One of the recurring memes/lies of wingnutopia is that abortion is just like slavery and that a fetus is just like a slave. A corollary to this meme/lie is that President Obama (or any black man or woman) is a race traitor if they support a women’s right to choose.
Fetishist Rick Santorum has been leading the charge on this nonsense as of late and Ta-Nehisi Coates recently took him and his defenders down here and here.
Yesterday, TNC linked to an excellent post by blogger scatx that takes apart the “Abortion = Slavery” meme/lie:
If you do take the time to understand the intertwined history of abortion and slavery, it becomes painfully difficult to assert that abortion is wrong. Because then you must defend the slaveholder who wanted the enslaved woman to birth that child so that he could enslave them both (even as he probably used religion and morality, rather than economics and labor, as his excuse and defense for why one shouldn’t turn to abortion). Who would be willing to fault the enslaved woman who aborted her fetus because she didn’t want that child to be a slave? Who would be willing to fault the enslaved woman who aborted her fetus because she physically could not bear the burden of labor and pregnancy? Who would be willing to fault the enslaved woman who aborted her fetus as a punishment to the man who raped her, barely fed her, barely clothed her, denied her religion, denied her liberty, and whipped her when she worked too slowly, made a mistake, or attempted to flee? Who would be willing to fault the enslaved woman who aborted her fetus to protect her life and to save the evils of her life from those of her child? To include the history of enslaved women in the history of slavery and then compare that history to abortion is not easy.
.
When conservative anti-choice advocates make that comparison, they actively erase the enslaved woman from that past, from her own history. This is similar to their larger approach on the issue: erasing women from the discussion. [snip]They are not agents in the anti-choice rhetoric except as either “locations” or murderers. They are either inhumane vessels or inhumane killers.
The entire post is well worth a read.
This mindset and active desire to erase people from the discussion is why these wingnuts could write The Rapists Protection Act of 2011. Hell, erasing people from the discussion is why these self-aggrandizing nihilistic assholes do almost everything they do.
Cheers
c u n d gulag
If you’re anti-choice, you’re pro “Forced Labor.”
Kryptik
This is generally the whole fucking problem with the pro-life argument as is: total utter lack of empathy for the women involved. No care for whether the woman can physically bear the burden. No care for whether the woman can emotionally bear the burden. No care for whether the woman can financially bear the burden. Especially, especially, when the man involved in this situation can get off pretty damn scott free with few consequences, leaving the woman to bear the whole burden.
Christ, I find myself actually ambivalent about abortion in many ways, due to knowing some who had abortions of convenience (as in, were financially, emotionally, maritally stable enough to handle it at least until they could put it up for adoption), but get an abortion because the pregnancy is convenient for the couple involved. But I’m also pretty damn open minded enough to recognize that this is not the only kind of case, and likely not even the most common case where abortion is involved. Which is the point. I cannot speak past my immediate relations and knowledge, and to say that I have enough intrinsic knowledge of the situation to say ‘this cannot happen, this must be banned, I absolutely KNOW it’s immoral and murderous’ is absolute bunk. I am pro-choice, because I know I don’t know enough to unilaterally support taking away a right. I am aware enough of my own ignorance to not take it as wisdom, something which depresses me to see inverted way too much.
Kryptik
@c u n d gulag:
Hey, don’t you know that’s making a comeback these days? I mean, Mike Lee wants to shuck Child Labor Laws, don’t you know?
pablo
They’ve got a plan alright…no such thing as rape. Problem solved.
Villago Delenda Est
Women are nothing but incubators. Of course, then there’s the problem of the termination of all concern about the child once it’s out of the incubator.
These people are monsters.
Agoraphobic Kleptomaniac
You do know that you’re calling ED Kain a member of Wingnutopia, right? Hopefully we’ll get a rebuttal from him before the end of the day, reposting his LXG post how yes, it really is just like slavery.
lol
Prohibiting abortion, just like prohibiting sex ed and birth control, is about punishing those sluts who had sex for reasons other than their God-decreed responsibilities as human incubators.
agrippa
That is pretty unusual reasoning there.
It makes me wonder about
their ability to distinguish “A” from “B”.
General Stuck
Add this to the Toomey Chinese Loan Shark Protection and Granny Under the Bus Act of 2011, in tandem with the Die Uninsured Die repeal of Obamacare, and the wingnuts are off to a dandy start this year. Writing Obama’s campaign adds for his reelection.
Of course, all that will pale in the face of coming Bring On World Economic Collapse initiative, from not raising the US debt ceiling. And keep your eye on Issa’s House Committee on UnMurrican Activities looking into reports of Obama high protein bars to feed the poor made from aborted white fetuses.
Zach
There’s also the whole fact that the abortion=slavery/black-genocide scam is based on a slew of racist myths. Particularly, that Margaret Sanger (and Planned Parentedhood) used (and continue to use) abortion to eradicate black people. If Sarah Palin’s paying attention, this is an actual blood libel.
The confluence of the eugenics and birth control movements nearly 100 years ago was complicated and troubling, but in many ways the two movements were at odds. A lot of people believed the fraudulent science underlying eugenics, but only a fraction of them wanted to act on it and go about banning marriages of the unfit, sterilizing the stupid/criminal, or breeding supermen. Sanger thought a better idea was to educate women and let them make their own decisions.
El Cid
This is just one of those so-called “debates” that are completely insane fucking babble which would be wasting no one’s time in public discourse except for the domination of our ideological system by the intellectual equivalents of angry drunken cavemen being attacked by hornets.
Kryptik
@General Stuck:
Sadly, as generally cynical as I am, I’m all too paranoid that the public as a whole will buy into these assholes hook, line, and sinker all the way through to the elections and past.
I mean…christ, they really love our utterly fucking broken health system that much to screw over everyone just for “MOAR FREEDUMZ!!’? ‘Freedumz’ which never existed in the first place?
justawriter
I have maintained for years that rapist rights is a perfectly good synonym for the forced birth movement. Their slogan is “Rapist’s sperm is more important than your daughter.”
FlipYrWhig
@Kryptik: These are fundamental freedoms we’re talking about! Freedom TO Fear! Freedom TO Want (i.e., Lack)! Wolverines!
c u n d gulag
@Kryptik:
Well, it’s important that corporations get the cheapest labor possible!
Between little children and extending SS out until 70, that kind of ensures cheap labor from the cradle to the grave – and that grave will be coming a lot earlier and earlier.
Kryptik
@c u n d gulag:
But hey, when that happens, we might actually get incentive to lower the retirement age back!
(beat)
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA, yeahright.
General Stuck
@Kryptik:
If they do buy into it, there is no point worrying about it, since we are pretty much toast as a viable country in that case. But I do understand the cynicism.
Kryptik
@General Stuck:
(sigh) Yeah. I’m just trying not to just curl up in crushing despair politically, since it seems like every day is an exercise in a cruel God telling me that ‘Yes, those belligerent assholes who want to exterminate all Libs and do everything to spite you? YES! THEY ARE MY CHOSEN PEOPLE, YOU WORTHLESS NIT!’
geg6
Well, I suppose if you think dirty whores are dirty whores whether while being black in the antebellum south or in the 21st C, then those dirty whores deserve whatever happens to ’em. They’d think that slave was just as big a dirty whore as that 13 yo who was raped, but not raped after a pistol whipping, by that 35 yo man. Women are nit and have never been and never will be fully human in their eyes. Certainly not as human as a zygote consisting of a few cells and no brain at all.
Jack
I keep hoping that eventually people will figure out that the radical right-wing only considers white adult males “people”.
According to them, women are not people, they are property, which is why they are now redefining rape, because they know all females want it, well, they all want it from white adult male people.
Why do you think radical Islam and the burkas freak the radical right-wing out so much? They see themselves in the radical Islamists.
Judas Escargot
It’s amazing just how many of the right wing’s “issues” can be attributed to bad parenting.
Villago Delenda Est
@Jack:
The bold is a friendly amendment to further our understanding of what these people are thinking.
jacy
If someone is dumb enough to want to make a slavery/abortion analogy (which they shouldn’t, because it’s, well, both dumb and racist) the actual analogy would be that black people ought to wholeheartedly be pro-choice because they know what it’s like for somebody to TELL THEM WHAT TO DO WITH THEIR BODIES. So, see, any black people who are pro-forced-birth are actually traitors to their long history as slaves.
kindness
I understand that those against abortion feel it is a moral question. I understand that those who support abortion rights also feel they are completely moral in making that choice. What I haven’t seen and fail to understand is how those who are against abortion can state that their view is the ONLY view allowed. I mean, I feel they are fine having their opinions and beliefs and carrying on their lives accordingly but they seem to think they have the right (and duty) to push those beliefs on those of us who don’t share them.
Put it another way….I am not going to tell them they have to go out and get abortions, but they seem to think it is fine telling me I couldn’t if I were to desire one. There is an inherent inequality to that argument. Their values and morals do not trump mine. Mine are equally valid.
Danny
Rick Santorum is right. Why would a group of people who were formerly considered property be against the government considering women’s bodies property? /sarcasm
aimai
This is such a great, great post, Dennis G. Thanks for the link. I’ve read TNC’s objections to the slavery = abortion thing and I found it useful and illuminating but ultimately unsatisfying since it puts all the focus on the slaves as abolitionists and not on women. It felt like only half the picture–and it was because it addressed only the notion of agency and said “the fetus is not an agent” which isn’t really a full rebuttal to the argument. In fact, in some ways, it plays into the hands of the abortion=slavery people because they fetishize innocence/fetus/baby/helplessness in order to aggrandize themselves as the supreme moral actors.
This post reminds us that self determination for all requires self determination for the woman–and for the enslaved woman–and that the primal territory of self determination is the self. The physical body. That undergirds everything else that is political and social.
I recommend Modern Medea, as I think I have before, a study of the landmark and horrifying case of an enslaved African American woman who, while fleeing slavery, chose to kill her own daughter rather than see the girl taken back into slavery. Its absolutely horrific and completely makes the case that the poster makes in the original post.
Also, and too, you can’t celebrate Masada and the right of adult males to determine how they and their women and children will die and not also celebrate the right of women to finally determine how and when and why they will become mothers.
aimai
aimai
Hate to double post but I also wanted to put this here. I recently had a really interesting–because so typical–argument with a woman online. She expressed her unhappiness that people whose birth control failed (this was in a long thread in which lots of women explained just how a wide variety of birth control had failed for them resulting in an unplanned and unwanted pregnancy). She kept insisting that she was “uncomfortable with using abortion as a form of birth control” and I finally had to explain to her that
“Birth Control is a form of Birth Control. When it fails and you get pregnant you aren’t using Abortion as a form of Birth Control. You are using Abortion as a medical procedure to prevent risk to your health, family, and life.” I haven’t been able to capture this thought as elegantly as I’d like but I did try to show her that sex between consenting adults isn’t an inherently risky activity, like gambling, in which you shouldn’t take part unless you are “willing to bear the child if there’s an accident.” Rather sex is like driving, with a seatbelt–if you get in an accident no one rushes up and tells you they won’t use the jaws of life and give you medical care because you recklessly chose to drive the car that morning.
aimai
Zifnab
@kindness:
When you boil your argument down to “Why do you want to kill the sweet baby Jesus?”, it doesn’t leave a lot of room for debate.
Jesus mythology has a lot of synergy with the modern pro-life movement.
gypsy howell
@Kryptik:
Once you start adding your own moral framework to the argument by using terms like “abortion of convenience” you’ve already given in to the forced-birthers. It’s not for you or anyone else to decide if the circumstances of wanting an abortion meet certain parameters. So what if it’s an abortion of “convenience” by your standards?
Sorry to jump on your shit about this, because I can see that we’re on the same side here, but this is what infuriates me about the “safe, legal and RARE” crap. It puts an arbitrary moral dimension on the decision to get an abortion. The message to women is “OK, sure you can HAVE the abortion, but you shouldn’t WANT to. It’s still BAD and all that.”
Violet
It’s not “anti-choice.” It’s “forced birth.” That’s what they are doing: forcing women to give birth. Let’s start using this stronger, more correct description of what they are doing.
Sko Hayes
I’m glad that the “Forced birthers” meme is catching on.
The more the Republicans reveal their motives, the more people will understand that it’s not about “saving lives”, it’s about punishing women who have sex for fun and profit.
I’ve posted this bit before, but it bears repeating. John (I think it was John) posted a video here last week by this whacked right wing Christianist going over the reasons why people that aren’t Christians shouldn’t be allowed to vote, and why this country should have a Christian dictator (and the right thinks we’re in more danger from Muslims!).
At one point in his delivery, he said:
You see? They want to punish women for having sex and liking it, without having a concern about pregnancy. That’s why the next forced birther fight in the states will be over contraception.
Susan of Texas
We kill babies all the time, as long as they are Brown and far away. We don’t care and in fact the right cheers on those deaths and calls people cowards if they don’t want to kill someone else’s baby.
The right wants to legally kill other people’s babies. The left (and most of the right) wants the right to legally kill their own unwanted babies. One seems much more reasonable than the other, and if the right doesn’t want babies killed or to pay taxes to have babies killed, they must give up war. Until then they can shut the hell up, the hypocrites.
I don’t care if someone wants to kill her fetus. It’s her life, her decision, her child, her act. If the right doesn’t like it they can change the law–which they won’t, because most of them want the option of killing their babies as well. We are losing the right to abort because we won’t go on the attack, and we won’t go on the attack because we let the right browbeat us with hypocritical moral arguments.
Zifnab
@gypsy howell:
That I disagree with. The Clintonian “safe, legal, and rare” slogan addressed the fact that even women having abortions don’t want to have abortions. They’d rather have just not gotten pregnant in the first place. An abortion is like emergency brain surgery. It’s not the sort of thing you anticipate with glee.
Sex education, contraception, and quality health insurance were cornerstones of the Clinton agenda. Giving women more opportunities to avoid pregnancy and more financial ability to afford pregnancy are precisely the avenues Democrats should be falling over themselves to promote. Clinton was much better at selling that agenda than the current crop of Dems. Of course, the Republican Party wasn’t quite so packed with manic religious zealots either.
Villago Delenda Est
@gypsy howell:
Yet, how many women WANT to have an abortion, in the sense that they WANT to have a slice of pie?
Not many, I’d wager, to the point of “none at all”.
The thing is, I’ve got testicles. I can’t imagine what it’s like. Therefore, I should leave that decision to the woman after she’s consulted with her physician. It is none of my business, as it’s not MY body we’re talking about.
Note that this is not Santorum’s position. He thinks he can butt into millions of medical decisions because he knows better than all those women and their physicians.
matoko_chan
@Dennis.
AND BALLON JUICE SUPPORTS THIS MINDSET by hosting EDK.
Do me a favor and cite his retraction if there is one, wudja?
I dropped a safe on him last week so i no longer see his fp posts.
i wrote my own filter….slash ignore. it not only redenders the offender mute, but it drops a virtual safe on him (or her) so that i nevah even see them post again, black sun bouncer style (warning snowcrash tagging).
I call it my Maya Angelou filter…..
sadly, EDK’s intransigent glibertarian buffoonishness has caused me to lose my faith in redemption.
tant pis.
Violet
@gypsy howell:
I sort of agree and sort of disagree. I do think the “rare” part is tossing a bone to those who waver on the abortion issue. But on the other hand, I think most people would want tooth extraction or heart bypass surgery to be rare, so it can be viewed in that way. We can avoid as many teeth extractions if we practice good dental hygiene and make dental care available. We can avoid as many heart bypass operations if we offer preventative care and encourage healthy eating and exercise. Equally, we can avoid as many unwanted pregnancies if we provide good sex education and make contraceptives easily available. That’s the “rare” part, put in a better light.
joe from Lowell
@justawriter:
Me, too. There’s a word for “forcing a woman to do something she doesn’t want to do with her reproductive organs.” It’s a four-letter word.
@gypsy howell:
No you haven’t. The concept of pro-choice, the definition of recognizing that someone has a right in any sphere, is real in the situation in which you support someone’s right to do that which you disapprove of. If there are no legitimate grounds on which someone can disapprove of an abortion – if every act of abortion is just peachy keen – then we’re not actually talking about respecting the other person’s self-determination. It’s not actually a pro-choice position, it’s a pro-abortion position.
If there was no such thing as objectionable speech, we wouldn’t need the First Amendment. You aren’t being some hero of freedom when you support someone’s right to act as you want them to. You’re making a stand for freedom when you support someone’s right to act in a manner that you disapprove of, on the grounds that the decision theirs to make, even if you think that decision is wrong.
Mnemosyne
@gypsy howell:
I don’t think that construction should have to put a moral dimension on it, though. There are perfectly good medical reasons to make abortion a rare occurrence: having surgery multiple times isn’t good for anyone’s health, even a surgery as minor as abortion. It’s like saying that, because a root canal is morally neutral, we shouldn’t promote dental health because people should be allowed to get a root canal anytime they want.
Villago Delenda Est
The thing is, the forced birth people don’t want to prevent unwanted pregnancies except by one way, and one way only:
Keep your legs together, slut!
They also oppose contraception in any form. They hate the pill, because it pretty much removes the risk of pregnancy from sex. They hate condoms, they hate IUDs, they hate morning-after pills, they hate anything that would allow women to have the same sexual liberty (fire and forget!) that men have.
Mr Furious
The first time I saw the abortion = slavery thing pop up here, I skipped right past it. Because it made my head hurt just to try and make the connection.
I seriously don’t get it.
joe from Lowell
@Villago Delenda Est:
This is why it’s so frustrating to read these centrist, Villager pieces about how contraception and sex ed are the common ground upon which anti- and pro-choice people can come together.
The people leading the charge against abortion rights are the same people leading the charge against contraception and sex ed in the first place.
aimai
@joe from Lowell:
I guess I don’t think it matters whether someone is a “hero of freedom” or not. I prefer the locution “I want abortion to be safe and legal” because its not my call whether it is “rare” or “common”–both of which are hidden value judgements based on some notion that for every X number of sex acts there is some legitimate fraction of pregnancy terminations.
Take a woman forced into prostitution–who am I to say that I want her abortions to be “rare?” Every single one of them is necessary to her. Being pregnant may put her life in danger from her pimp. Or carrying the fetus to term may make it harder for her to break out of the life. Or perhaps she doesn’t want to have the baby of her rapists? Who am I to say she gets a finite number of “chances” at abortion?
Or take a woman with a congenital health problem who gets pregnant because she wants the baby and discovers that the baby is carrying a fatal disease? Who am I to say that I want her abortion to be “rare”? I don’t. I want it to be safe and legal and uncomplicated and unfraught for her.
aimai
Zifnab
@matoko_chan:
/eye-roll
EDK is a bit hit-or-miss with his posts, but John wanted voices that span the ideological spectrum and EDK is as sane and reasonable a conservative as you are ever likely to find. He doesn’t “support” EDK’s mindset any more than he “supports” DougJ’s retorts or ABL’s Furry Convention photos. He runs a blog, not a Borg Mind Conglomerate.
Susan of Texas
They hate women claiming equality to men.
Villago Delenda Est
@joe from Lowell:
You’re thinking of that blockhead Salatan, aren’t you, Joe?
What a wanker he is. He misses the entire point. These people are not interested in reason or compromise. They want to impose their broomstick-up-the-ass ideology on everyone.
gypsy howell
@Zifnab:
Well, to each her own, I guess. I can tell you that when I got pregnant at a highly inconvenient time in my life, I desperately WANTED that abortion, no ifs and or buts.
Why should they be “rare?” To use your analogy, do we proclaim that emergency brain surgery should be “rare” or do we just accept that should it be available whenever needed, regardless of the circumstances leading up to it? Why put the moral dimension on it at all.
gypsy howell
@aimai:
Thank you aimai. You said what I was trying to say, except, as always, you were much more articulate.
joe from Lowell
@aimai:
“Not your call” and “not a subject you’re can rightfully have an opinion about” are two different matters.
Do I need to approve of racist speech in order to support the right of a racist to public a newsletter? Or, to put it another way, does one have to not object to racist speech in order to support freedom of speech?
When you’re reaching for such an unusual situation, we’re already talking about rare. What % of abortions in this country do you think are performed on women forced into prostitution? 0.1%? 0.001%?
You have utterly and completely whiffed on understanding the concept of rights. You can say anything you want. That’s not the point.
You want women facing the horror of congenital health problems and non-elective abortions frequently? Commonly? That’s a rather strange stand to take. You’ll have to forgive me, because I hope women find themselves in that position rarely. I think if you put a little thought into it, you do too.
It’s very easy to support people’s right to do things you approve of.
Zifnab
@gypsy howell:
If there was a massive wave of brain tumors sweeping the nation, I would like to think the ultimate response would be to reduce incidence of brain cancer, not to have as many brain surgeries as possible.
The Clintonian approach was “let’s reduce unwanted pregnancy”. Reducing unwanted pregnancy makes abortion rarer.
Given the choice, wouldn’t you have preferred having cheap, readily available birth control that prevented pregnancy to begin with or emergency contraceptives like Plan B rather than a full blown medical procedure?
Keep abortion available – safe and legal – but reduce the incidence – rare – by decreasing the incidence.
Persia
@joe from Lowell: Joe, please don’t be insulted by this– I usually enjoy your posts– but what the hell are you trying to drive at here? What’s your goal? I’ve read this post twice and still can’t figure it out.
Zifnab
Bleck. Reduce the incidence by decreasing the occurrence.
El Cid
@gypsy howell: For myself the notion that abortions “should” be rare isn’t a moral concern; for me I would mainly hope that the availability of and ease of access to and affordability of and whatever necessary factors for contraception would make the need for this surgical procedure less necessary.
I don’t mean any of the ‘morning after’ medications, because those aren’t any different to me than contraception, since I don’t hold zygotes to be some sort of human deserving of ‘rights’. I also don’t feel that way toward early fetuses.
I also hold the basic knowledge and principle that neither I nor government have the slightest moral or legal authority to enforce such policies upon female members of the human population, any more than similar biological control be mandated upon me. Which, of course, would only be fair.
This is a policy approach that tends to be more helpful to poorer and less educated woman than those with more such resources. At least, it’s a huge factor in the 3rd world.
In the 3rd world, the #1 factor to improve development of the nation is women’s access to education and contraception. I figure it’d help here too. Maybe not. If I have read such statistics backing this for the USA, I don’t remember them.
But as a male, it’s not in any way a moral policy preference, but one which so many nations have supported women with, rather than some insane delusion that people have authority over women’s innards.
[And if it wasn’t clear, yeah, no restrictions on the medical procedure known as “abortion”. And heck, while we’re at it, why not seriously protect such medical centers and doctors from the Talibangelical murderers and thugs targeting patients and medical workers and professional and institutions involved?]
joe from Lowell
@Villago Delenda Est:
He’s the most famous, yes, but you can find that wishful-thinking in a lot of places.
It’s understandable, if it’s coming from someone who is naive about the conservative movement, their beliefs, and their motivations. That really should be a position everyone can agree upon.
But Saletan has had plenty of opportunity to witness who these people are. And what’s more, he has had every opportunity to realize that support for contraception and sex ed as a means of reducing unwanted pregnancies is the pro-choice position, and doesn’t represent the slightest compromise for us.
Zifnab
@Persia: He’s comparing abortion to hate speech, which is to say he’s saying it should be supported in law, but discouraged in practice.
The idea is to reduce the number of Klansmen (pregnancies) through education and protection, rather than prohibiting Klan Rallies (abortions) carte blanche.
And before you get mad about comparing an abortion to a Klan Rally, please note that I compared a pregnancy to a member of the KKK.
This is a terrible metaphor.
Comrade Dread
@kindness:
If you see a fetus as fully human with all the attendant rights, and accept that the most important of human rights is to be, then any compromise on allowing he/she/it to be killed for any illegitimate reason is impossible.
Mr Furious
The way I understand the “rare” is not that a woman has a lifetime limit of abortions or even to pass a judgment on the decision—whether once, twice or twenty times.
The “rare” is from a better educated, prepared and contraceptively-equipped woman being far more unlikely to get unintentionally pregnant. If accidental pregnancies were dramatically reduced through any number of methods, then abortion would then become less common—or, more “rare.”
What woman wants to face this situation any more than absolutely necessary? Work to make the situation more rare by avoiding the accidental pregnancy in the first place—not a value or moral judgment in any way, in my opinion.
Violet
@aimai:
The abortions that have happened are necessary to the women involved. No argument there. However, many of the pregnancies themselves could have been avoided if proper education and contraception were available. That’s what the “rare” part says to me.
Certainly once a woman is pregnant she should be able to choose what to do with her own body. But ideally we should want to improve the chance that women who don’t want to be pregnant never become pregnant at all. Contraception and improved education won’t solve all those unplanned, unwanted pregnancies, but they’ll go a long way to reducing them. That’s the goal, isn’t it? Along with making sure that should a woman need or want an abortion, she can get one.
matoko_chan
@Zifnab: Cole is an enabler. he is enabling the cudlips (like you apparently) to see EDK as a “sane reasonable conservative”. that is false.
EDK is a headfake designed to get their way.
read this again.
Fucking glibertarian assclowns like EDK and Douchebag EXIST to give to give cover to eumemes. they are propagandists whorishly servicing their bankstah massahs with socon blowjobs is all.
Persia
@Zifnab:
Agreed.
And if we’re going to go with brain surgery, I would never want brain surgery to be ‘rare’, I’d want brain cancer to be ‘rare.’ I’d want the number of brain surgeries done to be not ‘rare’ but exactly as many as are medically needed. When we talk about wanting to make abortion rare, we’re already stigmatizing the procedure.
Mr Furious
The only reason to even glance at any post from matoko_chan is to guess how many words will appear between the “chan” and the inevitable “cudlip.”
What a fucking waste of pixels…
joe from Lowell
@Persia: I’m trying to clean up sloppy thinking among those who assert that one cannot disapprove of an act without being on the side of those who would prohibit it. That is a wrong, and dangerous, stance.
Have you ever heard the quote “I hate what you are saying, but I’ll defend to the death your right to say it?”
That’s my point. No, one does not have to swear fealty to the moral rightness of an action to endorse the right to perform that action. In fact, defining a belief in the moral rightness of an action as a precondition for supporting the right to perform it is an anti-choicie, anti-rights, anti-freedom position.
Arguing that one must approve of an action to genuinely support the right to choose that action is indistinguishable from arguing that the one must oppose the right to perform an act that one objects to.
aimai
@joe from Lowell:
No, I haven’t “whiffled the concept of rights” I’ve just pointed out to you that abortion rights, like any rights, aren’t really a place that we need to grandstand about *our* feelings. When people have rights, and I support them, I don’t require or deserve any credit for supporting those rights. And I don’t waste any time animadverting on my niceness or my nobility or my specialness for supporting those rights. Because what I feel really isn’t at issue. I’m a member of the ACLU and I support the rights of Nazis to walk through skokie blah blah. I don’t wnat their right to be infringed and i don’t even want their excercise of that right to be “rare.”
You are placing the emphasis on you and your feelings–no one cares. No one should have to care. A woman who decides she needs an abortion doesn’t have to satisfy you and your notions of what is the right one to get. That’s why lots of us on this board–not all of us women–are pointing out that the locution “safe, legal, and rare” is in fact a moral judgement and plays into the hands of the right wing with its insistence that women’s rights to self determination are qualitatively different from other people’s rights to excercise other kinds of self determination.
Would any politician say that people’s rights to bear arms should be “safe, legal, and rare?” Or their right to free speech should be “safe, legal, and rare?” I’m a woman and I could easily become pregnant and decide I need to terminate that pregnancy–I don’t think my abortion should be “rare” I think it should be safe and freely available to me.
aimai
Villago Delenda Est
Another tell with the forced birthers is their opposition to cervical cancer inoculations for girls.
They WANT the threat of cervical cancer to hover over these girls, to keep their legs tightly closed!
gypsy howell
@Zifnab:
Of course I would PREFER that unwanted pregnancies didn’t happen in the first place, just as I would hope that through good dental hygiene, the necessity of root canals would be reduced whenever possible. But then again, we don’t have high-profile political leaders making pronouncements about wanting root canals to be “safe, legal and RARE”. You can quibble all you want to about this, but “RARE” has, as aimee so aptly put it, a hidden value judgment that should be taken out of the equation.
That is all I am arguing here, not whether we should have better sex ed, and more widespread availability of contraception and all that. Of course we should have that too.
Mnemosyne
@gypsy howell:
Because it’s better to prevent things from happening than it is to have surgery to try and repair it afterwards. If people needed brain surgery because their water was contaminated, would you let things go on and do brain surgeries as needed, or would you try to clean up the water so you could make those surgeries a rare occurrence?
One of the forced birther arguments I hear that says that women know all about contraception and they can all afford it, but they just choose not to use it. That is, of course, patently not true, but I think focusing on pregnancy prevention and making contraceptives easily available is just as important as abortion access. And, yes, reducing the number of preventable abortions is a worthy goal just like reducing the number of lung cancer deaths by convincing people to stop smoking is a worthy goal.
joe from Lowell
@El Cid: I don’t disagree with any of that.
Comrade Dread
Not to dive into this yet again, but so what if it is a moral judgement?
The law stands as it is today (and will continue to do so despite some GOP grandstanding), and you can make that choice, what difference does it personally make to you if some people think that choice is distasteful or immoral?
suzanne
The moment I saw this post, I knew Our Lady of Perpetual Drunken Outrage was going to be here, screaming about E.D. Kain.
LMAO.
Mnemosyne
@Sko Hayes:
We’re already fighting over contraception (see “Pharmacists for Life”). That’s what the “safe, legal and rare” construction was supposed to do — point out that if the forced birthers hate abortion so much, they should support widespread distribution of contraceptives so those abortions can be avoided. How it then turned into a perception of finger-wagging at those naughty women, I’m not sure, but we definitely lost the thread of “rare” meaning “access to contraception.”
Persia
@suzanne: Well, you know. Why bother with a conversation when you can derail?
aimai
@Mnemosyne:
I’m not contradicting your point but trying to add to it.
I think one problem with the whole discussion is that it has never been the case that the left side of the aisle didn’t want fewer unwanted pregnancies. “Every child a wanted child” was our slogan. Good public education, Sex education, free contraception, anti-child abuse statues, child support money, Aid to Dependent Families, Welfare–these are all explicitly and implicitly already both means and ends to a happy, safe, healthy sex life for all. And these initiatives are always under threat from the right side of the aisle. Clinton’s “Safe, Legal, and Rare” meant to the left that we should increase spending on all these things in order to reduce the number of unwanted/accidental pregnancies. But to the right it is a concession that the problem isn’t unwanted pregnancies but abortion itself. And we know that because they refuse to support *unwanted pregnancy reduction* policies and instead support *forced pregnancy and child birth policies* while undercutting any amelioration of the problem.
Take planned Parenthood itself: the very name describes an orientation towards parenthood and pregnancy which is at odds with the right wing notion of unplanned/punitive/ constant pregnancy as part of god’s will. There can never be a meeting of minds between organizations which are determined to keep women barefoot and pregnant *by any means necessary* and those which are dedicated to happy, healthy, adult, expressions of sexuality and reproductive life.
aimai
Villago Delenda Est
@Mnemosyne:
Yet, they oppose any sex education (to include information about contraception) except “abstinence based” sex ed.
I remember my sex ed sessions back in the early 70s, supposedly the “golden age” of sex ed. Oh, we got a lot of biological information, but the entire social aspect of sex was glossed over, at best. How exactly does the penis get into the vagina? By some magical unconscious happenstance in the middle of the night? The teacher would not say!
None of this “putting a condom on a banana” stuff back then. We were supposed to go out and figure out all the social and interpersonal parts of sex on our own. Still. Go “play doctor”, kids!
That’s a good way to create a demand for abortions, if you ask me…
joe from Lowell
@aimai:
I didn’t start this conversation, amai. Grandstand? I replied to a comment from someone who took exception to my daring to hold an opinion, even when that opinion expressly endorses the notion that my opinion should not intrude on others’ freedom of choice.
And the next time someone tells you that you are aiding the political cause of speech suppressing by objecting to Naziism, the way gypsey howell’s comment did on on the subject of abortion rights, you let us know.
You don’t want marches of Nazis in full regalia through Jewish neighborhoods to be rare? Pardon me, but what the fuck is wrong with you?
Yes, amai, you have totally whiffed on the concept of freedom. If you think that you have to consider a Nazi march through a Jewish neighborhood to be morally neutral in order to support free speech rights, you have utterly failed to understand the concept of rights.
As a matter of fact, it is not I who is placing the emphasis on my feelings, but the commenter I responded to, who decided that wanting abortion to be rare was something she had to speak up about and condemn. I eagerly await your reply to her about not giving me and my feelings such emphasis.
Indeed they shouldn’t. In fact, I have said so over and over on this very thread – and your failure to understand that is precisely why you’ve whiffed on the concept of freedom.
Brachiator
Shit, I never knew it had ever been bunked. Women have killed their children (and themselves) rather than let them be enslaved. Is Rick Santorum up for infanticide?
joe from Lowell
@gypsy howell:
As a matter of fact, we have politicians talking about preventive medical care as a way to reduce the need for expensive, invasive treatment all the time.
El Cid
It’s not the abortion question we should be regulating, but getting women out of the workforce, stopping them from voting, and back in the home keeping it clean and making dinners for their husbands. You can go too far with this “rights” stuff.
joe from Lowell
@Comrade Dread:
That’s exactly right. Turning it right back on aimai, why are you putting such emphasis on the feelings of people who propose to do absolutely nothing to you?
You insisted you didn’t care, but clearly you do. Why?
gypsy howell
@Mnemosyne:
The forced birthers are never going to agree with a pro-choice position, so I wouldn’t fall into the trap of trying to create a tortured pro-choice framework in the vain hope that you’ll get them to agree with it. This argument you cite is just a trap to get the conversation going in the direction of who decides who is worthy of an abortion, and who isn’t. If a woman chooses for whatever reason not to use contraception, and she gets pregnant, you wouldn’t argue that she shouldn’t be “allowed” to get an abortion, would you? (or would you?)
I understand the underpinnings of the “rare” locution (“Maybe we’ll get those anti-choicers to agree with us!”), but I happen to think it is the wrong message, and ultimately counterproductive to the cause of a woman’s right to safe and legal abortion.
aimai
@Comrade Dread:
I’ll take a crack at answering that. Its nothing to me if anyone prefers that locution. Lots of people like to make moral judgements and grandstand about stuff. In fact, there are people who can’t get the through the day without doing so. But not all of us. I’m simply pointing out that there *is* an implicit moral stance of disapproval of the procedure in the locution. And its not one I share. Its not one I share because, as we’ve been discussing in this thread, if you take the long view of women’s health and reproductive issues and women’s freedom and self determination (if you look outside of America, or at state’s where abortion is impossible to get, or at places where health care is scanty) abortion is a positive good–not an evil. Sometimes the only way a woman can get enough space/time to heal her body or care for her family.
I think the modern notion that abortion is something that most women could do without– a mere convenience–is predicated on a willed forgetting of the facts of life: Pregnancy is hard–physically, emotionally, financially. Those nine months might be crucial in your life. We don’t ask any other kind of person to sacrifice their own life, health, education, finances for nine months to any other kind of person but women to fetuses.
I don’t object to people having moral objections or concerns about abortion. Joe from Lowell, for example, is a practicing Catholic and I absolutely think that if a person has moral or religious qualms about any practice they are entitled to voice their discomfort. Perhaps they are even entitled to demand a little respect, as Joe does up above, for being a “hero of freedom” for supporting in practice something they abominate in theory. I’m not one of those people, however. I don’t need any credit from anyone for supporting a right and a practice that I don’t consider unnecessary, icky, sad, or scary.
aimai
joe from Lowell
@gypsy howell:
The formulation “going in the direction” cedes to the anti-choice faction the argument that finding abortion, in some cases, morally objectionable leads inexorably to support for restricting reproductive rights.
I oppose your insistence that we proclaim abortion to always be morally neutral or beneficial, because I oppose ceding them that argument. It is not some notion of the moral rightness of abortion that underpins abortion rights; it’s the self-determination of women over their bodies, regardless of others’ moral judgment.
gypsy howell
@joe from Lowell:
Oh please. You are just talking bullshit now. This has nothing to do with my poor widdle fee fees. It has to do with the framework of the abortion debate. In case you haven’t noticed, our abortion rights (well mine, not yours apparently) are being whittled away in this country, and I am saying that we are not helping ourselves by having our so-called pro-choice leaders position abortion as undesirable in a way that we DO NOT position other medical procedures as being “undesirable.” No one is trying to take away your right to root canals or heart bypass surgery or brain surgery. The same can not be said for abortion.
aimai
@joe from Lowell:
Perhaps I’m wrong but I think you brought up free speech and the Nazis as an example of things that people should support but might object to. I really don’t understand why you are making such a big deal out of this but let me try again. No, I don’t object to the Nazis marching through Skokie. What is wrong with me? Uh. I’m a Jew and I think that when assholes have free speech they are going to act like assholes? But I also think that the correct answer to free speech that is painful, or hurtful, is more free speech? In other words, I don’t think we can guarantee rights like free speech without working hard to balance painful speech with more/better speech.
What’s the analogy to abortion? I’m wholly in favor of women’s right to have abortion full stop. I don’t think its a right that needs to be balanced by handwringing or more speech. To the extent that i think that any medical procedure is potentially dangerous and expensive I think, of course, that we might want to use social engineering to eliminate some percentage of the necessity for the procedure. That has nothing to do with placating the right wing about abortion because they don’t like the procedure. In addition, such social engineering is anathema to the right wing. They prefer to outlaw that which they don’t like. This is one of those interesting areas where a “free market” approach to the practice: allowing women to freely choose what they want to do when and how is inevitably going to produce a situation which the right wing doesn’t like.
aimai
aimai
joe from Lowell
@Comrade Dread:
Not necessarily. You are fully human with all the attendant rights, including the right to life. I even support the right of the government to tax my earnings to support your right to life.
But they can’t make me donate my kidney, even to save your life. Even if you need a kidney because I ran you over in a crosswalk, they still can’t make me donate one of mine to save you.
Because the rightful power of the government to promote even the right to life ends at compelling others to use their bodies in the cause.
aimai
@gypsy howell:
Hey Gypsy Howell, just wanted to say how much I agree with what you’ve been posting here. I think we’ve both tried, in good faith, to explain where we are coming from. You’ve really done a much better job than I have in being succinct!
aimai
asiangrrlMN
@aimai: I’m with you and gypsy howell on this. Ain’t nobody’s business but the WOMAN having the abortion why she is doing it. Why does everybody feel compelled to be all moral on this issue (even those supposedly on our side) while other issues, yes, like the right to bear arms is supposedly off-limits?
@gypsy howell: I agree with this as well. The twenty-seven percenters of the far-right forced-birthers are lost to any argument. One idiot on the latest thread at TNC’s place wants to have abortion laws similar to prostitution laws (which I am against as well).
I’m tired of ceding ground on this issue. I actually don’t give a shit what people personally think about abortion as long as they support keeping it legal–I just don’t understand why so many men have to pontificate on the morality of it so fucking much.
And, even in this, I have derailed from the intent of this post which is to point out that slavery = abortion leaves out the history of enslaved women who were raped by their masters and got pregnant.
joe from Lowell
@aimai: I don’t actually want you to offer me “respect” for supporting the right to do that which I (in some cases – I’m not a terribly orthodox Catholic) oppose.
I’d just like you to cease casting me as part of the other side.
joe from Lowell
@gypsy howell:
…and I’ve explained over and over now, and you can’t seem to muster any sort of rebuttal to, the framework you are pushing gives aid and comfort to those who would restrict abortion rights.
You want to talk, in pure political terms, about the threat to the right to choose? It comes from the possibility that the forced-birthers will win a majority of the country. Those of you whose fee-fees tell them that abortion is, always and everywhere, a positive good or morally neutral are a teeny-tiny, itty-bitty little minority. The pro-choice majority in this country consists mostly of people who have moral qualms about at least some subset of abortions. For you to cast the majority of pro-choicers as belonging in the other camp is an act of self-destruction.
And it’s one you’re committing because of your feelings.
Blogreeder
Did Sarah Palin write this? Scatx completely misses the point like Palin did with the Sputnik momement. Look, the abortion=slavery is about deciding that certain people don’t have the same rights as everyone else. Period. In order to have legal slaves; a slave has to be property not a person. In order to have legal abortions; a fetus has to be a non person also. Right? This is the crux of the equation.
joe from Lowell
@aimai:
Guess what, aimai: you just acknowledged that you disapprove of Nazi speech. You think it’s something that needs an “answer.” You think it needs to be “balanced,” you think it’s “painful,” and that we need “better” speech. I’m relieved to find that you misspoke when you said that you don’t have a problem with it. Of course you do; you clearly oppose it.
That’s ok, though. I’m not going to accuse you of wanting to suppress speech, or of helping those who do want to suppress speech. Because I understand that objecting to something, considering it something you want to rebut and make less popular and stir up opposition to, doesn’t have even the slightest connection to wanting to suppress it.
Speech is a “balance” to other speech. It is not a balance to action.
In case you haven’t figured it out by now, there are vastly more people than “the right wing” who find at least some subsets of abortion objectionable. In fact, most people who support abortion rights do.
And like gypsy howell, you still have no answer for my actual argument (not the one you’ve assigned to me, but the one I’ve actually, repeatedly made) about why it’s dangerous to insist that those who support abortion rights must affirm the morality of abortion always and everywhere: because it grants to the anti-choice faction their fondest wish, a connection between moral objection and legal restriction.
joe from Lowell
Oh, and aimai?
If you’ve ever read about the Skokie episode or trial, you will find that the ACLU lawyer was full of condemnation, in his statements to the press and in his statements in the courtroom, of the Nazis’ behavior.
aimai
@joe from Lowell:
I’m not casting you as the other side. Never have, never will. I’ve simply pointed out that I don’t share your apparent conviction that abortion is something that should be avoided, or curtailed, or limited. I understand completely that you are, as you see it, supporting a right which you aren’t fully comfortable with. I respect that. So what?
I mean that. Why does it matter to you what I (supposedly) think of your stance on abortion? Its a legal right. One that I feel very strongly must continue to be legal for the sake of myself, my daughters, and every other woman in the country.
Of course I will continue to fight for all the other supporting public health funding and legislation that will help protect women from unwanted pregnancies. But unwanted pregnancies are going to continue to happen–in proportion to the number of sex acts between heterosexuals and in line with other factors such as economic downturns and rising health and education costs. We will never eliminate unwanted pregnancies but we stand a very good chance of seeing the elimination of abortion rights.
Where I think you and I part company is not in whether we support legal abortion (we do) but whether we arrogate to ourselves the right to pass judgment on others for resorting to it. Not only don’t I pass judgement on women and their abortions myself–for obvious reasons being a woman and knowing full well I might need one–but I’m sick and tired of having liberal males tell me that I should be fucking grateful to them for supporting abortion rights as though the whole matter was my problem. Its like having your house guest complain about having to wash the dishes and animadvert, after a dinner you’ve cooked, about how much nicer it would be if dishwashing was “safe, legal, and rare.” Hell no. I don’t want dishwashing to be safe, legal, and rare. I want a god damned dishwasher.
aimai
aimai
@joe from Lowell:
You know, Joe. you really are a motherfucking passive agressive idiot. No one has accused you of wanting to suppress abortion rights. People have observed that the phrase “safe, legal, and rare” has a hidden moral condemnation in it which we, for political reasons, don’t subscribe to. It has nothing to do with you. Really. Believe what you want. Pull whatever slogans out of your ass that you want. But if you are waiting for a god damned cookie from women because you after much sorrowful thought decided you could give the all important Joe from Lowell support to our abortion rights you will have a really long wait.
aimai
joe from Lowell
@asiangrrlMN:
When you cede that there is an inexorable logical and legal connection between finding something morally objectionable and banning it, you are ceding ground on this issue. You are ceding to those who wish to ban abortion one of their core arguments.
I refuse to do that. The government must not restrict reproductive choice, even when it is used in an immoral manner. “I disagree with what you are saying, but I’ll defend to the death your right to say it.”
Yes, your apathy, your complete and utter lack of feeling one way or the other, is coming through loud an clear. Especially when you keep swearing as you insist upon that apathy.
As a matter of fact, this deflection began when gypsy howell just couldn’t stop herself from denouncing, utterly without provocation or relevance to anything that had been written, those of us who dare to not endorse every abortion ever performed.
joe from Lowell
@Blogreeder:
That’s their argument, but it’s faulty.
The government can’t use force to make you use your kidney to save another person’s life, even if you’re the one who put that life in danger. Ergo, it should not be able to force you to use your uterus, either, if if doing so is necessary to save another person’s life.
joe from Lowell
@aimai:
Who cares what it is to the right? They’re lost anyway.
That’s not what it is to the vast middle…unless some misguided people convince them that it actually is.
Brachiator
@asiangrrlMN:
But that’s just it. The GOP, in Congress and in the states, are drafting all kinds of legislation to restrict abortion, and there has been very little opposition. And the lack of opposition from women is strange. But it is not that liberals are ceding ground. It’s that the ground is being yanked out from under us. It is, of course, the same with any number of issues. The issue is no longer settled. The old rules, that no one would seriously tinker with settled law with relation to abortion, no longer holds, especially with the pseudo-constitutionalist arguments that the Tea Party people are offering.
I understand where you are coming from on this, but until somebody changes the law so that only women can vote on abortion related issues, this is an inherently losing argument.
Great point. The sadder, larger perspective is that no enslaved person had autonomy or reproductive rights that were respected. The same is true to a degree with white women who had children by black men during the age of slavery. There is a deep, ugly, history here. And it’s Black History Month. Lots of potential homework assignments.
joe from Lowell
@aimai:
I hope this is just another misstatement. I hope you aren’t still, after all of this, confused about the difference between supporting the right and supporting, in all cases, the act. I am not even the slightest bit uncomfortable with supporting the right.
I don’t care what you think; I care what you say. I’ve answered this question over and over and over now: you are granting to the anti-choice faction their fondest wish. You are asserting a connection between finding abortion morally objectionable (in any case), and promoting the abolition of the legal right to choose.
That’s what I object to: the people saying that the “legal, safe, and rare” formulation is wrong. The people saying equating approval of abortion with support for reproductive choice, and opposition to abortion – ever – with opposition to reproductive choice.
Once again, you can keep pretending that this argument began with me “grandstanding” (as if I, solely, am expressing my opinions and arguing for them, lol), but I’m not going to let you get away with it. This argument began with gypsy howell railing, out of the blue, against the “safe, legal, and rare” formulation, and launching an attack on those who agree with it.
I’m not the thought police here; I’m fighting back against them, because they started up with me.
This is profoundly dishonest. You’ve spent the entire thread denouncing me for my opinion
joe from Lowell
@aimai:
And I’ve objected to those political reasons, and explained why over and over and over and over.
To date, the sum total of rebuttals any of you have been able to manage is as follows:
Unlike you, dearie, I’m not actually demanding anyone feel or think a single thing.
My, this argument must be going really well for you.
joe from Lowell
Let me try this from another direction:
Which faction benefits from defining the dividing line between pro- and anti-choice in terms of the morality of abortion?
And which faction benefits from defining that line in terms of personal autonomy and the rightful limits of government?
aimai
@joe from Lowell:
Joe, you know, you really are a NiceGuy ™. When women involved in the decades long struggle to define the terms of the debate tell you that they have political reasons for objecting to a political struggle you lecture them on how you know better and speak for everyone in the rest of the country. When you demand to be recognized as a “hero of freedom” (your term, way upthread) and we say “no heroism required” you bleat about how its our feelings that are being hurt and we are just being too emotional or something. And now you call me “dearie?” If I’d been playing “liberal white guy bingo” I’d have hit bingo hours ago. You just can’t stop yourself from lecturing women from how they should understand history, politics, activism and their own relationship to their rights and their bodies. And on top of it all you want us to congratulate you for showing us all the way? Fuck off. Human rights, and women’s rights, don’t begin and end with what makes Joe from Lowell feel like the hero of the story. You risk nothing in your “support” and you do nothing in your support and you want to be congratulated and deferred to?
aimai
gypsy howell
@joe from Lowell:
Exactly. Which is why I don’t believe pro-choice proponents should be framing our position in terms of a judgment about how often, how available, and under what circumstances abortion should be an available option to women, — which is where inserting the loaded term “RARE” into the debate leads you.
And BTW, I was “railing” against what I thought was a morally judgmental statement from the second comment in the thread. (sorry, don’t mean to drag you back into this, kryptik) If you have a big problem with thread hi-jacking, my advice is to not litter it up with a jillion angry posts arguing about it. You could have just moved on from my comment and stayed on topic too, ya know.
I have to move on with my life now.
EmmATX
@aimai: Right on aimai and gypsy howell. I think the relevant term to describe what Joe from Lowell is doing here is mansplaining.
kay
@Blogreeder:
We understand that. We just don’t know where it goes. Say the state redefines “person” to include “at conception”. Who’s the slaveholder in that equation? The pregnant woman?
What happened to the women in this discussion? Dennis G.’s point is, we disappeared. There’s the life-at-conception and the state. Hello! Over here! There’s a human being carrying that life-at-conception!
Anti-choicers have succeeded in completely removing the mother from the picture. She’s gone. A non-entity.
Ruckus
@aimai:
I was going to try to make an argument that the use of rare in this case should not be a problem because it is a surgical procedure and there are risks with any surgical procedure. Are these risks greater than that of the use of some types of contraceptives? If they are, finding better contraceptives should be a given for finding ways to reduce the need for a surgical procedure. But I find very compelling the need to keep my business out of yours. And having a procedure be rare or not for someone else really isn’t my business.
Ruckus
@aimai:
I was trying to answer, well no, actually agree with your post #62 but wp ate my post. And then I see that of course you said it much better down thread.
Saying abortion should be rarer is not in of it self a bad concept. It would be nice if a lot of surgical procedures could be rarer. But of course that misses your entire point of using the word rare in this case.
ETA and I see WP didn’t eat my post, it just wouldn’t show it to me even with reloading BJ.
Brachiator
@kay:
These people are saying that a Real American Woman ™ will choose having the baby every time. There is only one choice, just like for a Real American(tm) there is only one choice for religion, Jesus.
Their shining star from now through the 2012 elections and beyond will be those two superwomen who chose life, Sarah Palin (mother of a Down Syndrome child) and her super starlet daughter Bristol, single mother and dancer with the stars.
Blogreeder
@kay:
There is NO slaveholder. You said you understood it but I’m unconvinced. There are only non-persons in that equation.
That’s exactly the point. It’s ALL about the fetus.
zuzu (not that one, the other one)
@joe from Lowell:
I just gotta ask you, dude: What’s it to you?
For real. Why do you think anyone gives a shit about your opinion of the motivations behind some abortions? Which, BTW, you volunteered without prompting, so don’t try to justify your endless prairiedogging in this thread by blaming it on gypsyhowell’s response to you.
Do you think anyone really cares about your moral ambiguity and wishy-washiness, or seeks your approval? Oh, if only I knew joe from lowell approved of my morality I would sleep better at night!
I mean, dude, whether you approve the reasons doesn’t change the outcome. The abortion procedure is the same regardless of whether the woman will go blind or die from continuing the pregnancy (I did notice you left “physically” off your list of ways that the woman in question could handle the pregnancy “until such time as adoption is possible,” or whatever it was you so blithely prescribed, as if going through a pregnancy and then giving up the child for adoption is a walk in the park, Mr. Douthat), or whether she simply doesn’t want kids at all, or now isn’t really when she wants them.
And yes, you’re entitled to your opinion about abortions. Gypsyhowell is entitled to her opinion that you’re a jackass. See how that works?
zuzu (not that one, the other one)
@joe from Lowell:
Actually, it started when you offered your completely irrelevant and unsolicited opinion about your acquaintances’ abortions.
When marriage equality is discussed, do you offer your unsolicited opinions about buttfucking and carpet munching?
Dennis G.
@Blogreeder:
Slave were people. They never were non-entities despite the massive efforts at removing their humanity and any control over their lives or any agency in changing their situation. Truth is, slaves were real people who actively fought for their freedom.
Zygotes? Not so much. Just cells. Not entities who can take actions to change their destiny.
Equating cells incapable of action to people dehumanizes the people equated with the cells. And that process to erase people from the discussion of issues impacting them is what the wingnuts do. The Slavery = Abortion meme is just a very blatant example of how it is done.
Cheers