That logo has an eerily fascist look to it.

Would that we could leave the debate up to women alone; the matter would be easily settled. Menfolk just can't stop meddling with vaginas, it seems... envy, perhaps?

Interesting that he elected to make the distinction about *human* abortion. Versus...?

@3: Other natural forms of birth control, such as animals that eat their own young.

i like the text layout. actually i kind of like the logo. and i like how the serif font makes fun of the first line as being feminine, then his manly points get to be sans serif.

That 3 is a 2, by the way.

the crux of his argument is that the fetus is not part of "your body". which is bullshit - babies are basically human fruit.

Saw one at Mercer & QA Ave last week which depicted a coathanger, saying, "A coathanger is not an argument."

Dear Ms. Madrid: Your body, like those of all women, are the property of Rupert T. Phornon of 4238 Mendenhall Drive, Dallas, TX 75224. Please reread your contract. Do not hesitate to call us if you have further questions. Have a nice day!

No idea what the writer is talking about, but I do think it's naive for anyone to think their body is their own. It's like when people are upset that prostitutes "sell their bodies." The point isn't that they don't, but that all of us who have an employer are selling our bodies in one way or another. There are many other ways in which we all are able to see that what we do to our bodies changes what happens to other people, and sometimes we all agree on various restrictions (blood alcohol limit for driving, some poor choices regarding health result in higher insurance costs for all of us, etc). It is mostly bourgeois idealism to think that any of us have a fair claim to our own bodies, men or women.

That logo makes me want to listen to 90s industrial music.

I saw a similar one posted outside the Planned Parenthood in Northgate, although that one just said 'Abolish Human Abortion' with the irritating logo.

And it is the logo that irritates me. Arguing for the abolishment of a woman's autonomy is not the sort of thing that warrants an edgy, rad logo. You are not a folk hero; you are not a countercultural icon; you do not need some clever meme-friendly symbol to mark your passing under the eyes of the authorities.

"The bible says so"
is a modern myth!

It is contradicted by both science and religion, and contrary to both faith and reason.

It is a rhetorical slogan designed to justify the destruction of post-born human beings.

Abolish abortion - give all of your babies to this guy to raise!

Ape god in the sky said nothing about abortion in the Big Book of Ape god.

The font choice is telling, like MR @4 pointed out. The curlicues make the "Body.. Choice" concept look "romantic" and not based in the Hard Facts of a Futura font!

Also, yeah, the AHA logo (aha!) does look quite fascist/nazi. Fitting.

Well, obvs as soon as there's a miniature person growing inside it, it's not your body anymore; it's a duplex. Duh.

(comment may contain sarcasm)

@10: So you'll adopt all the children I never wanted to carry to term in the first place, right?

On a lark, I dug up a pair of those sunglasses from They Live that's in that box in my closet that also holds the philosopher's stone, Luke Skywalker's hand, and the great American novel written by a guy named McGuffin.

Donning the glasses, I read the poster once again. It goes, "I could never get laid unless she was really drunk. I've never had a girlfriend and it's eating away at me."

Such is life.

While this poster is very weirdly worded, it's pretty easy to deduce what it's arguing: the fetus is human, not just another part of the woman's body. I'm pro-life, but pretending that you've never heard this argument before or have no idea what it means is a bit obnoxious.

Whoops, meant to write "not pro-life". Yowza!

@21. Too late, we will always remember your positions as being those described in 20.

It's like this person never read the bible or took a science class. But, at least, I'm a goddamn unicorn. Fuck yeah.

Gill Sans and Helvetica Condensed in the same poster? This dude is fucking NUTS!

It's not pro-life. It's anti-choice and pro-death.

@19: I just recently obtained a DVD copy of They Live for like $1.99. I think I'll be watching it sooner rather than later.*

*Yes, I have seen it before, just not in a long time.

Another gem from the pro-birth movement. These wackos are getting creative with their logos as I thought this might be a death metal band flyer upon first glance. Complete freak sauce with these guys - I will be ripping these down if I am within reach.

@20, I'll gladly cop to being obnoxious but perhaps you should read the post again? I didn't pretend that I've never heard this argument before or say have no idea what the poster means. What I said, very clearly, was that "it reads as if whoever designed it doesn't have a solid grasp of what words mean."

Because calling a slogan a myth and then arguing that the mythical slogan is contradicted by science and religion, without actually explaining either of those points, is both funny and incredibly stupid.

I don't think the poster is calling the idea behind "my body, my choice" a myth in the same sense that unicorns are mythical, but that's just me. If you're dying to hear some "explanations", I'm sure you could just Google Abolish Human Abortion.

It's not just one man. We're a growing movement throughout the country.

http://lotp.wordpress.com/2013/03/07/are…

@30: She's not hacking parts off of it, she's removing it from her viscera. If it were possible to remove a severely-immature fetus from a womb without killing it, it would be very nice; the day that is possible, feel free to institute that procedure in place of abortions.
Lemme put it in terms you may understand. Suppose someone breaks into your house and starts sleeping in your bed and eating your food (porridge?). You go to kick them out, and they protest that they'd die of starvation and exposure if you do. Should you have to keep this uninvited houseguest, or do you have the right to keep your domicile to yourself?

@32: God's Law says that abortion is entirely different from murder:
"And if men strive together, and hurt a woman with child, so that her fruit depart, and yet no harm follow, he shall be surely fined, according as the woman's husband shall lay upon him; and he shall pay as the judges determine." Exodus 21:22
Note that the Biblical punishment for murder is death, but that for feticide is a monetary fine.

I actually know someone involved in this particular anti-choice cult, and she is a LADY who attends a progressive college in the area. She's intelligent and outspoken and...somehow believes that my body actually belongs to "God" and therefore I'm not at liberty to make choices concerning what goes on inside of it. /shakes head

Ummm... what if a woman posted this up? Because I've seen quite a few pictures of women putting these up all over the country.

Also, since I am privy to the info, 63% of the 24,000 people on the Abolish Human Abortion facebook page do in fact have a uterus.

And yes... if you look into an embryology textbook you will find that a preborn human fetus is not actually "part" of anyone's body.

The body inside your body is your baby, not your "choice."

Ummm... what if a woman posted this up? Because I've seen quite a few pictures of women putting these up all over the country.

Also, since I am privy to the info, 63% of the 24,000 people on the Abolish Human Abortion facebook page do in fact have a uterus.

And yes... if you look into an embryology textbook you will find that a preborn human fetus is not actually "part" of anyone's body.

The body inside your body is your baby, not your "choice."

1. If you look into an embryology textbook, you will find that sexism is frequently embedded into scientific language (which has historically been crafted by men in a patriarchal society), which is then used to justify sexist policy. See Emily Martin's article called The Sperm and the Egg for a great example of this.
2. Knowing this, let's look past the language you are using to justify your argument, and look at the actual case you are making: a biological event inside my body does not fall under my own jurisdiction. Why on earth would you make such an argument? What is motivating you to try to convince the world that other people should get to regulate things which happen inside my body? Can you not see how this directly violates the physical barrier between me and the rest of the world? Can you actually not see that, logically, this physical space is inherently my jurisdiction? Do you feel that this will actually create a better world, or a stronger society? Who, exactly, benefits from this bizarre claim? As far as I can tell, this is 100% motivated by someone's personal (and in my opinion, fucked up) choice in religious belief, and not at all by logic or compassion or anything relevant to people outside of this particular religious system. If you have some other perspective, I would truly love to hear it. As it stands, this makes no sense to me, and I am concerned for the well-being of the women in your cult and the world that has to put up with them. Blaming it on science doesn't make is seem any less irrational.

That's a man putting them up? What a dumb ass. I've been informed to stay out of women's issues debates, and I do my best to follow that advice. And I'm on women's side!!!!

@36 As has been pointed out, your language is squirrelly. Can you define "part of ... body" please? Functionally, a non viable embryo or fetus is "a part" of me in the same way a virus or bacterium is. I like some of my flora and choose to keep them around. Others are detrimental and I eradicate them.

At the core of your view is a belief that human genetic material is privileged, special. You need to reconsider the basis for that belief. Try discarding reasons based on sentimentality and supernatural beliefs-- what do you get?

It never ceases to amaze that more often than not the same individuals who fulminate against abortion are the next minute bloviating about the government taking their freedoms away. There is nothing more fundamental to a free society than having autonomy over your own body.

@36 I don't think anyone here is claiming that all anti-abortion zealots are men but one thing is absolutely certain - if fathead white guys could get pregnant there would never be any kind of abortion debate.

I like the look of the poster... Usually the sorts that make this have such horrible taste. Well done, anonymous misogynist! You're raising the bar for morally myopic mouth-breathers everywhere.

@33 Should you have to keep this houseguest? If that person is your own child then yes, you do have to provide for him/her.

Using your scenario, let's say you live way out in the middle of nowhere and you wake up in the morning to find some very young child in your home. You have no who the parents are or how the child got there - you took all precautions to prevent this from happening (locked doors and windows) yet here he is. There was a snowstorm the night before that cut out all the power and the cell phone towers are down so you can't call someone and the roads are not driveable. Can you put this child out of your home even though it would mean certain death because the child's body cannot withstand the environment outdoors? I don't think it's stretch to say that doing so would be equivalent to homicide.

Parents have a responsibility to care for their children, and yes, we have to use our bodies to do that, in one way or another. Another example, a mother with a newborn baby has decided that she does not want to breast feed, she will bottle feed. Same situation, she is in the middle of nowhere, stranded for days or weeks even, and without any baby formula. She does however have milk provided by her breasts that could feed the child to sustain him. Does she have a moral and legal obligation to use her body in a way that is against her wishes to protect the life of her child? We both know the answer is yes.

@41 Come on, man. I fall more on the pro-choice side, but a fetus is not Enterobactereaceae. If you're going to say that the trillions of bacteria you crap out everyday are on the same level of reverence as a fetus, I forbid you from eating or wearing any animal-derived products from here on out, or from swatting any flies, squashing any cockroach, or taking out any mutant Tehran rat with a sniper rifle. Actually, don't forget about plants! They're alive before we slice them out and eat them. Or if you're going to go in the other direction and argue that all life is the same and it doesn't matter if we kill it, don't feel sore if one of those AHA loonies grab their Second Amendment and take a shot at you.

And Cienna, I respectfully disagree with you about the flier. (How else would I disagree?)

This is a fantastic flier, posted by thoroughly annoying people, because it gets to the core of the strength of the pro-life movement: The consensus that a late stage fetus is as much a "baby" as an actual, post-birth baby.

Let me illustrate with an analogy (You know where I'm going!): If you were to stab a newborn and kill him one hour after birth, would you be killing a human being? Most people, and society's laws, would answer "yes." Now lets say that you stuck a long, thin knife into the expectant mother's uterus one hour before delivery. ("But that doesn't happen!!" Hold on for just a second.) In this way, you end up killing the fetus. Now, would you say that you have killed another human being? One hour before delivery!

If you're honest with yourself, you're probably saying, "Yes. That's the same as killing a baby - meaning a human that has been born." THIS is the strength of the pro-life movement. This is the analogy this flier is appealing to - and we all know what it is, deep inside. The poster doesn't have to describe it. That's why it's saying that destroying a fetus is as much a "choice" as killing a baby.

Okay, then. So how about one month before delivery? Three? Five? Seven? Nine? How about three days after conception? Is destroying that blastocyst - that undifferentiated, expanding ball of cells - the same as killing our hypothetical newborn? Can we actually call that a human?

If you're honest with yourself, you'll probably say, "I hope not! I've taken pills to terminate an early pregnancy because we weren't ready to have a child, or we couldn't provide for the eventual child's needs, or the child was doomed to have a short, agonizing life, or *I* was doomed or would not be able to procreate further in the future," or whatever the case might be. And many women miscarry their fetuses way past the first month and life goes on for them.

This is where those buffoons in the Catholic Church and these AHA people and the American Taliban screw themselves up, because they fail to recognize that these decisions - these choices - are very personal and different from woman to woman, and that "abolishing" abortion in the law would not abolish it in actuality. The symbol of the clothes hanger is very powerful for a good reason. "Abolishing" abortion - removing that safe, legal choice - only ads to the woman's suffering, perhaps for years to come. It is difficult to overestimate the importance of reproductive control for the cause of women's rights. The ability to have a *safe*, *legal*, private abortion is a component of that reproductive control. (I won't open the can of worms regarding the expectant father's rights in all of this.)

So that's really the argument for most people, I think. At what point in the pregnancy is abortion tantamount to murder? I haven't bothered to read the decision for Roe vs. Wade (Is it long, technical, and dry?), but my understanding is that the Justices decided that it wasn't society's role to answer that question by offering a blanket decree banning all abortions. Instead, the idea was that this very big and intimate question should be answered by the parties involved. Anti-abortion activists would say that the fetus is one of the parties involved and that he/she doesn't get a seat at the table - hence this flier - but that just returns to the original question. So that's where we are

@48 Well there does seem to be a correlation to a lack of education and the belief that it is perfectly acceptable to impose one's religious beliefs on others, even if it involves extending the authority of the state into the interior of a person's body, even if it involves literal rape by the state such as the case with laws mandating transvaginal ultrasounds.

Only an idiot would support it.

Maybe it's like finders keepers, Ladies gotta say "Mine!" when looking in the mirror at some point. Then they gotta loop a video recording on a rotating monitor that rests on an extremely heavy hat. Preferably they should also pin some form of notarized proof that the video is authentic somewhere over the boobs. Common sense laaaaaddddiiiieeeesss.

@46: A child isn't an uninvited houseguest. If you choose to have a child, you assume responsibility for that person. But that's NOT what's happening here!
When abortions occur, it's almost always for one of two reasons: the pregnancy was unintended or the mother's health is in danger. You have no obligation to keep someone in your house if they were never welcomed in, or if their staying puts you in serious danger.
The legal status so far is that you aren't obligated to give up your flesh to save the life even of a relative; a man who sued to try and force his cousin to offer a kidney for transplant was unsuccessful.
You're bringing emotion into this where it doesn't belong. An embryo is NOT a person, and doesn't have the inherent right to occupy and endanger something that is.

These analogies about houses that have been posted seem severely lacking to me. Here's one of my own creation that I think captures the problem better:

You have a child, a child of your very own, and one day when you are out driving this child from one place to another you do something reckless (speeding, checking your cellphone, drinking coffee, w/e) and you cause an accident. Now your child is in the hospitals and needs a transplant, the transplant list is long and the only way the child will survive is if you donate one of your organs (lets say it's a kidney or part of your liver). In this scenario, do you have a right to refuse to donate? Off course you do! Even if it means your child will die because of something you did, you still have a choice. Why? Because it's an invasive procedure that carries innate risks. Pregnancy is invasive, and it carries risks, and you should always have a choice, up to a point at least. Here in Sweden where I live you can only get an abortion after the 18th week if the pregnancy is threatening your life, and to me that seems reasonable.

@36- Assertions aren't facts, no matter how strongly worded they are.

A woman's body is her own. It doesn't belong to a fetus, or to a (almost certainly fictional) god. She can choose to grow a baby in it or not. She can abort the process after it starts. A shocking large number of pregnancies miscarry anyway, so if you believe in God and the human-ness of a fertilized egg, you must believe God kills babies like I breathe air.

@53 Here in France you can only have an elective abortion before 12 weeks of pregnancy (since conception), when what you're carrying is an embryo, not a fetus - so before it's a miniature human with all limbs and fingers.

But anti-abortion idiots in the streets still show you pictures of dead full-term babies, or viable fetus, and pretend that's what elective abortion is like.

Therapeuthic abortion is decided by the doctors, at any term of pregnancy - the pregnant lady can still refuse it on religious grounds if she wishes. Doctors propose therapeuthic abortion in case of malformations or incurable illness of the fetus, or when the mother's health is in danger.

Usually when one hears in France from people who want to ban abortion, what is understood is "banning elective abortion". But I guess some of those people mean banning therapeuthic abortion as well ? This makes no sense - if one must die, a living human's life is worth more than an unborn human's.

As far as I know, the French Catholic Church has not declared in the last 30 years that it would like to ban therapeuthic abortion.

But what happened in a Catholic hospital in Ireland last year, when an Indian lady died, really was doctors refusing to perform a therapeuthic abortion - so, as usual, Catholic doctrine is shifty and adapts from country to country.

@56 Well let's discuss arrogance then shall we? Let's discuss this 'height of arrogance'. Is it the height of arrogance to state that religious zealots need to keep their ludicrous ideas to themselves and not attempt to ram them down the throats of those that want nothing to do with them but must nonetheless share the same society with them?

Or is it perhaps a much higher height of arrogance when said religious zealots assume that they have the authority bequeathed upon them from on high to compel the state to extend its laws into uteruses and other bodily orifices, the authority to repossess human bodies to ensure the fulfillment of the Lord's will, the authority to rape women via trans-vaginal ultrasounds so as to intimidate them into submission.

I'm thinking this is a little bit more than a difference of opinion but if all you want to do is register your difference of opinion and retire then perhaps we are making some progress here.

@56: I hold firmly that anyone who believes that the Earth is 6000 years old, that current flora and fauna were created at the beginning of time as they are today, or that the Earth is flat, is wrong, uneducated, and delusional. Care to challenge me there?
There are matters of opinion, yes. And then there are facts.

Someone's got to work on the headlines. I thought it said, "The Myth of Female Anatomy." That would've been interesting, but instead we just got the usual horseshit.

@55 - it's only an embryo until the 8th week, at which point the fetal stage begins. All of those 9-12 week abortions are on fetuses.