Comments

1
Female legislators should try flipping the script:

Since the male ejaculate is alive and can create life, it should be illegal to spill sperm (kill it). This makes male masturbation illegal, condoms illegal, facials illegal ad infinitude.

Before you scoff at this modest proposal, this concept has biblical precedent in the book of Genesis when Onan "spilled his seed [or semen] on the ground" (pulled out) and YHWH slew him. Evangelicals should be all over this.
Even John Calvin offered this: "the voluntary spilling of semen outside of intercourse between a man and a woman is a monstrous thing. Deliberately to withdraw from coitus in order that semen may fall on the ground is double monstrous"

Every time you jack off you are killing babies. There ought to be a law!
2
Pseudo scientific language...

How about the enforced ignorance about fetal development by the pro choice camp? Detectable brain waves at 42 days. You want to explain to me how something with brain waves and a heart beat isn’t “a life” in scientific terms?

I’ll wait...
3
@1,

Christians don't even read the bible, much less follow its rules.

Besides, they don't give a shit about babies or life. This is entirely about subjugating women.
4
@2,

Who gives a shit? It could be "life" at the moment of conception and conservatives wouldn't care.

You think they actually mean it when they say this is about babies and "life?" You should know better. They're just trying to subjugate women. Babies and life are just buzz words conservatives throw around to get donations and votes.
6
@5: Maybe people should be more careful about using strictly religious reasons for formulating public policy, lest they run afoul of the First Amendment's Establishment Clause, or the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment.
7
And who exactly will be footing the medical bills for having the 15-week fetus in the neonatal unit for months on end? Can we make it the proponents of this bill? Gov Bryant himself? That sort of medical cost would absolutely crush all but the most wealthy.
9
@2 Ah 'detectable brain waves'. You're a man of science!
12
@5,

Maybe someone should tell that to christians.
13
@9. Google it, dumbass. Am I wrong?

@8. If viable life is the standard for allowing something to live, then why not pull the plug on people in a coma? Or people who would die without medical intervention? That’s a ridiculous standard that you can’t defend.

Try again.
14
@4. I think there is a huge disconnect between conservatives and their “valuing a life”. They are being sentimental about the life of a baby. Which is actually a pretty standard biological reaction to a baby. But do they dedicate their lives and purpose to improving the welfare of society so abortions are not as necessary? About as much as environmentalists don’t use cars and electricity and rarely sacrifice more than a few weekends a year to protest. Meaning, the feelings people get about their beliefs are rarely backed up with concrete actions and tireless dedication. So short answer, “no”, I don’t think conservatives give a shit.
15
I’m not against abortion. I just disapprove of the dishonesty surrounding the issue. It’s disconnecting people decisions from reality which I think is harmful, any which way you slice it. (Pun intended)
16
muffy, you can't blather on about 'detectable brain waves' and not expect ridicule. Think critically, girl! How is the term being defined? (hint: there's no standard definition) Who's making the claim? (another hint: people tend to place their definition on the scale of neural activity to support their argument---it's called circular reasoning). Is there neural tissue at 42 days? Sure there is, but that's hardly a functioning brain in any reasonable view.
17
And the problem with saying what 'a life in scientific terms' consists of is that it's not a scientific question. It's a philosophical question.
18
@13 I think you missed the point, dumbass: anyone can come up with any sort of criteria they want to claim something or other represents 'a life'. I would say a life is something that is lived, and that is about exactly as 'scientific' as your brain waves. All completely irrelevant anyway as there is no more fundamental freedom than being free to decide what happens to your own body. A 'life' has no more right to occupy someone else's body against their will than a tumor does.
19
@16. Who’s blathering?

https://mobile.nytimes.com/2005/06/19/bo… ://www.google.com/
20
@18. A tumor doesn’t have the potential for sentience, does it? Kind of a big difference.

And if there’s no rules on what you can determine is “a life” then I proclaim my own life as the only life and the rest of you have yet to meet that criteria, so I get to choose whether you live or die. (Don’t worry, you can come up with the exact same stupid argument and it’s just as valid in your view)

Read The NY Times article and tell me again who is ducking the science on this issue?

You have this narrative about pro lifers being rubes and dumb Christian hicks, but you are too stupid yourself to admit that the scientific argument that a baby=a tumor is beyond ignorant. And again, I don’t oppose abortion, FYI so please keep your panties from bunching up in your ass and calling me names.
21
@20:

Nice false equivalency there, dumbass, seeing as @18 didn't actually say "a baby=a tumor". What they said was that any human being in which either of those things resides has a legal right to have them removed if they so choose.
22
The real dumbasses are the ones who are continually the most dependent upon federal assistance, live in an socio-economically repressed part of the Divided Police States destroyed by over-industrialization----and yet keep blindly voting RepubliKKKan because they can screw without birth control, drive their ozone depleting gas guzzlers, and---goll-durnit!--- KEEP their bahbuls an' their guns!
23
@7 fyi you cannot put a 15-weeker in the NICU. There is a huge gestational gap between 15 and 22 or 24 (which is still fucking early).
24
muffy @ 19 please read your own posted article, which nicely undercuts all your claims. I'm beginning to wonder about the quality of your own 'brain waves.'
25
@14, 15,

Completely agree.

And yes, liberals are often full of inconsistent beliefs and are all talk and no action just as much as conservatives.
27
Muffy, we pull the plug on folks in comas all the time. People that have legal responsibility make the arbitrary decision that the person wouldn't want to live "this way." What's "this way?" It's pretty broad if the person can't speak for themselves. Person can blink but can't feed or water themselves? You can withhold nutrition and they'll die. Completely 100% legal. That person has some measure of brainwaves too. So do cattle...and we kill cattle all the time. I would put money down that any standard of brain waves in a fetus would show it to be more primitive than nearly any animal we eat.

https://prolife.stanford.edu/theory/prem…

As for your proposal that we should somehow use your argument to withhold medical care from folks who would die without intervention, I counter with WHY NOT? For all the religious folks who claim that abortion, birth control, etc are murder because God has a plan and it's God's will, etc etc...why is it ok for us to flout God's will by trying to save someone who got in a car accident? Or who got cancer? Heart attacks? Surely all those things are part of the divine plan. Why is it OK for us to medically muck with that plan in those cases but performing an abortion is some kind of unfathomable disruption of the divine plan?
28
Also, for the TLDR of the following...just because an adult brain wave can be used to define life and death, giving fetal brain waves the same capacity is a jump in logic and medical science.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/article…
29
@24. I disagree with the journalists conclusions, she’s a journalist writing an opinion piece...but value the research. Is it that hard to understand?
30
@27&28. I’m an agnostic, so you’re barking up the wrong tree lecturing me on the stupidity of gods divine plan.

Pulling the plug on someone who has no chance to recover cognizance and lead a life worth living is different than pulling the plug on someone that will certainly recover and most definitely go on to lead a perfectly normal life.

Would you condone pulling the plug on someone who will fully recover from their “coma” and carry on healthy and happy nine months from now? That’s where the argument breaks down and potential for sentience is something of inalienable value to some people and a hurdle to clear with an arbitrary cut off point to others.

31
muffy @ 29. 'She' is not a journalist. 'She' is a HE, and HE is a famous psychobiologist. The article you posted is the first chapter of a book he was publishing at the time. And----tap dancing Christ on a cracker!---he presents a very nuanced and informed argument that completely undercuts your claim that brain waves and a heart beat at 42 day equals 'life.' Instead he argues that any neural function at 42 days cannot be called 'brain activity', that in fact if an adult person in a coma had that very low level of brain activity we would call them brain dead and pull the plug. Yes, he says that. In fact, he goes on to say that any real brain activity as we understand the term doesn't really occur until 23 weeks gestation, which is right where most people place the very edge of viability. He further says that science cannot determine where 'life' begins but it can inform the ethical and philosophical conversations around it.

So, you're kind of left being very much in the wrong on all of this. Wrong. Sorry. And ordinarily I would not waste my time pointing out that you're wrong, because what do I care if you are spectacularly misinformed, but this happens to be an area where I've done actual published research, and I happen to have a stake in abortion rights as a physician who knows how crucial abortion access is to women's health and as the mother of daughters who might need one, so misinformation around what a 42 day embryo is and is not kind of pisses me off.

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