In Chile there’s an 11-year-old girl impregnated by her mother’s boyfriend, and doctors say the pregnancy is putting the child’s life at risk. But Chile has very strict abortion laws that make no provision for life of the mother, not to mention rape. And it appears the government is not going to make an exception in her case.
In a way it’s a shame the child’s plight has been made public, because Chile has the highest abortion rate in Latin America. Chilean women are getting abortions; they just aren’t getting them legally. But if this child’s very public pregnancy were to suddenly go away, she’d probably be arrested.
Could this happen here? Hell, yes. Some of the troglodytes sincerely believe that there are no circumstances in which a pregnancy has to be terminated to save the mother; that “life of the mother” is just a dodge for the abortion industry. (And if you want to read something really twisted, here’s a creep arguing against termination of ectopic pregnancy.) So, yeah, there are people Out There who would make the U.S. the Chile of the North.
It seems to me that a lot of right-wing politicians are playing at a kind of abortion brinksmanship these days. How far can they go to please their atavistic base without completely blowing it with general election voters? Obviously Todd Akin and Joe Walsh went too far. But Marco Rubio is planning to introduce a 20-week abortion ban in the Senate that makes no provision for health of the mother. Rape, incest, and life of the mother are too close to the brink, but eliminating the health exception might be enough to show he is serious.
Conservative Christian POV:
Well, while we feel for them, “really,” ALL of these tramps, trollops, skanks, ho’s, and sluts, must be taught some responsibility for their wicked, wanton ways.
They tempt poor God-abiding men with their slutty ways, and must pay for it for, not only for 9 months, but for the rest of their lives – since none of us REAL Christians want to adopt the children of these wicked, wanton, women.
And don’t you DARE call us intolerant, because YOU LIBTARDS are the intolerant ones!!!
GOD knows we’re right. He tells us so!
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Never mind working on immigration reform, as it concerns their political future – Congressional Republicans had better start working on repealing The 19th Amendment.
Just like “you can’t fool all of the people, all of the time,” you can’t ‘piss-off most of the people, around election time.’
I’m reminded of one argument against gun control: ppl will just get guns illegally so why make them against the law?
“Gun control” is not the same thing as “making guns illegal,” but never mind that — IMO some things are woven so deeply into human culture and experience that they cannot be legislated away. Prohibition should have taught us that. And it is a fact, documented by many studies over many years, that making abortion illegal doesn’t stop it. In the long run, it doesn’t even seem to discourage it that much, if at all. It just goes underground, where it is more likely to be dangerous for the women. The terrible irony is that abortion rates tend to be lower in places where abortion is legal than where it is illegal. I suspect that is because places with legal abortion are also places where people have easy access to birth control and are not hung up about using it.
maha,
As I’m sure you know, it’s the same with our “War On Drugs.”
We’re trying to punish behavior that many animals in the world do – look for a “high.”
Many birds and beasts look for fermenting fruit, so they can get a “buzz.” Often when their natural predator’s are about.
But, instead of legalizing and regulating drugs, and alcohol, and a woman’s right to choose – and making sure that people have the safest option – the ‘holier-than-thou’ buttinsky’s, want to force their beliefs on other people.
These are ‘small-minded” people, because their brains are tiny – and their hearts, even tinier.
Actually, the “creep” you referenced is at least holding an honest debate. It’s not that I respect the person or the views espoused, but I do appreciate the honesty.
You have some people saying that abortion is just the same thing as walking up to a person and blowing their brains out… so there should be a waiting period, a canned speech, ultrasounds with more canned speech, etc., etc. ad nauseum.
I get it; they get a nice rage-stiffy out of claiming abortion is murder, and people say nice things about them. But if they really believe that, they can only be cowards for failing to protect those innocent babies with anything more than stupid-ass regulations.
If they do believe abortion is murder, they should own it. If they don’t, they should stop claiming it.
I don’t see the honesty. He’s being dishonest with himself about the actual consequences of his “ideas,” such as his claim that ectopic pregnancies can be/ought to be carried to term. He’s in fairly massive denial, I’d say.
Gun control’s about making SOME guns illegal. But don’t misunderstand me (which I always worry about with you). I think their policies are absurd. It reminded me of gun control though… high rate of illegal gun use in illegal activities they say is a sign to “why bother?” with restrictions. High rate of illegal abortions (yes, in another country) is a sign that “it’s working!”. The things we choose to legislate…
It has always been a woman’s right whether or not she brings a child into this world, as a matter of the species. It has nothing to do with which time or country she happens to be living in. It’s her right as a species. It is not a government’s right to bestow, or take. It has been a woman’s decision before the United States and after it. No government has the right to make that decision for a woman. Worry about the living more and leave the family decisions to actual families. Women can make this decision on their own.
One thing that makes these situations so tangled is the implicit moral posture that says these developing masses of cells are “innocent” human life, and are therefore worthy of more consideration than the human lives of the women carrying them. It’s particularly odd when set in communities that have such weird “stand your ground” laws.
Seems to me that, if you’re going to argue that the little “pre-born” is a human being, then it ought not be be acting all life-threatening, and if it is, then there ought to be a right of self-defense for the mother. Innocent human life my ass – if he’s trying to kill the woman, screw the little homicidal bastard. It’s bad enough if he just wants 9 months of free room and board.
(I have to go lie down now, because trying to think in such twisted ways makes my head hurt. Trying to make sense out of the Fetus People cosmology is just too painful.)
Go Marco, go! Don’t let the door hit you on the way out!
He’s saying that non-uterine pregnancies sometimes are brought to term. I have no idea if that happens in a statistically significant way – if that’s rare enough, it would count as a lie, because doctors are not supposed to rely on miracles. So I’m squishy on that.
Herm. And he said that ectopic pregnancies may spontaneously resolve.
If “spontaneously resolve” means the fetus dies (and I guess I can’t think of another possibility), then that’s not a morally honest position to take. If you know the fetus is going to die, by the hand of man or god, I don’t see any honesty or courage in refusing to do the deed one’s self, except when letting it happen naturally is best for the patient.
So, you’re probably right – the article is probably from a position of dishonesty.
I suppose my real point was, I’d rather have the debate made by people who tell the truth about their base positions. Too many pro-lifers are working either dishonestly, or from unexamined assumptions. With Randall Terry, at least everyone knows where he stands; with Rick Perry (for example), you can’t show that he holds the same beliefs. Hell – you don’t even know if he does or doesn’t; he might be on one of those “well, all the women *I* know can get an abortion if they need one, so it’s not like me or mine will be harmed.”
That’s a claim made on some Fetus People websites, but if you check actual medical websites they will tell you in no uncertain terms that there’s no hope for a baby and the pregnancy has to be terminated to save the mother. Wikipedia lists four known cases where a fetus developed to term outside the uterus, so if you want to believe Wikipedia there’s that, but the odds must be a lot longer than winning the lottery.
Four cases, and approximately 1% of pregnancies are ectopic… that’s beyond “miracle”. I mean, seriously – I bet that the Catholic Church will accept something with far better odds as a bona fide miracle. So, yes, it’s dishonest and in opposition to medical science. In fact, it’s precisely the kind of dishonesty that I most despise, the kind most damaging to this country: the refusal to call out bullshit as bullshit when it’s clear that it’s bullshit.
Okay, sorry I brought the whole thing up.
The creep threw in a little divine law to buttress his argument. He should have been a little more specific and named his deity. I assume he’s talking about big J but unless he spells it out he could be referring to any god from Apollo to Quetzalcoatl to be the arbiter of divine law.
As far as honesty goes…Don’t be looking for it in the creep’s line of bullshit because it’s just not there. What kind of a person, or doctor for that matter would conflate a fetus with an infant? “The killing of an infant!”. Only a person bent on deceiving by skewing words to shift perceptions in favor of their own desired outcome. Infancy occurs outside the womb.
I’d say Maha’s description as “creep” was accurate:
“The abortion exception for the life of the mother is the exception that most commonly seduces the sincere pro-lifer”
Seduces? I mean that’s pretty creepy. Yes those who want abortions are seducing the god-fearing pro-lifers just like they seduced their rapist! This guy is just another knuckle dragger who thinks he has some credibility because he graduated from medical school. Well Kermit Gosnell graduated from medical school too. In the end he’s just another wacko fundie who thinks the “pro-life” train is his ticket to Heaven!
The U.S. is 41st in the world in the rankings of newborn death risk, and 39th in maternal deaths. And yet Republicans — you know, those “all life is precious” folks — have been busily eliminating Planned Parenthood services for low income women and children, have taken it upon themselves to practice medicine without a license, and have pushed for sex education programs (I use the term loosely) guaranteed to result in more pregnancies.
Can’t tell me they’re pro-life. From where I’m sitting it looks more like they’re just anti-woman.
Now, that’s not entirely correct. One of the reasons viability is a bright line in the debate is that, in the womb or out, we have someone who is developed enough to survive. Whether an entity is a person, and deserving of protection, should not depend on location (i.e., being in the womb or not). Pre-viability, the fuzziness grows, and around 12 weeks, there’s no rational basis for fuzziness at all (if a person’s entire brain was the size of a 12 week fetus, that person wouldn’t have enough brain matter to survive – therefore, you can’t have a person).
The health exception exists because we don’t tell people how much risk they have to undertake for the sake of another person (at least, that seems the reasonable argument), not that it’s pre-birth.
Note that when I talked about honesty, I used two examples: Randall Terry and Rick Perry. The honesty with Terry is certainly not in the majority of his arguments; it’s simply in that you know what his goal is; he’s not trying to bullshit you that he just wants this restriction or that restriction “all for the good of the poor li’l ol’ woman what got herself knocked up”. No, Randall Terry is honest in one regard – he wants women who have abortions to be put in jail and he may even want them executed.
I despise that point of view, but at least you, and the public, know where he stands.
Rick Perry could be anything from a political gamesman (“if I don’t push for this bill, I won’t have as good a chance of winning my next election”) to a Randall Terry, and you simply can’t tell. In that respect, he’s slimy and much less honest than Terry, even if his arguments contain more true statements.