Redux: Rape, Abortion, and "Personhood"

Tiassa,

I would please like you to cite where I have stated a fetus is a person! I have stated repeatedly on this thread that it is not a person and stated my reasons why (it is not an independent being capable of life on its own), and that a living women has the right to abort a fetus because of this: right to life for a potential person is of less value then control of body for a living person and that after much obstenant reluctance got even Bell to stated rationally why abortion should be legal. But personhood and non-personhood are not decriet, there is the possbility of semi-personhood and a gradient between personhood of some rights but not all rights of a person. We grant animals some rights for example, just as we grant children some but not all rights of a full person. Now in the case of Marlise Munoz we have something very diffrent then the standard abortion issue, in this case we do not have a women, we have a corpse with lesser rights then a person (we all agree, right?). The arguement presented for termination have been fallacious or circumspect. For example the implication that just because bible-thumpers made the law and are siding with not terminating and are hateful irrational ignorant people therefor it not terminating is morally wrong, is completely fallacious, just as much as to point out Hitler was a vegitarian therefor vegitarianism is wrong. The arguement that the fetus is *garunteeably* deformed therefor should be terminated is cicumspect as it implies that healthy fetuses have more rights, somethig I'm sure the mentally and physically challanged people of the world take great offense in. The arguement that it is sexist is also circumspect because in this case we are not talking about the rights of a women but a corpse and the rights of corpses have been legally or via loopholes violated with examples both for 'former' men and women.

All I ask for (for useful discussion) a rational arguement for why or why not corpses have more rights than fetuses, for this case speically why Marlise family (claiming to be implimenting her wishes) have the right to terminate her body and the fetus inside. If it is trolling to ask for such arguement without fallacy, irrationinality, insults and appeals to emotion or comformity then so be it.

I beleive Capracus came closes to doing so, stating roughly that a fetus has no rights what so ever by federal mandate (Roe vs Wade) until viable. I'm inclined to agree, but technologically, viability of a fetus has been push back more and more, how do we determine viability and what rights does the fetus gain once is technically possible to remove it and grow it in an (artifical) incubator? Does that mean abortion after viability is technically possible should be illegal? And if we state that a fetus has no rights what so ever are there any other unpaltable ethical reprocussion? For example can a mother intentially mutilate her fetus, say a deaf mother that wants a deaf child, instead of aborting she has a surgical operation done to defean the fetus, that should be completely acceptable because the fetus has no rights what so ever. What if a mother wants to use her fetus for science, or even profit, completely allowable if the fetus has no rights what so ever. Is it trolling to ask we consider the ethical implications of our moral arguements for abortion?

 

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A lot of this could be cleared up with an ultrasound.

 

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Not really, it does nothing for the ethical question of rights for a deformed fetus verse a healthy fetus if any kind of fetus still has less rights then a corpse, and it brings up all the horrible ethical judgements on the handicap if we do make this our dividing line. Presently abortion is legal regardless if the fetus is deformed or not, regardless if rape occurred, etc, so these are of no consideration and thus no judgement against promiscuous women (not raped) and handicap people is being made, but we do prejudge a corpse, and the corpses don't complain.

Anyways why is the hospital not doing an ultrasound? is 20 months too soon, I don't think so (google shows ultra sounds are routinely done earlier). The hospital probably should if they are to determine if the fetus will be viable at all, maybe they have or will have before the 24 weeks point where they claim they will do a review to consider aaah something(?)

 

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Right. But if the fetus is brain dead as well a lot of the moral issues become a LOT simpler. (Even fetal heart rate monitoring will tell a lot about the level of function in the brain.)

Not at all; you can tell some basic fetal abnormalities (Down for example) and see activity when the fetus is active. No activity and no fetal heart rate variation would point strongly towards profound brain damage.

However:
1) they may have done the ultrasound; HIPPA might then prevent them from revealing the results (another moral question - does HIPPA apply to brain dead patients?)
2) the family may be refusing consent
3) the later the better when it comes to assessing activity so they may be waiting.

 

Yes I agree, but but I'm pretty sure the prolifers and the hospital don't care.

The heart beats without the brain.

All this is supposition, but it would be very interesting to know, of course we should not have known, this should have been a private matter, but now that this is public I think its in the public's interest to know because of the great legal repercussions this case could have.

I request that that the case of Marlise Monez be made into a new thread, that is of course unless this is consider the natural direction of this thread?

 

Once again, you fail to source your statement that the child in the womb is not viable, and once again you fail to acknowledge that there is contrary evidence about organ degeneration, etc as a result of being on a life support whilst bearing a child, and once again you fail to answer the question of what rights can be awarded to a dead person (as it heads down the murky path of being a dead pregnant person ... do the relatives get the right to abort? yada yada ...)

:shrug:


IOW you are just taking this thread even further afield of complicated ethical issues that already make the subject controversial
:shrug:

 

once again you fail to properly source that the child is not viable (since there is no one present in this discussion advocating the rights of a dead child over the rights of a dead mother ..... which would be kind of weird ..) and once again you fail to acknowledge that there is contrary evidence about organ degeneration (IOW citing one example where certain drugs * that you can't specify * didn't work in one scenario in no way addresses how -perhaps - different *specific* drugs in a different scenario *certainly* did) , etc as a result of being on a life support whilst bearing a child, and once again you fail to answer the question of what rights can be awarded to a dead person (as it heads down the murky path of being a dead pregnant person ... do the relatives get the right to abort? yada yada ...)

... and to just add one more, once again you *fail to assimilate* information.

*:shrug:*

 

Speaking of Useful

• #606: "No the personhood of the fetus must be disproved first."​

Now, you can try to get away with saying you were trying to make some sort of point, but that was addressed, and you didn't even bother responding to it.

• #644: "God what a horrible and misogynistic thing to say, god what hate fills these peoples hearts!"​

Your sarcasm is either genuine or mistaken on this count.

Yes, it is a horrible and misogynistic thing to say, to repeat an unfounded, unsupported assertion as the reason a woman is merely a baby factory.

One of the holes your pedantry has dug is that we're perfectly willing to believe this is the real you. After all, this is a bit long to be carrying on the ruse.

I mean, you are ignoring our customs and laws as a society regarding corpses. But, hey, that's okay, right? Because, what, laws and customs are for people, not women?

You had a chance to offer up an anti-abortion response to the personhood issue. You chose not to. You continue to sympathize with people who justify their animosity toward women through an aesthetic appeal. You continue to pretend you are completely uninformed.

It's stupid and obnoxious.

Then again, there is a way around that. We can believe this is the real you.

Why are you excusing anti-abortion advocates from rhetorical custom and logical rules? Why do we need to make special accommodation, and for what extraordinary need? Seriously, are they just stupid, or are they actually cognitively impaired?

And if you have no clue what's actually going on, sir, then why the hell are you even bothering to comment?

With all this talk about the fact that Marlise Muñoz is dead, where's the death certificate?

That's the thing. Marlise Muñoz is dead; she is not a patient of the hospital. They have no right to keep her body.

Think about it for a minute:

• JPSH misconstrues the law in order to keep Marlise Muñoz on life support.

• JPSH does this even though the fetus is not viable at fourteen weeks under any circumstances.

• As far as we can tell, there is no death certificate.

• Meanwhile, the hospital finally delivered other medical records to her husband, some six-plus weeks later; those records confirm the hospital considers Marlise Muñoz dead.​

The first three speak to JPSH's problem. The last speaks to the reality. The law does not prevent them from withdrawing life support, and it never did.

Are you not troubled at all by the idea that a hospital would manipulate medical and legal ethics like this in order to manufacture some political fame?

When this is over, any respectable jurisdiction would charge every person involved with descration of a corpse for every day and every procedure performed on Marlise Muñoz's dead body. To the other, this is Texas.

I cannot find a record of Marlise Muñoz's death via the Tarrant County Medical Examiner's Office. (If anyone has better luck, let us know; the record are organized by day, and if a death certificate was ever issued, we don't know when.)

We know from editorial commentary that no death certificate had been issued as of a week ago. The lawyers did not receive a death certificate today, but the medical records.

Misconstruing the law? Withholding a death certificate? And all to manufacture a political crisis?

And you go on with this balbutive about corpses and men and everything else?

Oh, poor you.

You want a useful discussion? That we have laws pertaining to how the dead are treated, and this whole case tramples that? Irrational?

The disposition of corpses is generally established. The specific disposition of corpses is generally left to those who think about it before they become a corpse.

The fetus is a fetus.

At eight centimeters long and all of forty grams, it is what it is. Looks kind of like the plastic fetus dolls they hand out to children. (Really, the plastic fetus dolls given to children by North Dakota Right to Life have nothing to do with abortion. After all, the E.D. of NDRL says so.)

We come again to the equal protection issue. Every woman capable of childbearing will need to be tested when she dies to see if her corpse needs to be mangled in an extraordinary effort to save the fetus ... embryo ... zygote ... blastocyst ....

That would be a practical reason why the fetus does not trump the corpse. Would you charge an emergency responder with negligent homicide for passing over the visibly dead in order to attend to the visibly alive, inadvertently leaving a blastocyst to die?

That's an implication of the fetus trumping the corpse. And it's actually a question that would not have come up save for John Peter Smith Hospital's mangling of the law for the sake of politics.

To the other, perhaps this case isn't the best for this consideration; after all, the question comes about artificially, as a result of deliberate manipulation. Then again, I understand. This is America. We love villains, as long as they aren't Muslim. Or black. Or female. Or ... okay, whatever; what it comes down to is the question of why you're rewarding the villains.

By the way, if the child is born live with severe handicaps, will those who forced this situation be civilly liable?

I mean, talk about the rights of the fetus: You have the right to be damaged for political gain so that we can celebrate the glory of your suffering once we haul you out of the corpse. That would be grim.

But, yes, the general question is a bit complicated by the fact of Marlise Muñoz's death.

And the fact that the fetus was not viable when the hospital improperly invoked the law.

And the fact that the hospital has been trying to dodge the fact of Mrs. Muñoz's death—they've known the whole time that their "patient" was dead.

The general consideration? It might well be that the general is merely abstract; I'm having a hard time fashioning the structure of a future case that might offer a better perspective. That is to say, there are times when I would definitely choose the fetus over the corpse. This, however, is not one of them.

I mean, especially as it's not just a matter of opinion, but also law.

Still, though, consider someone like me, who has been aware of the abortion debate for over a quarter century. One of the striking differences between diverse sides of political fights is that there is almost always one that can never move past the start. The idea that since I was in ... er ... um ... eighth grade? ... I think, the anti-abortion movement hasn't heard a word anyone else has said, and is still waiting for answers to their original questions?

It doesn't really matter what anyone says to these fanatics. They are driven by neuroses and emotion.

So you come in here looking for a "useful" discussion that is nothing more than what so many of us have been enduring and trying to deal with for decades?

If you're looking for a useful discussion, you ought to try having one.

But asking everyone to forget everything else and just start from the beginning ... again?

Just to avoid talking about the actual thread issue? I mean, what? Another how many posts gone by and people are still talking about anything but a woman's human rights?

I mean, hell, we're onto the rights of corpses.

Yeah. Real useful.

The problem ... might well be that in order to suspend a woman's general human rights she must first have them. At least that would explain how we're six hundred posts into this discussion and still arguing personhood as if there is actually a functional assertion of personhood on the table.​

____________________

Notes:

Tarrant County Medical Examiner Public Access. http://mepublic.tarrantcounty.com/mepublic/

 

what part of that link confirms *there is no hope for further fetal viability beyond 14 weeks* in the case of Marlise Monez.

*shrug*

And once again, there are linked articles (with even more details offered than what your references afford) to show cases (even cases involving brain dead pregnant women) *where this is not the case* (at least to meet the end of delivering a child).

I mean if there are examples of cases where medical procedures potentially* do as well as do not succeed*, what does that tell you?


*:shrug:*

 

Tiassa, in lieu of all your airs of scholarly expertise, have you bothered to research electricfetus's contributions to other abortion threads on this site, or do you feel its sufficient to just let roll with whatever conclusion you justify from a few cherry picked comments that proceed after the poster established they were playing devil's advocate?

http://www.sciforums.com/showthread...garding-discussions-revolving-around-abortion
http://www.sciforums.com/showthread.php?28954-women-loose-embryo-battle
http://www.sciforums.com/showthread.php?16966-What-is-a-Fetus

Seriously, its make you look as though you are so insecure that even someone playing devil's advocate unbalances your prime directive that its all about schisms and not stepping outside them.

:shrug:

 

Try Harder, or Don't Bother

No, it's just that by doing so he's only further burying the thread topic, although I think that, like you, that is his intention.

It's one thing to play Devil's advocate.

It's entirely another to pretend the Devil is an idiot.

As I have pointed out to the (ahem!) "Devil's advocate" he lacks an affirmative assertion of fetal personhood. A better "Devil's advocate" would have at least tried to answer the point, instead of acting like just another anti-abortion fanatic.

I don't think you realize that the best he's really achieving is mocking the anti-abortion crowd.

To the other, if he's going to bother he should probably try harder.

And to the ski-boxer's third, the digression only takes us further from the actual topic. He's got the misogynist part down just great.

Just like the anti-abortion advocates, he can certainly try to play a dishonest game, but nothing obliges anyone else to play along.

At the point that we've spent six hundred posts accommodating those who want to discuss anything but a woman's humanity, I think it's fair to say the chances to duck the obvious misogyny charge are pretty much pissed away.

Seriously, its makes you look as though you are so insecure that even admitting that women are people unbalances your prime directive that its all about what you want and not needing to acknowledge anything else.

 

Let see, Pro-lifers believe a fetus is a person, murder is wrong, therefor abortion is wrong... yep said that... but that stupid... how? Well I guess the premise is not proven "Fetus is a person" but I think I covered that on "potential people" a fetus will be a person, or likely to be a person. Ok what about viability, as I covered before technologically the age of viability has been going down, the pro-choice argument could be irrepiarably damaged if they ever develop a way to save any implanted fetus of any weeks of age, if they develop an artificial womb that is... ok so where is the stupidity in this devil? And don't get me start again on the corpse verse fetus argument, most of the pro-choicer on this thread so a far have vehemently refused to provide rational logical argument on why a corpse has more rights then a fetus and instead simply attack me, my character and call me a sexist, stupid, child, pro-lifer. I dare say that they are the pro-lifers, or at least act like pro-lifers. What was the purpose of this forum "Intelligent community discussion" HA!

Now Tiassa, I agree, if Marlise is a corpse the 'patient' part of the texas laws should make it void for this case (I sort of said that before hand). It just does not answer my question though on which has more ethical rights: a corpse or a fetus, nor does the behavior of the pro-lifers in that case. You see beside devils advocate I try to ask questions to test ethics, wether I'm for or against or honestly don't know, "Can a deaf child sue his mother for making him deaf intentionally en utero?" what would be the ethical implications of "yes" or of "no"? Strangely asking such questions does not result in answers but in aspersions and truculence from none other then pro-choicers here. Is it wrong to explore our own ethics and try to refine them, to make our arguments stronger? Is it so wrong to point out for example that if we say abortion should be allowed for cases of rape, that we are implying abortions can be made illegal for cases of non-rape, that we must focus on disproving the personhood of the fetus first and foremost? No that stupid you claim, how is it?

How can we talk about the humanity of women to people that think this is a issue of mass genocide? Put your self in their shoes: if the opposing side was arguing that murdering infants and children should be legal because if not women rights are restricted, would you not think they are insane if not even evil? Therefor we must prove that a fetus is not a child, infant, baby first and foremost, so what if they aren't going to listen to us, they certainly are not going to listen to us if we just keep calling them sexist and misogynist, they will retort by calling us murderers. We did not win Roe verse Wade by screaming "sexist" over and over again we won with with rational, logical arguments!

 

Regarding my question of research on EF's posts, I guess we can assume you didn't.
Moving on to your assertion about women not being people, precisely how do models of triage rob a person of their rights?

 

Want to Be a Whipping Boy? Then Take the Licks Proudly.

The reason people are disgusted with your behavior is that you're not really giving any attention to what people are actually saying.

Or else the law is simply an irrational notion.

After all, I did propose:

That we have laws pertaining to how the dead are treated, and this whole case tramples that? Irrational?

The disposition of corpses is generally established. The specific disposition of corpses is generally left to those who think about it before they become a corpse.

The fetus is a fetus.

At eight centimeters long and all of forty grams, it is what it is. Looks kind of like the plastic fetus dolls they hand out to children. (Really, the plastic fetus dolls given to children by North Dakota Right to Life have nothing to do with abortion. After all, the E.D. of NDRL says so.)

We come again to the equal protection issue. Every woman capable of childbearing will need to be tested when she dies to see if her corpse needs to be mangled in an extraordinary effort to save the fetus ... embryo ... zygote ... blastocyst ....

That would be a practical reason why the fetus does not trump the corpse. Would you charge an emergency responder with negligent homicide for passing over the visibly dead in order to attend to the visibly alive, inadvertently leaving a blastocyst to die?

That's an implication of the fetus trumping the corpse. And it's actually a question that would not have come up save for John Peter Smith Hospital's mangling of the law for the sake of politics.​

And yet here you are, ranting:

"And don't get me start again on the corpse verse fetus argument, most of the pro-choicer on this thread so a far have vehemently refused to provide rational logical argument on why a corpse has more rights then a fetus and instead simply attack me, my character and call me a sexist, stupid, child, pro-lifer."​

You know, if you're going to complain that there are no rational, logical arguments on the corpse-fetus distraction you have invested so much in, at least take a swing at the arguments provided.

Do you remember when the site changed ownership, and the browser title motto disappeared? Yeah, it was right about then we started compromising our already overbroad notion of what constitutes intelligent discussion. And no, it wasn't just for traffic. Rather, it was to be (ahem!) "fair".

You see, if we still aimed to be the Intelligent Community, we would not have permitted these people to go on without any rational argument for years.

Think about that for a minute. Think about how many people wouldn't be here. Sure, I'm probably fine with that in the sense that the conversation would get better, but how, exactly, would we separate the circumstantial result from the appearance of suppression?

It's not that I want to silence the anti-abortion crowd. I would just, very desperately, appreciate it if they would start making sense. If they cannot, because the constraints of the issue as they have constructed it rules out any logical argument (aesthetics and sentiment are not logic), then the issue is pretty much settled except for the question of whether or not they can ever cope with reality.

It's a bogus juxtaposition, beacuse your question ignores the laws pertaining to the disposition of the dead, and also the fact that a fetus is only a person according to an unsupported aesthetic appeal.

What's the point of writing a last will and testament if a "corpse has no rights"?

What's the point of laws against necrophilia? That it's "icky"? I mean, sure, you don't want to think of some meth addict breaking into the morgue and making a POV of your dead grandmother deep-throating him, but you've already made the point that it doesn't really matter.

What I'm getting at, and what you're ignoring, is that some of our ethics are bound by law. No, seriously, should we change the disposition of corpses? That's fine with me, as long as it doesn't create a public health hazard, or stink up the neighborhood, or whatever.

In fact, let's collect some venture capital and see if we can manufacture custom zombies. I mean, you know, they're dead. Let's see what we can do, and how much money we can make. After all, abuse of corpses in the name of knowledge also helped bring us that legendary, misunderstood character of Frankenstein's monster. (No, really. That and a stopover with Percy and Claire on their way home from a vacation, quite literally at the home of Dr. and Mrs. Frankenstein. But, yes, it's true that Mary Wollstonecroft Shelley did, in her youth, witness the adults around her trying to revive corpses with electricity.)

Except we do already have laws in place about how corpses are to be treated and disposed.

Get rid of them? Why not? That's actually fine with me.

Look, I'm trying to be understanding, here. To reduce the question to pure abstraction is an exercise in futility, because we are never going to have a circumstantial bright line of demarcation.

This is the basic juxtaposition: Laws and Customs Regarding the Dead and A Fetus Has No Rights.

The only reason you could consider that a refusal to offer a rational argument is if you simply don't want to deal with it.

Uh-huh.

Well that's a hell of a charge. Intentionally? I'm going to wait until I see the sleazy ads on television from law firms like Sokolove, begging for clients.

Meanwhile, I'll go with sure, right about the same time obese people start suing their parents for having children. And maybe I can sue my parents for bringing me to life in order to compensate for the racism I experienced as a child. I mean, really, what are people of Asian descent doing having children in a white-dominated country that has gone to war in Japan, Korea, and Vietnam, that last with some side trips to massacre Laotians. Oh, wait. I'm adopted. Well, I demand equal protection, so all of the sealed adoption records have to be opened to the public so people can figure out who to sue.

I don't know, am I being ridiculous, yet? I hope so. Because you still owe me serious answers on those ethical conundra. (Actually, you don't, because I really don't want to spend the time and posts refusing to answer your response while complaining that you haven't posted one. I mean, obviously you don't get that one, yet, so what would throwing it in your face accomplish?)

As I have noted, there are existential, ontological, and medical differences between the fetus in utero and the person standing on their own two feet, especially as there's really no way I would fit back up in there even if I knew who she was. But, hey, if she's dead already, I can crawl back up there anyway, and why should anyone stop me?

In light of the observable differences, fetal personhood—which is also a relatively recent innovation—is the extraordinary assertion. Fetal personhood is the new addition, and must justify itself. Furthermore, even if you insist that the obligation is to prove the negative, there needs to be an affirmative assertion to address. How it is that you have gone this many posts without figuring that out is, well, okay, I have no idea. It's absolutely silly.

Ordinarily, I would say we don't. Except for the nasty little fact that these people have enough political power to denigrate the human condition of the women I know. Even if I didn't have a daughter, that's enough to keep me engaged.

Because of that political reality, we must engage this crowd.

How to talk to them? A fine question, because as I've noted, well, okay, aside from your odd digressions into pissing on corpses and such, what we've seen in this thread generally, and your posts specifically, is enactment of the problem. The only way to communicate with them is to agree with them and give them everything they want. Well, okay, actually it's not. You see what happened with this thread.

I mean, sure, concede the point at the outset and ask, "What next?" It should be expected that fourteen months later we're still arguing over what was conceded at the outset to such extremity that we're now on about corpses.

No, really. Fourteen months. Go back and check the dates: November 1, 2012. As I said then:

None of the anti-abortion advocates can explain what happens to a woman's status as a human being during pregnancy.

Perhaps the problem is in our laws.​

So, of course it's ironic that your ethical inquiries deal with things like laws in the most convenient way possible, ignoring them.

Of course, I also closed that post as straightforward as possible:

Is this an ethical compromise, in their outlooks? Is it just? Or is this whole "personhood" thing really just about putting women back in their places?​

The determined distraction from the topic proposition is more than simply suggestive. It is indicative, and I would say about what I expect, except the dimensions are actually of greater magnitude than even I had anticipated. No, really. I actually would not have guessed that fourteen months later people would still flee screaming from the proposition of a woman's humanity.

Are you trying to play out the misogyny, or is that a sincere question? Once upon a time, and it honestly doesn't seem like that long ago, that I would have said I know you already know the difference.

So let me answer you this way: There is a difference between infants and children to the one, and a fetus to the other. If they cannot tell the difference, they need psychiatric assistance.

What? Am I wrong? Or are they actually incapable of putting up an objective, affirmative argument for fetal personhood because they literally can't tell the difference between a zygote—

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​

—and Bela Lugosi:

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​

If one's belief that people are murdering children for the sake of women's rights is not based in reality, then that person is delusional.

Maybe at one point they were merely stubborn. But for all we keep hearing about anything but a woman's human rights, neither are we hearing that obective, rational, affirmative assertion of personhood.

In truth, I don't think they have one.

Tell me again how proving negative conditions isn't a fallacy.

Fetal personhood is the new proposition. The proponents need to establish whence it comes and how it works before we can address the point. That is, in order for others to prove or disprove their proposition, there must first be a proposition to consider.

As it is, the answer is simple enough: A fetus is a child according to subjective emotions, with no existential, ontological, or medical data needed to back it up.

The difference between the umbilical cord and the navel is generally sufficient to establish the existential difference. The medical data tells us all sorts of things about what happens to the zygote, blastocyst, embryo, or fetus if its connection to the host is severed. Most people can tell the difference between sucking blood through your navel and eating. Between floating in a fluid sac inside another person's body and walking. Anyone who wants to assert parity between those two conditions is going to have to explain how that works. And no, aesthetics and emotions are not a sufficient explanation.

See, are you trying to be sincere there, or still playing the fool? Or have you lost track of which you we're dealing with?

The thing is that you have the chronology exactly backwards.

The growing perception of misogyny is considerably younger than the murder accusations; indeed, the main reasons it arises are the coincidence of membership in diverse but associated factions—it is not a coincidence that the guy who wrongly said a raped woman's body has a way of shutting down a pregnancy, the guy who said being raped to pregnancy is a gift from God, the guy who thinks his domestic violence conviction will help him at the ballot box, and the guy who doesn't understand how any jury anywhere could convict a man of raping his wife are all in the same political organization. The resurgence of these ideas is unsettling, to say the least. But the accusations of misogyny evolved out of the constant repetition of futility; there is no discussing these issues rationally with these people.

Remember back when we had that little digression about misogyny and if men could be pregnant, and it carried on a while, and was even a reasonably interesting digression.

Do you remember the anti-abortion summary?

"So...let me see if I have this straight. Because men cannot get pregnant women should have unimpeded choice regardless of any consideration of personhood?" —Syne​

After a while—oh, I don't know, say a quarter of a century or so, and probably considerably less, so we should ask around—that kind of repeated disrespect has its effects. And, indeed, the lack of social skills among the anti-abortion crowd seems pathological.

And in the end, there is the inevitable problem of giving over to bullies. The perception of misogyny is the result of behavioral observations. And, really, if you think, "I'm not a misogynist, I just happen to support a policy that would harm women because I think it's the right thing to do", isn't a misogynistic stance, you need professional help. If you think, "I'm not a misogynist, but I'm going to ignore everything you say so that I can enact a policy that would harm women because the right thing to do is for women to submit to my aesthetics", isn't misogynistic, you need professional help.

And, it is observable. Fourteen months, thirty-four pages, 675 responses, and we are still arguing the issue that was conceded at the outset.

So try that formulation again: "I'm not a misogynist, but if you suggest a woman has human rights, I'm going to change the subject."

Giving over to bullies: Why can't bigots be proud?

I mean, that's the thing. The bigots know they're doing something wrong, else they would not complain that accurate descriptions of their behavior are insulting.

So in addition to getting the chronology backwards, you're also recommending that people let observably misogynistic behavior go unchecked because to call it by its name would make misogynists sad.

So let's try that formulation: "I'm not a misogynist, but I think it's impolite to call observable misogyny by its name because it's not polite to the misogynists."

And at that point, you can simply go screw.

You're right. Women won over forty years ago.

And as society's views of women have changed, as women themselves have changed, as medicine and motherhood and economy and everything else has changed, you know what hasn't changed at all? The anti-abortion argument.

People have spent forty years trying to answer these questions for the anti-abortion crowd. And they started learning some time ago that the only point of answering the question at all is for the public relations war; after all, the anti-abortion crowd isn't listening.

Take a look in the states, sir. Right now things are so dire that the courts have to be the last bastion of rational argument. They lose in court, and then turn around and pass another one of their laws. They're not listening. They're following a delusional concept. Quite technically, they have no place in the abortion discussion because they're not competent.

Or is that observation unkind?

Okay, let's try it a different way. Fill in the blank: Following a delusion in order to demand that public policy hurt the majority of the species is a good thing because _____.

And if they want to get rid of the delusion talk, they can start with a rational, affirmative argument for fetal personhood.

In the meantime, stop appealing for kindness to the cruel.

No, seriously. We know they don't like being called misogynists. Just like the homophobes don't like being called homophobes. But do you know what's the same about those two bigotries? The same thing they have in common with every such bigotry: They want to behave poorly, but are offended by accurate descriptions of their behavior.

This is not the sort of issue in which little white lies will help.

 

will the irony never end?

I mean you did make some serious allegations about EF being a closet pro-lifer.
How long do you propose they went deep cover before they revealed this ruse?

 

Tow the line and you'll be fine.

Actually there is a sort of social phenomena where radical extremists are most (or at least markedly) vehemently opposed not so much to their diametric opposites but to those groups that are somewhat similar to themselves in ideals or values.

I guess on a certain level it makes sense, since the group dynamics dictate a sort of exclusiveness and the real challenge to maintaining that sort of hyper-vigilant atmosphere doesn't arise from "the enemy" (which, in one sense, actually sustains the group's identity) but from groups that share a similar ideological base and pose a very real threat of subverting the group dynamic to something else less radical.

 

Whether developed in vivo or vitro, any products of conception prior to mid term will always be physiologically equivalent to a brain dead corpse on life support.

During it’s lifetime as a person and member of society, the corpse acquired social rights and benefits that determined its treatment after death.

The pre-mid term non conscious organism never attained personhood and its associated rights, and is a possession of its progenitors, and at their mercy in regards to its survival. From a social standpoint it should have no more value than a pet or a piece of livestock.