I think the points of contact of emotive issues like this one often attract pretty aggressive people on both sides - people who would otherwise find a middle ground or at least mutual respect actually encounter personal attacks and hardened opinions that end up polarising people one way or the other. There’s obviously going to be a huge gulf between the conclusions of people who believe that human life is absolutely sacred from conception and those who believe that it is only worthy of unqualified protection from birth, but I think there are a number of points where people can find space for dialogue and respect. (e.g. you can be pro-life and believe that any abortion is a tragedy while respecting this as a choice for a woman to make in consultation with her doctor, and recognising that adoption will never answer all of the potential problems involved with bringing a foetus to term).
Maybe she can be the Biden to Sanders’ Obama.
Well that’s easy. Women aren’t really people.
You should edit your post. The One party shut down the government twice.
I find no morality in meddling in the reproductive rights of people who are not me.
That’s not what’s being discussed in the video, however. Nucatola says that research specimens are placed as a service to patients who specifically have asked about donating tissue. This is a consensual process, in which expenses incurred in the reclamation, storage, and handling of the samples are partially offset by researchers or middle-man companies - the patient isn’t (and probably should not be - though that’s my hangup, ymmv) compensated. If anyone’s DNA is being “sold” without their knowledge or consent, that certainly would be a problem. But without some evidence that this is the case, it’s a speculative strawman.
Me too, but I think people back off feeling like they get forced into this “babykiller” argument they can’t win, because people do know what an abortion is and that is why they are choosing to have one - because they can’t or don’t want to care for that baby. And as long as someone fixates on the fetus, it’s hard to turn the conversation around to the mom, her life, and her right to control her own body. That’s why I think these videos are really tough for the abortion rights movement, because it is so fixated on the actual process of abortion and the fetus, which is where they are at.
To paraphrase my dad’s old boss, she represents the democratic wing of the Democratic party.
I don’t think there is a middle ground. For most of the people campaigning for criminalizing abortion, I think they are far more interested in being the underdog in a grand fight for justice than they are in the actual issue they are fighting about. It’s not about babies. And let’s be clear, they are campaigning for criminal laws, not for babies.
They are not campaigning against a real problem. Those third trimester abortions? Except in extreme cases they are just a myth. If you are eight months pregnant with a seemingly healthy fetus and you go into a doctor’s office and say you want an abortion, it’s likely they are going to look at you like you just asked to have your liver removed.
Criminal laws mean that women with rare complications die to save a baby that won’t live a day. Criminal laws mean that women go to jail for having miscarriages because they cannot prove that they didn’t cause them. Criminal laws punish women who would never contemplate actually aborting their pregnancy. The mantra of the pro-criminalization crowd is “better than 100 innocent women go to jail than one anencephalic baby be permitted it’s few hours of agony in the open air.”
The pro-criminalization protestors I passed today were waving signs with bloody fetuses that reminded me of my own miscarried child. There were two adults and a half dozen teenagers. Disaffected youth are often quick to latch onto something that seems to give them purpose - that’s how terrorist groups recruit as well. Who are we arguing with?
The idea of seeking the mean is a flawed one. The sensible middle ground is where most of the pro-choice camp is.
Thanks for writing that. It’s well stated.
I have several friends who are thoughtful Christian people, not raving lunatics, who are talking about these videos right now - people I respect, who are not Fox News drones. There are people who are have sense who believe abortion is wrong, and probably vote on the issue. Is there a middle ground there? Or is it just, we keep having that rider on every health care bill that says no federal funding for abortions is the best middle ground we can reach? Because, personally, I think we should at least sometimes pay for the.
Well, in most other developed country the country funds abortions when medically needed, and while I haven’t done research, I am fairly sure you can get non medically necessary abortions paid for by the government as well, even if you have money. Funding or not funding is a tough question in the US because you crazy folks down there don’t have a public health care system (and somehow manage to spend more public dollars per capita on health care than Canada does). At least it’s a more sane discussion than criminalization.
Anyway, to me questions about funding are questions about discriminating against the poor or not. Women with money are going to have the right to choose, are women without much money going to have the same right? I think to most people with right-wing politics, it makes sense to discriminate in this way because the amount of money people earn is given moral weight.
It’s interesting to see the reasons given for third trimester abortions in the US:
71% Woman didn’t recognize she was pregnant or misjudged gestation
48% Woman found it hard to make arrangements for abortion
33% Woman were afraid to tell her partner or parents
24% Woman took time to decide to have an abortion
8% Woman waited for her relationship to change
8% Someone pressured woman not to have abortion
6% Something changed after woman became pregnant
6% Woman didn’t know timing is important
5% Woman didn’t know she could get an abortion
2% A fetal problem was diagnosed late in pregnancy
11% Other
A new study in 2013 shows that most women seeking late term abortion “fit at least one of five profiles: They were raising children alone, were depressed or using illicit substances, were in conflict with a male partner or experiencing domestic violence, had trouble deciding and then had access problems, or were young and nulliparous.”
1, 2, 3, 6, 8 and 9 directly relate to lack of teaching about reproduction, stigma related to it, lack of availability or direct opposition to abortion. A few of the others may well have had something to do with those reasons too. Based on this, it would seem that if anything, PP’s efforts are decreasing late term abortions and the attacks on PP and women are increasing them. In 2010, 89% of abortions were in the first trimester, so it seems clear that people make the decision early if they can. “Safe, legal, (and therefore) rare” seems like a fairly sane middle ground that will result in fewer abortions overall, particularly later term ones.
The pregnant woman is not the only victim of the anti-choice movement. There are two victims. No one ever listens to those of us who lost all rights and support at birth, because apparently our sacred lives don’t matter after that moment in time…to either side. What the pro-choice movement needs to do is start to openly acknowledge the other half of the victims.
Women aren’t real people so they don’t count, but having former fetuses (at least some of whom are male) be the voice of pro-choice would be much harder to scream against.
Why accept the anti-choice claim that “I’ve never met a former fetus who would have been OK with being aborted” when in fact there are many such people who belie that statement. Some will explain that if they had been aborted, they would never have known anyway so why would it bother them, and others (like me) had horrific and life-threatening childhoods because in fact being an unwanted living human isn’t such a great gift after all.
Stop letting them define the boundaries of morality and ethics on the subject.
I’d love to know where those statistics – which add up to 222% – came from, and why there’s no mention of the role fake “crisis pregnancy centers” and laws created specifically to keep women from being able to get LEGAL abortions fit into the equation.
It’s actually quite old, but it’s from a survey from the Alan Guttmacher Institute. I’m guessing you could tick all boxes that applied, which is why I didn’t claim that better access would prevent over 100% of late term abortions. I think the effect of the laws and attempts to prevent abortion is hinted at in numbers 2, 6 and 9 at least, but any specific mention would probably be under ‘other’. The second part was more recent, from a 2013 study which excluded abortions due to foetal abnormality. Here’s a summary of the main points, as the article is behind a paywall. Significantly, two thirds of the women cited cost as a factor in delaying the procedure (again, giving multiple reasons was possible). In any case, I’d say my main point still stands: if women have abortions, they have them early if they can help it and it’s quite possible that the single biggest factor in delaying abortions is the attempt to prevent them. Defunding PP is not a serious solution if your goal is to value the life of women or foetuses.
I think he’s saying that the Republicans will throw all their effort into blocking any goal endorsed by a Democratic president, even if they would have been fine with that goal otherwise.
I think it’s that the democratic leadership doesn’t think it can win on a progessive platform… They took their lessons from Carter’s first term and changed to party to what they thought the white working class leaving the party would want to hear. Hence, Clinton, hence Obama and their lack of progressive policies.
Seems to me that if they went the Sander’s route (be consistent, instead of blowing with the PR wind), they might get somehwere.
Well, yeah, people are apathetic, because they believe their votes don’t matter in the grand scheme of things. The corporate media doesn’t really help. But the question is less what do they SAY they’re going to do (Dems, I mean) and what have they actually done. As Sanders has pointed out, many of the policies passed in the couple of decades have been passed by democrats (NAFTA, Welfare reform, Obamacare, which is a huge give away to insurance companies, etc).
And are about to do it again over PP…
Except I don’t think that’s happening…
http://gawker.com/no-planned-parenthood-is-not-selling-aborted-fetal-bod-1717823538
Yeah, one sucks shit and the other just sucks.
I’ll stick to socialism.
Yet she shares the same party as Diane Feinstein…
