John McCain, the Pro-Life Candidate

That is sick.

I feel like explaining why is like explaining how to spell “cat” to a room full of Harvard professors.

Nice… it’s always weird/disappointing seeing the town where I grew up listed in a list like this. I wouldn’t paint Pierre as a bad place just because it is the capital where the abortion legislation ALMOST passed. It’s the entire state that ALMOST passed it. At least it didn’t pass.

PS,

I just noticed “Good Luck” at the bottom. That induces a second gag reflex. It is twistedly and disturbingly ironic, since some babies survive abortion attempts.

Holy crap that’s funny and disturbing.

Dhoff: I agree that it’s in bad taste, perhaps, but shock value is what the authors are counting on to help make their point.

While I don’t think we’ll find any common ground on the first three items on that list, what do you have to say about 4 and 5? I think that measures that would, in practice, put the life of the fetus/unborn baby above that of the mother are sick.

I also think that forcing women to keep tiny clumps of cells that are the result of rape and making them endure nine months of constant reminders of what happened to them is monstrous.

If life begins at conception, then some women are naturally miscarrying constantly during their periods, as fertilized eggs will often be dispelled just like unfertilized eggs. Is this somehow the will of God, yet He would insist that a rape victim keep her fertilized egg?

Daniel Hoffman: “Hearing groups like 23/6 talk flippantly about how happy-go-lucky it is to “terminate” “unwanted” “pregnancies””

Would like to point out that 23/6 is not a “group,” it’s a comedy site.

I agree with mikespeir and Siamang completely. Also: I find it kind of hilarious that the advertisement on the top of this page (for me, anyway) is a “John McCain for President” ad, lol.

Well, unlike Daniel Hoffman, who hates this because he wants to tell women what to do with their bodies, I am disgusted because a McCain term could very well lead to overturning important pro-choice laws, and that is upseting. As a woman who has sex with men, and yet does not want babies, I want my birth control (preferably covered by insurance, and handed over by the pharmacist when I ask for it) and want abortion to be an option available to me. As a woman who is friends with a woman who can never have kids- it will kill her- I find the right to an abortion to be mandatory.

Abortions will not end if they are illegal. Instead, women will die from unsafe abortions. Daniel, are you ok with your wife, sister, or mother dying from a coat hanger? And sure, maybe she never would have an abortion, no really, but one in three American women do. Please keep that in mind.

I would hope that a President would make policy decisions based on reason and on his or her morality based on good, well thought out reason rather than an emotional response. It doesn’t really matter if I agree with the decisions as long as I can follow the reasoning.

I think that the current law on terminations is pretty balanced for the most part. They are available where needed yet are not so easy to get as to be a replacement for contraception.

If McCain has a pro-life AND an anti contraception\abstinence only opinion then America is in for an increase in disease, risky illegal medical procedures and unwanted children who must rely on the state for support.

Yeah, good luck with that.

Come on, Daniel.

You’re assuming that a pre-viability blastocyst is a person. It’s not. Neither is a seed a tree, nor a blueprint a skyscraper.

The anti-choice people won’t get anywhere with their failed arguments if they do not address the actual reality that a baby is the results of more than just sperm and egg. It’s sperm+egg+time+uterus+luck.

If you can get a baby without all 5 of those, I think the Nobel committee would like to hear from you. Mr. McCain seems to think it only takes the first two, and would like to skip the other three and hand out cigars that say “Congratulations, it’s an Amoeba!” before any of the hard work of childbearing has even begun.

Such is the problem with magical thinking. There isn’t a bright clear line of instant creation. Development and gestation is a slow, fuzzy process. On one side is merely unimportant gametes, on the other side a need to be protected baby. And somewhere in that magic, mysterious middle is an ethical crossroads where difficult decisions need to be made thoughtfully.

The anti choice people want to pull the Overton window all the way to foreplay, I’m afraid. And perhaps all the way back to a boy’s first boner. Why else would they be trying to get the pill and the IUD reclassified as “abortion”? At this point, we’re not talking about babies at all, but rather attempting to control the sexual activities of others.

Let’s face it, the same people who want to outlaw abortion don’t particularly like gay sex, sex toys, straight oral sex or even masturbation. Which is a big clue that it’s not about the babies, it’s about the fact that they don’t like the idea that other people might be having some fun with their bits and pieces, without having to pay the wages of sin!

We (men OR women) don’t have free reign over our bodies. We are not allowed, by law, to use our bodies to pick up a gun and shoot a stranger on the street. Saying abortion should be legal “because it’s my body” makes about as much sense as saying “I am going to take this knife and stab my neighbor, and don’t try to stop me, this is MY hand and MY arm!”

I think you are missing the point. Actually, the belief in bodily autonomy would mean that it would be legal to take the knife and stab yourself. When you stab someone else, you are infringing on their bodily autonomy. When a woman is pregnant, the pregnancy is taking resources (calories, calcium, etc, etc). This is fine if that’s what you want, but difficult if you do not want it.

Let’s participate in a thought exercise. Let’s say I am pregnant, and I have a gyno who is going to perform an abortion on me. In my other hand, I have a knife that I am holding to the throat of my next-door-neighbor, a grandmother helping to raise her three grandkids. You burst in the room, because you are mighty interested in my uterus. Either the fetus or my neighbor is going to die, and I leave the choice up to you, because in McCain’s America, that is what women must do. Who do you choose to die?