Question from Pro-Choicers

Yes, yes, and yes a thousand times. Everyone has a right to life. No discrimination based on sexual identity, gender, race, or some nebulous concept of "wantedness."

Council of Canadians with Disabilities response to Taking Mercy

Everyone should read this.
 
"When you reduce the powerful and purposeful lives of persons with disabilities by using trite comments likening our existence to that of pets, plants, mere burdens or simplified stereotypes, you portray us as subhuman and suffering."

"War on Women"

 
A pro-choice friend of mine has been busy posting articles and videos on the much-maligned "war on women" by the GOP. Usually, I find the stuff she posts pretty annoying (I'm sure she thinks the same thing about my pro-life posts), but I actually found this video pretty interesting. Basically, its a bunch of women quoting some prominent Republicans and their supporters. They end the video with a snappy,

"Women will out-vote men by 10 million. 

You might want to keep that in mind. 

We're Women. 

We Vote."

Besides the first comment about aspirin (gross), and the Ann Coulter quote (seriously - ugh), I didn't really have a problem with any of quotes used as evidence that the Republican party is involved in a "war" against women. So, lets deal with the rest of these quotes, shall we?

"Forcing women to have an ultrasound before an abortion is justified because they already made the decision to be vaginally penetrated when they got pregnant." -Republican Lawmaker

Well, when people say stupid shit like this its no wonder pro-choicers went crazy and claimed that ultrasound laws are government-sanctioned rape. However, those who believe that this is the best reason that lawmakers can come up with in support of ultrasound legislation have clearly not done their research. There is no "negative" in requiring both that ultrasounds be done before an abortion, and that the mother should be allowed to see the ultrasound should she ask. It ensures both safety and informed consent. See my rant about informed consent here. See a pro-choicer's take on the rhetoric surrounding ultrasound legislation here (to quote a key paragraph: "I have considerable concerns about what calling these ultrasounds 'rape' and 'unnecessary' will mean for abortion patients and providers. The reality is that most abortion patients do receive an ultrasound to date their pregnancies [...] the transvaginal ultrasound is a useful and common tool that helps providers perform abortions safely and well."). See this article from the Ottawa Citizen about a women who had just undergone an abortion (another key quote: "Anna asked what the fetus looked like and could she see the ultrasound. She said, 'The technician told me she was not allowed to show me the images and I was unable to see the screen' [...] Bu that's exactly what Anna did want."). In my opinion, the main reason that pro-abortion leaders galvanize pro-choicers against this type of legislation is that the majority of mothers who view their unborn child in an ultrasound decide to keep their baby. Who cares about informed consent or safety when women are deciding to keep their children?

"The agenda of Planned Parenthood includes sexualizing young girls through the Girl Scouts." - Reb. Bob Morris

Well, the connection between Planned Parenthood and the Girl Scouts is pretty well-established. Whether they are sexualizing young girls or not really depends on your opinion of what constitutes appropriate sexual health. But this article from Secular Pro-Life is a great spring-board to do some research on the issue - you can go through the comments to find tonnes of links to more information, including the "Healthy, Happy, and Hot" PP brochure that has apparently been handed out at several GS events. Either way, from the controversy surrounding the PP and GS connection, its easy to see why Rep. Bob Morris said what he said.

"The vast majority of abortions are matters of lifestyle convenience." -VA State Del. Tod Gilbert

This one makes me laugh, because it is, quite frankly, very true. Just take a look at this table from the Guttmacher Institute on reasons why women seek abortions. Or you can read through this blog post which summarizes the stats. The most common reason women choose abortions (in both 1987 and 2004)? They aren't ready for a(nother) child. If that's not a matter of lifestyle convenience, I don't know what is.

 "A woman impregnated through rape should accept that horribly-created gift, the gift of human life. Accept what God has given you and make the best of a bad situation." -Rick Santorum

Frankly, I'm sick of the "rape" card. It is incredibly hateful. It trivializes the experiences of all those who have been raped, and it hurts those children who were conceived and born through rape. To really put a face to the issue, go here and read about Rebecca Kiessling, an attorney and pro-life speaker who was conceived through rape. Here is a quick excerpt of what she has to say: "Please understand that whenever you identify yourself as being 'pro-choice,' or whenever you make that exception for rape, what that really translates into is you being able to stand before me, look me in the eye, and say to me, 'I think your mother should have been able to abort you' [...] 'If I had my way, you'd be dead right now.'" I doubt that the lady quoting Rick Santorum could walk up to Rebecca and say that to her face, and yet, by the insinuation that pro-lifers are at war against women because we believe that those conceived through rape are just as worthy of life and love as those conceived through consensual sex, that is exactly what she is saying.

"Why should the government force you to insure for contraceptives. Are they going to have us have to insure for toothpaste? I mean, this is ridiculous." -Rudy Giuliani

Yup, I agree. And the issue isn't insuring for contraceptives, its being forced to. If you want to read some Catholic's perspectives, go here, and especially go to the Patheos blog Bad Catholic. Marc is pretty hilarious and does a decent job demonstrating why religious institutions understand the contraceptive mandate to be a war against religious freedom and not a women's issue. You can start with his first post, and go from there.

"If we're going to pay for you to have contraceptives, and thus pay for you to have sex, we want you to post the videos online, so we can all watch." -Rush Limbaugh

Ah, the infamous remarks from Rush Limbaugh, which I believe he has since apologized for. Good for him, and good for the media for pressuring him to apologize for saying such things. Woot! Looks like we're a culture that won't take mysoginist crap from anybody, right? Oh wait.

And to summarize the point of this passionate little video:

"The GOP must have a serious problem with women."

Well, two can play that game. Read over the last link I posted from Michelle Malkin. The point she makes, and something that should be obvious to anyone that does not have an agenda, is that the mainstream left has an equally bad, if not worse, track record in their treatment of women from the opposition. To quote, "Self-serving opponents argue that such attacks to not represent 'respectable,' 'mainstream' liberal opinion about their conservative female counterparts. But it was feminist godmother Gloria Steinem who called Texas Republican Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison a "female impersonator." It was NOW leader Patricia Ireland who commanded her flock to only vote for "authentic" female political candidates." ..." etc. Reading through the entire article, it becomes obvious that this so-called "war on women" is being fought on both sides of the US political spectrum. So is the issue really Republican vs. Democrat? Or is it a political culture that focuses only on snappy rhetoric, shallow scandals, and orchestrated controversy?

I think the answer is quite obvious.

How Atrocities Happen

Anyone who has wondered how slavery, the Holocaust, human sacrifice, or the killing of newborns in ancient Greece and Rome could have happened, look no further than this article from The Journal of Medical Ethics. I honestly thought it was a joke when I first heard about this article, so I went through my University Library to check if this was an honest-to-goodness published article that academic institutions have associated themselves with. And it turns out, it is.
Written by Alberto Giubilini and Francesca Minerva, the article argues that newborns, like fetuses, are only "potential persons" and so cannot be harmed by the "prevention of their potentiality". Therefore, in situations where families feel that it is in their best interests to end the life of their child, they should not be prevented from doing so, because the rights of self-determination of "actual persons" are more compelling than the rights of "potential persons" to develop into "actual persons". At the end, the authors do not make claims to any thresholds at which "after-birth abortion" should not be permissible - in effect, they say it should be left up to the discretion of families and doctors.

Seriously scary stuff. I really encourage you to read through the entire article, it is absolutely imperative that we understand how these people think, because they honestly believe that they are doing good. And it really does prove that we aren't crazy when we claim that abortion, besides being an atrocity all on its own, leads to the slippery slope of denying more and more humans their right to live (the central idea in the pro-choice movement). People who lived through past human rights abuses learned this the hard way, and yet how easily we forget such lessons.

"First they came for the communists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a Jew.
Then they came for me
and there was no one left to speak out for me."
-Martin Niemoller

I've included the paper in its entirety below, just in case you can't access the journal (hopefully this isn't a breach of copyright, if so just let me know and I'll take out the full article and leave in the particularly salient points, such as the fact that "after-birth abortion" can be a better solution than adoption ...):

2012/04/18 EDIT: So it turns out that this article is available for free to the public, and you can access it using the link above. If that doesn't work, the homepage of the journal provides the link for you, with responses from other academics (well worth the read imo, so do check it out). Apparently, even though the article is in the public domain, one still can't reprint the whole thing without permission, even though I'm not profiting from it and anyone can access the article through the link I provided. Anyway, just to be safe, I've taken out the entire article and replaced it with what I think are the most important quotes. All quotes are referenced directly from the paper, bold emphasis is my own.

Reference:
Giubilini, A. & Minerva, F. After-birth abortion: why should the baby live? J Med Ethics. Doi: 10.1136/medethics-2011-100411. Published online Feb 2012. 


Quotations:

"A serious philosophical problem arises when the same conditions that would have justified abortion become known after birth. [...] Such an issue arises, for example, when an abnormality has not been detected during pregnancy or occurs during delivery. [...] An examination of 18 European registries reveals that between 2005 and 2009 only the 64% of Down's syndrome cases were diagnosed through prenatal testing. This percentage indicates that, considering only the European areas under examination, about 1700 infants were born with Down's syndrome without parents being aware of it before birth. Once these children are born, there is no choice for the parents but to keep the child, which sometimes is exactly what they would not have done if the disease had been diagnosed before birth."
 

"In The Netherlands [...] the Groningen Protocol (2002) allows to actively terminate the life of ‘infants with a hopeless prognosis who experience what parents and medical experts deem to be unbearable suffering’. [...] But, in fact, people with Down's syndrome, as well as people affected by many other severe disabilities, are often reported to be happy. Nonetheless, to bring up such children might be an unbearable burden on the family and on society as a whole, when the state economically provides for their care. On these grounds, the fact that a fetus has the potential to become a person who will have an (at least) acceptable life is no reason for prohibiting abortion. Therefore, we argue that, when circumstances occur after birth such that they would have justified abortion, what we call after-birth abortion should be permissible."

"In spite of the oxymoron in the expression, we propose to call this practice ‘after-birth abortion’, rather than ‘infanticide’, to emphasise that the moral status of the individual killed is comparable with that of a fetus [...] Therefore, we claim that killing a newborn could be ethically permissible in all the circumstances where abortion would be."

"Failing to bring a new person into existence cannot be compared with the wrong caused by procuring the death of an existing person. [...] If the death of a newborn is not wrongful to her on the grounds that she cannot have formed any aim that she is prevented from accomplishing, then it should also be permissible to practise an after-birth abortion on a healthy newborn too, given that she has not formed any aim yet.

"The moral status of an infant is equivalent to that of a fetus, that is, neither can be considered a ‘person’ in a morally relevant sense."

"It is not possible to damage a newborn by preventing her from developing the potentiality to become a person in the morally relevant sense."

"The moral status of an infant is equivalent to that of a fetus in the sense that both lack those properties that justify the attribution of a right to life to an individual. [...] This means that many non-human animals and mentally retarded human individuals are persons, but that all the individuals who are not in the condition of attributing any value to their own existence are not persons. Merely being human is not in itself a reason for ascribing someone a right to life."

"It might be claimed that someone is harmed because she is prevented from becoming a person capable of appreciating her own being alive [but] in order for a harm to occur, it is necessary that someone is in the condition of experiencing that harm. / If a potential person, like a fetus and a newborn, does not become an actual person, like you and us, then there is neither an actual nor a future person who can be harmed, which means that there is no harm at all. / A consequence of this position is that the interests of actual people over-ride the interest of merely potential people to become actual ones."

"Actual people's well-being could be threatened by the new (even if healthy) child requiring energy, money and care which the family might happen to be in short supply of. Sometimes this situation can be prevented through an abortion, but in some other cases this is not possible. In these cases, since non-persons have no moral rights to life, there are no reasons for banning after-birth abortions."

"Why should we kill a healthy newborn when giving it up for adoption would not breach anyone's right but possibly increase the happiness of people involved (adopters and adoptee)? [...] however weak the interests of actual people can be, they will always trump the alleged interest of potential people to become actual ones, because this latter interest amounts to zero. On this perspective, [...] we also need to consider the interests of the mother who might suffer psychological distress from giving her child up for adoption. [...] What we are suggesting is that, if interests of actual people should prevail, then after-birth abortion should be considered a permissible option for women who would be damaged by giving up their newborns for adoption."

"If criteria such as the costs (social, psychological, economic) for the potential parents are good enough reasons for having an abortion even when the fetus is healthy, if the moral status of the newborn is the same as that of the infant and if neither has any moral value by virtue of being a potential person, then the same reasons which justify abortion should also justify the killing of the potential person when it is at the stage of a newborn."

"First, we do not put forward any claim about the moment at which after-birth abortion would no longer be permissible [...] In cases where the after-birth abortion were requested for non-medical reasons, we do not suggest any threshold ..."

"if [...] circumstances change such that taking care of the offspring becomes an unbearable burden on someone, then people should be given the chance of not being forced to do something they cannot afford."

Karen Handel Discusses Komen Controversy

Here is the segment on Fox News where Karen Handel, the pro-life ex-executive for Komen, is interviewed regarding what had happened. I think she is handling everything wonderfully, considered Planned Parenthood and Komen essentially threw here under the bus. She refused to say anything bad about Komen, stressed that they do great work in spite of everything that had happened, and refused to discuss the inner workings of Komen or trash talk Nancy Brinker - in fact, doing just the opposite! What a lot of class, in my opinion.

On the other hand, most of the comments on the video, evidently written by self-proclaimed "educated", "inclusive", "pro-choice" advocates, are anything but. Apparently, anyone who disagrees with them, anyone who sees that PP is a controversial organization (something that is very self-evident!) and therefore decides to not continue their involvement with them, is completely disrespected. Here are a few choice quotes:

"Right-wing nut job!" -rgftown
"what a dumb bitch" -CrackEMcGee
"Karen is an uneducated, narcissistic hillbilly. She's like Sarah Palin on donuts." -disneylandman66
"People don't get offered a 'severance package' when they resign! They're presented with this paycheck when they are FIRED!!! You pay off someone to let them go!
Karen Handel, don't let the door hit you in your fat ol'Santorum-slimed redneck ass as you leave the building, you sanctimonious backward bigoted bitch!!" - witchwild
"what a fucking cow. I wish I could do illegal things to this heffer." -The12GagePump

Classy. Because, you know, only uneducated, rightwing, narcissistic, hillbillies and dumb, bigoted bitches and cows would ever believe that Planned Parenthood is a black mark on Komen.

Oh wait.

I'm not a redneck, right-winger, hillbilly, uneducated, a cow, or a bitch ... actually, I grew up in the city, come from an immigrant family that only votes liberal, am working on my Masters degree, and I'm not fat or bitchy - and I happen to agree with Karen and think she's handled this wonderfully. I especially love her statement that she refused the severance package because Komen is a nonprofit, and because she wanted to leave on her own terms.

Anyway, if you have a youtube account, go give Karen some love! Don't stoop down to the pro-choicer's levels though, because there's already a few "Christians" and "pro-lifers" throwing out equally awful language to the other side, and that gets us nowhere.

Responding to Roe

This is a great video I wanted to highlight from Feminists for Life:

Definitely a must for anyone interested in the abortion debate!

Send a Thank You to Komen for Defunding PP!

"Please stop what you are doing right now and write to news@komen.org and say (in English please): “Thanks for defunding Planned Parenthood!” That is all you have to say! And it will make a huge difference."


Seriously, do this now! They need all the encouragement and support they can get, otherwise they could change their minds. We need to show the world that there are plenty of women (and men) out there who are FOR this and do not believe with will adversely affect women's health.


Thank y'all :) And get everyone you know to send a thank-you e-mail, or post on their Facebook account (or BOTH!) as well!