The “Question” of a Woman’s Right of Choice Shouldn’t Be a Question at All!

[Truth Warrior]

I see you didn't finish reading the piece. No, it shouldn't. When a man can get pregnant and bear a childd, then HIS right of choice exists. Otherwise, his right extends to sex or not in the first place.

Ian

Correct, I didn't. I was speaking in general and in a larger sense, as my question clearly shows.<IMHO> Would you care to answer THAT question? Or are only the women, individuals, with the right of choice, without question, IYO?

Thanks!

 

[klamath]

With that attitude you may as well crawl into some hole and curl up while the rest of us get on with it. Granted, evil - which is NOT relative - steals a march with sheer brutality, but it cannot build to last. Which is why the US is so rickety right now. And it's such a triumph when people who DO believe in rights win! Personally I'd rather fight against chaos and its agents than give up nd just tend my own garden until the darkness falls.

If if you're so bored sick of all this, then what are you doing here - besides sneering, I mean? Try something constructive.

Ian

Abortion threads have been on the front page of the new posts results for months.
"And it's such a triumph when people who DO believe in rights win!"- the right to kill. Sugar coat it any way you want. Both parents should be responsible. I don't even think laws against abortion can be enforced but I will never be convinced that the taking of life can be reduced to words like "Choice or Collateral Damage.
The height of evil is the cheapening of human life, for once human life is cheapened any kind of sick horror can be done to any living human body without thought.
I will continue to do battle with neocons that believe democrasy can be spread with the GBU-71 or the libertarian lays claim to the right to kill the unborn.

 

[Brooklyn Red Leg]

Quiz time Ian:

Does a 'fetus' have the same general human DNA pattern as the rest of us? In otherwords, is it a member of the species/subspecies Homo Sapiens Sapiens?

If the answer to that is 'Yes', then the Right to Life is pre-political. Its an 'Inalienable Right'. Furthermore, if the Right to Life is only extended to those fetuses that can survive outside the womb, then you can, through just application of the Law, murder your children up to the age which they can care, feed and clothe themselves. In the modern world, thats at least 14 years of age (lowest age they can legally get a job).

If the answer to that question is 'No', then I suggest you bone up on your biology.

The Right of Choice does not give one permission to aggress against another who is utterly defenseless. As klamath stated, whether its in a Doctor's Office with a high saline content liquid or a rocket-propelled grenade is irrelevant. Dead is dead.

 

[Original_Intent]

Quiz time Ian:

Does a 'fetus' have the same general human DNA pattern as the rest of us? In otherwords, is it a member of the species/subspecies Homo Sapiens Sapiens?

If the answer to that is 'Yes', then the Right to Life is pre-political. Its an 'Inalienable Right'. Furthermore, if the Right to Life is only extended to those fetuses that can survive outside the womb, then you can, through just application of the Law, murder your children up to the age which they can care, feed and clothe themselves. In the modern world, thats at least 14 years of age (lowest age they can legally get a job).

If the answer to that question is 'No', then I suggest you bone up on your biology.

The Right of Choice does not give one permission to aggress against another who is utterly defenseless. As klamath stated, whether its in a Doctor's Office with a high saline content liquid or a rocket-propelled grenade is irrelevant. Dead is dead.

I agree 100%.

I was reading an article last week about someone who was ranting about Obama's choice to give the invocation at his deification party - uh I mean cornonation - whatever. They were upset because this pastor opposes abortion, and the worst was he opposed it because "his Bible" told him that the fetus was a life.

Let's just take religion out of the picture so we aren't forcing our religious beliefs on anyone else. I want to ask the author of the article (Bill Press) what scientific study told him it is not a human life? Is there a biologist out there that has made the claim?

Roe v Wade wasn't a biblical finding or a scientific one. It was a political decision to deny ontological status - "personhood" to certain living members of humanity.
No more and no less. There is no serious discussion about whether a fetus is a living human or not - just that it had not achieved "personhood" yet and thus could not be protected under the law.

At the VERY least, they had no right to deny states the right to make their own laws regarding abortion. None. No legal precedent, no Constitutional authority.

 

[LibertyEagle]

And the woman had a choice to keep her legs together.

Indeed, but his question wasn't about women, it was about MEN.

 

[Ian MacLeod]

Correct, I didn't. I was speaking in general and in a larger sense, as my question clearly shows.<IMHO> Would you care to answer THAT question? Or are only the women, individuals, with the right of choice, without question, IYO?

Thanks!

Sorry, but I saw and see no generalization unless you refer to choice in general about anything. That wasn't the subject though, the question was on this piece so I took it as bein directed toward me and the subject at hand. " IYO"? I;m afraid I don't do text messaging, and never did get a lot of these first-letter only sentences. Whassat? If it's "in your opinion", of course; this IS an opinion piece, though I feel I defended it with good logic.

If I've missed entire;y, again, my apologies. I'm just now up from my second time asleep - 2 hours. My wife is in end-stage COP and bed-ridden, and I'm the only one here to do any and everything. I don't get a lot of rest. I'm disabled myself (chronic intractable pain, nerve damage), and am badly under-medicated, as the VA picked this moment after almost a decade of near-good treatment due to drug war politics. Still fighting as I'm able, and with some formidable help, but the art of politics is the art of delay. Damn them.

Ian

 

[Ian MacLeod]

Correct, I didn't. I was speaking in general and in a larger sense, as my question clearly shows.<IMHO> Would you care to answer THAT question? Or are only the women, individuals, with the right of choice, without question, IYO?

Thanks!

Sorry, but I saw and see no generalization unless you refer to choice in general about anything. That wasn't the subject though, the question was on this piece so I took it as being directed toward me and the subject at hand. " IYO"? I;m afraid I don't do text messaging, and never did get a lot of these first-letter only sentences. Whassat? If it's "in your opinion", of course; this IS an opinion piece, though I feel I defended it with good logic.

If I've missed entirely, again, my apologies. I'm just now up from my second time asleep - 2 hours. My wife is in end-stage COP and bed-ridden, and I'm the only one here to do any and everything. I don't get a lot of rest. I'm disabled myself (chronic intractable pain, nerve damage), and am badly under-medicated, as the VA picked this moment after almost a decade of near-good treatment due to drug war politics. Still fighting as I'm able, and with some formidable help, but the art of politics is the art of delay. Damn them.

Ian

 

[Ian MacLeod]

Abortion threads have been on the front page of the new posts results for months.
"And it's such a triumph when people who DO believe in rights win!"- the right to kill. Sugar coat it any way you want. Both parents should be responsible. I don't even think laws against abortion can be enforced but I will never be convinced that the taking of life can be reduced to words like "Choice or Collateral Damage.
The height of evil is the cheapening of human life, for once human life is cheapened any kind of sick horror can be done to any living human body without thought.
I will continue to do battle with neocons that believe democrasy can be spread with the GBU-71 or the libertarian lays claim to the right to kill the unborn.

I really wish someone would read the thing before commenting. And "democracy" is spelled with a "c", not an "s".

As I said in the piece you didn't finish, a slime spot of a handful of cells is no more a "child" than a pile of boards and bricks is a house. Natural abortion occurs a huge percentage of the time, (miscarriage, which is often a ejection so early the woman never has any idea she was pregnant), or is induced by accident - say horseback riding and a poor attachment. Waiting until a child is viable, weighs eight pounds and is days from delivery - well, I know of no one who would do such a thing. Not and kill the child, and yes, THAT'S a child. It;s the legal delays caused by laws proulgated by the Right trying to make it de facto illegal whatever the law actually says that causes too many abortions to happen far later than they should.

And the damned neocons have been supporting making it ILLEGAL. Sheesh... I'm sugar coating nothing. You're killing a potential human in abortion however - that pile of boards and bricks. Humans cannot live without killing, and sometimes, all throughout history, that has included abortion done in one fashion in another when nature itself doesn't take care of it. Many, perhaps most, cultures have included exposure of a newborn for various reasons, and there are indications that at least some and likely most very early cultures used it because an older child was still at suck and the woman was unable to nurse two. This is aside from killing to live - for food, in defense or in taking someone else's land when yours is no longer viable or won't support your expanding population. Humans are the latest descendants of energy-stealer cell colonies, and we cannot live witout killing things that other organisms have already converted to organic material. It's the degree now that we must choose, and choosing lifelong poverty and te damage it causes all around: to parents, children and society - is a bad choice IMO, and in the opinions of the women who choose abortion because they cannot afford a child at that time. Better a good, well educated, happy and well fed life. According to a great many people, at least, and I agree. So do most Rightists, else they'd support helping a child who already HAS been born instead of starving those help agencies and projects to punish the mother and the child they should hold blameless.

Ian

 

[Truth Warrior]

Sorry, but I saw and see no generalization unless you refer to choice in general about anything. That wasn't the subject though, the question was on this piece so I took it as being directed toward me and the subject at hand. " IYO"? I;m afraid I don't do text messaging, and never did get a lot of these first-letter only sentences. Whassat? If it's "in your opinion", of course; this IS an opinion piece, though I feel I defended it with good logic.

If I've missed entirely, again, my apologies. I'm just now up from my second time asleep - 2 hours. My wife is in end-stage COP and bed-ridden, and I'm the only one here to do any and everything. I don't get a lot of rest. I'm disabled myself (chronic intractable pain, nerve damage), and am badly under-medicated, as the VA picked this moment after almost a decade of near-good treatment due to drug war politics. Still fighting as I'm able, and with some formidable help, but the art of politics is the art of delay. Damn them.

Ian

What about a man's right of choice? Should THAT be a question, AT ALL?

No problem. That was my entire original post. I tend to be very literal, and individual oriented, gender not withstanding. If women have rights, without question, then so do men.<IMHO> Double standards suck. About half of the abortions performed, are of females. What about their right to choose?

IYO = In Your Opinion

BTW, my consistent position on abortion is, " PREVENT unwanted pregnancies. " No unwanted pregnancy, no abortion, no problem, by definition.

Hang in there. Good luck!

Thanks!

 

[mellamojuana]

Original_Intent, I like your post very much. TQ 4 it

Ian, you might like the book, Men, Women and Rape, by Susan Brownmiller. (I think; I read it long ago.) I respect your standing up for what you believe, and doing it rather eloquently. I see two articles/issues (pun not intended) in your post. With a bit of work, you could rewrite, expand, etc., & possibly sell 2 articles.

I'm in your corner. I was advised to have an abortion, but chose not to. The point is that I had a choice. It was my choice involving my God, my husband, and me. Had I/we chosen abortion, it still would have been my God, my husband, and me--a good God, a decent husband, and a woman concerned about her health and extremely difficult circumstances.

The troubling thing to me is that "we" are deeply worried about a fertilized human egg that might not later exist as a baby, but not at all worried about it/him/her after some years and time in juvenile detention, prison, oh, and the old folks' home. We really seem to despise those cute, cuddly babies after they've been around 85 years, and become dependent again. I didn't read any protests here about Ian's being a soldier with the Navy Hospital Corps. Please correct me gently if I'm wrong. Those wee babies become worth less and less when they are "enemy" soldiers, or when they're "our heroes" sent to kill or be killed. Forgive the sarcasm here, but our draftees weren't worth much. They had a choice during the "war" in Vietnam--go to Vietnam and hope to live, or leave the USA to live in exile for not obeying the laws of the nation. Why, hello, there's a male choice!

The way I experience and observe life, I see much hatred, disrespect, and lack of love and belief in the sanctity of human beings. Period. The way people bash each other on this website, beat each other down, call each other mean names, fail to respect other opinions, accuse, belittle, berate, one-up, condemn, and generally act like good, liberty-loving, and baby-loving Americans, convinces me that we don't really love fetuses very much, either.

Shakespeare comes to mind: "Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds." We love those babies, and lose that love over time when they change!

Ian, the National Family Caregivers Association has a website with supportive forums, in case you haven't discovered it. Godspeed. I respect what you are doing. You are not alone, although it certainly feels like it, sometimes, I'm sure.

 

[klamath]

I really wish someone would read the thing before commenting. And "democracy" is spelled with a "c", not an "s".

As I said in the piece you didn't finish, a slime spot of a handful of cells is no more a "child" than a pile of boards and bricks is a house. Natural abortion occurs a huge percentage of the time, (miscarriage, which is often a ejection so early the woman never has any idea she was pregnant), or is induced by accident - say horseback riding and a poor attachment. Waiting until a child is viable, weighs eight pounds and is days from delivery - well, I know of no one who would do such a thing. Not and kill the child, and yes, THAT'S a child. It;s the legal delays caused by laws proulgated by the Right trying to make it de facto illegal whatever the law actually says that causes too many abortions to happen far later than they should.

And the damned neocons have been supporting making it ILLEGAL. Sheesh... I'm sugar coating nothing. You're killing a potential human in abortion however - that pile of boards and bricks. Humans cannot live without killing, and sometimes, all throughout history, that has included abortion done in one fashion in another when nature itself doesn't take care of it. Many, perhaps most, cultures have included exposure of a newborn for various reasons, and there are indications that at least some and likely most very early cultures used it because an older child was still at suck and the woman was unable to nurse two. This is aside from killing to live - for food, in defense or in taking someone else's land when yours is no longer viable or won't support your expanding population. Humans are the latest descendants of energy-stealer cell colonies, and we cannot live witout killing things that other organisms have already converted to organic material. It's the degree now that we must choose, and choosing lifelong poverty and te damage it causes all around: to parents, children and society - is a bad choice IMO, and in the opinions of the women who choose abortion because they cannot afford a child at that time. Better a good, well educated, happy and well fed life. According to a great many people, at least, and I agree. So do most Rightists, else they'd support helping a child who already HAS been born instead of starving those help agencies and projects to punish the mother and the child they should hold blameless.

Ian

Seems like you talked youself right around to my original argument. Might makes right. Throw them babies out in the cold. We can't feed them. Heck, better yet eat the little suckers. Kill the sick and invalid as well, as they are just a burden on society as well. We only want shining happy people.

You told a truely sad story about the young women dying by being poorly served and educated by society. I truely feel for that young women.
Now I suggest you read Dr Paul's story about that "slime spot of a handful of cells" he listened to cry in the waste basket, until it died.
Those most be nano tools they use to crush the skull of that "slime spot of a handful of cells" so it can pass through the birth canal in a partial birth abortion.

 

[Ian MacLeod]

I agree 100%.

I was reading an article last week about someone who was ranting about Obama's choice to give the invocation at his deification party - uh I mean cornonation - whatever. They were upset because this pastor opposes abortion, and the worst was he opposed it because "his Bible" told him that the fetus was a life.

Well of course it's a life! As a human though, it's only potential.

Let's just take religion out of the picture so we aren't forcing our religious beliefs on anyone else. I want to ask the author of the article (Bill Press) what scientific study told him it is not a human life? Is there a biologist out there that has made the claim?

That's a shoal where a lot of people hang up: what constitutes a "human life"? To some it's a single, fertilized human ovum with the full compliment of human genes, ready to begin dividing. To others, it isn't human until it's been born, separated from the umbilicus and shown itself capable of surviving as an independent entity. And of course there's everything in between. Ovum and spermatozoa are each alive in and of themselves, as well, though neither has a chance of becoming human without the other. As far as I understand it, until an infant has had some experience and begun forming folds in the cerebral cortex, you have an infant variety of great ape (like the rest of us) with incredible potential. A child learns with unbelievable speed, but at that point you have a human being as far as I'm concerned. I agree with tossing religion; I have no idea about "ensoulment" or anything of the sort. It's simply my belief that until a potential person is separated from Mama, or at least is viable as a separate entity, it's still part of Mama. There are indications that tell when I/not I happens, but what does that matter? Killing an infant may not be killing a person, because a creature that has no self awareness can't called a person, but it also can't be called anything but human.

Sorry - tired and rambling. Abortion when there is not a human form, a fully developed brain, preferably with a little something in it, and the exogenous life-support system is no longer necessary, I don't see the argument as valid other than someone has the right to hold it.

Roe v Wade wasn't a biblical finding or a scientific one. It was a political decision to deny ontological status - "personhood" to certain living members of humanity.
No more and no less. There is no serious discussion about whether a fetus is a living human or not - just that it had not achieved "personhood" yet and thus could not be protected under the law.

At the VERY least, they had no right to deny states the right to make their own laws regarding abortion. None. No legal precedent, no Constitutional authority.

Now there I have to agree! I should have and still should be a question answered by individual states. This was supposed to be a republic, with the federal government carrying out customs and some other business, major infrastructure and national defense. It was to handle things that involved all of the states for and by the will of those states. It was never meant to be not just the final but the only authority and the source of all authority, and that is the place it has usurped: OURS!

Ian

 

[M House]

Why can't we just let women kill their unborn children and be done with this argument? Seems to me if the mom is really dying for the right to do that, I'm kinda not looking forward to her having any offspring anyway.

 

[Ian MacLeod]

Quiz time Ian:

Does a 'fetus' have the same general human DNA pattern as the rest of us? In other words, is it a member of the species/subspecies Homo Sapiens Sapiens?

If the answer to that is 'Yes', then the Right to Life is pre-political. Its an 'Inalienable Right'. Furthermore, if the Right to Life is only extended to those fetuses that can survive outside the womb, then you can, through just application of the Law, murder your children up to the age which they can care, feed and clothe themselves. In the modern world, thats at least 14 years of age (lowest age they can legally get a job).

If the answer to that question is 'No', then I suggest you bone up on your biology.

Well, as far as I know, yes, a fetus has a full complement of human DNA. It will also have undifferentiated cells and others that are not yet mature, and immature systems, but the DNA that is the self-building blueprint is there in every cell that's multiplying with the exception of generative cells; that's how the organism ends up physiologically human. I'd be interested to know what you're referring to. I'm certainly no doctor, but I'm not totally ignorant either. And I'm endlessly curious. If a chimp has more than 90% of the same DNA (covering things like liver, kidneys, general cellular structure and so on), surely a fetus would? If I remember, there is some type of cell (nerve cell?) that doesn't have all the DNA, but other than something like that, I'd answer yes.

The Right of Choice does not give one permission to aggress against another who is utterly defenseless. As klamath stated, whether its in a Doctor's Office with a high saline content liquid or a rocket-propelled grenade is irrelevant. Dead is dead.

And if your choice is between the life of a child already born and healthy but getting hungry in a serious depression where food is about to get scarce and that bunch of cells I mentioned, which do you choose? Endangering a child you already have for a possible child that may or may not ever make it to adulthood or even beyond childhood is anti-survival. No primitive would choose anything but the child already there, and most moderns as well.

Making sure our young are sexually ignorant regarding all means of protecting themselves in sex, encouraging a culture that glorifies violence, dominance over females and rape, it's ultimate expression short of murder, making not just abortion but simple contraception hard to get, humiliating especially to the young (somehow I was never vulnerable to that; had no trouble buying tampons for a girlfriend when I was in high school, rubbers or whatever) - this is a setup that reminds me of the way the Old Testament God set up Adam and Eve. Make sure they fail, then punish them forever.

Starting to babble again. Sorry folks; I'll try for a little more sleep after I get us both fed.

Ian

 

[Ian MacLeod]

Seems like you talked youself right around to my original argument. Might makes right. *SNIP*

No, might makes possible - if you have no morals, flexible ethics and few scruples. Recognizing a situation, however, is just that and no more. The state has no authority, should have no authority over this issue. Science says one thing, religion a couple of other things, politics says it's usual "what will get me votes?", and individuals say umpteen of each thing possible. The fact is that this is such a personal choice that people feel so strongly about, it must be left to the only ones directly involved: the woman and her doctor.

Now I suggest you read Dr Paul's story about that "slime spot of a handful of cells" he listened to cry in the waste basket, until it died.
*SNIP*

I'll hope sincerely that's a metaphor or hallucination - treatable etiology, hopefully. So does this story have a name?

Ian

 

[Brooklyn Red Leg]

Well, as far as I know, yes, a fetus has a full complement of human DNA.

So thats a yes and therefore it is entitled to the same pre-political inalienable right to life as the rest of us.

And if your choice is between the life of a child already born and healthy but getting hungry in a serious depression where food is about to get scarce and that bunch of cells I mentioned, which do you choose? Endangering a child you already have for a possible child that may or may not ever make it to adulthood or even beyond childhood is anti-survival. No primitive would choose anything but the child already there, and most moderns as well.

Sorry, but False Dilemma fallacies don't cut it. Try again.

Making sure our young are sexually ignorant regarding all means of protecting themselves in sex, encouraging a culture that glorifies violence, dominance over females and rape, it's ultimate expression short of murder, making not just abortion but simple contraception hard to get, humiliating especially to the young (somehow I was never vulnerable to that; had no trouble buying tampons for a girlfriend when I was in high school, rubbers or whatever) - this is a setup that reminds me of the way the Old Testament God set up Adam and Eve. Make sure they fail, then punish them forever.

No offense, but this has jack and shit to do with my position.

 

[Ian MacLeod]

So thats a yes and therefore it is entitled to the same pre-political inalienable right to life as the rest of us.



Sorry, but False Dilemma fallacies don't cut it. Try again.



No offense, but this has jack and shit to do with my position.

Then my apologies. I'll have a look at it again when I've had some sleep. It' a habit I seem to be getting out of a lot lately.

Ian

 

[klamath]

No, might makes possible - if you have no morals, flexible ethics and few scruples. Recognizing a situation, however, is just that and no more. The state has no authority, should have no authority over this issue. Science says one thing, religion a couple of other things, politics says it's usual "what will get me votes?", and individuals say umpteen of each thing possible. The fact is that this is such a personal choice that people feel so strongly about, it must be left to the only ones directly involved: the woman and her doctor.



I'll hope sincerely that's a metaphor or hallucination - treatable etiology, hopefully. So does this story have a name?

Ian

From the wiki article on Ron Paul.

Paul refers to his background as an obstetrician as being influential on his view, recalling inadvertently witnessing a late-term abortion performed by one of his instructors during his residency, “It was pretty dramatic for me to see a two-and-a-half-pound baby taken out crying and breathing and put in a bucket.”[

Yep just a smear of cells.

 

[SeanEdwards]

And if your choice is between the life of a child already born and healthy but getting hungry in a serious depression where food is about to get scarce and that bunch of cells I mentioned, which do you choose?

Now that's perfectly logical. Of course it is logical to kill the unwanted people in order to make life a little easier for the survivors. It works in the middle east, and it works in the womb. Everybody is happy, except the deceased, but we don't have to listen to their cries. In the case of abortion, the victims can't even make a cry, and we don't even have to look at their little faces. They go directly into a bucket for disposal. As long as we delude ourselves that our victims are less than human, either a "lump of cells" or some "goat-fucking jihadist", we're free to abuse them however we see fit.

What a wonderful world!

 

[NYgs23]

a slime spot of a handful of cells is no more a "child" than a pile of boards and bricks is a house.

"A slime spot of a handful of cells."

The only question is whether the fetus is a person or not. If so, it too has rights, just as much as the mother. It's seems most logical too me that a fetus is a person. Biologically, it's certainly a seperate organism from the mother. And if it's a seperate organism, it's a seperate human organism, for it is of no other kind. And if it's a human organism then it's a person, for what can a human organism be but a person. Also, I'm very leery of the idea of picking and choosing who to ascribe personhood to. That's a category that should be interpreted as broadly as possible. Once we start attempting to narrow it...