Redux: Rape, Abortion, and "Personhood"

Just to reiterate something here, since it seems that you and EF seem to believe that I and others advocate murder. When a woman is in labour, for example, then no, you cannot abort, not legally and not safely. Because if you do that, it is murder. Now certainly, you can try to argue about stuffing it back into the womb as a point of discussion in a 'what if' scenario, it does not mean that I will take your argument seriously.

As for the lotus birth technique, which sees some parents leaving the placenta attached for up to a week before it detatches.. Ermm no. I'll pass. Certainly, they now recommend waiting for about an hour before cutting it and just leaving the baby on the breast immediately after birth, but 6 days? No thanks.

I find stupid analogies more precious.

Stuffing it back into the womb? Really?

Perhaps you can show me or explain to me why deciding to keep a baby could result in a death sentence to the woman if once it reaches viability and say, she falls ill, then her personhood flies out the window and the personhood of the foetus becomes paramount? Perhaps you can explain to me why forcing women to die to comply with your belief of personhood is acceptable? Is it reasonable to consign women to possible death sentences once they decide to keep the baby?

If the mother falls ill, should the personhood of her viable foetus be factored in whether she is treated or not?

Because those who advocate personhood from any period (especially those in this thread) do not believe that the mother's chances should be factored in. If she has a shorter life expectancy, well tough luck to her, the person she is carrying in her womb has more value. Say, for example, a 7 month pregnant woman has a massive heart attack. She is still alive when she arrives in the hospital. Should she be treated and given the necessary drugs to ensure she stays alive? Or should they take time to figure out whether she has a chance or not because the medication could damage the foetus? What about if she has cancer? Should a woman, pregnant with a viable foetus, be denied medical care if she is terminal because said life extending care could damage the "person" in her womb? I mean, look at you as a prime example. You have withdrawn her individual rights for 18 years.

These are the realities of personhood.

The personhood at viability state of pregnancy has seen women forced to die and denied treatment and medical care because said care could harm the person in her womb.

I want you to show exactly where I said that a baby could be killed once it is out of the womb?

Because you see, this kind of intellectual dishonesty isn't going to wash with me. I have seen wayyyyy too many people like you try to pull this exact stunt. And frankly, it's stupid.

Also, to respond to your misrepresentation of Dr. Robinson, she also clearly states that anywhere near full term, she will not perform the abortion because it is unsafe.

Lovely, good to see you have decided to suck on the teat of pro-lifer's and use the same exact stupid arguments they spout. This is absolutely despicable. No pro-choice would ever support what he did. Ever. But hey, pro-lifer's won't ever regard that, will they. Gosnell was a murderer.

I like how you disregard her reaction to terminating a full term pregnancy..

Any person who misrepresents another person's argument and resorts to one which questions whether a baby could be stuffed back into the uterus after its umbilical cord was re-attached should never, ever, complain about what they perceive to be an extreme position of another person.

Ever.

Also, the treaty, signed by all of those Latin American countries? I take it you missed all the links about rape victims being forced to give birth to the babies of their rapists, or the 17 year old girl who was forced to die because she was denied an abortion and denied life saving cancer treatment because it would harm the "person" she was carrying.. Is this acceptable to you?

Or how about the link from the WHO which deems the lack of abortion and contraceptive health care to women, especially in countries that ban abortions, are seeing thousands of women dying every year and that it has reached pandemic proportion.. Do you think the foetus' right to exist should invalidate the mother's rights to living? What about if it's viable? Here is yet another reality of what you deem to be the "toothless international construct":

A poor woman living in a rural area, she became pregnant for the second time while suffering from lupus (an autoimmune disease) that had already compromised one of her kidneys. As soon as she found out she was pregnant (and she had barely survived her first pregnancy) she went to the doctors and they diagnosed that she was carrying an anencephalic foetus, a foetus that does not develop a brain. So it was not only a pregnancy that was going to put her life at risk, but this was also an unviable pregnancy—a foetus that was going to die as soon as it was born.

'I think it would be best for them to go ahead and save my life, because it doesn't make sense to continue with my pregnancy if the baby won't survive,' she told reporters at the time. 'And I hope the court accepts this and they do what they need to do with my life, because I want to live.'

But in late May, her arguments were rejected by the court which ruled that El Salvador’s constitution is clear—abortion is illegal, irrespective of the circumstances. However, fortunately for Beatriz, her advocates had also approached the Inter-American Court of Human Rights and only hours after the Supreme Court’s ruling, it ordered doctors to proceed with treatment to protect her life and health.

A compromise was reached. Beatriz was given an induced birth rather than a termination. The child died soon after it was born.

The pregnancy has left a permanent mark on Beatriz’s health and wellbeing. She now requires a kidney transplant. Poor, caring for a one year old child and with expensive health needs, Beatriz will face many challenges in the future.
​

Personhood, how fucking grand..

How about if a 12 year old girl is raped by her step father and falls pregnant.. Should she be forced to carry to term? What happens when the foetus becomes viable? Where are her fucking rights?

I would strongly suggest you show me where I said that it was acceptable to murder a delivered full term baby or, to use your stupid argument, stuff that lie back in.

Your ideal reality sees girls and women dying, by the thousands, because others have determined "personhood" based on their personal beliefs. You determine the point of viability, others here see it from conception and another sees personhood as being from the point of the first brain activity.

Which one of you is right? If a woman is 26 weeks pregnant and dying, should her rights to try to live for as long as she can be withdrawn because she is pregnant and her non-viable baby be forcibly removed from her womb without her consent because it might just be viable, thereby ensuring she just dies faster?

You seem to be arguing that if a woman is pregnant with a viable foetus, then she loses her rights over her body and her life - something you seem to believe she does for the first 18 years of her child's life.. And I thought EF's stance was fucked up. You took his to a whole new level of twisted.

I believe that a woman has rights over her own body, regardless of whether she is pregnant or not. You obviously disagree. So much so that you are willing to lie and misrepresent my stance on the issue and claim I have said things I clearly never said. Hell, you even claim that I advocate the murder of babies. I don't think a woman should lose her intrinsic human rights because she is pregnant, nor should she lose her life's choices. I mean sure, you might just be that guy who ties 'his woman' to the kitchen sink once she's pregnant with your spawn, because you believe she has given up her life's choices for 18+ years from the moment she decides to keep the baby. Reality and women's rights disagree with your stance and your position.

You mean women and young girls who often even deny to themselves that they are pregnant and refuse to acknowledge their pregnancy and then even the birth?

Researchers find that women who commit neonaticide have poor coping skills, dysfunctional or highly religious families, emotional isolation, and a conflicted pregnancy. These different circumstances contribute to the vicious cycle of denying and concealing a pregnancy, laboring in secret, and killing the newborn.​

As I said, wait until you walk in the shoes of these women and men before you make generalised comments. I'd suggest stupid comments about how a woman is robbed of her future life's choices for the first 18 years of her child's life does not help in such situations. Just saying.

 

lightgigantic:

If you claim is that Bell's ethical framework is inconsistent on this issue, then you should be able to come up with a hypothetical situation for which the inconsistent portions of Bell's framework would demand two different outcomes (i.e. allowing the abortion on a certain set of grounds while denying it on another set of grounds).

Can you point to any such example?

 

But what if it could...

The argument is surreal. No woman could abort while in labour or even at full term for that matter. Why? Because no doctor would do it and frankly, what woman wants 40 weeks to abort? Who does this?

Less than 1% of abortions occur in the 3rd trimester. Of those, the majority are because of an issue with the foetus or a medical condition that has arisen with the mother. It is only a minute few who elect to abort for other reasons, and as the article states, those reasons are usually because they did not know they were pregnant or their miscalculated the due date or something has happened to warrant the woman desiring an abortion. I know a woman who had a late term abortion and it was a harrowing experience. She and her husband were both devastated at having to abort a much wanted child, and frankly, it nearly destroyed her. This is never a decision that is taken lightly or made on a whim.

So you can perhaps imagine my disgust at the flippant attitude pro-lifer's use in this thread, and turn it onto a nightmarish freak-show. From asking me 'what if you could re-attach the umbilical cord and stuff it back in the womb, can it be aborted then?' to obscene and offensive accusations of 'you support killing new born babies with umbilical cords still attached!', I am left to wonder how and why these men believe that I or other women would support such ridiculous arguments against abortion? I mean really, is reality not fancy enough that these men must delve into the depths of one's imagination to dream up the most ridiculous scenarios? And here I thought the most ridiculous thing I had seen in regards to giving birth to a child was when the midwife placed the placenta in a dish and shoved it in front of my very shocked nose (child birth was a shocking experience, I still remember the feeling of 'what the hell is happening to me?'..) and asking me if I wanted to keep it? There was no happy haze, there was just this sense of horror over having popped out 3.5kg's of a small human being who was plopped on my breast and I was trying to figure out 'what the fuck do I do now?'.. "Ermmm, why do I want to keep it?", I asked the midwife. She smiled benevolently at me and told me that some want to keep it as a souvenir and some even eat it.. "Errr no, NO! Thanks, I'll ermm pass"..

You know those times when you just wished you had not asked and just said no? That was one of those moments and sadly, it is one of the most memorable parts of giving birth to my first child. It's what remains stuck in my mind. Now, as surprising as that answer was, I have to admit, Capracus has managed to top that, in so far as the subject of 'abortion' will always be dominated by the frankly ridiculous "what if you could reattach the umbilical cord and stuff it back into the womb, could you abort it then?".. As much as that midwife's comments about placentas made the after birth glow/sheer terror/no idea what he fuck just happened to me moment into a nightmarish freakshow, the moronic questions in the last few pages have turned this one into a nightmarish freakshow..


I have put up with stupid and inane arguments from pro-lifer's before, but this latest invention from that faction of this site's population is worrying in the extreme. The level of fanaticism, to the point where distortions and misrepresentation, to outright and deliberate lies written because I refuse to give their freakish, side show scenarios any serious consideration.. Well, there's always a first time, I suppose.

What if indeed..

1) What if could be stuffed back into the womb after reattaching it's umbilical cord?

No, this cannot happen because if anyone did that, it would be murder as it would kill the baby and the mother - for a variety of reasons. If you don't know what those reasons are, then I'd suggest a book on the women's reproductive organs and what happens in childbirth may be in order..​

2) What if you kill it after it is born and not yet detached from the umbilical cord?

Once again, murder. No doctor would ever agree to abort at full term unless there was something catastrophically wrong with the foetus and no woman would wait until the moment of birth to decide to abort. It would also be illegal and downright impossible.. Not to mention, because for some weird reason, this needs to be established, no one in their right mind would abort during labour (it can also kill the woman for one thing), be they the woman or the doctor.​

I have to wonder though, the real life horrors imposed on women are not enough? We have to contend with psychotic men who want to think up of new ways to kill a woman?

 

Unlike you, Kittamaru actually understands my position. You not only misunderstand it, but you have twisted it into something it is not.

As I and many many others have pointed out (over about 10 years now on this forum, at least), how many women do you think get to full term and go 'ermm nup, don't want to do this anymore, getting an abortion!'? No, seriously, how many?

And as has been pointed out so many times now, I am just about to keybind the phrase, less than 1% of women abort after the point of viability. The majority of those do so due to a health reason for the foetus or the mother or both, others because they miscalculated or did not know they were pregnant or were denied the chance to abort earlier (you can look up the numerous laws that demand women wait weeks before being able to access an abortion - which forces women into positions of having to abort after 24 weeks). So how about we look at realities instead of your perverse fantasies of how to murder a woman and her baby? You know, debate real life things.

The dry foot policy works as thus... Because the foetus is in the womb of its mother, its rights cannot trump the mother's. Applying personhood from that point on would mean that the mother loses all rights. If she falls ill or something happens, then she can lose her rights and in too many instances to count, women are being forced to die sooner or to simply die, because they are denied treatment or abortions when they fall ill. This is the nightmare that is personhood. Certaintly, if a woman decides to keep a baby, it should never mean that she should be forced into a death sentence if she falls ill for the sake of the child she is carrying. The mother's right to life should always be paramount in pregnancy. EF deems that if a woman is sick and she is pregnant, if she is terminal, then she should be forced to give her life to her foetus, even if it means killing her sooner, to protect her foetus. I find such an approach to be appalling. WOMEN HAVE INTRINSIC HUMAN RIGHTS. At no time should a woman be deliberately killed to get her baby out. In most states, this is deemed a crime and punishable as such. Just because she is sick does not mean she loses her basic human rights and it certainly does not mean that the rights of the foetus should trump her own.

So perhaps you can stop misrepresenting my argument and lying outright because you want to turn a woman into a fucking Turducken - in short, the argument you have now decided to adopt is merely you trying to find new ways to kill a woman and her child. And frankly, it is obscene. I have seen some sick shit from pro-lifer's, but you are taking the cake. Because heaven forbid you apply reality to your argument. Oh no, you went for the Turducken argument and then somehow or other have come to the belief that I support the murder of babies. At no time did I ever make that argument, so yes, you are making crap up to fit into your fantasies. I apply real life cases, you turn women into a Turducken and ask me "what if" in that scenario.

Then you CLEARLY have not been reading EF's posts.

So this is what you are arguing? Is a woman's life just not worth that much if she's sick and her foetus is viable? Sure, this is the kind of talk you hear about breeding livestock. For misogynists, of course it would apply to women as well. I mean you get the level of stupid of such a stance, don't you? Or are you simply blind to it? What am I saying, you're asking 'what if you killed a woman and a baby by stuffing a baby back in her womb after it has been born'..

Just to be clear, the only people making the argument to kill live babies here have been you and EF. No one else has. Doesn't that strike you as strange? At all? And the only people making the argument that killing a woman is acceptable has been you and EF. So yeah, what other twisted and sick ways are you two going to think up ways to murder a woman and her baby?

And the only people making moronic things up and directly misrepresenting what we have been saying and lying and applying a standard that DOES NOT EXIST IN REALITY has been you, EF and the other pro-lifer's in this thread.

 

Oh look, it's the peanut gallery..

In other words, you are here just to troll, AGAIN and once again, you have nothing of substance to add.. What a surprise.

 

More trolling and zero substance from you. Again, no surprises there.

 

You would have to be one of the most dishonest hacks to ever grace this site.

I know they can't get an abortion during the birth or just before the baby is born, do you know why? BECAUSE NO DOCTOR WILL PERFORM SUCH A PROCEDURE. How many god damn times does this need to be repeated? Or are you just going to keep lying to make a point that cannot exist in reality? No, really, how many times?

Nope. That is at the discretion of the abortionist. Roe vs Wade applies the 24 week scale of viability. Do women abort after this point? Yes. Should she have a right to? Yes. However common sense also prevails here, something you and Capracus are clearly lacking and you have instead attributed arguments that are so extreme to myself and others, because you are too god damn dim to apply real life situations and have instead adopted a 'what if' dumbarse and moronic scenarios that could not exist in reality.

I even linked an interview with one of the few doctors who perform late term procedures and she clearly states, she will not abort past 35 weeks because it is too close to term. She even clearly states, she will not do it at 35 weeks because it could be at 37 weeks since calculating the exact age is so difficult.

So really, how about we apply real life situations and stop making the most moronic stuff up? For example:

Okay, I need to ask. Are you mentally disabled? Slow? Have suffered a brain injury? Because how many god damn times does this need to be repeated?

NO, SHE COULD NOT KILL IT EVEN JUST BEFORE BIRTH!

Understand now? Or do I need to have it tattooed on your forehead? The doctor who did do that is up on murder charges and rightly so.

Did you even read why it is so rare? And why it is legal?

At all?

Or are you just going to lie some more?

Wait no.. here we go again.. more fantasies on how to kill people..

WILL YOU FUCKING STOP LYING AND MAKING CRAP UP?

I would rather discuss the subject matter at hand instead of delving into your sick and perverted fantasies about murdering people, you dolt.

You do realise, the only person who has made the argument for eugenics has been you, right?

So why are you lying and applying it to me and others? So perhaps you can answer your own retarded question.

What?

Do you think this is not something that is considered? Again, stop making crap up. If a woman is 24 weeks pregnant (the line of viability) and she cannot survive a c-section because she needs urgent life saving treatment, and for the foetus to survive, it needs to come out by a c-section... Which would you choose? Well since you already established that if a woman is sick, then she just isn't worth that much to you, so we already know what you would pick if your "breeder" is ill.

Because a foetus is not a person and viability does not always mean 'will survive'.

Your right, I had forgotten the level of perverts I was dealing with. For example, thus far I have been compared to a plethora of things and had the title of supporting murder of babies assigned to my name. Now here you are saying that I might as well give trolls a blow job because "gasp", I actually apply reality to my argument. Because it isn't sexist at all to tell a woman that when she deals with men like you, then I might as well just give trolls like you a blowjob. And you have the nerve to say that I should not show my disgust at the display of misogyny and just downright stupidity I have seen here? Really, you sit there and wonder how to kill a woman and you are surprised that I react with disgust? You fucking sit there and determine that if a woman is terminally ill, then she just isn't worth that much or worth considering and you expect me to just, well, get on my fucking knees and suck you off, because if I find people like you offensive and disgusting, well, that's just giving you what you want, so I should just suck your dick right off the bat? I'll put it this way, I'd have rather have eaten the placenta.

Actually no. What it clearly shows is a level of stupidity rarely seen on this site. And we've dealt with many stupid people in the past.

I mean I could come up with all sorts of weird fantasies that cannot ever exist in reality to destroy another person's argument, but hey, reality is sick enough.

Your point?

Well yes dumbass, which is why the midwife asked me if I wanted it. Did you notice I never said that no woman would want to eat her placenta? It was already established that some do. But again, it's much easier for you to lie than deal with reality, yes?

Oh wow.. it just gets more stupid and more dishonest with more lying...