Planned Parenthood ♥s Barack Obama
I’m flattered. The Truth About Margaret Sanger blog is calling Day Gardner and me “the other Obama girls.” Day is president of the National Black Pro-Life Union and also has had plenty to say about Obama’s radical pro-abortion position.
But Obama girls like us won’t be sending him any valentines this year. Not to worry, Obama’s girls at Planned Parenthood are sending him plenty of love. This will be tricky since they’re all heartless.
Obama loves PP, too. Actually, they prostitute one another. PP helps elect Obama so he can turn around and appropriate tax money to it. He’s trying to legislate PP an abortuary load of cash at the moment. PP explains why in its Obama love note….
tax $$ for PP’s “comprehensive” sex ed classes – ✓
tax $$ for contraceptives and the morning-after pill – ✓
tax $$ for other PP “services” like examinations, pregnancy and STD testing – ✓
Basically, the PFA will give PP tax $$ for every service and product it sells except candles and abortion.
And this $$ isn’t for poor women. It’s for women who make too much $$ to qualify for any other assistance. Middle class socialized reproductive health care.
Ah, love $$ is in the air. So, happy VD! Whoops, VD is also short for Venereal Disease, which we now know as Sexually Transmitted Disease, or STD. Yeah, I guess that works.
Jan.11, 2008 5:02 pm |
Industry watch |
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.
Jeeze, Jill, did something happen to you? Your posts have been on fire! :)
Nathan, I’m having a good day… :) TY.
The worst thing for a politician is when people aren’t talking about them. They’ll take publicity, even if some people think it’s “bad.”
Shrieky.
Shrill.
The eight-year window of opportunity with a Republican House, Senate, and Oval Office is fading to grey…
I’M FEELIN’ THE LOOOOOOOOVE!
Unfortunately, there’s no way to fund contraception and comprehensive sex ed in this country without those funds going to an organization that supports abortion. We pro-lifers have totally dropped the ball on this.
I’d love to be able to write to my Congresscritters and tell them that they should fund a non-abortion-supporting family-planning organization instead of Planned Parenthood. But there isn’t one.
This prolifer is in favor of abstinence only education.
“Abstinence Only” education will be effective when only ONE thing happens: When the media stops glorifying pre marital sex, when celebrities are no longer given all the attention they get, and when DECENT role models for young people start showing up.
Not even then.
“Abstinence Only” education will be effective when only ONE thing happens: When the media stops glorifying pre marital sex, when celebrities are no longer given all the attention they get, and when DECENT role models for young people start showing up.
Posted by: Mike at January 11, 2008 9:19 PM
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
There was just a bulletin on “E” channel.
Apparently every pop-diva and celebutante on the planet burst into children today.
Can anyone else SMELL foreboding and doom? (Heck, I was sweating bullets when those airheads started collecting tiny dogs. I wasn’t wrong…)
There was premarital sex, and lots of it, before there was mass media and the celebrity culture. I agree that there is a lot that’s pathological about the way sex is portrayed in our society, but you could get rid of that tomorrow and “abstinence-only” still wouldn’t work.
There was premarital sex, and lots of it, before there was mass media and the celebrity culture. I agree that there is a lot that’s pathological about the way sex is portrayed in our society, but you could get rid of that tomorrow and “abstinence-only” still wouldn’t work.
Posted by: Jen R at January 11, 2008 9:43 PM
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
No! No! No!
We have a poster who SWEARS there was no pre-marital sex, adultery or porn before Kinsey and Hefner came along.
not true, it was no where near as bad as it is today. baloney.
not true, it was no where near as bad as it is today. baloney.
Posted by: jasper at January 11, 2008 9:50 PM
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The worst year for teen pregnancy in America?
1958
The rate of teen pregnancy has taken a total dive in the last 15 years.
You need to read a fabulous book called “The Way We Never Were” that has the true facts and stats about America in the 20th century. (Did you know that the rate of stranger abduction-murders of children hasn’t changed since the FBI started keeping records in the early 1920’s? We just hear about every Amber Alert these days, and thats a GOOD THING…)
not true, it was no where near as bad as it is today. baloney.
Posted by: jasper at January 11, 2008 9:50 PM
………………………….
Right. History began the day you were born. @@
Or perhaps evil began the day you were born. Muuuuwwaahaha.
who are you Anon? why hide yourself? come out into the light. don’t be afraid.
Directed to FetusFascist —
Author of “The Way We Never Were”…would that be Stephanie Coontz?
Directed to FetusFascist —
Author of “The Way We Never Were”…would that be Stephanie Coontz?
Posted by: Angela at January 11, 2008 10:21 PM
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The very one.
Thank you for adding the author. I’ve got the book sitting not three feet from me, and was too lazy to get it.
‘Will obtain the book and scrutinize.
Now…here’s one for you:
Killer Angel, authored by George Grant.
‘Am interested in a discussion once we’ve each completed our reading.
who are you Anon? why hide yourself? come out into the light. don’t be afraid.
Posted by: jasper at January 11, 2008 10:11 PM
…………………………….
I am me. How would I be hiding?
Did you know that contary to PC opinion babies (n the womb)are considered persons under the law. Roe V Wade did not change that, it just said that the privacy rights of the woman trumps the baby’s rights. So the death Roe decision gave women the right to kill their babies if they want to, but nobody in government or on the Supreme Court has ever said the babies were not persons and deserving of protection under the law. So anybody who elects to abort their healthy baby will always be looked upon as a killer, even if they are not prosecuted for it. Maybe thats why they keep it so private and do not want to talk about it.
They might sound off on a blog cause they are hidden, but who wants to be known as a killer to the people they meet face-to-face?
MK!!!!
Here are pictures!
http://minnesota.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=43213808&l=72670&id=13956917
http://minnesota.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=43213809&l=47aca&id=13956917
YAY!
Directed to FetusFascist —
‘Hope you aren’t standoff-ish due to the ‘assignment’.
Certainly, you should scrutinize as well!
It’s all of 121 pages…and it’s just a book.
Doug’s dog stories.
Just about can’t believe it – been 35 years. My Paddington, part Siberian Husky, part Bernese Mountain Dog.
Medium size really, but mighty. You know how dogs “establish dominance”? Never saw another dog not back down to him, but Paddy wasn’t really aggressive.
I was 13, and we moved to the farm where my dad lives to this day. That first winter we figure Paddy went down and was chasing the neighbor’s horses.
He came home, happy and sassy, but with a big bloody cut on his jaw area. Maybe a horse kicked him. Took him to the vet, and they sewed him up, said they’d keep him overnight, no problem.
The next day my mom said, “Doug, Paddy died.” Probably a blood clot. No BS, no fluff, no attempts at “breaking it to me gently.” I was already sort of “hardcore” as far as going to the heart of the matter, and though I was still my mom’s baby, to some extent, she respected that.
In March, we’re going to have a bg family reuninon at my aunt’s/my mom’s sister’s place in Florida, and I will honor my mom for that, there.
___
Moppie, AKA the Mop Dog. Cockapoo, jet-black and maybe 8 pounds.
Made her way around the spaceways, in our imagination, the paths between worlds, etc. Had a bright, new Monte Carlo. One hard-and-fast reality – I was 19 or so, and on a cold after-Thanksgiving day I went out for a run, after there had been a big snow.
Moppie followed me down the lane – our dirt and gravel street down towards the paved road. I expected her to turn back, but she didn’t.
So we went, she keeping not too far behind me. Almost no traffic “out in the boonies” where we lived, especially after the snow. Thing was, my route took me in a rectangle, turning right on the paved road, then right again on another gravel road, then right on another, and eventually working my way back to our house over farm lanes and fields.
I’m 6′ 2 1/2″ but poor Moppie was like 10″ tall. I’m running through the fields at the end, and it’s not that big a deal, but there’s Moppie, “porpoising” through snow almost as tall as she is high.
I didn’t leave her, but didn’t stop. That was one stout-hearted dog; she made it home, exhausted.
……
Leroy. Half Bassett Hound, half Dachsund. I loved him for his limitless science. Hard to imagine all that Leroy did in our imagination. He, like Moppie, was my stepmother’s dog. He had more guile than ten humans. And more laziness, and more jealousy, and more spitefullness toward other dogs. Still we loved him – in a way hard to imagine.
Doug
Did you know that contary to PC opinion babies (n the womb)are considered persons under the law
No, they’re not. They should be, but they’re not.
Jen R, you are my hero.
::clings::
We need to stick together!
I don’t know about any of you, but the celebrity pop culture and the over-glorification of sex only repulses me and makes sex seem less appealing to me.
Yet… I still have a sex life as an unmarried woman.
I’m quite certain Hollywood has nothing to do with it, thanks. Not everyone sticks their noses into weekly issues of Glamour with fascination. ((vomit))
ps: Valentine’s Day=yuck
Jen and prettyinpink,
They are considered persons. I am sorry if it hurts but you are mistaken or in denial. People are getting prosecuted all the time for aggression that harms babies in the womb. Roe V Wade just gave the mother a get-out-jail-free because they deemed a mother’s privacy rights trump the rights of the baby. Anybody else who harms a baby in the womb is subject to prosecution. The fact the baby inside has value and deserves protection has never been disputed by civilized society.
I can recall just last year a case where a man attacked his girlfriend and cut the baby out of her womb. He was charged for two homocides.
How do I knnow you are the real HisMan???
Anyway, to answer your question IMHO those stats are likely not available cause the only one that has them are PP and they wouldn’t want to have that information out in public. I wish I knew though.
Jen R. and prettyinpink,
I apologize for saying you are in denial. I believe you really just did not know. Please accept my apology. I was looking to jump on whoever replied to that post cause my anger got the best of me.
They know that the cold hard facts of what goes on in that place would put them out of business.
Gee, I was an ardent Hillary supporter before I read this post on Obama’s support of PP and birth control. Now I really want Obama to win the Presidency.
You anti-choicers say you want to see the rates of abortion fall, but then you hate people like Obama and organizations like PP who really just advocate sensible ways of going about lowering the rates of abortion, in effect. No one is going to go back to the dark ages when women were barefoot, pregnant, dysfunctional, with twenty children running around and twenty miscarriages besides that. All PP and Obama advocate is an enlightened age when every child will be a wanted child. Everyone sensible WANTS abortion just to be safe, legal and RARE, and we advocate education and BC and education ABOUT BC in order to promote that goal. I can’t believe any sane person would bash a decent person who only wants to put that goal into effect. What is the MATTER with people like you?
Anna, you posted:
********************************
All PP and Obama advocate is an enlightened age when every child will be a wanted child.
*********************************
Please enlighten me and answer these questions:
What does wanted have to do with it? Can civilized society kill the unwanted? Is somebody’s life worth less cause they are not wanted?
Kill em early so you don’t have to hate them later sound pretty evil to me.
Anna says:
****************************************
Everyone sensible WANTS abortion just to be safe, legal and RARE, and we advocate education and BC and education ABOUT BC in order to promote that goal.
*****************************************
Anna,
Nobody here is arguing that people shouldn’t be educated about birth control,so quit hiding the evil behind that “front”. Youu say the abortion industry wants abortion to be RARE, but I count 50 million since the Death Roe decision. Thats not RARE. You could stop many more by educating people to understand the truth about abortion as the taking of a life. Educate them that abortion is a complete aberration; and that it goes violently opposed to a mother’s natural inclination towards nurturing.
Heather, Ab Laura, mk, and anybody else who said they like waking up to a Psalm. Here’s to you
Give thanks to the Lord for he is good,
for his love endures for ever.
Let the sons of Israel say:
“His love endures for ever.”
Let the sons of Aaron say:
“His love endures for ever.”
Let those who fear the Lord say:
“His love endures for ever.”
I called to the Lord in my distress;
he answered and freed me.
The Lord is at my side; I do not fear.
What can man do against me?
The Lord is at my side as helper:
I shall look down on my foes.
It is better to take refuge in the Lord
than to trust men:
it is better to take refuge in the Lord
than to trust in princes.
The nations all encompassed me;
in the Lord’s name I crushed them.
They compassed me, compassed me about;
in the Lord’s name I crushed them.
They compassed me about like bees;
they blazed like a fire among thorns.
In the Lord’s name I crushed them.
I was hard-pressed and was falling
but the Lord came to help me.
The Lord is my strength and my song;
he is my saviour.
There are shouts of joy and victory
in the tents of the just.
The Lord’s right hand has triumphed;
his right hand raised me.
The Lord’s right hand has triumphed;
I shall not die, I shall live
and recount his deeds.
I was punished, punished by the Lord,
but not doomed to die.
Open to me the gates of holiness:
I will enter and give thanks.
This is the Lord’s own gate
where the just may enter.
I will thank you for you have answered
and you are my saviour.
The stone which the builders rejected
has become the corner stone.
This is the work of the Lord,
a marvel in our eyes.
This day was made by the Lord;
we rejoice and are glad.
O Lord grant us salvation;
O Lord, grant success.
Blessed in the name of the Lord
is he who comes.
We bless you from the house of the Lord;
The Lord God is our light.
Go forward in procession with branches
even to the altar.
You are my God, I thank you.
My God, I praise you.
Give thanks to the Lord for he is good;
for his love endures for ever.
Psalm 118
Oh, thank you TS. I enjoy waking up to a Psalm too. :)
Phony HisMan,
I am deleting your posts until I hear from the real HisMan…we will have a code word that only he will know and unless it is used you will be unable to post here…
TS,
I think you should start us off every morning with a Psalm. It really is so awesome to wake up to that…Thanks.
I’ve only gotten as far as Leviticus in the Old Testament and there are SO many Psalms that I find my head spinning. Wish I had my own private biblical historian to explain everything in the OT. These little bits that you feed me are awesome…
Hey Rae, Mk,
those are some cute pictures of you guys….I like them.
Yes,
Rae, Thank You and thank Lindsey for me! I loved, loved, loved meeting you guys. Midnite says she’s coming in March…want to come too?
Jen R,
Most definitely!
mk, you live in Chicago?
Yes Pip,
Why, you gonna join Midnite?!?
Thinkin about going there over spring break, I have a friend who lives there who graduated last year. Maybe I could meet up with you at some point!
PIP,
That would awesome…BREAKFAST ROCKS!
Truthseeker,
I’m not sure why you think it would hurt me to find that the unborn are considered legal persons — I’ve already said that I think they should be! Unfortunately, however, they’re not.
You said above:
Roe V Wade did not change that, it just said that the privacy rights of the woman trumps the baby’s rights.
That’s not the case at all. Read section IX.A. of the decision, which says, among other things:
If this suggestion of personhood is established, the appellant’s case, of course, collapses, for the fetus’ right to life would then be guaranteed specifically by the Amendment.
and:
All this, together with our observation, supra, that throughout the major portion of the 19th century prevailing legal abortion practices were far freer than they are today, persuades us that the word “person,” as used in the Fourteenth Amendment, does not include the unborn.
In Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court ruled that the unborn were not legal persons. They did *not* rule that the right to privacy includes the right to kill a legal person.
Laws against harming an unborn child in certain circumstances, such as in an assault on the mother, don’t establish personhood. It’s illegal to harm animals in many circumstances as well, but that doesn’t make them legal persons.
How ’bout a little of the Song of Solomon:
I am the rose of Sharon, and the lily of the valleys. As the lily among thorns, so is my love among the daughters. As the apple tree among the trees of the wood, so is my beloved among the sons. I sat down under his shadow with great delight, and his fruit was sweet to my taste. He brought me to the banqueting house, and his banner over me was love. Stay me with flagons, comfort me with apples: for I am sick of love.
Sweet….
They are considered persons. I am sorry if it hurts but you are mistaken or in denial. People are getting prosecuted all the time for aggression that harms babies in the womb. Roe V Wade just gave the mother a get-out-jail-free because they deemed a mother’s privacy rights trump the rights of the baby. Anybody else who harms a baby in the womb is subject to prosecution. The fact the baby inside has value and deserves protection has never been disputed by civilized society.
Truthseeker, it’s only in some states where such wording is in laws – there’s no blanket deal at all, here, in the first place.
It’s in the case of a wanted pregnancy where “aggression” is seen, and that’s just fine with pro-choicers. Nobody is saying that Joe Blow should be able to harm a pregnant woman or the fetus without penalties, anyway. And, of course such aggression was not legal in prior times, whether or not a given state put “person” in a law.
The main point is that when a crime is deemed to have occurred, then a given state may say that the unborn were “persons.” It’s after the fact, not before it.
Otherwise, personhood is not deemed to be there, and thus abortion is legal. The over-arching difference is between wanted and unwanted pregnancies.
Doug
Jen R: Laws against harming an unborn child in certain circumstances, such as in an assault on the mother, don’t establish personhood. It’s illegal to harm animals in many circumstances as well, but that doesn’t make them legal persons.
Jen, while that is true about animals, some state laws do deem the unborn as legal persons when an illegal killing has occurred. I see it as a mixture of grandstanding by some state legislators plus the protection of wanted pregnancies to an increased extent.
To wit, that if couple A has a newborn baby, and if couple B’s woman is 39 weeks pregnant, then if Joe Blow breaks into B’s house and attacks the woman, killing the fetus, the penalties can be the same as if he killed the newborn baby.
Doug
Jen you said:
**************************
Truthseeker,
I’m not sure why you think it would hurt me to find that the unborn are considered legal persons — I’ve already said that I think they should be! Unfortunately, however, they’re not.
***************************
Thus my post shortly after erquesting you accept my apology for the mischaracterization
Doug said:
********************************
Truthseeker, it’s only in some states where such wording is in laws – there’s no blanket deal at all, here, in the first place.
It’s in the case of a wanted pregnancy where “aggression” is seen, and that’s just fine with pro-choicers. Nobody is saying that Joe Blow should be able to harm a pregnant woman or the fetus without penalties, anyway. And, of course such aggression was not legal in prior times, whether or not a given state put “person” in a law.
The main point is that when a crime is deemed to have occurred, then a given state may say that the unborn were “persons.” It’s after the fact, not before it.
Otherwise, personhood is not deemed to be there, and thus abortion is legal. The over-arching difference is between wanted and unwanted pregnancies.
***********************************
Doug, I cannot see rationally the killing of the unborn child can be characterized as homocide in one case and the the exact same child can be killed by someone else and it is not homocide. We are talking about the same child either way. It makes no sense to me logically. Please extrapolate. How can not wanting a person make it o.k to kill them. Answer, it does not. What not wanting does is give the woman a get out of jail fre card. The killing is the same either way?
Truthseeker, thank you.
Bethany,
I got your back.
Let’s get something straight about Obama. He is all about money. He makes $160,000 as a US senator and paid $1.6 million for his house. Let’s say his wife his wife makes what he does. It just doesn’t add up. of course he is beholden to every special interest group. Money doesn’t grow on trees and people don’t give politicians money for nothing.
Jen R,
I’d love to be able to write to my Congresscritters and tell them that they should fund a non-abortion-supporting family-planning organization instead of Planned Parenthood. But there isn’t one.
Posted by: Jen R at January 11, 2008 8:23 PM
I don’t know what you mean by family planning group but virtually every county in America has county health services and they can and do provide the same family planning services cheap and free and can provide seminars in schools etc. and most don’t do abortions.
The worst year for teen pregnancy in America?
1958
The rate of teen pregnancy has taken a total dive in the last 15 years.
Posted by: FetusFascist at January 11, 2008 9:58 PM
The worst year is not 1958. Why? because those women were married. The worst year for teen pregnancy is when the women are not married, not loved and not valued.
Why is there so little talk about adoption on this board as a possible solution to an unplanned pregnancy> I know it’s not for everyone but I can’t understand why it isn’t more widely discussed as a viable option.
Yes, I’m an adoptive mom. My son is 17 now; we’ve had him since he was six weeks old.
I am African American, so please don’t tell me that “nobody wants black babies’ that really annoys me. In fact, in my city there is an agency that specializes in adoptions of African American and to a lesser extent, biracial babies. I would like to adopt another baby, but at my age (almost fifty) it might be difficult.
Melissa,
some days there is more talk about adoption than others. People do want black babies. I personally know people both black and not who have adopted black babies. It is harder to adopt when you are older but you can. Don’t give up if you really want another because a beautiful child is out there for you and needs a special person like you with a loving heart. Congratulations on your 17 year old son. It sounds like you know what you are talking about when it comes to adoption. Best to you.
My son is 17 now; we’ve had him since he was six weeks old.
Melissa, congratulations, and I’m glad for both him and you. I wish all the kids languishing in state or foster care could have good parents like you.
Doug
Doug, I cannot see rationally the killing of the unborn child can be characterized as homocide in one case and the the exact same child can be killed by someone else and it is not homocide.
“Homicide” isn’t really the deal, though, but rather whether it’s justified or not. If we say that it’s the killing of “a human,” then I think the unborn qualify, though it can be argued.
……
We are talking about the same child either way. It makes no sense to me logically. Please extrapolate. How can not wanting a person make it o.k to kill them. Answer, it does not. What not wanting does is give the woman a get out of jail fre card. The killing is the same either way?
What changes is the valuation, i.e. wanted or not. It’s not just a matter of a fetus, or “baby,” if you wish, it’s also the matter of the pregnant woman and her rights versus anything on the part of the unborn.
Does the desire of some people, like you, for the baby to live trump the desire of the woman to end a pregnancy in a given situation?
I would much rather see pregnancies be prevented versus abortions taking place. Yet of course once a pregnancy is fact it’s too late for that. Then, I don’t see that miscarriages and abortions hurt society, especially not to the extent where we’d need to forbid the pregnant woman the choice.
Let’s get something straight about Obama. He is all about money. He makes $160,000 as a US senator and paid $1.6 million for his house. Let’s say his wife his wife makes what he does. It just doesn’t add up.
Ha ha, very funny. Good grief, he’s a lawyer and was President of the Harvard Law Review. Do you think he’s not astute with money? Did you lose a bunch of yours?
I don’t know what his wife makes, but if they would make $320,000 per year, having a house that cost five times as much ain’t nuttin’ at all, so to speak.
Doug,
*********************************************
I said, We are talking about the same child either way. It makes no sense to me logically. Please extrapolate. How can not wanting a person make it o.k to kill them. Answer, it does not. What not wanting does is give the woman a get out of jail fre card. The killing is the same either way?
Doug said,What changes is the valuation, i.e. wanted or not. It’s not just a matter of a fetus, or “baby,” if you wish, it’s also the matter of the pregnant woman and her rights versus anything on the part of the unborn.
Posted by: Doug at January 12, 2008 4:54 PM
My point exactly, we are getting closer to agreement here. The only difference in the two scenarios is wether or not the mother wants the baby. The killing is the same either way. Either a scum bag like the smoothie gut who killed the baby by feeding his wife abortion pills, or the mother who doesn’t value the life of the child and has it pulled out of her in pieces. They are both guilty of taking the same innocent life, but we give the mother a get out of jail free card. But just cause we give a legal option for the mother, doesn’t make her decision to kill the child any less monstrous.
Anna, you posted:
********************************
All PP and Obama advocate is an enlightened age when every child will be a wanted child.
*********************************
Please enlighten me and answer these questions:
What does wanted have to do with it? Can civilized society kill the unwanted? Is somebody’s life worth less cause they are not wanted?
Kill em early so you don’t have to hate them later sound pretty evil to me.
Posted by: Truthseeker at January 12, 2008 3:09
______________________
Truthseeker: What’s evil is promoting policies that would create starving masses and long lines of homeless children waiting for the bottom of the pot at soup kitchens (and later, even the situation that India sees in the streets of its central cities–have you ever been to India? Do you know what severe overpopulation looks like?). That’s evil.
“Wanted” has everything to do with it. “Wanted” means having children that you are able to feed and support decently. “Wanted” means every child should have a decent home with stable parents and good food and clothes and love. “Wanted” means that children shouldn’t be born into homes where they might be abused because of tired, hurt, angry and sick people who were railroaded by their anatomy into giving birth when they shouldn’t have been forced to do so in the first place.
The only real evil in the world is the evil induced by stupidity. Obama and PP want to reduce that evil. We should thank them. Smart people do.
Anna says:
****************************************
Everyone sensible WANTS abortion just to be safe, legal and RARE, and we advocate education and BC and education ABOUT BC in order to promote that goal.
*****************************************
Anna,
Nobody here is arguing that people shouldn’t be educated about birth control,so quit hiding the evil behind that “front”. Youu say the abortion industry wants abortion to be RARE, but I count 50 million since the Death Roe decision. Thats not RARE. You could stop many more by educating people to understand the truth about abortion as the taking of a life. Educate them that abortion is a complete aberration; and that it goes violently opposed to a mother’s natural inclination towards nurturing.
Posted by: Truthseeker at January 12, 2008 3:37 AM
_____________
First, there is no proven “natural” inclination toward nurturing on the part of the human female. People should hardly be indoctrinated with your chauvinist notions about women because you have strange, chauvinist notions about them. Your tautologies are no one else’s problem.
Second, I said that it is our GOAL for abortion to be safe, legal and RARE. No one wants to have a messy medical procedure performed if she can help it. People are not out there getting pregnant on purpose to have abortions! PP and Obama want funding for EDUCATION about BC, and you people want to demonize PP and Obama for this very thing that would help to make abortion RARER than it has been–EDUCATION. Instead of being chauvinists and wanting people go sanction dark age myths about women, why not work with PP and Obama for a rational goal of educating people about BC so that abortion might become less necessary and RARER in the future?
You could stop many more by educating people to understand the truth about abortion as the taking of a life.
Posted by: Truthseeker at January 12, 2008 3:37 AM
________________
Everyone knows that a nonviable fetus is removed from its original host, outside which it cannot survive, during an abortion. That is hardly the point of the abortion debate. What of that?
Melissa,
Thank you fr your comment on adoption. You will find some who post here think that adoption is self-centered or evil. But those who have been involved with adoption know better:)
My Pastor and her husband both in their 50’s just adopted their first child from China. 50 is not to old to adopt:))) You should go for it, if you want!
Whew…if they want to adopt, that’s great, but man, I can’t imagine trying to keep up with a baby, infant, or man, a TEENAGER when I’m getting into that age. They must be some mighty energetic people!
My point exactly, we are getting closer to agreement here. The only difference in the two scenarios is wether or not the mother wants the baby. The killing is the same either way. Either a scum bag like the smoothie gut who killed the baby by feeding his wife abortion pills, or the mother who doesn’t value the life of the child and has it pulled out of her in pieces. They are both guilty of taking the same innocent life, but we give the mother a get out of jail free card. But just cause we give a legal option for the mother, doesn’t make her decision to kill the child any less monstrous.
TruthSeeker, thank you for your reasonable tone and your recognizing that we can indeed share opinions about some of this.
Agreed – there is no difference in the “baby,” by itself. And that it’s killed, either way.
My opinion – “innocent” isn’t the argument. There’s no capacity for guilt (I’m not into “original sin,” etc.) in the first place, and pro-choicers are not saying the unborn are “guilty.”
I don’t see it as “monstrous” for an abortion to take place. I realize you will not agree, here, but I don’t see what is so bad about the ending of a given life when there has never been consciousness there. For a woman who wants to have kids, I’d think a miscarriage can be truly terrible and abortion out of the question, but if the pregnancy is unwanted then who is really harmed? The unborn do not care, here, nor have any awareness, and if the woman wants to end the pregnancy, then the only suffering is on the part of outsiders, perhaps such as yourself, who don’t like the idea. I don’t rate that suffering as a good reason to make abortion illegal.
Doug
Truthseeker,
Recently you commented that all I do is make jokes and throw out one liners and I responded that you hadn’t been following mine and Bethanys conversations with Doug or you wouldn’t say that…
Well, welcome to Dougs world and good luck. This is where I was putting all my time and effort last week before the squabble broke out. The conversation went on for so long that the posts got dropped and we had to continue it in the archives. As far as I know we’re still having it…I posted just this morning…
I feel for you babe. Takin’ on Doug is not easy. Bethany was told she has an ulcer and we both think it is a result of debating with Doug…lol.
Ha – Erin, sometimes I can’t see anybody keeping up with and dealing with teenagers.
My poor parents – I wouldn’t wish a kid like me on anybody.
I feel for you babe. Takin’ on Doug is not easy. Bethany was told she has an ulcer and we both think it is a result of debating with Doug…lol.
MK, I feel bad when Bethany and you get upset.
I didn’t know about the ulcer, either. Damn. Tell you what – seeing Bethany’s picture clearly gives a feeling of what a good person she is.
TruthSeeker, I think the abortion debate is a good one because it takes us all down to the unprovable assumptions we all make.
As long as those assumptions are the same or do not conflict with each other, then all’s relatively fine.
But when they diverge, that’s where the arguments begin.
Doug
Everyone knows that a nonviable fetus is removed from its original host, outside which it cannot survive, during an abortion. That is hardly the point of the abortion debate. What of that?
Anna, right on and I like your style. I think you like to get right down to the heart of the matter.
Doug
Doug,
Aren’t you the one that said there is no De-humanizing going on on the pro choice side?
noviable fetus? original host? What are we, androids?
Erin –
You are right they are very energetic. But, for a first time Mom and Dad in their 50’s, when she gets up at 2am it’s a challenge. The first couple of weeks was hard. She was still on China time (14 hours ahead). Their daughter is 2 1/2 years old. She was born to the lowest class in China’s class structure, and she has a heart problem. She will be under going surgury in March. She wouldn’t have had a prayer in China. She is so beautiful and her smile is to die for. She is a real blessing.
@Doug: Believe me, nobody would have wanted a pre-teen like me. I was A-W-F-U-L. But as soon as I started being medicated at 13 my parent’s problems vanished.
********************************
First, there is no proven “natural” inclination toward nurturing on the part of the human female. People should hardly be indoctrinated with your chauvinist notions about women because you have strange, chauvinist notions about them. Your tautologies are no one else’s problem.
*********************************
Well Anna, my wife and every other woman I’ve ever known has felt protective towards their children, inside or outside the womb. I think that makes me a realist not a chauvinist. But you are a woman and the topic is a woman’s human nature so I want to try and understand you. Let me ask you a couple questions about it and maybe you can help clear it up for me. Have you ever been pregnant? Have you ever had an abortion?
***********************
ts said. You could stop many more by educating people to understand the truth about abortion as the taking of a life.
Posted by: Truthseeker at January 12, 2008 3:37 AM
Anna said, Everyone knows that a nonviable fetus is removed from its original host, outside which it cannot survive, during an abortion. That is hardly the point of the abortion debate. What of that?
Posted by: Anna at January 12, 2008 6:48 PM
***********************
Anna, is there such a thing as five week old human life?
Anna, what what stage of human life is the baby worth more than a squirrel to you?
Anna, you said:
***********************
Truthseeker: What’s evil is promoting policies that would create starving masses and long lines of homeless children waiting for the bottom of the pot at soup kitchens (and later, even the situation that India sees in the streets of its central cities–have you ever been to India? Do you know what severe overpopulation looks like?). That’s evil.
“Wanted” has everything to do with it. “Wanted” means having children that you are able to feed and support decently. “Wanted” means every child should have a decent home with stable parents and good food and clothes and love. “Wanted” means that children shouldn’t be born into homes where they might be abused because of tired, hurt, angry and sick people who were railroaded by their anatomy into giving birth when they shouldn’t have been forced to do so in the first place.
The only real evil in the world is the evil induced by stupidity. Obama and PP want to reduce that evil. We should thank them. Smart people do.
Posted by: Anna at January 12, 2008 6:36 PM
*********************
Sounds like pretty severe economic and social regimentation. No tolerance for the poor. Are you fetusfascist back under a different name?
Doug,
According to a simple website, you can see that if Obama and his wife make $300,000 a year, $1.6 million is twice what they would qualify for for a mortgage.
http://www.homefair.com/mortgage_and_finance/calculators/affordabilitycalc/index.asp?cc=1
Of course is astute about getting money, under the table that is.
According to a simple website, you can see that if Obama and his wife make $300,000 a year, $1.6 million is twice what they would qualify for for a mortgage.
Depends on the down payment, for one thing. Perhaps they are “over-leveraged,” though, as so many Americans are.
Believe me, nobody would have wanted a pre-teen like me. I was A-W-F-U-L. But as soon as I started being medicated at 13 my parent’s problems vanished.
Rae, well – you sure turned out well!
My wife and I were joking last night – one of my nieces, Jess, turns 13 on Feb. 8. YIKES.
noviable fetus? original host? What are we, androids?
MK, “nonviable fetus” is strictly and perfectly correct.
“Original host,” now, well that does sound a bit clinical to me, but you’re gonna have that once in a while.
There is no doubt nor implication that the fetus is anything other than human, there, regardless.
my wife and every other woman I’ve ever known has felt protective towards their children, inside or outside the womb.
Truthseeker, do you really not know anybody who’s had an abortion?
Biologically, women are the only ones who can get pregnant and have kids, sure. But reality is that not every woman wants kids, even ever, let alone in some situations at some times.
Doug
Truthseeker is correct. When Justice Blackmun authored Roe he conceded that: “(If the) suggestion of personhood (of the preborn) is established, the (abortion rights) case, of course, collapses, for the fetus’ right to life is guarenteed specifically by the 14th amendment.”
The “person” status which he denied unborn children was narrowly defined, so narrow in fact that it did not cross over to preborn children harmed or killed as the result of malicious intent. Justice Blackmun, by his own words, acknowledged that the broader question of personhood was not answered, because his intent was to challenge the various states statutes on abortion rights only. His convoluted reasoning has been questioned even by constitutional scholars who favor abortion rights.
Doug said
*****************************
Truthseeker, do you really not know anybody who’s had an abortion?
*****************************
Posted by: Doug at January 13, 2008 9:19 AM
Doug,
My wife and I went through an abortion at 20 weeks gestation and it was a really, really abd experience. My wife is still recovering from it to this day. It seemed completely unnatural to have the baby taken from her womb in pieces and my wife seemed to think it went completely against her human nature to have it done. And in our case the baby’s heart had stopped beating. It must be exponentially worse when the baby is still alive.
Doug said:
*************************
Biologically, women are the only ones who can get pregnant and have kids, sure. But reality is that not every woman wants kids, even ever, let alone in some situations at some times.
*************************
Doug, Lets be clear here. I do understand that there are outside societal influences that can cause a woman to want or not want pregnancy. Read this carefully “It is part of a woman’s human nature to protect/nurture the lives of their children inside or outside the womb.”
Doug said:
I don’t see it as “monstrous” for an abortion to take place. I realize you will not agree, here, but I don’t see what is so bad about the ending of a given life when there has never been consciousness there……..
Posted by: Doug at January 12, 2008 7:42 PM
Then I guess you wouldn’t have a problem being neighbors with the smoothie killer. IMHO all human life has value. And how do you decide that a living, growing life with a nervous has no consciousness? Lsst I heard scienrists couldn’t explain where in the brain consciousness is located or what causes it.
Anna siad:
People are not out there getting pregnant on purpose to have abortions!
Anna, why do you suppose that is. Is it just because they don’t want a messy medical procedure or is it also cause killing their baby doesn’t feel right to them?
Who would have thought that Venereal Diseases could be cute?
http://www.giantmicrobes.com/us/main/venereals/
Doug,
You still seem to fail to see that just cause a woman may choose to kill a child, does not mean it is part of human nature. Choosing and decision making is a part of human nature, but the choices we make can go against it.
According to anthropologist Donald Brown who did much research on this issue, there are many “human universals”. Child care, and nepotism (preference for your own kin) are among them. You might find it interesting reading.
mk said:
*******************
I feel for you babe. Takin’ on Doug is not easy. Bethany was told she has an ulcer and we both think it is a result of debating with Doug…lol.
Posted by: mk at January 12, 2008 7:42 PM
********************
mk, how am I doing? I think I might be getting a headache…LOL
Truthseeker,
Aleve helps. I’ve covered this ground with Doug many, many times, but it really is different hearing someone else do it with him. Maybe it will trigger something I haven’t thought of before.
I prayed for him again today. If prayers count for anything, he has a treasure chest full by now.
That is certainly true, MK. I have prayed for him so many times I can’t count.
I know there must be several others on this blog who are doing the same thing.
Bethany,
Now how do we get him to open the treasure chest???lol
I do believe in the power of prayer. But unlike you two, I haven’t been debating this with Doug for several months yet, so I’m still trying to persuade him through logic and “the truth”.
Truthseeker,
You go for it…but trust me, a few prayers couldn’t hurt.
Actually, you should pray for yourself while your at it…I’m tellin’ ya, you’ll be pullin out yer hair, screamin’ at the kids, losing your appetite and going into a catatonic state…Wear a crucifix and keep the holy water handy.
Seriously tho, through it all, you’ll come out likin’ him in the end.
Rae, those are so funny!! haha
Bethany,
Now how do we get him to open the treasure chest???lol”
I think God will open it for him when the time is right. ;)
Tara wrote, “Their daughter is 2 1/2 years old. She was born to the lowest class in China’s class structure, and she has a heart problem. She will be under going surgury in March. She wouldn’t have had a prayer in China.”
Amazing, absolutely amazing! What is discardable to one country is another’s future and potential!
Everyone knows that a nonviable fetus is removed from its original host, outside which it cannot survive, during an abortion. That is hardly the point of the abortion debate. What of that?
Anna, right on and I like your style. I think you like to get right down to the heart of the matter.
Doug
Posted by: Doug at January 12, 2008 7:51 PM
Thanks, Doug. I like your style, too. :)
Doug,
Aren’t you the one that said there is no De-humanizing going on on the pro choice side?
noviable fetus? original host? What are we, androids?
Posted by: mk at January 12, 2008 7:57 PM
Anna: Why are you against the use of specific language for things, mk? A nonviable fetus is just that, a nonviable fetus.
And since a mother is a role that no one has to adopt unless she wants to adopt it, “original host” is more specific and appropriate in my opinion, if we are talking about someone who as an unwanted, nonviable fetus in her uterus. I’m hardly dehumanizing anyone.
The whole point of the matter is that women are
human beings who should have basic human rights–and among those rights is the right to control what happens to your internal organs. If we lose the right to control our internal reproductive organs, and we have to support the lives of fetus after fetus because they happen to be in our reproductive organs, what sort of lives do we have at all? THAT is dehumanization for women–being barefoot and pregnant all the time is the most dehumanizing existence that I can possibly
imagine for anyone.
being barefoot and pregnant all the time is the most dehumanizing existence that I can possibly
imagine for anyone.
As a mother who absolutely is thrilled with being “barefoot and pregnant”, I take offense to the idea that it’s somehow “dehumanizing” to any human to be so. If anyone is misogynistic, it is those who have to insult those who choose motherhood.
********************************
First, there is no proven “natural” inclination toward nurturing on the part of the human female. People should hardly be indoctrinated with your chauvinist notions about women because you have strange, chauvinist notions about them. Your tautologies are no one else’s problem.
*********************************
Well Anna, my wife and every other woman I’ve ever known has felt protective towards their children, inside or outside the womb. I think that makes me a realist not a chauvinist. But you are a woman and the topic is a woman’s human nature so I want to try and understand you. Let me ask you a couple questions about it and maybe you can help clear it up for me. Have you ever been pregnant? Have you ever had an abortion?
Posted by: Truthseeker at January 13, 2008 12:10 AM
Anna: I have known women who have had abortions and women who have been pregnant. I am a graduate student in Psychology and I have studied human behavior. The upshot is that the maternal instinct in humans has not been proven. There have been theories advanced and different definitions for this instinct put forward, but they’ve been refused by the wider academic community.
The protectiveness that you observe in your wife and other women is socialized–from the moment that a baby is born, and long before it is born, women are trained by their peers and families to feel protective about their offspring. If they weren’t, the human race would die out. It is very difficult, of course, to distinguish between one’s socialized feelings and one’s “instincts,” but that is really what’s going on, when looked at closely.
The studies done on large groups of women who have had abortions have come back to this effect–women do not regret their abortions. The major feeling that women feel after their abortions is RELIEF. There is no documented proof for the syndrome that antichoicers claim to exist that is known as PAS or PASS. If you look on JAMA or the AMA website, you won’t find a single article about it because it doesn’t exist for the medical community. However, postpartum depression is very real–many women become so depressed after they gestate a pregnancy to term and give birth that they become suicidal–which is one of the reasons why I wouldn’t want to do this myself. It sounds perfectly dreadful. :)
***********************
ts said. You could stop many more by educating people to understand the truth about abortion as the taking of a life.
Posted by: Truthseeker at January 12, 2008 3:37 AM
Anna said, Everyone knows that a nonviable fetus is removed from its original host, outside which it cannot survive, during an abortion. That is hardly the point of the abortion debate. What of that?
Posted by: Anna at January 12, 2008 6:48 PM
***********************
Anna, is there such a thing as five week old human life?
Posted by: truthseeker at January 13, 2008 12:40 AM
_________________
Sure there is. There are also human cells that are much younger than that that exist in the skin tissue in my butt. They are of human extraction and they are alive, just like a nonviable fetus. They have the same capacity for humane affect that a nonviable fetus has (none–something without a functioning brain has no capacity for humane affect). Were you attempting to make a point?
Anna, what what stage of human life is the baby worth more than a squirrel to you?
Posted by: Truthseeker at January 13, 2008 12:51 AM
__________________
The human life of an ACTUAL baby is definitely worth more than a squirrel to me.
Anna, you said:
***********************
What’s evil is promoting policies that would create starving masses and long lines of homeless children waiting for the bottom of the pot at soup kitchens (and later, even the situation that India sees in the streets of its central cities–have you ever been to India? Do you know what severe overpopulation looks like?). That’s evil.
“Wanted” has everything to do with it. “Wanted” means having children that you are able to feed and support decently. “Wanted” means every child should have a decent home with stable parents and good food and clothes and love. “Wanted” means that children shouldn’t be born into homes where they might be abused because of tired, hurt, angry and sick people who were railroaded by their anatomy into giving birth when they shouldn’t have been forced to do so in the first place.
The only real evil in the world is the evil induced by stupidity. Obama and PP want to reduce that evil. We should thank them. Smart people do.
Posted by: Anna at January 12, 2008 6:36 PM
*********************
TS: Sounds like pretty severe economic and social regimentation. No tolerance for the poor. Are you fetusfascist back under a different name?
Posted by: truthseeker at January 13, 2008 1:02 AM
Anna: I don’t want the poor to suffer. I don’t think the poor want to suffer either. If the poor were given a choice, I think they would prefer my world to the nightmare that you would offer them.
And no, I’ve only posted under this SN.
Anna:
People are not out there getting pregnant on purpose to have abortions!
TS: Anna, why do you suppose that is. Is it just because they don’t want a messy medical procedure or is it also cause killing their baby doesn’t feel right to them?
Posted by: truthseeker at January 13, 2008 2:18 PM
________
Anna: I don’t think people get medical procedures when they don’t need them. When they feel they need them, they tend to get them when they can afford them.
Do you ever miss an opportunity for really thick emotional hype or the attempted demonization of your opponent? ;)
Anna,
There is always the option of not putting a nonviable fetus into the original host to begin with. It’s called responsible self control. But should a non viable fetus suddenly appear in the original host than the original host should do the responsible thing and let the non viable fetus become a viable fetus and then pass it off to a secondary host who will nurture it until it too has the option of responsibly becoming an original host oneday.
Anna,
Do you ever miss an opportunity for really thick emotional hype or the attempted demonization of your opponent? ;)
No more often than you never miss an opportunity to reduce a living breathing human being to scientific terms in order to remove any emotional response whatsoever…;);) nudge,nudge
I am a graduate student in Psychology…However, postpartum depression is very real–many women become so depressed after they gestate a pregnancy to term and give birth that they become suicidal–which is one of the reasons why I wouldn’t want to do this myself. It sounds perfectly dreadful. :)
Physician! Heal thyself…lol.
Anna,
Anna: Why are you against the use of specific language for things, mk? A nonviable fetus is just that, a nonviable fetus.
Been here/done this…
anybody remember Olea europaea/Arvicolinae /Lycopersicon pizza?
I mean really…the guy taking the order would hang up on you…
Actually, you should pray for yourself while your at it…I’m tellin’ ya, you’ll be pullin out yer hair, screamin’ at the kids, losing your appetite and going into a catatonic state…Wear a crucifix and keep the holy water handy.
Seriously tho, through it all, you’ll come out likin’ him in the end.
Posted by: mk at January 13, 2008 4:17 PM
**********
Thank’s for reminding me about keeping my crucifix on. Maybe you and Bethany could say a few prayers for me *.* too that I can find the right words. I’ll end up friends with Doug as long as I think he is motivated to care for “life”. Look at Anna’s post though. Values like hers scare me. Her idea of solving the world’s problems is to kill the she would discriminately value as less. It sounds like cleansing for the master race. And her views on abortion are in place to do as much cleansing as possible as early as possible. Look at what she said:
************************
“Wanted” means that children shouldn’t be born into homes where they might be abused because of tired, hurt, angry and sick people who were railroaded by their anatomy into giving birth when they shouldn’t have been forced to do so in the first place.
************************
And she wants to accomplish this through abortion. I mean “railroaded by your anatomy”. She sounds like she blames her anatomy for getting her pregnant. rotflwtime
I would like to know more about Doug though. I don’t see the consistency that you were referring to but he does seem honest. And honesty is something I appreciate in a person, even if we disagree.
mk said:
Actually, you should pray for yourself while your at it…I’m tellin’ ya, you’ll be pullin out yer hair, screamin’ at the kids, losing your appetite and going into a catatonic state…Wear a crucifix and keep the holy water handy.
Seriously tho, through it all, you’ll come out likin’ him in the end.
Posted by: mk at January 13, 2008 4:17 PM
**********
Thank’s for reminding me about keeping my crucifix on. Maybe you and Bethany could say a few prayers for me *.* too that I can find the right words. I’ll end up friends with Doug as long as I think he is motivated to care for “life”. Look at Anna’s post though. Values like hers scare me. Her idea of solving the world’s problems is to kill the she would discriminately value as less. It sounds like cleansing for the master race. And her views on abortion are in place to do as much cleansing as possible as early as possible. Look at what she said:
“Wanted” means that children shouldn’t be born into homes where they might be abused because of tired, hurt, angry and sick people who were railroaded by their anatomy into giving birth when they shouldn’t have been forced to do so in the first place.
And she “wants” to accomplish this through abortion. I mean “railroaded by your anatomy”. She sounds like she blames her anatomy for getting her pregnant. rotflwtime
I would like to know more about Doug though. I don’t see the consistency that you were referring to but he does seem honest. And honesty is something I appreciate in a person, even if we disagree.
Anna said:
*******************
I don’t want the poor to suffer. I don’t think the poor want to suffer either. If the poor were given a choice, I think they would prefer my world to the nightmare that you would offer them.
And no, I’ve only posted under this SN.
Posted by: Anna at January 13, 2008 5:29 PM
******************
Anna, if it were your world, there would be no poor because in your world the poor would be exterminated before they were ever allowed a chance to live.
mk, that is hilarious:
Anna,
There is always the option of not putting a nonviable fetus into the original host to begin with. It’s called responsible self control. But should a non viable fetus suddenly appear in the original host than the original host should do the responsible thing and let the non viable fetus become a viable fetus and then pass it off to a secondary host who will nurture it until it too has the option of responsibly becoming an original host oneday.
Posted by: mk at January 13, 2008 5:33 PM
TS,
By consistency we mean that you can’t shake his world view. He believes that every thing we do, every choice we make, is motivated by desire. At different times, society collective desires are often the same, and this is where we get law. He does not believe that there is any objective morality, or objective truth. There is only what is true for you and what is true for him. Then there is the truth that most of us agree to…which is not the same as objective truth.
Hitler was wrong in Dougs eyes, Hitler was wrong in my eyes, but Hitler was not “objectively” wrong. See?
He does not believe that a human without consciousness is a person. He does not believe that a baby that is not viable has consciousness. Therefore, when placing value on peoples desires, he places the greatest value on those with consciousness. Hence, the mother’s desire is greater than the nonviable fetuses because technically the nonviable fetus has no desires.
He believes that when a person suffers a trauma leaving them in a state like Terri Schiavo it is acceptable to allow them to die, or if the family wants, to help them to die, because they don’t have consciousness.
He believes by definition, a baby outside of the womb is a person. When asked about operating on a non viable fetus (like baby Samuel), he says that while the baby is IN the womb it is not a person, when it is out during the operation it becomes a person (mostly because the law says that once it is out of the womb it attains personhood) but that once it is put back in the womb, it ceases being a person again.
Likewise, a person in a coma with no consciousness is no longer “there” and has no desires. Therefore, it too is not a person. However if the non person should regain conciousness, they may reobtain the status of personhood.
I promise you, no matter what you hit him with, he won’t budge.
Personhood is determined by law, by consciousness and by the ability to desire. Women have personhood, nonviable fetuses don’t. Therefore the womens desire wins…
As for Anna,
As I said to Doug earlier…
CSLEWIS says:
Every sane and civilized man must have some set of principles by which he chooses to reject some of his desires and to permit others…
Folks like Doug and Anna are concerned with what the man does. Christians are concerned with who the man is.
They have no problem with abortion because they look at it as something that a person does. We abhor it, because it speaks to us of who a man is.
@Anna,
“The whole point of the matter is that women are
human beings who should have basic human rights–and among those rights is the right to control what happens to your internal organs. If we lose the right to control our internal reproductive organs, and we have to support the lives of fetus after fetus because they happen to be in our reproductive organs, what sort of lives do we have at all?”
I’m most curious as to where in constitutional law does anyone have a ‘right to control’? Such seems more an invention of a control-freak than a person seeking lucidity of what is being written re. ‘rights’. As a right’ please name one body process that we do ‘control’ … just one … blood pressure, heart rate’; breathing; eating … (can we ‘control’ hunger?), or sleep perhaps? … Just one where control is paramount.
Why then of all anatomical systems where ‘control’ is not a good aptitude … such could even lead to her death … should ‘reproductive-control’ be accepted as a positive?
mk said:
By consistency we mean that you can’t shake his world view
mk, maybe his world can be shaken. He is out here blogging because he is searching for answers cause he cares. I still haven’t asked him if consciousness can come before viability?
mk says:
He does not believe that a baby that is not viable has consciousness.
Not even scientists know when or where consciousness comes from. Here, I will give you an objective truth:
“Truthseeker does not know when a human life gains consciousness.”
Their is no relativity to that statement. Just cause Doug believes that a human gains consciousness at viability does nothing to affect the objective truth I do not know. And as much as Doug says he believes consciousness comes at viability does not make it the truth.
Heres another objective truth
“Doug does no know the point at which a human life gains consciousness.”
That is a “truth”. Regardless of what Doug believes. It cannot be disputed by anybodys beliefs or desires. Even if a person desires to believe Doug knows the stage at which a human life gains consciousness, it does not and cannot change the objective truth that Doug does not know the stage of developement where a human life gains consciousness.
It cannot be denied. It is an objective truth.
@TS,
Scientific instrumentation record electrical impulses. Both Bethany and Doug make a leap in that these recordings are considered a ‘fetal’ brain functioning as intellect, consciousness, feelings. desires or anything, as these same electric signals represent these happenings in an ‘adult’ brain. We just do not know nor have any interpretation about is what electrical signals mean. We all have them, but even a repeated simple stimulus ever traces the same pathway in the brain.
Linking consciousness to electric stimulus is even more assuming. Such signals would be best considered as ‘proof of aliveness’ IMO.
Rae,
I love those! We got my mom ebola and strep pneumo for her birthday last year!
I like the rhinovirus one too. TOO CUTE
@John
I concur
mk says:
*******************
Hitler was wrong in Dougs eyes, Hitler was wrong in my eyes, but Hitler was not “objectively” wrong. See?
********************
mk
Wether something is right or wrong is subjective so yours and Dougs opinions could be different. But the fact that he rallied people to racism is an objective truth, neither of you could rationally deny that.
Same is true for abortion. No matter how
mk said:
*********
I promise you, no matter what you hit him with, he won’t budge.
Personhood is determined by law, by consciousness and by the ability to desire. Women have personhood, nonviable fetuses don’t. Therefore the womens desire wins…
**********
mk,
Fortunately peoples opinions and desires don’t make up the truth.
Posted by: mk at January 13, 2008 6:10 PM
TS,
mk,
Fortunately peoples opinions and desires don’t make up the truth.
And that is another “Objective” truth.
*It isn’t that he doesn’t believe in objective truth, he doesn’t believe in objective moral truth…
We have concsiousness. That is an objective truth. But he won’t answer where he thinks this consciousness comes from.
Nor does it prove that consciousness makes a human being a person.
He claims that consciousness is having sentience (a word the prochoice crowd throws around a lot) but upon further examination, I believe he means sapience, or self awareness. He won’t concede that point, and insists he means sentience.
But sentience, is only “Physically Feeling” something…sensate…using the “senses”…
Sapience, is self awareness. I have argued for days that a fetus can “physically feel” things very, very early on…as is evidenced by grasping, thumbsucking, reacting to touch, sound…etc.
But he claims these are all “reflexes”. Bethany and I provided proof after proof that very young fetuses (babies) are sentient, but he doesn’t accept it.
We also pointed out a man whose brain stem is completely defunct, yet he walks and talks…Doug was impressed, but didn’t change his mind.
We’ve asked about people in comas, stroke victims, you name it…
This is Wiki’s post on Consciousness…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consciousness
Now, isn’t this interesting…
Etymology
Look up consciousness in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.
“Consciousness” derives from Latin conscientia which primarily means moral conscience. In the literal sense, “conscientia” means knowledge-with, that is, shared knowledge.
This is the kind of stuff I was referring to:
The Death Of Vincent Foster
Hillary’s fingerprints on Foster’s records
FIRST LADY’S FINGERPRINTS ON BILLING RECORDS (House of Representatives –
April 30, 1996)
http://rs9.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/2?r104:./temp/~r104m5Xv:e0
[Page: H4166]
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the
gentleman from Indiana [Mr. Burton] is recognized for 5 minutes.
[Page: H4167]
>
Mr. BURTON of Indiana. Mr. Speaker, Newsweek magazine reported this week
that the FBI had discovered Mrs. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s fingerprints
on billing records from the Rose law firm discovered at the White House
in January. These billing records have been under subpoena and could not
be found for over 2 years. Nobody knew where they were. And yet, just
recently, they were found in President Clinton and Mrs. Clinton’s
personal residence at the White House by Mrs. Clinton’s secretary.
Independent counsel Kenneth Starr is investigating to determine if
anyone obstructed justice by hiding the subpoenaed records. The billing
records supply important information about Mrs. Clinton’s work for
Madison Guaranty Savings & Loan and the Castle Grande real estate
projects. Arkansas Governor Jim Guy Tucker, who at the time this was
taking place was the Lieutenant Governor under President Clinton, is on
trial right now in Arkansas for fraud because hedefaulted on loans over
$1 million related to Castle Grande.
Now, Mrs. Clinton was the billing partner at the Rose Law Firm for the
Madison Guaranty Savings & Loan account. However, she stated in a sworn
statement to the Resolution Trust Corporation that she did very little
work for Madison Guaranty and could not recall the Castle Grande
project.
Yet, these mysterious billing records, that could not be found for over
2 years that were just found, tell a different story. They show that she
had 14 meetings and conversations with Madison executives about Castle
Grande and she drafted a comprehensive option agreement for this
project.
http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/RANCHO/POLITICS/FOSTER_COVERUP/hillprints.html
Doug, Lets be clear here. I do understand that there are outside societal influences that can cause a woman to want or not want pregnancy. Read this carefully “It is part of a woman’s human nature to protect/nurture the lives of their children inside or outside the womb.”
Truthseeker, if you are talking about all women, then I gotta say the answer can be either yes or no.
In general, yes, though.
You still seem to fail to see that just cause a woman may choose to kill a child, does not mean it is part of human nature. Choosing and decision making is a part of human nature, but the choices we make can go against it. According to anthropologist Donald Brown who did much research on this issue, there are many “human universals”. Child care, and nepotism (preference for your own kin) are among them. You might find it interesting reading.
Truthseeker, pretty much a “universal” for caring for children – I grant you that. But not for every single woman on earth – and that’s even before we get to the abortion debate.
So human nature is not monolithic, here. Same for nepotism. Very prevalent, yes, but not truly universal.
TS: Just cause Doug believes that a human gains consciousness at viability does nothing to affect the objective truth I do not know. And as much as Doug says he believes consciousness comes at viability does not make it the truth.
Truthseeker, “viability” does not have to be the same time as getting consciousness. It’s really just a function of medical technology, in the first place. I do think that the weeks in the 20s are when awareness develops in most fetuses, though.
You are right – I don’t know the exact time, same as you. MK has asked me how I would define personhood, and some awareness is definitely part of it. A human body is one thing, a person is another, IMO.
……
Heres another objective truth: “Doug does no know the point at which a human life gains consciousness.” That is a “truth”. Regardless of what Doug believes. It cannot be disputed by anybodys beliefs or desires. Even if a person desires to believe Doug knows the stage at which a human life gains consciousness, it does not and cannot change the objective truth that Doug does not know the stage of developement where a human life gains consciousness. It cannot be denied. It is an objective truth.
That’s not the whole argument, though, by any means. We do know that most fetuses develop some consciousness along the way in gestation. Late enough in gestation, and most fetuses are conscious.
Early enough in gestation, and there is no good reason to think that consciousness is there. That could be argued, but I certainly don’t see any logic or proof to refute what I said.
So, there will be a “gray area” or zone where it’s in doubt, in-between late enough and early enough to be fairly sure, either way. My point then is that early enough there’s an embryo of fetus there, that is not a thinking and feeling being. And of course the pregnant woman IS a thinking and feeling being.
Doug
MK: We have consciousness. That is an objective truth. But he won’t answer where he thinks this consciousness comes from.
Nope, as before, the first and only thing a consciousness knows is the fact of its own consciousness. This is before any unprovable assumptions occur. There is no way to know “where” it came from – at the most it would be an assumption.
……
He claims that consciousness is having sentience (a word the prochoice crowd throws around a lot) but upon further examination, I believe he means sapience, or self awareness. He won’t concede that point, and insists he means sentience. But sentience, is only “Physically Feeling” something…sensate…using the “senses”… Sapience, is self awareness. I have argued for days that a fetus can “physically feel” things very, very early on…as is evidenced by grasping, thumbsucking, reacting to touch, sound…etc.
Sheesh, MK, been here and done it already – we were talking about sentience being involved with personhood. Sapience does not apply to newborns or fetuses late in gestation, so that’s not the deal at all.
1. having the power of perception by the senses; conscious.
2. characterized by sensation and consciousness.
There are the first two definitions from dictionary.com. If we have a human fetus, and those apply, then I think some personality and personhood is there.
……
But he claims these are all “reflexes”. Bethany and I provided proof after proof that very young fetuses (babies) are sentient, but he doesn’t accept it.
No, you have not provided any such proof, MK. During the weeks in the 20s, yes. Not before.
I don’t believe Doug is being honest here. His arguments are heartless.
I don’t believe Doug is being honest here. His arguments are heartless.
Anna,
I was able to discern from your response to my question that you have never been pregnant and you have never had an abortion. Therefore no personal experience with a woman’s inclination to protect her children. Therefore I will have to accept the “almost” universal opinion of women of all cultures and discard yours.
How can you be so “clinical” and yet have no problem discarding all the women who testify that they have post-abortive depression. They exhibit signs of depression. They claim to be depressed. Again, it is a natural reaction for a woman who comes to the realization that the life they ended was truly human and their baby. Are you saying they all are liars so they aren’t really depressed about it? How many women claiming post-abortion depression does it take to make a clinical study? To deny they exist is to exercise your “choice” to put yourself in denial of reality.
btw Anna, until you experience children, you can never be an authority on the subject because it is a bond that comes from deep inside you and grows stronger as the baby developes inside you. At least that’s how pregnant women I know have described it. I can’t say for sure wether you would abandon or abuse any children you had, if you ever did get pregnant, but if you did you would be an aberration.
Doug,
We did show how a baby much younger than viablilty reacts to it’s mothers voice, moves away from an ultrasound, sucks it’s thumb and a number of other things. To us this was proof, but you said you believed they were just reflexes.
It really comes down to assumptions on both sides ;)
Duog is not a person, has no personhood, when he is sleeping. He has no sapience or sentience. He may become a person, if he uses a alarm clock to make him a person again.
In fact, without a alarm clock,
Doug has no control over when he will be a person again. And Doug also has no control,will, volition,reason,emotion, to remain a person if sleep overtakes Doug’s sapience/sentience.
All we need to do is ask if no one “wants”, Doug, and if Doug is not sapient/sentient, one may kill Doug,since he is not a person with personhood.
Any appeal to potental/future personhood of Doug, is irrelevent to killing Doug, since Doug denies potenital personhood of a baby in the womb.
Sleep with your pirate’s eye patch pulled up, Doug? You be for a killin, I be for a livin’ matey.
I don’t believe Doug is being honest here. His arguments are heartless.
Heh – you’re the one being dishonest.
Duog is not a person
yllas, despite your (repetitive) silliness, you really don’t know the truth there, one way or another. All you reallyknow is that you are conscious. This could all be a dream, from which you wake up at a later time, in your perception, finding that all you had thought you’d experienced thus far was not reality.
Anyway, per your posting, chalk another one up for the Pro-Choice side.
Women have the freedom they do in this matter, and that is a good thing.
We did show how a baby much younger than viablilty reacts to it’s mothers voice, moves away from an ultrasound, sucks it’s thumb and a number of other things. To us this was proof, but you said you believed they were just reflexes.
Thumb-sucking is most definitely reflexive early on. Response to sound is questionable, at the least. Heck, a loud enough sound and movement will occur whether mental awareness is there or not.
I’d like to see it again if the mother’s voice was really said to elicit a response.
……
It really comes down to assumptions on both sides ;)
Noting a lack of proof is not the same as stating a factual “yes” or “no” either way.
Doug,
Noting a lack of proof is not the same as stating a factual “yes” or “no” either way.
Exactly, but you are willing to risk your assumptions, barring this lack of proof, to kill human life.
Yet another fundamental difference between us.
You cannot state a factual “there is no consciousnes” and because of this, you err on the side of death.
We cannot state a factual “there is consciousnes” and because of this, we err on the side of life.
Take that a step further, and you will note that we don’t require a factual “yes” there is consciousness. Consciousness is your gig. We don’t care one way or the other. It is human, It lives, and that is enough.
15 May 2003
Mothers Voice Triggers Fetus Heart Rate Increase
New research findings on the ability of a fetus to recognize its mother’s voice and even distinguish it from other female voices confirms what scientists have speculated about for more than 20 years – that experiences in the womb help shape newborn preferences and behaviour.
Dr. Barbara Kisilevsky, a Queen’s University professor of nursing along with a team of psychologists at Queen’s and obstetricians in Hangzhou, China, found that fetuses are capable of learning in the womb and can remember and recognize their mother’s voice before they are even born.
Their research findings are published in the current issue of the international journal Psychological Science.
While previous research on infant development has demonstrated that newborns prefer to listen to their own mother’s voice to that of a female stranger and will even change their behaviour to elicit their mother’s voice, Dr. Kisilevsky’s research proves tthat this “preference/recognition” begins before birth.
“This is an extremely exciting finding that provides evidence of sustained attention, memory and learning by the fetus,” says Dr Kisilevsky. “The fetuses learn about their mother’s voice in the womb and then prefer it after birth. Our findings provide evidence that in-utero experience has an impact on newborn/infant behaviour and development and that voice recognition may play a role in mother-infant attachment.”
The findings also suggest that the foundation for speech perception and language acquisition are laid before birth, says Dr. Kisilevsky. Therefore, the precocious language processing abilities observed in newborns and young infants may not be due to a hardwired speech-processing module in the brain as has been assumed, but instead stems from the interaction of the fetus with its environment.
Along with researchers at Zhejiang University, China, Dr. Kisilevsky tested 60 fetuses at term. Thirty fetuses were played a two-minute audiotape of their own mother reading a poem and 30 fetuses were played the voice of a female stranger reading the poem. The researchers found that the fetuses responded to their own mother’s voice with heart-rate acceleration and to the stranger’s voice with a heart-rate deceleration. The responses lasted during the two-minute tape as well as for at least two minutes after the offset of the voices.
“These results tell us that the fetuses heard and responded to both voices and that there was sustained attention to both voices,” notes Dr. Kisilevsky. “But, because they responded differently to the two voices, we know they had to recognize their own mother’s voice. We believe they are probably already learning about language in general and their own language specifically.”
Dr. Kisilevsky’s team is now investigating both fetal response to the father’s voice and the ability of the fetus to differentiate between English and Mandarin. In 2000, Dr. Kisilevsky’s research team proved that fetuses hear by the third trimester of pregnancy.
http://www.aphroditewomenshealth.com/news/20030414211301_health_news.shtml
Granted this was done on third trimester fetuses but note that it say “By the third trimester”…no one knows yet when they can begin recognizing her voice.
Fetal Psychology
Janet L. Hopson
Psychology Today, October 1998
Source: Psychology Today, Sep/Oct98, Vol. 31 Issue 5, p44, 6p, 4c.
Behaviorally speaking, there’s little difference between a newborn baby and a 32-week-old fetus. A new wave of research suggests that the fetus can feel, dream, even enjoy The Cat in the Hat. The abortion debate may never be the same.
The scene never fails to give goose bumps: the baby, just seconds old and still dewy from the womb, is lifted into the arms of its exhausted but blissful parents. They gaze adoringly as their new child stretches and squirms, scrunches its mouth and opens its eyes. To anyone watching this tender vignette, the message is unmistakable. Birth is the beginning of it all, ground zero, the moment from which the clock starts ticking.
Not so, declares Janet DiPietro. Birth may be a grand occasion, says the Johns Hopkins University psychologist, but “it is a trivial event in development. Nothing neurologically interesting happens.”
Armed with highly sensitive and sophisticated monitoring gear, DiPietro and other researchers today are discovering that the real action starts weeks earlier. At 32 weeks of gestation – two months before a baby is considered fully prepared for the world, or “at term” – a fetus is behaving almost exactly as a newborn. And it continues to do so for the next 12 weeks.
As if overturning the common conception of infancy weren’t enough, scientists are creating a startling new picture of intelligent life in the womb. Among the revelations:
* By nine weeks, a developing fetus can hiccup and react to loud noises. By the end of the second trimester it can hear.
* Just as adults do, the fetus experiences the rapid eye movement (REM) sleep of dreams.
* The fetus savors its mother’s meals, first picking up the food tastes of a culture in the womb.
* Among other mental feats, the fetus can distinguish between the voice of Mom and that of a stranger, and respond to a familiar story read to it.
* Even a premature baby is aware, feels, responds, and adapts to its environment.
* Just because the fetus is responsive to certain stimuli doesn’t mean that it should be the target of efforts to enhance development. Sensory stimulation of the fetus can in fact lead to bizarre patterns of adaptation later on.
The roots of human behavior, researchers now know, begin to develop early – just weeks after conception, in fact. Well before a woman typically knows she is pregnant, her embryo’s brain has already begun to bulge. By five weeks, the organ that looks like a lumpy inchworm has already embarked on the most spectacular feat of human development: the creation of the deeply creased and convoluted cerebral cortex, the part of the brain that will eventually allow the growing person to move, think, speak, plan, and create in a human way.
At nine weeks, the embryo’s ballooning brain allows it to bend its body, hiccup, and react to loud sounds. At week ten, it moves its arms, “breathes” amniotic fluid in and out, opens its jaw, and stretches. Before the first trimester is over, it yawns, sucks, and swallows, as well as feels and smells. By the end of the second trimester, it can hear; toward the end of pregnancy, it can see.
Fetal Alertness
Scientists who follow the fetus’ daily life find that it spends most of its time not exercising these new abilities but sleeping. At 32 weeks, it drowses 90 to 95% of the day. Some of these hours are spent in deep sleep, some in REM sleep, and some in an indeterminate state, a product of the fetus’ immature brain that is different from sleep in a baby, child, or adult. During REM sleep, the fetus’ eyes move back and forth just as an adult’s eyes do, and many researchers believe that it is dreaming. DiPietro speculates that fetuses dream about what they know – the sensations they feel in the womb.
Closer to birth, the fetus sleeps 85 or 90% of the time: the same as a newborn. Between its frequent naps, the fetus seems to have “something like an awake alert period,’ according to developmental psychologist William Filer, Ph.D., who with his Columbia University colleagues is monitoring these sleep and wakefulness cycles in order to identify patterns of normal and abnormal brain development, including potential predictors of sudden infant death syndrome. Says Filer, “We are, in effect, asking the fetus: ‘Are you paying attention? Is your nervous system behaving in the appropriate way?'”
Fetal Movement
Awake or asleep, the human fetus moves 50 times or more each hour, flexing and extending its body, moving its head, face, and limbs and exploring its warm, wet compartment by touch. Heidelise Als, Ph.D., a developmental psychologist at Harvard Medical School, is fascinated by the amount of tactile stimulation a fetus gives itself. “It touches a hand to the face, one hand to the other hand, clasps its feet, touches its foot to its leg, its hand to its umbilical cord,” she reports.
Als believes there is a mismatch between the environment given to preemies in hospitals and the environment they would have had in the womb. She has been working for years to change the care given to preemies so that they can curl up, bring their knees together, and touch things with their hands as they would have for weeks in the womb.
Along with such common movements, DiPietro has also noted some odder fetal activities, including “licking the uterine wall and literally walking around the womb by pushing off with its feet.” Laterborns may have more room in the womb for such maneuvers than first babies. After the initial pregnancy, a woman’s uterus is bigger and the umbilical cord longer, allowing more freedom of movement. “Second and subsequent children may develop more motor experience in utero and so may become more active infants,” DiPietro speculates.
Fetuses react sharply to their mother’s actions. “When we’re watching the fetus on ultrasound and the mother starts to laugh, we can see the fetus, floating upside down in the womb, bounce up and down on its head, bum-bum-bum, like it’s bouncing on a trampoline,” says DiPietro. “When mothers watch this on the screen, they laugh harder, and the fetus goes up and down even faster. We’ve wondered whether this is why people grow up liking roller coasters.”
Fetal Taste
Why people grow up liking hot chilies or spicy curries may also have something to do with the fetal environment. By 13 to 15 weeks a fetus’ taste buds already look like a mature adult’s, and doctors know that the amniotic fluid that surrounds it can smell strongly of curry, cumin, garlic, onion and other essences from a mother’s diet. Whether fetuses can taste these flavors isn’t yet known, but scientists have found that a 33-week-old preemie will suck harder on a sweetened nipple than on a plain rubber one.
“During the last trimester, the fetus is swallowing up to a liter a day” of amniotic fluid, notes Julie Mennella, Ph.D., a biopsychologist at the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia. She thinks the fluid may act as a “flavor bridge” to breast milk, which also carries food flavors from the mother’s diet.
Fetal Hearing
Whether or not a fetus can taste, there’s little question that it can hear. A very premature baby entering the world at 24 or 25 weeks responds to the sounds around it, observes Als, so its auditory apparatus must already have been functioning in the womb. Many pregnant women report a fetal jerk or sudden kick just after a door slams or a car backfires.
Even without such intrusions, the womb is not a silent place. Researchers who have inserted a hydrophone into the uterus of a pregnant woman have picked up a noise level “akin to the background noise in an apartment,” according to DiPietro. Sounds include the whooshing of blood in the mother’s vessels, the gurgling and rumbling of her stomach and intestines, as well as the tones of her voice filtered through tissues, bones, and fluid, and the voices of other people coming through the amniotic wall. Fifer has found that fetal heart rate slows when the mother is speaking, suggesting that the fetus not only hears and recognizes the sound, but is calmed by it.
Fetal Vision
Vision is the last sense to develop. A very premature infant can see light and shape; researchers presume that a fetus has the same ability. Just as the womb isn’t completely quiet, it isn’t utterly dark, either. Says Filer: “There may be just enough visual stimulation filtered through the mother’s tissues that a fetus can respond when the mother is in bright light,” such as when she is sunbathing.
Japanese scientists have even reported a distinct fetal reaction to flashes of light shined on the mother’s belly. However, other researchers warn that exposing fetuses (or premature infants) to bright light before they are ready can be dangerous. In fact, Harvard’s Als believes that retinal damage in premature infants, which has long been ascribed to high concentrations of oxygen, may actually be due to overexposure to light at the wrong time in development.
A six-month fetus, born about 14 weeks too early, has a brain that is neither prepared for nor expecting signals from the eyes to be transmitted into the brain’s visual cortex, and from there into the executive-branch frontal lobes, where information is integrated. When the fetus is forced to see too much too soon, says Als, the accelerated stimulation may lead to aberrations of brain development.
Fetal Learning
Along with the ability to feel, see, and hear comes the capacity to learn and remember. These activities can be rudimentary, automatic, even biochemical. For example, a fetus, after an initial reaction of alarm, eventually stops responding to a repeated loud noise. The fetus displays the same kind of primitive learning, known as habituation, in response to its mother’s voice, Fifer has found.
But the fetus has shown itself capable of far more. In the 1980s, psychology professor Anthony James DeCasper, Ph.D., and colleagues at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, devised a feeding contraption that allows a baby to suck faster to hear one set of sounds through headphones and to suck slower to hear a different set. With this technique, DeCasper discovered that within hours of birth, a baby already prefers its mother’s voice to a stranger’s, suggesting it must have learned and remembered the voice, albeit not necessarily consciously, from its last months in the womb. More recently, he’s found that a newborn prefers a story read to it repeatedly in the womb – in this case, The Cat in the Hat – over a new story introduced soon after birth.
DeCasper and others have uncovered more mental feats. Newborns can not only distinguish their mother from a stranger speaking, but would rather hear Mom’s voice, especially the way it sounds filtered through amniotic fluid rather than through air. They’re xenophobes, too: they prefer to hear Mom speaking in her native language than to hear her or someone else speaking in a foreign tongue.
By monitoring changes in fetal heart rate, psychologist JeanPierre Lecanuet, Ph.D., and his colleagues in Paris have found that fetuses can even tell strangers’ voices apart. They also seem to like certain stories more than others. The fetal heartbeat will slow down when a familiar French fairy tale such as “La Poulette” (“The Chick”) or “Le Petit Crapaud” (“The Little Toad”), is read near the mother’s belly. When the same reader delivers another unfamiliar story, the fetal heartbeat stays steady.
The fetus is likely responding to the cadence of voices and stories, not their actual words, observes Fifer, but the conclusion is the same: the fetus can listen, learn, and remember at some level, and, as with most babies and children, it likes the comfort and reassurance of the familiar.
Fetal Personality
It’s no secret that babies are born with distinct differences and patterns of activity that suggest individual temperament. Just when and how the behavioral traits originate in the womb is now the subject of intense scrutiny.
In the first formal study of fetal temperament in 1996, DiPietro and her colleagues recorded the heart rate and movements of 31 fetuses six times before birth and compared them to readings taken twice after birth. (They’ve since extended their study to include 100 more fetuses.) Their findings: fetuses that are very active in the womb tend to be more irritable infants. Those with irregular sleep/wake patterns in the womb sleep more poorly as young infants. And fetuses with high heart rates become unpredictable, inactive babies.
“Behavior doesn’t begin at birth,” declares DiPietro. “It begins before and develops in predictable ways.” One of the most important influences on development is the fetal environment. As Harvard’s Als observes, “The fetus gets an enormous amount of ‘hormonal bathing’ through the mother, so its chronobiological rhythms are influenced by the mother’s sleep/wake cycles, her eating patterns, her movements.”
The hormones a mother puts out in response to stress also appear critical. DiPietro finds that highly pressured mothers-to-be tend to have more active fetuses–and more irritable infants. “The most stressed are working pregnant women,” says DiPietro. “These days, women tend to work up to the day they deliver, even though the implications for pregnancy aren’t entirely clear yet. That’s our cultural norm, but I think it’s insane.”
Als agrees that working can be an enormous stress, but emphasizes that pregnancy hormones help to buffer both mother and fetus. Individual reactions to stress also matter. “The pregnant woman who chooses to work is a different woman already from the one who chooses not to work,” she explains.
She’s also different from the woman who has no choice but to work. DiPietro’s studies show that the fetuses of poor women are distinct neurobehaviorally-less active, with a less variable heart rate–from the fetuses of middle-class women. Yet “poor women rate themselves as less stressed than do working middle-class women,” she notes. DiPietro suspects that inadequate nutrition and exposure to pollutants may significantly affect the fetuses of poor women.
Stress, diet, and toxins may combine to have a harmful effect on intelligence. A recent study by biostatistician Bernie Devlin, Ph.D., of the University of Pittsburgh, suggests that genes may have less impact on IQ than previously thought and that the environment of the womb may account for much more. “Our old notion of nature influencing the fetus before birth and nurture after birth needs an update,” DiPietro insists. “There is an antenatal environment, too, that is provided by the mother.”
Parents-to-be who want to further their unborn child’s mental development should start by assuring that the antenatal environment is wellnourished, low-stress, drug-free. Various authors and “experts” also have suggested poking the fetus at regular intervals, speaking to it through a paper tube or “pregaphone,” piping in classical music, even flashing lights at the mother’s abdomen.
Does such stimulation work? More importantly: Is it safe? Some who use these methods swear their children are smarter, more verbally and musically inclined, more physically coordinated and socially adept than average. Scientists, however, are skeptical.
“There has been no defended research anywhere that shows any enduring effect from these stimulations,” asserts Filer. “Since no one can even say for certain when a fetus is awake, poking them or sticking speakers on the mother’s abdomen may be changing their natural sleep patterns. No one would consider poking or prodding a newborn baby in her bassinet or putting a speaker next to her ear, so why would you do such a thing with a fetus?”
Als is more emphatic. “My bet is that poking, shaking, or otherwise deliberately stimulating the fetus might alter its developmental sequence, and anything that affects the development of the brain comes at a cost.”
Gently talking to the fetus, however, seems to pose little risk. Fifer suggests that this kind of activity may help parents as much as the fetus. “Thinking about your fetus, talking to it, having your spouse talk to it, will all help prepare you for this new creature that’s going to jump into your life and turn it upside down,” he says–once it finally makes its anti-climactic entrance.
You anti-choice people just don’t get it.
For the government to try to tell all
pregnant women that”You must bear this child”
just won’t work.There is no way to enforce
laws against abortion.The only way to prevent
abortions is to prevent unwanted pregnancies.
If there were a way to do this,pro-choice
people would be all for it.But that is a pipe
dream.And to be opposed to contraception is
either naive or just plain stupid.Contraception
prevents abortions.
Doug is not a person when he sleeps.
He has no sapience or sentinence.
Since your not a person, Doug, when you sleep, may others kill you if they want,since your not a person while your sleeping?
Your repetitive denial of personhood, to allow killing human life, is easily applied to sleeping humans.
What reason may you give to deny a sapient/sentinent person from killing a non- sapient/sentinent person? Or you Doug, while you sleep?
List them without appealing to any future/past sapience or sentinence, which suggest potential knowing or feeling.
You defined personhood Doug, I am only applying your definitions to personhood.
The act of killing Doug in his sleep occurred when Doug was not a person. According to your definition of a person, no person was killed, Doug. And to be a human being with value according to Doug, one must be a person. But, human life was killed Doug,wasn’t it Doug?
You devalue human life to increase the chance of human life being killed, by appealing to the non-personhood, of human life, Doug. Some brother’s keeper you are Doug.
And since there is no one here, that has a good argument for not allowing the decision to kill human life, and just think they do(words of Doug), what are you doing here Doug?
Spreading pessimism of not having value if your not a person, to feel better about your decision to allow others to kill their creation from pleasure?
Your repetition Doug, of appealing to the decision to kill non-person’s has killed millions of babies in the womb, Doug.
And the only value the dead fetus/baby has for Doug, is from the sheer desire of being able to decide to kill.
Your for a killin Doug, I be for a living, you sneaky pirate of personhood, Doug.
yllas, your Carmen Miranda hat is off-center. ; )
Your for a killin Doug, I be for a living, you sneaky pirate
You’re for having the desire of pregnant women subverted to your own, and I am saying you are among the last people in the world who should be telling others what to do.
To some extent it can be said that I am for some killing, since ending a pregnancy is indeed that, and since it’s fact that not all pregnancies are wanted. I would rather have some unwanted pregnancies end than try and force women to continue them against their will.
I see that as less of an evil than taking away the freedom that women have, now, or as a greater good, if you prefer.
MK: You cannot state a factual “there is no consciousnes” and because of this, you err on the side of death.
Early enough in pregnancy and I don’t think it’s a substantial “worry” even if the negative cannot be proven. If anything, we are affirming the woman’s freedom, there.
…..
We cannot state a factual “there is consciousnes” and because of this, we err on the side of life.
Late enough in gestation and that’s really not in doubt for almost all fetuses, in the first place, and the argument is really not about that time in gestation. I see the error as wanting your desire enforced over that of the pregnant woman before that point.
Granted this was done on third trimester fetuses but note that it say “By the third trimester”…no one knows yet when they can begin recognizing her voice.
MK, agreed that by 26 weeks most fetuses have some awareness like that.
……
a baby already prefers its mother’s voice to a stranger’s, suggesting it must have learned and remembered the voice, albeit not necessarily consciously, from its last months in the womb.
This is aside from the consciousness argument, and in the “last months in the womb” anyway, but that’s interesting. Wonder if it’s the same for other species?
Doug,
The experiment was done on (wait for it)…sheep.
Doug,
The point is that we simply don’t know either way and you err on the side of permitting the life to end, and we don’t.
No desire, really, just belief. I don’t desire the fetus to have consciousness. I don’t care if it has it or not. My view would not change. It is Human. It is alive. Period. YOU are the one that uses consciousness as a measuring stick.
What we are talking about here is that you, without having proof one way or the other, make YOUR decision based on consciousness, and that decision results in the legal right to end millions of human lives.
Doug, your eye patch grows.
Your for the desire of pregnant women subverted to your own, and I am saying your among the last people in the world who should be telling others what to do.
List the reasons why someone cannot kill a “person” while he sleeps. Or the reasons why.
Start with Captain Queeg, Doug. He’s a person.
He’s human. He’s to a extent, not alife, just like a baby in the womb is not alive in your dogmatic mind that allows death of those non-persons. That’s why your a pirate Doug, you fly the flag of “life must be desired”, until they board your ship of blood and guts, hiding below decks.
That’s when Doug shows the “other side” of his peace lovin’, pirate flag, that has written on it, “or death”.
You steal life, just as a pirate does Doug.
You loot pleasure of its fullness, and leave wanted death.
You be for a killin, Doug, I be for a livin’.
What’s evil is promoting policies that would create starving masses and long lines of homeless children waiting for the bottom of the pot at soup kitchens (and later, even the situation that India sees in the streets of its central cities–have you ever been to India? Do you know what severe overpopulation looks like?). That’s evil.
We are not a third world country and have more freedoms and a better ecomic advantage than India. And to compare the U.S. to a third world country is ridiculous, not to mention you’re using the fallacy of emotional appeal.
“Wanted” has everything to do with it.
Yes, indeed, Anna. The term “wanted” degrades children to be seen as property to be treated as we see fit, whether that is to choose to love and nurish them, or to treat them with abuse.
“Wanted” means having children that you are able to feed and support decently.
Why not then support legislative measures and community organizations which offer low-cost daycare, vocational/job training,
“Wanted” means every child should have a decent home with stable parents and good food and clothes and love. “Wanted” means that children shouldn’t be born into homes where they might be abused because of tired, hurt, angry and sick people who were railroaded by their anatomy into giving birth when they shouldn’t have been forced to do so in the first place.
Just what do you propose, mandate or encourage sterilize/birth control for the poor and the drug addicted and for women who are risk of abusing their children to have abortions? Well, I can tell you this, proposing abortion and birth control as the solution isn’t going to make the underlying issues leading to poverty, homelessness, and domestic violence go away. They don’t want an abortion so much as they want a way out of their bad situations. Instead, we should be offering afforable addiction/substance treatment and opportunities such as reasonably affordable education, affordable and safe housing, affordable daycare, community support and education classes for parents, respite care for parents, and vocational training and employment opportunities.
Mods, this is a re-posting of the above post to make some corrections
What’s evil is promoting policies that would create starving masses and long lines of homeless children waiting for the bottom of the pot at soup kitchens (and later, even the situation that India sees in the streets of its central cities–have you ever been to India? Do you know what severe overpopulation looks like?). That’s evil.
We are not a third world country and have more freedoms and a better ecomic advantage than India although we do have our share of economic problems. And to compare the U.S. to a third world country is an inaccurate comparison not to mention you’re using the fallacy of emotional appeal.
“Wanted” has everything to do with it.
Yes, indeed, Anna. The term “wanted” degrades children to be seen as property to be treated as we see fit, whether that is to choose to love and nurish them, or to treat them with abuse. It’s a slippery slope when we start deciding other’s worth (and fate) based on our perception of their worth, abilities, developmental level, and what they can contribute to society.
“Wanted” means having children that you are able to feed and support decently.
Why not then support legislative measures and community organizations which offer better opportunities and advantages to the disadvatnaged (see more below).
“Wanted” means every child should have a decent home with stable parents and good food and clothes and love. “Wanted” means that children shouldn’t be born into homes where they might be abused because of tired, hurt, angry and sick people who were railroaded by their anatomy into giving birth when they shouldn’t have been forced to do so in the first place.
Just what do you propose, mandating sterilize/birth control and abortion for the poor, drug-addicted, those with mental illness, or disabilities. Even now, abortion is often seen as the “responsible choice” for women in unplanned pregnancy situations, and is now more of a responsibility than a right, how long until abortions are mandated?
Well, I can tell you this, abortion and birth control aren’t the single best solutions, as the underlying issues leading to poverty, homelessness, and domestic violence need to be addressed. In listening to the stories of thousands of women who’ve chosen abortion, what I myself and others are hearing is that they don’t want an abortion so much as they want a way out of their bad situations. Abandoning women to lonely despair in both the issue of their unplanned pregnancy and their situational issues (finding safe housing, continuing education, etc) is a pretty crappy way to treat them, be it handing them a coat hanger or handing them a medical abortion.
Instead, we should be offering afforable addiction/substance treatment and opportunities such as reasonably affordable education, affordable and safe housing, affordable daycare, community support and education classes for parents, respite care for parents, and vocational training and employment opportunities. Only once we start addressing the problems surrounding the unplanned pregnancy will we better their lives and reduce the need for abortion.
Robert Berger said:
*You anti-choice people just don’t get it.
For the government to try to tell all
pregnant women that”You must bear this child”
just won’t work.There is no way to enforce
laws against abortion.The only way to prevent
abortions is to prevent unwanted pregnancies.
If there were a way to do this,pro-choice
people would be all for it.But that is a pipe
dream.And to be opposed to contraception is
either naive or just plain stupid.Contraception
prevents abortions.
Posted by: robert berger at January 15, 2008 9:49 AM***************
Rob, Modern medicine can give you a vasectomy and leave your organ working. You could spare your wife and the rest of the women the troubles associated with putting hormoes into their body and it’s 100% effective. That would prevent abortions. Sexual activity with contraception alone woul inevitably result in pregnancies. Even if it is 95% effective that means one pregnancy every twenty times you have sex. Knowing that it would be more rational to say contraceptives do not “prevent” abortions but they can reduce the number of pregnancies. If you want to prevent pregnancies then the vasectomy would be the way to go. And quit trying to keep women on hormones just so you can convince yoursel your preventing abortions by having sex with them.
yllas: You’re for the desire of pregnant women subverted to your own
No, that’s you. If your “argument” is no better than such silly falsehoods and pretenses, so be it.
The point is that we simply don’t know either way and you err on the side of permitting the life to end, and we don’t.
MK, if anything I see it as “erring” on the side of the pregnant woman.
……
No desire, really, just belief. I don’t desire the fetus to have consciousness. I don’t care if it has it or not. My view would not change. It is Human. It is alive. Period. YOU are the one that uses consciousness as a measuring stick.
Belief/desire = same thing, here. You more want the unborn life to continue than you want the woman to have the legal choice.
……
What we are talking about here is that you, without having proof one way or the other, make YOUR decision based on consciousness, and that decision results in the legal right to end millions of human lives.
And the legal right for the woman to do what she feels is best. Miscarriages and abortions occur all the time, around the world. It is not in doubt that the pregnant woman is a thinking, feeling person. Do we really need less miscarriages and abortions? As a race, as a society, I say no, though of course a miscarriage may be a very sad thing when the pregnancy is wanted on an individual level.
Beyond that, we certainly do not need “more births,” per se, to the point that we take away the legal choice that women now have. If we are to take away such a choice, then at a minimum I think the motivation should be something we all or almost all can agree upon.
Doug
Doug (7:36 AM),
Imagine you have a daughter with four pre-teen children. She calls you one day and said “I’m pregnant”. Would you react with as little heart and emotion as you do here? Would you ask her if she was going to keep it, since “we certainly do not need more births” or react with the joy she would hope for from you, the grandfather of her children?
Conversely, would you be fine with YOUR grandchildren knowing how disposable you believe potential human life to be? How would that attitude from you affect their attitudes about life in any way other than a negative one? Their attitude would become “what’s the point?”.
If everyone lived by the creed that “my desires trump everyone elses”, it would be a dark, depressing world. Arrogance and Selfishness are better replaced with Humility and Charity. Young children progress from a “me! me! me!” attitude after they realize that life is better when the focus is on something other than them and their selfish desires.
Children need guidelines and rules to grow up with the ability to live to their potential and do good for the world – which is why we’re here, BUT, The BEST parents (THE teacher in their life) are those who talks the talk and walks the walk, and lives each day according to a morality that is Truth, much MORE than popular opinion.
Imagine you have a daughter with four pre-teen children. She calls you one day and said “I’m pregnant”. Would you react with as little heart and emotion as you do here?
Oh please. I have as much (or more) heart and emotion as you do. Should people like you be able to tell pregnant women what to do. I feel strongly the answer is “no.”
……
Would you ask her if she was going to keep it, since “we certainly do not need more births” or react with the joy she would hope for from you, the grandfather of her children?
It’d depend on the situation. How was she doing with the first four? Does she really want another child? I could be very glad, or feel like, “Oh no, this is bad…” If she’s doing okay with the four, and wants another, then I’d be happy for her.
……
Conversely, would you be fine with YOUR grandchildren knowing how disposable you believe potential human life to be? How would that attitude from you affect their attitudes about life in any way other than a negative one? Their attitude would become “what’s the point?”.
Pro-Choicers have kids who know they were wanted, not just that they came to be because of some dogma on the part of the mother or mother & father. I’m fine with my nieces and nephews knowing I’m Pro-Choice, now. I’d tell them the same thing as anybody – I’m for the woman keeping the freedom she has now, and, if the pregnancy is wanted, then it’s good she is allowed to continue it, and if it’s unwanted then it’s good she can end it, to a point in gestation.
……
If everyone lived by the creed that “my desires trump everyone elses”, it would be a dark, depressing world. Arrogance and Selfishness are better replaced with Humility and Charity. Young children progress from a “me! me! me!” attitude after they realize that life is better when the focus is on something other than them and their selfish desires.
The darkness and depressing thing is when people pretend what other people say. In no way do I say that my desires trump everything else. I wouldn’t force my desires on the pregnant woman, for example. The selfishness here is acting like what you want is more important than what the pregnant woman wants.
……
Children need guidelines and rules to grow up with the ability to live to their potential and do good for the world – which is why we’re here, BUT, The BEST parents (THE teacher in their life) are those who talks the talk and walks the walk, and lives each day according to a morality that is Truth, much MORE than popular opinion.
Well, morality is opinions, in the first place. Ideas of the right/wrong/good/bad in the moral realm. A thing internal to the mind, not existing outside and independent of it.
Agreed that kids have to learn, even just to get along in society. But in no way is indoctrinating them with unprovable dogma the right way to go, IMO.
Doug
Doug,
Pro-life parents have kids who know they are wanted too. That’s not a reason in and of itself to be pro-choice.
I should have said “my desires trump everyTHING else”, not “everyone elses”. I was referring to what motivates people.
How do you know that “indoctrinating kids with unprovable dogma” (your words) is not the right way to go? Have you tried it? If you’re the least bit curious about the RC Church’s beliefs, and why we think the crazy way we do, tune in to Relevant Radio (you can “google” it for radio stations in your area). You don’t have to be Catholic to listen. There’s a show there for everybody.
Lastly, I am not trying to tell any women what to do in her own life. I cry every time I see a newborn baby because of the miracle of it all. I don’t know anyone who has had an abortion, but the thought of losing a precious soul makes me so sad. It makes me want to tell people there must be a better choice than abortion.
Pro-life parents have kids who know they are wanted too. That’s not a reason in and of itself to be pro-choice.
Well, I do hope they are wanted and know that. I was just saying that there won’t necessarily be any “negative attitude” about life. It is simply a fact that not every pregnancy is continued, whether because of miscarriage or because of abortion. Being “positive” isn’t just saying we need as many lives as we can get, etc.
……
I should have said “my desires trump everyTHING else”, not “everyone elses”. I was referring to what motivates people.
Some people do feel that way about some things. As far as the pregnant woman, I do think her desire is the most important thing.
……
How do you know that “indoctrinating kids with unprovable dogma” (your words) is not the right way to go? Have you tried it? If you’re the least bit curious about the RC Church’s beliefs, and why we think the crazy way we do, tune in to Relevant Radio (you can “google” it for radio stations in your area). You don’t have to be Catholic to listen. There’s a show there for everybody.
I’m not saying “religion is bad.” What I see as bad is force-feeding it, often at an early age. My sister, pretty much agnostic or vaguely non-denominationally Protestant her whole life to that point, became interested in Catholicism and converted to it when she was in her early 30s. A cousin of my mom’s, a Quaker to that point, became “born-again” and Evangelistic. In both cases, the religion serves their needs and they like it.
I don’t see it as thinking in “crazy” ways – there are all sorts of beliefs around the world…. I would rather see people free to examine different beliefs and choose the best one for them, if they feel the need for such.
……
>i>Lastly, I am not trying to tell any women what to do in her own life. I cry every time I see a newborn baby because of the miracle of it all. I don’t know anyone who has had an abortion, but the thought of losing a precious soul makes me so sad. It makes me want to tell people there must be a better choice than abortion.
Babies really are something, ain’t they? I can appreciate the way you feel, and I appreciate your posts. I don’t believe in the “soul,” but I’d much rather see a pregnancy prevented versus having an abortion.
Doug
Doug,
Pro-choice parents can behave in a way that makes their kids feel unwanted just like pro-life parents can. The pro-choice label no more guarantees “positive attitudes” than the pro-life label guarantees “negative attitudes”.
When you think about it, the labels PL and PC can be pretty misleading. Before 1973, I doubt those labels existed. Everyone considered themselves PL, except for the abortionists of course, and the leaders of the abortion-movement, who were PA. After abortion became politicized, it became easier for people on either side of the debate who weren’t strong in their convictions to call themselves Pro-CHOICE. It sounded nicer, and it was easier because they didn’t have to take sides. I think there are a lot of PC’rs who are actually PL, but won’t admit it, for fear that it would offend other PC’rs. Unfortunately, in many circles, admitting to being PL is considered just plain weird.
Regarding miscarriages – they are a natural end a to a pregnancy. Although the medical term describing it is a “spontaneous abortion” one cannot put an elective abortion in the same category. They both end a pregnancy, but one is an act of the will, and one is not. That’s a HUGE difference.
As Catholics, being pro-life also doesn’t mean that we think we need “as many lives as we can get”. The Catholic Church asks that we have an “openess to life, because all life is a gift from God. This is why artificial contraception is not allowed. Abstinence at a woman’s most fertile times is allowed if a couple has a serious reason for delaying a pregnancy. It’s explained in detail in the Catholicism of the Catholic Church, a book that can be found in most bookstores.
I wouldn’t say “force-feeding” (or “indoctrinating unprovable dogma”) correctly describes how most children learn about their religion. It seems reasonable to me that parents would start their children in the church that they know. The instruction follows a natural progression as the child grows in the same way a coach teaches a sport or a teacher teaches math. You start with the basics and go from there. As a child gets older there’s no rule against studying other religions either. It’s actually a good idea for many reasons.
There’s more to religion than “serving a persons needs”. Our primary purpose for existing is to love and serve God according to his will. We can’t prove that we have a soul, but we can’t prove that we DON’T either. So I choose to believe.