Why is a Canadian Mayor Making a ‘Pro-Life Week’ Proclamation?

I was very disappointed to hear you kowtowed to a pro life group and
endorsed their views. So you can imagine how much worse it was when I
found out you’ve done this four years in a row!

Pro life is just code for anti choice and, particularly, anti woman.

You should be ashamed.

“Yeah, she’ll respect human life… unless you’re a woman who needs an abortion, in which case she doesn’t give a shit about you.”

Hemant, do you hear yourself? This is an utterly ridiculous comment.

I think I may email Watson (my mayor) again, to alert him to the dangerous precedent he’s set.

I definitely support a mayor who says this. I abhor how easily some people are willing to commit murder on others, specifically both despite and yet because of their age. The fact that the Left (which I usually consider myself a part of) has fallen behind on the issue of murdering other humans saddens and angers me. We’re supposed to be the empathetic ones.

I think that I should write a letter to this mayor (especially because I live in the region) to inform her that an atheist endorses the decision to protect human life over human convenience. Don’t get me wrong: I also empathise with women’s plights with regard to pregnancy and childbearing, but when you research the stats, rape is really not a factor. Women and men make conscious choices to have sex and are (usually) entirely aware of the potential consequences. Basically, we choose, as a society, to condone murder in order to compensate for others’ lack of responsibility and willingness to be further responsible upon conception and thereafter.

please expand on the source of ridiculousness…

how can you say that (women) they have a choice on whether or not they get raped

Oops!

 Good news everyone! No need to take part in a serious and difficult debate about the moral distinctions between stopping a pregnancy from occurring in the first place and making the decision to end one early when one isn’t ready for a child, it turns out cabalavatar has figured it out for us! Stopping semen? Great! Abstinence? Even better! Preventing a pregnancy from starting? All is well. Ending a pregnancy after it started? Societal decline!

You win this round, ohioobserver… fixed!  Thanks 🙂

cabalavatar,  you’re taking the moralistic stance that unwanted pregnancy is the just and rightful penalty for irresponsibility having sex. Most of the women who seek abortions are not casually and frivolously using it as a form of birth control. They’re incapable of properly raising a child because they’re too young, and/or too poor, and/or psychologically inappropriate for parenthood, and/or they have no help from the father or their own family.  So even if they were irresponsible when they had sex, they would be adding another irresponsibility on top of that by having children they cannot raise.

So in many cases their children will be put into foster care funded by the state. If you want to force these women to finish their unwanted pregnancies with a religiously-based law, essentially you are forcing the rest of society to have to take care of them according to the values of your religious views, not necessarily everyone’s religious views. 

Since you’re so big on responsibility, please tell us how many unwanted babies have YOU adopted, helping to reduce the burden that you want to force onto society?

I was going to quote that exact same sentence, and ask how this logic is at all valid. Most humans are averse to the idea of killing one person to save another. In surveys, people reliably say that it would be wrong to harvest a live person’s organs in order to save someone else. If a fetus had the same moral standing as a fully-formed human, Hemant’s logic would fail on these grounds – that you can’t kill one person just to help another person. Thus, Hemant’s reasoning here seems to be exactly wrong. What I think most of us disagree with Shepard on is the idea that a fetus has the same moral standing as a full human. Attacking that premise would be the appropriate way to go.

Let’s imagine a hypothetical scenario here.  Lets say that you get in a car accident.  it doesn’t matter why, it could even have been a problem with the car you had no control over.  Someone gets seriously injured.  They are going to die unless someone is willing to share their blood contrinuously for the next 9 months.  The two people would have to be permanently tethered.  How would you feel if you were ordered to hook yourself up to that person for the next 9 months?  Now add that the strain on your body’s systems from this will cause permant changes, and you could even die from it.  

Let’s make it more realistic.  Would you support a law requiring the person who caused a car accident to donate blood, organs, bone marrow, or anything else to the victim, even if the person responsible was not actually at fault?  

Remember that driving a car is an inherently risky behavior.  Every time someone gets behind a wheel there is a non-negligible change that they will hurt or kill someone, and everyone who drives a car knows it (or they are supposed to).  Why should drivers of cars not have to take the same sort of responsibility that you think pregnant women should be required to take?  

What about your house or apartment?  What if a worker doing maintance hurts himself or herself?  Should you need to provide your own body to support that person?  You made the decision to hire him or her, knowing full well something could go wrong.

If you say no to any of these things, how is it any different?  Why is taking responsibility for some thing so important but taking responsibility for other things is not?

THIS. This this this thisity THIS.

It’s my body, and the only person who has a right to use it is ME. (Anything else that wants to set up shop in my body had damn well better pay rent.)

My letter to Sharon Shepherd (note that I grew up in that hellhole and do not expect it to make it past whoever screens these e-mails):

Dear Mayor Shepherd,

I’m a former resident of Kelowna who lived there for 19 years before moving to Vancouver, and I wanted to express my concern about your proclamation of the upcoming “Protect human life week”.  From one woman to another, I would like to ask that you do not use public money to support their cause.

The religious groups in Kelowna have so much support already, that they do not need further support from the municipal government.  These self-righteous people think that they are saving the lives of “unborn babies”, who may be at such an early stage that they cannot feel anything, or have conscious thought. Their fantaticism on this topic is based on their belief in the existence of a soul, which cannot be proven, and on the existence of an afterlife and judgmental deity (ditto). What they are in fact doing is advocating that women lose control over their bodies, so that they become incubators (however unwilling) for a foetus. What they are doing is shaming women who don’t want to have children or lead conventional lives. They want to punish women for having sex just for the enjoyment of it, particularly if they are not married. Many of these “activists” are men, or women past childbearing years, who are not attuned to the reality of bearing children: i.e. the financial cost, physical discomfort, etc. They do not care if a woman has an abortion for medical reasons – they only care that they make her feel ashamed of herself, and hopefully that she joins their church as a result. 

Unopposed religious fanaticism is why I left Kelowna. I was sick and tired of hearing from people, including friends and acquaintances, tell me that they didn’t believe in evolution, or that people would be punished for having premartial sex, for having abortions, or for not being a Christian. I have met people who consider themselves to be “warriors for Christ”, who go abroad to brainwash people into joining their religion, and who think that their problems can be answered by prayer alone. They are smug, brainwashed, and so conservative that they alienate many well-educated young people, who inevitably move away.

You should really consider what sort of message you are sending to people in Kelowna that are not affiliated with these groups. All that I’m hearing is “your kind is not welcome here, and there is no room for rational discussion of this topic because Jesus said so”.

“When you research the stats, rape is not a factor”? Pardon me, but YOU have not done your research. Rape is, in fact, very much a factor. And if you don’t want to be ridiculed within an inch of your life, you might want to present proof of your assertions, instead of letting them lie there like so many pieces of dung. Abortion is NOT murder; murder requires malice aforethought. Who ever has an abortion just out of malice? NOBODY.

This x 2

Politics and religion have no place in my uterus, thank you very much.

Because:
1. A woman never “needs” an abortion. You never “need” to kill a baby.
2. It’s stupid and wrong to assume that pro-life people “don’t give a shit” about woman. Being opposed to murder does not translate into being callous towards the female demographic.
3. He is pretending to “respect human life” when he thinks killing babies is ok.

Well when you kill a baby, that’s what you are.

But weapons do, I suppose?

The source? Well I said “Hemant,” I guess to expand: Hemant Mehta. The ridiculous comment came from him.

Yes, but we aren’t talking about babies here.  Did you flunk middle school biology or something?  Or are you just arbitrarily redefining words to score rhetorical points?

1) No, let’s talk about it.  Because you sound like you are opposed to abortion under any circumstances.  You just ignore rape, you would rather avoid the subject of pregnancies that will kill the mother entirely.  You are making a black-and-white argument and then refusing to actually deal with the real-world implications of that argument.

So answer the question: if the fetus is going to kill the mother, is it alright to have an abortion?  If the fetus is going to kill itself AND the mother, is it alright to have an abortion?  If the fetus is non-viable, either going to die before coming to term or shortly after birth, is it alright to have an abortion?2) You apparently haven’t gone out of your way to help the situation, either.  So I will ask the same question: how many children have you adopted?  How much money have you donated to taking care of the countless homeless children your plan is going to create?  It sounds like you want to set these rules, but don’t want to actually have to take responsibility for them.  There is that pesky responsibility thing again, something that you want to force on everyone else but apparently don’t want to take yourself.3) Lets turn this around: iif you admit it is just a clump of cells, why are you opposed to abortion early in the pregnancy?  Is there a cut-off point before which you think abortion is okay?  Or are you one of these “life begins at conception” people?

If she wants them there, yes.  It is her uterus, she can put whatever the hell she wants there.  But you have no right to tell her what she can and cannot put there.

How developed does it have to be before it counts as a baby? How about when it’s viable to live on its own? And do you actually want to restrict abortion to before that time? I doubt it.

He keeps on using that term again and again like the more he would say it the truer it will become. It is still not “killing babies” and it never will be. 

Here is a quote from Richard a few posts ago that some people still don’t seem to understand. 

” you’re taking the moralistic stance that unwanted pregnancy is the just and rightful penalty for irresponsibly having sex. Most of the women who seek abortions are not casually and frivolously using it as a form of birth control. They’re incapable of properly raising a child because they’re too young, and/or too poor, and/or psychologically inappropriate for parenthood, and/or they have no help from the father or their own family. So even if they were irresponsible when they had sex, they would be adding another irresponsibility on top of that by having children they cannot raise.”

So you have no problem whatsoever with abortion prior to that point?

To answer your question: no, because for me the issue, as I have pointed out repeatedly, is that we cannot force someone to provide their body to support someone else.  I wouldn’t even allow that for a fully-grown human, not to mention a fetus.  Honeslty I doubt you would allow it for a fully-grown human either, yet for some reason you do allow it for a fetus (which means you think that a fetus is MORE important that a fully-grown adult).

Ireland is getting better.

He can’t give a serious answer because he doesn’t have one.

If so-called “pro-life” people care about women, then why do they campaign for the closure and/or defunding of Planned Parenthood, although only 3% of their services are abortions, and they do a huge number of other things like cancer screenings, sexual and health education, contraceptives and simply general reproductive health care. For a lot of poor income women PP is their only provider. So why be against it?

Why are they also against comprehensive sexual education in school? Why are they for abstinence only propaganda, which is proven to not work and actually increases teen pregnancies?

Most religiously motivated “pro-life” fanatics simply want to subjugate women according to their biblical ideology

It’s MY body and I’ll do whatever I want to it or anything in it! Get out of my uterus!

There’s an entire web of problems there. Like couples shacking up who aren’t married…

Not couples shacking up!! 😮

So I’m guessing you’re a theist of some sort and therefore have a need to believe that “shacking up before marriage” is wrong, despite there being nothing rationally objectable about it. Given that your religious biases take precedence over logic, what is the point in arguing with you?

3) I’m a clump of cells. I’m just further developed.

Assuming you’ll listen to logic, I can help with this one.

As a “further-developed clump of cells,” you have wants, hopes, and dreams. You have a rich history of life leading up to the present moment, and hopefully continuing into the foreseeable future. A fetus doesn’t. That’s why the protections granted to you and a fetus aren’t the same. That’s why most rationalists care more about protecting the mother, since denying mothers the right to an abortion never works, and just creates more suffering in the world.

You can set rules against murder though, and it doesn’t matter where the person to be murdered is located.

“you’re taking the moralistic stance that unwanted pregnancy is the just and rightful penalty for irresponsibly having sex”

No I’m not. I don’t think pregnancy is a “penalty.” Sex obviously is something of a package deal though, and you have to be ready for possible consequences if you do it. Pregnancy isn’t a punishment, it’s a common natural consequence of sex, and it doesn’t warrant a killing just because it wasn’t thought through.

Oooookay…does that same mentality extend to heart surgery or removal of a tumor?

In reply to Daniel H. here: It is not obvious that an unmarried couple is any less able to raise a
child than a married couple. In fact, I’m pretty sure it’s religious
bias talking. Would you care to cite evidence to support your claim?

How much of that stuff do I need before it becomes wrong to kill me?

I don’t know.

Now, you do see the difference between this and a person, don’t you? The reason why one seems a little more important than the other.

People aren’t falling for your appeals to emotion and constant twisting and redefinition of words

After birth, all of the care the baby requires is transferable.  It can be undertaken by any willing adult. 

Can you see now why BlackCat’s argument can only be taken as far as birth?

I heart this example.

“That is  bizarre way to think of pregnancy.”
Who are you to decide what is and is not the right way to think about pregnancy?

“You can take it pretty far – when a parent is caring for an infant (after birth) they are providing their body to support that baby (by being there to take care of it). I don’t think you’d say they have the right to negligence”

Uttery baloney.  They are not physically grafted together.  One is not feeding directly off the blood supply of another.  

I have made it very clear several times that I am talking about this is a very specific, medical sense, which you have systematically avoided addressing.  Instead you pick one short repeat of what I said, take it out of context, then twist it to mean something totally different.  

Do you care to actually address the more substantial versions of this argument I have posted elsewhere in this discussion, or should we conclude you are intentionally cherry-picking in order to avoid actually having to address other peoples’ arguments?

“Why not abort the rapist and let the baby live?”

1. It isn’t a baby
2. I thought you were against muder, but now you advocate killing someone?  
3. You are forcing a woman to carry, support, and suffer a great deal, maybe even die, for the constant reminder of a brutal crime committed against her.  How is that remotely just?

“2) Well I’m in school and single, so no I haven’t adopted. I would love to when I get married. ”

Then you don’t have a clue what you are talking about then.

” And “my plan” will lead to countless homeless children? There’s an entire web of problems there. Like couples shacking up who aren’t married, delinquent fathers, etc. Outlawing abortion is a move in the direction of responsibility, not towards hordes of homeless children.”

Seems you slept through history class.  People were no more responsible when abortion was illegal just a few decades ago, nor are they any more responsible in countries where it is still illegal.  If you think that making abortion illegal will magically make people stop having sex you are delusional.

“3) I’m a clump of cells. I’m just further developed.”

Yeah, like a building is”just further developed” than a pile of rocks. 

“I mean of course, a day after fertilization when it’s just a few cells, maybe I can’t call that a “baby,” but I also can’t be arbitrary and say at a certain point it becomes wrong to kill it. Why not err on the side of protection?”

Why is protection only about the fetus, never the mother?  Lots of women suffer terrible health problems, even die, during pregancy or birth.  Why don’t we err on the side of THEIR protection?  Why do you care so little for what happens to mothers but care so much what happens to a ball of a few hundred cells?

I would also like to add that, if we look at the history of this country and the present of others, there is no reason to think that outlawing abortion will have any effect whatsoever on unmarried couples “shacking up”, or on how often such people conceive.  

We were in that situation not that long ago, so we know for a fact that it doesn’t work this way.  It just led to lots of kids who were either in orphanages, barely supported in unstable households, or aborted in illegal and unsafe back-alley or home abortions (with the serious injury and death that routinely resulted from such procedures).

So Daniel’s claims are not just wrong, they are the total opposite of reality.  If we follow his plan, the situation he thinks he is going to fix will only get far, far worse.  In fact a lot of people attribute the drastic drop in crime in the U.S. over the last few decades to Roe v Wade, although I do not know how certain that is.

It still doesn’t have a right to use my body without my permission.

Also, abortions done that late are done because they are medically necessary.

Thanks for sharing your story. 🙂

“You just ignore rape”
Why not abort the rapist and let the baby live?”

Really?

… really?

That is how you choose to respond to that?

You are still ignoring rape.

That’s not what I asked. I asked you how you would feel about (you or someone else) aborting an 8-month-old fetus. And let’s stipulate that the abortion isn’t medically necessary – that the fetus is completely healthy.

You’re making blanket statements about abortions and how a mother can do whatever she wants with the fetus. I’m curious if you draw a line somewhere, as I think most people would. So please, answer the actual question. Would you not have a bit of moral aversion to the abortion of a healthy 8-month-old?

The photo of Mayor Sharon Shepherd instantly reminds me of Carlin’s Law.

Daniel H:  Read my comment above.  Even if it is your sperm that fertilized an ovum, your control over biology ended at ejaculation.  If it’s someone else who did the deed, you have even less say over what goes on in that uterus.  You’re a man.  Get over it.  Stop trying to dictate what women can do with their bodies and the parts thereof.  Until it can live outside my uterus, a fetus is just a growth, a part of me, and I have the same rights over it as I do over any other part of my body.  This is why abortion is not murder.  To be murdered, you have to be viable – able to maintain your own life.  This is why women who toss their breathing newborns into garbage cans are charged with murder, while women who abort a 12-week fetus are not.  A fetus is not an independent being (by the way, at 8 months gestation, a fetus is viable. At this stage, induced labor will result in a preterm birth, not an abortion – for the reason stated above). 

And, since your whole argument seems to rest on the premise that an embryo or fetus is a full-fledged human being, just where do you draw the line?  At conception?  Why not go all the way, and make it illegal to waste any potentially human cells?  Having a period could be outlawed, as an ovum would be wasted….and guess what?  Any man who blew a load outside of a vagina would be a killer worse than Hitler, as millions of sperm would die.  Oh, wait a minute…since only one sperm can fertilize an ovum, and the average ejaculation contains about a hundred million of the wigglies, I guess every load constitutes genocide, even inside a vagina.  Too bad.

I work in a gynecology office that also provides abortions. We have at least one patient a week who was raped and got pregnant as a result of the assault.  Many of these patients are younger than 18. 

In any case – It doesn’t matter to me why someone doesn’t want to carry a pregnancy to term – what matters to me is that they don’t, want to or can’t be a parent in 7-8 Months.

Pregnancy is not and shouldn’t be a punishment, and abortion isn’t murder. Most abortions occur before 8-12 weeks,  before viability. I’ve seen about a thousand ultrasounds that look like dots and kidney beans less than 2 centimeters long. Those that occur later in the 2nd trimester? often performed to assist women carrying pregnancies with severe or fatal birth defects, for health reasons to the mother, and other issues that may not be noticed until later in pregnancy.

I don’t think it is selfish, shameful or morally wrong to have an abortion, or even multiple abortions. My patients are brave, independent and smart women – trying to do right by their families and themselves.  If a woman comes to us and changes her mind – we support her. We are not in the business of judgement or telling a woman what she can or cannot do.

We do our best to  provide our patients with reproductive health education, resources, and choices for health care, birth control, and life.

Nope, a woman with breast cancer in both breasts  who can’t get the life-saving medication and treatment she needs because she is pregnant certainly MUST carry that pregnancy to term. Right?  SO what if she dies and the fetus dies with her, so long as she doesn’t murder it, huh?

In most US  states, viability is restricted to 24 weeks or less. Guess how many women have abortions past the 1st trimester?
Fewer than 6% of all abortions performed occur after the 1st trimester – and very few being performed past 20 weeks.