The Pro-Life Movement and Its Discontents

Jethro: for me, I have no idea. I think it's obviously unacceptable to abort a child who's T- one day from birth. Or T- two days. Or you get the point. On the other hand? I've got absolutely zero problem with first trimester abortions.

Allow me some shorthand here, particularly w/r/t to the word squick, which I'm going to use for the vast range of moral and ethical issues with various things: It seems to me that many pro-life folks end up coming to their position via a weighing of competing squick factors. Like, abortion has a certain squick factor. But so does forcing a woman to bear the child of her rapist. Ditto the child of her (insert relative here). Likewise, it's pretty squicky to condemn her to death so she can have a child. So lots of people end up at the "Pro Life except...." stance which actually on the surface makes a lot of sense to me. Some things are squickier than others, and we just do the best we can.

Where my thinking goes further is to ask why is it so squicky to expect a woman to bear her rapebaby? Or her incestbaby? Why is it squicky to expect a woman to risk her life to deliver a child? Now we're getting into Aaron's neck of the woods, especially with the former. Clearly the idea of sanctity of life uber alles has gone out the window, because if that really was the case then it wouldn't matter how squicky the circumstances of conception are. But if it's really not sanctity of life uber alles, why is it OK for a woman who got raped to get an abortion, but not a woman who just got laid and unlucky? Why's the former potential baby squicky enough, but not the latter? And OK then there's the whole verbiage I just posited above, w/r/t the whole unlucky thing and &c &c already we're deep in the weeds of gender issues... (see how I'm framing things without even realizing it....).

Pretty much that's how I end up at my pro-choice position. I agree an abortion at T- one day ought to be illegal. But the reality is that this is a totally uncontroversial position, literally nobody on earth thinks it ought to be OK. The real battleground is in first and second term abortions, with the like super super rare third term.

Christians down with C.S. Lewis are a pretty huge group as far as my experience has shown me, consisting of most Christians who think reading books is a good idea. The book I quoted him from, Mere Christianity, was his attempt to distill Christianity down to its most basic doctrines. So it struck me as contrived that you considered him an outlier within the Jesus crowd.

Of course we could use those as data, and if they supported your position, and they didn't suck, I'd be inclined to adopt your position. But last time I checked we didn't have a lot of data on the issue, and I think that in itself leads to an impasse.

We keep talking past each other. You keep talking about people having abortions for the wrong reasons, a blame game. I keep talking about struggling with the issue of when one is actually killing something that should not be killed. I suspect we're not gonna get closer than two parallel lines.

I suspect the problem is that Jason is addressing the abortion issue as it actually crops up in our culture vs. the kind of private stuff you're talking about.

Yeah, I no more have a real recommendation on when it is an isn't ok to have an abortion than I do when it is and isn't to turn off life support for your parents. I do know it's probably not my business 99% of the time.

That right there is the real recommendation, although I'd say that percentage is probably closer to 99.99%. Recommended course of action: mind your own business.

Jethro, are the folks you are talking about coming from the opinion that they personally are against abortions, or that they believe that society should put into place a ban on abortions and implement it by force? That's really where the line is drawn between personal belief and public policy.

The follow-up from the OP blog even covered this pretty well:

I wrote a post that ended up already being addressed, so I then deleted it. But it did include the term "funerals for fetuses" which I think would be a good heavy metal band name.

'Choose Life' license plates ruled unconstitutional in North Carolina
http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2012/...unconstitutional-in-north-carolina/?hpt=hp_t3

A federal judge ruled that North Carolina's new "Choose Life" license plates are unconstitutional because the state does not offer a pro-choice alternative.

"The State's offering a Choose Life license plate in the absence of a pro-choice alternative constitutes viewpoint discrimination in violation of the First Amendment," U.S. District Court Judge James Fox wrote in the ruling Friday.

[...]

During the fight to get the bill passed, North Carolina lawmakers voted down amendments that would have created pro-choice alternatives such as "Trust Women. Respect Choice," the affiliate reported.

I included that last sentence from the article because I think it illustrates the problem with lawmakers on the pro-life issue. It isn't that they hold an opinion with which I disagree. It isn't that they hold an opinion based on religion. It's that they also hold that any dissent is unacceptable, disallowed, wrong. The court's decision here rested entirely on the lack of offering the alternative position. (Irony alert: by allowing a pro-choice message, lawmakers would have been pro-choice on choosing different plates.)

I have to agree with Reldan here. This may be just my own personal bias creeping in when reading Jethro's views and descriptions of his people, but it sounded like they were more personal views as opposed to views they wanted to push on others. My wife would personally never have an abortion (except under extreme circumstances), but she is pro-choice, in that she doesn't want to legislate what others do over the matter, and to prevent the horrible backyard abortions that happen when it is made illegal.

I was going to say that personally, I would never have an abortion, but then I thought, because I am a man, if I was pregnant, it would probably be an alien baby. I know that it sounds prejudiced, but I do not want anyone in my family having some alien's baby. I would have an abortion if an alien from another dimension or neighboring planet impregnated me, and I understand that alien gestation can be accelerated by Earth's nitrogen rich atmosphere. Because of this, I do not think that it is right to limit me to terminate a cosmic interloper's invasion plan only in the first fifteen minutes to three days, depending on the species. After all, what if it takes that long for me to determine the origin of the creature that bit me with its space penis or whose eggs I inadvertantly ate, mistaking them for Tropical Skittles? I would effectively be deprived of the right to control my own body. While a half-human hybrid or sapiomorph would possess some of the hallmarks of humanity, and after it breaks free I understand that it would be preferable to capture and study it, or at least see if following it can lead us back to its well disguised mothership or hive. I feel that my rights not to have a parasite of any sort burst forth from me and attack my shipmates is one of those rights naturally understood by our founding fathers not to be able to be surrendered to the state.

Hence the term, "inalienable."

Jindal makes case for over-the-counter birth control
http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.co...akes-case-for-over-the-counter-birth-control/

The political battle earlier this year over health insurance coverage for contraception wouldn't be repeated if women could buy birth control without a prescription, Louisiana's Republican Gov. Bobby Jindal wrote in an op-ed Friday.

[...]

"As a conservative Republican, I believe that we have been stupid to let the Democrats demagogue the contraceptives issue and pretend, during debates about health-care insurance, that Republicans are somehow against birth control. It's a disingenuous political argument they make," Jindal wrote.

[...]

"Democrats have wrongly accused Republicans of being against birth control and against allowing people to use it. That's hogwash," Jindal wrote in the Wall Street Journal Friday.

So here's a guy who doesn't hold wholly repugnant positions but still manages to beat the drum of tribalism: "I am a moderate, and those jerks on the other side of the aisle are the ones making this political!" The GOP might have won the White House if this had been their message.

That actually is significant political movement for someone with his history.

Jindal does hold repugnant positions, he's just being pragmatic since the election and trying to find ways to extract the party from unpopular positions without going against their prior ones.

In this case you can't say "insurance should cover it" without looking like you suddenly don't care about religious exemptions. So you propose it just not be involved in insurance at all. Moving it to OTC doesn't solve the problem of access though, since it lowers the price a little bit, but completely prevents insurance from helping to pay for it.

So his proposal is basically "Insurance shouldn't pay for birth control" still. Just couched in a very pleasant sounding "let's all get along" voice. Hell, he even says insurance can still cover it if they really feel like it, and it's all totally.. wait a minute! He's simply proposing that we return to the status fucking quo from before the whole debate!

Exactly. Same asshole policies, same people unable to get birth control, but with a smiley-face. (And, in consequence, all sorts of praise for the New Sensible Face of the Republican Party from the "centrist"-mad Millbankses and Friedmans.)

The whole insurance/birth control thing is just comical from a fiscal conservative standpoint anyways. Insurance that covers BC is CHEAPER than insurance that does not. Because babies are expensive medical cost wise, so the insurance company prefers anything that helps people have fewer of them.

The argument to allow insurance plans that do not cover BC is asking for insurance to offer a higher priced plan that fucks women to benefit a very tenuous link to religious belief and shared payment. It's as tenuous as demanding lower tax rates for pacifist religious sects so they're not paying for military spending.

Birth control isn't a political issues. It's a moral issue, you damn sluts!

Why do republicans hate sex?

Oh now, they don't hate sex, they hate not being able to control everyone's sex life. Totally different!

They want everyone to have the same, awful sex they do, interspersed with illegal liaisons in bathrooms - adds to the exciting tension!

The same blogger that I linked in the OP posted a follow-up answering a brain-melting response from a pro-life site:
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/lovejoyfeminism/2012/12/the-adventures-of-ziggy-the-zygote.html

Maybe would have been better to not have given that particular response any attention, but I appreciate a look into the world of tacky idiocy.

I found this comment from "Rebecca" to the article interesting, and I think it highlights the emotional disconnect most people have with the anti-birth control movement and total ban on all abortions people:

Ireland to clarify law on abortion when mother's life is at risk
http://edition.cnn.com/2012/12/18/world/europe/ireland-abortion/index.html?hpt=hp_t3

Ireland's government is to introduce a new law and regulations to clarify that abortions are permissible when the life -- but not health -- of the mother is at risk, Minister of Health James Reilly announced Tuesday.

The decision, made in a Cabinet meeting Tuesday, follows controversy over the death of Savita Halappanavar from blood poisoning seven weeks ago.

The government is acting on a report from an expert group on abortion, commissioned after a judgment by the European Court of Human Rights.
[...]

The proposed changes would bring the country's laws in line with a 1992 Irish Supreme Court ruling that established a woman's right to abortion when her life is at risk, including by suicide.

Including that last paragraph* for the WTF factor.


*does anyone else not care for the trend in internet news to make every single sentence into its own paragraph?

It's an interesting workaround I guess. I wonder how they assess that risk when determining the legality of abortions.

I think that's what legislation will force them to clarify, since the "life but not health of the mother" was well in place before Savita's death.

I mean the suicide part specifically.

Israel has something like that, except broader -- abortion is permitted if it would impair the physical or mental well-being of the mother (also if the baby has birth defects, is the product of rape/incest, etc). I'm not sure what the real effect of this is -- whether it makes it trivial to get an abortion or much harder,

This is what Personhood looks like in application.

I have no fucking words. Shit is fucked up and bullshit.

Hey, remember when I said that that's exactly what's going to happen if we pass personhood laws and everyone said that I was being a hyperbolic troll?

Yeah, I wish you'd been right. Especially since as the article points out, we haven't passed any of those laws and the judicial system still finds it necessary to fuck over random people.

Did you really just post an "I told you so" to the rest of the forum as if we somehow supported personhood laws?

No, I posted an "I told you so" to the rest of the forum as if you-plural'd consistently asserted that personhood laws would not actually result in prosecution of women for bullshit reasons.

How about you back that up with the names of the people that did so rather than anonymous blanket allegations? Maybe link the posts, even? I'd be interested in reading those exchanges, because I can't think of anyone on this forum with the possible exception of Brett that would downplay the potential ramifications of personhood laws. Then you could feel vindicated against specific people, too, which might be even more self-affirming.

You're playing the "I was the sole voice of reason and nobody listened!" card. Needless to say, it's not all that useful, let alone accurate.

I did a quick search, but unfortunately actually browsing through the threads looking for specific posts is brain-annihilatingly painful due to proximity of Brett.

The one time that I strongly remember it happening was when people were arguing with Brett, and a bunch of people were taking the "well of course these claimed ramifications of personhood bills that Aaron's trolling about are bullshit, but have you considered..." and I got pissed enough that I walked away from the thread because I couldn't trust myself to stay civil.

And fuck it, trying to find the post makes me angry all over again, so I'll just say fuck the "personhood" concept entirely and leave it at that.

That's the part i don't get. How is it possible for any lawyer to allow their client to get sentenced basing on non-existing law? How does someone spend 8 fucking years in prison after such bullshit verdict like everything was legit?

It's... just wtf.

To be fair (and you know what that means), it's hard to believe that government officials would . ...

No, fuck that.

Enjoy your I told you so's. Damn.

Overworked public defenders trying to defend poor brown people = jail

I'm sorry but no, no amount of "overworked" excuses just leaving your client with 20->12 year sentence that has no legal justification. What's especially mind-boggling, apparently this was never raised as an issue by anyone, and the whole argument, 'outrage' and petition that followed revolved around whether the woman could know her actions could possibly lead to the stillbirth? And that's not even a new development but something that happened a decade ago. I can't even... wat.

The Slactivist weighs in on the changing views on contraception and the battle revving up in the evangelical movement surrounding it: