killing of my unborn child is morally permissible.
This “machinery” can run very nicely, regardless of its utter lack of logic, ignorance of human biology and human nature, and moral coherence. Wave your hands, and reality changes such that you can do as you please. God-like, one might say. It’s almost a pity it’s all stuff and nonsense.
I don’t think any government is infallible, but I’ve chosen to enter into a contract with a State and not a God
You missed my point completely (and you’ll note that the “State’s” founders predicated the State’s existence on a Creator–on what basis do you reject their design, which gave us the Constitution in the *first* place?). The same court that you trust as the writer of the “Gospel of Roe v. Wade” is the same court which brought us “Dred Scott v. Sanford”. When you appeal to “the law of the land”, as if that somehow settled all moral questions about abortion, I must conclude that you have no idea what you’re talking about; the fact that “a law” exists says NOTHING, WHATSOEVER about whether the law is good or evil. Evil laws exist; that’s simply a fact. You need to show that Roe v. Wade is a morally right law, above and beyond the mere (and morally irrelevant) fact that it exists.
Of course, if you’re so extreme in your moral relativism that you think Dred Scott v. Sanford was *good* (or at least morally neutral), then neither I nor any morally coherent person could really have anything further to say to you. DO you think Dred Scott v. Sanford was non-evil? Do you find the ownership of (complete with legal freedom to rape, torture and kill) “black slaves” non-evil? Please let me know; most of our entire discussion hinges on this point, I think.
and a State that is designed to protect me from the overreach of organized religion.
This is simply hysterical rhetoric, Megan. I suppose you don’t think the government was designed to protect me from the overreach of atheism, or of secularism? Have some sense.
You are making spurious claims about the absolute sovereignty of Divine Law,
I am?
given the multiplicity of religions in this country and their different beliefs about Divine Law.
Ah. So they must all be right, eh? Or do you mean they must all be wrong (including atheism)?
Your claim that personhood begins at conception is no more “subjective” than my claim that it doesn’t.
Before I answer that, please help me out with a question: when DOES personhood begin, for you? At birth? When the mother decides she wants the child? When?
“I’m serious, here: why is physical autonomy so important?”
I guess this is just a pretext for my wanting to live a promiscuous life filled with lots of consequences-free, non-procreative sex. Maybe some lesbian sex in there, too! I think you gloss over the physical autonomy issue because you don’t have an honest answer to it. Here’s a slight tweaking of your words: “I’ve known women who were on absolute bed-rest for 9 months, suffering horribly, and they’re as pro-life as I am, and so too should other women accept these potential consequences of pregnancy–under any circumstances–on the basis of moral code dictating that they should subordinate their interests, physical or otherwise, to those of their unborn children.”
Why don’t I “feel that a mother has no obligation to feed and nurture her own daughter, at least until the point where other options are available?” Oh, way to appeal to my maternal sensibilities. I’m moved, truly. Hm…Because that “feeding” and “nurturing” is directly physically taxing, and to force me to do it amounts to physical hijacking, not to mention potentially leading to a worse pregnancy outcome (stress, allostatic load, has been shown to result in low birthweight). Again, your response elided complete discussion of my statement. If a woman can be forced to house an embryo or fetus, why can’t we forcibly conscript people to harvest them for blood or organ donation, or force women into carrying unwanted embryos (say IVF cast-offs)?
And letting a baby die in a remote cabin would be criminal neglect, obviously, since the baby is a person, i.e. no longer directly sustaining itself off its mother’s body. The child’s demands are external–while the mother uses her body, mechanically, to feed the child, this life is no longer growing inside of her. And when does personhood begin? Oooh, we’re riding the moral slippery slope! Yes, at birth. This doesn’t mean that fetuses after the potential point of viability, and especially in the third trimester, shouldn’t have any “rights.” However, the woman’s interests, though balanced against the fetus’, are still considered preeminent. Women, in consultation with their physicians, should have a say in whether they can abort a pregnancy for medical reasons at these late stages, and to have control over her actions. It’s cruel and unusual, say, to shackle incarcerated pregnant women and women in labor, or to physically deny pregnant and depressed women their SSRI’s, or perform C-sections without informed consent–all out of concern for potential harm to the fetus or child.
Tell me, why should a fertilized, newly-implanted egg’s right to life be privileged over a woman’s right not to be pregnant and mother a child?
Nagem
September 23rd, 2010 at 12:52 pm
Thanks Mother in Texas, but I’ll take my scientific data without the overt religiosity. I was able to find that meta-analysis for the link between breast cancer and OC use without any spiritual guide.
It wasn’t just religious either, it was Medical Science. Dr. Chris Kathlenborn is a MD. The other one I posted also had MD at the end. You can skip the religious stuff in it and go with the scienific stuff since both are in those articles.
And it wasn’t just breast cancer and OC links either. Did you even LOOK at the articles? Probably not.
Because that “feeding” and “nurturing” is directly physically taxing, and to force me to do it amounts to physical hijacking,
No, it’s called accepting the responsibilities that come with sexual activity and its outcomes. It’s called being a responsible parent. You want to go out and have indescriminate or discriminate sex, then you have to accept the fact that it is possible you can get pregnant (/a woman can get pregnant). If you can’t take care of the child yourself, there’s adoption. I know people who would LOVE to be parents but haven’t been able to have their own.
I’ve been through the physicalality of pregnancy and breast feeding. Yeah, it can be exahusting and hard, but I didn’t do it because I thought it was going to be lots of fun and exciting, I did it because as a Mother, providing for my child was my responsibility. The moment conception happened I was a Mom and as a mom it was my responsibility to do the best I could for my child.
Once I conceived that child it was no longer about just me, it was about that child, too.
Becoming a parent means stepping up to the plate and being responsibile. Yes, there are parents who have not done that, and more’s the pity, but the fact remains: conception means parenthood, which means responisibility, which means it’s not just about you anymore.
You don’t have to FEEL like you love the baby, you just have to act it. After all, love is NOT an adjective…it’s a noun and a verb. Warm fuzzies come and go, but responsibility remains.
“I’m serious, here: why is physical autonomy so important?”
I guess this is just a pretext for my wanting to live a promiscuous life filled with lots of consequences-free, non-procreative sex. Maybe some lesbian sex in there, too! I think you gloss over the physical autonomy issue because you don’t have an honest answer to it.
And where, exactly, would YOUR answer to Paladin’s question be? So, rather than actually answer the question, you put words in Paladin’s mouth? You. Sound. Insane.
Oh, way to appeal to my maternal sensibilities. I’m moved, truly.
It’s pretty clear you don’t have any maternal sensibilities. Not anymore. Killing one’s own offspring can do that to a person.
If a woman can be forced to house an embryo or fetus…
First of all, I still can’t get over the fact that the pro-aborts on this site act as if the embryo/fetus crawled up into the uterus as an act of his/her own will!! Your uterus HAS NO OTHER PURPOSE BUT TO HOUSE A GROWING EMBRYO/FETUS. Sorry to shout, but good Lord, I’m so tired of you acting like people don’t know how biology works. Maybe they don’t. Maybe those little birth control pills also affect logical reasoning.
why can’t we forcibly conscript people to harvest them for blood or organ donation, or force women into carrying unwanted embryos (say IVF cast-offs)?
Ok, here’s the thing: Sex results in reproduction. Not by mistake, but by design (whether you believe in God or not, it’s clear that reproduction is the overarching goal of sex). Sperm and egg meet and a new life is created. This is basic biology. It is hardwired into our BEING. It isn’t something we can will away or choose not to BE. We are living beings and we reproduce. Blood donation is not an act of basic reproduction or biology. IVF is a whole different animal. Moral and ethical issues abound. It’s one reason why I’m against IVF. Children are not commodities and we shouldn’t be creating and destroying them at will. They are human beings.
This doesn’t mean that fetuses after the potential point of viability, and especially in the third trimester, shouldn’t have any “rights.”
Why not? What would those rights be? What’s magical about viability? Isn’t a viable fetus still residing inside his/her mother’s womb? You’ve been arguing bodily autonomy, but it seems like you hedge a bit on this one. Why is that?
Tell me, why should a fertilized, newly-implanted egg’s right to life be privileged over a woman’s right not to be pregnant and mother a child?
First, let’s get our terminology straight: No such thing as a fertilized egg. Newly created, newly implanted life or blastocyst is better. It ceased to be an “egg” once fertilized by sperm and new DNA was set in place. Secondly, you assume that simply because a human isn’t of a certain stage in development, that somehow he doesn’t have as much inherent worth as another human being in a later stage of development. Thirdly, the right to LIVE always trumps someone else’s right to not be inconvenienced. There is no such thing as a “right to not be pregnant.” Abortion does not somehow negate the fact that you *were pregnant.* Abortion doesn’t make you “unpregnant.” It kills the developing life. As for not mothering a child, we’ve already established that a woman who gives birth does not have to parent that child but can choose someone else for that privilege.
Nah, see, Megan’s one of those “open minded” pro-choicers who discounts anything that is said by a person of faith, regardless of the fact that it may be true.
Why let ideology get in the way of facts?
You. Sound. Insane
I don’t think so. I think her use of the word hijack was fairly revealing though. That’s what the proaborts are doing. They want to hijack conscience protections and other aspects of health care for the sake of their agenda. It isn’t the innocent unborn child who is the hijacker. It’s the proaborts who disavow every shred of personal responsibility while trying to legislate what everyone else’s ought to be.
You. Sound. InsaneI don’t think so. I think her use of the word hijack was fairly revealing though. That’s what the proaborts are doing. They want to hijack conscience protections and other aspects of health care for the sake of their agenda. It isn’t the innocent unborn child who is the hijacker. It’s the proaborts who disavow every shred of personal responsibility while trying to legislate what everyone else’s ought to be.
I was actually referring to the part of Megan’s post where she went on a rant, putting words in Paladin’s mouth, as I quoted. It makes her sound unstable.
“Secondly, you assume that simply because a human isn’t of a certain stage in development, that somehow he doesn’t have as much inherent worth as another human being in a later stage of development.”
Yep. But keep arguing that a blastocyst’s moral worth must be privileged above the interests of the woman housing it, and argue against contraception on those grounds. Wow, you make the pro-life cause seem so legitimate and woman-centered: anti-abortion and anti-contraception. Score 1 for the pro-choice movement: you sound insane.
“Thirdly, the right to LIVE always trumps someone else’s right to not be inconvenienced.”
Well, no. I’m thinking of that dumb movie, what’s it called? My Sister’s Keeper? So is forced organ/blood harvesting legal, and if not, on what grounds? What about the existing cast-offs of IVF and stem cell research–should we find women to implant them in so they don’t “go to waste?”
“Why let ideology get in the way of facts?”
I got the facts without the ideology, that’s why. I read several of the studies Mother in T. listed, and that’s why I’m not on oral contraceptives. If there’s a fact, it doesn’t need to be muddled with religious ideology. Call me crazy, though–I’m just a grievin’ “mother-of-a-corpse.”
Kel @ 5:47pm, my bad. I skip over troll comments and only see them in snippets when other commenters reference them. Reading her words in context, I still don’t think she sounds unstable. She sounds like a typical troll. She could probably present reasoned arguments if she chose to, but that’s not the purpose of trolling, is it?
Sorry to shout…I’m so tired of you acting like people don’t know how biology works.
Kel you’ve voiced the very question I’ve been wanting to ask. I’ve been saying egg plus sperm = baby, but apparently for them it doesn’t…but you see, a funny thing happened to me…when I was at my most fertile stage of my cycle I made love with my husband, got pregnant and gave birth to a baby, not a “blob”. So maybe my body didn’t get their memo?
But keep arguing that a blastocyst’s moral worth must be privileged above the interests of the woman housing it,
No, a growing human being’s moral worth is EQUIVALENT to his mother’s. However, as many have repeated here time and time again, the blastocyst/embryo/fetus has more to lose: his life; his mother may have “interests,” but her interests should not override her child’s right to survive.
Wow, you make the pro-life cause seem so legitimate and woman-centered: anti-abortion and anti-contraception.
I’m against hormonal contraception not only for the possibility of harm to a growing child, but because of the harm it can and has done to women’s bodies. I’m also for that archaic notion of sex within marriage only, not only for the well-being of children born into that relationship, but for the well-being of both men and women, who are unlikely to reap the lovely benefits of STDs when faithful to each other. Among other benefits. Those are my positions.
“Thirdly, the right to LIVE always trumps someone else’s right to not be inconvenienced.”
Well, no. I’m thinking of that dumb movie, what’s it called?
So, you’re thinking “no,” based on a “dumb movie?” Okay…
So is forced organ/blood harvesting legal, and if not, on what grounds?
I don’t know enough about this topic to answer that, sorry.
What about the existing cast-offs of IVF and stem cell research–should we find women to implant them in so they don’t “go to waste?”
http://www.nightlight.org/adoption-services/snowflakes-embryo/default.aspx
So is forced organ/blood harvesting legal, and if not, on what grounds?
“I don’t know enough about this topic to answer that, sorry.”
Well that’s convenient! In that movie, which is dumb because it’s very sappy, a little girl’s parents want to force her to donate a kidney to her dying sister because their systems are so compatible. If the little girl doesn’t have the right to “liberty” in the sense of bodily sovereignty, what legal recourse does she have to protest against this treatment? What about prohibitions against rape, habeus corpus–what rights are these codes based on?
“No, a growing human being’s moral worth is EQUIVALENT to his mother’s.”
The reason for this debate in the first place is that not all people find your argument here to be self-evident, and not because all prochoice women are violently suppressing their maternal instincts or something. You haven’t convinced me yet that society should confer the right to life on blastocysts, which would unequivocaly trump a woman’s interests potentially divergent interests in physical liberty. Also, why shouldn’t physical independence be a condition for the “right to life”?
But seriously, do you spend ever month not pregnant crying over the toilet, wondering if your body rejected implantation of any blastocysts?
And why stop concern for developing babies at gestation? Pre-conception should totally be a target area. Why not prohibit smoking, mandate weight loss, and proscribe consumption of specific foods in reproductive-aged women? Everyone knows these things are bad for babies, and poor health statues of mothers makes their bodies less conducive to carrying a healthy pregnancy. Heck, why not consider miscarriage to be a form of manslaughter?
Nagem
September 24th, 2010 at 1:39 am
And why stop concern for developing babies at gestation? Pre-conception should totally be a target area. Why not prohibit smoking, mandate weight loss, and proscribe consumption of specific foods in reproductive-aged women? Everyone knows these things are bad for babies, and poor health statues of mothers makes their bodies less conducive to carrying a healthy pregnancy. Heck, why not consider miscarriage to be a form of manslaughter?
Actually, I’m all for women taking care of themselves whether they can have children or not. I’m not perfect at it, but that doesn’t change the fact that it’s a good idea. Prohibiting smoking is fine by me. I’m totally allergic to it and it’s contributed to the death of at least two of my relatives, if not more. So, sure go ahead, prohibit smoking. I’m sick of my eyes watering and me feeling sick everytime I’m around second-hand smoke. So yeah, I’m down with that. (I’ve been trying to get one of my friends to quit for YEARS!)
Yes, women should definitly take care of themselves whether they’re pregnant or not. Of course, I’m not perfect at that by any means, but, it doesn’t mean I don’t recognize how important one’s health is. It’s a good reminder to women to try and take care of themselves whether pregnant or not. And thank you for reminding me! :-)
As for miscarriage, NOT the same thing as abortion. A lot of women who miscarry don’t do it on purpose. In fact, the majority of women I know who have miscarried really tried hard to take care of themselves and were quite upset when they miscarried. Abortion is a willful act involving someone making the conscious decision to abort (kill) a pregnancy (baby), but miscarriage isn’t.
(Apologies for the length of this…!)
Megan wrote, in reply to my comment:
[Paladin]
“I’m serious, here: why is physical autonomy so important?”
[Megan]
I guess this is just a pretext for my wanting to live a promiscuous life filled with lots of consequences-free, non-procreative sex. Maybe some lesbian sex in there, too! I think you gloss over the physical autonomy issue because you don’t have an honest answer to it.
(??) You dodge my question with a sarcasm-filled, gutter-level rant, and then you accuse *me* of “glossing over” the issue? That’s rather telling, miss.
Let’s back up a few steps… since I’m one of those odd creatures who likes to have points addressed one at a time, before moving on to a plethora of new ones:
1) I asked you why your principles (which were strictly of the “duress and freedom of the mother” variety, when you first talked about all this) didn’t endorse post-birth infanticide as well as abortion, and you dodged the question with talk of “slippery slopes” (which, as I said, wasn’t my point at all).
2) When I asked (in a similar vein) why a mother shouldn’t have the legal and moral right to kill her *born* child who was conceived in rape (since rape-conception was reason enough for you to consent to an *unborn* child’s murder, whether the child was a “person” or not), you dodged that question by asking a new one.
3) I also asked why Roe v. Wade is at all relevant to the issue of whether abortion is morally wrong, or not (since the USA, including the SCOTUS, has provably enacted bad law in the past–see Dred Scott v. Sanford); and you dodged that question completely.
4) When I persisted, you then brought out the obliquely-related idea of “physical autonomy”, and you claimed that an unborn child’s lack of physical autonomy neutralizes its right to life, whether he or she is a “person” or not.
5) I then asked why physical autonomy was so important as to authorize death for one person, and not for another, and you replied (after pulling several teeth, metaphorically speaking) that the travails of pregnancy were so bad that the avoidance of them easily overwhelmed the child’s right to life. (You also went on an illogical slippery slope fallacy, suggesting that pro-lifers would approve of–or at least bring into being by their efforts–forced artificial insemination, forced organ transplants, and the like; if you disdain slippery slopes so much, would it be asking too much for you to stop using them, yourself?)
6) I then asked why this wouldn’t be the case with a woman trapped in a ski lodge with a colicky child for 9 months (without access to babysitters, adoption agencies, etc.)–i.e. why that woman shouldn’t have the moral and legal freedom to kill her baby daughter; and you replied with an irrelevant, snark-ridden tirade about sexual perversions.
7) You went on to misquote and misread Roe v. Wade in multiple ways, and then subsequently dropped that line of discussion when challenged.
8 ) A bit later, I asked: “Why don’t you “feel that a mother has no obligation to feed and nurture her own daughter, at least until the point where other options are available?” You replied with more intense snark (hint: that tells your opponent that you’re on shaky ground; no confident debater needs to result to ad hominem gibes and blather), followed by the suggestion that it was outrageous–and tantamount to “bodily hijacking”–for a child to depend on her mother for sustenance. I can only wonder how you come to that conclusion. (If we were to recast the world by your eyes, all women who didn’t slaughter their children–or give them up for adoption, if they didn’t find the process too burdensome–at the first sign of a burden would be either “masochists” or “heroes beyond all human imagination”. That’s… an odd view of the world, to say the least.)
Again, your response elided complete discussion of my statement.
(I assume you mean “eluded”?)
Given that I was “extending conversational credit” to you by answering your many questions (while you’d dodged mine), I think I’ve been rather patient and generous in question answering, actually. Does this mean that you’re ready to go back and address my questions that you… er… “missed”?
In the interests of magnanimity, here’s my further answer to your question:
First, I completely reject your bizarre categorization of “forced”, in this instance; unless you’re referring to the ridiculously dirt-level idea of “laws against murder continually force me to endure my enemy’s life on earth” (which is technically true, but a bizarre way to look at things), I can’t fathom why you could be so outraged. Do you seriously feel that motherhood can only be tolerable if the mother has moral and legal freedom to throw her children away at the first sign of duress? “Okay, I’ll be a mom… but this kid had better not cry when I’m tired or frustrated or sick; I need my sleep and rest and relaxation, you know… and forcing me to care for a child when I have burdens of my own is a moral crime!” No one is arguing against the idea that motherhood (and fatherhood, for that matter) can–and often will–entail sacrifice and suffering. I’m merely arguing against your insane assertion that this state of affairs is somehow “burdensome to the point of being morally criminal, and unjust enough to justify killing an innocent person”.
If a woman can be forced to house an embryo or fetus, why can’t we forcibly conscript people to harvest them for blood or organ donation,
This was answered already; and I really wonder why you’re “riding the slippery slope” again, after all your nasty things to say about them! To parrot one of your own questions: when have you last heard of forced blood donations in the USA, for example?
or force women into carrying unwanted embryos (say IVF cast-offs)?
I hope you see my point, above; you need either to: (a) recognize that debates about moral principles will necessarily involve extreme examples, or (b) stop using “slippery slope” examples. (Or, if you could give examples of women abducted off the street and forcibly inseminated with “castoff embryos”, that’d help, too.)
And letting a baby die in a remote cabin would be criminal neglect,
You *do* understand that this is a mere accident of culture, right? Nothing “cosmic” forced anyone–least of all, secular pro-abortion people and the like–to enact laws against child abandonment. It was quite common in other cultures, in fact. You really need to decide: do laws create morality (in which case, the abandonment of children in those other cultures was perfectly acceptable and morally right), or are laws *reflections* of morality (in which case there’s an external standard of right-and-wrong which goes beyond mere legislation and opinion)?
obviously, since the baby is a person, i.e. no longer directly sustaining itself off its mother’s body.
Oh, come now! In addition to the fact that you’d be wrong (if there were no formula at hand, breast milk would be the only mode of sustenance, yes? And I do wonder how long the child would survive without the mother cuddling the child, keeping her warm, etc.–all “sustaining off the mother’s body”; see http://www.thefreelibrary.com/The+truth+about+teaching+and+touching-a0160104146, and look for “King Frederick II”), why especially would “direct sustenance” be any worse than “being forced to feed, burp, and change the baby, suffer sleep deprivation and frazzled nerves from the crying, etc.”? Again, you seem to be sharing your own personal tastes, here… to which, I can only say, “Don’t become a mother, yourself, until you get over these severe, selfish hang-ups of yours.”
The child’s demands are external–while the mother uses her body, mechanically, to feed the child, this life is no longer growing inside of her.
Right. So why does that grant “personhood”?
And when does personhood begin? Oooh, we’re riding the moral slippery slope!
Mm-hmm. You seem to have gotten less averse to using them, yes.
Yes, at birth.
I really would appreciate it if you could work in a proof of that raw assertion, one of these times.
This doesn’t mean that fetuses after the potential point of viability, and especially in the third trimester, shouldn’t have any “rights.”
(??) Okay… aside from your personal tastes, opinions and feelings, why is that so? Do you have reasoning to back this up, or merely opinion? I assure you, I’m quite aware of your opinions and feelings on the matter, already.
However, the woman’s interests, though balanced against the fetus’, are still considered preeminent.
Now, please think this through: “considered” by whom? And are the opinions of these people (who hold the position) correct? If so, PROVE IT. You’re claiming that it’s “true”, and not merely your personal fancy; such a claim requires reasoning to demonstrate it beyond all reasonable doubt. You haven’t even begun to do that.
Women, in consultation with their physicians, should have a say in whether they can abort a pregnancy for medical reasons at these late stages, and to have control over her actions.
All right; you’ve given us yet another iteration of your personal opinion. Now: would you please prove your case?
It’s cruel and unusual, say, to shackle incarcerated pregnant women and women in labor,
(??) Under what possible circumstances would this be done? Have you heard of examples?
or to physically deny pregnant and depressed women their SSRI’s, or perform C-sections without informed consent–all out of concern for potential harm to the fetus or child.
I really think you have some serious difficulty with the idea of proportion. Don’t you see the difference between “remote chance of causing harm” and “causing certain death”? Abortion does the latter, to the child; if anything, you seem to be arguing against yourself, here. Even by your standard (stated here), would it not be “cruel and unusual” to dismember and kill a woman’s baby daughter on the remote chance that the pregnancy might inflict physical or psychological harm on the mother?
Tell me, why should a fertilized, newly-implanted egg’s right to life be privileged over a woman’s right not to be pregnant and mother a child?
(There’s no such thing as a fertilized egg; you’re speaking of a zygote, I think. Your efforts to dehumanize the child in utero are leading you to make some bizarre statements…) For the same reason that the mother’s right to life supersedes the child’s right not to be jostled in the womb by a mother’s seat belt; life is the primal right of all rights, on which all other rights depend. Isn’t that quite clear?
You haven’t convinced me yet that society should confer the right to life on blastocysts, which would unequivocaly trump a woman’s interests potentially divergent interests in physical liberty.
Without the right to life, there can be no liberty. And as has President Obama, you seem to have forgotten that the Constitution does not state that “society” confers a right to life to ANYONE. “That they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
Also, why shouldn’t physical independence be a condition for the “right to life”?
Because even those who are not physically independent and yet are living, have the right to remain alive and not be terminated at will by the person who flips the switch.
But seriously, do you spend ever month not pregnant crying over the toilet, wondering if your body rejected implantation of any blastocysts?
This isn’t a serious question, it’s another ad hominem attack. There are MANY, MANY women who cannot conceive and you’ve just insulted every single one of them. Congrats.
And why stop concern for developing babies at gestation? Pre-conception should totally be a target area.
In case you haven’t noticed, it totally IS a target area. During childbearing years and when trying to conceive, doctors recommend women take extra folic acid to help prevent neural tube birth defects in the event of a pregnancy. They also recommend quitting smoking prior to pregnancy (men, too, as some studies have shown it affects the health of sperm). Mandating and prohibiting aren’t typically done, though. However, certain things are most definitely recommended.
Heck, why not consider miscarriage to be a form of manslaughter?
Most miscarriages take place in the first trimester, and most causes are wholly unknown. And it wasn’t a serious question anyway. Unless you think abortion, then, is first-degree murder?
Paladin, I’m not soft-pedaling anything; I just can’t provide you with the answers you want to here. This is because both our conceptions of life (no pun intended) ARE matters of personal taste, and we want other people to share in that belief, too. That’s how law is created. Your positivism is so militant that you can’t seem to see how this statement requires interpretation: “Life is the primal right of all rights, on which all other rights depend.” For the purposes of this argument, let’s say we both agree that “life” is important. That still leaves that categorical imperative to be translated into practice, into definition. So what is “life?” You say life begins at conception, and I do, too, but that fetus’ do not merit the rights of personhood until the fetus has some degree of physical autonomy. My moral framework bases the definition of life on physical sovereignty–the right to control what goes in, out, and happens inside one’s material body. From this perspective, infants and children are protected from bodily harm (and people on life support, or with critical disabilities, or Siamese twins, etc,) because they’re not living inside another person.
And FYI, restrictions are placed against pregnant women all the time. Incarcerated partrurients are shackled during labor (a quick Google search will turn up some shocking stats); drug-addicted pregnant women are tried and convicted of child abuse, and sent to jail (where no serious rehab and healing could ever take place), all out of concern for the fetus; and women in manufacturing jobs face restrictions based on potential fertility (see Johnson Controls, 1984). In all these instances, the fetus’ right to life is privileged above the mother’s interests. These laws are not enacted to protect WOMEN, but to protect fetuses. If blastocysts, embryos and fetuses should be considered worthy of legal protection, then society should have no problem restricting what women of reproductive age eat, smoke, drink, etc. Sure, the causes of miscarriage are unknown, but we KNOW ways to make the body less hostile to developing life. Why not merget the recommendations and prohibitions? And in this age of advancements in genome mapping, why not prevent certain women from bearing children altogether, out of concern for fetal harm?
By the way, the word is “ELIDE,” in the sense of “leaving out of consideration.” No need to be condescending, bro.
Megan,
Before we begin again, perhaps it might help to say this: I honestly have nothing personal against you, nor do I harbour any ill-will toward you. I will certainly confront whatever you say that I find to be wrong (especially if it seems dangerous to sane morality or the like), but I hope you won’t mistake that for animosity. I may well be merciless with one or more of your pet ideas, but that doesn’t translate into anything other than a sincere desire to warn you (and others) away from ideas which can only spread error, grief and pain.
You wrote:
Paladin, I’m not soft-pedaling anything; I just can’t provide you with the answers you want to here.
Well… I appreciate your candour (and relative lack of rancour, in this reply); but since you’ve made your pronouncements boldly and in objective-sounding language, it’s only natural that I (and others) would ask you to back up those statements with solid reasoning, and not mere personal preferences. When you presume to imply that anti-abortion people are degrading, demeaning, imprisoning, abusing, exploiting, etc., women, that’s a serious charge… and it would be wrong of you to level such charges without proof. It’s that very proof for which I’m asking; the alternative is for you to back down from those inflammatory comments, apologize (don’t worry–all of us have had to apologize, at one time or another), and start over.
This is because both our conceptions of life (no pun intended) ARE matters of personal taste, and we want other people to share in that belief, too.
Hold on. We (pro-lifers) certainly want others to share our belief; that’s true. But we want others to share our belief because it’s TRUE, not because we happen to hold it. The right to life of a child–at any stage of development, is hardly a matter of personal taste; it’s an instance of raw fact. Humans are physically free to ignore that fact, just as they’re physically free to ignore the fact that smoking crack is destructive; but the fact remains. I assure you, it’s not a matter of personal taste on the side of life; it’s a matter of stopping a moral outrage of the worst order.
That’s how law is created.
And I (and others) already pointed this out, incessantly: the mere existence of a law says nothing special about whether the law is morally “just” or not; evil laws (such as the Dred Scott v. Sanford decision–I *did* mention that before, once or twice!) do, in fact, exist… and there must be some way to DECIDE which laws are evil, and which are not. Surely you see that? Surely you see that (for example) any law mandating every woman to be inseminated with “left-over embryos from IVF” (by the way: do you now see some reasons why IVF is morally evil?) must be an evil law? You wouldn’t roll over and say, “It’s now the law of the land, so it must be okay”, would you?
Your positivism is so militant that you can’t seem to see how this statement requires interpretation: “Life is the primal right of all rights, on which all other rights depend.”
The statement is one of pure logic, Megan. Life is the predicate for all other rights; if one is not alive, one will not have any other rights (e.g. liberty, pursuit of happiness, eligibility for marriage, etc.). Do you not see this?
For the purposes of this argument, let’s say we both agree that “life” is important.
That’s rather vague, don’t you think? Lots of things are “important”, but some have priority over others; and it isn’t just a matter of “counting noses” in a vote, or going on one’s personal tastes. Planning for one’s retirement is “important”, as is getting enough sleep and eating well; but abstaining from murdering my next-door neighbour with a flame-thrower is “important”, as well… and yet, I think I’d place a bit more emphasis on the importance of the latter.
That still leaves that categorical imperative to be translated into practice, into definition. So what is “life?” You say life begins at conception, and I do, too,
Half a moment. When pro-lifers say, “Life begins at conception”, surely you know that this is shorthand for saying, “The personal life of a discrete human being begins at conception”? We mean that “personal life, complete with all the rights pertaining to a person, begins at conception”. Conception is the beginning of personhood, not merely biological animation.
but that fetus’ do not merit the rights of personhood until the fetus has some degree of physical autonomy.
So you say. I’m still waiting for you to explain why that must be the case. For you to say, “It’s my firmly-held opinion, and it’s self-evident!”, I (and others) would reply that it isn’t at all self-evident to us (in fact, we find “personhood from conception” to be self-evident), and that we need you to offer more than that.
My moral framework bases the definition of life on physical sovereignty–the right to control what goes in, out, and happens inside one’s material body.
I understand. Now: please explain why your moral framework is right, and not wrong. It isn’t merely up to pure chance or whim; if your statement is objectively true, then there must be some way to demonstrate that.
From this perspective, infants and children are protected from bodily harm (and people on life support, or with critical disabilities, or Siamese twins, etc,) because they’re not living inside another person.
But do you not see that your criterion is arbitrary, even by your own standards? You abhor “living inside another person” because you (apparently) are disgusted with the idea; it seems to repel you on some primal level. Accepted. But if you’re trying to extend that personal bias to a universal principle of morality, it must have objective reasons to support it. Some pro-euthanasia people would sneer at your definition, saying that an elderly grandmother with Alzheimer’s Disease who is on life-support is draining away the financial resources of the family, and placing that family in dire distress which eclipses that of a pregnant mother (which is at least a natural phenomenon, as opposed to life-support machinery). Don’t you see?
And FYI, restrictions are placed against pregnant women all the time. Incarcerated partrurients
:) You *are* exercising your lexiconic erudition, aren’t you?
are shackled during labor (a quick Google search will turn up some shocking stats);
All right (and I agree–all other things being equal, that practice is disturbing to me); data noted.
drug-addicted pregnant women are tried and convicted of child abuse, and sent to jail (where no serious rehab and healing could ever take place),
I can’t speak to the last point (which is likely, but beside the point; I doubt that you’d approve of jail time, even if the rehabilitation programs in jail were fantastic… true?), but I don’t see why you’d be upset about the first. I could probably think of several scenarios in which you’d sympathize with jail time for a mother who poisoned her child, even through willful negligence (e.g. having a peanut butter sandwich when she knew her child was violently allergic to peanuts, chain-smoking in the house with a child who she knew had severe asthma, etc.). On that point: you *do* know that the possession and use of illegal drugs is… well… illegal (and cause for arrest/jail) in its own right, don’t you?
all out of concern for the fetus;
All out of concern for the unborn child, yes. (Do look up the etymology of “fetus”, when you get a moment; it’s not nearly so dehumanizing as you might think.)
and women in manufacturing jobs face restrictions based on potential fertility (see Johnson Controls, 1984).
(??) And you object to this? Given that the risks are real and proportionately grave, what woman in her right mind would WANT to recklessly endanger her child, otherwise? (If, rather, the risks were faint, unconfirmed and remote, then I’d say these women would have solid basis for complaint, on moral grounds.)
In all these instances, the fetus’ right to life is privileged above the mother’s interests.
Perhaps you could define “interests” a bit more clearly? At the moment, it could mean anything from “personal imperative” to “passing fancy”.
These laws are not enacted to protect WOMEN, but to protect fetuses.
Car seats are designed to protect children, and not their mothers; do you decry them (with their nuisance, legal burden, and added expense), as well?
If blastocysts, embryos and fetuses
Try rewording that: “children, children and children”; you’ve already admitted that your argument doesn’t care if the child is a person or not, so you might as well call people by their true names, yes?
should be considered worthy of legal protection, then society should have no problem restricting what women of reproductive age eat, smoke, drink, etc.
Replace the “clinical-sounding” words with “children”, and see if your statement is more, less or equally compelling to you. As for the issue of proportionality, see below.
Sure, the causes of miscarriage are unknown, but we KNOW ways to make the body less hostile to developing life. Why not merget the recommendations and prohibitions?
Now, do you remember what I said about proportion? That which has a vague and unproven chance of being a threat should not be treated identically to that which is a near-certain and grave threat; don’t you agree? A provably pregnant mother who knowingly and regularly drinks herself into a stupor should be treated a bit differently than a mother who didn’t eat her full complement of “5 veggie servings per day”, right?
And in this age of advancements in genome mapping, why not prevent certain women from bearing children altogether, out of concern for fetal harm?
Here’s where you’re in grave danger of going off the tracks completely; what sort of “harm” do you have in mind? Down’s Syndrome? Trisomy 13? Cystic fibrosis? What, exactly, would constitute “harm” in your mind, and how do you justify giving it moral parity with “freely choosing to rip an unborn child limb from limb, for the purpose of killing him/her”?
By the way, the word is “ELIDE,” in the sense of “leaving out of consideration.” No need to be condescending, bro.
(*sigh*) I wasn’t trying to condescend; I was honestly trying to point out a potential typo. (You’ll note that “i” and “u” are immediately next to each other on the keyboard?) Believe me or not, as you like.
Hi Paladin. I don’t I don’t feel any animosity towards you, either. In fact, I don’t even think pro-lifers are out to oppress women, though I can say that some of your positions result in conditions of oppression. I believe every woman should enter into pregnancy freely and willingly, and that sex is not a contract for pregnancy.
“But we want others to share our belief because it’s TRUE, not because we happen to hold it. The right to life of a child–at any stage of development, is hardly a matter of personal taste; it’s an instance of raw fact.”
What do you think of pro-lifers who are also pro-contraception (not only barrier methods, but also OC and IUDs)? Is their pro-life position compromised, or do you still consider them worthy to champion the pro-life cause?
I’m not trying to convince you that my position is objectively “right.” Laws represent what is most tolerable in society at a given time, or what the majority vote deems tolerable. This isn’t to say there aren’t “universals”—certain beliefs have reached near-consensus in almost every human society. I’m thinking about prohibitions against murder, or the incest taboo. But within these strongly-held beliefs there is significant room for interpretation. Take the “right to life” belief, for example. Our country is at war, and it is accepted that many civilians—children included—have, and will become, casualties of this military endeavor. Yet the majority of voters and lawmakers think it is more tolerable to take pre-emptive military action, most certainly killing innocent people, than to have another attack on American soil. Which lives are privileged in this instance?
I refuse to make appeals to some universal “truth” to support my position. I find it more useful to illustrate the outcomes of the legal codification of our respective principles. And right now’s a useful time to clarify my discussion of various instances where society has oppressed pregnant women. The issue with these restrictions is their framing. For example, with the Johnson Controls, restrictions were enacted not out of concern for women, but for unborn children. JC also conveniently ignored the fact that many men at the company were probably fathers, and that by working at JC they’d be exposing their children to harmful substances should they come home with chemicals on their clothing, say. And back to the drug addiction example: I obviously don’t think it’s a “good” idea to smoke crack while pregnant. The mother definitely exposes her unborn child to harmful substances and her lifestyle is probably not conducive to overall good health if she’s high. However, pregnant women found guilty of using illegal substances are charged primarily with child abuse, and not with possession of crack. Again, the focus is on the unborn child, and not the woman (and while incarceration is a separate issue, and I have my certain beliefs on the matter, I don’t think a jail is ever a healthy place to be pregnant, and I therefore find incarceration, and not drug rehab, hard to reconcile with legal statements professing to support the health of unborn children and babies).
You could probably gloss over that last part in parentheses about jail—I can get rather polemical on the whole subject. I really think it’s horrible the way pregnant women are treated in our nation’s jails, and have been quite outspoken about it (See! I don’t think pregnancy is an invariably horrible experience!). My point is that we have separate legal categories for pregnant women and non-pregnant women, which I believe to be unjust and a direct outcome of “right-to-life” beliefs. If our legal system took liberty (including physical sovereignty) as its foundation for matters concerning pregnancy, unborn children would not have an inherent right to life (because they aren’t physically autonomous, and the mother’s physical liberty would override any right-to-life claims); however, this perspective would also confer the right-to-life to born children.
Hi, Megan,
You wrote, in reply to my comment:
[Paladin]
“But we want others to share our belief because it’s TRUE, not because we happen to hold it. The right to life of a child–at any stage of development, is hardly a matter of personal taste; it’s an instance of raw fact.”
[Megan]
What do you think of pro-lifers who are also pro-contraception (not only barrier methods, but also OC and IUDs)? Is their pro-life position compromised, or do you still consider them worthy to champion the pro-life cause?
I’d have to parse out your question, in order to answer it accurately:
a) Do those who approve of hormonal contraception and IUD’s compromise their pro-life position? Yes (though they may well be doing so innocently, and through lack of knowledge), since both of these have been implicated in early abortions (i.e. making the endometrium hostile to implantation of the new child).
b) Do those who approve of non-abortifacient artificial contraception compromise their pro-life position? Somewhat, but on orders of magnitude lower than the aforementioned. The issue of “contraceptive mentality fueling the fires of the abortion mentality” is real and (I think) easily demonstrable, but the very topic would serve more as a “divide-and-conquer red herring” (in this particular line of questioning) than it would any approach to a reasonable resolution. I’d be happy to discuss that topic with you in another thread, or at another time; but if we could, let’s stick to explicit abortion, for now.
c) There’s no real use in speaking of “worthiness” to champion the pro-life cause; the phrase (especially for a Christian) is meaningless, and it doesn’t apply to anything on the topic. Even in the secular sense, there’s no “worthiness panel” which approves one’s ability to chime in on a discussion forum, right? As for “worthiness” in general, we’re *all* unworthy sinners; Christ didn’t come to save the “worthy”; He came to save us wretched rebels who prove our unworthiness at every turn. No… any talk of “worthiness” in this matter makes no sense.
I’m not trying to convince you that my position is objectively “right.”
That’s precisely what you will have to do, I’m afraid; or else you’ll have no basis on which you could convince me (or anyone else who doesn’t share your personal and particular moods, opinions and tastes) of anything! Two people throwing their vehement opinions at one another is likely to make quite a bit of noise, but it’s very unlikely to “convince”. If moral absolutes exist at all (and I assert that they certainly do–and that you agree with me, at least on some level, on that general point), then there will be such a thing as “right” and “wrong” laws, and “right” and “wrong” views on morality.
Laws represent what is most tolerable in society at a given time, or what the majority vote deems tolerable.
Right. That’s why some laws are good, some are (mostly) neutral, and some are evil.
This isn’t to say there aren’t “universals”—certain beliefs have reached near-consensus in almost every human society.
Hold on. A moral principle isn’t “universal (in the sense of being a universal moral principle)” simply because it’s popular and nearly ubiquitous! Laziness, for example, is epidemic in most societies, but no one seriously proposed it as a standard of excellence and/or a trait to be admired/imitated; the same could be said for gluttony, lust, and a thousand other common human weaknesses and sins. “Consensus” does not establish morality (“proof by consensus” is a textbook fallacy, in fact); only sane reason and an acknowledgment of objective moral law can do that.
But within these strongly-held beliefs there is significant room for interpretation. Take the “right to life” belief, for example. Our country is at war, and it is accepted that many civilians—children included—have, and will become, casualties of this military endeavor. Yet the majority of voters and lawmakers think it is more tolerable to take pre-emptive military action, most certainly killing innocent people, than to have another attack on American soil. Which lives are privileged in this instance?
Good question… and I think you’ve illustrated why consensus is not, and cannot be, a guide for moral absolutes; your own sane reason recognizes the fact that attacks which specifically (or heedlessly) target innocent civilians are morally wrong… despite any consensus to the contrary.
That’s one of many distinctions we’d need to make, by the way: is the proposed attack specifically targeting an innocent? If so, then it’s unquestionably evil.
I refuse to make appeals to some universal “truth” to support my position.
Again: unless you’re content to swim in a sea of relativistic nonsense (in which reasoned debate and science are both replaced by hyperbolic and vitriolic screaming matches), you’ll need to rethink that position. Otherwise, you’ll cut the ground out from under any future attempts to defend your claims of anything (even the most outrageous crimes) being “right” or “wrong”.
I find it more useful to illustrate the outcomes of the legal codification of our respective principles.
Well… think that through: if the outcomes are “bad”, you’ll need some objective standard to show WHY they’re “bad”; otherwise, what’s to prevent someone from (hypothetically) saying, after looking at your points, “Yes, I agree that all of those effects may well happen. So what?” If someone thinks that lung cancer isn’t a bad thing, why should they care whether their second-hand smoke causes cancer in their loved ones? You and I would both regard that as an insane position, I think… but it takes objective morality (e.g. “innocent life should not be endangered in any significant or serious way, out of mere whim or search for pleasure”) to show that fact.
And right now’s a useful time to clarify my discussion of various instances where society has oppressed pregnant women.
And again: you seem to think that the oppression of women (and we’d need to define that, at least somewhat) is absolutely wrong. Why? (I agree, but you’ll need to base it on more than our mutual feelings.) What if your audience thinks that “might makes right”, and his oppression of women is morally right simply because he’s stronger and more fit in the “Darwinian sense”?
The issue with these restrictions is their framing. For example, with the Johnson Controls, restrictions were enacted not out of concern for women, but for unborn children.
I would argue that the two aren’t mutually exclusive; nor are women’s preferences for “career freedom” comparable to preventable and likely life-and-death situations. My desire to be a math teacher, for example, is of far less gravity than is someone else’s right to life, and I am morally forbidden from making any deliberate choices which violate that priority in any significant and proximate way.
JC also conveniently ignored the fact that many men at the company were probably fathers, and that by working at JC they’d be exposing their children to harmful substances should they come home with chemicals on their clothing, say.
True. I’d suggest, though, that such contamination would be less likely, and more remote.
And back to the drug addiction example: I obviously don’t think it’s a “good” idea to smoke crack while pregnant. The mother definitely exposes her unborn child to harmful substances and her lifestyle is probably not conducive to overall good health if she’s high.
I think you may be able to see the need for objective standards, here; otherwise, on what basis could you say that smoking crack was “bad” in any sense of the word (other than the fact that you and I don’t happen to like it)?
However, pregnant women found guilty of using illegal substances are charged primarily with child abuse, and not with possession of crack.
I’d add, as an aside: this is a mere accident of law, which could have been wildly different if the various legislatures had thought differently. This is yet another reason why an objective standard is needed; or else all rational basis for complaints will evaporate.
Again, the focus is on the unborn child, and not the woman
Perhaps (though again, the two overlap), but the life of the child *is* of greater importance than the woman’s liberty to live exactly as she pleases. (The same would apply to men.)
My point is that we have separate legal categories for pregnant women and non-pregnant women, which I believe to be unjust and a direct outcome of “right-to-life” beliefs.
It’s certainly an outcome of right-to-life beliefs, yes; but you’d have to explain *why* you believe it to be unjust (above and beyond your raw opinion and feelings); I trust you don’t want people to view your strong convictions about ethics with the same lightness that they’d view your taste for olives (whatever it might be)!
If our legal system took liberty (including physical sovereignty) as its foundation for matters concerning pregnancy, unborn children would not have an inherent right to life
I’d reword that, a bit: “If our legal system took ‘liberty’ to be the PARAMOUNT principle of ethics, above and beyond the right to life of ANYONE, then yes… the right to life of unborn children would not be recognized.” But do note: under such a government, ALL right to life would be imperilled; if liberty always trumps life, then my freedom to prefer a quite night’s sleep empowers me to shoot and kill my noisy neighbour. And note: this isn’t an appeal to any “slippery slope”, either (i.e. a fear of what might possibly happen in the future); it’s an iron-clad deduction from the premises, using sound logical principles.
(because they aren’t physically autonomous, and the mother’s physical liberty would override any right-to-life claims); however, this perspective would also confer the right-to-life to born children.
I’m not sure your case would work as smoothly as that; there are numerous gray areas (e.g. woman trapped in a ski lodge with only breast milk to feed the colicky baby, a child whose expensive medical condition so impoverishes a family that the mother’s nutrition and health suffer markedly; such a condition might well inflict worse physical damage on a mother than might a difficult pregnancy). But above all: we’ll need to see which moral principles are absolute, and which are not, before we could make any general claims like that.
Obviously human societies create standards by which to live to achieve consistency and avoid anarchy. Some of these frameworks based entirely on secular principles. Let’s deal with the assertion that “murder is wrong.” Just as easy as one could say “God abhors murder,” so too could one make references to notions about the human psychological condition and the “will to life” or “will to power,” or invoke Golden Rule principles: “I have an instinctive desire for self-preservation, and therefore I shall not harm my neighbor because this would give him license to kill me.”
You aren’t going to force the world under the banner of one type of ethics or morality because there is no empirically verifiable objective moral truth (and no, referencing the Ten Commandments doesn’t cut it). You seem to be arguing that we can’t create standards for society without religion, which is definitely not the case. And debating ethics doesn’t have to devolve into a “shouting match”; what are we doing here? We’re discoursing.
Obviously human societies create standards by which to live to achieve consistency and avoid anarchy. Some of these frameworks based entirely on secular principles. Let’s deal with the assertion that “murder is wrong.” Just as easy as one could say “God abhors murder,” so too could one make references to notions about the human psychological condition and the “will to life” or “will to power,” or invoke Golden Rule principles: “I have an instinctive desire for self-preservation, and therefore I shall not harm my neighbor because this would give him license to kill me.”
So now how do we proceed? Do we want to continue trafficking in claims about abstract, unverifiable moral absolutes, or proceed from a different standpoint? Consequentialist, maybe?
Oops, guess that posted twice. Sorry.
Hi Nagem.
“You aren’t going to force the world under the banner of one type of ethics or morality because there is no empirically verifiable objective moral truth.”
Now why should empirical verification be the only standard (or at least the default standard) by which we arrive at truth? In fact, how does one empirically verify that the only (or best) way to arrive at truth that should be held by all is empirical verification? The problem with the principle of empirical verification is that it collapsed under its own weight in the 1950s. It is also a killer of science. Science is based on philosophy- what constitutes a good study, what is good methodology, why shouldn’t you fake your results, etc.
In our experience, we intuit a realm of objective moral realism. That is, there are certain things that we as human beings realize is always and everywhere, in every possible world, wrong. For example, there is no possible world in which it is moral to rape, or torture a small child for fun. Or there is no world in which lying is considered virtuous, or cowardice is cherished. Those who believe otherwise do not have properly functioning minds. If someone believes that rape can sometimes be moral, then their cognitive faculties are not properly functioning. Once one realizes this, it is not a far cry to extrapolate and hammer out those other moral values which are objective and binding upon all men.
Oh oops. That was in response to the ongoing conversation with Paladin, I see… well, that was my piece, and I shall leave now…