It’s Kind of Like Abortion

they must be doing it wrong if he has that much blood on his hands…

All who could ever in their wildest dreams take this seriously, say “aye.”

*crickets chirping*

…

‘s what I thought. Just how stupid do pro-lifers think we are?

Ugh. The mentality behind this naked guilt trip is incomprehensibly abysmal. The root is at the foundation of religion: “Control and subjugate women at all costs.” The cost to civilization is very high.

*sigh* Having an abortion isn’t a quick fix or easy decision for many women. And no, going to jesus after isn’t going to make you feel all better again.
This video rubbed me the wrong way :-/ As did the paper cut comment.
Do I think abortions should be legal? Absolutely. But I also don’t think its fair to trivialize a growing human being. In a perfect world, birth control would never fail when you needed it, you would only get pregnant when you wanted to, every child would be born or adopted into a healthy home, and abortions simply wouldn’t be necessary.

Anyone who thinks murdering a baby is comparable to abortion should be watched very closely… they do not have as good a moral sense as a typical five year old.

A baby can be cared for by anyone who is willing. A fetus, on the other hand must be a burden on only one (sometimes unwilling) pregnant woman. Pregnancy is a risk to a woman’s health and occupation.

Only a complete wingnut digbat could compare these two things directly. Ethics always involve some kind of trade-off with a goal to maximize happiness and minimize suffering. Why don’t people get this into their heads???

Disgusting.

Anyone who thinks murdering a baby is comparable to abortion should be watched very closely… they do not have as good a moral sense as a typical five year old.

You must admit – it is strange now horrifying the act in this video is, when if it were 2 or3 months earlier it would be generally fine with you. (you realize that even without the gunshot, abortion is as violent and bloody as what was shown, right?)

Obviously this is an extreme video – but to say that one can’t be even compared to the other is a bit cowardly.

Thanks for bringing this to my attention. The abortion world (as far as I know and I keep a very close eye on what’s going on) was not aware of this video. This is horrific. I am shaking I am so mad. Except to see something up at Abortion Gang in the near future.

Just how stupid do pro-lifers think we are?

Whenever two views are diametrically opposed to each other, both sides tend to view the other side as insanely stupid. That’s the only way people can keep from being forced to actually examine their own view.

We are lucky that science and reason give us tools to monitor our own prejudice and allow us to examine our own view critically. This lets us change our mind when we can be demonstrated to be wrong. Christians do not have such a mechanism and are stuck with believing that we are insanely stupid. Any other viewpoint forces self examination and allows for the possibility that their view may be wrong. That’s why they’re taught that their view, and the Word of God, is infallible; to prevent anybody from examining real evidence and changing their mind.

As such, they think you are insanely stupid, and criminally so at that. After all, God’s Laws are supreme to them and should be enforced by real police, not just imagined angels.

I wonder how the antiabortion christians would react, if a gay advocacy group came out with a video showing a gay 15 year old hanging from a church steeple.

Garren, here is a list of the differences.

1. The viable fetus lacks a nervous system capable of forming and recalling memories.

2. The mother is nearly a year into the commitment when they shoot the baby, where most abortions are within weeks of discovery of pregnancy.

3. Legally, a person gains individual rights after birth.

4. The baby can survive without the mother.

5. The couple made a commitment to the baby by buying clothing, setting up a room, having a family photo taken, etc. Aborted fetuses have no commitments made to them.

Those are the first 5 that came to mind.

I thought it was hilarious! Disturbing, but hilarious. I love how ridiculous and exaggerated these issues can get. I think seeing a baby’s face and spending even a small amount of time raising it provides the true difference between infanticide and abortion. But, as sick as it may be, I laughed at the gunshot. Not because of the idea of murdering a baby, but the idea of the video. Religion is ridiculous.

As such, they think you are insanely stupid, and criminally so at that. After all, God’s Laws are supreme to them and should be enforced by real police, not just imagined angels.

Yeah, and isn’t that one of their key hypocrisies — that even though they believe “this” world is only temporary and impermanent and “fallen” (i.e. incapable of governing itself) still for some reason its very material occupants are expected to do God’s heavy lifting?

And if that WTF channel isn’t good enough, we have nurses taking babies to military compounds, strapping them with explosives, and throwing them at… Wisconsin protesters. That is if the exploding illegal immigrant babies don’t stop them first.

Am I the only one getting hungry?

@Revyloution
“The baby can survive without the mother.”

I’m asking for morally relevant differences between infants and viable fetuses, both of which can survive without the mother.

“The viable fetus lacks a nervous system capable of forming and recalling memories.”

Once that level of development in place, would you agree the analogy to killing an infant is more reasonable?

“The couple made a commitment to the baby by buying clothing, setting up a room, having a family photo taken, etc. Aborted fetuses have no commitments made to them.”

If a pregnant woman paints a nursery and posts an ultrasound photo to Facebook, is she then morally unjustified in having an abortion?

Wow. I guess if their objective was to get pro-choice people to facepalm themselves into stupidity–then mission accomplished.

Yaay, an abortion debate on the internet!

I’m sure we’ll all come away from this more personally enriched and knowledgeable, with a better understanding of truth.

Oh, wait, no we won’t, but that won’t stop this thread from reaching 75+ outraged comments.

I’ve always felt abortion will be an ongoing gray area of ethics. A wanted child would begin at conception for eager parents. Where an unwanted pregnancy would be an adverse effect of sexual activity. As an aethiest and someone who has been the male in a couple who has had an abortion the experience was incredibly traumatic. Why on earth anyone would not want birth control access and education is by far the greatest atrocity. Beyond ethics, it is a womens choice, the process will take a tremendous toll on her health/energy and emotions. Prenervous system development makes sense but nothing about it may ever feel right.
Freedom to choose.

This is just about the funniest thing I have watched today, especially when Daddy Dearest says, “Problem solved.”

That may be because it made me think of this comedy short from SMBC Theater: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_AzEeIGznU

I lolled.

And if you have to go to this much work to try and convince people that two things are actually the same, you’re almost certainly wrong.

@Garren

“I’m asking for morally relevant differences between infants and viable fetuses, both of which can survive without the mother.”

Show me how, without the use of modern medicine, you can remove a ‘viable fetus’ from a mother and have it survive. The fetus is dependent on the mother until it is born.

“Once that level of development in place, would you agree the analogy to killing an infant is more reasonable?”

That level never ‘takes place’, there is no line of demarcation where consciousness takes hold. It’s a gradual process that begins in the womb, and completes well into adolescence.

“If a pregnant woman paints a nursery and posts an ultrasound photo to Facebook, is she then morally unjustified in having an abortion?”

Perhaps. Morality is a personal thing, not an absolute thing. Some people think it’s immoral to step on ants. Other people think it’s moral mutilate their children’s genitals. It would be up to the woman to determine if it was moral or not.

It is not the same, simply because a fetus doesnt have the neural capacity to be considered a sentient human being. That is the main thing to keep in mind here. We are perfectly capable of destroying life as a society, and it is accepted – only when that life is a thinking human are we opposed.

I would set a cut-off for when abortion is allowed. Third trimester, or even late in the second. Its all about when the nervous system begins to form. But a single celled zygote, or a blastula, or a three week old fetus is definately not the same as a full grown baby.

Exodus 21:22-25: “And if men struggle with each other and strike a woman with child so that she has a miscarriage, yet there is no further injury, he shall surely be fined as the woman’s husband may demand of him; and he shall pay as the judges decide. But if there is any further injury, then you shall appoint as a penalty life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise.”

A mother’s life and a fetus… Not the Same Thing, according to the Bible.

So what should be the appropriate criminal punishment for women who have abortions? Execution?

@Garren

“I’m asking for morally relevant differences between infants and viable fetuses, both of which can survive without the mother.”

The obvious difference is that an infant has been successfully separated from the mother’s body, and a viable fetus has not. This actually matters a lot.

There are also differences in degrees of development of the brain (in particular) and other organs, depending on how far along the pregnancy is. There is a big difference in likelihood of survival.

The term ‘viable’ for a fetus is rather imprecise. For each additional week of pregnancy, the chance that the fetus will survive (if born at that point) increases. But even fetuses past the point of supposed viability are at much greater chance of dying if prematurely delivered.

I think many people who are in favor of abortion rights feel varying degrees of discomfort with late term abortions, and the later the term the greater the discomfort. But in our society these are rarely performed, and usually only done due to extreme health problems of either the mother or fetus. I had never really understood the need for late term abortions until I read some letters from people after George Tiller was murdered, expressing how he had helped them in extraordinarily difficult physical circumstances (and no, it wasn’t about their ability to pay the bills).

Spending a lot of time arguing about late term abortions doesn’t seem very practical. The anti-abortion crowd is actually much more concerned with early term abortions, because that’s when most abortions are performed. And when they can be performed easily, and for any reason at all.

MikeTheInfidel, the sin of Onan will damn you to hell! And make your palms hairy! And you’ll go blind!!

I was having a discussion about abortion just yesterday with a self described ‘cafeteria Catholic’. She said that while she was opposed to abortion, she thought it should still be legal.

I gave her my position on the whole debate, and she loved it.

“If you don’t have a uterus, you shouldn’t be able to vote on what other people do with theirs.” – Me.

I seriously laughed after reading your post on preserving the meat of a newborn from pellet damage…

And Mike? Your statement :

“Saying that a woman must take a pregnancy to term if she chose to have sex is a bit like saying that the child is her punishment for violating antiquated views of human sexuality, in my view.”

Is exactly why this was done!!!

I am especially perplexed about the extreme pro-lifers views that any and all abortion is a sin, even in the cases of rape or incest victims.

What a horrible sense of morality with no justification.

What would have been inhumane, Blacksheep, would have been forcing me to give birth as a 15 year old. At that point it was aborting a 9 week fetus, or killing myself. There are a few asshole anti-choicers out there who would be perfectly fine with the latter, since then I would have been sent to judgment at the feet of their gawd that much sooner. -insert eyeroll here-

What would have been inhumane would have been to force me to continue a doomed pregnancy, had the amniocentesis come back positive for Edwards syndrome (trisomy 18) with my third wanted pregnancy. See, my son showed cysts on the brain at my 20 week ultrasound, and since I already have a child with Down syndrome (trisomy 21) this was particularly concerning. Edwards syndrome fetuses are rarely carried to term, and if they do make it to birth they have a 90% chance of dying within the first month, and the few remaining not long after. They never attain consciousness, and the organ systems are too messed up even to make organ donation a possibility. It would have been inhumane to make me continue the pregnancy, wondering each day if I am carrying a dead fetus, to eventually have to go through birth to watch an infant die, for my other two children to have had a brother only to watch him die in the NICU. By the time my amniocentesis results came back, and we found a provider for an abortion, it would have been too late where we were living. Somehow, since military insurance won’t cover abortion, we would have had to come up with money for the surgery and travel, likely to Kansas at the time. Because THIS is what later-term abortion looks like, not a woman deciding one day to kill off a viable fetus because she wants to fit into a dress.

Trust women.

I tell ya! That was not how they taught us to prepare supper in cooking class.

Fucking amateurs.

No, TheRealistMom, you don’t understand. What would be inhumane is to prevent you from that experience, since as a woman you (and I) are are Baby Containers, and it would be far more inhumane for us to end an devastating pregnancy-gone-wrong than to proceed as God planned–that gut-wrenching experience is exactly what we are “created” to do, after all, and to prevent it would be denying our Place in Life. In fact, there is no such thing as being inhumane to us, because we are just Baby Containers, with our only value being our internal contents. And you can’t trust Baby Containers, because Baby Containers have no brains and must have decisions made for them by the Nut Sacks, whose Wisdom and Glory dwarf our meager feminine abilities.

God, that’s sickening to even type out. But that does seem to be how they reason this. Or at least, when any of them are forced to admit, as you said, to what late-term abortion really looks like. Even when you can get them to admit to that, most people will bend over backwards to qualify and justify their views even more. My sister had two co-workers arguing about abortion. The anti-choicer insisted that any potential baby would choose not to be aborted (as if we can know exactly what a potential human thinks before they exist) and we must respect that by stripping women of their right to choose. The other, a product of incest, has numerous serious problems and declared passionately that she would have preferred to be aborted rather than live the way she has had to. The anti-choicer just closed her eyes, plugged her ears, and insisted that the other woman had actually lived a wonderful life and had no problems at all and wouldn’t really have wanted to be aborted, over her companion’s continued insistence that she lives in constant pain and degradation and would have preferred never to have been born. Finally, she called the anti-choicer an idiot, or a moron, or something.

My sister, the tone-troll, was completely on the anti-choicer’s side, because she felt there was no reason to be rude and call the anti-choicer names. Never mind how completely rude it was of the anti-choicer to flippantly brush aside her companion’s miserable personal experience and insist that her life was actually perfect and not painful or unpleasant at all–no, the real horror comes in when someone is called an idiot. Gasp! Now that was entirely uncalled-for! The anti-choicer, however, is considered to be polite by default, no matter how vile or sociopathic her words happen to be.

So, anyway, my point is that even if you could get them to admit your experience isn’t their assumption of “a woman deciding one day to kill off a viable fetus because she wants to fit into a dress” (much less the fact that your experience is the norm and not the exception), they’ll just come up with some justification about how a horrible experience like that was actually a wonderful and life-affirming experience that made your world richer, and how terrible it would be to deprive you of carrying out your one true Purpose–even if it means you and/or your baby die in pain. Black means white, left means right, and word games are their entire world–it’s all they have, in lieu of actual arguments or evidence.

I am almost surprised they did not actually show the shooting. Just for the effect. Once you distort reality, why not go all the way.

Using the same troll logic of the video, we could solve the same problem of all this anti-choice legislation being proposed in government by putting a bullet into every republican’s head.

@ Holytape:
“What this and that shooting santa video teaches me is that under no circumstances are you to allow a fundie christian access to a shot gun.”

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!

THANK YOU!!

I was waiting for the message at the end where Jesus brings money to your house to pay the bills. But that didn’t happen.

What a fucking twisted video. I wonder if those actors in that video can sleep at night after have to act through that, let alone being able to stomach watching the final version.

Whoever thinks in this logic… senseless.

Focusing on the viable fetus issue is a red herring, a common diversionary tactic.

Infants born at 22 weeks gestation have a 9.8 percent survival rate. At 23 weeks, the survival rate is 53 percent and at 24 weeks, it’s 67 percent. At 25 weeks, an infant’s chances of survival are 82 percent. After 26 weeks, the survival rate is near 100 percent.

This doesn’t address the serious issue of birth defects from premature births, which are serious, live-long, and often debilitating.

Figures from the most recent CDC Abortion Surveillance report:
The majority (62.3%) of abortions in 2007 were performed at ?8 weeks’ gestation and 92% were performed at ?13 weeks’ gestation. Few abortions (7.2%) were performed at 14–20 weeks’ gestation, and 1.3% were performed at ?21 weeks’ gestation.

In cases of abortions performed after 21 weeks, they are for medical reasons. Either the fetus will not actually survive because of a serious birth defect, or the life of the mother is threatened, or there’s been some sort of accident requiring a choice between the woman and the fetus.

While it is entirely possible there’s some idiot out there who doesn’t realize she’s pregnant for 6 months and suddenly says “Hey, I want an abortion!” and she might possibly be able to find a doctor who would actually perform said abortion just because she doesn’t want to be pregnant any more, the chances of that being the case are so incredibly miniscule as to not even be worth the dignity of discussion.

Late term abortions are very rare, and always a painful choice is being made. NO one is going around slaughtering viable fetuses willy nilly without there being some serious life-threat at stake.

The overwhelming majority of abortions, and the ones that the Supreme Court protected as the absolute right of the woman to obtain with the decision in Roe v. Wade, are performed prior to 13 weeks.

The Supreme Court has ALREADY protected the burgeoning rights of the fetus with its ruling in Roe v. Wade by their statement that after viability, the state has a reasonable interest in protecting the fetus’ rights and is allowed to put restrictions on late term abortions. I haven’t specifically checked, but I think that all of the states have laws on the books regulating how, when, and for what reasons late term abortions are permitted.

Of course this video is an extreme illustration to make the point that an abortion is killing a baby and despite all of the horror stories of mother’s safety,rape and incest, the overwhelming majority of abortions are done for convenience of the mother and her partner. An example of the only place in our society that we allow the innocent victim of other people’s choices to pay the cost.

Oh, but wait. Even more genius in the works…

http://thinkprogress.org/2011/02/23/bobby-franklin-miscarriage-naturally#
Force women to prove miscarriage happened naturally or face felony charges. Now that is real compassion. Yes it makes such logical sense now. The jobs the GOP wants to create are in the justice system and by just building more jails to house all of the un-American sinners that they would prefer to see go away.

@Karen
“Spending a lot of time arguing about late term abortions doesn’t seem very practical. The anti-abortion crowd is actually much more concerned with early term abortions, because that’s when most abortions are performed.”

Thanks for your thoughtful reply. I brought up the question of aborting viable fetuses because that is what Pro Life advocates often use to debate Pro Choice principles. It’s every bit as fair game as using extremely early points in human development to criticize Pro Life principles.

I’m concerned that neither side — as typically argued — does a good job of developing consistent justifications for their position. The opposite side can easily (and rightly!) exploit this weakness.