Marshall, the awful little Republican who claimed that disabled children were God's punishment on women who got abortions, is now trying to claim he never suggested any such thing, and that his remarks were misinterpreted. Fortunately, he was caught on video:
He has also said many other odious things.
It's worth noting that Marshall has a history of saying offensive things - or being "misinterpreted."
He said this about abortion in the case of rape: "[T]he woman becomes a sin-bearer of the crime, because the right of a child predominates over the embarrassment of the woman."
And he said this about contraception: "[W]e have no business passing this garbage out and making these co-eds chemical Love Canals for these frat house playboys in Virginia."
I think it's his political career that has become a toxic waste dump.
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"Sin-bearer"????
"Embarrassment"?????? He thinks that the biggest problem a raped pregnant woman has is being embarrassed???????
There are not enough question marks in the world to express my complete what the fuck response to that characterization of rape victims.
Sadly, I think he might survive these comments. As a Republican, his target demographic doesn't include feminists or youth. Hell, it might even endear him to his supporters.
Every single person who voted for this degenerate owes us an explanation.
Lies, like "miracles", seem to be the biggest casualties of modern technology.
"I never said that!"
"Ummm... I didn't mean that!"
"No comment"
"F#*K you!"
They can run, but they cannot hide.
As a non-American, I have these eternal questions: how do these idiots get elected to public office in the first place? And once they open their odious mouths, how do they manage to still cling to their position? Where is the public outcry against the obnoxious comments he uttered, where is the indignation in the mass media and news channels?
So tell us, Marshall, are you for motherhood and against the man-eating shark? Or are these positions too controversial?
Excuse me?!
"[W]e have no business passing this garbage out and making these co-eds chemical Love Canals for these frat house playboys in Virginia."
First off, who the fuck still uses the word "co-ed" to refer to a female college student? Secondly, my vagina is not a "chemical love canal" to be used by frat boys. Way to completely ignore female sexuality by implying a vagina is FOR boys to fuck.
Birth control doesn't turn me into a sex object. It does the opposite, by helping to relieve women of the specifically female consequence of sex- pregnancy. When women can control their biology, they can be free to enjoy sex for pleasure on their own terms. God forbid that women actually enjoy sex for pleasure. After all, if God had wanted women to enjoy sex, he would have given them an organ designed solely for pleasure and capable of multiple orgasms.
I realize it's a small part of a much larger and more dangerous stupid, but it fucking pissed me off.
You think only feminists or youth will find his comments repugnant ?
Why the hell do you think he felt the need to issue this back-pedaling statement :
Translation: it's your problem if you understood my words to mean what they actually meant.
Words fail me as surely as reason fails him. It's nearly impossible to think someone could face any gathering and spout such hate, vitriol and nonsense while keeping a straight face.
You have it backward. Here in America, stupidity is praised, intellect despised. They get elected because they are idiots.
That's what a shoddy education system does to a nation.
I think it really helps drive home how much these people are fossils and relics of times we've tried our best to forget how horrible they were when they talk like this.
You both get the exact spelling out of what they think about women and blacks and homosexuals, attitudes from as little as 30-40 years ago that used to be the norm as well as their continued dismay and perplexed responses to the fact that everything they say is recorded and easily accessible.
They were used to being able to say whatever nonsense came to their minds and then lying when called on it. They just have no frame for dealing with a reality where a youtube video passed around the world of direct evidence of their dumbfuckery can be copied and pasted and mailed to them so that even the laziest of reporters can notice it.
They are entirely unprepared for a world where they have to personally face the consequences of their words and actions.
I'm hoping we can keep making it uncomfortable for these dinosaurs.
With apologies to Molly Ivins:
If you took all the bigots and idiots out of the legislature, it would cease to be a representative body.
Welcome to America!!!!!!!!
A story by Capital News Service regarding my remarks at a recent press conference opposing taxpayer funding for Planned Parenthood conveyed the impression that I believe disabled children are a punishment for prior abortions. No one who knows me or my record would imagine that I believe or intended to communicate such an offensive notion[.] I regret any misimpression my poorly chosen words may have created
Amidst the lies, the truth is told.
Haley, I'd watch what you say, about your equipment. Who knows, someday, they might come after it, like they already do in so many countries. I don't know about you all, but I'm a little bit scared. But, its the scared that makes me want to take action.
Kausik Datta @5:
What llewelly said.
Also, remember that the US has a FEROCIOUS infestation of god-botherers. To them, women are supposed to be punished for being sexual--unless they're pumping out babies after man-on-top-get-it-over-with-quick sex that they didn't enjoy!
Really, couldn't you have shipped the Puritans to Antarctica?
I'd love to hear Sarah Palin's take on the idea that disabled children are punishment for prior abortions. If she had any integrity, she would condemn Bob Marshall.
Also, remember that the US has a FEROCIOUS infestation of god-botherers.
Yah. And on the radio today some guy is saying 80% of young adults "believe" in miracles, heaven, hell, eternal life and the like.
That eternal life thing is very seductive, apparently.
"If you took all the bigots and idiots out of the legislature, it would cease to be a representative body."
No. Then you'd have an empty body. It never was truly "representative."
Religion and racism, our twin national mental disabilities.
"...some guy is saying 80% of young adults..."
If I recall, it was Robert Siverberg or another quite sharp SF writer of that same general time who observed that "90% of anything is bullshit."
Sturgeon.
@Kausik Datta: well one answer is that we don't have party control over candidate selection or centrally funded campaigns. Like in Europe you have the crazy nationalist parties (and in India as well, I'm guessing thats your nationality?) but they wouldn't have someone like this in a mainstream party due to typically increased power of the party bosses. The party whip has a real whip to crack (money).
(the downside is of course that American politicians spend half their time raising money)
As far as lack of indignation... being a delegate in Virgina isn't really high-profile. This story has hit all the blogs and probably the local press (just guessing from the fact that he felt obligated to respond).
@ema #3
Shorter Bob Marshall: "I misspoke. What I really meant was SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUTUPSHUTUPSHUTUPSHUTUPSHUTUP"
Javohl. Sturgeon it was. A truism it remains. Tnx PZ.
Reminds me of an old story. An old country graybeard was asked how he considered himself as a father. He said "I must have done a good job, since none of the boys were sent to prison or the state legislature." This twit's father failed.
I am literally shuddering with rage, and I'm not one to use the phrase "literally" lightly.
The very idea that my son could be a "punishment" really, truly shows how much people who claim to oppose abortion truly value human life: not at all. When he can dare to imply that my son's only worth is as a punishment... specifically by his flavor-of-the-month deity and for so petty a reason as "vengeance," not as an object lesson, not as a show of force, not as a more severe challenge... as a punishment.
I wonder if he mutters that to women in his congregation. "Oh, here's little Billy. Got a 40 on your English test, eh? Well, that's because somewhere, somehow your mother was a whore, but it's okay, she gets it from Eve, so it just means she didn't repent enough. Thank your mother for her slutty-slut ways getting you into a meaningless job which will no doubt lead you to drugs and Hell."
Man, it hurts to even think like that. How do these people sleep at night? Seriously - upside down from the rafters of a steeple?
@Lyr #17
If she had any integrity, she wouldn't be Sarah Palin.
Anyway.
I went searching around for evidence regarding this asshat's claims, and the most I could find was this one study at the Guttmacher Institute that showed a correlation between terminating a first pregnancy and higher risk of preterm or post-term delivery and low birth weight, in Danish women whose first pregnancies where in 1980-1982. The results were highly complex and the researchers were unable to control for a number of confounding factors. They said nothing about birth defects.
Since Marshall is so focused on first pregnancies, then: once I've given birth to at least one kid, I guess it's okay to terminate as many later pregnancies as I could find, right? Right?
Really, though, if these pricks are so concerned about the consequences of abortion on later pregnancies, then perhaps they should be concerned with reducing unwanted pregnancies by doing stuff like not defunding Planned Parenthood, y'think? However, since Marshall also thinks oral contraception is mini-abortion, he's not really interested in defending unwanted and disabled children so much as creating as many as possible.
Embarrassment? This fucking assclown thinks being raped is a simple embarrassment? Zombie Jesus Wept. He needs to be shoved headfirst into a dung pile.
Contraception isn't new, it's just better. Women will always want contraception. Most men will want contraception too, if they want women.
"I have finally figured out what the Republican orators mean by what they call 'moderate progressivism.' All they mean is: 'Don't just do something, Stand there.'" - Adlai Stevenson
Since Marshall is so focused on first pregnancies, then: once I've given birth to at least one kid, I guess it's okay to terminate as many later pregnancies as I could find, right? Right?
No, because if you terminate a pregnancy the fetus inevitably turns out to be Beethoven.
Haley #7
It's worse than you think. The term "Love Canal" in this case refers to a famous toxic waste dump. The man considers the pill to be a toxic chemical, given to a woman so that they may serve as the whores of frat boys. Because clearly, a) women don't get a say in whether or not they take the pill, and b) any woman who uses contraception must be a whore.
Bob Marshall is a bad person and a bad Christian.
do we have evidence that says Planned Parenthood decreases unwanted pregnancies? Or is that something we just intuitively believe?
@Haley:
I've noticed this about the conservative mind generally: everything must be FOR something. Everything. And not just vaginas, but entire women. (Yes, women are "things," not people. Duh.) I'm way out of my depth here, but isn't there research indicating that during a cognitive developmental stage in young children, there is a strong predisposition to project deliberate purpose onto everything? (E.g., trees are "for" providing shade, rocks are "for" animals to scratch themselves on, etc.).
IIRC, this was mentioned on a thread here in a discussion about cognitive biases and the apparently intuitive appeal of creationism. (Or it could have been a discussion about bacon. Nevertheless it's an interesting phenomenon, and just one of many childlike behaviors conservatives consistently exhibit.)
Franky, think about it for five seconds. PP gives out birth control devices, so yes, it does dramatically decrease unwanted pregnancies. In fact, it is with fundies who abstain from birth control, where most unwanted pregnancies and abortions occur.
uh... yes. there is evidence that access to free or cheap contraceptives reduces pregnancies. wtf?
@ NitricAcid-
Aw damn you. I was at least not terribly offended at the "love canal" part of "toxic love canal", and now you have to shove unpleasant facts in my face?
So do other medications render me toxic as well? Or just ones that let me have sex with reduced fear of an unwanted pregnancy rob me of my sole life purpose as a female?
God I want to punch this guy. I'm not even pro-choice or whatever terminology, and I want to smash this stupid fuck's skull in and shit in the hole.
Of course, it's not like that'd change the shit-to-brain ratio in his head much.
It's not terribly difficult to become a delegate in either mainstream party in the U.S. There is seldom much competition for the position and some modestly funded campaigning will often prove sufficient. (It's about as hard as a school board election). The expression for this sort of position is "party hack." It's how Pelosi started out. Sometimes they rise from party hack to candidate. Thanks to the magic of the inter-tubes if the republican party runs this guy for so much as town dog-catcher any opposing candidate in the primary (or the election, if it got that far) would certainly use this video to remind the voters of what he really said.
Now to the crazy. Facts and evidence will likely not matter to the core of nuts who consider any stick or stone thrown at the evil left somehow, someway legit. Obviously they want to play it both ways, from Palin's sanctimonious use of her baby to Marshall's handicapped children as punishment, the inconsistencies and contradictions matter not a bit to them. This also exposes their mendacity. It's a big fat lie. Actual and sincere concern for children would produce very different behavior.
I wonder what it is like to be married to an odious shit like Marshall?? Benny Hinn's wife of 30 years has filed for divorce. Rev. Stanley's wife of 30 years divorced him several years ago (forcing him to step down as pastor of a big Baptist church in Georgia as they don't permit divorced ministers). I guess their wimmenfolk can only take it for so long...........
Franky, think about it for five seconds.
unpossible.
Franky's job is not to think, but to troll.
I can see a situation where birth control is handed out, people have more sex with more partners, and the rates of failure result in unwanted pregnancies. So I'm just asking if there are numbers behind the claim. Maybe it hasn't been studied?
SHPLANE:
you are to present yourself for public flogging back on this thread, where you left quite a mess:
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2010/02/they_dont_really_care_about_…
@idiot
No, Planned Parenthood deliberately increases unwanted pregnancies so that they can reap millions of dollars providing abortions.
Do try to keep up with the deranged wingnut position du jour (for which there is always ample supporting evidence).
Maybe it hasn't been studied?
why are you so lazy not to find out for yourself?
If you really cared, you likely already would have.
since it's obvious you don't, there's only one reason you would bring it up as you have...
troll.
Oh, I'm certain it has. Franky, have you heard of Google, the search engine? It's designed for questions like yours. You don't need us to feed you information. You can look it up yourself. For example, I dug this out:
Neither his House of Delegates website nor his his campaign website mention any employment prior to getting elected, although his Wikipedia page mentions exactly one job: staffer for the American Life League, which opposes both abortion and birth control.
That appears to be his entire career.
There are a lot of one-issue voters out there, but Marshall appears to be a one-issue politician. I wonder if all of his constituents are aware of it. Even long-time Republicans are tired of being represented by whackjobs.
I'm not even pro-choice or whatever terminology
The appropriate terminology would be, "someone who values, supports, and trusts women."
@42 Hypatia's Daughter:
I'm not certain, but my guess is that it would be very similar to being married to frank.
I have lived for 15 years in the foothills of the Blue Ridge mountains 40 miles outside of DC yet work near the city. The difference in the people and their beliefs between these locations is remarkable.
Within 5 miles of my house there are people that have working outhouses and no heat except for wood.
Where I work, people whine if their power (and internet connection) goes out for ten minutes.
My observation is that what is happening is that the beliefs of small rural communities are now able to say what they have always been taught to believe in their small communities on the internet.
You wouldn't believe how tight knit these communities are.
Not trying to propose a theory, but the above is what I have experienced.
doesn't happen:
people have sex regardless of whether it's safe or not, but they tend to get ill and pregnant a lot less when they're informed (incidentally, also something PP does) and have access to free or cheap birth control.
go and read this, and this, and stop annoying us with your absurd hypotheticals
I did look it up on google, didn't find anything. And look, I don't think I have to be the one to find data to refute a claim that hasn't in the first instance been supported. I was just wondering if this was based on fact or a hunch, so I guess I have my answer.
Nerd, the issue isn't "teenage childbearing".
frankosaurus:
I strongly suspect it's been studied.
As for the numbers, since the purpose of contraceptives is to prevent contraception, the simple comparison is how much more vaginal sexual congress it would take to overcome their efficacy.
If their efficacy were 90%¹, say, it would take a tenfold increase in activity merely to compensate.
--
¹ A wildly-conservative estimate.
Fuckosaurus, what does that have to do with funding Planned Parenthood? Human failure to use birth control as directed every time it is necessary does not excuse Bob Marshall's inhumanity.
Wikipedia has this to say about contraceptive failure rates if you must know.
No Franky, that is the issue. Any woman, be she 15 or 45, and uses birth control, is far less likely to get pregnant than one who doesn't. What is your problem with that? And why couldn't you find any statistics? I had a first page hit.
*FACEPALM*
Fuckosuurus, you are the one pulling anti-choice talking points out of your ass.
Argh.
contraception → conception @55.
#36 Iris
Yeah, I noticed that, too. Women are for sex, making babies, raising kids and cleaning toilets (all the shitty menial, stuff men are way too important to waste their time on). I wonder if anyone ever asked then what they are good for?
Well, a fair case can be made that Jesus (or whoever made him and the stuff he supposedly says up) was ethically pretty progressive (as evidenced by sentence 1) for the time (as evidenced by sentence 2).
But we move on. Technology advances, and so does ethics.
Actually, what exactly does the second sentence say about this "god" character?
Yep, Fucky has a comprehension problem. He doesn't comprehend the real world. It doesn't appear to run the way he expected, and he can't deal with it. And he wonders why we think he is a fool...
your google-fu sucks. or you're just being lazy.
you're the one doubting a well-established and well-known correlation, with hypotheticals you pulled out of your ass.
are you stupid? teenage pregnancies are a proxy for unwanted pregnancies, because otherwise statistics for them are a wee bit hard to come by. I mean, how the fuck do you tell if something is an unwanted pregnancy? teen pregnancies are reliable proxies. stop shifting the goalpost.
From Jadehawk's links that frank won't read:
and
But nevermind, frank already has his "answer."
@Haley: Actually, your vagina IS for boys to fuck. What do you think it's for?
In fairness, my penis is for girls to fuck.
We both have the option of not using those body parts for those functions, of course.
But there's no question what their functions are.
I mean all this in the nicest way. I agree with everything else you said. But shrillness doesn't help the cause.
Um, has anyone told you you're beautiful when you're angry? Do you come here often? Is it hot in here, or is it just you?
Lighten up kiddo.
Franky, the cost of raising an unwanted child to 17 these days (2008-2025) is $200,000-$300,000 for middle income earners. Consider that when you wonder why birth control is needed. Can you afford that on your income?
This idiocy reminds me of what others have said:
"Never attribute to malice what can be explained by stupidity."--Napoleon Bonaparte
Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public.
H. L. Mencken
US editor (1880 - 1956 )
"Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful." -Seneca (Roman philosopher, mid-1st century CE)
“The Bible is a wonderful source of inspiration for those who do not understand it”
– George Santayana
“ The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt. -Bertrand Russell
The Triumph of Stupidity
“Faith is believing what you know ain’t so”
Mark Twain
“Let me make the superstititions of a nation and I do not care who makes its laws or its songs either.”
Mark Twain
"Not all conservatives are stupid people, but most stupid people are conservatives."
-John Stuart Mill
I realize that posts made entirely from quotations are considered by some internet "rules" to be invalid, and that they cast aspersions on the integrity and intelligence of the poster. I apologize to all for this post, but the subject shocks and embarrasses me so that I need to remind myself of other more thoughtful people who must have been similarly shocked.
plumberbob
Your condescending trivialization of women is disgusting.
65:
And what if the owner of a vagina doesn't care for men in the sexual sense? What if the owner of a vagina is asexual?
There is discussion of this from the Feb. 22, of the Rachel Maddow Show:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26315908/#35531536
Caine, look at it this way, the asshole's brain is here so all of us to fuck with it.
Hey, kiddo, you throat was make for me to throttle. Has anyone told you that you are smug when you speak? Is it stupid in here or is it just you?
Creep!
Seconded. Shplane is a closeted supernaturalist, employing soul-magic and teleological inversions of logic for the sole purpose of slut-shaming. I enjoyed watching this fool twist and thrash in defense of anti-rationality earlier, and it will be a damn shame if I don't to see the end of the show.
Too crude, plumberbob. Your crack is showing.
...get to see...
I don't think #65 is plumberbob. Their Yahoo links are different.
Janine, Mistress Of Foul Mouth Abuse, OM @ 71:
Good point. Although I think all that he's working with is a brain stem and it's planted firmly up his ass. Do you suppose he'd take it as given if I told him his asshole was made for fuckin'?
Oh wait, #65 is not plumberbob. Sorry about that plumberbob. Who is #65?
I think in this case, his asshole would be for pegging.
Lying for jesus again? Do these people ever not lie in public?
And the correlate: his penis was made for assholes to fuck.
@69
Then obviously our job as asexual women is to be raped, duh. Same with lesbians.
Think I'm joking? Asexual women who have come out to pastors have been told that their job is to "be fruitful and multiply" and that God wants them to fuck and give birth.
Now, it's conceivably possible that an asexual woman may choose to give birth for reasons wholly her own, but given the general idiocy and the urging of pastors and parents demanding not only reproduction and marriage, the big focus does seem to be on marrying, spreading one's legs, thinking of England and accepting a nice career of marital rape.
And on purposes...oh boy, first of all, there's no real purpose for biological apendages, merely functions. This is because things arise in evolution and prove their usefulness when they give an advantage in how they are or can be used. A penis has several potential purposes, waste propellent system, reproductive system, pleasure button system, some heat transfer, etc... A vagina has similar multiple uses.
In general however we tool using monkeys decide to use it pretty much is the "correct way". If we want to use it for reproduction and waste release, great. If we just want to focus on the libido-connected nerve endings, great. If we want to place various tools around or inside them or supporting them, that's a correct use too. As is treating it like the tailbone, you can choose to ignore it.
Viewing them as having specific purpose comes from the same sort of idiocy that asks "what is evolution's goal?" or worse from the long history of viewing women as a sort of subhuman creature whose "natural place" is helpmeet to men who are the only ones who are important.
@boring anti-choice troll
Gosh, I've never before seen in my life an anti-choice moron ignore evidence, assume women are all sluts, and focus on their delusions above truth and whine that women owe him with personally convincing him.
This has never before arisen in the anti-choice community and is totally aberrant to the way they work. Similarly if he were to get violent and use the threat of terrorism to slowly drive away available services and out-in-public support of the world's most common medical procedure that would also be a sudden shocking shift for the community.
More so than most, this shit has been fucking done to death and it arises from the simple fact that well, we haven't really accepted as a society the premise that women are people rather than subhuman slaves for very long. Back in the 60s, women could be legally raped by their husbands as their property, divorces were hard to acquire even for abuse, and the idea that women had a sex drive and a right to bodily autonomy was a radical notion with seldom perch outside organizations like the communists. Even in the 80s, the milquetoast ERA couldn't even manage passage and the idea of equal pay for equal work was fought against and defeated. People blamed working outside the home responsible for pretty much all crime and a woman who did so was looked down upon.
In short, the radical idea that women are people is actually fairly new and radical.
@65-
Yes, the physical function of a vagina is to be receptive to a penis, and as a birth canal for babies. My issue wasn't with that fact. It was with reducing sex for the female as providing a hole to be fucked while we lie back, thinking of England, for the sole purpose of providing pleasure for a male. As in, women don't(or shouldn't!) only go on bc to be a better source of pleasure for men, but for themselves.
Then you go all weird on me. Calling me "shrill" is a common way to dismiss uppity women. And then,
Uh, what? Is this supposed to be some kind of meta joke about feminists needing to learn to take a joke and stop being so damn passionate about their cause? Because I'm quite unapologetically passionate.
@Haley #7: You miss the point, in that asshole's world women were made to be screwed by men - that and making babies is all they're good for, and god says so hisself in the bible (well, that's the claim anyway). So Marshall would be shocked that you would think the Creator ever meant women to be anything but obedient sex toys and maids. This is nothing new; that's been part of christian dogma for millennia.
strange gods before me @ 72:
I responded to Shplane in the other thread (very late to the party, but that was some first class idiocy). Looks like another dime-a-dozen idjit who has no way to defend their views.
@84
I just ran away from that at the beginning. I've had way way WAY too many versions of somebody with some existential crisis (wait, what if I never existed at all) who decides that that trumps a woman's right to do with a non-sentient ball of cells leeching her body's nutrients against her will and somehow grants that same clump extra-human rights (such as the right to use a person's body against their will or force them to provide medical donations and even to enslave them against their will).
And always it comes down to three general final reasons:
1) Women are sluts who need to be punished. Shoulda shut their legs.
2) I was raised catholic and thanks to their programming I have a voice in my head that makes it "complicated".
or
3) My sperm is magic and thus the only meaningful and important part is the male contribution to pregnancy and what's 9 months of using the nutrients of your body to actively create a full human being other than waiting for the sperm to grow humunculous style in an empty void known as the womb.
Given the responses on this thread to the Shplane idiocy, it looks like that was the case again.
I was just wondering if this was based on fact or a hunch, so I guess I have my answer.
just.
fucking.
DIE.
godamn, why anyone takes you seriously at all here is beyond my comprehension!
@ aratina cage of the OM,
This whole miserable treatment of women, and GLBT people and all other groups of which the right wing religiosos are terrified is a national embarrassment...whether the country realizes it or not.
Thanks for your note at #77. Accepted.
I will sign what I post, whenever I post. I try to be neither crude nor disrespectful.
plumberbob
Mere function is not purpose, and the asshole has conflated the two.
One can see this easily. A common incandescent light bulb has the function of a methamphetamine pipe, but this is not the light bulb's purpose. Its purpose is that for which it was intended, to provide light.
Purpose requires intent, so most things have no purpose. Tools have purposes, but only relatively sophisticated animals design tools.
A vagina, or a penis, has no purpose. They have functions, but these functions are not limited to procreation.
@86
It's fairly standard practice for misogynist trolls. State a pulled-out-of-ass assumption, demand women drop everything to prove you wrong, ignore all women who promptly do so as well as provide a long history lesson in the exact boring way they are wrong, state that women are just bitches who can't think and that no one disproved your theory so it must be true. Basically, assert, ignore refutation, act as if the "failure" to refute is proof of the assertion which was as always innocent and just the result of "a thought experiment".
Kirk on the atheist and women thread used this tactic, most anti-choice goons use this tactic.
In general it's probably a good general tactic for a troll. They don't have to do any real work, can stay in their fantasy world and pisses off anyone who takes the time to refute them or respond to them and since pissing off liberals or "bitches" is the only purpose of this type of trolling (It's about inserting an unwanted penis and making women feel a little worse and thus securing your masculinity for one more day, kinda like rape), it succeeds in getting them what they want.
And yes, they make me wish I could stab people over the internet too.
I'll need to see some evidence that anyone takes Francosaurus seriously, rather than using him as a chew toy.
https://me.yahoo.com/a/DhjBEuJ8pt63x6eBKuPx0Jv9_QE-#7c327 | February 23, 2010 11:34 PM:
Thank you for your concern, troll.
I'll need to see some evidence that anyone takes Francosaurus seriously
see John Morales' first response to him, which he probably is regretting about now.
OK, can we please ALL agree that franky has never been anything BUT a troll on any substantive thread on Pharyngula?
just ignore it, or chew on it with sharp pointy teeth, but don't ever act like it has a valid point of any kind.
It never does.
@91
Question.
Does anyone but misogynists use the word "shrill" in a non-ironic context?
It's sort of like dropping "welfare queen" or "sodomy" in a conversation. Instant identification as an asshole.
Cerberus @ 85:
Yep.
More or less. His reasoning in regard to "abortion bad" was "some of them are for frivolous reasons" and it's (having an abortion for "frivolous" reasons) a Dick Move. (He wrote those last two words in caps, emphasizing his idiocy.)
Ichthyic @ 92:
Frankentroll had the honour of being first in the killfile I installed last week. It's a fine place for it.
@94
So that's one part slut shaming and one part sperm magic.
This quote just to reference the conversation generally. I imagine there is a good correlation between contraception (though this wouldn't be limiting ourselves to planned parenting, would it?) and decreasing the chances of pregnancy, and with plenty of studies to boot. And the fact alone that we are living in relatively prosperous times with low birth rates is evidence enough to show the impact contraception has on society.
However, the point is ultimately an evidenciary one. I'm surprised especially at you Nerd for not thinking through these things discretely. The two variables are unwanted pregnancy and planned parenthood. Not teenage childbearing and a column of contributing factors.
A narrower question around this would be whether "defunding" planned parenting would really impact its ability to perform its function. Most interest groups find a way of flourishing through their own fundraising, for example. (Though I will admit I don't know the extent government has its hands in planned parenting anyway).
The broader question is whether a culture of contraception has its own ironic twists like all other forms of social engineering. Bob Marshall thinks so in the case of abortion, but for some highly suspect reasons. But to compare, some have linked subsidizing health care with rising sickness generally.* It's interesting to speculate what the rates of unwanted pregnancies have been like with the rise of the pill. One thing that will have probably changed in the culture generally is the way in which "unwanted" has changed its meaning.
---
*see Hans Hermann Hoppe on this issue
I imagine
nobody cares what you imagine.
nobody cares what you think.
nobody cares.
clear?
fuckkkosaurus, you are going to be slapped silly when your guardian/girlfriend gets home, I just know it. It happens every time. You go on a crazed commenting spree of inanity with references to David Duke and Hans Hermann Hoppe among others and then slink back the next day with a goofy grin on your face after receiving your corporal punishment.
I'm sorry, but a troll has derailed the subject.
This goon (subject of the post) has not only attacked choice, but has used the crude bludgeon of both an angry god and the garbled truncheon of the disabled as punishment as his selected implements.
The weapon of choice? This is a true atrocity, and going after the obvious "controversial" target of planned parenthood has rerouted what should be something critical enough to get anybody anywhere out of any position of power: the ultimate hypocrisy of devaluing two human beings as a response to a perceived devaluing of a potential human being.
The mother and a child, one devalued as a nonperson who just lives to put forth more congregants, and the other who has been reduced further to a footnote to god's wrath, a mere punishement for a failure to be fruitful.
You know, my son and children like him have effectively been compared to boils or locusts.
Only less important.
This same attitude makes mothers waiting with their children at the school answer their daughters question of "Why is that bus different?" with "That's the bus for the retards." Within earshot of parents of those same children who are going to board the different bus. And not care a whit.
I would prefer to see the trolls attempt to defend this action of devaluing human beings en masse as excusable rather than derail the thread.
Leaving aside Frank, it's worth noting that while PP is invaluable both in its support and aid in the number one performed medical procedure in this country and being pretty much the main if not only source of affordable and free contraceptives, especially for women, those are both sort of ancillary.
PP is often the sole health care many poor uninsured women receive, is a main source of affordable pre-natal check-ups and help for parents seeking a wanted pregnancy.
It is also pretty much THE place to go for something critical from a public health standpoint. I'm talking about STD testing. PP is pretty much where you go when you want to get tested for various STDs including looking at your general health so you can get treated, take precautions and check out potential sexual partners before sleeping with them. It also ends up being the main source for treatment or prevention for STDs providing necessary public education about STDs and how to recognize them, things like the HPV vaccine, and treatments for treatable STDs like crabs.
And they make such services easy, accessible, low-impact, and affordable.
Without these services, people would be at far greater risk every time they have sex and the exact group of people most at risk (youth) would have the least access to any help and thus would be most at risk for spreading diseases.
In short, we'd see a much much worse STD problem in this country.
Especially since they are also the main source of genuine sex education in this country (one of the few and almost the only one with official clout) and the main source of affordable contraception and educational resources on their proper use and application (which prevents the "fuck ups").
Basically, without PP, we'd pretty much be Africa.
fuckosaurus, stop spewing your paranoid fear of change in society on us. it's fucking disgusting. fact is, societies with free healthcare for everyone, free or subsidised contraception and health-care, and proper sex ed are the ones with fewer STD's, fewer unwanted children, and fewer toxic issues about sex in general.
and yeah, "unwanted" does mean something else now. for one, it no longer means the choice between a potentially deadly, illegal procedure on the one hand, and a lifetime of slavery to other people's desires on the other. I have heard stories by women old enough to remember; it would do you a world of good to listen to them, too. and I really mean listen, if you're even capable of that.
And the fact alone that we are living in relatively prosperous times
HAHAHHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHAHAHHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
I'm sorry, what?
with low birth rates
BWAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHAAAAAAAAAA
I'm sorry, what?
A narrower question around this would be whether "defunding" planned parenting would really impact its ability to perform its function.
/s/planned parenting/fire department
Nice intentional misnomer, by the way.
Most interest groups find a way of flourishing through their own fundraising
Sure. Like API. Grassroots to the max.
The broader question is whether a culture of contraception has its own ironic twists like all other forms of social engineering.
Social engineering? Are you fucking kidding me? Helping prospective mothers with care and counseling is social engineering? How about willingly and knowingly lying your ass off to them in order to protect a sub-pea blob of cells over an actual living human being?
Would that be social engineering?
But to compare, some have linked subsidizing health care with rising sickness generally.
Firstly, nice Fox News "some" disingenuous lack of taking responsibility for saying something easily, objectively and repeatedly provable to be wrong and reprehensible on so many levels that there is no satire sufficient to properly skewer the lack of humanity in even thinking such a thing.
If that was a bit too TL;TR:
- Who's "some"?
- What's "rising sickness"?
- How are they linked?
- At all?
- No, really, at all?
It's interesting to speculate what the rates of unwanted pregnancies have been like with the rise of the pill.
It's interesting to speculate what the survival rates are for prolonged exposure to mustard gas.
When it actually gets done, it's really interesting for the less scrupulous medical professionals involved. It's a bit less interesting for the people whose lives get fucked the fuck over by such interesting speculations.
Also, fuck you. And by the way, fuck you.
One thing that will have probably changed in the culture generally is the way in which "unwanted" has changed its meaning.
I know. It's such a relief that you, as a person totally unaffected directly by unwanted pregnancy in any way can debate the meaning of "unwanted" in current culture. Whew. I know that many involuntary mothers all over this country are much relieved that you, with all your insight, are on the job of defining that slippery, wily term "unwanted". Where before, they had children they did not plan for and/or could not care for, your redefinitions are sure to show them the way.
Also, fuck you in the ear.
These citations are always illuminating, as they repeatedly remind us what a terrible person Francosaurus is.
Hans Hermann Hoppe is a happy homophobe who believes the Mexicans are the fault of the gays, and who makes special effort to publish his writing on the neo-Confederate racist Lew Rockwell's website.
Why on Earth would someone make such a consistent effort to not only seek out the most hateful people in the world and spend one's time wallowing in that hatred every day, but to proudly display such hatred as the sole indicator of one's own personality?
What a pitiful creature.
I will drop the matter, this is unproductive. However, a point on etiquette:
I called for justification of an assertion. I provided context and motivation for why there may be a need for justification. There is no need to answer if there is no answer, but there is an alarming lack of civility when the quickest response is to accuse me of heresy.
you should realize by now that I won't be harassed to leave. You'll only foul your own mood by trying to foul mine.
*cue an OM "naming the behaviour" of this post*
DNFTT
plumberbob
I'm letting my temper get the better of me. And I know I'm lowering myself to his level but, what a backward assed abortion of a cockroach!
dude, no. it's not our job to do your homework for you. it's not an "assertion" just because you don't know and don't accept the evidence for it.
As for Bob Marshall's notpology, I wish just once one of these conservative fuckers would make a genuine apology: you know, something like "I now accept that what I said was wrong, and I'll do my best to change the attitudes behind it". Instead, you get self-serving bullshit like Marshall's:
Translation: "I'm sorry if I've harmed my career by distracting people from how awesome I am".
If we could answer this, we might be able to eliminate the Republican Party.
frankosaurus, you don't get to determine the rules of etiquette on Pharyngula. Fuck you, franky.
you should realize by now that I won't be harassed to leave.
trolls ALWAYS say that.
It's why we have a dungeon.
You have my vote for the next "Survivor Pharyngula".
I will drop the matter, this is unproductive.
No shit, Sherlock.
However, a point on etiquette:
Oooooooh! Ooooooooh! Anyone want to bet against me that there's concern trolling ahead?
I called for justification of an assertion.
Sure. Whatever. TL;DR. How exactly does that justify your mysoginistic claptrap?
I provided context and motivation for why there may be a need for justification.
You know, I scrolled up and down for minutes and cannot for the life of me find any such thing. Did I miss it, or do you need a dictionary?
There is no need to answer if there is no answer
Ah, I love the smell of pre-emptive passive-aggressive middle school debating "tactics" in the morning.
Seriously, is that the best you can do?
but there is an alarming lack of civility when the quickest response is to accuse me of heresy.
Shit, I guess it is. Concern troll is concerned, film at 11.
Wait, didn't I call that one?
Oddly enough, I cannot find the word "heresy" on this particular page until you mentioned it. Did it get smudged during its rectal extraction?
you should realize by now that I won't be harassed to leave.
Disregarding the complete failure of verb transitivity, what the fuck is up with that martyr complex? Do you actually feel good about yourself after a stormy evening of your arguments being exposed for being none of the sort and being laughed at?
Or are you one of those incapable of distinguishing "at" from "with", specifically in the context of "laughing"?
You'll only foul your own mood by trying to foul mine.
Thank you for literally and openly admitting you're trolling.
*cue an OM "naming the behaviour" of this post*
Sorry, not an OM. For now, you'll have to do with me.
You are a disgusting person. Your presence fouls moods, full stop. It can only lighten the mood to remind you that you are a disgusting person, that you are boring and stupid, that you are unwelcome here.
Attention is attention. Learning how to interest and impress people, to receive positive attention, is hard work. Much easier to just stick out his tongue and declare that no amount of negative attention will cause him to stop seeking negative attention.
Oddly enough, I cannot find the word "heresy" on this particular page until you mentioned it. Did it get smudged during its rectal extraction?
I think he is taking his cue from the good Quackalicious ND that has been posting his irrational paranoid screeds in the threads with his name of late.
It occurs to me that if children with disabilities are indeed a punishment from God, then we shouldn't provide them with medical care, special education services, or provide their parents with support, counseling, respite care, etc.
After all, who are we to interfere with God's mysterious plan? If He wants to punish the parents, we shouldn't be doing anything to alleviate their suffering, or that of their children.
@#45
Yeah I went to go play a flash game and then came back to see that the post count of the thread had doubled, so I decided it probably wasn't worth digging through the bullshit.
I could probably illustrate my points better and without being such a dick if I slept more often. Or, y'know, at all.
What I'm saying is, my stance on abortion is more moderate than it probably seemed in that thread. But I was in a pissy mood due to sleep deprivation and what I believe to possibly be an ulcer (Horrible stabbing pains in my stomach) and thus got pissy and rant-ish.
Since I honestly don't think I can illustrate what my actual views are (As I'm still trying to figure out exactly what they are myself) I'm just going to leave it alone.
I will, however, say that this fuck up here is a complete asshole and needs to die in a fire. A fire made of sharks (The sharks are made of shards of glass that are made of salt.)
Holy shit that's twisted, not sure if I could top that one.
Let's try.
If you get the frat boys polluted enough you can use THEM for hot chemical Love Canal action, and you don't need no stinkin birth control.
It's the Vaseline/Vodka solution, why do you think they call them 'fraternitys'
Gamma Slamma BoyBamma
woo hooo
Shplane @ 117:
Excuses, excuses. You have a lot of 'shplaining to do.
You said plenty about your views. That was a whole lot of stupid, much of it downright offensive. If you're not willing to answer people, clarify and defend, perhaps you should keep your fingers off the keyboard.
Thanks Stuv, strange gods, Ichthyic, et al. Keep up the good work!!
However, strange Gods, I will single you out for something. You appear to me to be a one trick pony. You don't like "homophobia" or anything that might resemble it. I get it. But allow me to reproduce what you quoted from Hoppe as you have chosen to put it into play. My expectation of you is that you will bristle about homophobia again and go off and sulk about how "hateful" everyone is. My CHALLENGE to you is to provide reasons he is wrong - flawed thinker that he is, I think he has the left libertarians' number. Now your critical theorists are people with whom I disagree, but I do credit them with the ability to string together cogent thoughts, so why not take a crack at it with them? Show me your stuff rather than assuming it has all been refuted, leaving no necessity for any mental effort on your part.
In the alternative, I challenge you not to respond to this message at all as a test of maturity and restraint.
I think issues concerning abortion should be decided by referendum and only women can vote.
121:
Absolutely not. A whole hell of a lot of women are pro-lifers of the worst kind.
"lifestyle"?
"allowed to live at others' expense"?
"arrested in this phase of mental development"?
do you seriously expect a serious response to a bunch of lies, fallacies and ad hominems?
Translation :
I felt like trolling. I provided context and motivation for my trolling. There were various answers, but I chose to continue trolling and whine about the responses that accused me of trolling.
Short version :
I'm a troll, what do you expect me to do apart from trolling ?
@ 118,
I second that , what was that T-shirt title again, ass : the other vagina? or somesuch...
Fixed.
Aratina @ 99
I don't know if it's really true, but some people say that these paultard fuckkkasewer types like being peed on. Not sure if it's before of after the spanking, however.
frankosaurus,
First, there's no such thing as the gay lifestyle.
Second there's no evidence that progress on gay rights "leads to" open borders. All I see is the opposite, in those regions where gay rights are making progress, immigration laws are getting tougher, but I don't even assert that there is any cause/effect relationship.
Hoppe just believes this shit, with no justification. And you apparently drink it like kool-Aid.
Let's see,
Hoppe type Proposition #1 :
I CHALLENGE you to provide reasons why this proposition is wrong.
#125
Hurr hurr. u gawt me lolol
You guys have entirely the wrong idea about what I was trying to get across, which is mostly due to me posting at 5AM while in extreme pain. Also because my feelings on abortion are jumbled and conflicting anyways, due to my desire to both help women to remove themselves from shitty situations and to allow other individuals to come to exist.
I just can't accept that anyone's right to anything else overrides another individual's right to exist. It is something that I, as someone who enjoys being, and does not believe in any sort of soul and afterlife, cannot endorse, and cannot understand why anyone else does either.
It just seems supremely selfish to believe that a person's right to control their body extends past another person's right to have a body at all.
I'm not opposed to casual sex, or use of contraception, or any of that. Admittedly, that seems hypocritical, but as much as I like giving people a chance to experience, I dislike punishing other people for having experiences themselves, so I draw the line (As I may have mentioned before) at the point where there will be a person if no one fucks up/there are no natural complications. And even then, I believe that exceptions should be allowed under certain circumstances (I cannot define those circumstances besides the extremes on both sides, so I'll leave all that alone).
I've taken all the arguments from both sides into account. I've discarded the ones that are irrelevant, dug past the rhetoric, the moronic catchphrases, the attempts to guilt me into siding with one group or another, and made an attempt to find a middle ground that hurts the fewest people. And, as callous as it may seem, the only reasonable system I can see involves some abortions simply not being allowed.
I was, however, rather dickish in my expression of that in the other thread, and I apologize. Yes I felt bad. No that does not mean I get to act like a Christian. I am sorry.
All of these thoughts are conflicted and jumbled. I don't know how to reconcile them, and how to make a coherent moral system out of them. I am incapable of defining what should and should not warrant an abortion. I simply know that, due to the fact that I enjoy being and feel that others should have that right, I cannot be 100% pro-choice. Yet because I do not want to punish people for something as simple and innocent as sex, I cannot be 100% pro-life, and cannot be at all anti-contraceptive.
I'm going to try to ignore people's responses after this (Well, I'll probably read them but not reply), because it'll be the same tired arguments I've read a million times. Everyone will be 100% assured of their viewpoint, and completely incapable of changing it not matter what anyone says. I will probably fail at ignoring said comments as I cannot resist a debate. Especially on the internet.
Hopefully everyone doesn't think I'm a complete moron. I pretty much agree with all the other common viewpoints around here: Homeopathy is stupid, religion is stupid and/or evil, people like Fuckwit McAssclown with his bullshit about punishing women and whatnot are horrible, internet polls are retarded, and PZ is dead goddamn sexy. I just don't entirely agree on abortion.
Shplane:
Interesting disclaimer.
Your concern is noted; you can now move on.
"The point where there will be a person" is debatable, though.
I'm pretty confident in saying that an embryo is not a "person", in any meaningful sense. Nor is an early-term foetus. They are bundles of cells, with no brain stem and none of the characteristics of a human being. They may be biologically human, but there is little or no basis for according them the status of persons. That's why US and UK law give a woman the right to have an abortion during this stage of the pregnancy if she so chooses. There is, at this stage, no "baby" whose rights can conflict with those of the woman, so her bodily autonomy takes priority. A potential person doesn't have any rights; otherwise we would have to accord rights to an ovum or a sperm cell. The notion that "life begins at conception" is just ridiculous, and has no foundation in medical fact.
Of course, as the pregnancy goes on, the ethical situation becomes less clear. A foetus in the final term of pregnancy has many more of the characteristics of a human being, and so abortion at this stage is much more ethically dubious. But late-term abortions are very, very rare, and the vast majority of them are performed for urgent medical reasons to save the life of the woman.
#129
I tried before. They pulled me back in. ):
#130
I agree with most of what you said, other than that a potential person has no rights and thus does not matter. I can't help but find that, since not being born and dying both result in a person not experiencing, they are both situations that should be avoided. I do not believe this for any of the reasons stated by fundie idiots, or honestly any reason I have ever seen expressed anywhere (Though I haven't looked very hard).
Whether or not a fetus has developed human characteristics simply does not seem relevant though. It just seems completely and utterly beside the point. No matter what point in the pregnancy it is terminated, it still results in a person not living.
I wish I could put out something that's not jumbled, train of thought garbage. I used to be a good write, I promise.
Huh, troll infestation.
Okay, let's see Shplane, you don't think you are a moron. Well, isn't that special. We all have dreams, honey and delusions.
Here's my four line response to your crisis: 1) Your existential panic about potentially not ever having existed does not trump a woman's right to bodily autonomy. 2) Even if a fetus were fully equal to an actual born real person, it does not have extralegal rights to inhabit an unwilling host, use their nutrients without permission and enslave another person; no one has the right to life at another's expense without their consent. 3) A fetus isn't a fucking person and I'm sorry but potential life doesn't have some extra special extension on their lives and the right to trump someone's actual life; potential life is lost every time a woman has a period or a man splooges into a sock. 4) You're a close minded moron who doesn't actually understand what he's arguing.
The dinosaur fascist hybrid, wow, that's some powerful crazy.
First off, let me ask you exactly why we need to debate only what you want on your terms on any thread you show up on. This thread has absolutely nothing to do with homosexuality, yet you've decided to try and derail it that way anyway.
Secondly, why would anyone bother affording you any respect. When debunked earlier, you showed zero signs of arguing in good faith, so why should we believe you would accept debunkings of this topic instead of continued trolling.
Thirdly, what's the weird obsession with left libertarianism? I'd suspect the number of left-leaning libertarians on this thread could be counted in one hand.
Fourth, you challenge us? You demand us to both respond and leave alone a copy paste job and a bunch of unfounded bullshit...or what? You'll huff and puff and blow our house down. Here's a lesson on google, practice on the word "petulant man-child".
Fifth, what's there to refute, most of it is unfounded ramblings devoid of a topic and a point. Most of it is unfocused ranting against a perceived group of enemies, the throwing together of random right-wing enemy buzzwords together and basically the usual "everything I'm against is connected by virtue of me being against them". Similarly it denotes things as negative which pretty much directly show you're dealing with a racist nutcase. I mean, when your first bugaboo is "multiculturalism" aka acknowledgment that different cultures and races exist, then you're pretty much an inch shy of a genocide defender.
On the actual claims, again, there really aren't many. Um, let's see, gay rights connection to anti-racism activism is that progressives support both because they believe acknowledgment of the existence of people who aren't white and straight and male is good because people who aren't white straight males exist.
And let's see, oh yeah, Sexual Orientation isn't a "lifestyle" nor is it inherently "harmful". Also, how exactly is discrimination by human agencies "natural"? Or desired? I mean, it's pretty much straight animus, so what exactly was your point other than pissing off teh liberal with your mad copy-paste skills of deranged lunatics?
Now, let's begin the fun, let's psychoanalyze franco. He adopts the moniker of a famous fascist dictator mixed with a dinosaur epithet, that already says a bunch about his views on race. Combine that with links to out and out white supremacists like David Duke and we've got an eliminationist. Which is noted in his "big quote" basically being a combined gay/mexican panic with its logic apparently being self-evident. By early comments, we see that he views women as subhuman and doesn't even believe in their right to health care as he doesn't see PP as necessary or deserving of any funding. He's also a libertarian and outside a select few, they seem to mostly be misogynist psychos. He is also so obsessed with teh gay that he had to bring them up in an unrelated thread.
He uses traditional trolling techniques of the school of waving the dick around and demanding everyone pay attention to him which is common to the type of personality that cheered on the superbowl ad about the book club.
So we have someone who has no emotional level to connect to women on any level, an obsession with minorities and gays that overtakes even his passionate distaste for the double X.
Basically what I'm saying is that it's possible that frank is not a self-hating closet case who masturbates to pictures of Julio Estrada, but the odds wouldn't be in your favor.
@132
It's not that complicated.
What you describe is something called "sperm magic". That the important crucial part that determines the important qualities of personhood is fixated on the only input given by the man.
Your "confusion" is that it's stupid when stated allowed and you're protecting your brain from that cognitive dissonance and the emotional impact of your existential crisis over the "hypothetical what if I was aborted" question that seems to affect only men.
And that's why we mock your "jumbled mess".
#133
Cool story. However, you make ridiculous leaps of faith as to what I do and do not understand, and do and do not believe.
Masturbation and periods are nowhere near the same thing as abortions. Sorry, but no. In one case, some chunks of genetic material that will not be anything are discarded. In the other, a person will be formed assuming nothing fucks it up.
I really do love the way you paint me as a moron because I take a moderate stance on abortion instead of screaming "FUUUUUUUU- RIGHT TO CONTROL BODY". Relax. Damn. I took the same information as you, and came to a different conclusion because I place value on different things. It happens all the time. Calm down about it. We're arguing philosophy, not hard scientific fact.
That might be its name, you know....
I've got it killfiled, so I don't read its droppings anyway.
#134
Nah. I'm afraid of dying, but hypothetical situations about me being aborted or not are wholly irrelevant. I wasn't, so it's pointless.
I give no special place to semen. I totally jacked off earlier. I do not feel bad.
I do not find my viewpoint stupid when stated. Sorry, but you (Or even all of Pharyngula) disagreeing with it does not mean that it is instantly stupid.
You should mock it because it's poorly written garbage. I really, really need to write some more and get back into doing so because my current ability is sub par.
Schplane,
Maybe this will help to alleviate your perplexity (as an ex-phallocrat with the same querries, I know it did help me) :
think about Judith Jarvis Thomson's thought experiment :
Do you believe that you have the right to unplug yourself from the famous violonist (with no doubt a person) even though this will cause his death ?
If your answer to that question is Yes, why would you believe differently if you were a pregnant woman and the fetus in the role of the violonist ?
I hope this helps you.
I just can't accept that anyone's right to anything else overrides another individual's right to exist. It is something that I, as someone who enjoys being, and does not believe in any sort of soul and afterlife, cannot endorse, and cannot understand why anyone else does either.
It just seems supremely selfish to believe that a person's right to control their body extends past another person's right to have a body at all.
Idiot, a fucking blastocyst isn't a fucking person!
Again, bitches ain't shit--they only exist as sperm receptacles and incubators.
135-
"We're arguing philosophy, not hard scientific fact."
This is why you are a moron. This right here. Of course we are arguing scientific fact. You think reproduction is some magical action outside our normal world, where everything just "happens" in a void rather than a cold hard long process of biology.
The non-personhood of a fetus and pre-fetal biological clumps is a fact of biology. For that nine months of "nothing" a woman is carefully using her body, leaching her own body of resources, even the calcium from her bones to build a human being piece by piece. The brainstem and all possibility of sentience is pretty close to the last thing built.
Remove the "potential life form" at any point from this careful deliberate process of the mother's body and it will not continue growing on its own on sperm magic. It will simply cease to function, even if you could artificially provide it with nutrients. This is because there are a wealth of processes that the mother's body is engaging in to grow the clump of cells into its final form.
It's not a debate on philosophy. A debate on philosophy shows its about existential panic (what if my unique specialness never existed, answer: it would never have existed and you would never have existed to mourn it or be mourned, doesn't mean anything) and a desire to remove the woman from the equation (sperm magic, it's all automatic once the sperm meets the egg because once there's a full chromosome set, it'll just grow itself, the only important part is the part the man is directly involved in (hint: this isn't true)).
Trying to remove the biology from the abortion debate is like trying to remove the biology from the evolution debate or the physics from the Big Bang debate.
So yes, that's why you're a moron.
Though you are right that thinking the moderate stance is some big stand of principle also makes you a moron, but it's mostly the biological ignorance and assumption of woman as void that are the main sources of stupid.
And believe me, you didn't take the same information as me. I'm actually informed on the biological process of reproduction and the realities surrounding one of the most practiced medical procedures in the world. You're a psuedo-intellectual blindly flailing in "philosophy" thinking they know something because the thought of not ever existing makes them sad.
#138
A compelling argument, but one with a couple of flaw.
Pregnancy does not entirely shut down a woman's life (In most cases) as would tying someone to a sickened man. Yes, it is inconvenient. That doesn't stop most women from working around it.
Second, there are myriad other ways in which to cure the violinist. I guess the thought experiment is supposed to assume there aren't, but that assumption is completely absurd.
Kind of makes me think... wouldn't it be nice if they developed a way to transfer fetuses over to a tube or something? Mother is free, babby is formed. Everybody wins.
Sulk? You misunderstand. I am merely noting the fact that you are absolutely and completely consumed by hatred, specifically for women, black people, Latinos, and gay folks.
Noting this fact, that you are a hateful person who lives to spread your hatred, does not imply that I am depressed about the fact. It doesn't imply any particular emotion at all. Though I disapprove of your hatred, and would have been emotionally impacted by it half a lifetime ago, I am -- unfortunately -- quite accustomed to it by now. Your type are absolutely banal and boring these days.
In truth, I recognize that you have been correct about one observation, Francosaurus. We are fighting to decide the future, and in the long view it is quite apparent that progressives are winning, and conservatives are losing.
This is pleasant enough.
What the fuck are you talking about?
Fuck that noise.
The gay-hating Hoppe begins with the unsubstantiated assertion that most left-wing libertarians anarchists were drawn to anarchism as juveniles. This is lazy thinking, the repetition of "common sense" as obvious and needing no evidence. It may or may not be true -- data might be difficult to come by, given the small size of this population and their relatively high interest in anonymity -- but it's worth noting that there is no common anarchist equivalent of "when I was fifteen I read Atlas Shrugged and it changed my life."
The claim of arrested development relies on the unsubstantiated and dishonestly unstated premise that there is a more mature position than anti-authoritarianism and acceptance of gay folks, which neurotypical people would otherwise naturally come to.
Then comes the absurdity about gay people living at employers' expense. The truth is that all for-profit employers live at others' expense, by taking as profit the value that their employees have created by their labor, and paying workers less than the value they created. That we allow this situation to exist at all, that we allow capitalism to continue, is historical contingency and not moral necessity. There is no reason that any community must allow such economic exploitation to occur, so for-profit employers are very lucky that we do as yet allow it. We grant them the legally-enforceable privilege to operate such businesses in our communities, so we can demand concessions -- minimum wages, anti-discrimination laws, workers' safety regulations -- in return.
The notion that discrimination and exclusion is normal and acceptable treatment of gay people is likewise asserted without substantiation, again the lazy reliance on "common sense." Perhaps to someone who hates gay people as much as Hoppe does, it seems so obvious as to stand without argument, but for the rest of us it lacks much support.
In the last two sentences there is a fallacy of equivocation. He begins with the unremarkable observation that decent people believe a gay "lifestyle" (another homophobic dog whistle) is as good and acceptable as a straight "lifestyle." And it is, so we do. Here he is referring to one particular instance of a specific lifestyle being as good as another specific lifestyle. Fine so far, but then in the next sentence he equivocates and pretends that he just identified a belief that all lifestyles are as good as all other lifestyles, implying an either lazy or stupid use of "multiculturalism" in its absolutely naive form to mean what almost no actual multiculturalists in fact believe.
I certainly don't believe that all cultures are equal. Ours is better than yours for example, Francosaurus.
It's not worth asking whether the naive absolute of multiculturalism does lead to the naive absolute of cultural relativism, since no one worth discussing actually holds to either view.
But then from cultural relativism to open borders? An absolutely laughable non sequitur. An opposite stance would be at least as compatible; if cultural relativism includes allowing cultures to perpetuate themselves through insularity, immigration controls would be required. But again neither propose causation is actually evidenced.
If Hoppe wasn't such a fuckwit, obsessed as your kind is with the hated buzzwords of multiculturalism and cultural relativity, seeing them everywhere he looks, he might simply listen to anarchists explain why they favor open borders. The simple reason is that they believe worldwide workers' solidarity is unattainable as long as employers can force workers of one nation into a race-to-the-bottom (of wages and workplace safety) in competition with workers of another nation. Allowing workers to freely cross borders changes the game somewhat: people can not be as easily corralled into discrete groups that are held in ongoing competition. Workers can choose to selectively reward areas with better labor laws by simply moving there and adding the value of their labor to the local economy. This alone is not the overthrow of capitalist exploitation, but it is some amount of leverage that may be utilized toward revolution.
So. Unevidenced assertions, lazy reliance on common sense and the assumption that his reader is as homophobic as he, hand-waving, blatant lies, fallacy of equivocation, non sequitur. And you didn't notice any of this? You "think he has the left libertarians' number"? It strains credulity that you could be so fucking stupid. But an apparent explanation would be that because you hate gay people so much, you are in Hoppe's assumed readership, and when you hear something properly homophobic which seems to speak your language, you cling to it emotionally and reflexively without bothering to critically examine its claims.
You're a stupid piece of shit, Frank, and I definitely shouldn't have had to explain that last bit about borders for you. I can't imagine why you still suppose that you bring anything of value to these discussions. You ask stupid questions and refuse to research for yourself, relying on everyone else here to do your homework for you. Even ignoring your political depravity, just accounting for the matter of wasted time, Pharyngula would be a better place without you. Your continued presence demonstrates your contempt for everyone else here, but you haven't the maturity or decency to therefore fuck off.
violonist (not violonist).
Sorry for my franglization.
Iris @36, re: "Things being FOR something":
". . .isn't there research indicating that during a cognitive developmental stage in young children, there is a strong predisposition to project deliberate purpose onto everything?"
see, Supersense by Bruce Hood
http://brucemhood.wordpress.com/about-supersense/
#139
Didn't say it was. It will be, given the opportunity.
Also didn't say that second thing either. You like to make assumptions, don't you?
#140
More assumptions. I never claimed that a fetus could survive outside of a woman. It's just that that information is irrelevant. Children cannot survive without their parents, does that mean their parents are allowed to do whatever the fuck they want with them? Why is a fetus different. It's not a child, but why does it not have the same rights?
I do not understand this cognitive dissonance. Why do you draw the line at "When the child would be able to survive outside the womb"? Why is that a relevant factor?
let's try it again
violinist (not violonist)
Typo:
But again neither proposed causation is actually evidenced.
'S all cool Negen. I did not even notice.
Moron @137
Please use your google. I am talking about a worldview not in a belief that sperm is people. Sperm magic is the belief held by men that the important aspects of making a life end at the male's sole contribution to the process. This is why conception is viewed as somehow the beginning of "life" and that the womb is sort of an empty vessel in space just there to hold onto the sperm/egg hybrid until it just sort of forms on its own with no impact.
It erases the toil on the woman's body that pregnancy entails. The high ratio of miscarriages and fertilized eggs that just fail to implant are not even acknowledged nor are those nine months where the woman's body is basically building the dividing cells, sculpting them slowly and deliberately.
This is because a certain type of man cannot handle being extraneous and not central to something as important as "the creation of life" even though the reason that men have been so privileged over history has been through the exploitation of this distance from the act. A whoopsie costs the man nothing in regards to his body, but basically knocks the woman out for nine months, often killed her, and if it didn't, it would drain her of a whole pack of nutrients she needed for her own survival. And this debilitation of a woman could be as little as a rape away. A perfect weapon against any woman who decided to challenge any inequity.
And your woeful lack of knowledge on a subject you purport to debate as an equal against those with actual knowledge is why you are a goddamned idiot.
You should mock it because it's poorly written garbage. I really, really need to write some more and get back into doing so because my current ability is sub par.
We mock it because it's poorly thought out (which is reflected in the poor writing) and because it's anti-woman.
In the other, a person will be formed assuming nothing fucks it up.
So, what?
Hello all. Back to the real vermin that this post is about, have you noticed the statement on his delegate site about this?
"A February 22nd Capital News Service story claimed, “Western Prince William Del. Bob Marshall (R-13th) says disabled children are God’s punishment to women who have aborted their first pregnancy.”
I never made this statement. I believe that all children, no matter their background are a blessing from the Lord, not a punishment. Capital News Service never called me about these alleged comments.
No other reporter who attended the same February 18th press conference regarding Planned Parenthood funding made the same claim for the simple reason that I never made such a statement about disabled children."
He then goes on to provide a link to a better quality video that 'bears him out'. There can be no doubt about the words he used; he even provides a transcript.
Technically, he is correct. He does not say the exact words that are in the quote he opens with. But if that isn't his meaning, then I don't know what it is.
I find it incredible that he uses the very evidence against him as his explanation. That takes some chutzpah.
The link is here - http://delegatebob.com/category/news. Sorry, I haven't worked out how to hyperlink yet.
Wow! It hyperlinks automatically.
#149
Wow this sperm magic thing is certainly an interesting type of idiocy that I don't believe.
I am not saying that a woman plays no part in the development of babies. That would be idiotic. Monstrously so. You are making assumptions based on what you think I SHOULD believe, because you can't accept that someone would think differently than you without being completely fuckoff stupid.
That's ok. Everyone does it.
And yes, the way women have been treated historically is appalling. That is not at all relevant to modern pregnancy and abortion.
Note also that I entirely acknowledged natural miscarriage. Remember all those times I said "As long as no one fucks it up/THERE ARE NO NATURAL COMPLICATIONS". So I guess you ignored half my post because you want me to be an idiot as that would validate your point.
Didn't say it was. It will be, given the opportunity.
Again, so what?
Also didn't say that second thing either. You like to make assumptions, don't you?
Your entire position is that the potential for a blob to become a human is more important than an actually living, breathing human being...the woman. Bitches ain't shit when compared with what's in 'em, and that blob of potentiality, not actuality, must be given priority over women.
You know women, the actual people in this situation?
@145
Dear Bob in Himmel, your ignorance is a wonder to behold.
My point was not the tired, fetus can't survive outside the body, but that a fetus outside the body would not be recognizably human, nor would it have any chance of being so even if you provided it with some sort of sump pump of raw nutrients. The fetus and the embryos before it are partially formed by the mother itself, a deliberate mixture of hormones and triggers in order to build the human being. Without these, the fetus would not only die, but fail to actually form into a person.
It's not completed and comparing it to something that can survive outside the womb such as a born child is a sign of immense ignorance.
Ignoring the obvious, a child doesn't need its own parents for survival. If a parent decides it doesn't want to feed the baby anymore, they can immediately give it to someone else to take care of. They can at any moment revoke their right to take care of the child and it becomes someone else's problem. This is why child protective services "take away" kids rather than forcing the parents to raise them because "they could have closed their legs".
What you are calling for is extra rights for fetuses, the right to another's body without consent, a right extended to no one else, no matter how innocent, how dire, how necessary. No one has these rights. A child doesn't have to be fed by its parents, it can be relinquished to the state at the parents decision at any moment they decide to relinquish. A dying man does not have a right to someone's healthy non-critical organs. And similarly, even if a fetus was a person (which it biologically is not and I'm not your biology teacher, so read a damn textbook yourself) it would not have the right to invade, leech resources, and otherwise use a person's body without their consent.
This is critical, no one has this right. Not even if it's no big deal. Not even if someone will die without it. No one has the right to enslave another and use their body without consent.
And your staggered half-thoughts and inability to even grasp basic facts of the "debate" show to the world that your moderation is the result of laziness and ignorance on the subject and worse, a profound lack of intellectual curiosity needed to escape this ignorance. You are more invested in retaining your "moderate" position than actual do more than half-listen to arguments and yet you demand to be treated as an intellectual equal.
In this regard you are exactly like a creationist moron. Congratulations.
Now buy a damn biology textbook and read the damn chapter on human reproduction.
Shplane wrote:
Uh, perhaps because when it can survive outside the womb the woman is no longer slave to it, i.e. it can be kept alive if she does not consent to look after it?
Sheesh.
The issue you fail to grasp is simple: it is unjust to force a woman into slavery. If she does not want to carry the child, she should not have to - any argument to the contrary is an endorsement of slavery.
It's not rocket science, for fuck's sake.
Why is a fetus different. It's not a child, but why does it not have the same rights?
Because it's not a person.
#150&154
You mock it because it's a differing viewpoint. So far I've seen little to indicate that my posts are even being read. It's getting rather annoying that people try to say that I believe things that I never indicated any belief in and in fact stated that they are idiotic and make no sense.
What do you mean "So what"? How can you possibly think that piece of information is irrelevant. There will be a person. Facilitating people living is a good thing. I intend to do that.
It sure is great being called "Anti-woman" when I constantly make a point of indicating that I'm trying to find a reasonable point at which the fewest women and the fewest potential people are fucked. I'm sorry that I'd rather, y'know, try to find a good solution instead of just throwing someone the keys and saying "HEY, JUST DO WHATEVER Y'KNOW?"
I have also never said that a fetus should be "Given priority over" anyone. If the woman would die, or has significant reason otherwise to have an abortion, then her rights take precedence. If she does not, the those of the potential person that the fetus will become do.
I'm pretty much done with this argument because everyone is just making assumptions and playing psychologist. I expected, y'know, some degree of rationality from Pharyngula. Not particularly for you to agree with me, but for you to not make baseless assumptions because some other people that happen to share one belief with me happen to have certain others.
Also, your writing seriously is not any better than mine. In fact, that of most of those here is not. So have fun with your "I'M SMAORTER DAN U" circlejerk.
I thank Negen and Walton for not jumping to so many conclusions and not claiming that I'm an idiot without knowing what I actually think. Pretty good guys there.
@153
There are none so blind as those who refuse to see.
You are devoted to a lack of knowledge and understanding of what I am even saying. You are aggressively ignorant. This is why you are beneath contempt and why I am rubbing my forehead as I try and respond to you and keep calling you an idiot.
Your responses are pretty much this exchange:
YOU: "But if evolution is true, why are there still monkeys"
ME: "That's a gross misinterpretation of biology. The simian family are our closest relatives meaning that we had the latest branching off from them and we have the most recent common ancestor who would be a precursor to both simians and hominids."
YOU: "I don't know what that has to do with anything and why are there still monkeys."
You are apparently fundamentally unable to picture pregnancy outside the bounds of sperm meets egg. Or if we give you an ounce of credit you don't deserve, implantation. You are completely ignorant to the fact that it
DOESN'T
JUST
HAPPEN
It isn't some magical process on automatic. The mother's body carefully, deliberately LEECHES OFF ITSELF to BUILD PIECE BY PIECE each stage of fetal development ending in a brain.
Outside the womb, it won't just die, it will NEVER BE, because it WON'T BE BUILT.
And the fact that you are this resistant to basic explanation shows your right to speak on this subject with any illusion of competence or understanding to be EXACTLY ZERO.
I find this quote especially telling. To my knowledge, the only people still using the word "co-eds" are porn producers. Like in "Sexy Co-eds Gone Wild XIV" or something of the like.
What do you mean "So what"? How can you possibly think that piece of information is irrelevant. There will be a person.
So, what? There isn't a person.
I have also never said that a fetus should be "Given priority over" anyone. If the woman would die, or has significant reason otherwise to have an abortion, then her rights take precedence. If she does not, the those of the potential person that the fetus will become do.
BULLSHIT!
Your entire point is that women should be subordinated to fetuses. That is the entirety of your positions.
No. It is your "points," such as they are, that serve to demonize women who choose abortion. It is your viewpoint that makes you a bad person, not merely the words you choose to express that viewpoint.
Your first mistake here is in believing that there is another "person" to take into consideration. Except in the last weeks of pregnancy, not coincidentally when doctors no longer offer abortion except to preserve the health of the mother, there is no person home except the woman.
Since there is not yet a second person who exists, there is no one who we can give moral consideration to. We can only consider the interests of organisms which currently or previously have had some awareness -- which requires a mind, which requires a brain -- because an organism which has not yet had awareness is necessarily an organism which has not yet had interests. Since there is no second person with interests we can consider, we simply can not give moral consideration to a pre-aware fetus. There are no interests to consider.
In order for you to believe that a "potential person" who does not yet physically exist has interests for us to consider, you must believe in supernaturalism. You either believe in teleology, by which the future reaches back in time to impart meaning to the present, or you believe in souls which can be conscious of a fetus's interests before the brain can be conscious of them.
You are therefore a supernaturalist. Since you specifically protested too much that you don't believe in souls, I'm leaning to the explanation that you apparently do believe in souls. Although considering the entirety of your thinking, including your invocation of potential, it appears you believe in both souls and teleology.
Observe further incoherence:
You can't accept that anyone's right to anything else overrides soul-magic, except when it does because exceptions should be allowed when someone you empathize with needs an abortion.
I think you're a woo-lover who believes in fetal ghosts. Take that for what you will.
Shplane, there is a theory that if you sound stupid, you should shut up. You should shut up. You sound stupid. You are not rational. You don't read and respond with substance to our posts. You are just like Fucky, an stupid idjit troll. For example:
you show yourself to be liar. That is what happens when a woman must carry a fetus to term. There cannot be any other practical interpretation. You do give the fetus priority over the woman.
Grow up troll, in both age and mental maturity
Shplane is the kind of guy that would imprison women for miscarrying or delivering a stillborn child. Eh, he hates us all. If he didn't, he wouldn't equate our lives to those of microscopic clumps of cells.
But that's all we're worth to him, so we don't matter.
@158
Oh boo fucking hoo.
We're supposed to cheer that you believe a woman should get out of being raped and enslaved for nine months by a concept if it'll cause her death?
Because we're mean when you inherently dismiss a woman's right to bodily autonomy?
Fine.
I'll do so as long as you agree that I have the right to grow people organs in your colon without your consent because the right to save people trumps your right to an unobstructed asshole.
Gee I wonder why dismissing the basic humanity of women and demanding their second-class citizenship to an unformed clump of cells because you're too stupid to bother learning biology is at all triggering hostile responses from free-thinking women.
I know, we must all be on our periods.
Schplane #141,
So if the pregnancy is sufficiently inconvenient for the woman, she should have the right to abort.
So if there is another option (the fetus can survive outside the mother's womb), the woman should be allowed to ask for this other option, otherwise she should have a right to abort.
Good ! You've made progress.
It follows that you believe if one woman could be forced into childbirth against her will, in order to allow two brainless embryos to be born, this would be preferable.
Well, consider what this means.
You believe that brainless lumps of flesh without interests deserve as much moral consideration as already-born women who have memories and dreams, relationships and friends, children who love and rely on them, hopes and ambitions, favorite songs, stories to tell, a stated preference for living, a kinship with the world, something to lose.
You believe that women deserve no more consideration than empty, brainless, mindless, soulless lumps.
You believe that women deserve no more consideration than does a tumor.
You are therefore anti-woman. You can not be pro-woman if you believe that women are not worth more than mindless lumps. If you believe that women are worth no more than mindless lumps, you are therefore anti-woman.
On the contrary, it's apparent that you are not reading for comprehension.
Explain what Wowbagger is saying at #156. I want to see if you can grasp it.
there is no person home except the woman.
It's hard to get to that point when folks don't see women as fully human in the first place. The drawing false equivalencies between blobs of cells that might become people and actually living, breathing, feeling, thinking human beings gives away the game.
Anti-choice = anti-woman
It really is that simple.
Shplane is the kind of guy that would imprison women for miscarrying or delivering a stillborn child
Just like the Utah legislature.
http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/blog/2010/02/19/utah-passes-bill-that-cha…
# 166 So if the pregnancy is sufficiently inconvenient for the woman as she determines it to be, she should have the right to abort.
Someone take that man's shovel away
Someone take that man's shovel away
Looks like he ran away with it.
Shplane,
Pregnancy is
not
just
inconvenient
you
fucking
twit.
So will the sperm. Difference, please?
Shplane, would you willingly run into a burning IVF clinic and sacrifice yourself to save a boxful of frozen embryos? If there were 10 embryos in the box? A hundred? Two hundred? Aren't two hundred potential lives worth more than the single one of yours?
@173
Ran away?
I suspect we should call down the hole, he might have hit China.
Ok, apparently I have to split this into two, because I don't know the secret runaround to multiple link moderation.
Shplane,
Pregnancy is
not
just
inconvenient
Shplane, you
fucking
twit.
So will the sperm. Difference, please?
Shplane, would you willingly run into a burning IVF clinic and sacrifice yourself to save a boxful of frozen embryos? If there were 10 embryos in the box? A hundred? Two hundred? Aren't two hundred potential lives worth more than the single one of yours?
Shplane, would you willingly run into a burning IVF clinic and sacrifice yourself to save a boxful of frozen embryos? If there were 10 embryos in the box? A hundred? Two hundred? Aren't two hundred potential lives worth more than the single one of yours?
Nah, he'd shove a girlfriend in to do it. After all, her life is worth less than those embryos. (And men's lives are worth more than EVERYONE'S!)
The obvious difference is that the death of an already-born person with a mind deprives that actually-existing person of the life that they already knew. All people with minds have interests, and nearly all of them have memories. This is a person who has something to lose, and is almost certainly aware at some level that they have something to lose.
On the other hand, brainless embryos can not 'know' what 'they' are 'losing'. There's nothing to lose and there's no one to lose it.
Obviously these situations are very different in their moral significance. How could you possibly think that losing the life you've known and loved is at all comparable to never knowing anything in the first place?
It's strange that you didn't think of that, and stranger that you appear unable to even understand it.
You've missed opportunities in your life, and the ones you knew you missed probably stung a bit to think about. It does suck to know that you screwed up, and know exactly what otherwise might have been. But do you even bother wondering about all the missed opportunities you never even noticed? If you'd returned that library book at a different time, you'd have run into a new potential romantic interest. That sort of thing. There have been millions of unknown missed opportunities in your short life already. Do they bother you at all? Do they bother you nearly as much as the opportunities you consciously watched yourself miss? They don't, of course. They don't seriously bother anyone. So you can see, unequivocally, that knowing what you have to lose is much more painful than never knowing any different.
Of course in the case of the fetus, it can't know anything, and so can't lose anything.
Dude, frozen embryos is not the preferred nomenclature. Snowflakes, please
The World Health Organization in recent years conducted a comprehensive study of abortion rates in nations around the world.
Their findings were extremely consistent, allowing me to simplify greatly here without sacrificing accuracy:
In nations where abortion is illegal, the rate of abortions performed was equal to the rate in nations where abortion is legal. In other words, no matter whether abortion is legal or illegal, the same number of fetuses get killed. Procuring abortions is so important to women who need them, that the possibility of jail time is no impediment. And that makes sense, because the rational person weighing her options can see that the possibility of imprisonment (or death; see next paragraph) is preferable to the certainty of unwanted childbirth and childrearing.
That was the first finding. Illegality does not reduce the number of fetuses being killed.
However, in nations where abortion is illegal, more women die during and after the procedure. That also makes sense. Of course back-alley abortions are going to be more dangerous than abortions in a hospital or clinic with well-trained staff under minimal pressure.
Summary: outlawing abortion does not reduce the number of fetuses being killed, but it does increase the number of women being killed.
Now tell me, Shplane, if you understood what I just said. And if you did understand it, then tell me how the anti-choice stance can be considered anything but objectively anti-women.
MAJeff #171,
thanks for making that clearer.
I'd think that it's self-evident that only the pregnant woman can make that determination, but with people like Schplane around, it's always safer to make it clear.
negentropyeater,
No worries. I agree that it should be self evident, but when dealing with people who refuse, or are unable, to view women as autonomous ethical agents more specificity is indeed required. On this issue, I guess I keep coming back to once principle: trust women.
strange gods, that just proves that women are evil and will resort to breaking the law just because they want to punish the poor wee babies so much, so obviously the solution is to make the laws even more punitive, and maybe incarcerate all pregnant women so they don't do anything stupid while they're pregnant. If they have good enough behavior while they're in the Life Fulfillment Center
No shit. Welcome to Gilead. I'm getting to the point where I hope my daughter (now 17) will find a way to make her life in a more civilized country.
The problem is evidently not that Schplane doesn't see women as fully human, but that he sees fetus as fully human.
IMHO arguing about that is a big waste of time. You can't convince someone who doesn't accept that a fetus isn't fully human.
Wowbagger's argument #156, and Judith Jarvis Thomson's violinist thought experiment (see #138) do not require one to consider whether the fetus is fully human or not : the fetus might be fully human and have a right to life, but it doesn't have the right to use the pregnant women's body against her will.
negentropyeater - those are the arguments that really turned me around into full pro-choice, when I was still a nascent rationalist.(I used to be a fundie, but I got better.) No, no one should have to donate an organ if they don't want to. No, no one should have to sacrifice themselves if they don't want to. If they do, it's slavery, full stop.
Then going through two pregnancies convinced me that no, it is NOT a "temporary inconvenience", and it is nothing I would even wish on someone who didn't want to do it, much less force on them.
@ #180 -
Strange gods, a local anti-abortion group has billboards up with, "Abortion stops a beating heart". I have a dream of one day winning the lottery and using part of the funds to put up my own billboards next to theirs. Mine will have a picture of a coat hanger and the words, "Back alley abortions often stop two".
And for Shplain--a traffic jam is an "inconvenience". A burned out lightbulb? Inconvenience. Pregnancy? Much more than an "inconvenience". According to WHO stats, every minute at least one woman dies from complications of pregnancy or while in childbirth. That's 529,000 women a year. For comparison, that's more than 10 times the entire population of my county. For every one woman that dies, 20 (that's 20) more "suffer injury, infection or disease – approximately 10 million women each year." That would be the same as if you wiped out the entire population of my state 1.5 times. That's one hell of a definition of "inconvenience" you've got going there.
should be simple, when you get it :
Nobody has the right to use someone else's body against his/her will.
Not even a fetus.
Really, "Prolife" people are just nearsighted douches. They refuse to see a whole picture.
I been having zomg internet serious business arguments lately over twitter and really, their brains stop at "It's a person!" and "They're blessings!" or "The placenta is their own spaceship!" (wtf?) Oh and they love to tout that abortion kills women. Like every medical procedure kills someone sometimes, but hey, SPECIFICALLY, ABORTION KILLS YOU.
And pregnancy is just a minor inconvenience. I mean really, put the little bugger for adoption and forget it ever happened. I mean, you just didn't have to spread your legs you awful murderous whore.
...so I came to the conclusion there's just no waking up these mysoginist asses.
Wow. Apparently he's a dipshit AND a liar.
I seriously know people who would say that, Carlie, except they'd reach for woman=bitch=selfish instead of woman=evil=hurtbaby.
Fuck, but it doesn't even surprise me.
Well, it's inconvenient for him, because then there are fewer women around to get him a sammich.
I have also never said that a fetus should be "Given priority over" anyone.
Hold this statement in your mind.
If the woman would die, or has significant reason otherwise to have an abortion, then her rights take precedence.
How generous of you. But every pregnancy may end in death. Which ones are high enough risk to "deserve" the right to abortion in your mind? Twice the average risk? Ten times? 100% mortality only?
If she does not, the those of the potential person that the fetus will become do.
Arguing with pro-lifers is like arguing with Willie Lowman: They just can't keep from contradicting themselves every second sentence. You said, above, that you never said fetus' rights should take precedence over anyone else's rights. Now you say that they do. Take a position and stick to it. Does the fetus have more rights than the woman hosting it or not?
We did it for Comrade Walton, actually. I can find the old links if you want to see. I would delight in embarrassing him by dragging out them out, like photos of him learning to walk as a wee little baby pro-choicer.
And it may not change Shplane's mind, but he's stumbling all around instead of simply addressing the arguments, and I want to see if he falls and hurts his brain.
I like it.
How could we tell if his brain suffered any further injury ?
You know, Shplane, I'll elaborate a little because I think you really might be close to halfway there.
The reason your stance is greeted with such vituperative condescension is that you are refusing to acknowledge the actual effects your position causes to women. That is why you are being called misogynistic. You (and everyone who argues as you do) like to live in a philosophical, theoretical world where one might postulate that an embryo might have some similarities with a full-grown person and therefore might have some basis in being granted some of the same legal and moral rights by virtue of such potential personhood.
But the rest of us? We live in the actual world where the direct result of that kind of thinking kills women. It kills them, it maims them, and as the link MAJeff provided about Utah, it takes away all of their rights as actual persons to govern their own lives. For anyone who actually cares about human suffering and dignity, that is too high a price to pay for a thought experiment. If you can't see that ensuring that women are treated as fully human citizens the way men already are, then you are indeed a misogynist.
If you can't see that ensuring that women are treated as fully human citizens the way men already are, then you are indeed a misogynist.
Just needed to be restated.
@194: I agree. And even if you can't convince the person who is arguing ridiculously, you might be able to reach people who haven't given the issue much thought but think that abortion sounds kind of icky and therefore would tend to vote for restrictions. Especially restrictions that sound reasonable if you don't know much about the issue like the "partial birth" ban or parental notification.
Wow - Shplane ran into the same 'mob' I did when I made posts about abortion rights. Of course, unlike him, I was willing to listen to you all and admit that most of my ignorance came from the fact that I was a Fundie Christian until late last year. Course, you all straightened me out, thanks for that by the way.
As for Bob Marshall, he doesn't know his ass from his face. PP gives so much more to the community than abortions. I like the guy in the center of the screen, sitting down. You can tell how incredibly uncomfortable Assclown's words are making him.
He's sounding his own death knell, I hope. If he somehow magically gets reelected, it's a sad state of affairs for the state of Virginia. How Americans let their rights and laws be dictated by fundamentalist retards is completely beyond my understanding.
Who wants to move to Japan with me?
Frankosaurus #54: "I did look it up on google, didn't find anything."
Try searching for "contraceptives" instead of "baby stoppers."
Pfft - borked my take-home statement. And I'm not sure how to fix it, since the syntax is so garbled. Lemme try again.
If you can't see that women must be treated as fully human citizens the way men already are, then you are indeed a misogynist.
Do you reckon Frankosaurus used normal Google and not Google Scholar ?
@Kevin: No thanks! I like my cities free of giant robots and nuclear tentacle monsters.
Oh and I like my streets with streetnames.
@Michelle R (204):
Giant robots and nuclear tentacle monsters versus fundie idiots trying to turn the country into 'Godville.'
Hard choice, really.
I have to agree with Cerberus that this was an incredibly stupid thing to say, and you are obviously painfully ignorant about the facts around this topic.
We are arguing hard scientific fact. It is a scientific fact that an embryo does not have a brain, thus does not have a mind, thus does not have interests.
The only way you've tried to introduce "philosophy" to the discussion was through teleology and soul magic, both from the theists' philosophy camp.
And the conclusion you come to is not moderate. The compromise of Roe v Wade was moderate. You are an extremist in comparison.
Your conclusion is morally abhorrent, too. One can look at the various philosophies of government and come to the conclusions of a racist conservative like Francosaurus, but it doesn't mean that this conclusion is not morally abhorrent just because he's spent an unhealthy time thinking about it.
The value you place on women is exactly as Carlie outlines at #197. And it makes you anti-woman.
I'd say the smell from this one indicates it goes all the way to glass tables.
@My own 205:
Besides, you're safe from tentacle monsters unless you wear a schoolgirl uniform.
Shplane @ about 145:
Interesting, this. Look up Fritz Goro and 2001, remember that "space baby" scene from the movie? The whole concept came from a photo by Fritz Goro, a science photographer, of a researcher working on an artificial womb. You know, the thing that might have saved many a desired miscarried baby. Turns out the pro-lifers were the ones who shut him down after seeing the photo in "Life" magazine. Oh, the layers of rich, rich irony.
Apparently it isn't really the fetus they are out to save: it is all about the subordination of women.
You can send a message by donating $13 to the Prince William Democrats in our continuing effort to change our representation in Richmond. We will not give up!
Bob Marshall is an embarrassment to Prince William and Virginia. Please donate $13 to the the PW Dems to help us unseat this anti everything person.
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bruce roemmelt, PWC Dems Vice Chair
I do not understand this cognitive dissonance. Why do you draw the line at "When the child would be able to survive outside the womb"? Why is that a relevant factor?
This is the thing I love. In Shplane's view, women are little more than disembodied wombs. The fact that the uterus happens to be inside a woman is, apparently, completely irrelevant. Women don't figure into a world in which sperm magic reigns supreme.
@Kevin #206: Wearing regular clothes makes me SAFER but not 100% safe. You know, I saw it in hentai, they just walk right on you and get it on.
Mind you I have yet to meet any catgirls or women with giganormous portable slushy milk tanks...
So, two dudes who will never ever ever EVAR have to deal with an unwanted pregnancy feel that they get to tell the rest of us that abortion is wrong and PP services don't amount to shit. I love it.
Here's my view: your "morality" (or lack thereof) does not trump my right to be an equal participant in society. There is no way for a woman to achieve and hold equality unless she has control over her reproductive choices.
And now it is time for me to actually enjoy my snow day. Ten inches and counting! I think it's time for a snowball fight with the neighbors.
I saw that! It was nice to read your thoughts in transition, so thanks for that. I thought about adding something in praise of selfishness and frivolity, but I wasn't sure if you were still reading the thread by the rather late point that I found it.
Besides, children who have been born can live outside of the womb without the support of their parents if they are raised by animals.
And yet, Shplane, you were the one who started those hypotheticals:
See, you asserted that because you enjoy existing, we should all try to bring non-existent people into existence. But these non-existent people are hypothetical. Their desires, for being or anything else, are hypothetical. Their "right to exist" is hypothetical. You compared yourself, a real person, to hypothetical people. And then you took what you learned about yourself and applied it directly to hypothetical people.
This was stupid soul magic when you did it, but now it's blatant hypocrisy when you're telling other people that hypotheticals are irrelevant. By any honest interpretation of your latter stance, everything you've said so far in this thread was irrelevant.
@Michelle R (212):
Unfortunately, neither have I. Where are all these catgirls, anyway? I wouldn't mind a cuddly cute girl like that...
Hmm, maybe they're all in Japan?
@strange gods (214):
I went back and read it a couple days afterward, noted a few statements, but wasn't responding. I pretty much said everything that I could have said about it.
Jadehawk, OM @ # 63: ... teenage pregnancies are a proxy for unwanted pregnancies, because otherwise statistics for them are a wee bit hard to come by.
Well, not really. Many teens want to become pregnant, mostly because they see motherhood as the gateway to adult status.
And lots of research on unintended pregnancy has been published (both links pdf).
There are at least two responses to this.
In the first, the violinist is a dwarf. You can carry him around in a sling on your torso, and go about the rest of your business. Now you're not confined to a hospital bed; you can walk like a pregnant woman. It's still obvious that the violinist has no inherent right to utilize your body in this way, and it is entirely your choice to disconnect him at any time.
In the second, we take your affirmation of the 'inconvenience' of pregnancy to mean that you must allow an equivalent inconvenience to be done to you against your will. And this is going to be a monumental inconvenience. I get to leach your bones! Plus I get to hang out with you constantly, punch and kick you whenever I please. You have to feed me every time you eat, and I get to eat as much as I want before I let you have any. Sound tolerable so far? If you ever get sick of it and try to call the police on me for trespassing in your house, you'll be charged with a crime instead of me. You do not get to disagree or choose differently. You have no right to control your own body when I depend upon you.
This latter case sounds silly, but it's illustrative of what you just assented to. You declared that women should be enslaved by the state as incubators for forced childbirth, so you declared that humans do not own their own bodies and do not get to escape slavery if the state deems their enslavement necessary to preserve another's life.
Now, you can get away from the result that I get to own your body and use you as I please, but it will require you affirming that the state does not have the right to enslave a person for the purpose of saving another person's life.
Wow, you really are stupid. Do you understand what a thought experiment is? In this sort of comparison, there needs to be very close congruence between the two examples. So since there's no other way to preserve a fetus than to keep it attached to its host, we have to similarly constrain the violinist. Otherwise there's no potential for the hypothetical case, constrained only by imagination, to provide insight into the real case, constrained by reality. Some idiot would just come along and say "there are myriad other ways in which to cure the violinist."
While you amuse yourself with irrelevant bullshit, real women's lives are being ruined because they can't afford to miss work and take the bus halfway across the state to reach the single abortion clinic in the capital, listen to the doctor give the legislature-mandated recital of lies and distortions about post-abortion health, take the bus back home, wait several days to pass the mandatory waiting period, take another day off from work, take the bus back to the capital, and then pay again for the actual abortion. Such runarounds are allowed to continue precisely because people like you are unwilling to think clearly and rationally about what's really happening, and you want to treat this as a game.
Because at that point, it isn't dependant on its mother anymore.
Until that point, it is consuming ressources from it's host with moderate to severe side-effects and risks (look up the possible maternal complications of pregnancy to have a better understanding of the risks). The risks and side effects compare quite strikingly with live organ donation, and are pretty much worse than organ donation upon death.
As a society, we don't make the latter compulsory, because we just can't impose risks and side effects on an healthy person to save a sick person without the healthy person's informed consent. We don't even enforce mandatory organ donation upon death, thus making the comfort of surviving family more important than the survival of a real-life person!
A foetus is a person-to-be which is dependant upon the organs of its mother, and upon the mother being submitted to drastic hormonal changes which can have side-effects just as bad and sometimes worse than many drugs.
I repeat : a pregancy is not a minor inconvenience, it is a high-risk endeavor, no matter how many women will insist that it is "natural". We as a species have one of the highest rate of complications in pregnancy - it's not upon the doctor's whims that human pregnancies are so medicalized, but because of very high risks. Many of us here would not be alive or would be orphans if our mother's pregnancy had not been followed closely by doctor.
Even if the risks are made less important by modern medicine, the point is that there are still risks (of death and disability), and you're still forcing an healthy person to take them.
On what criteria then would you force a woman to take such risks and agree to such side-effects if you would refuse to enforce live organ donation or mandatory drug testing ?
Exactly. As I said, we're in the real world. Someone who will never have to worry about getting pregnant can afford to treat this as a game or thought experiment or "just wondering", but those of us with fertile uteri (and those who care about those with fertile uteri) can't, and we have no respect for those who can view taking away the rights of others as simply an unfortunate side-effect of their posturing.
As a Republican, or at least one of the wackos among them, his "target audience" as the attention span of a field mouse being chased by imaginary owls, and, unless someone, like Olberman or others, **remind them** that their glorious leader **did** say such things, and its not a misquote, will never remember, accept, or recognize, how big of an idiot he actually is.
Most people who are against abortion are on religious grounds. However, I do know an atheist who is antiabortion. Makes no sense to me why he draws the line at conception.
The question is where to draw lines. We only gradually become human, become conscious of ourselves. Arguably it isn't until after we are born. But we are not going to start killing babies! So we draw the line somewhere before birth, keeping in mind that the woman who is carrying the child is the one bearing a huge burden when we draw the line for her.
For the religious, I think some think that the moment the sperm and egg join brings a "soul" into the body and any human tampering at that point is sinful. (It is fine if god does it because we are all god's property, e.g., "god called him back home") Because this is a religious position and is without any scientific support an absolute ban on abortion from conception should not be legislated. To say fertilized egg is human is way too out there.
Justice Brennen for the Supreme Court didn't do a bad job of drawing the lines.
Go Bob! Tell it like it is! It's driving the leftist liberal abortoholics over the edge.
Libs tolerate anything but a criticism of liberalism, showing their hypocrisy of which they accuse good men like Marshall.
Want to see a sicko? How about the bolshevik leftist baby killer views of our Kenyan-born president, Barack HUSSEIN Obama?
http://www.bornalivetruth.org/default.aspx
http://www.lifenews.com/obamaabortionrecord.html
@224:
Wow... It's like a snapshot into idiocy.
An anti-choice, 'liberals=socialist' truther.
How about the bolshevik leftist baby killer views of our Kenyan-born president, Barack HUSSEIN Obama?
Orly Taitz, is that you?
- You don't know what bolshevik means.
- You don't know what leftist means.
- You don't know what baby means.
- You don't know what killer means.
- You don't know what citizen means.
Also, your fascination with the middle name is very telling.
I don't tolerate you, either, shit bitch.
@OurDeadSelves:
Now I'm thinking about PowerThirst.
"Because this is a religious position and is without any scientific support "
Hell, it's not even biblically supported.
Kevin:
This? I'm totally lost.
(Although TURBOPUNS is totally going to be the name of my avant-guarde comedy troupe.)
@OurDeadSelves (230):
Yeah - probably that, one of the 'new flavors' in the second video is 'FizzBitch.' Your insult just kinda brought that to mind.
Bolshevik comes from bol'shinstvo which means majority, so at least the idiot stuv got that right...
No one has accused Marshall btw - PZ has only rapported the actual words he said, and some people felt the need to vent their frustration at them.
In short:
Aiiiiiiii!!! The stupid! It burns!
Hmm, late to the thread, but it sounds to me like with all this talk of 'potential lives not lived' Shplane is concerned about the man on the stairs:
"As I was going up the stairs, I saw a man who wasn't there. He wasn't there again today, gee I wish he'd go away." - William Hughes Mearns
Bolshevik comes from bol'shinstvo which means majority, so at least the idiot stuv got that right...
Wait, I'm an idiot because I'm right?
Idiot stuv: Yup - because I bet my hairy ass that you didn't use the word in that meaning.
@Thebear (235):
Yahooname != Stuv
The still picture at the start of that clip (i.e., when it's not running) reminds me of something that's puzzled me for a while. When a US politician gives a press conference, who are all the people standing with him/her at the podium? What do they do? Would it hurt to have just one or two and the rest to get back to work? I hope it doesn't catch on here.
ouch - sorry Stuv - my bad.
Thanks Kevin
First, let me say - YiPPie! I was able to make an account. After a solid year of a few minutes here and there as time permitted I have a functional account. Good things though seem to never last.
I do not see what all the fuss is about. We have a typical piece of shit theist ranting from the pulpit. Like many of your piece of shit theists this one happens to be an elected official of the USA. It is really nothing new. Actually, there are several well written books on the topic. I hate to bring bad news but the vast majority of the world are theists. They openly state, rightfully so if their god is real, they govern by their gods law and will not that of the people. Until theism is destroyed, even that of your mom/dad or loving sister such reports are disgusting but should not be shocking. I do not think I like this topic much and will not be returning, sorry.
-----
"If Jesus touched your heart, show me on the doll where else he touched you."
-Tony
Xenithrys @237
I think mostly the crowd of supporters is just a cue for the audience so they know when to laugh, cheer, boo, threaten or whatever else the politician happens to want. And to give him some of the immunity of popularity - most people are reluctant to criticize popular people.
On one occasion, the "supporters" included about 30 young children, specifically brought in by Tom Reynolds to embarass reporters away from asking pointed questions about Mark Foley's sex scandal. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o946ObydUO8&eurl=
@Anti-Theist-317 (239):
He's not ranting from the pulpit. He's ranting from a Planned Parenthood press conference.
You're missing his (rather trivial) point. Penises and vaginas evolved for sexual intercourse (and in the case of penises, uriniation as well). Obviously an individual human doesn't have to use his or her organs for that purpose, but that is in fact what they are "for", to the extent that anything in nature is "for" anything.
Nah, even then they would deny he ever said it. Most of them would deny he ever said it while watching a video of him saying it.
truthspeaker, you're missing the point of these responses, and you're making the same mistake as Yahoo guy did, by conflating purpose and function.
Yeah, "to the extent that anything in nature is 'for' anything," but nothing in nature is 'for' anything, because nature does not design purposes at all, only functions. And that was the point, that 'the extent' is zero.
That was delightful, glowball.
I don't know what to be more offended by... his disgusting comments about children with disabilities/the parents of children with disabilities, or the equally as disgusting claim that raped women, basically, gotta live with it. "Sorry, sweety, but your daddy was a convicted rapist who scarred just as many little girls as your mommy". Ya, that will do WONDERS for his/her self-esteem...
As a person with Asperger's, and who has a precious little cousin with both severe autism AND cerebral palsy - whose mother had NO abortions - I think I'll be more offended by this conservative scumbag. As if people like this actually GIVE a rats ass about kids, aside from treating them as "property". People who don't believe science works shouldn't use junk science (or even ACTUAL science) to support their nonsense claims.
If one truly considers autism a disability, then why is it that the birth rate is approximately 1 out of every 150 individuals born will have an Autism Spectrum Disorder. And what about Down syndrome, Fragile X, FASDs, Prader-Willi, or even physical handicaps? What about the other disabilities I did NOT mention? Are you saying (or alluding) that every one - or most- of their mothers were abortion freaks?
Makes me glad that backwards hooligans like this guy are useless, powerless nutjobs in Canada... to all my fellow American free-thinkers, you have my sympathy.
strange gods at 142
Great work, proud of you. No sulking at all. A+ for effort, but passion won't save you. you completely missed his point.
Let me try to give you some direction. And I take this from the footnote alone, having not read the context in which it was placed.
He roots part (not all) of the left libertarian fascination with open borders in their commitment to equality. What is the root of this equality? As you say, a fairly condescending apprehension of an "arrested" juvenile attitude about making everyone feel happy and included. So much for structure of the argument about "motivations". You are right to question how he argues this, making statistical claims without any numbers to back this up (an error you ironically make yourself in your counter thesis), but you neglect the principle invoked, and that is THE MEANS by which the ideal is realized. His critique is ultimately levelled at those who would "[use] the power of the central state to impose non-discrimination or "civil rights" statutes on society." Yes, he condescends their motives, and maybe he is off the mark with the actual content of the morality the left liberals want to infuse in social policy. Fine, have it your way, it's about solidarity and empowerment of class. But this is irrelevant. As an economist, recognize his interest: he plays up financial cost of policing non-discriminatory practices with the added infusion of workers of different cultures and backgrounds. This is what is at stake for him, in addition to the corresponding deprivations of his own conception of the effects of individual liberty under the thumb of the positive law. The gist of the assertion you will need to rebut is that there is nothing fundamental about the intermixture of cultures and peoples themselves that creates added strain on financial allocations or the sacrificing of individual liberty. How will you prove that?
Yet, I suspect you just disregard the things he considers at stake. Money? Big deal. Liberty? that's just code for privilege. you call him a fuckwit, he tells you to grow up (the footnote is, afterall, a glorified jab at opponents). If you really want to take him to task, you have to meet him on his own terms - to point out the flaws (not gripes) with his presupposition of the friction inherent between cultures that produces costs. If you want to see his reasons for maintaining this presupposition in a footnote (aside from the obvious that a footnote is by definition not a treatise) you will have to look in his other writings where he may have fuller support. That's if you want to analyze things properly, rather than just vent.
Thanks for playing. Should we expect round 2?
@132 you wrote
I agree with most of what you said, other than that a potential person has no rights and thus does not matter. I can't help but find that, since not being born and dying both result in a person not experiencing, they are both situations that should be avoided. (snip)
Not being conceived results in a person not experiencing either. Logically, if your problem actually *is* "a 'person' not experiencing" then birth control is just as bad or worse.
Since you don't seem to be anti-birth control, it would seem that "a 'person' not experiencing" is not your real problem...so I kind of wonder what is.
In the meantime I cannot help but notice that you keep ignoring the woman. It's as if you thought of fetuses as floating peacefully around in little glass bubbles, sucking their tiny thumbs in the sunshine.
But the actual ugly fact is that fetuses by definition parasitize someone else's body to exist, drawing their nutrients from, and depositing their wastes into, her tissues. (Bleagh. No wonder she gets nauseated). As far as I'm concerned, there is a huge moral difference between a parasite and a non-parasite. And of course a person gets to say whether her body gets parasitized or not. It's just like sex; anyone gets to stop anytime he or she wants; it doesn't matter whether she or he said yes a minute ago--he or she is still free to say no now, and "Meh, I just don't feel like it anymore" is a perfectly good reason.
I just don't see how "you must submit to parasitization" can possibly be considered to be any kind of moderate position.
When you consider that the parasitization is of a completely human person, for the benefit of something that is, at the time most abortions occur, as mindless as a slug in the garden, it's even harder to see that as a moderate position.
And while I'm sure it's completely beside the point, a matter of pure and entirely disinterested coincidence, I'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest that you are of the gender that can never be enslaved to a fetus. Which turns out not to be beside the point, actually, because I don't doubt it's a lot easier to be philosophical about enslavement and parasitization when you know it will never happen to you.
Whereas I belong to the gender that sees it from both sides. Like you, I was once a fetus and can sympathize with fetuses to the extent they deserve it. But unlike you, I could be enslaved to vomit my way through pregnancy and scream my way through labor for the benefit of an uninvited fetus.
Seeing it from both sides, I can more easily take a moderate position. And do.
Was giving them the benefit of false doubt, sort of like false hope, which, similarly, is pretty useless, but makes them all feel better.
Frankosaurus: Really? Really? Am I seeing what I think I'm seeing? You expect a refutation of this:
Really? I can refute that rather easily. A monoculture is more vulnerable to effects of change, even very slight ones. That goes for a society, a population of bacteria, a large aggregate of potatoes grown from continued budding.
I give you the great potato famine as an example that while a monoculture might seem like some great paradigm, it is in fact a much more vulnerable and precarious situation than most are willing to admit. A slight change in an environment with little variation in a monoculutre can be catastrophic.
The economy of scale is not paramount: with it comes the cost of committed resources. One can turn a rowboat more easily than a frigate: there is no such thing as "too big to fail." Failure becomes more catastrophic with increases in commitment. Ever hear of "The bigger they are..." It's a truism for a reason.
In the world of ideas, a monoculture leaves little option to dismantling the current status quo without horribly violent overthrow. Which is actually why most people should really, really fear an uneducated populace. It's great for creating a monoculture, but a monoculture is unstable.
Now, please enlighten me to the "costs" of a lack of xenophobia. I do hope you use examples including such turns of phrase as "furiners" and "immgrants" and "they took our jobs!", since they do provide colorful variation from civilized discourse.
onethird-man, things to reflect upon
1) potatoes aren't humans
2) a basic conservative rejection of equality is that it is unstable, or "monocultural" in your terms. This would be what Hoppe is driving at.
If the term "culture" I used before is throwing you off, feel free to replace with "peoples".
1) potatoes aren't humans
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IK2hbBL9Ubs&feature=fvw
onethird-man, you're right but that's for people who know about evolution and the value of diversity that derives from it... But this guy even confounds equality of rights and being the same.
Of course facts support obviously what you say. Highly stratified, unequal societies are bad just as monocultural ones. And often the same as very bad as relatively recent experiments have proven. And that's just what the dinosaur wants. One god, nation, culture, moral and so on. And with the powerful fucking up the rest. Really the worst type of society for the worst type of individuals.
That's not even conservatism, it's just totalitarism. And it does not work. But then try to convince a creationist... That's the same.
And while this guy whines, I'm enjoying a beautiful diverse and plural blend of cultures that is not even "mine". "Vive la différence" :-)
Thanks for telling me what I want. That's not what is the issue at all. Do yourself a favour and read what Hoppe wrote again. Where does he say he is against diversity? That's just the natural product of people being different from each other. What he is against is MANDATED DIVERSITY. State power, that's the problem. So why would a person who is critical of using the state as an instrument to realize social objectives think the issue is just about which objectives are realized? And have you not seen his fierce admonitions against big conservatism and the Buchanan brigade?? I want to hear your answer to this. Or do you still hold that favouring a limited state is "totalitarian."
Like i say, hoppe isn't perfect, but all I've seen so far is stone throwing.
good. how are you enjoying it? Anything really different about how you organize your life, like weaving in and out of cultures as you find them, or is it more of a special attitude that you hold and movies you watch.
Sorry if this is kinda late, or if this may have been addressed already.
So I've been keeping up with most of the dialogue regarding Shplane's comments on the previous Bob Marshall post and this one (up until about comment 185). I don't think Shplane is a troll, but I do think that s/he hasn't really thought his/her stance all the way through. I think s/he could be reasoned with and I don't think s/he's intentionally angering people.(I'm also addressing this to him/her, so I hope s/he comes back to read this.)
First, you says you're not 100% pro-choice; and by that it seems you mean: getting an abortion whenever for whatever reason. I don't think ANY of the pro-choicers support that. I think most pro-choicers would rather an abortion not be the default/only answer to unwanted pregnancies(eg. consider adoption), but that the option is on the table. And then, there are limits to when legal abortions are done (first trimester). As someone else said, late term abortions are very rare, and done to save the life of the mother.
Secondly: not getting abortions for frivolous reasons. Having a kid is a life changing event, so how can deciding to have a kid or not be frivolous?
Thirdly: depriving someone of potential life. Even if we could turn every blastocyst into a person without forcing the woman to carry it to term and raise it, should we(would we)? I mean, if the government could somehow take all the unwanted fetuses and grow them in test tubes or something, should we do that? WHO would raise them (spend all the money on food, clothes, shelter, education, etc.)?
Fourthly: personhood of fetus. I don't think you have any reason to think that the fetus is a person, other than your feelings. As others have argued (more clearly and eloquently) earlier, there's nothing at that stage that resembles a human, they're simply a collection of cells.
Anyway, I hope I've added to the discussion.