june gloom on 3/7/2013 at 02:29
Quote Posted by Renzatic
I'm probably missing some obvious sarcasm, but yeah...it does matter. It's the crux of the whole abortion argument.
Actually, no, it really isn't. Anti-choicers
do not actually care about the fetus. They pay lip service to the "what about the
baby D:" argument but they don't care what happens to the kid after it's born. Our education system is in the shitter, a lot of kids aren't getting enough food, there aren't enough jobs for them when they grow up, etc. etc. Do the anti-choicers care? Do they think up solutions to this problem? Nope! In fact, any attempt to fix these problems are usually dismissed as namby-pamby lie-beral bullshit.
It's not about the fetus. It's about sex. It's about controlling what people do, how they behave. Abortions banned after 12 weeks? Not enough. Banned entirely? Not enough, gotta take away birth control pills too. No condoms either. Woman's life is in danger? Doesn't matter. Raped? Stop dressing like a whore then! The woman doesn't matter, her circumstances don't matter, the baby after being born doesn't matter, all that matters is upping white birth numbers and keeping women under control.
Azaran on 3/7/2013 at 02:35
"Conservatives want live babies so they can raise them to be dead soldiers"
[video=youtube;AvF1Q3UidWM]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AvF1Q3UidWM[/video]
mopgoblin on 3/7/2013 at 03:24
Quote Posted by Chade
Mopgoblin, I don't think individual rights work so well when one of those people is literally living inside the other.
At the end of the day, there isn't a good solution here. It's just a question of whose rights get impinged and how badly.
Once again, it's easy to think that individual rights don't work so well when you're only talking about someone else's rights. Women (and maybe some trans men) are the only people capable of decision-making who are at risk of losing our rights here. Why shouldn't we be trusted to make the decision for ourselves? For that matter, why should men, who as a group have a well-documented history of oppressing women,
and who benefit greatly from both historical and contemporary oppression of women, be allowed to have even the slightest bit of power in regard to this question?
Quote Posted by Phatose
Kind of depends on the situation. If I had nothing to do with you needing one of my kidneys, no, you generally don't have that right. If, however, you need my kidney because I knocked you out, rendered both of your kidneys non-functional for 9 months, then hooked you up to mine, it becomes a hell of a lot more complicated.
Yep, that sure is an solid analogy for
unwanted pregnancy. Seriously though, it reads like you think women are deliberately conceiving foetuses specifically to abort them or something.
Chade on 3/7/2013 at 03:47
Quote Posted by mopgoblin
Once again, it's easy to think that individual rights don't work so well when you're only talking about someone else's rights. Women (and maybe some trans men) are the only people capable of decision-making who are at risk of losing our rights here. Why shouldn't we be trusted to make the decision for ourselves? For that matter, why should men, who as a group have a well-documented history of oppressing women,
and who benefit greatly from both historical and contemporary oppression of women, be allowed to have even the slightest bit of power in regard to this question?
I'm not sure I interpret you correctly. If I do interpret you correctly, the "men vs. women" is a little bit dishonest. I
think you are actually trying to say that groups should not be able to dictate abortion restrictions to pregnant individuals. This has almost nothing to do with men vs. women (iirc men are only about 3% more likely to disapprove of abortion*). Would you be satisfied if your nation's population of women got together and voted for abortion restrictions?
As a general rule of thumb, we don't give care-givers sole discretion to do whatever the hell they want with their dependents. Of course, an unborn baby is an extreme case, so there are certainly lots of arguments you can make in favor of making an exception.
But I don't that argument is as simple as appealing to our general attitudes about individual rights between autonomous adults and calling it a day.
LATE EDIT:
* Found some actual stats. Attitudes towards abortion in the US broken down by various criteria: (
http://www.people-press.org/2012/04/25/more-support-for-gun-rights-gay-marriage-than-in-2008-or-2004/4-25-12-9/). Abortion is mostly a war between religion, not a war between gender.
Muzman on 3/7/2013 at 03:59
Quote Posted by Briareos H
Maybe. Maybe it's all context, a context I don't fully comprehend, because of the limited view from reading one-sided news.
It's not exactly clear to me when reading the bill if drug-induced abortions fall under the same rule of requiring a physician with hospital access. If they do, that's unnecessary and I can understand the uproar. If not, if a similar law was proposed here, people wouldn't even raise a brow.
There, perhaps not. Here I'd hope it would.
But yes, it seems what's at issue is mobs shutting down the House for seemingly little reason and that is a bit hard to see on the face of it. This is a part of a couple of years worth of battling across the whole country by conservative legislators and it seems this is where the movement put its stake in the ground and get some attention for the whole thing. Plus the law would cut the number of operating abortion clinics (
http://www.texastribune.org/library/data/sb5-abortion-restrictions/) from 42 to 5 leaving rural areas almost entirely unserved in a very large state.
(
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2011/05/fetal-pain-bills) This article goes into the foetal pain study a little and the history of its usage, -it is a minority report as far as the wider science in concerned yet has been the lynchpin of so much legislation already- as well as just how many abortion restrictive measures had been implemented even two years ago. Some states have even passed flagrantly illegal restrictions seemingly to get them challenged so they get a case into the Supreme Court and attempt to take down Roe v Wade a peg or two.
(
www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqzE16UsNW4&t=31m36s) This video from two years ago has a bit of a run down in part. And (
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-01-17/how-state-governments-are-regulating-away-abortion#p1) this article describes the pressures clinics have come under from legislation, in case you feel the video is a little too "activist" in tone.
So in sum, if you're feeling people are being a little over the top; believe that abortion rights have been under constant pressure in the US for 30 years and in the past couple of years this has ramped up enormously. Texas now being just the latest in a long line of states falling into line with creeping regulations that sound innocuous enough but amount putting abortion out of reach for most people. So making a bit of stand like this should come as no real surprise.
As for the gestation limit, again I have to say it's at best to placate people from the 'ick' factor. Which is significant I admit. It 's a yucky and unsettling thing to have to do at times so people fell like there needs to be something there. But it serves very little legal or moral purpose otherwise. Later term abortions already occur almost exclusively for reasons that are allowed as exceptions already. The change to no restriction at all would not alter the rate at which these things have to be done. However it would take out some pointless legal interference in people's private lives usually at very difficult times.
SlyFoxx on 3/7/2013 at 04:06
Takes two to tango. That kid is as much the man's as it is the woman's.
I sympathize with the woman. I really do. She's the one who has to go through with the proceedings. But it's just the way things are.
To quote the fictional Vulcan character T'Pau..."The air is the air." "What can be done?"
Phatose on 3/7/2013 at 04:08
Quote Posted by mopgoblin
Yep, that sure is an solid analogy for
unwanted pregnancy. Seriously though, it reads like you think women are deliberately conceiving foetuses specifically to abort them or something.
You would prefer I prefaced it with "I wanted an orgasm, and this machine would either give me an orgasm and do nothing, or give me an orgasm and do that so I said "Fuck the consequences, it's only 2% and I want to cum."?
Deliberately conceiving to abort, no. Knowingly risking conception and thus being responsible for it, yes. If the pregnancy wasn't unwanted enough to forgo sex, it's hard to expect anyone uninvolved to forgo their lives because of it.
Muzman on 3/7/2013 at 04:40
Quote Posted by SlyFoxx
Takes two to tango. That kid is as much the man's as it is the woman's.
I sympathize with the woman. I really do. She's the one who has to go through with the proceedings. But it's just the way things are.
To quote the fictional Vulcan character T'Pau..."The air is the air." "What can be done?"
I'd say this is convention more than absolute. You're saying that in the case of pregnancy a woman's body is suddenly no longer her own, a bit like joining the army but without the option to quit. We can say quite easily that it is, and bad luck fellas she gets the final say, any time we want. But there's this resistance thanks to endless unspoken assumptions about what that might mean (that are generally misguided in my experience).
SlyFoxx on 3/7/2013 at 05:02
Sorry Muz...but when you join the army you don't get a say as to when you leave. It's a contract plain and simple.
As a society many have learned to devalue human life. People wrap it in the shroud of "it's not a life yet" so it doesn't really matter" or "it's my body and I'll do what I want with it." But deep down every woman who aborts a child knows what she's doing.
Anyway, I'm done here so don't bother to respond.
june gloom on 3/7/2013 at 05:09
Quote Posted by SlyFoxx
Takes two to tango. That kid is as much the man's as it is the woman's.
I sympathize with the woman. I really do. She's the one who has to go through with the proceedings. But it's just the way things are.
To quote the fictional Vulcan character T'Pau..."The air is the air." "What can be done?"
Wow. Just wow. You're seriously going for the "it's just the way it is, so deal with it" argument?
Just...
Quote Posted by SlyFoxx
Sorry Muz...but when you join the army you don't get a say as to when you leave. It's a contract plain and simple.
As a society many have learned to devalue human life. People wrap it in the shroud of "it's not a life yet" so it doesn't really matter" or "it's my body and I'll do what I want with it." But deep down every woman who aborts a child knows what she's doing.
Anyway, I'm done here so don't bother to respond.
God, and then you drop THIS and then bail to avoid the obvious and well-deserved drubbing you'd get. Disgusting.
