Hobbyists and Little Hitlers: This is the next step along the road towards True Believerdom, Domestic Terrorism division. If you’re the sort of woman who really believes (because it’s what you’ve been taught all your life) that God Wants Woman to Stay Home & Breed, anti-choice rallies aren’t just a pleasant outing, they’re a very public reinforcement of your own virtue. Sure, you “had to” get married and start popping out children (and hope that your fellow congregants won’t count the months between your wedding and the first christening, at least not too publicly) and now you’re stuck home alone with a growing pack of stinky filthy whining needy human larvae sucking up every morsel of your attention 24/7, or you’re juggling a string of sub-minimum-wage part-time jobs to try and keep one step ahead of homelessness, and your husband resents the day he first laid eyes on you, but at least you’re not going straight to HELL like those snotty uptown women in their expensive suits with their fancy degrees and careers! When you take time away from your family, it’s in service to God and the cries of the womb-babies, not because you’re desperate to do work that couldn’t be done just as well by a chimp or a robot, if only those creatures weren’t more expensive to rent than you are! If you truly believe that being a WifeandMother is the highest, the only truly acceptable, calling… and you haven’t hit the reality-show jackpot with a pack of adorable multiples or penned a series of bestseller doorstops based on your teenage fantasies of True Pure Love… well, serving as head of the local anti-choice committee is almost as much public attention as getting on the school board, and you don’t have to run for election and pretend to listen to what the neighborhood liberal pervert anti-creationist satanists might think. Imagine a young Sarah Palin, with a little less determination and a lot less luck.
Of course Governor Palin eloped with her high-school sweetheart, “to save her parents a fancy wedding they couldn’t afford” (seven months before her oldest son was born, I hear) but it’s hard to form lasting bonds when you switch colleges five times over the course of seven years. However, if you’re a young thing still working on her M.R.S. degree, bossing the Choose Life ! ! ! subdivision of your college’s Young Republican chapter is an excellent strategy to draw the positive attention of some future real estate salesman or marketing vice-president, especially if God has not seen fit to reward you with superficial qualities like beauty-contestant looks. Sure, their laundry may be full of crusty tubesocks and their laptops laden with pr0n-sourced viruses now, but it is a fact universally acknowledged that a single young Conservative in immanent possession of an assistant-vice-presidency at his daddy’s firm needs a true Christian helpmate who knows how to impress the neighbors using only her natural moral superiority, a handful of credit cards, and ten years’ worth of hoarded Better Homes & Gardens magazines.
‘And whenever you pray, do not be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, so that they may be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. But whenever you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.—Matthew 6:5-6
(Thank you, commenter Raven)
Speaking of Little Hitlers, this is the level where most of the male forced-birth terrorists first show up, because of course Their Lord God has informed them that men are meant to be the Head over women, who are only jumped-up body parts. (Ribs, you perverts, Adam’s rib.) Our decadent modern era makes it harder and harder for a (usually) White man of a certain age and no particular claims to brawn, brains, or beauty to attract a covey of female attention sufficiently ego-soothing — even the remaining Catholic nuns have gotten all uppity. And just try treating your so-called ‘personal assistant’ like one of the secretaries from Mad Men! But pius Men of the Cloth, or even the Wednesday-evening-Bible-study-polyblend-polo-shirt, can still demand respect among the anti-choice advocates. As commenter Slaney Black reminisces:
My personal “favorite” is the Irish-voodoo Catholic priest. The one with all the miraculous trinkets and end-of-days talk that would make Jack van Impe blush. Normal routine goes about like this…
“Abortion doctors are baby killers and I have proof because some Polack lady saw the Immaculate Heart of Mary in a bucket of chicken livers! Also, I don’t like Jews and Freemasons! Make sure to get one of these here gen-u-wine miraculous rosaries I got blessed personal by B16 when last I was in the Holy City. (Suggested donation folks, these little babies don’t come free). In conclusion, abortion doctors are like Hitler, who was bad even though I don’t care for the Jews either.”
Redirecting these peoples’ energies is going to be… complicated. Given the parlous state of American education, we certainly can’t afford to put them on the school boards. And I haven’t been able to think of a God-blessed project worthy to absorb their boundless desire to correct other peoples’ morals while parading their own superior worth. (For potential pitfalls, see ‘Maoist Neighborhood Committees’.) I mean, we could try convincing them that the West Nile Virus is an Al-Qaida plot and point them in the direction of mosquito eradication… okay, well, who’s got a better suggestion?
Next: Disgruntled Baby Buyers, Testicle Defenders, and Borderline Crazies — where the funny stops
Ned R.
These were all some of the gangs featured in The Warriors IIRC.
(And needless to say, A L, you’re setting the bar enjoyably high with all these!)
beltane
When these women do work outside the home, their husbands usually take all their earnings. Christian marriage is apparently similar to slavery.
Antonius
This post is filled with demeaning stereotypes. I disagree with right-to-lifers, but if this is where the discourse on this blog is going, I’m not sure it’s for me.
El Cid
Brava. But shrill. I blush and clutch my pearls. Or maybe I’m pearling the clutch. I’m not sure.
wombat
Antonius
So which stereotype do you identify with?
The Austin works for me.
Little Dreamer
@beltane:
Yes, thank the Apostle Paul.
Sirkowski
Tell it like it is!
JenJen
Anyone else getting a flood of astroturf-talking-point-mess in their inboxes today from annoying acquaintances?
This one is ruling the day:
Tiller’s Murder – a Pro-Choice Mentality
It’s so full of awful I really don’t know where to begin.
Thanks for this series, Anne.
Chris Johnson
Terser, please?
Little Dreamer
@Antonius:
I was not aware that Anne Laurie was “this blog”. She is a front pager, this is one of her posts, it is not the total sum of Balloon Juice.
Brian
I love this site but wtf is this writing? I could hardly make it through. This post is incoherent and reeks of an attention-seeking writing style.
Little Dreamer
@JenJen:
I’m so glad I don’t have many acquaintances, and none that would send me that kind of garbage. :)
bloodstar
I applaud the sentiment and welcome the outrage, but a minor point must be made: Sometimes a scalpel works better than a club. This is a clubbing post. *bam bam bam bam bam* :)
It’s unfortunate that verbal clubbing doesn’t work on the people who need it the most, which are the people who aren’t the true believers, who have some residual sympathy for the “Womb Bigots” (for whatever reason), but still have an open mind and can be peeled away (those people who are the true believers, nothing will work to convince them of their wrongness). Clubbing tends to cause a sympathetic reaction and driving them away from the intended goal, Scalpels work at peeling them away from the “Womb Bigots”
For examples of Scalpel type arguments see Obama.
My nit picking aside, it’s a great post.
Michael
Anne, can we have a chapter on Glengarry Glen Ross and the Baby Marketing Boilerrooms (er, make that “Faith Based Adoption Agencies and the Things They Do for Connected Adoption Lawyers, Prolife Sorta Social Workers and Church Property Managers”)?
Always Be Selling.
Dickens has nothing on these people.
I’m also liking the idea of a “World as It Could Be” chapter, complete with descriptions of the profits to be made by FutileCare(tm) Neonatal Providers, the Faith Based Adoption Agencies and the happy smiles in the birthing room as the accountants are tallying up the bill next to the birthing mother and getting financial information on where to send the bill, the interest rate on copays and disallowed charges, and getting signatures for guarantees. They’re entitled to pay, you know.
I’m wondering if we should have a form sent out to OB/GYNs to send in to lift passports of the expectant. Can’t have them leaving the country for abortions, even if we have to chain ’em to the bed.
Zifnab
@Antonius: I enjoy a little broad brush humor as much as the next guy, but Antonius has a point.
I mean, Anne, you realize that people – even people of the anti-abortion enthusiast variety – don’t come off a factory farm right? We get the culture war, but what do you really have to gain by setting up little strawmen and knocking them down?
If you’ve got a beef with a particular jackhole, then by all means, line’m up and knock’m down. But you can’t just go after “the sort of woman who really believes that God Wants Woman to Stay Home & Breed” because that’s not anyone we can pick out of a lineup. At the end of the day, I’ve got a picture of a nebulous black hatted self-hating anti-feminist riding in her ’97 Chevy Suburban covered in Jesus bumper stickers with the 8.5 pitch-fork wielding future Hell’s Angles dangling out the rear windows. I’m just not sure if this individual really exists or if he’s the product of the imagination.
HY
I’m with Antonius. I know tensions are running high over Tiller’s murder, and I fully agree that it is terrorism and I’m glad this blog has been dealing with it in several posts. But to me these particular posts aren’t amusing, thoughtful, or even cathartic. Annie Laurie’s free to post whatever she likes but I also hope she decides to go in a more reflective direction.
Comrade Dread
So in your mind, it’s completely impossible to look at the issue of abortion as a clash of two rights (privacy vs. life) and side with the one you deem the higher right?
Personally, I don’t care what women do with their sexuality. I support contraception and sex education and would support subsidies to make contraception available to poor women.
But once the issue of another human being with its own set of rights comes into the fray, sorry, but I’m going to go with the right to existence first and foremost, unless the mother’s life is threatened or there is a pressing medical reason or there would be a deleterious psychological reason (such as the child being the product of a sexual assault).
JenJen
@Little Dreamer: Kind of comes with the territory when you live in a swing-state right-leaning area. Through business, you meet people, they get your email addresses, and suddenly, you find yourself inundated with shit you never cared to know about people you merely work with, and never wish to know socially. It makes me crazy, and it’s one of those “downsides” that comes with email and social media, and I try not to let it bug me, but it kind of pisses me off.
Around 2004 and the swiftboating, I started sending out a blast-email to everyone on these annoying email lists, that made my politics completely clear and begged off the list, while threatening a second dose of uber-liberalism from me. It worked like a charm (!!) and I am amazed how spam-free I remained during the 2008 Election, despite the horrifying things actual friends would send me from their annoying email lists.
I think it has more to do with my locale than anything else. Every now and again, something sneaks through. And when it happens four times in one day, like it did today with this “Tiller Murder = Pro-Choice Mentality” garbage, well, let’s just call it my personal Effective Astroturf Monitor.
Joshua Norton
Red wine.
Xanax.
Repeat as needed.
TR
I’m in favor of broad-brush stereotyping as much as the next guy, but yeah, these posts are a little too full of strawmen. There’s enough specifically crazy in the pro-life movement to hold up to the light and mock mercilessly that you shouldn’t need to resort to this.
If you reduce the pro-life crazies to a two-dimensional cartoon, it’s easy for everyone — us, them, and the fence sitters we’d hope to sway over to our side of the debate — that your account, and thus your argument, can be dismissed.
Little Dreamer
@HY:
@Zifnab:
More reflective, I agree with.
At the same time, I don’t see this as strawmen, I see this as a snarky description of the moral superiority of the right. Perhaps the fact that I grew up in a Republican family who acted a lot like these people, a family who praised me because I had caught the attentions of a Republican legislator’s son as a husband (we divorced later) makes this not so stereotypical for me.
HY
Comrade Dread, I basically agree that it’s a clash of two rights. But I believe it’s a very messy world and that sometimes difficult decisions have to be made– and often I’m not going to agree with those decisions. If it was me, I would likely abort a fetus with a profound condition expected to be incompatible with life. i think I might also abort a child diagnosed with Down’s. Now I have a cousin with Down’s who’s lovely and doing reasonably well with immense support from her devoted parents and the British National Health Service. I have also cared for a few children with Down’s who were terribly impaired. You can’t know which you’re going to have until the child begins to develop and knowing what I know I wouldn’t take that risk. But the bottom line is that in a messy world I can’t and don’t want to make decisions for another woman. Women will make choices I believe are terribly wrong, but I can’t fix that reality. All things considered, it’s imperfect but better to allow people to make the choices they think are best.
EconWatcher
This post is grotesque. Not a glimmer of recognition that there could be decent, thoughtful, and sincere people on the other side of the issue. (My grandmother was one such.) Demonizing, gratuitously disrespectful, thoughtless. Not at all what you usually see on this blog.
Joey Maloney
@Comrade Dread:
Those are excellent guidelines, Comrade, for you to use should you ever be faced with an unwanted or unhealthy pregnancy.
Oh, what’s that you say? Those are for applying to other women? Strangers, about whose lives you know absolutely nothing? Ah. Well, in that case, may I suggest a Big Gulp full of STFU with a supersized order of MYOB?
Notorious P.A.T.
If you want, we could go back to discussing the anti-abortion zealout who murdered a doctor in cold blood. That better?
Ain’t that the truth. And brains don’t help any, these days.
El Cid
Given that there is still no legal definition of the embryo as a human being with a separate right to existence from the mother, from whence springs the government’s authority to restrict doctors and women from pursuing their own agreed upon choice of most appropriate medical procedures?
Second, from my perspective all I feel like I frequently encounter on liberal blogs are even handed discussions of the rights of choice in which writers bend over backward to respect the viewpoints of those who disagree or which to limit the scope of that choice. From time to time I am more than happy to hear a blunt “this is how I feel, screw you” perspective, just like how from time to time I want to hear plain spoken denunciations of religious belief from the non-religious, and foreign policy dissent from people who don’t want to waste my time expressing U.S. foreign policy in the most complimentary terms possible.
Comrade Dread
Typical. You cannot or will not concede that someone might honestly see the issue differently than you and have a equally principled stand regarding rights.
No, for you, it all has to be about misogynists or lunatic religious nuts.
Little Dreamer
@EconWatcher:
Are you certain your grandmother would still be a member of this current Republican party? They seem to be dropping like flies these days.
Notorious P.A.T.
What can we do? Evil is banal.
Krista
Do you take every tongue-in-cheek screed that seriously? If so, you really must expend a lot of energy being offended.
Personally, I thought it was a delicious blend of tasty, satisfying humour, fortified with crunchy, good-for-you Grains of Truth(tm) (now part of your complete breakfast!)
Janefinch
I’m with the commenters who’d like to see something a little more reflective…all of these one dimensional opponents may exist in RL, but are hardly indicative of the majority of anything, much less pro-life folks. This kind of diabribe may play well with the choir, but at the end of the day is very easy to dismiss.
Zifnab
@Comrade Dread:
If this was “Do I have the right to look through your mail if I think a human life is in jeopardy?” you might have point. We could make the Bush wiretapping debate about Life v Privacy.
But this isn’t about straight up “Life” versus straight up “Privacy”. This is about who gets to decide which woman can use contraception. This is about government regulators peering into a woman’s uterus and declaring a cyst as a human being. This is about a rapist planting a giant flag in between his victim’s legs. This is about a woman being forced to choose between spending three to eight months carrying a child to term when the doctor has already informed her that the child will almost certainly die at birth. This is about whether an ectopic pregnancy can be treated or whether the woman will just have to die.
This is, at the end of the day, an argument over who gets to control a woman’s body from the start of her menstrual cycle to the first day of her potential future child’s life. Should a woman get to decide if and how she carries a child to term? Or does this pre-natal citizen become property of the state for the duration of gestation?
John Cole
Look, I don’t find this series of posts particularly helpful or useful, either, particularly because in your face like this undercuts what I’m trying to accomplish in other posts, but when you ask someone to join the front page, you don’t tell them what to post. At least I don’t.
I just think these are a terrible waste of Anne’s talents and will just be used against her to discredit her when she makes good points, but if you run a blog, you don’t tell people what to write about when you invite them. Ask DougJ, or Tim, or Michael D.- I don’t tell them what to write about, I can’t see why I would tell Anne Laurie.
For now, if it upsets you, keep voicing your opinion about why, and maybe you can influence her, and if it becomes unbearable, don’t read her.
Margarita
Biggest. Strawman. Ever.
Who is this post intended to persuade? Or is it pure spleen, in which case better writing please.
TR
Actually, yeah, that would be better. A lot better.
I think it would be much more productive to get rid of the broad-brush cartoon characterizations that apply to pretty much no one in the real world and instead dredge up the facts, the quotes, the position papers of the nutjobs who actually do live around us.
Stop wasting time drawing these over-the-top sketches of make-believe enemies and go after the real assholes — the actual individuals and the groups they belong to, listed by name — who pushed that zealot over the edge. Make them accountable for their actions, for their deeds, for their words and the connections they have to this act of terrorism.
Randall Terry and his pals at Operation Rescue have a long history of intimidation and outrageous arguments, and they need a spotlight on them. Same for Frank Pallone and all the rest. *That* would be a productive direction.
Or, you know, give these pro-life versions of Archie and Jughead a real piece of your mind. Ooooh, that’ll show those figments of your imagination. That’ll show them real good.
The Grand Panjandrum
@Zifnab:
I think this is a pretty good take down of a jackhole supreme:
Joe, we hardly knew ye.
Just another reason to dislike the half-bright atavist filling the screen every time you tune to MSNBC for some unenlightened drivel.
JenJen
@Antonius; @John Cole: Just to add to the chorus, I’ve never, ever, in years of visiting this Balloon-Juice thang on a daily basis, considered it to be a wedge-issue, culture-war, partisan blog. Ever. It’s what I found so appealing about it, and it’s why I continue to visit and recommend to every smart person in my life.
Tiller’s murderer took this story to the front pages, and it is a topical subject. Thorny, to be certain, but one thing about this blog is that it has always been current and topical. Ms. Laurie’s post seems perfectly consistent with what I think Balloon-Juice is… a topical, political website, with excellent writers who don’t fear writing honestly and, at times, pushing buttons, eliciting comment, and responding to comment.
Bravo, Balloon-Juice, I say. I like to be surprised. I like being made to think. The posts aren’t spontaneous, they’re a certain, well-written view on current news, aren’t they? Isn’t that what I keep coming here for?
KRK
immanent s/b imminent
pius s/b pious
After the first post in this series, I thought this “field guide” was going to be a genuine exercise in identifying the different factions of the anti-choice movement and their motivations and what that means going forward. Now with this entry it appears I made a mistake. Is “Hobbyists and Little Hitlers” a single category or two? If two, what’s what? Is your paragraph beginning “speaking of Little Hitlers” supposed to be tongue-in-cheek, because you realize that you hadn’t mentioned them up to that point? Are you classifying “Little Hitlers” as any men who would otherwise be “Hobbyists”? (Or is this like my mom calling my stepdad “Hitler” because he was a controlling jerk?)
There’s plenty of cause to be outraged on this issue, so maybe you’re just doing a series to dole it out in smaller pieces. But if you are intending to shed some light on the distinctions amongst the masses, I’m not getting it.
EconWatcher
Little Dreamer: My grandmother wasn’t and wouldn’t be a Republican. She was an Irish Catholic lady whose heroes were Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, and John Kennedy. But she thought abortion was an abomination.
Joshua Norton
Bull and shit. You don’t defeat the wingnuts until you learn to fight like one. Pearl-clutchers need not apply.
They get to carry on and lie and froth and scream because they know the Dems won’t bring firearms to the table to settle their differences. We don’t have that same security on our side because they’re party is the ultimate safe harbor for the sociapathic, trigger-happy gun loons.
HY
@Jenjen
I don’t think we’ve actually heard the responding the comment part yet. From JC, yes, but not from AL.
Comrade Dread
My objection has nothing to do with contraception. Use it. Double up on it. Triple up on it. I don’t care. Your choice.
No, this is about the question of at what point in development does a human being become a person and accorded with minimal human rights and deserving of having those rights protected.
You will kindly note that I addressed all three of these as exceptions. If there is a medical reason or if there would be substantial psychological harm, or if there is a physical risk to the mother, she should be free to have an abortion.
You cannot harm another human being without just cause. If a fetus is a human being, it has certain inalienable rights which are deserving of consideration and protection.
So again, the question would be, at what point in development does one obtain human rights?
Joey Maloney
@Comrade Dread:
Not at all. I’m perfectly willing to concede you are honest and principled in your position.
You just happen to be wrong. You do not get to decide what women do with their bodies. Period. Your moral squeamishness and/or philosophical dithering don’t trump their right to bodily autonomy, no matter how honest and principled they may be.
Little Dreamer
@EconWatcher:
Sorry, didn’t realize you were talking about a catholic democrat (you didn’t mention that, I assumed, my bad) – but you stated she thought abortion is an abomination. Abortion IS an abomination, but it is also a necessary procedure. NO ONE LIKES ABORTION, get that through your thick head.
I don’t have a beef with those who feel abortion is not a good thing, yet, I do take exception that they probably don’t consider the consequences of not having the procedure available.
Did your grandmother ever voice the opinion of what she felt should be put in place of abortion, sans abstinence?
Observer
Drinking while cruising the intertubes never ends well.
AnotherBruce
This post is grotesque. Not a glimmer of recognition that there could be decent, thoughtful, and sincere people on the other side of the issue.
Maybe if those people could give a shit about scum who murder doctors, I could give a shit about them. But after 20 years of blood shedding, Randall Terry is still having a good laugh. These people are stereotypes. They deserve everything they get and more.
asiangrrlMN
@Comrade Dread: When that fetus can exist on its own is the “correct” answer, but given that I’m not in a very correct mood, I will answer thusly. To me, the life of the existing woman takes precedence over the life or lack thereof of the fetus in her body. We can debate until the end of time when life begins. It won’t change the fact that the woman who is carrying the baby is the one who will ultimately be responsible for that baby. Therefore, whatever choice is made should ultimately be made by the woman. There is no principled equivalency here because we’re talking about real people. Your beliefs are not equivalent to mine when I am deciding what to do with my body and my life.
Again, if women are just to be brood mares, then at least allow us to tie our tubes at any point after menstruation starts so those of us who have absolutely no desire to be mothers can’t be forced to carry a pregnancy to full-term.
As for the post, I am torn. I like the idea in theory, but I find it lacking in carry-through. I would like a little more nuance as well.
Margarita
Well, that’s a question, but not the question, else we wouldn’t concern ourselves with “exceptions.”
Little Dreamer
@The Grand Panjandrum:
Whoa!
That’s some serious shit (and for the record, I can’t stand Scarborough).
JackHughes
I thought the post requested useful ideas on how to channel anti-abortion zealtots’ time and efforts into (ahem) more constructive endeavors?
The mosquito eradication idea was a good one, but I don’t think it would satisfy their urge for public denunciations and loud pieties.
Little Dreamer
You don’t redirect the energies of religious extremists. I guess that is the major problem I have with this post.
Blue Raven
Wow. Satire is lost on a lot of people, isn’t it?
Little Dreamer
Well, I tried to edit, but after waiting two minutes and then being knocked offline it didn’t take, so edit is below:
Edit: Anne, I may be wrong but I’m under the impression that we’re getting ready to face an ever widening ideological war with a group of people who like and defend the right to own and carry guns. Would you like to talk about this sometime? I hate to say it, but I really think this is the direction they’re going to take sooner rather than later.
Joshua Norton
Or better yet, do what they do in China. After the second kid, the male has to get a state-mandated vasectomy.
See how fast the wingnut men demand the right to control their own bodies.
O tempora o mores!
Notorious P.A.T.
Your grandmother stood in front of women about to abort a non-viable fetus with a picture of bloody body parts, while screaming “BABY KILLER”?
A lot of people in this thread seem to think Anne is just making stuff up. I find that difficult to believe.
joes527
@Joey Maloney:
Walk into any hospital and ask them to amputate your healthy arm. Offer to pay cash if you want – you will still discover that bodily autonomy has limits.
I agree that the right for a woman to control her body is a strong argument that everyone else should just butt out.
But I am uncomfortable with the idea that a fetus 10 minutes before birth has no rights whatsoever and 10 minutes after birth is a person with rights and protections.
Perhaps the correct answer to this is to get over our squeamishness and allow babies younger than X, or who have not reached development milestone Y to be offed at the parents request.
And maybe birth is the best milestone that can be identified. (though from the fetus/baby perspective, birth is more of a switchover of life support systems than a developmental milestone that can clearly be identified as conferring personhood.)
But to suggest that anyone who wonders if a passage through the birth canal is really the key ingredient to personhood is a “Little Hitler” doesn’t help anyone
Notorious P.A.T.
So, you think a piece of our mind does nothing, but shining a light on them will work like a charm?
John T
I came in here to comment that I think John made a good choice giving Anne Laurie front-pager status. I looks like my opinion is in the minority. I enjoy a good blast of snark (and I grew up among Christian wingnuts, so I recognize that the exaggerated caricatures are based on reality), but then again, I’m one of those Unserious™ blogospherites so pay no attention to me.
The Raven
This is a discussion of where violent terrorists and their supporters come from. Do you expect them to be nice people? I am sympathetic, but I’ve done reasonable. And done it, and done it, and done it. Until I finally realized I was becoming complicit with abusers and criminals. The “decent, thoughtful, sincere” people accepted the arguments of the most uncompassionate and cruel as valid, despite every attempt by many people to point this out. I finally decided that their claims of decency, thoughtfulness, and sincerity were half-truths. The term “concern troll” hadn’t been coined yet, but that was what these people were–decent enough to recoil at acts of terrorism, but not decent enough to renounce the ideology that led to those acts. Maybe great saints and wise charismatic politicians like Obama can persuade such people, but I cannot. These days I subscribe to the Willow/tnh/Raven theory of troll management: “Bored now. Krawk!”
Comrade Dread
So somewhere between 10-28?
If her actual life or health (bodily or mental) are in jeopardy, then I would agree with you. But if not, we are not talking about her life. We maybe talking about her right of choice or her right to pursue happiness, but I would argue that as those are dependent upon life, then the right to exist would trump those.
Yes, and there are over a dozen forms of contraception available. While none of them is 100%, doubling up on them will significantly reduce the likelihood of pregnancy. Your risk of getting an STD is probably higher in such a case than getting pregnant.
Inform women of their options, educate girls regarding their choices, and provide them contraception when necessary.
I’m not suggesting that we steal your shoes, chain you in the kitchen and force you against your will to become pregnant and be a stay at home mother.
You are free to act and live and do as you choose. The only caveat that applies is the same one that applies to all humans. When your right to pursue happiness conflict with another’s rights, there needs to be some guidelines (i.e. the law) in place to ensure that both persons’ rights are respected and protected. In the case when that is not possible and we must side with one person over the other, then the higher right takes priority.
Notorious P.A.T.
Who is doing that? Seriously, who? Part One of this series says “these are the people standing outside your local reproductive services clinic”. Not “these are people who are anti-abortion”.
Inaccurate analogy. There is no particular reason to amputate a healthy arm.
TR
You know when I’d believe it? When she produces actual quotes from actual people. Until then, it’s just mental masturbation.
A piece of our mind makes us all feel self-righteous and superior, but makes independents think we’re hyperventilating over nothing and makes conservatives dig in their heels.
Shining a light on them — pointing out Randall Terry’s cold-blooded comments, followed up by a goddamn invitation to the reporters to join him for a goddamn beer and fucking hot wings, like he’s toasting the terrorist here — yeah, that might make people in the middle reconsider their opinions.
Notorious P.A.T.
People like that used to believe (for the most part) that politics was a vulgar and wordly pursuit, unsuitable for their wonderfully pure religion. Maybe we could get back there again.
Notorious P.A.T.
I don’t disagree with you; I just think you are trying to draw a distinction where none exists. Both of these options sound pretty much the same to me. Unless you have the power to compel reporters to sit down with Terry and endure a couple hours of his “philosophy”, that is.
Really? You don’t believe people like this actually exist? You don’t think there are men who resent modern women, or women who are bitter at other women for having opportunities they did not?
joes527
@Notorious P.A.T.:
If I had bodily autonomy, why would I need YOUR approval to cut of MY arm? To quote the bard: May I suggest a Big Gulp full of STFU with a supersized order of MYOB?
Or are you saying that we, as a society should be evaluating the particular reason someone might want an abortion before we decide whether it should be legal and obtainable?
Perfectly accurate analogy.
Charon
Hi, long-time lurker, first-time poster.
I wanted to echo John T @58 and Notorious P.A.T. @61.
Also, the reaction of some of the posters here to Anne Laurie’s post reminds me strongly of the Right-wing reaction to the DHS report. She’s not talking about you!
Notorious P.A.T.
I second that. No one’s comments tend to stick in my mind (except mine, hehe) so I didn’t really know who Anne was, but these pieces by her have been, I think, first-rate.
Notorious P.A.T.
Anyone who thinks people like Anne is describing don’t actually exist, just Google “Terri Schiavo”. Remember that? Not a one-to-one correlation, of course, but still illuminating.
uila
Go ahead and rage, Anne! Looking forward to the next post!
Easy there, David Broder. Give the woman some space, for chrissakes!
Notorious P.A.T.
To rephrase one of my earlier comments: I suspect your grandmother was too good of a person to stand in front of a heartbroken couple on their way to abort a brainless fetus yelling “MURDERER!” If I’m right, then she clearly does not fall in any of Anne Laurie’s categories.
someguy
You nailed it, Anne Laurie, only possibly not quite hard enough. Surprised you were able to do that without touching on the Palin incest question and the apparent ubiquity of gays in conservative leadership positions and how that relates to their twisted politics… but then there’s always Pt. III.
TR
Really? See if you can spot the difference in the two:
Randall Terry said this:
Anne’s commenter offered this:
The first verbatim quote takes Randall Terry — an actual human being with actual human being followers — and shows what a despicable piece of shit he is.
The second imaginary quote has none of that power. It throws out accusations of anti-semitism and conspiracy theories, has no internal logic — as a Catholic, frankly, most of that shit made me pissed at the author, not at the people he was trying to mock — and is just ridiculous.
The first quote makes an impartial reader want to reject Terry. The second rendering makes an impartial reader want to reject Anne.
Notorious P.A.T.
Ouch! hehe
Paul L.
Interesting, So this must be what is taught in Womyn’s studies classroom. Enough posts and we’ll have a new Womyn’s studies textbook.
Keep up the good work cupcake.
How about a workaround.
I’m Feeling Mischievous This Evening
Unless it is born during the abortion, then according to Obama, it has no rights.
TR
Are you being purposefully dim?
YES, OF COURSE I BELIEVE PEOPLE LIKE THIS ACTUALLY EXIST. THAT’S THE WHOLE FUCKING POINT.
There are real-life right-wing pro-life psychos out there. Target them for ridicule. Quote them and shame them. Make them radioactive so that political moderates don’t want to be associated with them.
Mocking these cartoons does absolutely nothing productive. Nothing at all.
Charon
@Notorious P.A.T.:
I agree. In addition the notion that the picketers outside of abotion clinics and outside of providers homes qualify as peaceful protesters is a crock. With the anti-abortion movement’s history of violence the presence of any of these types of protesters has to be seen as an implied threat of physical assault.
Notorious P.A.T.
I wasn’t clear enough: I think there is not much of a distinction between “speaking our mind” and “shine a light on”. I mean, telling people “this is what Randall Terry thinks, and it sucks” is both speaking and shining.
Well, I took my examples straight from Anne’s piece. So it’s not really fair to say that she is making up straw men, then say that people like she’s talking about should be ridiculed. Not saying that you did that; I can’t really remember who is saying what and dammit I missed 2 goals while typing away. We should target the “names” in the movement, but we also have to try and shame their nameless (so far) followers, like Anne is doing.
TenguPhule
Indentured servitude and manual labor growing the food they want to eat, otherwise they starve.
TenguPhule
Only if Paul L volunteers to get his testicles pulled out through a big hole made in his stomach first.
Notorious P.A.T.
That’s not true.
Starfish
I agree with everyone else who finds these tediously long-winded and mean-spirited to no good end.
TR
No, that’s a straw man. If you can find me an actual Catholic priest who expresses that kind of anti-semitism and freemasonry nonsense, who refers to the pope as “B16” and talks like a Southern used car salesman, I will make your mortgage payments for a year.
What? He doesn’t exist? Then he’s a straw man.
Yeah, ridiculing stay-at-home mothers for being stay-at-home mothers is really going to convert them to our cause.
Fuck, I’m having flashbacks to Amanda Marcotte’s arrival at Pandagon. A perfectly good blog got washed away in a sea of hysteria.
TenguPhule
And here we go again with the slut deserves it.
Notorious P.A.T.
As far as I’m concerned, if you want to remove your arm for no reason whatsoever, go right ahead. I’m sure there is a doctor out there who would do it for the right price.
But your arm is not going to grow into a much larger, much more demanding entity, or turn out to be (despite what you thought at first) an arm that has no chance to be healthy and viable, and no one has an arm because their uncle raped them when they were asleep.
Notorious P.A.T.
Hey, my mom used to stay at home. But I thought we weren’t talking about people who stay at home, but rather people who haunt reproductive services clinics.
Hehe, brother I can sympathise with that sentiment.
Comrade Dread
So saying you are completely free to pursue happiness as you desire so long as your actions do not harm or conflict with another person’s rights and, by the way, here’s all the information you need to prevent that situation from happening and, oh yes, we will even comp you whatever you need, is exactly like saying a woman should be raped because she wore a mini-skirt.
Sweet frickin’ Buddha… I don’t even know how to answer that mentality.
Notorious P.A.T.
Every TV preacher I’ve seen sounds to me like a used-car salesman. As for anti-semitism, well, it’s not atheists who push that stuff. I figure the “B16” was meant to be a stylistic choice, so it’s not dispositive. And do Catholics value having trinkets blessed by a Pope? Yes, I can say from personal experience they do.
WarrenS
Damn, I dunno. I thought that was some pretty high-quality stuff; snark goes well with moral outrage, IMO.
Notorious P.A.T.
I think we all agree with that. But:
1) we differ on whether or not a fetus is a person
2) no contraceptive is 100% effective, and
3) some people want to have a child, only to find out that their child-to-be is not viable and has no chance at a real life. People like that deserve to have choices (disclosure: this happened to a married couple I’m friends with)
Yeah, let’s save the heavy artillery like this for people who we know merit it.
SrirachaHotSauce
Well, after the blogday I had, I’m sure John will think I am just out to bust his chops, which is not the case, but ….
I enjoyed the top post. I thought it was funny and made good points. Witty. And better-humored than the thugs on the right really deserve, but that’s just me.
Joey Maloney a/k/a The Bard Of Balloon Juice
@joes527:
Actually, you don’t need my approval. I’ll even loan you a hacksaw. You do need my approval to assist you, of course, and sorry but I just waxed these floors.
One limit we do not place on bodily autonomy, however, is a requirement to sacrifice it to save someone else’s life, and that’s why – even if you grant “human being” status to a fetus – no one else should be allowed to interfere with a woman who chooses abortion.
If you think I’m wrong, I hope you’re prepared to give up a kidney to any dialysis patient who’s a good match for you and wants it. After all, it’s just one kidney. You’ll be fine without it, and I hear the post-op recovery period isn’t all that long.
And if we’re taking a poll, I can enjoy a good snarkfest just as much as serious, chock-full-o-citations argument. Ms. Laurie could use an editor, maybe, but I sniggered and I’m not too proud to admit it.
tripletee (formerly tBone)
@John Cole:
Whatever, John. Everybody knows that you’re a total control freak who drove away Tom in Texas with your insane micro-management.
FWIW, I think Anne should write whatever she wants, but I hope in the future she’ll make her arguments a little more, dare I say it, nuanced. This just seemed like a mean-spirited broadside aimed at a bunch of lazy caricatures.
@TenguPhule:
I think that would be a little unfair. You wouldn’t need a big hole.
John Cole
@tripletee (formerly tBone): Actually, Tom’s account still exists, he just never uses it.
TR
Same here. I’m not calling for any kind of blog owner control, I just think Anne could be much more effective if she dials back the imagination and digs up the facts.
TenguPhule
Comrade, accidents happen.
Punishing women for that does not compute.
joes527
@Notorious P.A.T.:
Umm … Actually no. BIID is a real issue, and folks wanting to get rid of an appendage for reasons that are not approved by society are often forced into dangerous back alley amputations.
Don’t even start on whether medicare will pay for it.
None of those concerns end at birth, they just get worse. But we frown on infanticide. Why?
And I’m not saying that there aren’t real reasons why a woman would chose abortion. Just that “my body – my choice” is a rather simplistic view of a complex situation.
Comrade Dread
You are confusing consequences with punishment.
Is it a punishment if I’m driving my Volvo with my seat belt on, surrounded by air bags, and some joker rear ends me and I break my arm? No, it’s a random consequence that happened to me despite the measures I took to mitigate it.
Is it a punishment if a woman uses contraceptive, forces her partner to use it, and she still somehow gets an STD? No. It’s just an unfortunate consequence that happened to her despite taking what were suitable precautions to prevent it.
Are both of those things inconveniences and (in the latter case) life changing events? Yes.
But they are not punishments.
Nearly everything you do carries some risk to it. But we calculate our chances, do our best to mitigate that risk and we live our lives accordingly, and if the worst (or the life changing unexpected happens) we adjust, make new decisions and carry on.
El Cid
It would be a punishment if the woman could not attain medical treatment from a doctor for the STD, if it were the case that there were those people who had made access to such medical services illegal, or who had made it more costly and difficult for doctors to practice medicine through their actions at those medical offices.
Darkrose
@Comrade Dread:
Because there’s no chance that birth control will fail, or that the various methods that are most reliable involve hormones, which many women can’t tolerate. And certainly there’s no such thing as a woman with a wildly irregular cycle that will affect how said hormones work.
Darkrose
@Comrade Dread:
Here’s the thing:
I don’t like children. Other people’s are okay because as soon as they start crying or smelling awful or demanding to be fed I can hand them off. When my cats get annoying, I can pick them up and toss them off the bed (probably straining my back if it’s Joxur). I understand that people frown on tossing infants around the room because they won’t shut up and let me play City of Heroes in peace.
Selfish? Hell yeah. And that’s why I don’t have children. But if, for example, a condom broke (I can’t use hormonal birth control), and I didn’t realize there was a problem because I have a very irregular cycle (and I was, you know, having sex with men), I would absolutely consider being forced to continue the pregnancy to be a punishment. And I know myself well enough to realize that I’d take it out on the kid I didn’t want and whose existence I resent.
Cyrus
@Comrade Dread:
Well, if it walks like a duck and talks like a duck, then despite its vigorously quacked protestations, we might have to consider the possibility that we have a duck on our hands.
Comrade Dread
As I said above, all life carries some risk to it. Despite your best efforts to avoid or mitigate it, it is entirely possible that you will be in a horrific car accident and become paralyzed.
This does not prevent you from driving.
You take the precautions you can and you live your life and you deal with the random circumstances that happen to you.
In which case, if you know that you do not want the responsibility or could not provide the best environment, the difficult decision you would have to make would be whether or not give the child up.
Comrade Dread
Well, please enlighten me.
At what point in any of my posts have I stated or alluded that I hate, mistrust, or dislike women?
The Moar You Know
Sweet Jesus (the good kind) I think you set my monitor on fire with this post.
Needless to say, keep it up.
les
@Janefinch:
Well, jane, the fact that you are willing to admit that these “opponents” exist in real life, but you’re just not interested in addressing them, is what makes the “moderate christianists/pro-lifes/whatevers” the enablers of the lunatic fringe. Keep on dismissing anything that might disturb your comfortable morality and pretend that it’s nothing to do with you–geeze, it’s just that crazy choir yelling at those crazy fringers. And maybe moan and give a little grimace at the next bible study or kaffee klatsch, but it’s surely not your problem. Oh if everyone would just be reasonable!!
Church Lady
Damn, bitter much? I think this is just a tad over the top. Nothing like denigrating those women that actually choose to stay home and raise their children. Given the way you described children in this post, I have to assume that you not only don’t have any, but have absolutely no desire to ever have children. Good thing Roe v. Wade is still the law of the land.
les
@TR:
What is the fucking deal? Do you actually believe that the asshole who shot Tiller is some kind of one-off, a unique individual existing with no counterpart, no support, no one in “mainstream xianity” or republicanism or whatever? He is in fact a type–the Heart of Fucking America is full of him. He’s a long term member of any number of formally organized groups, xian and otherwise, and most of them are wringing their hands while they explain that it was really the doctor–the professional acting totally within the law, providing a service to women and couples who came to him without coercion (in fact in the face of vile assaults from his fellow xians and right wingers)–it was really the doctor who forced this poor guy to act. Kansas Republicans lionize our ex-Atty. Gen., Phil Klein, who repeatedly broke the law to “get” Tiller. A national “news” network lets bill ofuckingreilly mount a spittle flecked assault on the man, and gives him time to crow that gee, shouldn’t kill, but gosh the guy deserved it. Well, pull your head out of your ass. There are legions of these “one dimensional stereotypes” out there; maybe not all brave enough to pull the trigger, but enough to support the killers. Tiller isn’t the first to die. Keep on retiring to your fainting couch, and supporting the beliefs that support these killers. ‘Cause gosh, let’s all be reasonable.
les
But I am uncomfortable with the idea that a fetus 10 minutes before birth has no rights
did someone say we need a definition of “strawman”?
HRA
Wow! I have no idea where to start and where to end.
I visit this blog without commenting more often than when I do comment. I got here by way of clicking onto the site some months ago at another location and I liked what I read here.
I can fully agree on venting about those who commit murder using the term pro-life as their warped reasoning. I cannot see any reason to mock people who live a different life style.
I could get into the fray a bit more if time was not getting late to tell you how this once stay at home Mom how and why had to go to work. Then it would most likely be much too long of a piece and certainly not very interesting to everyone.
les
@Comrade Dread:
You know, if you essentially agree with current law, why are you spending so much energy apologizing for the no abortions, no contraceptives, kill the doctors crowd? Do you actually believe that AL’s “stereotypes” don’t exist, and all the pro-lifes are like you? Or are you arguing with some strawman that believes every American should be forced to have an abortion annually? I really can’t figure out your problem.
bellatrys
Confirming quotes may be found on any day of the week at Free Republic, or at CUF, or in The Wanderer or Columbia magazine, or pretty much any conservative Catholic blog. Or showing up trolling (for a given value of trolling) on Feministe or any other feminist blogs.
And yes, I know all the people that Annie is “caricaturing.” Hell, I used to *be* one of them.
Yes, I was trying to figure out how I could blow up abortion clinics at age 15, in study hall, and if it would be better to do it openly and go to jail and be a martyr for the cause, or better to not get caught secretly in order to be able to do more for the “prolife” cause. Given that everyone I know at home and all our adult friends (and the magazines we subscribed to) talked about it as being equivalent to bombing Auschwitz, on a regular basis, it made sense at the time.
Of course, I planned to do it after hours, so that nobody would be hurt, because I wasn’t Eric Rudolph even then in, the early 80s. Also, I had no idea how to build a bomb, and even after I had *some* idea how, I had no idea then how to get hold of any of the materials for one. So I thought about arson. But of course, I chickened out (I wasn’t even sure where the PP clinic in our city *was* at that point, and I didn’t have a drivers license either) – which meant I could flagellate myself as a moral coward and a sinner for *that*, too.
I obviously “got better” – but it was a long hard journey (which includes the shame of having voted for both Pat Buchanan *and* Alan Keyes in my misguided youth), and as recently as 2000 I couldn’t even vote, because voting D would have been “cooperation in material evil of abortion” or some such bullshit according to my bishops, and yet I couldn’t convince myself even then that the Rs were the lesser evil any more.
And yes, we were all about the slut-shaming. Boy howdy, were we all about the misogyny, and being able to look down on all the other, “sinful” women and thus tell ourselves that we were *almost* as good as the menz, because we weren’t “selfish hedonists” and temptresses and murderesses, and would never ever do anything that would get ourselves raped, ohno, let alone jump into bed with a guy – we had no sexual desires ’cause we weren’t nymphomaniacs (that’s what the 1950s Catholic Manual for Teens that my mother gave me called women who wanted sex that was not just for babymaking) and it was all secularhumanistliberal lies that there were ever any dangers in pregnancy – and anyway if there were, it was a “far, far better thing” to trust in God and just go through it and maybe be a martyr, like those sundry beatified (now canonized) housewives who had chosen to die rather than commit murder, just like Maria Goretti chose to die rather than give in to rape…
Reading The Handmaid’s Tale for the first time in high school was a horrible experience for me, because I kept wanting to insist that no, we weren’t like that (how DARE she caricature us that way!) — and yet I kept choking on my denial, because I couldn’t help but remember various articles in conservative Catholic publications and various statements by conservative Catholic authority figures of my acquaintance that mapped extraordinarily closely on Atwood’s prose.
There is no good faith in the prolife movement, which I realized bitterly back in the mid-90s, when I realized that the arguments against condoms were entirely specious, and if we really *were* for reducing abortions, then we’d be *for* contraception AND for accurate sex-ed – only we weren’t, and we weren’t. And we didn’t give a damn, as a movement, about miscarriages, no matter all our talk of innocent babies condemned to Limbo by the Holocaust of Abortion. Never mind the whole pro-war, pro-death-penalty, anti-health-care-for-the-poor, anti-social-justice side of things!
Prolifism exists so that conservatives can immunize their consciences, and nothing else. Worry about harm being done to the environment? Pah, you care about nature but not little babies, we don’t have to listen to you! –I saw this within 3 comments to the article about the Gov.Gen of Canada eating a seal heart. Object to torture and cluster bombs? Liberals don’t care about the torture/murder of abortion, so neener neener we don’t have to do anything about it OR feel guilty for voting for Bushco & the War Party – Rod Dreher has said this several times, nor is he the only blog commenter to do so. Whatever abuse you bring up – unjust imprisonment, innocents on Death Row, exploitation of workers – all of it is NABA the D&C.
The Holocaust Of Abortion is simply the ultimate rhetorical tool, to be whipped out to “refute” any liberal cause or argument, because Killing Babies trumps every and all other wrongdoing, which is the point I often think of why we focused on it so much – it turns off the brains of voters who would otherwise reject the Party of Greed, and it provides moral cover for the voters who *are* voting conservative in their own self-interest, but can’t admit that they’re just looking out for Number One because Christians aren’t *supposed* to be doing it.
Oh yeah, the late Fr. Marx who used to be one of the very big biggies in the prolife movement, used to rant about Jewish Abortionists in dialectic straight out of Fr. Coughlin. Fr. Coughlin is *still* very popular among the prolife Catholic movement, and you can get his tapes, and find people claiming that he was a wronged man. It’s still 1936 in an awful lot of ways, among the followers of Pat Buchanan (and yes, I’m a handshake away from him, as well as Keyes – I not only voted for them, but know people who worked on their campaigns, and also for Weyrich and Viguerie.) If you don’t know *those* names – then you don’t know enough about the conservative movement, let alone the prolife movement, of the last 40 years to comment on this issue.
les
@joes527:
Jebus. Hey, you want to amputate your arm, go for it. The fact that you’re not likely to find a doctor who will do it, a hospital that will host it or an insurance company that will pay for it is all a benefit to me, since your survival is dubious. None of that, of course, will suggest that your notion of “analogy” may suffer somewhat, from a dose of stupidity.
Cyrus
Well, you’d have to be very stupid to come right out and say it, and I didn’t call you stupid. Let me ask you though, do you support a legal requirement for forced organ donation? Lungs, kidneys, bone marrow, blood, anything a “normal” person can spare some of. There is always a waiting list for tissue. People – actual people, not this “every sperm is sacred” farce – dying because there just aren’t enough donors out there.
And yet, calls for mandatory tissue donation in that way are completely nonexistent, as far as I know. Not one person even suggesting it. Unless the tissue in question is a uterus, in which case not only do millions of people demand it, but an even greater number cautions the rest of us to take their demands seriously and seek middle ground and not lump them in with terrorists. So why do you think that is?
Also, les at 11:15 has a point. But, you know, one thing at a time.
les
@Church Lady:
Church lady, planet xeon is calling. They would like you to return the post you’re commenting on, which doesn’t exist on earth.
les
@bellatrys:
Thanks. Just–thanks.
Janefinch
@les: Well, living in a country where there is no abortion law, so-called partial birth abortions are regulated by the College of Physicians and Surgeons, and both left and right agree to leave abortion out of election issues, abortion is not the perpetual shiny thing that sends everyone’s blood pressure sky high when there are other more important issues at hand. So I guess I just can’t get all that worked up over a stilted diatribe that characterizes the fringe as the mainstream. And with abortion sentiments pretty evenly split in America, there’s a lot of mainstream on both sides.
les
Finally–I try not to flail like this, but disgust, rage and beer are an apparently volatile combination–why don’t all you pro-life moderates with your “oh we’re not about controlling women” get back to me when you start picketing in vitro fertilization clinics, and screaming abuse at middle aged suburbanites with the $$ to be there, and excusing the motives (but certainly never the actions, oh no!) of xtians killing ivf specialists. If you’re, like, in search of an analogy or whatever. In place of AL’s one dimensional stereotypes. Hypocritical assholes.
Brava, Anne Laurie. And to John, for providing the forum.
les
@Janefinch:
I won’t comment on the lack of logic:
What part of the post do you deny exists on the pro-life mainstream? Have you missed the entire thread? The clinic bombings, the doctor killings, the assaults on patients at Planned Parenthood clinics–they’re carried out by xians, supported by mainstream congregations, lauded by mainstream ministers and politicians. The fact that you can’t imagine that you are part of the problem, is a big part of the problem. The fact that a lot of people don’t think you’re part of the problem, doesn’t make you right. A tough concept, I agree.
Cyrus
@Janefinch:
Just for the record, this is incorrect. Here’s a link.
41 percent of Americans think abortion should always be legal, only 15 think it should always be illegal. In between are 27 percent who say it should only be legal in the cases of rape, incest or the woman’s life, and 18 percent who say other reasons could be acceptable as well but “only after need… has been established,” presumably to a judge or board at a hospital or something. The 27-percent position is ideologically incoherent; why allow abortion in those cases but not others? Aren’t children of rape and incest people too? However, it’s a compromise position which allows abortion in the most traumatic situations and no others. Almost as unpopular as no abortions at all is the idea of having some third party making the decision based on whatever he or she (no, he) feels like.
Summary: more than twice as many people in America think abortion should always be legal as think it should never be legal. Of the two compromise options presented, the less intrusive option is more popular. Ergo, there’s an absolutist pro-choice mainstream, and there’s a mainstream which would like to do something about abortions but realizes that sometimes it is the lesser of two evils and sometimes we have to let people lead their own lives as distasteful as it might be, but there is no pro-life mainstream.
Janefinch
@les: I really, really am not part of your American problem. I don’t vote there, and I am perfectly free to think you’re all wasting your time (left and right) when each and every time something bad happens, you use it as an excuse to get on your social issue hobby horses to beat it to death again with a rant I could have read in 1975.
Mayken
@Comrade Dread: One of the reasons we are in the position of having 87% of counties in the US with NO abortion provider and a vast swath without affordable reproductive health care, only 2 doctors in the entire country who do late term abortions and we are rapidly loosing on the contraception front is because we have been far too willing to concede that the so-called pro-lifers have a legitimate point of view.
You may very well legitimately be concerned with the “personhood” of a fetus and want to give it rights – and not personally feel the need to control the sexual lives of women – but I for one am 100% DONE with trying to be reasonable, to debate rationally or concede that there may be a legitimate point on the other side simply put because the anti-choicers REFUSE to concede that we have any legitimate points. That they and the government should have no business making MEDICAL decisions for women. That the only way for women to be fully functioning members of society is if they have reliable ways of controlling their own reproduction, up to and including abortion.
Nope! Sorry, done with that. Tired of losing ground to a bunch of people who in general feel the need to impose their own point of view on what I do with my own body. From here on out it is a knock down drag out fight. I will not see my daughter dragged back into the middle ages for the “morals” of a bunch of cave men.
les
@Janefinch:
Well.
Doesn’t that make you morally superior? On the other hand, since you have nothing to do with the problem or the solution, STFU.
TenguPhule
And said joker *INSISTS YOUR ARM REMAIN BROKEN FOR 9 months before sawing it off*.
Complete your analogy next time.
TenguPhule
Except you don’t want them to deal with the circumstances in any way but the one *YOU* approve of.
Abortions would not go away if made illegal. If the woman does not want to carry the pregnancy, she’s going to try to get rid of it by any means possible.
Unless of course, we lock down every pregnant woman until she gives birth to “protect the fetus” for her own good.
So yeah, “Pro-life” is code for “Fucking idiot”.
Darkrose
Yes. I can deal with that by having an abortion. Preferably legally.
So I’d get to decide between having a child and being a crappy mother and being a walking incubator and risking my own physical and mental health for a child I don’t want–a child who would almost certainly inherit my physical problems, plus the lovely bipolar/ADD combination. I’m pushing 40, which would make me a high-risk pregnancy even if I didn’t have hypertension and migraines. Oh, and the kid would be at least half black. Odds on the Fetus Fan Brigade rushing to provide for the care and raising of a disabled black kid? Odds on that kid ever making it out of the foster care system?
At the end of the day, it’s my body, and I’m the one who will have to deal with the consequences of my decision. Not you.
Janefinch
@les: Tellling me to STFU is not a cogent rebuttal.
Emma Anne
@bellatrys:
This was fascinating. More please.
tripletee (formerly tBone)
@les:
Christ, try weed instead of beer next time. If your goal was to prove that pro-choice zealotry can be almost as tedious as the dipshit Bible-banging alternative: mission accomplished.
Mayken
@Janefinch: I’d love for our country to be a place where abortion was a purely medical decision and the right-wing zealots would quit trying to take away women’s control over their own reproduction from birth control to elective sterilization to abortion. But we don’t and the wingers don’t want to allow it for love nor money. So, you’ll have to excuse us Americans while we discuss a subject that is unfortunately still extremely relevant to the lives of millions of women. Whinging about us discussing abortion because it isn’t important to you doesn’t actually present a cogent argument so you shouldn’t be surprised if you don’t get nifty logical arguments back. If you don’t want to get involved in the discussion there really is one simple solution – move on to the next post.
Lord Faahtass
Jesus Buttfucking Christ you rock!
North Dallas Thirty
Odds on the Fetus Fan Brigade rushing to provide for the care and raising of a disabled black kid?
You could talk to my aunt and uncle, both staunchly pro-life and Christian, who adopted a mixed-race child whose mother was a drug addict and whose mental and physical abilities definitely show that she didn’t slow down much for pregnancy.
And why is it that the liberal women who scream the loudest about pushing contraception are always the ones who eschew its use in favor of just aborting the child?
amocz
As a (mostly) lowlife lurker here, I would like to express my awestruck admiration for the quality of both the front-page posters and the commenters here at Balloon Juice. A good blog is the very definition of a communal work-in-progress. John puts an obviously inordinate amount of time and energy into this one, and results are evident in the posts he writes himself, the other voices he selects to share the space with him, and the quality of the comments that his blog somehow manages to attract and maintain over time.
I was not on hand to witness JC’s remarkable odyssey from darkness of wingnuttery into the quavering light of moonbattery, though I have seen it alluded to here. But the most remarkable thing is that it could happen at all, given how tenaciously most folks will cling to a world-view that is familiar, long after its wrongness is pretty manifest to thinking observers (a category which evidently excludes most of the usual suspects regularly taken to task in these pages.)
As my own career as a lurker has developed, I have infested a fair sampling of lefty blogs over time, initially in search of the quick snark fix, but lately in search of basic sanity and a little common decency. And that, above all, is what I find here that was in short, or at least spotty, supply elsewhere (except possibly at Digby’s … and FDL … and of course SadlyNo! … etc.) But lately, only here at B-J do I find it necessary to read all the comments in each thread (other than the ones dealing with pro sports, which are teh suxxor!)
So…if John invites a new voice onto the front page, I am more than willing to give her a sympathetic read; if a few wisps of straw are drifting down after she has unleashed a case of righteous whupass upon a recognizable wingnut type, instead of attaching a name and turning it into a personalized attack and inviting Flameageddon, I can deal with it. Her swordmanship may run a little heavier on the sabre than I am used to with John and DougJ, scarlet pümpernickeln that they are; and the idea that the souls of the morans she targets might still be won, if she would approach them with a kinder, gentler, more reasonable attitude… riiiight!
So, Annie Laurie, on behalf of me and myself, the resident monitoring lurkers here at B-J, excellent post; John, great blog! And to all the commenters (The Best on the Web, as the man has said…), here’s lurkin’ at ya!
–AManOfConstantZorro
Johnny Pez
@KRK:
Yeah, when I read the title “Field Guide to Womb Bigots” I too was expecting a sober, nuanced discussion of various right-to-life activists.
Sheesh!
North Dallas Thirty
So I’d get to decide between having a child and being a crappy mother and being a walking incubator and risking my own physical and mental health for a child I don’t want—a child who would almost certainly inherit my physical problems, plus the lovely bipolar/ADD combination.
So don’t have sex.
Or don’t have unprotected sex.
It’s not like pregnancy happens spontaneously. It’s a predictable event with a very specific act that causes it.
Charon
@North Dallas Thirty:
You missed (or are ignoring) Darkrose’s post @99. Pregnancy is not a predictable event when contreception is used, but fails.
Lord Faahtass
@bellatrys:
For me there is something profound to this, something that I hadn’t seen before and yet makes perfect sense. Why I didn’t I see that connection? I am glad I do now.
Lord Faahtass
@amocz:
Now there’s a handle that’s just begging to be taken!
Charon
@Lord Faahtass:
I actually liked ” A Man of Constant Zorro” even more. Best poster’s name I’ve seen in years.
Lord Faahtass
@amocz:
Kinda what I was thinking too.
I think you ought to lurk less and comment more.
Lord Faahtass
@Charon:
Yes but it’s already taken.
Charon
@Lord Faahtass:
Fair point. But I have to admit that it’s tempting to run off with it to some far part of the web and claim it as my own.
josefina
Comrade Dread, joes527, TR:
Where did Anne Laurie say that there are no honest and principled arguments against abortion? Please provide a quote.
She’s drawing caricatures of people who actually exist. They’re real. They’re out there in the world, harassing every single woman walking into a women’s health clinic. They wave their aborto-porn signs and they hold up their babies and scream “DON’T KILL ME!” regardless of whether these hapless women have showed up for a pap smear, a prescription for birth control pills, or an abortion.
And some of their leaders condone murder.
Mayken
@North Dallas Thirty:
Kudos to them but they are in the minority.
Not even a little bit respectfully – STFU! This isn’t true either and you frackin’ know it. Women who are best educated on contraception are the ones most likely to use it. But no form of contraception is 100%, not even sterilization (just ask my mother!) so women may have to avail themselves of abortion even if they are well versed in the proper use of contraception.
Mayken
@josefina: for various reasons during highschool and college I used Planned Parenthood for my reproductive health. It sucked eggs to have to walk through all those right-wing asshats every few months just to get a pap smear or my pills. The best/worst part was that a couple of times I went to PP clinics that didn’t actually perform abortion procedures and the asshats were out there anyway.
Xel
I have this to say to all anti-abortion view holders. A debate on when personhood comes to pass is a great idea. Demanding that abortion providers really offer all choices to the women at hand is also good, as are discussions about how to make abortions rare in general.
But you are never getting a ban. I’ll never back down on that and I will do everything I morally can to make sure that that horrible state of things never comes to pass. You’re not getting it and as long as this is the ultimate goal of your movement I will be very reluctant and cautious to offer you anything.
I’m ready for all kinds of debates but you will never bring enough to the table to make a ban a considerable proposition to me. Stop asking for a ban on abortions.
Charon
@Xel:
I actually have issues with the personhood debate. As someone said in a prior thread (and if anyone knows who it was please tell me so I can give proper credit) if at any point during pregnancy the fetus is a distinct individual with the rights and obligations that individuals are afforded in this country, then a woman who wishes to abort but is not allowed to is essentially the victim of state enforced rape.
North Dallas Thirty
Kudos to them but they are in the minority.
Nope. They’re just the kind of people that you and your hatemongering leftist ilk are trashing in posts like this.
Not even a little bit respectfully – STFU! This isn’t true either and you frackin’ know it.
Yeah, just like you and your fellow lefty bigots “knew” that no pro-life Christians would ever adopt a mixed-race disabled child.
Mayken
@Xel: See my comment #121 for why I am no longer willing to have these “debates” with the so-called pro-lifers. Everytime we concede a point we get another restriction put on to our right. 24 hour waiting periods, mandatory counseling, and bans on state or federal funds being used to help poor women: these are all ways of trying to make it prohibitively expensive (in terms of time and money) to procure abortion services. Meanwhile the anti-choicers are also busy driving doctors and clinics out by means of intimidation (from “protests” to out right death threats) making the laws more and more prohibitive (see above) etc.
Add to that the campaign against affordable and accessible birth control options.
What is the point of having a legal right to abortion if it is not also safe, convenient and affordable? There are many points between where we are now an outright ban that the anti-choicers need to be stopped or have their actions rolled back.
Mayken
@North Dallas Thirty:
Oh, yes, we are the haters because we want women *gasp* to have actual rights to control their bodies and reproduction. Not the people who stand outside of clinics and intimidate people into not getting their reproductive health care, threaten or attack doctors and workers who provide these services to women or otherwise try to force their religious views onto other people.
And the fact is that people who are willing to adopt mixed race disabled children are very much in the minority. There is a reason why adoption agencies who handle these special children offer grants to help defer the cost of adoptions and the federal government gives extra tax breaks for adoptions from foster care (which are overwhelmingly minority and older kids, many with special needs.)
Darkrose was saying that the odds of a child she were to have being adopted or getting out of the foster system were very low – which is a true statement, your aunt and uncle’s laudable actions not withstanding. It is also a true statement that the more a person knows about contraception the more likely they are to use it. And people who do not know about it are least likely to use contraception. Which is why abstinence only sex “education” does not work.
North Dallas Thirty
Oh, yes, we are the haters because we want women gasp to have actual rights to control their bodies and reproduction.
Which is why you blast people like my aunt and uncle who, because of their faith and beliefs, are “stuck home alone with a growing pack of stinky filthy whining needy human larvae sucking up every morsel of your attention 24/7” and a “White man of a certain age and no particular claims to brawn, brains, or beauty”.
One hour ago, that’s what you were calling them. Now that you actually know, you’re trying to pretend that you think their actions are “laudable” and you’re excusing your bigotry and hate towards them based on no reason other than their faith and beliefs under the guise of protecting “choice”.
Your “choice” would have killed my cousin. Your “choice” would have doomed him to death based on your stereotypical and bigoted belief that, as a disabled mixed-race child, he had no future, and that the “kindest” thing you could do would have been to murder him in utero.
Charon
@North Dallas Thirty:
You see, this is the fruit of allowing the personhood debate to take place. Pro-choicers allowed that maybe Pro-lifers weren’t right wing f*cknuts and suddenly we are muderers and accomplices to murder. If we had taken a firm stand that a fetus is not a person and ingrained it into the American psyche comments like North Dallas Thirty’s here would be seen as beyond the pale. Instead it is a standard part of our national discourse.
Charon
@Charon:
I realized after posting this that it came off as a personal and ad hominem attack. I’m sorry for the language used and I should not have applied it to North Dallas Thirty. However, I stand behind the general point of the post.
North Dallas Thirty
If we had taken a firm stand that a fetus is not a person and ingrained it into the American psyche comments like North Dallas Thirty’s here would be seen as beyond the pale.
Gee, I wonder why you have to ingrain “a fetus is not a person” into the American psyche?
Probably because it goes against the most basic biology that a baby in utero is not a human being?
Probably because someone who attacked a pregnant woman with the express purpose of causing her to abort or to otherwise kill her baby would be seen in the eyes of the vast majority of people as a murderer?
Probably because the law, as codified in the Endangered Species Act, extends recognition to unborn animals, be they in egg form or in utero, equivalent to that of adult animals?
I realized after posting this that it came off as a personal and ad hominem attack.
But not before, when, because of my religious beliefs and my opposition to abortion, you were characterizing me as a “right wing f*cknut”.
Charon
@North Dallas Thirty:
On the contrary, the problem with my post was that a fair reading of it applied the epithet specifically to you, whom I have no real opinion or knowledge of. This was not my intention. Never the less, I am responsible for it. My description of the pro-life movement as a whole as a group of “right-wing f*cknuts” while overly broad still fits within the accepted bounds of hyperbole, and as a broad charcterisation of course it will sometimes be false in the specific while still holding true to the group as a whole. Also, I never said that a fetus is not a (potential) human being, I said it is not a person. There is a difference.
Charon
@North Dallas Thirty:
Just because something is counter-intuitive and difficult to grasp does not mean that it isn’t true.
Mayken
@North Dallas Thirty: Excuse me but I didn’t say any of the things you are accusing me of. That was the author of the post. Got a problem with it? Take it up with her. I did call the so-called pro-lifers who are spending so much time and energy trying to stop women from exercising control over their own bodies zealots, right-wingers and anti-choicers – which is all true. Those views are right-wing and they are anti-choice and the people who espouse them are religious zealots. OK, did call them “cave men” but meh? The folks who are trying to force their ideas on all women are so rarely ever polite, kind or rational about their views to us. So you are surprised when we are not deferential to them?
I do think that your aunt and uncle’s action in adopting your cousin is laudable. It is possible for one to think someone who’s beliefs one vehemently opposes did something laudable. If they are out there with the other asshats who are using force, intimidation, hateful language and blatant lies to try to force women to do what their holy book says (or actually what they THINK it says) they should, then yes, I oppose their views. I’m not trying to excuse anything because I have nothing to excuse. I have no patience or tolerance for people who use hate, intimidation, violence and lies to force other people to act the way they think all people should.
My personal choice would not have done $hit to your cousin because clearly his birth-mother, you know, the one who carried him for 9 months, made a different choice. But the fact is she got a choice. Which is precisely what anti-choicers think women should not have.
TenguPhule
And that is where you go off the rails.
It is not murder. Until it is outside of the mother able to survive on its own, the fetus is not an independent being.
And kindly respect the rights of women who are not your aunt to choose their own way WITHOUT idiots who think they know better trying to force them to behave according to their own personal beliefs.
TenguPhule
And it isn’t a baby until its out, its a fetus within and sometimes the cells don’t attach or a fold doesn’t fold and a woman has to make a fucking difficult choice so kindly Fuck off and give them their fucking privacy you stupid dick.
TenguPhule
Kindly let us know when we start issuing death threats and isolate them within their own neighborhood and then get back to us on that hatemongering thing.
Whoopie, they have one baby. So what? That’s the whole POINT OF BEING PRO-CHOICE, you’re ALLOWED to make that decision instead of having it forced on you.
Cain
@uila:
Uh.. he did. On the front page and he’s not exerting any editorial control. That’s about as much space as one can give to a person on their blog. He’s asserting his right as a commentator though to put down his own reactions to her post.
As for mine, I was somewhat uncomfortable. I wasn’t sure what the point was. There was an overall bitterness tone to the whole thing that I was comfortable with. I believe those people exist, but I have no idea if this changess anything other than mocking them. If it is mocking then I guess mission accomplished, maybe it reaches them? Who knows? I’m not an expert in right wing crazy. :)
cain
Charon
@Cain:
As I read it:
Although the post is mocking, the mocking is not the point. Although you could hope someone sees themself in Anne Laurie’s prose and changes, that is extemely unlikely and not the point. This is public catharsis. Anne Laurie is blowing up in anger and facilitating the same in others of similar temperment (such as myself) in order to move beyond the horror and outrage of Doctor Tiller’s assasination. This prevents us from doing something physically fool-hardy, such as Anne Laurie’s desire to break Randall Terry’s jaw with an axe, and also lets us put our nose back to the grindstone more quickly. If we allow our rage to simmer we may well not be thinking clearly enough to prevent the next Pro-life assault on womans’ autonomy.
I would agree that this type of behavior can be counter-productive and ugly if taken beyond a certain point. I do not believe that point has been reached yet.
Cain
@bellatrys:
Er maybe this should have been the front page post.
cain
Charon
I’m out of juice (both literally and metaphorically.) ‘Night all.
Cain
@Charon:
Thanks, I appreciate the explanation. :)
cain
matoko_chan
Here is another category
See the comments
my personal favorite– <3 Dave
“Still, that’s why Roe continues to engender such passion, and sadly indefensible violence as well – it removed a decision historically and properly the role of the legislature and/or localities, and turned it into a settled question of constitutional law despite acknowledging that the Constitution provides little guidance as to how to define a “person,”
“ask whether it’s possible to alleviate the causes of that legitimate grievance by giving them an avenue to pursue that grievance legitimately.”
matoko_chan
haha, I should have said–
TR
@les:
Right, which is why I wrote this three hours before your comment above:
I’m not sure I can make it any clearer. Maybe one more time since reading comprehension doesn’t seem to be your strong point.
Real assholes are out there, so mock the real assholes. Mocking overblown caricatures accomplishes nothing and, I’d argue, is actually counterproductive as it drives away moderates and independents who need to be swayed to our side.
Get it? Is that really that fucking hard to understand?
TR
@josefina:
OK, I’ll play along — where did I say there are no honest and principled arguments against abortion? Please provide a quote.
Sweet fucking Jesus.
FOR THE LAST TIME — YES, I KNOW THESE PEOPLE REALLY EXIST. THAT IS WHY IT’S SUCH A COP-OUT TO ATTACK A GENERIC STRAW MAN RATHER THAN GO AFTER THE REAL CULPRITS.
You want to bring these people down? Then guote those REAL women, give concrete examples of their REAL harrassment of patients at clinics, give actual photos of their REAL deeds and actual transcripts of their REAL arguments.
Providing actual evidence of what the other side is doing — and why most Americans who aren’t paying attention should find them revolting — will do a world of good in shaming them and discrediting them.
Providing hyperventilating and exaggerated takes on them, blowing their real sins into cartoonish hyperbole, will not. Sorry, it might be rooted in reality, but the second you cross the line from fact to fiction, you’ve lost.
Slowly, once more: There are real psychos out there who need people holding them accountable for their real words and real deeds. That is a productive use of our time. This is not.
PK
These are my sentiments exactly. This post is utter crap from start to finish. Its the kind of junk Anne Coulter writes.
flukebucket
I thought the post was hilarious and loved it. I read it a couple of times last night on my Kindle but have no access to comments from the Kindle so I was not able to see the reaction until this morning.
Sure I winced when children were referred to as “stinky filthy whining needy human larvae sucking up every morsel of your attention 24/7” but hell guys, the post does fall under the heading of “Field Guide to Womb Bigots” and is filed under “Vagina Outrage”.
Hell hath no fury like a Vagina Outraged!
Welcome to Balloon-Juice Anne-Laurie. It is one of the hottest kitchens on the interons. I feel sure you can stand the heat and don’t let the concept of “kitchen” insult you.
matoko_chan
rawr
Anne Laurie is right.
Behold, a video produced and paid for by Operation Rescue of the Prolife Domestic Terrorism Movement.
You say these people don’t exist?
Here are thousands of them, documented in comments.
Actually I would be fine with prolife terrorists killing abortionists, but they have to do it equally.
That means they have to kill all the women that sought out abortion providers and paid them and laid on the table.
A life for a life, right?
I mean Dr. Tiller didnt run those women down and force them to abort did he?
And the women sure wouldn’t murder a baby ever again, being dead and all.
A fine terrorist deterrent for would-be-fetus-murderers, and much more effective in preventing lateterm abortions, if that is the goal.
Afterall, if a woman wants to abort, she can….there will be either a legal or illegal way to do it.
But this is perfect!
Carry that fetus to term, or die biyotch!
TR
No, I don’t say that. At all.
But way to knock down yet another straw man.
Thanks for proving my point. Those are actual comments, actual documentation, actual proof of their words and deeds.
Isn’t that so much more effective in making the case against the pro-life extremists than the “I’m a kaaaaa-razy pro-lifer and I hate teh Jooz!1one! and lookit me draggin’ mah knuckles and beatin’ mah Bible!” schtick?
joes527
@les:
Good!
So we agree that bodily autonomy is not a concept that requires society to participate in any act that it, as a whole, disapproves of. And that society failing to provide a service that it has determined is wrong is not the same thing as preventing someone from having reasonable control over their own body.
Perfect. We are in complete agreement.
Let the discussion of abortion proceed.
RememberNovember
Ever notice it’s the men who are most vocal in the Anti-Abortion movement? I’m sorry, but when did they get sex-reassignment surgery?
That has about as much street cred as female anti-Viagraists.
les
@joes527: well
Unfortunately for you, none of those situations apply to abortion. Logic: Ur doin it rong.
les
@TR
duh.
FOR THE LAST TIME —YES, I KNOW THESE PEOPLE REALLY EXIST. THAT IS WHY IT’S SUCH A COP-OUT TO ATTACK A GENERIC STRAW MAN RATHER THAN GO AFTER THE REAL CULPRITS.
So your point is, these people really exist, but we can’t speak of them without a laundry list of names. Aside from the stupidity of characterizing this situation as “strawman” or “caricature”–see, by definition, a strawman argument sets up a situation or target that does not exist, and a caricature is an exaggerated portrait that does not exist, discussions of groups of people often happen without naming all, or even any, specific members of the group. Doing so can facilitate discussion by avoiding individual attacks in favor of general planning, venting, etc. If you really need identification, it’s not hard–teh great gazoogle is your friend. If your only problem is the lack of a target list for your personal convenience, consider the point made and stfu.
TR
“These people” exist in the sense that “pro-life extemists” exist.
But as I’ve said repeatedly, and as you seem to be almost willfully stupid in not recognizing — to the point that I’m starting to think you’re a troll — “these people” that you and Anne are talking about do not exist.
So, yes, that is a straw man. There is no real pro-life person out there making the argument as characterized here, and by definition, that is a straw man.
And yes, that is a caricature. There is no real Catholic priest out there talking about how much he hates the Jews and Freemasons and calling the pope “B16” and shamelessly selling rosaries in those terms.
One more time, since you seem to be mentally retarded: The first group is fact, the second group is fiction. And here in the real world, I think it’s more productive to debate the facts and stop the real assholes from committing real crimes against real people.
If your only problem is an inability to comprehend the English language, consider your point made and stfu.
les
@les:
By the way, I in no way meant to imply this was joe’s sole failure of logic or reason.
les
Read the news much? Missed B16 rehabilitating the holocaust denying bishop? Or is your bitch that no single person absolutely embodies every single character Anne Laurie mentions? Christ, what a pedantic twit.
TR
No, my problem is that no one really resembles anything she’s talking about.
Go fuck yourself, asshole.
someguy
Abortion is a civil right. Because opposing civil rights is patently wrong, there is no reasonable opposition to the right to choose. It’s like being a little opposed to letting blacks vote, or being a little in favor, sometimes, of giving women equal pay for equal work. You can’t oppose the right and say that because your opposition is phrased in soft terms, that you are reasonable, any more than Mein Kampf doesn’t get any better if you translate it in sonnet form. The only question I have about these extremist views is whether the extremist supports violence, and to what extent: openly, with tacit approval, or in denial that their extremist rhetoric is what lays the groundwork for murder.
So TR, tell me, what other civil rights do you think it’s reaosnable to oppose? The right to marry people of the opposite race? The right to free speech? Miranda rights? I’m just curious.
TR
Uh, Where did I say it’s reasonable to oppose abortion rights?
I’m as pro-choice as they come. I’ve donated thousands of dollars to NARAL and marched in three separate pro-Roe demonstrations in D.C. over the years.
I’m saying the pro-life crowd is full of real-life assholes doing real-life harm, and it’s imperative that we call them out for the specific, factual, actual things they do.
I’m not excusing what they do, for fuck’s sake, I’m demanding a thorough and honest accounting of what they’ve done and said so that they can be held responsible and shunned by polite society.
How the fuck is that *supporting* what they do?
TR
Some of you new people here have the reading comprehension skills of the Michelle Malkin Book Club.
For the last time, I’m not trying to defend the pro-life extremists, I’m arguing that a fact-based attack on them is a more effective attack than a caricature-based attack.
The caricature may be rooted in 90% fact, but again, as soon as you cross the line into fiction and fevered imaginations, you’ve entered Ann Coulter territory and, in the world of grownups, that means you’ve lost the argument.
Go ahead and stick to the wild hyperbole if it makes you feel good. The middle of American opinion will be slowly backing away from you, as you slap each other on the back.
les
OK, lemme see if I can shorter TR:
OF COURSE THESE PEOPLE EXIST; but No, my problem is that no one really resembles anything she’s talking about. But The caricature may be rooted in 90% fact. But SHE WON’T TELL ME WHO THEY ARE!!!eleventyone! Talk about something important to ME!!!
TR
No, here’s a shorter TR:
The facts are on our side. Why bother making shit up?
Is that simple enough for you, moron?
joes527
@les:
Lets bring back the comment that started this discussion:
@Joey Maloney:
What I have been saying is that we do NOT in our society have a right to bodily autonomy that automatically trumps all other concerns.
Bodily autonomy is a right that must be weighed against other rights and interests. If you are of age, no one is going to stop you from having your navel pierced, regardless of how stupid it looks, but we do, as a society frown on and make it diffucult for people to amputate healthy limbs.
We, as a society, judge the acceptability of the choice being made under the banner of bodily autonomy and in some cases deny it.
How does this apply to abortion?
A woman has a right to bodily autonomy and should not be interfered with unless there are other competing rights or interests that outweighs the woman’s right to do what she wants with her body.
You might notice that I haven’t weighed in on whether there ARE any competing rights that might outweigh the woman’s right to bodily autonomy. There IS another entity – that somewhere between zygote and 18 years of age becomes a “person” The tricky bit is *when*.
I don’t have any satisfying answer to that question. But the moment of birth endowing personhood seems absurd. The essence of the baby just after birth and the essence of the fetus just before birth do not seem changed just because it starts breathing and the cord is cut. Does this mean abortion in the last trimester should be more limited? Does this mean infanticide in the first month should be allowed? I don’t know. We don’t allow severely handicapped newborn babies to be killed. Is that just squeamishness? Many voice approval of late term abortion due to severe handicaps in the fetus. Is this just because the fetus is hidden from sight?
I don’t oppose abortion. This is not because I don’t find it to be an important moral issue that society has a stake in, but because I don’t see any way for society to determine what its stake it until the idea of “person” gets fleshed out in a way that explains society’s relationship to the very young, the very old, the very disabled, the very dysfunctional, and the dying. Our society isn’t anywhere near a coherent concept of “person” that would explain who has what rights at what times, and when should society be stepping in to protect the “person”. Absent that, we can’t point to a competing right or interest that overrides the woman’s right to self determination.
I don’t oppose abortion. I oppose the argument that it is none of anyone’s business because SHUT UP, that’s why.
jp
“The facts are on our side. Why bother making shit up?”
TR,you have such strong ideas about what Anne should be doing with her writing. Why don’t you start your own frackin’ blog instead of dictating what Anne should be writing about and how she should be doing it? You could compose an entire essay on your point of view with the energy you’ve devoted to commenting here.
I do not understand the impulse that makes commenters demand that bloggers conform to their own (ie, those of the commenters) desires and expectations. I like a lot of what I read here, not all of it, but can’t imagine demanding “John! Express an opinion more in line with MY views! Oh, and don’t be sarcastic about it, because I don’t think sarcasm is appropriate for this topic.”
And Anne, ignore the haters, because your writing and this series rocks.
TR
I’m not demanding she do what I want. She’s welcome to do whatever she wants.
But I’m suggesting that if she wants to make an argument against the pro-life extremists, there’s another route that I personally think would be more effective.
Like what Rachel Maddow did here on last night’s show. Watch that, and then re-read her post, and tell me which one is more effective.
The Raven
TR, #185:
How is this different from
Unless, of course, you want to argue that the only apples that fall are bad apples, and it’s only a few bad apples that kill doctors?
Bored now. Krawk!
Comrade Dread
Because I don’t agree with the current law. I would agree with a law that restricted abortions to those that were medically necessary: be it due to crippling birth defects, potential psychological harm, or potential physical harm to the woman.
I won’t and don’t apologize for them. People have no right to break the law and harm another human being, it is immoral and if taken up by everyone, society would cease to exist and the world would descend into a brutal hell of All against All.
I had a visceral reaction to Anne’s post. My subsequent posts since then have been in response to comments or inquiries from other posters.
Aside from the perverse incentives that might be created, this analogy is flawed in that we are talking about two different things: intervening to save a life vs. actively destroying one.
Yes, because the other option would be to end another person’s life which is generally frowned upon unless you have a legally justifying reason to do so.
And as I said previously, your simplistic definition of who is and is not a person would allow for termination well beyond birth.
TR
The analogy is precisely the opposite. Making hyperbolic claims about the religious right is akin to saying angels cause things to fall; accurate representations of their comments are akin to the theory of gravity. One is easily dismissed, the other is factual.
Again, just my opinion, but caricature and over-the-top stereotyping doesn’t seem to be an effective approach. Make these people eat their words, expose them for the psychopaths they are, and drive them out of the respectable realm of the public sphere.
You want to hurt them? Stop making outlandish claims that they — and independents — can easily laugh off as over-the-top, and start pinning them down on the stuff they actually did.
lou
Talk about a freaking strawman. You do know that aborting a viable fetus is illegal, right? Women don’t suddenly decide in seventh or eighth month, “Oh my, I’m really not ready for this baby thing, guess I’ll have an abortion.” Abortions performed that late are ****by law*** medically necessary. There was some asshole state attorney who per-er-prosecuted Tillman, unsuccessfully, trying to prove that he did medically unnecessary abortions.
So if you’re going to accuse Anne Laurie of setting up strawmen, at least acknowledge you are not without sin on the strawman side.
Mayken
I like this thread. It’s exciting!
El Cid
@Mayken: Applaud Star Trek reference.
gex
@Comrade Dread:
Well, someone’s being simplistic here. A 2 month old can be adopted and raised by another person. Can a fetus? You are deliberately misconstruing the phrase “survive on its own”.
As is pointed out above, late-term abortions are only legal when the fetus is non-viable.
joes527
@lou:
You need to keep your players straight. I never accused Anne Laurie of anything. I didn’t even respond directly to her post. I was responding to a comment made by someone else.
I’m a little uncomfortable with what Anne Laurie wrote, because I would be uncomfortable with a field guide to Al-Qaeda that focused on the fact that they are evil terrorists who are scary moosims (even though both statements are true, and Al-Qaeda themselves consider their Muslim-ness to be a key characteristic, and they themselves mingle their evilness with their religion) Focusing on the link between the evil terrorists who think that killing doctors is acceptable in their holy war and Christianity without explicitly acknowledging that this is the lunatic fringe of Christianity feels like talking about terrorism and the Muslim religion without explicitly acknowledging that the terrorists are the *crazy* Muslims.
Comrade Dread
And that was not the criteria that was expressed. Medical advances have pushed viability back several weeks in the gestational period so that fetus born in the sixth month can be viable.
What if a fetus could eventually survive in an artificial environment at 12 weeks?
And while I’m not a lawyer, I can’t see any particular reason why it would be impossible to ‘adopt’ a fetus, if the mother does not wish to raise the child.
gwangung
Artificial uterus/placenta. It’s coming.
It’ll be damn expensive and Operation Rescue will STILL be trying to shame the pregnant woman into carrying it or paying for the artifical womb.
Slaney Black
Yes, that is in fact a caricature. And I confess a rather clumsy one. But it IS based on an actual priest of my acquaintance, who used to do quite a business in Medjugorje tours, part of which he’d drum up at pro-life vigils. The Jews thing was a little unfair – but only a little. You find that talk explicit on the fringes of the Catholic Right, but with this guy it was more a wink and a nod kind of thing.
Keep it up Anne! And tnx for citing my irresponsible comments!
Mayken
@gwangung: That’s if we can get the FDA to approve it for use in humans. Ands you said, it would be damned expensive so would likely not be covered by health insurance therefor would only be available to the richest. Which would still leave the vast majority of us with asshats like those in Operation Rescue telling women that we must carry the baby to term no matter what.
Thought experiments are nice but the fact of the matter is that personhood and viability debates only get us back to incremental loss of the rights of women to control their own reproduction.
Comrade Dread
Arguments regarding personhood are essential to this debate.
It is all well and good to say that women should control their own reproduction and I agree with that, with the caveat that your freedom (and my freedom) to act as we wish ends if it causes injury or harm to another individual.
And that is precisely what an argument regarding personhood and the establishment of human rights and protections is trying to determine: whether or not the exercise of your liberty is, in fact, destroying another human being.
Mayken
@Comrade Dread: DNA doesn’t lie – we know it is a homo sapiens – a human being. Whether it is a person, well, I’m just done arguing that point. I don’t think it is but that is neither here nor there.
My comment is one of a hard stance. See my comment at #121 for the reasons why I no longer have patience for these arguments. It’s another tactic – however reasonable it may seem – for the anti-choicers to try to get us to concede more ground so as to make it nigh on impossible to ever have this medical procedure (and don’t get me started on the consequences on simple birth control methods.)
If folks want to continue to have these discussions, more power to them, I for one am just no longer willing to concede to the opposition any more ground.
TenguPhule
Zigots and fetuses are not individuals.
And if we’re going to go down this road, a very good case can be made that pregnancy causes injury and harm to women, therefore all children should therefore be bred in artificial wombs.
Nicole
And this argument (the old “legal except in cases of rape or incest or when the mother’s life is in danger” is about as blatantly an anti-women position as you can get, and yet a fairly large portion of the country believes it to be a reasonable position. If you think the right to existence is first and foremost, then there is no difference between a baby conceived because a condom broke during consensual sex between adults and a baby conceived because a nine-year-old got raped by her stepdad. There is no difference. One fetus has just as much “right” to existence as the other, and to borrow from other arguments made, it’s just unlucky circumstance that that nine-year-old happened to be in that house that night, like it’s unlucky circumstance someone got hit by a car and broke his or her arm and hey, the person should just have to adapt to those circumstances. The only actual difference between the two situations is the intent on the part of the female involved- one wanted to have sex; the other didn’t. So, according to the “except in cases of rape or incest” the nine-year-old gets an abortion because she didn’t want to have sex, and the adult doesn’t get one because she did want to have sex. Why? Why is one acceptable and not the other? Because the nine-year-old suffered a horrible trauma and we don’t want to further traumatize her. What does that say about how this “except in rape or incest” position views pregnancy? As a trauma. A punishment. One that is seen fit to foist upon women who had consensual sex, but not upon those who did not have consensual sex. Which says not only horrible things about how we as a society view women’s sexuality but also how we as a society view having children (which ties back to Anne Laurie’s post from last week).
I don’t buy it. If you’re truly pro-life you can’t still allow for abortion in cases of rape and incest. If you’re pro-choice you have to make it accessible to all women (preferably in addition to comprehensive sex-ed and easy access to birth control. And state supported prenatal and day care and lots of other things I can daydream about). And I wish pro-choice people would really push pro-lifers who support a rape and incest exception on why they support that; what they think makes the fetus of a rape different from one conceived in different circumstances. Because in the end, I don’t think most people are willing to say a nine-year-old should be forced to have her stepfather’s baby. I’m certainly not.
TR
Sorry to single you out there, Slaney. My real issue was with Anne’s post, not the example she appropriated from you.
But thanks for acknowledging what others haven’t, that it is a caricature.
Mayken
@Nicole: You bring up a good point – I agree and actually do make that argument from time to time.
To me, being pro-choice is about more than abortion rights. It’s about being pro-woman and pro-child. It’s about supporting the rights for women to have true and accurate information on, and affordable access to, birth control and reproductive care. It’s about allowing a woman to decide she isn’t ready to be a mother and since no form of birth control is 100% that needs to include the right for her to terminate a pregnancy. It’s about supporting the women who really wanted to be mothers but found to their horror that the baby she wanted is not to be. Or that her heath or life would be in jeopardy by bringing this child to term. It’s about supporting IVF and other artificial means of becoming pregnant and having that covered by insurance. It’s about supporting ethical adoption laws and foster care that is actually aimed at providing the children with stable homes. It’s about being for poverty mediation services that help women and children (and men too – forgive me, I don’t mean to leave them out completely!) with the means to be stable and loving families. It’s about eliminating the reasons why women are raped and battered etc. again so that she and her SO can provide a stable family for any children. It’s also about supporting all women’s right NOT to be a mother by electing sterilization and having insurance pay for it, regardless of her age and maternal status.
I am that kind of pro-choice woman.
BDeevDad
Here’s a new one for you. Racist is bad unless it’s a pro-life racist.
Mayken
@BDeevDad: Ah, Rushbo. He never fails us. Keep talking big mouth – you are our best fundraising advertisement EVAH!
Thanks for bringing that one to our attention BDeevDad.
asiangrrlMN
You know what? This is to all the “When is it a person” arguers, I’m going to say something that is politically incorrect and no one is going to see it, but I don’t care. It has to be said.
I don’t care when the fetus becomes a person. Why? Because I matter more than it does. Yes, I said it. I matter more. Why? Because I am a viable, living human being. I am not a vessel that contains the fertilized egg. I am not “the body” that carries the fetus. I am a person.
From what I’ve heard, a baby takes over your body when you’re pregnant. Given what I know about me, I would lose my mind if that happen.
Comrade Dread, it would be a punishment for me to have to carry a child. You say consequence, but your tone is punishment. If I get pregnant, well then, I *have* to carry the baby to term unless I can come up with a reason you find good enough to justify me terminating the pregnancy.
In your car analogy, TengPhule got it right. If you got in a car accident, then were never allowed to heal, that would be the same equivalence as to me getting pregnant and being forced to have the child. Because that’s what you’re talking about–me being forced to have a child against my will–which is slavery or back to being a brood mare. If I were forced to carry to term, I would most likely kill myself, and then, two would be dead.
You are the one being simplistic in this matter. You are the one saying because you are uncomfortable with women having abortions willy-nilly (in your mind), they should be restricted. So, yes, to me, that makes you misogynistic. You want to control what I can do with my body because it makes you uncomfortable that I can give life, and yes, I can take away the potential for life.
You are like Ross Douthat in the respect that you just don’t believe a woman has the right to make those decisions on her own. You are like Sully in that you are morally opposed to abortions when it doesn’t affect you a whit.
I’ve changed my mind. Anne Laurie, keep it up. It’s time to re-frame the issue of abortion because for far too long, pro-choicers have been trying to placate the anti-choice people. No more. No longer.
I choose the woman’s life first. There. I said it.
Mayken, and Nicole, thank you. Your posts also say what I wanted to say.
TR
WTF? Is he back on the pills?
Mayken
@asiangrrlMN: Applauds! Yes, time to reframe the debate. Also, time to tell our stories. DKOS had a great thread going with women telling their stories of their choice (and some men too) which I think is great. (Due apologies to John et al for pimping someone else’s site.)
We women need to be the one’s raising out voices because ultimately we are the one’s most effected by the outcome.
asiangrrlMN
I wanted to edit to add, “I am not the vessel that carries the fertilized egg”, but stupid ajax is on the fritz again.
@bellatrys: Thank you very much for the personal look into the mind of a anti-choicer. I really, really, really appreciate it.
gex
@asiangrrlMN: As soon as you start seeing a fetus as fully equivalent to an adult human being you start getting into ridiculous situations.
Around 2004, the state of Utah tried to bring murder or manslaughter charges against a woman who lost her child during childbirth. She’d had two conflicting opinions on whether she should have a C-section. She opted not to, and the state was going to hold her criminally liable.
It was the most horrifying demonstration of following the logic of the pro-life fetus = full person position. In my mind, it was all made worse by the knowledge that, had she had a C-section and the baby still died, these same folks would likely deny that she should have any right to sue the doctor for malpractice.
So, yeah, what you said.
Comrade Dread
It is also a living human being in a stage of development.
If we are going to discuss viable as a magic turning point for according human rights, then a great many people in this world should logically be deprived of them.
There is a difference in that the latter could be justified as the long term psychological harm such a child could cause as a product of rape, as well as medical necessity because a nine year old is not physically capable of carrying a child to term.
And if you honestly suicidal or potentially suicidal at the prospect of motherhood, then that would also qualify as severe psychological harm.
Once again, I am not saying that I am uncomfortable with abortion. I am saying that I oppose it on the basis of the basic principle that when one’s exercise of liberty conflicts with the rights of another or causes harm to another person or their property, then there needs to be established guidelines to ensure that both rights are equally respected.
And in the case when that is not possible, that the higher right is respected.
To me, that seems to be a perfectly logical, consistent, and defensible position for someone who believes in equal human rights to take regardless of your attempt to paint it otherwise.
Tax Analyst
Anne, I agree with virtually all of your points, but Sweet Jeebus, my wrathful rant meter just blew up (and I have it set pretty high to accomodate my occasional rage-induced screeds). Fight the fight, for sure, and say what you need to say in the way you need to say it…and then copy it to a word doc, maybe print it out and re-read it in 10 or 15 minutes before posting (I probably ought to try that myself once in a while).
I understand and share your fury at these folks and on the whole I found your post amusing and somewhat therapeutic, but upon re-reading it I find the flogging a wee bit on the excessive side. Sort of like using a knout when a plain, old strap would do. It’s a whipping either way, but you don’t want the crowd wincing and turning away because the flaying has produced quivering ribbons of bloody flesh.
But it’s easier to critique than to express righteous anger and indignation in a manner sharp enough to get the point across without upsetting the tender sensibilities of your Dear Reader’s. I have enjoyed your posts on this and look forward to the next posting, which I expect will be ruffling ever more feathers of the flock.
Nicole
And forcing a woman to bear a child she doesn’t want, that was conceived because she forgot to take a pill, or because a condom broke, or whatever, isn’t going to cause long-term psychological harm?
Women are all individuals and have different levels of stress tolerance- there are rape victims who got pregnant and had the baby and kept it, and there are women who had consensual sex and then tried to kill themselves when they found out they were pregnant. Under your standards, the suicidal ones are not suffering “long-term psychological harm.” But you feel they should be forced to carry out the pregnancy- again, because since the sex was consensual, you don’t see any possible way they could be suffering “long-term psychological harm” by being forced to continue a pregnancy.
Pardon me while I do short-term physical harm to myself and smack my head on my desk.
matoko_chan
In Japan scientists have been gestating goat embryos to full term for the past 4 years. In 8 to 10 years we will have human ectogenesis. The prolifers will be out of of work.
We can just take aborted fetuses and drop them into our swell new Bene Tleilax host-womb-vats and gestate them to full term.
Sadly most of them will have horrific genetic anomalies, requiring many hideously expensive and only marginally helpful surgeries. You see, most late term abortions are NOT actually of healthy fetuses, see?
Perhaps the prolifers could aldopt them ALL!!!
The true meaning of of prolife and xian charity.
;)
asiangrrlMN
@Comrade Dread: Sorry. You can say your position is perfectly reasonable as long as you want. It doesn’t make it true. My life matters more than the life of the fetus in me. That’s my position, and, since it’s my body, it’s more true than your position. That’s the way it goes.
A woman has the right to choose what she is doing with her life. A woman’s right supersedes a fetus’s existence and a man’s disdain for whatever he disdains in the abortion process. My case is extreme, but why should any woman have to carry a child she doesn’t want? You talk about consequence, but that’s a punishment. You want women to be punished for–well, for having sex, really.
You are not arguing in good faith. Take away all your words and your rhetoric and what it boils down to is that you think a fetus’s existence is more valuable than a woman’s life. Otherwise, it is really none of your business.
les
Seeing as how a viable discussion still carries on, with much valuable and poignant content among the snark and whinging (handily putting paid to TR’s endless complaints about how valueless such a post is), let me re-raise something that (I think) got lost in the flow: why is there no pro-life concern–pickets, mommy spitters, doctor threateners, vandals and worse–at the in vitro fertilization clinics? Thousands of fertilized eggs, frozen, trashed, lost–why is this apparently ok? Purely because the “patients” are more likely to have money? Purely because the pro-lifes know it would cost them the shred of political viability they still have? Sheer hypocrisy? We know from the response to Plan B that the loonies see persons from the moment of sperm/egg union–it’s abortion before implantation in the womb–where’s the outrage?
Comrade Dread
If you want a cynical answer, it is because it wouldn’t play well.
Why should any woman have to care for a child she doesn’t want? Why should any man have to pay monetary support for a child he doesn’t want?
Because they had a hand in creating that child and they have an acknowledged legal responsibility to provide the minimal amount of care necessary to keep it alive until it can fend for itself.
asiangrrlMN, at this point I think we’ve said all we need to. I’ve articulated my position and it’s rather obvious that continued arguments are not going to get us anywhere and our positions on this topic are irreconcilable.
Mayken
@les: Well, there actually is a lot of talk about it in anti-choice circles about IVF and just as much misunderstanding of the issues etc. Hence things like the Georgia bill (or did it become law?) about IVF clinics keeping the unimplanted embryos in perpetuity and the Snowflake “adoptions” and other things. And the ban on donating these embryos to research (until this administration at least.) There even have been some incidents of threats and some picketing and a lot of wringing of hands by the anti-choicers.
But yes, the fact that they are not storming the IVF clinic and threatening the doctors has a lot to do with the clientele and the doctors themselves being generally far more affluent and ready, willing and able to mobilize the $hit out of law enforcement to make these idiots go away.
grumpy realist
I’ve often thought of writing a “what if?” satire along the lines of what would happen to the US if a) we had a Human Life Amendment to the Constitution passed put together with b) the US legal system, assuming c) the silliness got pushed to the max.
Have some of the plot figured out, and yeah, uterine replicators get thrown in there as well (developed outside the US because the technology can’t get tested inside the US.) In the end of the book, because the record of gestation is so much better with the uterine replicators than with real-live human beings, the US passes a law saying that all babies must be born from uterine replicators and that no woman will be allowed to remain pregnant because she is thus deliberately endangering the human life inside her. The final sentence of the book will be is: “In 2038 the wife of the president of the United States was formally convicted of criminally negligent manslaughter by drinking a glass of wine when she could not know that she did not have a live zygote in her uterine cavity.”
matoko_chan
Yup, grumpy, that is why ectogenesis science is light years ahead of ours in Japan. Think of all the EXPENSIVE Bene Tleilax J-wombs we will have to buy for US hospitals.
TRADE DEFICET!
You really only need two categories, Anne Laurie, all the prolife movement are either hypocrites or proto-terrorists. Supporting a ban on late-term abortion simply means they believe abortion is murder. So the hypocrites seek to remove legal options for women to abort. Prolife hypocrites do not want to prosecute the mothers that have abortions for murder, although if a woman seeks out an abortionist , pays his fee, and lies down on the table, she is obviously acting in a premeditated fashion to facilitate the murder of the fetus.
The other part of the prolife movement is made up of proto-terrorists, who genuinely believe that they have no recourse other than assassinating, bombing, vandalizing, and intimidating abortion providers.
Both groups are simply stupid, because a woman desiring to murder her fetus can just throw herself down the stairs or self-curette with a coat-hanger, and as long as late-term abortions are legal in some cases, providers will arise.
If the proto-terrorists really were interested in preventing abortions they would execute a few women that have had abortions, as a deterrent.
Carry that fetus to term, biyotch, or ima put a cap in your ass.