Guntram Shatterhand: The Republicans are a dying party, and this is their scream into hell.

From your keys to God's monitor...

Aarontology: Man, the GOP really f*cking hates women, doesn't it?

To be expected when it was a woman who cost John McCain the Presidency.

The more crap that conservatives keep pumping out the more I just want to keyboard mash run outside and scream. I'm willing to make a deal here... I won't take your guns and you don't take my vagina.

RedVentrue: When you are pregnant, there is another body in there too. What you want is freedom to kill that other body, right?

This is the crux of the matter. Right here. And here's the answer.

If a fetus is granted personhood, then it is a person. It is also responsible for infringing and restricting the rights of the woman who carries them. It is stealing her food, causing unwanted physical changes to her body. The fetus is abusing the woman, if these changes are unwanted. If a fetus has personhood, that fetus must be responsible for their harm.

If you cannot separate the fetus and the mother, if you cannot grant the fetus independence of action, if you cannot hold the fetus responsible in any fashion for their wanton, cruel abuse of the person they are a parasite within, then you cannot grant them personhood. If the State insists on being an executor upon the behalf of the unborn child, then the State must be held responsible for the actions of the fetus. That means a lawsuit. And that means every woman who gets pregnant just has to say they don't want it, and they get a lottery-sized cheque from their government. That means the fetus starts life in jail as a felon, because it's already harmed and abused another person. If you wanna walk down this road, let's walk down it, all the farking way.

Pro-choice is saying that a woman has basic rights to her body and what she wants done with it. It's got nothing to do with killing fetuses. Cut 'em out and let 'em live. If they can.
Except they can't. Because they're not people.

Dr Dreidel: RedVentrue: s2s2s2: AbbeySomeone: What right do these men have to tell women what they can or cannot do with their bodies?

I get what you are saying, but there are better arguments. Most laws are regulations on what a person is allowed to do with their bodies.

When you are pregnant, there is another body in there too. What you want is freedom to kill that other body, right?

No. There are cells with unique DNA, kind of like cancer (or the Dark Half condition, where you swallow a twin in utero).

// if fetuses are people, do we charge the survivor with manslaughter?
// after all, did the other fetus not have a full chance at life?

If the fetus were self aware at that point, I would say yes.

Guntram Shatterhand: Expect more of this. The Republicans are now realizing they're about to lose big, and want to get things in motion before Obama wins. To them, not moving on this is pretty much a loss, so they're trying to build a dam before they end up kicked out of office.

The Republicans are a dying party, and this is their scream into hell.

I would love to believe that, but every few years I keep hearing 'This is it! They're dying and are about to disappear completely' only to see them chugging along at the same pace as always.

I sincerely hope you're right though.

The world that Rick Santorum and the GOP want to live in: "These men, we've been told, are like war criminals. It's no excuse that what they did was legal at the time: their crimes are retroactive. They have committed atrocities and must be made into examples, for the rest. Though this is hardly needed. No woman in her right mind, these days, would seek to prevent a birth, should she be so lucky as to conceive."

I really, really hope this law is off the books by the time my GF and I plan to have kids. It's possible that the (long ways down the road) pregnancy would have complications, and the thought that a doctor might not tell her the pregnancy will kill her (and could LEGALLY NOT TELL HER) because terminating the pregnancy is against their religion farking terrifies me.

Earpj: MyRandomName: AbbeySomeone: This is insane. What right do these men have to tell women what they can or cannot do with their bodies?
NONE.

To play devils advocate, women have the right to force men to use their bodies to support the females choice even if the male doesn't want the kid. See the random dads in jail for failure to pay child support when they didn't want the kid. There was even a story of a homeless man in jail for failure to pay.

Men have no say, yet can be punished for the females choice. Women get the choice and have no negative consequences, always having the ability to seek support for their choice. It's a hitch of a system with no true solution.

Won't even get into the bias present in family courts.

Perhaps he made his choice when he had sex with her.

But applying that to women, didn't they make the choice when they chose to have sex with him? Since having sex is consenting to anything that comes from it, and children come from sex, shouldn't they carry the pregnancy to term?


/long weekend, drunk, and feeling trollish.

starsrift: RedVentrue: When you are pregnant, there is another body in there too. What you want is freedom to kill that other body, right?

This is the crux of the matter. Right here. And here's the answer.

If a fetus is granted personhood, then it is a person. It is also responsible for infringing and restricting the rights of the woman who carries them. It is stealing her food, causing unwanted physical changes to her body. The fetus is abusing the woman, if these changes are unwanted. If a fetus has personhood, that fetus must be responsible for their harm.

If you cannot separate the fetus and the mother, if you cannot grant the fetus independence of action, if you cannot hold the fetus responsible in any fashion for their wanton, cruel abuse of the person they are a parasite within, then you cannot grant them personhood. If the State insists on being an executor upon the behalf of the unborn child, then the State must be held responsible for the actions of the fetus. That means a lawsuit. And that means every woman who gets pregnant just has to say they don't want it, and they get a lottery-sized cheque from their government. That means the fetus starts life in jail as a felon, because it's already harmed and abused another person. If you wanna walk down this road, let's walk down it, all the farking way.

Pro-choice is saying that a woman has basic rights to her body and what she wants done with it. It's got nothing to do with killing fetuses. Cut 'em out and let 'em live. If they can.
Except they can't. Because they're not people.

By that same extension, would not an infant be considered non-human, or the disabled. The same Fark off and die attitude could be applied to emergency room patients or anyone needing any kind of life support.

Pro-life, anti-choice, they're just words.

I go by whether an opponent of abortion is calling for comprehensive sex education in our schools, along with easy, stigma-free access to birth control, both of which drastically reduce the number of abortions. If you're against those things, you're not as anti-abortion as you think you are. You just don't want people to have sex.

MyRandomName: AbbeySomeone: This is insane. What right do these men have to tell women what they can or cannot do with their bodies?
NONE.

To play devils advocate, women have the right to force men to use their bodies to support the females choice even if the male doesn't want the kid. See the random dads in jail for failure to pay child support when they didn't want the kid. There was even a story of a homeless man in jail for failure to pay.

Men have no say, yet can be punished for the females choice. Women get the choice and have no negative consequences, always having the ability to seek support for their choice. It's a hitch of a system with no true solution.

Won't even get into the bias present in family courts.

Except that the choice of rather to have an abortion or not is a pretty damn shiatty choice, seeing as it's a choice between being pregnant for 9 months and giving birth, or undergoing a potentially serious medical procedure that occupies a moral grey area. It ain't exactly like choosing to put on a condom or take a pill.

And you're ignoring the fact that BOTH parents are on the hook for supporting the child they unintentionally conceived. It's the father who you hear about who's in jail, because the mother of that child is probably raising it at her home.

Calmamity: There is no such thing as homunculus.


I saw one in a movie, once --

I'm so over this bullsh*t. It is so stupid and the people who are for it are going to pay for it down the road. We live in an information age. No one will be allowed to ever forget this year. Anyone running on this hateful platform will live to regret it.

/that made me sound crazy but i don't care anymore

The Why Not Guy: Pro-life, anti-choice, they're just words.

I go by whether an opponent of abortion is calling for comprehensive sex education in our schools, along with easy, stigma-free access to birth control, both of which drastically reduce the number of abortions. If you're against those things, you're not as anti-abortion as you think you are. You just don't want people to have sex.

I agree. People should know what the outcomes and responsibilities will be.

LouDobbsAwaaaay: MyRandomName: AbbeySomeone: This is insane. What right do these men have to tell women what they can or cannot do with their bodies?
NONE.

To play devils advocate, women have the right to force men to use their bodies to support the females choice even if the male doesn't want the kid. See the random dads in jail for failure to pay child support when they didn't want the kid. There was even a story of a homeless man in jail for failure to pay.

So the answer is to pass legislation that will insure that every pregnancy ends in the man being on the hook for the child's finances for the next 18 years, regardless of what either parent wants?

You too. Here's a hint: the mother is also on the hook for that child's finances for the next 18 years. It's just that you don't often hear about it, because of the rarity of the mother shoving the kid into the father's arms to take care of and then running off. Women typically just don't do that.

RedVentrue: By that same extension, would not an infant be considered non-human, or the disabled. The same Fark off and die attitude could be applied to emergency room patients or anyone needing any kind of life support.

1. An infant, or a disabled person, or someone in a coma, or a elder on their deathbed, do not intrinsically cause harm to another person and deprive them of the rights to do what they wish with their bodies, in order to exist.
2. This attitude is applied to people on life support. Often with the graceful euphemism, "Pulling the plug".

namatad: Republicat: The world that Rick Santorum and the GOP want to live in: "These men, we've been told, are like war criminals. It's no excuse that what they did was legal at the time: their crimes are retroactive. They have committed atrocities and must be made into examples, for the rest. Though this is hardly needed. No woman in her right mind, these days, would seek to prevent a birth, should she be so lucky as to conceive."

LOL
I thought that that quote was familiar. LOL

Yeah, I'm reading that book right now. It's scary to think that this book (along with Julian Comstock) is the type of country that the Religious Right seems to want.

RedVentrue: starsrift: RedVentrue: When you are pregnant, there is another body in there too. What you want is freedom to kill that other body, right?

This is the crux of the matter. Right here. And here's the answer.

If a fetus is granted personhood, then it is a person. It is also responsible for infringing and restricting the rights of the woman who carries them. It is stealing her food, causing unwanted physical changes to her body. The fetus is abusing the woman, if these changes are unwanted. If a fetus has personhood, that fetus must be responsible for their harm.

If you cannot separate the fetus and the mother, if you cannot grant the fetus independence of action, if you cannot hold the fetus responsible in any fashion for their wanton, cruel abuse of the person they are a parasite within, then you cannot grant them personhood. If the State insists on being an executor upon the behalf of the unborn child, then the State must be held responsible for the actions of the fetus. That means a lawsuit. And that means every woman who gets pregnant just has to say they don't want it, and they get a lottery-sized cheque from their government. That means the fetus starts life in jail as a felon, because it's already harmed and abused another person. If you wanna walk down this road, let's walk down it, all the farking way.

Pro-choice is saying that a woman has basic rights to her body and what she wants done with it. It's got nothing to do with killing fetuses. Cut 'em out and let 'em live. If they can.
Except they can't. Because they're not people.

By that same extension, would not an infant be considered non-human, or the disabled. The same Fark off and die attitude could be applied to emergency room patients or anyone needing any kind of life support.

Ah, and here's the moral grey area. An infant is obviously a person. A zygote is obviously not a person. (unless you're insane) Where does the personhood start?

Aarontology: namatad: why dont these anti-abortion laws also include increased penalties for the father?
1) the father of the child should be forced to take sole custody of the unwanted child.

Exactly. If he didn't want responsibility for a child, he shouldn't have had sex. But doing so isn't in the spirit of punishing women for having sex, so it'll never happen.

But a dude still has to get laid, right? Right.

Mentat: I thought the Republicans didn't want the government coming between you and your doctor?

Of course not. They want their God to build a wall there instead, and they think of Government's job as merely handing God the bricks.

starsrift: RedVentrue: By that same extension, would not an infant be considered non-human, or the disabled. The same Fark off and die attitude could be applied to emergency room patients or anyone needing any kind of life support.

1. An infant, or a disabled person, or someone in a coma, or a elder on their deathbed, do not intrinsically cause harm to another person and deprive them of the rights to do what they wish with their bodies, in order to exist.
2. This attitude is applied to people on life support. Often with the graceful euphemism, "Pulling the plug".

Not to mention the fact that an infant, by definition, can already survive on its own in an outside environment by breathing, eating, and using it's own organs to function. It is not physiologically dependent on being connected to another organism to survive. Theoretically, the infant does not HAVE to be cared for by the birth mother. Anybody could adopt him/her immediately after birth and provide the necessary care in the same fashion. The same cannot be said for fetuses.

Need_MindBleach: RedVentrue: starsrift: RedVentrue: When you are pregnant, there is another body in there too. What you want is freedom to kill that other body, right?



Ah, and here's the moral grey area. An infant is obviously a person. A zygote is obviously not a person. (unless you're insane) Where does the personhood start?

If you have the genes of a human and are alive, you are a human.

Dear Grand Old Party,

THIS IS NOT A VIABLE POLITICAL ROADMAP!

namatad: 1984 wasnt scary enough. they had to toss the handmaid's tale into it? shudder

To be fair, only the authoritarians want 1984. In order to get it, they're willing to get in bed with the religious right, which leads us to a world like The Handmaid's Tale.

Or, as I like to think, we're the new Roman Republic. Obama is one of the Gracchi's, and health care is the land that the rich have bought up. Ok, it's not a perfect analogy, but basically, we're boned as long as even one party tries to play politics as a zero-sum game.

RedVentrue: s2s2s2: AbbeySomeone: What right do these men have to tell women what they can or cannot do with their bodies?

I get what you are saying, but there are better arguments. Most laws are regulations on what a person is allowed to do with their bodies.

When you are pregnant, there is another body in there too. What you want is freedom to kill that other body, right?

Yes. We do. We have the right to decide what inhabits our bodies. We have the right to decide when to take an action that sends 50% of us to bankruptcy court. We have the right to kill something that would cause us indescribable amounts of pain and suffering, and whose own life would be filled with pain and suffering.

Yes, there are things worth killing another human being for. Even to protect it. Abortion is a right that I will never give up to anyone, and if you call that murder, then I accept your definition because I know I won't convince you otherwise. I'm still not surrendering my right to my sovereignty over my body.

RedVentrue: Need_MindBleach:
Ah, and here's the moral grey area. An infant is obviously a person. A zygote is obviously not a person. (unless you're insane) Where does the personhood start?

If you have the genes of a human and are alive, you are a human.


My sperm demand voting rights. And there's enough of them to form a hell of a petition drive.

RedVentrue: Need_MindBleach: RedVentrue: starsrift: RedVentrue: When you are pregnant, there is another body in there too. What you want is freedom to kill that other body, right?



Ah, and here's the moral grey area. An infant is obviously a person. A zygote is obviously not a person. (unless you're insane) Where does the personhood start?

If you have the genes of a human and are alive, you are a human.

But how do you define "alive?"

...aaaaand we're back to square one.

RedVentrue: Need_MindBleach: RedVentrue: starsrift: RedVentrue: When you are pregnant, there is another body in there too. What you want is freedom to kill that other body, right?



Ah, and here's the moral grey area. An infant is obviously a person. A zygote is obviously not a person. (unless you're insane) Where does the personhood start?

If you have the genes of a human and are alive, you are a human.

So you consider a single cell a human? I guess that makes getting my tonsils removed a crime against humanity.

MyRandomName: There was even a story of a homeless man in jail for failure to pay.

Sounds like he has a home now.

What I don't get is why the insurance lobby isn't getting involved. Life begins at conception? Fine, I want a $1,000,000 life insurance policy on the fetus. If my wife miscarries, pay up.

This and gay marriage are not the issues the election is going to hinge on.

I wonder if you can guess which issue will be important.

Here's a hint. The phrase begins with "it's" and ends with "stupid". Try not to screw it up like you did in 2010 Dems.

namatad: Need_MindBleach: Ah, and here's the moral grey area. An infant is obviously a person. A zygote is obviously not a person. (unless you're insane) Where does the personhood start?

well and all the abortion laws try to dance around and find this point.
is a sperm or egg a person? no
is a 3 month old a person? sort of - lol
is a 39 week fetus? yes
is a one week blastocyst ? fark no (refused to look and see what label was correct for one)

somewhere in the middle the line gets crossed. EVERYONE who is pro-choice agrees with this. (except the batshiat crazy ones ...)

Agreed. My personal line is 3rd trimester; there'd have to be some extenuating circumstances for me to consider an non-medically necessary abortion after 6 months. However, I would NEVER tell another woman that just because I'm squeamish about getting one that late, she CAN'T. Abortion is hard enough, so I'm not going to judge any woman who's had to make that choice.