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In any case, unlimited private internet access, whether used for porn or not, is just asking for kids to waste all their time and not get any homework or anything else done. That's the main reason computers stay in public areas at my house and I limit my kids' time.
Did I stumble across the ass end of advice columns where hose beasts go to tell each other they aren't crazy and it's OK that they burned their boyfriends house down to prove how much they loved him or something? How are these chicks getting away with saying your advice is great?
I've been reading Savage Love for over a decade. I've never seen Dan drop the ball like this.
Oh, I see. I had imagined 182 to be talking about the fact that a man cannot force a woman to have the baby even if he is the father. He can say he will legally adopt the child, bear all responsibility, that she'll never need to worry or even see it if she doesn't want to; still, he cannot legally force her to take the pregnancy to term and deliver the baby, since this would be akin to commandeering her womb. And this, only because there currently is no option to a woman's womb as a place for a fetus to develop: either the woman agrees, or there is no pregnancy, given the principle of body autonomy which our culture considers important.
But you (and maybe 182, too) are talking about a different thing: the right to opt out of parenthood. And there I tend to agree with you: it would be better (by which I mean: more equal) if both the man and the woman had the same right to opt out of parenthood. In moral/ethical terms, I don't think there is any counterargument to what you say.
In pragmatic terms, however, there may be a problem. Historically, for whatever reasons, the tendency is for fathers of unwanted children to abandon said children (this is more frequent than the opposite) and their mothers, which basically puts the burden of raising the kid on the woman. Indeed, she may opt out and have an abortion, but there is social pressure against that (no need to remind anyone of how anti-choicers make life hard for women who want to have abortions, plus religious beliefs, etc. etc. etc.); so the actual, pragmatic result of allowing men to opt out of fatherhood is more single mothers without father support (to change that, we would actually have to encourage single pregnant women to abort -- with all the disturbing feelings that this would generate). Now, if we admit the principle that, in such cases, the law should decide on the best interest of the child (who is the one totally innocent participant in the whole story: s/he could neither have kept her legs closed or his junk in his pants), it stands to reason that it is better for the child to have more financial resources -- the mother's and the father's -- than fewer -- only the mother's --, so it is in the best interest of the child to make the father carry part of the burden. The only other options I can see is to accept a less good situation for the child (which goes against its best interest), or then for there to be some social security benefit for single mothers -- in which case the burden would be borne by the taxpayer, which, in the current political climate, looks pretty hard to swallow to me.
In sum, pragmatically speaking, it seems that the principle of deciding in the best interest of the child leads one to go for making the father share the burden -- even though the decision not to abort was the woman's. The alternatives are giving up the principle of the best interest of the child, burdening all taxpayers, or then encouraging abortions (perhaps even making them obligatory unless the mother can prove she has guaranteed income above some threshold value X) -- all of which look worse to me.
But what do you think?
Letter #2 - as a militant feminist who discovered kinky porn around the age of 12 (a friend's older brother's magazine collection) scoured bookstores (thank you anne rice) and libraries (thank you misters desade and masoch) for more - the interweb was in its infancy, I can whole heartedly agree with dan's advice. I like kinky violence against women and men in my porn. I 'always' have. Safe, sane, consensual violence is great (can you really call it violence when everyone is getting what they want)! Porn is not reality, and a talk about the difference between the two is warranted. Now that we have the Internet, that talk could include directing the boy to some of the more educational kink sites as well, for a bit more advice on kink in real life.
It seems worse when one connects violence and sex, because our civilization does have a history of mixing them -- and then there's BDSM to add to the mix, just to make things more complicated... But I would claim that what is disturbing is not that the violence Jellybean's child was watching was specifically sexual, but that s/he was (apparently?) being influenced by it towards actual violent behavior.
Indeed, what do we think about that? What is the role of violence in art and the media, especially the part consumed by our children?
I don't have an answer for that. I do have an opinion, but not a strong one, and I'm struggling with it (to put it shortly: I'm not against violence in art, even if it does turn out to be a bad influence). I'd like to hear other people's opinions on that.
Even worse, what should one do, regardless of one's opinion, if one is confronted with Jellybean's situation -- an apparent correlation, and a very disturbing one at that? (My first gut feeling: for what we should do, it shouldn't matter much what the source of the kid's violent behavior is, but the fact that said violent behavior is there; we should find out how this violent behavior integrates into the ecology of the kid's psyche and attack it there; but with what methods?...)
I keep seeing ambiguous images of violence-related characters in art and literature, from the Alex of Anthony Burgess' A Clockwork Orange to Dexter Morgan. This topic clearly needs thinking.
It does need to be repeated that if there is one person in the story who did nothing to deserve any punishment, it's the baby.
As I said in my post to avast, either we give up the principle of deciding on the best interest of the child (by arguing that the mother's and/or the father's happiness is more important than the child's), or we create a new tax (heaven forbid!...), or we encourage abortions or even make them obligatory (if the mother doesn't earn more than X dollars per month)... or we force the father to pay. It is unfair, in the sense that he is in a worse situation than the mother; but all the above options look to me even unfairer. Yes, unfairer than making a poor guy pay child support for 18 years.
In other words, it's not simply about how many options the mother or the father has, but also about what is best for the baby (who may also, by the way, be a man). Unless you disagree with that, I don't see how to avoid the conclusion that the least unfair (better: the pragmatically more efficient) solution is indeed to burden the father.
What's next....lie about a rape?
Yes, lets lie.
You have just destroyed all the credibility you had. I have been a loyal reader for over 10 years, but this time, you screwed up.
I hear you. I'm not advocating unlimited internet access for kids. I'm just advocating against confronting your kid about porn you find distasteful. I understand the gut instinct behind such a confrontation, but I do not see any positive outcome. (Again, Dan's points about discussing consent and safety are good, but apply to all kids, not just those who like kinky porn.)
And your point about taking away porn to encourage the kid's imagination is good in theory but not in practice. Guys are very visually oriented, so we don't want to jerk off with our eyes closed. And if porn were really just a "societal script", which is I'm guessing how you view this kid's porn, then there wouldn't be any porn featuring women dominating men. And you'd probably be able to "fix" gay boys by showing them the "script" of straight porn.
You are a leftist who believes in coalition politics. Therefore you try to make the ridiculous argument that if you are in favor of gay rights, then you also must support abortion rights, amnesty for illegal aliens, unionized public workers, etc. HOGWASH.
Mixing abortion with contraception is also bullshit. They are not the same. And no one has a constitutional right to free birth control. I agree it makes sense for the poor who can't come up with the $9/month. But for upper class c**ts like Sandra Fluke, the taxpayers or other policy holders don't need to subsidize it for her.
People opposed to abortion have very good grounds for that position and it is pretty heartfelt. To dismiss it and mock it and use it for an excuse to end a relationship is intolerance at its very worse.
Just break up with him, LIFE. It is obvious this relationship is going to end badly, because if you are willing to break up with him over that, then you really shouldn't be together.
I also never dated men who were on opposite ends of this argument, because I cannot take birth control due to a medical condition. I did not want to get pregnant by a pro-choicer only to have him pressuring me to have an abortion. When it comes to children, you should be with someone who shares the same belief on such important issues as having children, raising them, etc.
On a side note, I don't think I'll be coming back to savage love anymore. I don't really like advice columnists who claim to be open minded and accepting, yet look down their noses at other people's view points like they are some sort of demons. Hypocrite.
It's not the woman's fault, because she didn't create our reproductive system; it works the way does not because of her, but because of nature. Also, she is not responsible for the principle of bodily autonomy: our bodies cannot be legally commandeered against our wills. She didn't create this principle; it's our society that holds this belief.
So it's not her fault that life and society are like that. I don't hold her responsible. But it's a damn sad fact that your boyfriend couldn't get the child he wanted so much.
It would be equally sad if someone died because your boyfriend's former girlfriend refused to donate a kidney, or bone marrow, or even blood -- sad enough that your boyfriend come to the conclusion that maybe we should give up complete body autonomy and make certain things -- blood donation, for instance -- obligatory when human lives are at stake. It's an honorable opinion; just as it is honorable to be (sincerely, as opposed to politically) anti-choice. It's a defensible moral position. I happen to disagree with it on pragmatic groudns -- criminalizing abortion creates more suffering than it solves -- but I don't disrepect or hold a grudge against people who have this opinion (if it is sincere, and consistent).
I could perfectly well live and even love someone who had the opposite opinion to mine on the abortion issue, as long as I thought this person's opinion is sincere and deeply felt. I can understand where they're coming from.
The fact there are perks to being a man is really just a side note to the issue of the sexes' power inequity vis-a-vis deciding whether to abort a fetus when the guy doesn't want to be a dad. Please ease up on the "two wrongs don't make a right" hand-wringing.
This is not about some power trade off ("you get to force me to be a dad, then I get paid more than you for comparable work"). It's about what is best for the kids and for society as a whole. Please see comments # 206 and 211. Again, not all laws are about or should be about "justice" for each individual effected. Sometimes laws are just rules that best organize society.
Yeah, it may not be perfectly fair, but has anyone got a better solution for the welfare of the child?
And let's not forget that plenty of men can and do find ways around paying child support, legal and otherwise.
And I really don't care whether anti-choicers feel their reasons are "heartfelt". They're still ignorant, often willfully so.
Some are really concerned with the fact that "that bunch of cells" is something more... troubling than simply a bunch of cells.
I find it perfectly respectable to be so concerned about that disturbing, troubling bunch of cells.
I think it is pragmatically bad to be anti-choice -- this creates more suffering than it resolves. But I don't think all anti-choicers are just ignorant. Some are actually very wise. I still think they are pragmatically wrong -- but I don't despise them. Only those who do deserve it (by actually being more concerned with controling other people's sexuality or following the rules of some old rule book than really being concerned with that disturbing bunch of cells).
Not convinced. I thought the same people who said guys were so visually oriented also said that guys are very, very good at visualization? As in, picturing things that aren't there? Not to mention going around being already totally horny all the time anyway? And there is no shortage of stimulating images in the world. In my generation, the vast majority of people never saw a porn movie until they were grown up, and even those who did seldom had sufficient privacy with the VCR to be jerking off to said movies. I really, really don't think they had any trouble finding things to jerk off to.
I trust my wife explicitly, but find this fucking scary as hell.
What an appropriate column. Thank you Dan, for this week's letters.
Today, I sat in on an abortion. It was one of the most positive, life enriching experiences I've ever witnessed.
A woman deciding if and when to have a child is HER business, period. She is spiritual enough, smart enough, kind enough and capable enough.
Once she has decided, being able to provide abortion services in a warm and peaceful space, was such a gift.
The women and men in the doctor's office needed this, got it, and had respectful, considerate treatment. Exactly the way it should be.
Vote Obama. @8- yes!
Maybe you were just venting?/
But in general, yeah, your wife, as the carrier, gets to decide what goes on in her own uterus. If you don't like this, maybe consider adoption.
i do love the advice to MFKS.
I also have never really agreed with Dan's view on porn. I can tell you that I am really pretty sure that the things that I saw and heard and was generally exposed to when I was a young teenager INFORMED my sexuality. I don't believe I had some kind of blueprint and that I just responded to something that fit the mold. If I'm wrong on this, I'd like to see the evidence that such preferences work in this way. If that were my teenage boys I'd be telling them under no uncertain terms that while I can't control what they choose to seek out in the porn realm that I strongly frown on them looking at extreme porn or anything that degrades women. I realise the attraction of the freaky or illicit but I'd be trying to prevent it in any way I could. At some point in the evolution of the porn world on the internet, because of it's ubiquitous nature and the scale of its presence, people just seem to have suddenly accepted that because teenagers CAN have access to any and all manner of sex expression that they SHOULD. Bullshit.
I'd like to point out that our objection is pragmatic. I'm not against all lying on principle. I'm against lying in this case because it wouldn't serve Dan's intended purpose, because it wouldn't serve any good purpose, and because there would be negative unintended consequences.
In some ways that makes the question like the one on porn. The far right objection to porn is on principle, that looking at it somehow makes a man unfaithful to his wife or that it's wrong to get turned on in general. My objection (when I have an objection) is pragmatic. I want to know if looking at the porn has a negative effect in the real world. In other words, if a boy looks at violent porn, does he have a greater chance of becoming violent in reality?
The lie should be this: "I got raped and pregnant, I had an abortion, do you think I'm a murderer?"
If LIFE's boyfriend really believes that life begins at conception, and that a fertilized egg is a full citizen with all the rights citizenship entails, he believes that women who have abortions are accomplices in murder, and that the law should recognize that.
Of course he doesn't believe that, almost no one does, because if they did they would have a little funeral every time a woman miscarried.
Politicians who invent little reasons why pregnancy from rape doesn't matter do so because they recognize that the inconsistency in opposing abortion except in cases of rape is indefensible.
I would just show him Dan's comment, and ask him to really imagine what he might feel. Maybe he isn't capable of it, and maybe she will want to dump him. But if the point of the exercise is to change his mind AND keep him as a boyfriend, DON'T PULL A STUNT LIKE THAT.
You are clearly smart woman making points based on common sense. A lot of times, smart men make points about female perspectives based on common sense, but are wrong.
Most guys don't end up having very frank conversations with women about jerking off. Women lucky or unlucky to have such conversations have generally only had them with one or two guys. I don't know you and don't want to make assumptions about you - and I definitely don't want to come off sounding as though a lack of experience having detailed discussions with guys about jerking off qualifies as some sort of deficiency. But I suspect you may lack such experience.
You are correct that guys can jerk off to things other than porn, have done so prior to the existence of porn, and, when the need arises, continue to do so today. At no point did I suggest that that getting rid of porn would render impossible the act of male masturbation.
This was not the point I was making. You suggested that taking away a kid's porn would help him develop his sexual imagination. My response was not that he would stop jerking off if his porn were taken away, just that he would keep jerking off without experiencing any increase in imagination, and that his jerking off would be less pleasurable if he were denied his preferred images. While it is true that guys have not always has easy access to pornographic images (just as we have not always have easy access to warm food), I think it's safe to say that we prefer them to the alternative, and this this preference is not simply a social construct but rather goes to biological hard-wiring. (No, I do not think gender is all biological ... but some of it is.) Thus, the cross-cultural male appreciation for porn, when available.
I think the mistake you make here is that you imagine yourself as a young boy switching from a porn to a no-porn status, but kind of superimpose a female sexuality on the scenario. Also, the process of males looking at porn is not as static as you seem to think it is. We often take the porn as a starting point, then imagine other scenarios which incorporate the images. So porn does not necessarily have the dulling effect on imagination you describe.
Separately, just because he is pro life doesn't mean he wants to impose his views on other women.
Why are you making it so black and white? Abortion is a non reversal decision,and life is long. Just because you also believe in it in theory doesn't mean you yourself, when really confronted with the decision, would have one.
Cut out the game playing your boyfriend sounds like a nice guy and it sounds like he presented this view to you in a thoughtful manner
Have you considered that you might have hangups about this issue, and only see it in one light e.g. your perception that men are enforcing their belief on your body?
*By which I don't mean people who are "personally pro-life, politically pro-choice" -- I mean people who actually think abortion should be outlawed.
I believe that a fetus is a life. Does that make me pro-life? No. One of the considerations women use in determining whether or not to have an abortion is what the quality of life of the child would be like. There have been stages of my life where I have taken types and quantities of substances that would have affected the health of the child. There have been times when the lack of social support would have impacted the child.So yes, in that way, I am considering the rights of the fetus to a healthy, loving, supportive home.
"I want to know if looking at the porn has a negative effect in the real world. In other words, if a boy looks at violent porn, does he have a greater chance of becoming violent in reality?"
I think the verdict is still out on this one, and the concern is not baseless. However, we should keep in mind that the kid is not really looking at "violent porn"; he is looking at porn where people are just pretending to be violent.
I've seen a lot of TV/movie violence, and I've also seen a fair amount of real-life (non-sex-related) violence. These experiences are surprisingly different, whether a viewer of or participant in the violence. I'm not sure if this difference undercuts any of your points or directly addresses any of your concerns, but it may be worth mentioning, anyway.
I say every last one of those pro-life assholes should go to Malawi (or, shit, outside our doors in America) and adopt a child each, and THEN get back to us about why pro-life is such a sacred thing.
Easy to spout off about while they count their tax-break dollars collecting dust in a bank in Switzerland..
God, how badly I wish I could smack a right-wing Republican pro-life tool upside the head with THE Biggest Bible I can find and handle!
The C**ts.
;-D
Uh, reality check time. Lying about the pregnancy was only ever a suggestion, and it came from Dan. Letter Writer didn't say anything of the sort. Just so we are all clear on that. We now return you to our regularly scheduled ranting... :)
It's not necessarily completely black and white, but there are a number of beliefs that logically follow, and the whole chain of them have ramifications:
If you believe that human life begins at conception, then you believe that abortion kills a real live human being. (You've probably heard the slogan "abortion stops a beating human heart.") If that was your wife/girlfriend who aborted a fetus resulting from sex with you, then it follows from that belief that your girlfriend/wife killed your child.
What do you estimate the odds are of long-term relationship success after an abortion if a man carries within his heart the conviction that his wife literally killed his child? Is it surprising that a woman would seriously reevaluate her chances of a successful relationship with him when that became a known example of a very likely deal-breaker?
He still thinks abortion is a bad thing. But he's THINKING, and realizing that black and white views on abortion, birth control, and family planning are bad in real life situations where the shades of grey are to numerous to count. He's not on my side of the fence yet, but he's looking at it with new perspective and respect.
And that's okay with me.
A potential person isn't an actual person.
Corporations are people.
Get it? Got it? Goooood.
I think the question for me is more if the kid already has violent tendencies, is he likely to see the porn as reinforcing the idea that everyone is like that? It's well known that male rapists tend to think that what they do is pretty much what all guys do, and that stuff like rape jokes tends only to reinforce that belief in them.
There are also young people, don't forget, who are relying on porn for what they should be getting in sex ed. See, e.g., Cliff Pervocracy's post http://pervocracy.blogspot.com/2012/02/t…, in which she points out "And yet it left me, not just lacking in advanced topics, but in the basic understanding of how sex even worked. I mean, it wasn't until I started watching porn that I understood what an erection was, or that intercourse involved thrusting. The sex-ed version was so sanitized it had left me honestly thinking men stuffed their soft dicks in women and just sorta stood around until they ejaculated. This isn't a frivolous pornographic detail. This is like taking driver's ed and still not knowing about the gas and brake pedals."
It seems likely to me that kids who come to porn with that little understanding (and who probably don't have the advantage of Cliff's intelligence and talent for analysis, because face it, most of us don't) are likely to be getting very different messages out of it than those who are looking at it in a more sophisticated way.
wise advice.
You and her have exactly the same rights and exactly the same options. But she has one thing you don't -- a womb. It's not your fault, it's not her fault; it's just the way things are. And, if you believe in bodily autonomy, you can't force her to use her womb against her will just as she cannot force you to donate blood against your will.
Scary? Yes. But unavoidable (at least until science invents artifical wombs), and nobody's fault.
Death is scary, and equally unavoidable. Nobody said life was supposed not to be scary.
I suspect it does. After all, we are affected by the images we see. If we weren't, the advertising industry would make no sense.
But things aren't deterministic: the images we see don't determine who we are, they are not the only thing that influences the final outcome. Or else, advertising would simply be the same as brainwashing.
We tolerate several things that have some negative influence or consequence or have some inherent level of danger (drinking, driving, etc.) because we think their bad influence or level of danger is tolerable, and because we think there are also good consequences (drinking is fun, driving is an efficient way to move around, etc.).
So the pragmatic question to me is: what is the level of danger / intensity of bad influence from violence in porn (or art in general -- porn is just a specific subarea of art)? Is it tolerable? Is it compensated by any good consequences?
Yes, the latter is an interesting and intriguing question: are there good consequences of there being violence in art (including porn)? (My personal short answer: yes). If so, what are they? (My personal short answer: they satisfy a certain need, both in art and in us; they play an important role in a larger system, like all other frequent topics/elements in art.)
Anti-choicer: "When evaluating how bad the consequences of something is, we have to take into account all the consequences, not just some of them. True, when abortion is banned, it often continues under worse conditions, which is bad. The number of women who would die in illegal abortions is worrysome -- that is a huge minus. But, if we consider that all life is important, the number of babies who won't be killed in abortions should also be taken into account -- babies who will be born and live. If their number is much higher than the number of women who die from badly performed illegal abortions, then the pluses still outweigh the minuses. Also, if we make contraception more widely available and make sexual education and information more widely available, the number of women who will need an illegal abortion will decrease -- thereby making the pluses outweigh the minuses even more strongly."
(I don't agree with the above argument, for reasons I think are obvious, but I hope you'll agree that this hardly qualifies as "lalalala I can't hear you").
That's a great question. I will only add a comment: having violent tendencies is only part of a more complex ecological system we call "personality." There are people with violent tendencies who keep them under control -- in some cases, exactly by using violent images as a surrogate for actual violence. Paradoxically, they would be more openly violent if they didn't have access to violent images.
I would add to your question: and what else, besides violent tendencies, is there in this kid's mind? How do these tendencies relate to these other elements? If the whole dangerous? If so, is there some way to re-structure these elements so as to produce a non-dangerous outcome?
"I was talking about not having access to MOVIES."
Nope. You mentioned movies in a subsequent post @224, but here is what you originally wrote @203: "I do think it's reasonable to limit their opportunities to access commercial porn. That's not limiting their fantasies one bit -- indeed, you could argue that it's encouraging them to develop their own rather than relying on societal scripts." See? No mention of movies at all, let alone limiting the discussion to movies. That is why I interpreted your use of the phrase "societal scripts" as figurative, not literal.
And, far more importantly, as far as we know, the mom of the kid at issue here did not mention movies to their friend who wrote to Dan here, only "a stash of really kinky violence-against-women stuff on her kid's computer" - a stash which likely contained still photos, as still photos of men committing pretend-violent sex acts against women are readily available online. So even if you did limit the discussion to movies, which you did not, you would have been going on a tangent which does not necessarily apply to giving this person advice on how to deal with their particular situation.
"In any case, given a typically horny mid-teens boy's state of mind, I can certainly see why they're drawn to erotic images ..."
Oh, it doesn't end at the teen years. And, per the biological hard-wiring I referenced @242, the visual orientation of male sexuality which I referred to @213 is not limited to imagery, but is rather rooted in us being sexually aroused primarily by the appearance of females, rather than by their intelligence status, wealth, sense of humor, or willingness to provide us shelter. (Ditto for gay guys, just substitute "males" for "females".) Which is why jerking off without images will almost never be our first masturbation choice. Which is why your suggestion that this kid might be better off jerking off without images was wrong. I want to emphasize that I don't believe that your inability to get this far into the head of a masturbating guy constitutes a character flaw, although your unwillingness to recognize this inability might be.
"but by the same token I can't see why they should actually need [pornographic images] very badly, any more than they usually need appetite stimulants."
Right. I'm not on a soapbox saying "Your teenage boys need porn!" They don't. This isn't about whether teenage boys need porn, it's about what a mom should do when she rudely snoops and finds a stash of her son's porn that contains images, moving or otherwise, of men pretending to commit violent sex acts against women.
My advice would be: Don't tell the kid you found his porn, and don't throw away or delete the porn. Have a general, non-porn sex discussion along the lines of Dan's suggestion regarding consent and safety. Try to come to grips with how little influence a parent can (intentionally) really have on their kid's sexual tastes and actions, and hope for the best.
Wow, did you seriously just say that the women who took Thalidomide were committing an immoral act? Please tell me you don't honestly believe that women took that horrid drug because they wanted to fuck up their child and give him or her flippers. They took it because it was prescribed by their doctors. They took it because they were told it was safe. No one had any idea it would do what it did.
But let's put alcohol back into the discussion. Have you ever taken a peek at the recommendations given to women in Europe? If France, they tell you not to have more than two glasses of wine daily. In Italy, they tell you not to have more than one. Neither nation is overrun with children who have fetal alcohol syndrome. In fact, for a significant portion of human history women drank wine and beer and mead because the water wasn't safe!
And what if a woman gets the flu or any other virus while she is pregnant? Recent studies have shown that a child born to a woman who catches a virus during pregnancy have a 1.5 to 7 times increased risk for schizophrenia. Are those women immoral as well?
Where does a woman's responsibility to spend 40 weeks of her life being a proper incubator end? We are already told to eat lots of fish (EFAs) but to avoid fish (mercury and PCBs and listeria). We are told to avoid shellfish (algae-related infections). We are told to avoid deli meat (listeria). We are told to avoid soft cheeses (listeria). We are told to avoid raw vegetables (toxoplasmosis). We are told to avoid raw meat (coliform bacteria, toxoplasmosis, and salmonella). We are told to avoid foods like mayonnaise and Caesar salad that may contain raw eggs (salmonella). We are told to avoid unpasteurized milk (listeria). We are told to avoid pate (listeria again). We are told to avoid caffeine (studies have shown that caffeine is safe but doctors aren't 100% sure it doesn't potentially contribute to miscarriages during the first trimester so they prefer it if women simply don't drink it throughout the pregnancy). And of course alcohol, as you mentioned.
And that's just foods. The list of activities we are told to avoid is even longer. For fun, this is just a taste: We are told to avoid cats (toxoplasmosis). We are told to avoid gardening or otherwise coming into contact with dirt (toxoplasmosis). And we are told to avoid any activity in which we might potentially fall down.
But yes, please, let's be sure to pass moral judgement on new mothers who are already devastated to learn that something is wrong with their baby and who are, I -promise- you, already blaming themselves. That will help.
You obviously aren't getting any because you don't get it.
Idiots like you are among the many reasons why fewer women
are having children, and more people in the United States are
happily choosing to remain single.
Do they ? Source please.
Already in 1998, French doctors would recommand to "avoid alcohol as far as possible" during pregnancy. I know, I was pregnant at the time. I didn't touch the stuff. I already cared for my children.
As for toxoplasmosis, it's recommended for young girls to have cats, so that they get toxoplasmosis and have antibodies a long time before they're pregnant.
A woman who chooses to have a child has a responsability to do everything possible to be, yes, a proper incubator. A woman who doesn't want to take the pains to be a proper incubator, she should abort.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/12…
LIFE - if you lie to your boyfriend about being pregnant, that relationship is over. I, and any sane man, would take that as a sign that you were willing to manipulate me shamelessly, that you were completely unworthy of trust, and that I should run (not walk, RUN) from you as fast as I can. You would become a story about a crazy lady in my past, an exemplar and warning to friends, family, acquaintances and coworkers about what not to do in a relationship.
Lying to him immediately transitions the issue from one about him being a troglodyte when it comes to abortion to one about you lying to him about one of the most important events in a relationship. Absolutely do not do it.
@227- You found an abortion positive and life affirming? "A woman deciding if and when to have a child is HER business, period". Abortion is not birth control. A woman has all the choice she needs prior to getting pregnant: BC pills, Norplant, IUD, diaphragm, condoms, tubes tied. Waiting until the miracle of life has occurred and another being is created is not the time to make your "choice".
No, I wasn't suggesting that the women unlucky enough to take it when it was prescribed for morning sickness are immoral. I find it surprising that you'd interpret my statements in such a way.
I'm saying that if we are to suggest that a fetus isn't a person and therefore has no rights, then a woman who isn't pregnant taking thalidomide is no different morally than a woman taking thalidomide today (knowing what it will do to her baby). To my mind this is completely absurd.
I'm aware that being pregnant requires extra responsibilities and it's exactly the "wah wah, women are treated as incubators" rhetoric that you just went through that is a perfect example of what I was talking about a few weeks ago - why I have beef with feminism's veiwpoint on pregnancy.
It's not that women are "just incubators" or that a fetus has "more rights" than a woman. But when you choose to bring a human being in this world - and in a society with IUDs, condoms, pills, surgeries, and abortions as an option, pregnancy is a choice - it is clear to me that you should take on the extra responsibility especially since YOU are consensually choosing to have a child while that child is not consensually choosing to be in you. There are lots of roles and professions where people are held to a higher standard. We don't consider that a loss of rights, we consider it an addition of responsibilies. The same should be true of pregnant women (and parents of any gender, but that's another rant).
That's not a person, it's a zygote.
That's not a person, it's an embryo.
That's not a person, it's a fetus.
That's not a person, it's a neonate.
That's not a person, it's an infant.
That's not a person, it's a toddler....
That's not a bird, it's a bluejay.
I'm sorry, but since we're on the topic of development I can't help but resist making the joke that you appear to be waiting on the concrete operational phase, where one gains "the ability to name and identify sets of objects according to appearance, size or other characteristic, including the idea that one set of objects can include another". If you're under 11 years old, don't be concerned. It'll come...
"Tell him you're pregnant" is a call for a relationship neutron bomb.
It is strange how some people view a pro-life viewpoint as misogynistic. Remember that nearly half the fetuses aborted are female. (Somewhat more males are conceived, to compensate for the higher early mortality of male than of female fetuses and babies.) See also
http://www.aaplog.org/american-issues-2/… and http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and… and consider the availability of gender determination combined with preference for male children expressing itself in some societies (China for one) in higher rates of abortion for female first pregnancies, producing more male than female survivors of gestation there. (This if continued is ominous for twenty years from now, since societies with lots of young males with limited opportunities tend to start wars. Who wants a war with the most populous nation in the world and a powerful and rising economy?)
Abortion is not benign for the people I know who have had one. (None chose to repeat it.)
@104, tumors are not, after a suitable number of years of letting nature take its course, going to develop into little league players or Nobel prize winners or sex columnists or the discoverer of an effective vaccine against the common cold or AIDS or creation of a practical nanobot method of preserving or even restoring youthful health and vitality, or a great comedian or friend.
The unique genetic combination of the aborted fetus, which is mathematically calculable to not occur twice within the lifetime of the universe, may produce that individual that brings a particular medical or scientific advance into being, or is the next Maya Angelou. (Though, there's no guarantee against a bank robber or another Idi Amin-like individual.) The formation of that new combination from genetic material from two parents is the clearest line of creation of a new individual that the scientific evidence provides us. (While many of the possible combinations would not be viable, the human genetic material is about 3 billion base pairs per cell; each individual's set of genes is 3/4 of a gigabyte of data expressed in DNA. That provides room to express or encode one out of unimaginably more possible unique combinations than the total number of subatomic particles in the universe.)
The position of some that if it's to be considered human with rights it must be capable of shouldering responsibilities fails in lots of ways. One is a newborn is not viable on its own, as abandonments prove with appalling regularity. Heck, most 30 year olds are not viable in certain environments. (Drop one off near no assets in the middle of a large forest or desert or glacier or body of water and see how they fare. Thought experiment only!) My 95 year old father is in lockdown nursing home care for his own safety and not responsible for anything any more. Someone who tries to treat him like he's not human will meet with organized resistance. The argument of abortion being acceptable until the fetus is viable outside the womb occurs to me as logically similar to saying it isn't murder to throw someone out the airlock of the space station before she's finished putting on her space suit; she's viable where she is, but not in an environment for which she's not yet ready. One might argue that a viable new living individual deserving of some level of protection begins not at fertilization or delivery but at implantation (adhering to the uterine wall) which is typically days after ovum and sperm combine.
Darwin's theory of evolution provides an explanation for what we are seeing statistically. Over the past generation plus of legalized abortion, as some pro-choice abort some or all their own offspring, there is a slow shift in the population away from it. Pro-life are out-reproducing pro-choice. Pro-choice are deselecting their own genes and their partners'. The boyfriend may want to move on.
As much as I am glad to have had sisters, I have always felt the lack of a brother. It turns out there was a child aborted before my oldest sister was conceived. After her, a boy was born and quickly died of a fatal birth defect (microcephaly) years before I was born. It turns out that most of us siblings had some congenital defect. It turns out that there are a number of studies showing increased occurrence of some types of birth defects following abortion. "Researchers reviewing ten different studies found that some studies have found that abortion can increase the risk of 3 major causes of defects among newborns". http://afterabortion.blogspot.com/2004/1…
Our mother carried the secret of her abortion silently for many decades, until revealing it to us shortly before her death of old age. She seemed to be seeking acceptance and forgiveness, and got it. In the meantime it had brought her a lot of discomfort and guilt.
Here's a thought experiment. Put in the situation of the letter writer's boyfriend after being told the pregnancy alarm was a false alarm meant to convince me of the rightness of her intent to kill the new life, and the initial shock, stress of rethinking my life plan, then excitement was in response to a cruel fraud, I think my response would be something along the lines of the following. "What? Who are you? What are you? What sort of person are you that you would say you want to kill a baby, our baby, for your own financial or lifestyle convenience? To lie about the existence of a life to test me whether I'll go along with such a plan? On second thought, never mind, I don't need to ask which kind of person. You're an ex. We're done, NOW." Then I'd call the locksmith. Trust would be gone.
I have a son. The idea that if his mom and I had begun to have sufficiently severe relationship difficulties before he was born rather than a couple years later to result in the end of our marriage, that it would be only her choice whether to let that smart young man be born or to slice and dice him sickens me. Biology puts the blessing and burden of reproduction on women. Women in America and many other nations have reproductive choices; men have responsibilities. Until cloning is both perfected and allowed, a man can't have a child on his own. A woman can go to a bar for a sperm donor, lie about birth control, and then sue him for child support later. A woman needs only get along with a man for an hour for a child, or use a sperm bank. A man needs to be on the right side of a woman for a year or so. Biological difference between the genders makes equality of choice and consequences unattainable.
I think things were in some ways clearer in the old days. Women engaging in sex were in effect consenting to the risk of pregnancy and complications, and men were consenting to the shared responsibility, eg it would be said of some couples "they had to get married". And some lifelong high functioning marriages resulted.
But in the abstract, I can agree that there are some people who are so selfish they probably should not reproduce.
@113, the right of a draft age male to his body, freedom, and survival was subordinate to the desire of his nation's government to make war on others. That desire has no material substance of its own. The zygote is embodied in a discrete clump of living tissue, provably assuredly human, by dna test when it can afford the loss of a sufficient number of cells for the test. What it is not is an _adult_ human. Human is a species not an age or stage of maturation. On a developmental scale, one could make a case based on the completion of development all the way up to completion of brain development (currently considered to be around 25 years after birth). We have age requirements for major national office for good reason. Being an individual not mature enough yet for certain human roles does not make one subhuman or inhuman or not-human.
@159, either that's sarcasm or you can drive your car into a lake if you really mean it and want to act on the choice. I'd rather you didn't.
@182, you nailed it. In this area, women are not equal, women have significant advantage. In America at least.
@185, the liver analogy doesn't work. The uterus is not essential to the survival of the owner, and it is not in the normal course taken by the fetus, only inhabited for a while, by a natural outcome of an activity to which most likely there was informed consent.
I must say, with all the side effects and potential complications, I think it's an amazing act of courage for an intelligent informed woman to choose to become pregnant. Twenty nine years later, I still recall lots of details about when I heard her say, "Let's make a baby".
And 29 years later I'm still waiting for a men's rights movement to get traction to make things reasonably equitable for him and his male cousins and friends. As things stand now, even someone convicted of statutory rape gets child support--from the paternal grandparents, parents of the underage male, regardless of age of the mother or her incarceration!
@201, mostly bingo. Note though that there may be some men willing and able to be single parents.
I have a friend who had an abortion years ago, has no children and has been having second thoughts about her choice. To my knowledge no one is making her wrong for her choice, except possibly herself.
The whole topic is so much more complicated than simply "it's the woman's decision" versus "it's wrong".
"Remember that nearly half the fetuses aborted are female."
Worldwide it's most certainly more than half considering the worlds two most populous countries practice sex selection.
"This if continued is ominous for twenty years from now"
It HAS been carried on for twenty years and there IS serious social problems in China because of it.
"A woman can go to a bar for a sperm donor, lie about birth control, and then sue him for child support later."
Any man (or woman) who has sex with a stranger without a condom is stupid/ignorant. Any man who goes "oh word, you're on the pill strange fucking woman I've never met who could be a sociopath who wants a baby and/or has HIV and/or has another STI or two or three? awesome, no condoms for us!". My sympathy is not with that stupid fucking man, it is for that poor baby who will be dumb as sand.
"the liver analogy doesn't work. The uterus is not essential to the survival of the owner, and it is not in the normal course taken by the fetus, only inhabited for a while, by a natural outcome of an activity to which most likely there was informed consent."
If you think the uterus is the only part of a woman's body that is "used"/effected during pregnancy you need to read a couple books then come back later. Also an organ donor has a surgery and recovery. This surgery and recovery does not last 9 months.
Finally, this:
"I think things were in some ways clearer in the old days. Women engaging in sex were in effect consenting to the risk of pregnancy and complications, and men were consenting to the shared responsibility, eg it would be said of some couples "they had to get married". And some lifelong high functioning marriages resulted."
Rewrite:
"I think things were in some ways clearer in the old days. Women engaging in sex were in effect consenting to the risk of pregnancy and complications, including death. Women who were raped or molested as young but pubescent girls were forced to endure the risks and complications of pregnancy including death.
Men were consenting to the shared responsibility, unless they were unknown to the woman such as a strange rapist may be, or if they were otherwise successfully able to shirk their responsibilities as a father which often happened especially with young men. It would be said of some couples "they had to get married". And some lifelong high functioning marriages resulted, as well as some extremely dysfunctional and life-destroying situations"
Now how it happens is that women are in effect consenting to the possibility they might get pregnant and therefore need to make a decision about what to do with her body. Whatever her choice, there may be a risk to her health but she is no longer forced to carry a pregnancy that will likely kill her.
Men are in effect consenting to the possibility that his partner may get pregnant and his ability to influence her decision is limited. (Though many women, myself included would weigh their boyfriend's/husband's desires heavily into her decision.)
Though neither situation is ideal, I'm appalled that you'd suggest the earlier one is better.
To simplify, let's compare the worst case scenarios.
The old worst case scenario: a 10 year old girl is raped by an older relative, forced to carry the baby despite the risk to her health, is retraumatized by the pregnancy, shamed and shunned by society for "having sex", and dies in childbirth.
The new worst case scenario: a man gets a woman pregant and
a. Wants to keep the baby but his girlfriend/wife/ONS aborts. This is emotionally upsetting (no doubt, I agree) but he is still capable of having the joy of building a family one day.
b. Doesn't want to keep the baby but she chooses to keep the baby. This is how things were in the "good old days" so I'm assuming this isn't the worst case scenario you envisioned.
Definitely not his best effort.
No, new worst case scenario might be:
Raped 14 yo who wants to have the baby but is pressured into abortion by (maybe) well meaning relatives, and re-traumatised by this second negation of her bodily autonomy.
Already in 1998, French doctors would recommand to "avoid alcohol as far as possible" during pregnancy. I know, I was pregnant at the time. I didn't touch the stuff. I already cared for my children.
As for toxoplasmosis, it's recommended for young girls to have cats, so that they get toxoplasmosis and have antibodies a long time before they're pregnant.
A woman who chooses to have a child has a responsability to do everything possible to be, yes, a proper incubator. A woman who doesn't want to take the pains to be a proper incubator, she should abort."
You want sources? Search: french doctors allow wine during pregnancy
First hit on google:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/29/dining…
Second hit on google:
http://www.vinography.com/archives/2006/…
Third hit on google:
http://parents.berkeley.edu/advice/pregn…
Fourth hit on google:
http://blogs.babycenter.com/mom_stories/…
Now, regardng Toxoplasmosis: intentionally contractinng toxoplasmosis is self destructive in the extreme.
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/scie…
"Women with Toxoplasma infections were 54% more likely to attempt suicide – and twice as likely to succeed. In particular, these women were more likely to attempt violent suicides (using a knife or gun, for example, instead of overdosing on pills). But even more disturbing: suicide attempt risk was positively correlated with the level of infection. Those with the highest levels of antibodies were 91% more likely to attempt suicide than uninfected women. The connection between parasite and suicide held even for women who had no history of mental illness: among them, infected women were 56% more likely to commit self-directed violence."
So parents should expose their little girls to toxoplasmosis to prepare them as incubators? Even though it means their little girls are then 50% more likely to blow their own brains out? Does that really seem even remotely okay to you?
And women should do everything possible? Everything? Really? So while you were pregnant, did you stay in a clean room throughout your pregnancy to make sure you didn't catch a virus and make your child around 500% more likely to develop schizophrenia? If not, you DID NOT do "everything possible" to protect your developing children. I guess you should have had an abortion, then, shouldn't you? Isn't that what you said?
Look, life happens. We have to live our lives, even while we are pregnant. Should we be careful? Of course. But it's sick and regressive to suggest that any woman who gives birth to a child with any sort of physical or mental problem should be viewed as "immoral." Instead of blaming and vilifying the mothers of special needs children, we should be helping them.
I'll admit I was floored when I read that post and saw that you made it. But take a peek back at it. You'll see why I interpreted it the way I did. And I agree that parents (not just women) need to go above and beyond (and not just during pregnancy).
BUT (I coulsn't agree with you completely. That wouldn't be any fun. ;) ) it's a balancing act. It has to be. To expect women to not only know everything that could possibly harm their children but to be able to act in their children's best interests 100% of the time is simply unrealistic and, quite frankly, cruel.
In the interest of honesty, though, since we were talking about tiny clusters of cells, here is my personal experience with it: When I found out I was pregnant, I had a breakdown in my OB's office. I hadn't really been trying to get pregnant yet and had only been off the pill for two months. I'd had two glasses of wine after he was conceived but before I knew I was carrying him (one in mid November and one on Thanksgiving - I had mistaken implantation bleeding for a light period so I thought I was sure that I wasn't pregnant). I was convinved I would either have to abort my baby or risk giving birth to a child who would suffer from profound disabilities throughout his (or her) entire life. My OB takled me down and reassured me that it was absolutely okay and there was a vanishingly slim chance that I had done even the slightest bit of damage. (She was right, of course.) But our society already moralizes about women who drink during pregnancy. The things I had heard were the refrain in my head. And in that moment I honstly believed I had done the most horrible thing I could imagine doing. And I believed I had done it to my baby. No woman should do something as innocuous as what I did and feel as horrible as I felt for having done it.
But like I said, it doesn't end when the baby is born. And of course it shouldn't. (If it does, then we're expecting a fetus to be treated with more care than a child and that's kinda messed up.)
When my son was about to turn one, he was quickly getting too big for his rear facing infant seat. I chatted with my mom about it and we were both excited to turn him to face forward. I started dinking around on the internet, reading car seat information. Three months before I began my research, the AAP released a statement saying that children should rear face until they are at least two. That really surprised me so I dug deeper. I ended up logging a total of around 60 hours of research and making heavy use of Google translate (so I could read information in four languages I do not speak) before spending $650 on a car seat that will allow my son to rear face until he is between four and five years old (children's vertebrae don't calcify until they turn four and prior to that forward facing greatly increases a child's risk of of internal decapitation in a head on collision at speeds of only 35 miles per hour).
Are women who don't have $650 to spend on a car seat immoral? Are women who could spend $650 on a car seat but do not immoral? Had my son been born four months earlier, I would have turned him to face forward when he turned one. I would have had no idea I was putting him at risk.
I'm neurotic as heck about product safety for my son and I could give you a dozen more similar examples. Sometimes I have gotten the information in time to make the right choice. Sometimes the information hasn't been available until I have already made the wrong choice. But to outright call this a moral issue seems very, very wrong to me.
That's why I reacted with the "incubator" argument. Sometimes you don't have the information. (I didn't know until a few months back that apple juice contains aresnic). Sometimes you have the information and your response is limited by other considerations. (I had my OB test me for toxo antibodies and I came back negative. We have cats. My husband cleaned their litter during most of my pregnancy. My husband can't cook. I wore latex gloves any time I handled raw meat while I was pregnant.) And sometimes you do have the information and there's not a damned thing you can do except cross your fingers and hope. (I knew that exposure to viruses would increase my child's chances of developing schizophrenia but I couldn't spend 40 weeks in a clean room).
We do the best we can. What that "best" is varies from woman to woman, but almost universally we do the best we can. Pregnancy is scary enough and being a mom is hard enough without the external moralizing from the peanut gallery.
Your points are completely true, but of course we can easily go too far in the other direction. Some people say things like "if you don't have kids you can't say anything about how I raise mine" or even other parents can't comment.
I don't need to be a parent to know that if I see a parent beating the crap out of their kid, it's wrong. I don't need to be a parent to know that if your child accuses your boyfriend of sexual abuse, the right response isn't to punish her. And I don't need to be a parent to know that you shouldn't withhold food from your child as a punishment so often that her growth falls behind a healthy level for her age.
The problem, I think, is that a lot of people comment on parenting from a holier-than-thou standpoint. That's not how it should be. But the response to that is that everyone should just mind their own business. That's a very current-day-North-American-individualistic mindset but I don't think it's a good one. It takes a village to raise a child and everyone should care about the wellbeing of children.
To that end I'll come back to your question about parents who can't afford x or y thing. Are they worse parents? No. Are their children worse off in that specific way? Yes. There are a number of ways that money benefits children from safer cars to healthier food. But as the Beatles told us, money can't buy love. And having grown up in an especially affluent setting, I can tell you that the kids there are more fucked up than middle class kids by many many miles a lot of the time.
Umm... okay, so let's look at that.
1. In the current state of affairs, the girl can be pressured into a decision, but unlike before, she has the legally protected right to decide what to do with her body.
2. It's interesting that you suggested that the worst case scenario was one where she's pressured into having an abortion, and not pressured into having the baby.
It's plainly obvious to everyone that being legally forced into a reproducive decision is worse than being socially pressured (not to discount pressure, especially on young, dependent people), so if you're suggesting that the new worst case scenario is worse than the old worst case scenario then I can only conclude it's because you think an unwilling abortion is worse than an unwilling pregnancy/birth.
That's quite a claim to make without any evidence.
Also, I agree that your worst case scenario is more apt, but the OP seemed to be suggesting that men now get the raw deal when it comes to reproductive rights. Your worst case scenario is way more accurate, but I meant to address the scenarios that seemed to be behind his wistfulness to the days of shotgun weddings.
1rst : an American newspaper article contemplating what happens now, quote, "If pregnant Frenchwomen are giving up wine completely ...",
2nd : comments on an American wine blog "I can tell you that - at least in the past - French doctors ...",
and 3rd : anonymous comments on an American parenting board...
... and I didn't bother to check your 4th source.
That's not what I call credible sources. Maybe you should have read them before linking.
Your (credible for once) source is fairly recent research - of which I was not aware - mentioning mental problems, including an increase of 91% of suicide attempts for people who have the most antibodies. So, at worst, toxoplamosis causes roughly a doubling of the death by suicide risk.
Since the Wisqars study lists the death by suicide rate for American females, ages 18 to 85+, as 5.5 per 100,000 (1999-2007)- that means a suicide death risk of 0.011% instead of 0.0055%.
This doubling is a pretty strong effect alright, but it doesn't make intentionaly catching toxoplasmosis something "self destructive in the extreme".
In fact, it's about the same death risk as stepping outside your house : the American females, ages 18 to 85+, death by transportation rate is 11 per 100,000 (1999-2007, Wisqars again).
Smoking, now, that's something that's pretty self-destructive. Bath salts too.
You can however, talk to him. Bring up the points Dan made. And find out what he would want to do if you got pregnant. If abortion's not in the picture for him, you should probably move on and find someone else.
I didn't say that the "new" worst case scenario proposed by me is either better or worse than the "old" one proposed by you. I just disagreed with your comparing a child-abuse case to consenting sex between adults- like there is no child-abuse anymore today.
Personally, I don't dare judge what is more traumatising: forced to carry to term or pressured to have an abortion. I think it probably depends on each woman and situation.
Since abortion in Germany is not legal in all cases but tolerated in the first trimester (a weird result from reunification and unifying abortion law of East and West), I personally don't know of any women having been forced to carry a child to term, nor any women having had dangerous illegal abortions.
But I do know of some cases where there was pressure on a girl/ woman to have an abortion. In one particularly difficult case, the parents of the adult pregnant woman were well-meaning but managed to alienate their daughter and son-in-law instead of giving them the support they needed in a very difficult time.
Also, I am volunteering and work with teenagers from troubled backgrounds. In a lot of cases, teenage girls who were abused and ended up pregnant want to keep the baby. Pressure on them to abort the fetus is devastating to them, even though it is usually well-meant.
See my second post at 286
So sure, present it as a thought experiment. But don't manipulate emotions to prove a point - however valid that point may be.
Burdening the father is the least bad option here. Yes, it is unfair to the father -- I agree 100%. But considering the other options, which are all even more unfair, I don't see how to avoid that.
Here is the thing: this entire debate always hinges on what is ultimately a philosophical choice. When does the "miracle of life" happen? There are many answers to that question. (Mine: it never does; life is a process without beginning and end. But that's a long story...) If you insist on treating your opponents as if they had the same answer to this question as you do, yet for some evil reason failed to draw the same conclusion about abortion, then you are fooling yourself.
I don't think personhood is binary. Development is continuous, birth is continuous, death is continuous. None of it is discrete.
The closest I can come to drawing a line is conception, and the formation of a new genome. Once a new genome is formed, there is a living cell with a unique, homo sapien genome. It is a living creature that is genetically distinct from the mother. It's undoubtedly human. So as far as I'm concerned it's also person. Does that mean I'm "pro life"? Absolutely not. Many people have pointed out the flaws in the logic that just because someone is a "person" does not mean they are equivalent to the standard adult, mentally and physiologically competent "person". There are lots of people who's rights and responsibilies differ from such a person - that doesn't make them not people.
So to answer your question, I think a zygote is a person, sure. But because of that person's special circumstances (lack of a nervous system and ability to perceive suffering, dependence on another person's body for viability, etc) their treatment is of course different than someone else's.
I'm comfortable drawing the line at what I see as the cleanest break nature offers because I don't think the right to someone else's body follows naturally from personhood. If I did, I might be more inclined to draw the line somewhere in the fuzzy realm where consciousness and the ability to experience suffering arises. Or even birth, as some do.
Oh, I totally missed your second question!!
As I said above, I'd prefer that society seperated "personhood" from the abortion debate, mainly because of the perils I mentioned of giving a pre-birth human NO rights.
In my ideal world parenthood would be legally (and socially) treated drastically different than it is in our current system where parenthood is treated as a birthright and not a privelege. As it stnads, any professional who has to deal with children is rigourously vetted, but parents, who have much greater ability to shape and harm children just need to have working reproductive systems - or date someone with a child. It's gut-wrenching.
Ideally sex ed would be excellent and thorough, birth control would be free, abortions would be safe, legal and rare (luckily where I live we're not TOO far off that goal). But if a woman chooses to keep her baby, that fetus has rights, since it will become a being we can all agree is a person. I'd be in favour of a parenting license system.
In short I want to see a shift of parenthood as a right to parenthood as a privelege and a change from quantitity to quality.
"A bean isn’t a baby; a baby was once a bean, and between those two truths it is, or ought to be, every woman for herself."
Read more http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/ne…"
"A bean isn’t a baby; a baby was once a bean, and between those two truths it is, or ought to be, every woman for herself."
Read more http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/ne…"
Frankly, for me it would be a deal breaker, but whether it is for you is something you have to think hard about, only you know the answer to that. But don't lie about being pregnant, that's some serious bunny boiler psycho shit!
I do think conception is a very important moment, but (precisely because I see personhood as a development) even there I don't see its inception. True, there is an independent DNA sequence there, but I don't equalte it with personhood. If we actually did, in a consequent way, I think there could be quite strange consequences.
A lawyer friend of mine once speculated about whether this would make it impossible for a person to be declared legally dead if s/he happened to have donated an organ -- say, a kidney -- to another person who was still alive. So, if my kidney -- with cells that have my DNA sequence -- is still alive in someone else's body, then I am still (legally) alive, and so my property cannot be passed on to my heirs... In order to avoid that, it would be necessary to define (legal) personhood as not equivalent to a single individual DNA sequence; something like having a full body, or having a mind, would have to be added to it.
Because personhood is a process, I can't see it being present at the point of conception yet (except in the diffuse way in which it was already present even in the pre-conception gametes -- you may not know what person or what DNA sequence a given human gamete will become, but you can be 100% sure that the only thing it can become is a human, not a dog or a bird). Personhood may well be an (almost) inevitable consequence of that moment, but the first step (if indeed it is the first) is not the same thing as the whole journey.
Maybe I could put it like this: to assign "full" personhood to a zygote is to me to somehow 'debase' the meaning of personhood, as commonly understood: to be a person.
But that's not what you're doing, and as I said it seems we're on the same page, the biggest difference being that I'm apparently a bit more of a gradualist than you are.