Comments

1
And then there's the Child Interstate Abortion Notification Act which will keep minors from travel out of Kansas (or any other state) to get an abortion. http://rubio.senate.gov/public/index.cfm…
2
Never live that far away from the ocean.
3
Is there any sort of underground (or above ground, or light rail, bullet train, mag-lev) railroad for women who want to get the fuck out of Kansas?

All of this, based on the bald assertion that zygotes have this undefineable thing called a soul, and doing whatever it takes to keep the patriarchy in power.

Please ladies, LEAVE Kansas. Turn the whole fucking state into one giant sausagefest. Make their insanity irrelevant by not leaving a single vagina in the wretched state.
4
Dumb women are the most likely to get knocked up. The same lack of advance planning that leads to unwanted pregnancy also leads to an inability to successfully plan their way out of Hellhole Kansas.
5
Solution: all women leave Kansas. Quarantine it and wait 30 years. Shuffle few remaining bitter, hateful old men off to minimum-security "retirement communities" and repopulate Kansas with government-assisted homesteads of bright-eyed young would-be farmers who are currently trying to raise pygmy goats in their 10' x 12' yards in the city.

Or, you know, sane, intelligent Kansans could start taking an active role in their state's governance instead of chickening out and abandoning it to the venomous idiots who currently run it.
6
What sane, intelligent Kansans? Outside of Lawrence, I think most of them have already taken your suggestion to leave. I did.
7
egads! and still some people here castigated the "abortion pledge for the rest of us" post as extreme....
i find this much more consequentially far worse....

and the silence on this will be deafening.

people want to bash their allies far more so..
whatever.

8
Holy shit, Kansas making a big push to overtake South Dakota as most embarrassing state on abortion rights!
9
I want to start a fund to help women leave Kansas and start lives somewhere civilised.
10


Infanticide isn't easy in Kansas? What barbarians!! What retrogressive assholes! They must hate women! Or sex! Or something equally unrelated to the wholesale murder of babies!

Wait...wouldn't the barbarians be the ones who, you know, want to kill innocent babies rather than buy a condom?
11
@10: Wait...I find the real barbarians are those who, you know want to keep people from getting a condom in the first place, or act like it it is some moral failing to have been sexual at all...and then get all het-up about it when a girl or woman needs a procedure that really gives her true autonomy over her body.

when it is the very "men" like yourself that have been, and still are inflicting most of most of the real damage.

sad, sad SB, you are the "barbarian" you rail against.
12
The destruction of fetuses isn't infanticide you fucking moron. It's not murder. Souls don't exist & fetuses aren't people.

Are you in favor of WIC, you jackass? Oh right, any government intervention post uterus is socialism, it's immoral and rewards laziness, right?
13
@11

I don't care if someone buys birth control, so long as they aren't asking for taxpayer money to do so.

I could care less if they sleep with no-one, one constant lover or the cast of Cirque de Soleil, so long as they keep their private life private and don't ask me to celebrate their various perversions.

But oddly, when it comes to murdering babies because they were too drunk or stoned or stupid to use birth control, I kind of think that goes beyond personal autonomy.

@12

Don't recall mentioning souls, though in my opinion you're both wrong and willfully blind in your conclusion. And until you're 100% positive about the point at which life begins, taking the chance of ending it simply isn't your perogative morally.
14
No, no, no.
Women don't need to move out...that all but ensures that a big chunk of the Senate will be controlled by assholes forever.
More progressive people need to move IN. Less than 4 years ago, Kansas had a Democratic Gov. and half of its representatives were Dems, better than California. It can happen again.
Heck, Lawrence exists because Northeasterners moved in specifically to sway the state to be anti-slavery when it entered the union...and they won.
Yes, you'd lose the "coolness" factor of living near water or mountains, but you'd potentially have a lot bigger effect on changing the senate and the country (you could afford a house, too; no more rent payments).
It actually wouldn't take all that many people to change Montana, Dakotas, Wyoming, Nebraska, and Kansas to blue states, and the senate would never be Republican again.
15
this is just part of the process of playing out the conservative era (1980-2015ish (hopefully)). and yeah, alot of people have been and are getting fucked throughout this period. maybe it will end soon. maybe not. regardless, this is simply who we are as a people right now. and yes, it sucks.
16
Oh Seattleblues, you're so pointless that sometimes it's almost endearing. Yeah, that's right sweetcakes, it's we baby-murdering liberals who advocate "abstinence only" sex education, leaving scores of young people totally clueless about birth control and condoms. You nailed it. It's a giant conspiracy. We just like killing babies that much.

Let me ask you something. Infanticide - and here I mean post-utero baby killing - and abandonment have historically happened regardless of the legal status of abortion. Ancient Greeks used to put unwanted babies in urns and leave them on roadsides - they called it "exposure." In the Middle Ages, they created hospices called foundling homes for abandoned babies, but the conditions in the hospitals were so horrible that most of the babies died shortly after admission. By the mid 20th century, they'd managed to get the mortality rate down to 37% within two years of admission, but the ones who lived still had developmental and psychological problems.

So you view abortion as the wholesale murder of babies and clearly seem to think that we'd be better off without it. Fine. Here's my question: is exposure, abandonment, abuse, and neglect the better option? Because by and large, unwanted children wind up suffering.

Getting rid of abortion means more children who exist outside of their mothers' bodies, in the world, actually suffering before they die. You're not going to end infanticide by criminalizing abortion and you can't force anyone to be responsible loving parents. So who's going to take care of those children and make sure that they don't suffer? You?
17
@11

And ya know what? You're an idiot. I married when I could support a wife. Between us we decided to have kids when our income and maturity could countenance having them.

The ones who are "inflicting most of most of the real damage" are those who have kids because they just forgot to take their pill or put on the condom. Or the ones who murder babies because they can't be bothered to take responsibility for their choices or stupidity.

18
@14

i say fuck these red states. i've become a states rightser as a progressive. they wanna live in the dark ages, let 'em. just don't force me to live in the dark ages, too. let's see where conservative governance gets you. i'd be more than happy to let these red states run themselves into the ground (both socially & economically) for the next couple of decades.
19
doucheionary says:
"I don't care if someone buys birth control, so long as they aren't asking for taxpayer money to do so.

I could care less if they sleep with no-one, one constant lover or the cast of Cirque de Soleil, so long as they keep their private life private and don't ask me to celebrate their various perversions.

But oddly, when it comes to murdering babies because they were too drunk or stoned or stupid to use birth control, I kind of think that goes beyond personal autonomy."


i.e. fancies himself an enlightened entity w/ no contact in any sort of reality.
see; Seattleblahs
20
@17; what? do ya want a fucking medal for your crotch droplings?

your sanctimonious fuckery is a sham. you are only fooling yourself.

the hate you spew, couched in psuedo-touchy feelyness fools no one but yourself, dumb dumb barbarian.
21
12

so Tubs, what exactly does abortion kill?
What species is the creature being slaughtered?
If it is not human what species IS it?
22

Isn't an "abortion clinic" about as relevant as a horse and buggy?

One in eight girls aged 16 has used the morning after pill, an alarming report has revealed.

It heightened fears over the reliance placed on the emergency contraception by thousands of youngsters.

Widespread use of the pill was uncovered by the Government's comprehensive General Household Survey.

It found that 12 per cent of girls aged 16 and 17 had turned to the contraception at least once after having sex.

One in 50 had used it twice, and one in 100 had done so more often than that.

In the 18 to 19 age group, 16 per cent of girls - more than one in six - had used the pill once and one in 25 had taken it twice.

The survey showed that nine out of ten 16-year-olds were 'fully informed' about emergency contraception and how to get hold of it.


http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/articl…
23
I don't understand why y'all argue with that idiot on his own terms. He twists the argument into "People are so lazy and stupid they just wanna get abortions instead of bothering to use condoms" and you don't even call him out on it? You let him just casually elide out rape, abandonment, birth defects, medical threats to the mother's health, occasional failure of birth control methods even when they're used correctly, and instead choose to respond based on souls?

Goddammit.

But as long as the question of souls has been raised, I think the point, idiot, was that since fetuses have neither the cognitive development to attain consciousness nor any experiential frame of reference in which they could be said to have identities even if they were conscious, the only ethical objection you could be raising to what is admittedly infanticide, but which is not evil in spite of the venom you load into that term, is that it destroys a being with a soul, which is an intrinsically religious judgement that has no place in American law.

It's also the kind of essentialist bullshit that results in unwanted children growing up miserable when they should never have been thrust into a life that was never going to welcome them. After all, once they're out of the womb, they're not your problem any more, are they? You don't want the government to be able to assist people with birth control, and you don't want abortions to be legal, so why don't you spell out exactly what you do want? Is it that you want legions of screaming unsocialized delinquents? Or do you think that sex without risk should be a privilege of the wealthy?
24
@4 @22

You, sirs or madams, are anti-choice.

You may believe you are pro-choice. You may say some words and wave some banners. But that is an anti-choice belief you carry within you, and it is a powerful one.

It's also a wrong belief.

Women do not become pregnant out of personal failure alone. Women become pressured -- financially, sexually, emotionally, and physically pressured -- out of using birth control. Birth control fails. Many women do not have access to accurate information about birth control.

No woman should be punished for "failing" in your eyes. Go read abortioneers.blogspot.com or something and get some perspective.
25
@21: When a researcher spills out some cultured human cells, those cells are human cells all right, but they're not a human.
You need to distinguish between being biologically human tissue and being a person.
26
@22 - I don't like the tone of that article - emergency contraception is used more by 16 year olds because they don't have easy constant access to birth control, and they do have unexpected sex/are date raped/pressured into sex they weren't planning on/don't want to have more often than older women who are having sex more consistently and are therefore already on the pill/other long term method of birth control (and for whom it is more socially acceptable and economically and logistically feasible to be on it). They are also likely to be exposed to poor condom use (or outright lying) by young men and then have to take the morning after pill despite using or trying to use condoms, because they are more easily pressured, more inexperienced, and don't have the ability to weed out assholes yet. Of course they use it more often. And anyone using condoms as a sole method of birth control had better be using Plan B as a backup for when they fail - not if, when. Look at it as better educated more responsible 16 year olds making appropriate decisions about their lives and bodies by choosing to be extra certain about not becoming pregnant, rather than the old timey method of winging it and hoping for the best. They are super fertile and not all automatically put on easy to use hormonal birth control at 14. If they were, you'd see a lot less use of Plan B. Also most human beings, 16 year old girls or not, aren't capable of taking a pill every day at the same time every day (unless it's a pain pill or something that causes withdrawal). You miss a day - you are 16 - you had sex that week - you are going to be taking Plan B if you have any sense. Better to be super careful than a pregnant teen in places like Kansas. Those numbers you cite are actually really dangerously low, given the environment the average 16 year old girl is likely to be having sex in. And everyone has been educated about it (I hope), but I've had people give me shit buying it in the South, I can't imagine how much fun it must be in small town Kansas where the cashier knows your mom. I don't know if they will let boys buy it (they ID you down south even if you are clearly way older than 17 or whatever the current age limit is), but again, if the adult environment is that hostile, i imagine it's still hard to get your hands on it, if your pharmacy even carries it. The places where it's hard/impossible to get an abortion? I imagine those are also the places it's hard/impossible to get your hands on Plan B (especially within the time limit you have to use it). Just a guess.
27
the notion that a significant number of coastal liberals would voluntarily move to kansas is a non-starter. ask any midwestern refugee. it would be easier to change the apportionment of senators to one based on populace.

the only thing that belongs on the great plains are buffalo herds.
28
25

Whose human tissue?

Is it the mother's?

Like fingernail clippings and sloughed skin cells?

Whose human tissue does an abortionist kill?

Do a DNA test and get right back to us.....

30
You're not real bright, are you, @28?

If I were to synthesize up some human DNA in a test tube, would that be a person too?

What if I - say, just for example - in vitro fertilized a whole bunch of eggs and then threw most of them away? Is that mass infanticide? Not that anything like that EVER happens in the name of helping (frequently anti-choice) people have exactly the babies they want. It's purely hypothetical. Of course.
31
Pretty much so the same thing is happening in VA. They want abortion clinics to live up to the standards of hospitals. The question to ask is do other similar out-patient facilities performing similarly low-risk procedures have to live up to those standards? Cosmetic surgery boutiques spring to mind. Lots of minor, low-risk cosmetic procedures are performed in clinic settings rather than hospitals. What about ambulatory surgery centers? How about an oral surgeon's office (I've had minor oral surgery performed in clinics that were nowhere near as sophisticated as a PP clinic)? Oh, no? BUSTED!
32
@22: That's a British survey. The numbers would not be as high in the US.

@17: You realize birth control fails sometimes, right?

And when life begins is irrelevant. Even granting that a fetus is a living human, that doesn't mean we should force a pregnant women to use her body to incubate it.
33
@32

When a woman chooses to have sex, she takes the risk of pregnancy upon herself. And she has that right to make the choice. She can eliminate this risk or at least substantially lower it with birth control. That too is her choice.

No, it isn't fair that the woman bears the brunt of sexual decisions in our culture. Blame biology. Fair or not, she does, and this has to weigh in her decision making about when to have sex and with whom.

When she chooses to murder another human being for her convenience, the choice affects others. This only is outside her choice in a culture that doesn't value human life. That may be the kind of nation you want to live in, it isn't the kind I do.
34
@23

You folks keep bringing up souls. I didn't as a justification for the only non-psychopath stance on abortion, which is that a human life being intentionally ended is murder. I noted only in passing that I consider Outer Cow wrong in his conclusion that the human soul hasn't the same existence as the human body, of less demonstrably.

You're the kind of person the neighbors are interviewed about after the basement slab is jackhammered up by the cops. 'He seemed nice, but he kept to himself. But you know, he always kept his lawn mowed.' Which somehow is supposed to make up for actively evil statements like "the only ethical objection you could be raising to what is admittedly infanticide, but which is not evil in spite of the venom you load into that term..." Because in your demented world infanticide can be a social occasion, presumably. Come around at about 7:00 or so and we'll throw Janey on the BBQ. Bring a good Chardonay, would you?

You're a really sick person, just so you know.
35
Care to answer my question @16, Seattleblues? Here, I'll condense it for you:

What is it about abortion that gets your panties in such a twist when the result of bringing unwanted children into the world is infanticide, neglect, abuse, and suffering? Is having children who end up being thrown into garbage cans, abused and often killed by neglectful parents who didn't want them in the first place the better option? Or do you only worry about babies in-utero and not give a shit about them after?

Also, (after reading @34) if embryos and fetuses qualify as a human life, and therefore intentionally ending that human life is murder, then logically we should charge women who accidentally miscarry with manslaughter. Right?
36
@35

This is just a rehash of the MSNBC/NARAL/NOW talking points on abortion.

We have laws about the treatment of live born children. Abuse them, throw them in a garbage can, or outright kill them and the law will most often deal with that. Nor is this at all common. It happens but with extreme rarity. The kind of human being who can be talked into the murder of their baby pre-birth by doctors selling a product and willing to tell them whatever lie will sell it is regrettably common. The kind that that takes a baby in their hands with intent to kill him or her is thankfully not.

And the whole miscarriage thing is another red herring I've seen about a thousand times. If I'm involved in a car accident in which my child dies, barring some clear culpability like being drunk, I won't be charged with manslaughter. Nor should a woman whose child proved inviable or miscarried by accident.

I have no way of knowing if a child born with Epilepsy or Asbergers may become the worlds greatest violinist or physicist or just a wonderful human being. Nor do you. I have no way of knowing if the victim of horrible abuse may grow up to contribute something to the world no-one else could. Nor do you.

The difference is that I don't take it on myself to decide who lives or dies, as every woman who chooses abortion does.
37
@36: And don't you think there's a reason that it's much more common for someone to be able to have an abortion than it is for someone to intentionally kill a baby or an adult? Do you really value a fetus to anywhere near the same extent as an adult? Even though an adult can feel and communicate and participate in a community, while a fetus is incapable of doing anything, or feeling or thinking, or conversing or interacting with humans in any way?
38
@36 Buddy, I already know that we have laws about the treatment of children. That's not what I'm asking you. I'm speaking to your particular moral sensibilities, since you feel the need to come onto SLOG to chastise, insult, and berate strangers who don't share your personal opinion.

You're here a lot, so I'm certain you've seen Dan's Every Child Deserves a Mother and a Father posts. Regrettably, the neglect and abuse of children by their parents, resulting in fatalities is not as uncommon as you'd like to think. 80% of the 700,000+ kids who are abused in the US are abused by their parents. 75% of child abuse and neglect fatalities are caused by parents.

So why does your concern for human life end at "Well, we have laws to protect them?" If a woman isn't stable enough to carry a child to term and isn't going to be a responsible parent anyhow, should she be forced to have that baby and we then punish her for abusing and neglecting her child after the fact? That child has still been abused and neglected.

I'm not asking about what a potential human life can contribute to the world. I'm asking why that potential is more important to you than the suffering that is visited upon the people who already have a stake in it. And why it is that you think your particular set of moral values should determine which of those two is more important. That's particularly of interest to me because your values would remove my rights to personal autonomy.

And it's hardly a red herring, Seattleblues, because pregnant women are already being arrested for miscarriages. In this country, we seem to have a different set of standards when it comes to culpability when it comes to pregnant women - apparently anything at all that endangers a fetus, including accidentally falling down the stairs, or continuing to take cancer medication indicates malice aforethought.

39
@22 you show ignorance by talking about a country on the other side of an ocean which has a different legal framework and culture around sexuality and abortion. Note that on this side of the pond the age of consent is 16, and there is a moral panic (usually stoked up by the Daily Mail) about teenage pregnancies. If you reference all of the article you will find that those women (less than 1% of the population have taken it more than twice!) who take the morning after pill (which is not an abortion pill and does not damage anything if conception and implantation has taken place) are taking it mostly as a backup if they aren't confident that their contraception will have worked as intended.

There are fewer abortions in the population who have taken the morning after pill in the UK than those who do take it. This is a good thing for reducing surgical interventions and for the moral avoidance of harm to unwanted children.
40
@22, I'm guessing the emergency contraceptive pill isn't all that easy to come by in Kansas either.

I also dislike calling that report "alarming". So girls are using emergency contraception. It's meant to be a back-up, ie, condom breaks or slips off. Teenagers are (or should be) paranoid about getting pregnant. Before emergency contraception was available, teens with a broken condom or pressured into sex without birth control, or raped, faced a month of worrying and stressing about pregnancy. Now there's a product available they can take to avoid that stress and girls are using it for what it was meant for. Maybe some of them are even taking it where they don't need to as a "just in case" (although my understanding is it makes you pretty darn sick for a while, so I suspect no one is likely to try that more than once). I'd say that girls using the morning-after pill are being responsible, not irresponsible.

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