Loading ...In a piece published in National Review, Dan Oliver stated that, “the first and central issue in the abortion debate is whether the fetus is a person.” However, this is not true. What makes this issue so tormenting is the uniqueness of pregnancy. In no other case does a “right to life” encompass a right to the most intimate possible use of another person’s body. I have a friend who recently donated a kidney to a father whose kidneys were failing. No law forced him to do so. Neither father nor son had a legal right to so much as a pint of the other’s blood even if the lack of it meant death. The fetus must make use of its mother’s entire body in order to survive and grow so to live it must be legally allotted superior rights to born people.
One could argue that the girl or woman accepted the burden of lending her body to the fetus when she (in most cases) voluntarily engaged in intercourse. One could also argue that even in rape cases the uterus is the natural habitat of the fetus and therefore it is wrong to prematurely expel it from that habitat regardless of the burdens imposed on the pregnant female.
However, there are also intense practical problems in demanding a right to the pregnant woman’s body for the fetus. For example, however helpless a newborn is, a suicidal mother can hand it to someone else, then kill herself without harming the baby in the slightest. If a pregnant woman kills herself in despair, the non-viable fetus automatically dies because, unlike the born, it must use another’s body to survive.
This does not mean that the decision to abort is morally neutral. I personally believe the best course for a female with an unplanned pregnancy is to carry to term and give the baby up for adoption just as I think it is most moral to donate a kidney (or bone marrow or blood) to someone in need. We must do much more to support and honor girls and women who take this most courageous, generous, and difficult route.
amfortas said,
It is natural for animal life that reproduces sexually to bear offspring. It isn't a 'right' in any sense for either mother or baby. It is Natural. It is part of the design specs. Women didn't have a hand in that design. Nor men, Nor the babies. We are subject to nature and to cast the baby-bearing issue in terms of Women's Rights, excluding the place of men and babies in the grand scheme of things is falacious, mendacious and humanity destroying. It is evil.
August 10, 2007 at 4:33 am
jackal1994 said,
I'm a big fan of fantasy books. In one particular book a wealthy city was being sacked by an army. Some soldiers were making a desperate last stand to protect the pregnant women children and injured in a make-shift hospital. When the enemy's finally broke through they gave a groan of frustration–they had thought it was treasure being protected!
But, if the order of disposibility is Man, Woman, Pregnant Woman, Teen, Child, Toddler, Baby — shouldn't the unborn baby be the LEAST disposable? After all they have no voice to defend themselves. Isn't that what the eco-nuts at Peta tell us about animals? Nobody who is even remotely sane would attack a baby. But, if the murder is unseen, unfelt, and unheard then it's okay I guess?
I can't get over the hypocrisy that Michael Vicks can't have a dog fighting circuit, but a 13y/o girl can abort her child. Nobody ever said doing the RIGHT thing is easy. Many Presidents don't do the right thing, often preferring to do the smart thing to keep them in power.
In any event look what happens when a woman gets pregnant and brings the child to term: the man can be forced to yoke ANY oppression (under threat of incarceration) under the emotional mantra:"it's for the children!" And what does society say about this huge civil rights violation? "You play you pay!" or "You shoulda thought about that before you unzipped your pants!" or "Shoulda kept your dick in your pants!"
EVEN THOUGH the woman has total control of her "choice" and the man is paying the fiddler for her choice of the song!
Where's these tough messages when we scrutinize the woman? Where are these messages: "you should've kept your legs crossed" "You play, you pay" when a woman is thinking about abortion? They're nowhere to be found. When it gets to the woman it's all about "choice". Quite frankly this is an abhorrent decision that women shouldn't have access to.
But pandering to woman is great business for politicians and for men. Maybe if men in their lives were to tell their aunts, sisters and so forth that abortion is grisly, and they can't understand how she could do that–maybe things would change.
Were the feminists right? Is the personal political?
August 10, 2007 at 7:45 am
jackal1994 said,
That's what makes concepts seem profound.
August 10, 2007 at 7:54 am
PolishKnight said,
This brings us back then to the concept of babies coming out of men's pensises (penii?) When a man chooses to engage in heterosexual sex, most people argue that he accepts full liability for paying child-support for the next 18 years if a child results.
As I discussed on a human events forum recently: pro-lifers do infantalize women and it was incredibly a leftist columnist who pointed out this. It's quite simple: Juding women like adult men (who as adults are allowed to vote and work full-time at the same pay as men), then it's quite simple: She had sex, she agreed to make AND support the baby. Do not pass go, do not collect $200. If her attempt to give up the child for adoption fails, she then has to accept the financial obligation for raising it.
If you want a laugh, check it out:
http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=21804&page=4
Pro-lifers, like leftists, regard women as entitled and spoiled retarded children who should be allowed to even legally "relinquish" or abandon their offspring because it's likely they'll murder them. Adult men would rightly be called monsters if they were acting in such a manner.
August 10, 2007 at 8:11 am
David R. Usher said,
One cannot compare this situation to donating a kidney, in which one's gratuitous decisions are a life and death decision primarily affecting the donor, but to SAVE the life on another human.
This is part of the feminist notion that everything that occurs within 2000' of a woman's body is within her right to control. This includes absolute right to divorce (no fault), absolute right to have children out of wedlock and get paid for it (entitled serial polyandry), and an absolute right to make even the most outrageous false rape allegations without consequence (VAWA).
Perhaps you take your blog and the lame horse you rode into town on to a feminist website. There is no sympathy for convenient feminist pretzel logic here.
August 10, 2007 at 8:46 am
PolishKnight said,
Denise said something on USENET soc.men recently that gave another woman pause: That rape was the worst crime imaginable to her (paraphrase) and abortion rights defenders argue that abortion rights are based upon the notion of "bodily privacy" that cannot be violated.
Perhaps this is because in a chivalrous society that patronizes women, a woman's body is her greatest asset. If your primary asset is hammers, you would love a "right" that the police cannot take away hammers but everything else is fair game.
In short order: There is no "bodily privacy" right in the constitution. Men were drafted even after the abolition of slavery in cases of "extreme" circumstances (and sometimes not even that) to serve their country. But leftists like to claim that there is and that this even trumps all the other actual written rights in the document that can be edited, removed, or redefined for convenience including: property rights, gun rights, public religious freedom, and freedom of political speech.
Since women rarely pay alimony or support to another person and since the government is designed to serve mostly their interests, saying that a "bodily privacy right" exists allows them to basically get off scot free with their most precious asset while going after men's assets (income generation). What's yours is mine and what's mine is mine.
August 10, 2007 at 8:54 am
conservativation said,
The donation of a kidney is not at all a sound analogy. I won’t bore anyone with why…most know.
It’s a shame Denise that you see most things pretty clearly but on this matter you veer off. And this matter is a defining one, one where you cannot afford to be off.
For one analogy. A loose one, I’ll use the environment.
How can we accept the way natural things are, the planet around us, and rail on about global warming and all the “unnatural” things we do to harm it, then look upon the most precious and innocent of natural things and see it as a choice? Save the whales and abort the babies is the most horrible of shared beliefs in the abstract. It isn’t enough for you to say it is your opinion that they should be carried to term. Nothing short of black and white declaration of the evil of abortion demonstrates right moral thinking on it. Anything short is rationalization and an escape from guilt.
August 10, 2007 at 9:07 am
El Cid said,
"She had sex, she agreed to make AND support the baby. Do not pass go, do not collect $200. "
I beleive that if full financial responsibility for the child were the price for giving women the right to choose, the feminists would not want the right to choose.
It's a perfectly moral position: you make the choice, the pay the price. If a woman alone gets to choose to end or continue a pregnancy, she alone gets the full responsibility for the child–not her hsuband, not her boyfriend, not the closest man, not the government.
Why should one human being be responsible for another human being's choice?
Give responsibility to the woman who has the choice and that woman will quit demanding the right to choose. But we've disconnected choice from responsibility and given women a free moral ride.
August 10, 2007 at 9:11 am
Denise Noe said,
A fetus is human, not a parasitic fly.
(Denise) Here we are in agreement.
Usher: When women 'voluntarily' have sex because it fools good and do not use birth control (which is also a choice), they have consented to a pregnancy if it occurs.
(Denise) I'm not sure how major of a factor "because it feels good" is in the decision of women to have sexual intercourse. It can feel extremely good to women, leading to as many as six orgasms; it can feel like nothing much; and it can (even if voluntary) be excruciatingly painful. I prefer the term "contraceptives" to "birth control" because abortion itself can be seen as "controlling birth." Contraception prevents conception.
Usher: One cannot compare this situation to donating a kidney, in which one's gratuitous decisions are a life and death decision primarily affecting the donor, but to SAVE the life on another human.
(Denise) You can compare it but the comparison is imperfect. This is because there is simply nothing perfectly analogous to pregnancy that is not pregnancy.
Usher: This is part of the feminist notion that everything that occurs within 2000' of a woman's body is within her right to control. This includes absolute right to divorce (no fault), absolute right to have children out of wedlock and get paid for it (entitled serial polyandry), and an absolute right to make even the most outrageous false rape allegations without consequence (VAWA).
(Denise) Whoa. I believe the woman who made the false allegations against the Duke players ought to have been prosecuted. I read that she will not be prosecuted because her mental state is such that it would be hard to prove that she knew what she was saying was false. If this is the case, I believe her children should be removed from her care as she is too mentally ill to take adequate care of them.
Usher: Perhaps you take your blog and the lame horse you rode into town on to a feminist website. There is no sympathy for convenient feminist pretzel logic here.
(Denise) The point of this blog wasn't to defend the legality of abortion but to point out the uniqueness of pregnancy and the complexities that result. This isn't "convenient feminist pretzel logic." Many people call abortion "murder." Yet when abortion was illegal in this country, no one was ever prosecuted for murder who performed an abortion. They were prosecuted for illegal abortions. Usually the female who solicited the abortion wasn't prosecuted for anything at all. People who want to criminalize abortion almost always say they would prosecute only the abortionist. If they really believed the pregnant female who seeks the abortion is comparable to a man or woman soliciting a hit they would hardly take this stance.
Personally, I would like to see a lot more done to honor those courageous and generous girls and women who carry to term and give their babies up for adoption. They should be made to feel proud of their sacrifices for they do something that is truly beautiful.
August 10, 2007 at 11:34 am
jackal1994 said,
If abortion was outlawed, the 2 million (or whatever abortions) per yea, in a few years time would probably dwindle down to about 4% of that in births. Why? Because now woman would have to make sure they use contraceptives.
Responding to PolishKnight about a woman's body being her greatest asset: you're 100% right on the mark. $5billion in makeup per year? An average of 20 pairs of shoes, and (say) 1/2dozen slinky cocktail dresses? It's quite clear that a woman's body is her primary asset in terms of generating freebies, money, respect, affection, and security, and attention.
Also, you mentioned how women in divorce want to steal men's primary asset income generation. It reminded me of something I saw stating why men shouldn't marry because divorce is so one-sided:
When the wife divorces a well-to-do or rich husband she says she should be supported in the lifestyle she has become accustomed to.
This argument is just as valid (which is to say not valid at all) as the husband stating his ex-wife must come over every day and make him dinner and give him a bj because that is the lifestyle he has become accustomed to.
Both are invalid, but only one becomes enshrined as law in divorce court. the one pandering to women.
August 10, 2007 at 11:42 am
PolishKnight said,
I was disgusted when I heard one family services worker state matter-of-factly that a parent's financial worthiness in terms of raising a child was irrelevent since all the courts had to do was just transfer the money from the non-custodial income generating parent to the other. Why fiddle-dee-dee, that's rather easy isn't it Rhett? One parent gets all the goodies and the other one is just a mule getting the fruits of his labor picked off of his back.
One thing to consider is that even with all the chips on their side, even with all the goodies, most women cannot get into a man's pocketbook without at least having sex… ONCE! They can dress up in nice cocktail dresses and flirt with men all they like, but they'll usually have to put out otherwise they'll just get a night out on the town.
This is the "final frontier" for feminism: To get money from men without doing anything at all and it's proving to be more difficult than they thought. Most of the problem has to do with the fact that even the most wussified men in charge aren't willing to become eunics AND chivalrous protectors.
August 10, 2007 at 12:12 pm
Denise Noe said,
The Bodily Privacy Right
Denise said something on USENET soc.men recently that gave another woman pause: That rape was the worst crime imaginable to her
(Denise) I don't believe I said that. What I think I said — and what I believe — is that rape is ONE OF the worst crimes.
August 10, 2007 at 12:18 pm
PolishKnight said,
Most men would not view being raped by a woman as a bad thing provided that the form of force by itself wasn't harmful and that it was a heterosexual act.
So only a specific form of rape is considered ONE of the worst crimes: homosexual rape of men (or penetration of the anus) outside of a prison context and rape of women. The former is based upon men finding homosexual sex abhorrant by itself. The latter, in it's least serious, say, a man getting a woman drunk and having his way with her. Or a man having sex with a girl 1 day underage. Do you honestly believe that kind of crime is on the same par as with other capital crimes as murder? Or extreme violence?
What I've seen from Parg and feminists has generally been to escalate issues to higher importance when they affect primarily women and when an issue affects men mostly, sweep it under the rug. Even in the case of rape, we see society pushing the male victims under the rug while making the smallest case of where it impacts women a big deal.
With alimony and child-support, it's no big deal to force one peson (mostly men) to fund another because money isn't everything but if women are earning 1 dollars less than a man due to sexism it's a huge issue to be addressed.
Denise, it all comes across as totally patronizing towards women. It's sexism and chauvanism in the worst degree.
August 10, 2007 at 1:17 pm
Denise Noe said,
The most common form of rape in this country, prison rape, is viewed a social good and a form of creative punishment by many people. It's often joked about. Police routinely threaten suspects with the possibility they may be raped in prison.
(Denise) I'm not one of those people, Mark. I believe there should be a national campaign against prison rape and far more stringent efforts to separate prisoners who may commit rape from those who are likely to be raped. It's no joke to me but a heinous crime. Before the campaigns of the 1970s, jokes about heterosexual rape were common and the subject of male-on-male rape needs similar campaigns to alert people to its seriousness.
PolishKnight: Most men would not view being raped by a woman as a bad thing provided that the form of force by itself wasn't harmful and that it was a heterosexual act.
(Denise) The fact is that female-on-male rape is extremely rare for biological reasons. The vagina cannot engulf the flaccid penis or vaccuum it up.
PolishKnight: So only a specific form of rape is considered ONE of the worst crimes: homosexual rape of men (or penetration of the anus) outside of a prison context and rape of women. The former is based upon men finding homosexual sex abhorrant by itself.
(Denise) Not in my opinion. I listened to a radio program about rape many years ago and a man called in to say he had been raped by two men. He was obviously in pain as he talked about the trauma of it and even close to tears. I'm pretty certain he was homosexual in his preferences as he said, "I didn't report this because it took place in the parking lot of a gay bar." He also said he "knew" it was true that hostility was part of rape as, "They were of a different race and made degrading comments about my race while they were doing it.
PolishKnight: The latter, in it's least serious, say, a man getting a woman drunk and having his way with her. Or a man having sex with a girl 1 day underage. Do you honestly believe that kind of crime is on the same par as with other capital crimes as murder? Or extreme violence?>>
(Denise) These are two very different cases. The man "having his way" with a woman who is drunk and unable to give consent IS committing an act of "extreme violence." Statutory rape is a completely different offense IMO and many things must be considered in age-of-consent cases including the relative ages of the parties. I don't consider forcible rape on a par with murder.
PolishKnight: What I've seen from Parg and feminists has generally been to escalate issues to higher importance when they affect primarily women and when an issue affects men mostly, sweep it under the rug. Even in the case of rape, we see society pushing the male victims under the rug while making the smallest case of where it impacts women a big deal.
(Denise) Then you and others should campaign to do more to decrease prison rape and aid its victims. I will support you completely in campaigning to reduce male-on-male rape in prison.
August 10, 2007 at 2:13 pm
conservativation said,
August 10, 2007 at 2:24 pm
veritas said,
If it's all about her…I say to her …go f**ck youreself!!
and it seems I'm not the only man who feels this way!! The birth rate America is no longer enough to repopulate itself!!
Are you happy now you sick Bi-polar feminists???May you face the consequences for youre actions!!
August 10, 2007 at 3:14 pm
Denise Noe said,
Denise you have some unusual hang-ups about pleasure and sex as evidenced in your retort here to David Usher. In the group David refers to, those who may be having an unwanted pregnancy because they "hooked up", I hardly see that happening very often when it is painful or neutral. In fact, during the build up, the "dance" if you will, if she felt that sex with this new guy who she has deemed worthy was going to hurt, what the hell would cause her to proceed? Sure that may be the case occasionally in marriage or long term relationships but I think the fact that you needed to mention it here, and based on other things you write about self pleasure etc., you carry more issues than a news stand about intimacy between men and women.
(Denise) Unwanted pregnancies — and abortions — are not just the results of "hook-ups." They can occur within marriage and long term relationships. Pointing out the truth that females engage in sexual intercourse for a wide range of reasons and not necessarily because it "feels good" is not a put-down of intimacy between men and women. As I've said before, it is at least possible for men to give far more sexual pleasure to women than women can give to men. However, it remains true that girls and women have sex for many reasons. Those reasons aren't necessarily "nice" or admirable but they often have nothing to do with it "feeling good." Females have sex to keep a relationship going, because they feel duty-bound (this would tend to be within marriage), because they are lonely and just want company, because they are prostituting themselves, because they want revenge against someone, and out of other motives.
August 10, 2007 at 4:04 pm
PolishKnight said,
While men just have sex because they like it.
But… "science" says women have a capacity for greater sexual pleasure. Yeah, ok.
August 10, 2007 at 4:54 pm
donnieboy57 said,
August 10, 2007 at 6:55 pm
Denise Noe said,
[long paragraph of the multiple reasons women have unpleasurable sex.]
While men just have sex because they like it.
(Denise) Men don't have sex just "because it feels good." Like women, they have sex for a variety of reasons. I have a friend who regularly takes Viagra and one of his primary motivations is to keep his happy marriage together. Men, like women, may engage in "mercy" sex in which a main motive is to be kind to the partner. There are many other reasons men have sex. However, I do believe that, especially as regards sexual intercourse, because "it feels good" is a much more likely reason for men to engage in it than women.
PolishKnight: But… "science" says women have a capacity for greater sexual pleasure. Yeah, ok.
(Denise) No contradiction. Masters and Johnson as well as other researchers have found women have a greater capacity for orgasms. Capacities are capacities and are often unrealized.
August 11, 2007 at 3:16 am
Halo said,
Funny. Same reasons a lot of rapists do their thing.
Denise Noe said researchers have found women have a greater capacity for orgasms.
That was "research" from the forties and fifties, and their "methodology" was totally unscientific. Kinsey was even worse than them, and Shere Hite was a complete joke.
As for women's "larger capacity", some have it, some don't. I've been with all types of women. The ones who have little capacity for orgasm tend to not like sex (frigid), and the ones who have a large capacity (i.e. ten, twenty or even more) tend to be total sluts. The women who usually have one orgasm per lovemaking episode (occasionally two) are far more likely to be stable and happy human beings. The sluts and the frigids all have serious mental problems, and they are always users of men.
August 11, 2007 at 4:12 am