Redux: Rape, Abortion, and "Personhood"

Since the topic is abortion, and there can be no abortion unless there is a pregnancy, and the only way for a pregnancy to come about is some kind of sexual involvement of a man and a woman, this is about a lot more than just the sexual behavior of women - it is about the sexual behavior of men and women.

 

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Extraordinarily ordinary?

Would you prefer the PowerPoint version? The Canadian mental health journal version? Or perhaps the American Sociological Association article version?

The positive effects of sexual intimacy on relationships and human socialization are, generally speaking, hardly the realm of extraordinary assertions.

However, in terms of the morality of non-reproductive sexual conduct, I would suggest that the history of sexually repressed societies, such as American Puritans and, more recently, backwater Islamic communities where they kill rape survivors for promiscuity, is worth considering. Or you might read up on glove paralysis (a conversion disorder) and its role in Freud's work.
____________________

Notes:

Monk, Debra. "Sexuality, Intimacy, Mental Illness and Quality of Life". Centre for Excellence in Rural Sexual Health. (n.d.) CERSH.com.au. December 4, 2012. http://www.cersh.com.au/PresentationPDFs/2011/CERSH_conf Debra Monk.pdf

Canadian Mental Health Association. Visions. No. 8, Spring/Summer 1999. CMHA.BC.ca. December 4, 2012. http://2010.cmha.bc.ca/files/visions_sexuality.pdf

Ganong, Kathryn and Erik Larson. "Intimacy and Belonging: The Association between Sexual Activity and Depression among Older Adults". Society and Mental Health. V.1, N.3, November 2011. ASAnet.org. December 4, 2012. http://www.asanet.org/images/journals/docs/pdf/smh/Nov11SMHFeature.pdf

 

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Naomi's Va-whoosit, and Other Notes

One of the downsides of Firefox in Linux is that, unlike Safari in OSX, PDFs open in a separate application. Trying to draw those links out of the mangled Google link is ... um ... I don't know. Fun is not the word. (Hint for anyone who might need to do that: It's easier to extract the link from the Quick View.)

Of course, there's probably a better way; I just haven't worked out the specifics of this particular interface.

Ironically, though, this morning Naomi Wolf was on a local radio station, KUOW, discussing her new book, Vagina: A New Biography. I'm not sure when the audio will post; the entire Weekday episode runs for another forty-five minutes. But it's an interesting discussion, to say the least. The physiological processes of sexuality and mental health are emerging; I'm not sure how much of it is actually new information, or how much is simply moving into a more publicly accessible sphere because it's Naomi Wolf.

 

No, I don't.

No, you don't. You repost debunked and/or irrelevant innuendo.

Again: for the original sideline point and your claim, way back when, you need an example - for relevance, one from a culture represented in this discussion or at least in Western civilization sometime this millenium, to bail you out of the hole you and your kind are sunk into here, but whatever - of a culture treating a three month embryo as a person. As this seems a difficult concept for you, a couple of tips or hints: cultural treatment of already born babies is probably not pertinent, as they are not three month embryos. Cultural treatment of three month embryos as persons - names, ages, funerals for the deceased, census counts, medical or coroner's statistics and determinations, wakes for the bodies, etc - is what you need.

I address it each and every time I respond, if only to refer to the original dismissals and subsequent elaborations. More than five times, over multiple threads. Each time directly in response to your posting, and each time read and reacted to by you - not missed, or overlooked.

Your responses have been insults, slanders, and accusations, not addressing the issues, but nevertheless establishing the fact of your having read the posts.

So to respond in kind and in line with your standard approach to discussion here: are you lying, or are you stupid?

I see little evidence of much concern with the sexual behavior of men, over the many, many years of this garbage toss - but admitting one's central concern in general (sexual behavior) is a good first step to self-awareness.

Unsupported, inauthentic, convenient, and improbable declarations of the personhood of the embryo can be quietly dropped from the discussion, then, and we can proceed on grounds of good faith.

 

err ... yes you do

I even linked them

Do you want the links again?

meh

You aren't even confident to reiterate your points because its plainly obvious how weak they are

and as I said, if you want to relegate "real categories" to western culture I am afraid you are in the wrong century for academic discussion ... but even then, if you want to work with eurocentric models, I provided you with links in the previous post.

Obviously you know what they are since you went to great pains to edit them out of your response.

you simply say "yes I respond to your posts" and edit out the post.

I'm afraid it requires a bit more than your lip service of "I explained that".
:shrug:

The real question is why you can't respond to a post without editing most of the material out. You say you want exclusive evidence of western culture acknowledging personhood - I provide you with the links doing just precisely that - and you edit out this bit of information taht is most essential to the discussion.

It seems you are not really interested in discussing anything but saving face.

wow, you see a connection between sexual activity and pregnancy - leaps and bounds my friend ...

as I said, already provided.

Just simply requires that you respond without editing out the post. Apparently this is too much to ask.

Anyway I guess the only outcome from this is that I will keep a record of the link and have it on hand to bring up the next time you make the same uniformed argument. In a certain light we are making a sort of progress. At least on this occasion you have seen how fragile your argument is and have tried to shrink the discussion down exclusively to mainstream contemporary western population (which also was a failed argument - might take you another 5 attempts at bringing up the same point in different threads in the future for you to come to terms with that)

 

Damn that Equal Protection?

The way you seem to be looking at it renders LACP moot. The best way to explain that is to look into the second part of your post:

In 2011, a woman fell down the stairs after arguing over the phone with her estranged husband. Though paramedics responding to the incident found her healthy, the woman decided to go to the emergency room to make sure the baby was okay. On the basis of the woman's discussion with health professionals, because she admitted that she had at one point considered abortion, she was arrested for attempted feticide.

The charges were later dropped, not because they were ridiculous, but because the woman was, documentably, not in her third trimester when the fall occurred.

In 2010, a pregnant woman in Flordia was ordered by the court to bed rest. Why? Because, at twenty-five weeks in, she was showing potential for miscarriage; the woman, being a working other of two, did not consider bed rest a realistic option. Rather than referring her for a second opinion, the doctor found a court that ordered Burton to report to Tallahassee Memorial Hospital and subject herself to whatever procedures and treatments the doctors decided were appropriate. Three days into this stressful captivity, she miscarried.

Sure, there is no scientific evidence to support the benefits of bed rest; the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists does not recommend routine bed rest. For these and other reasons, the court order was eventually overturned, months after the woman miscarried while forcibly confined to a hospital.

Now, these absurd tales exist without LACP as the statutory outlook.

We might, then, consider Virginia, where the legislature failed to pass a bill that would have required all women to report all miscarriages or suspected miscarriages to authorities. What eventually passed was a fetal protection law that specifically excluded the mother from criminal consideration.

But under LACP, that exception cannot stand.

What you overlook is the Equal Protection Clause of Amendment XIV and the Due Process Clause of Amendment V. The Fourteenth obliges the states to equal protection of all persons under its jurisdiction, and the Fifth guarantees due process to all persons within federal jurisdiction.

It's not that I am without sympathy for your appeal to reasonable sentiment; rather, you seem to be rendering LACP moot by ignoring the implications of a blastocyst becoming a person. Once that organism growing inside a woman becomes a person, it is covered by the laws. The Fourteenth is quite specific about this:

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

(Boldface and bold-italic accents added)​

One cannot rely on that first sentence, "born or naturalized", for a way around the conundrum; due process and equal protection are assigned to people, not citizens. The Due Process clause of the Fifth, as well, applies to people in general, and is not specifically limited to citizens.

Thus, to start with more specific examples:

• Car wreck: The driver at fault in a car wreck is liable for the injuries he or she causes. If that wreck causes the death of another person, the driver at fault is liable for that death. To suggest the prosecution of a husband for driving too fast on a wet road and potentially causing his wife to miscarry is somehow extreme simply ignores the way the law already works.

• Pregnant woman falls: Given the record, it does not seem somehow extreme or unreasonable to suggest that a woman would be prosecuted, under LACP, for tripping over a chair-mat at work.

• Rhesus disease: An easily preventable outcome. Exposing a child to mortally dangerous conditions is already illegal. Since Rho(D) immune globulin is available, fetal death by Rhesus disease very strongly implies negligence on the part of the mother, though the father is also at fault for his role in conception.​

More obscure considerations, what you have described as "normal" miscarriages, cannot simply be written off to "medical statistics".

Medical Examiner: What caused this miscarriage?

Assistant: Doctor, the medical statistics suggest a high probability for a "normal" miscarriage without identified cause.

Medical Examiner: Excellent. We need not attempt to identify a cause. After all, medical statistics say it is a normal miscarriage.​

So much for the Fourteenth Amendment, eh?

Why not try that with the pierced chest consideration?

Medical Examiner: What caused this man's death?

Assistant: Doctor, the medical statistics suggest a pierced heart consistently results in death.

Medical Examiner: Great. Case closed. Death by pierced heart. No need to look any further; I need to hit the links.​

"Medical statistics" are insufficient. One of the reasons so many "normal" miscarriages are labeled as "normal" is that there is not enough data to establish cause. To say that they just happen is fine enough in the context of not knowing the answer, but LACP includes an Equal Protection obligation to try to find those answers.

It's not that I don't get your suggestion that these are extreme and absurd outcomes, but they are also symptomatic of making the fetus a "person" in the land of Equal Protection. And that is the point. The proposition underpinning this thread is an attempt to reconcile the Equal Protection and other legal conflicts that will inevitably arise under LACP.

And if you look—and close scrutiny is not required to note these themes—the more ardently "pro-life" one the argument, the less it seems to have thought through the implications. Look at Wynn and Lightgigantic, for instance. LG is still trying to argue the validity of LACP, which was conceded at the outset for argumentative purposes; it's unclear what Wynn is trying to do.

Yet our neighbor Bowser, who tends toward the pro-life side of the argument, quite reasonably noted, "Certainly this would be a 180 degree turn in how we presently view life in the womb. If we do define it as being a person at conception, then we must protect its life as we would any other."

I would, then, recall a couple of questions I raised in the early portion of the thread—

• "Life at conception" has a certain political value, but what is its real value in terms of morality and, functionally speaking, justice?

• How do you provide equal protection for the "person" who exists inside a woman?​

—and ask you for some affirmative assertion in response.

Because I do understand that people find such suggested outcomes extreme. Indeed, I agree that they are extreme and absurd. But I also find them consequential because of Equal Protection and Due Process. Simply saying, "Enforcement is too ridiculous!" and throwing up our hands is not an option according to the Supreme Law of the Land.

Fetal protection laws are already more widely used against mothers who miscarry than assailants who cause miscarriages.

We've already seen attempts to compel women to register suspected miscarriages with law enforcement authorities.

I would very much like LACP advocates to consider the implications of getting what they want. And I would also like to imagine that it isn't just about denigrating women.

And if the potential for investigating one in three women is an absurd straw man, then LACP really is about putting women back in their places, because then it is just about stopping them from having abortions.
____________________

Notes:

Constitution of the United States of America. 1992. Law.Cornell.edu. December 4, 2012. http://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/

 

No, I don't

No, you don't. This has been explained to you several times now, without counter or argument from you. It is not rocket science - you can't expect people to believe you are that stupid.

That's over the line of innuendo, and in the category of flat out lying, slander, etc - you can't be that direct with your lies, you have to weasel more to avoid the label.

You said that last time, and I agreed that would be perfectly satisfactory as long as you quoted my responses to the original two or three postings of that link, and no more lies about my failing to respond, ignoring anything, etc. You should actually do that, and save us bandwidth and time.

I am interested in discussing nothing from you except the nature of your posting here.

The reason that is worth discussing is that it seems to be typical, representative, of the "pro-life" crowd when the topic is abortion, and therein lies a puzzle, an oddity, and a discussion topic: why or how would those who most want to be or at least appear to be good people, decent and honest human beings in a certifiable and defensible sense, people for whom morality and ethics are overtly and formally at the center of their approach, end up posting as lightgigantic does on the subject of abortion?

 

all you can say is "no you don't" and 'yes I did".

Clearly you don't have the confidence to reiterate your points.

Anyone perusing this discussion, particularly the links and other bits of information you choose to leave out in your responses, can understand why.

:shrug:

 

Don't forget this:

Meanwhile, the question of why you and other pro-lifers post like that is more worth pursuing than any tail-chasing about hypothetical embryo personhood. Intellectual bankruptcy is one thing, but this kind of reiterated slander and willful stupidity calls for explanation; we have here an indication of something large and dark and carefully hidden.

 

I provided links to the thread and went to great pains (in this thread ) to explain precisely how your responses are irrelevant and how you are avoiding addressing key points.

Your response to this is merely "no you didn't/yes I did"

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As I said, clearly you don't have the confidence to reiterate your points
:shrug:

 

I provided links to the thread and went to great pains (in this thread ) to explain precisely how your responses are irrelevant and how you are avoiding addressing key points.

Your response to this is merely "no you didn't/yes I did"

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As I said, clearly you don't have the confidence to reiterate your points ... much less address criticisms of them (outside of empty ad hom threats and trying to goad me into responding to your slander)
:shrug:

 

By engaging in sex, you are putting her at that risk already. No contraceptive is 100% reliable.

Even if she is to have an abortion, abortions are not risk-free either.

Personal opinion or not, I would expect more detail.

Only some of them, and based on findings of studies done on very specific, non-representative populations, by non-representative criteria.

 

Without the input of men, there would, literally, be no need for abortions.

 

Why engage in an activity if one doesn't hope that it will make one morally superior, purifying one?

You are strawmaning, flat out lying and attacking my character.

I am not insisting "sex is bad unless it is for procreation." You are making that up.

I know very well what the popular notions of sex are.

Like Socrates, I simply challenge a popular notion, in this case, about sex.
And as it turns out, people generally can't defend it, other than by appealing to popular consensus among a specific population.
The problem is, there is so much suffering caused by these popular notions, this is why they are worth addressing.


Like I said earlier, it can be easier to have an open conversation about sex with a traditional Buddhist monk, than with a liberal.

You couldn't accuse me of being on the "looney fringe of my society" or of living in a "weird social bubble or something" if you wouldn't think that your stance on is sex is superior to whatever you imagine my stance on sex to be.

:shrug:

 

I will argue that without an explicit belief in serial reincarnation, or at least without an explicit belief that one is uncertain about whether there is more to life than these 70 years or so, it is impossible to cultivate thoroughly wholesome mental and physical attitudes and practices, as such cultivation necessarily transcends the limitations of this one lifetime.

IOW, the belief that this one lifetime is all there is effectively puts a stop or at least a limit to all practices that may require more than this one lifetime to accomplish. If one believes that this one life is all there is, and that death can come at any time, cutting short all one's efforts, then one will not be inspired to actively pursue such things as strength of character, except out of pride (which then in turn sabotages those efforts).


You are, of course, free to prove me wrong.