Redux: Rape, Abortion, and "Personhood"

More like "answer the question and gtfo"
:shrug:

 

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¿The only question that matters?

Even though you were on the phone, were you able to keep a straight face as you recited the Turducken question?

 

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So Tell Us, General, Is It Party Time? And If It Is, Can We All Come?

If You Deep-Fry a Turducken ....

Wait a minute, I don't care how the neologism is built. No food should ever start with turd.

Yeah, it's one of those things.

You know, though, when you're a middle-aged (ahem!) aspiring writer, you still think about what it will be like when your day finally comes.

My mother still has a Mont Blanc set aside for my first signing. I know, how pathetic are we?

But still, the Turducken bit will be the sort of thing one can open with in their first television appearance just to make the audience sit up and pay attention.

And should that day ever come for me, I will make sure to raise a glass to the almighty Turducken.

Who knows? Anything is possible.

Though our neighbors might wonder why we're having this sidebar; that's there problem, I suppose. It is, after all, relevant insofar as we're considering the absurdity of things.

And it's also preferable to other questions. For instance, the temptation to ask people how they can not be aware of certain relevant facts yet opine on the related issues.

I think part of it is that the stonewalling is at once successful and a failure. That is, they have succeeded in stonewalling the question of a woman's human rights, but they're running out of stones.

At any rate, the apocryphal Boeing/NASA story has to do with RLV design. Since they weren't trying to drop in with a parachute, but fly through the atmosphere on wings, NASA engineers recognized some challenges they needed to resolve.

Birds, for instance. The vessel hits a flock of birds on its way in, there will be a disaster. After all, they can take down airplanes.

So NASA needs to test its cockpit. They call Boeing for advice. Boeing says they'll do better than that. Apparently, at some point, Boeing used a gas cannon to fire uncooked turkey carcasses at their airplanes to see if the structure would hold against a large bird strike. So the story goes, they lent NASA their cannon.

And eggheads are always excited when they get new, high-end toys to play with. So they prepared the test, fired the cannon, and were horrified when the turkey smashed all the way through the cockpit and lodged in the back wall. Panicked, the engineers collected all their data and handed it over to Boeing with the question, "What went wrong?"

Boeing got back to them, and much more quickly than expected. According to the story, their communique was all of one sentence long: Thaw the turkey.

So goes the story.

If you fire a Turducken out of a cannon, does that mean you need three birds to kill one plane?

However, regardless of whether or not the tale is true, it would seem the moral of the story has something to do with the little details.

Something about a vegemite sandwich goes here, and for once it has nothing to do with Colin Hay.

 

I wasn't aware I moved ... however if we examine your behavior ...
:shrug:

 

Why are you ignoring the absurdity of a qualitative distinction between a full term fetus inside the womb and that same fetus seconds later outside of it? Why instead are you obsessed with the irrelevant absurdity of the mechanics used to demonstrate it?

If I proposed that on the surface of the sun your weight on a scale would read 28 times greater, would you take it as a lesson in mass and gravity, or express astonishment over the absurdity of a person standing on a scale in a 5000 C plasma environment?

Since Tiassa made severance of the umbilical cord conditional to personhood, maybe I should’ve made it easier on your sensibilities and left out the dramatic embellishment of surgical replacement.

I imagine some women could conceivably get their kicks from an abortion procedure, but I’m not aware of any. It certainly wasn’t the case for my wife many years ago.

This young woman wasn’t too thrilled either.

Then like any other brain dead person, you pull the plug.

So the only thing preventing this elective near full term abortion wasn’t the lack of desire by the OB/GYN, but the lack of facility.

Personhood is what a particular society decides it is and how it's applied. As far as fetal rights, they already exists to some extent in various federal and state legal code.

Did your young children have the right to drink alcohol, drive a car, marry, receive Native American tribal benefits, vote, engage in sex, perform or receive abortions? At some point were some of your children due to age and capability entitled to more rights than others? Do all adults and children outside your country enjoy rights equal to your own?

Wow, what a complicated concept, comparing the rights of two entities migrating to a foreign territory. Why would anyone in their right mind use an immigration analogy to describe a fetal personhood policy?

What about most mothers like yourself who keep their babies, are they exempt from child welfare laws?

I was talking about a hypothetical expansion of child welfare laws to deal with the welfare of a viable fetus. As you and I both know the case in Texas concerned a nonviable mother and fetus, and was rightly resolved on that basis.

If only they hadn’t cut the cord.

 

Turducken ... Tuducken ... Turducken

The Unfortunately Requisite Description Using Cold Knowledge Easing Nuance

It seems a rather straightforward, mechanical issue.

(1) Dry-foot.

(2) Means that baby, born and severed from the mother, regardless of any other consideration of personhood one might wish to invoke, is unquestionably and irrevocably a person.

(3) Meaning, in turn, that reattaching the umbilical cord and stuffing it back in the womb does not make it not a person, but it does make it a crime victim.​

What people don't seem to understand is that in order to achieve a lot of what they want, this anti-abortion argument, they will need to change the Constitution. As we've seen, the abstract dominates the anti-abortion consideration, and in this case it is a question of function.

Like the infamous line earlier in the thread when someone told me that the implications I suggested in the topic proposition would only come about if people like me were in charge. It's a telling line. These implications would only come about if people who actually recognize the Constitution as the supreme law of the land are in charge. In other words, those implications wouldn't come about if we simply do the rational thing and ignore the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments.

I don't think I could have written a better indictment than our neighbor did.

The law is mechanical; there is no exception to Due Process and Equal Protection simply because it seems too difficult to figure out, and too expensive to enforce. LACP creates a new class of people in the legal context, and thus those people are fully entitled to their Due Process and Equal Protection rights. As our neighbor points out, we could simply be rational and enforce the law while ignoring the framework that empowers the law. That is, we can simply be rational and call the zygote a person and then arbitrarily strip it of whatever constitutional rights we don't want it to have.

The idea that the mere presence of this functional issue is somehow complicated is, in itself, astounding. At some point I want someont from the anti-abortion side to explain how it is that if they can't figure this out, and are ignorant of these aspects, how they dare to opine on the subject at all.

I mean, I get it. They have an opinion. That is not something to object to. But when they want that opinion enforced as law, and apparently are ignorant of the subject they're opining about, yes, there's a problem.

Like I said of Putin, if you let people keep talking, they will eventually tell you the truth. And these fourteen months are an astounding testament, resolving ever more clear as the reality of LACP being about nothing more than forcing women to have babies.

This isn't about the organism inside the woman. They've always made this about the woman.

 

still not listening to answers ... from syne, wynn, electric fetus, myself, and now capracus.

Congratulations.
Only an exceptional person could possibly succeed in simultaneously asking questions yet refusing to hear answers involving so many different people with so many differing opinions on the subject.
:shrug:

 

Not only can I show you where they answer, but I can show where they berate you for displaying pigheaded reluctance for refusing to discuss the question you insist no one is answering.

On the contrary, it is *you* who is imagining stuff and trying to coerce posters into fulfilling these pre-conceived roles that no one is actually advocating.
I mean can you find *ANYONE* in this thread who suggested that the personhood of the child in the womb trumps the personhood of a mother facing serious birth complications?
I mean anyone aside from yourself?

Feel free to find a reference for that being the consequence of a triage model (as discussed by persons in this thread ... aside from your hysterical self of course).

legal definitions?
Probably the legal system I guess ....

But then several posters have been pointing out how stupid it is to justify an ethical stance that has no higher foundation than a legal system (since, at least in our saner less hysterical moments, we would at least like to think that ethical standards shape how we formulate legal systems, and not vice versa)

Triage models explain what happens to her "life".
As for what happens to her body and rights, they are much the same as any one else who finds themselves in a situation where they are obligated to another or another exists in a state of contingency.
IOW being rendered to a position of obligation or contingency *in no way* suddenly extinguishes one's rights.
To disagree with this is to disagree with perhaps the most intrinsic foundation of civilized society.

 

If viability is used to determine if a fetus is a person or not then we need to start giving fetuses rights even when they are in the womb once they become viable. Hence we could morally start charging a mother for child endangerment after said point. For example if a doctor declares that this particular pregnancy is likely to end in death for either the baby, the mother or both without a c-section and the mother refuses a c-section for some irrational reason, it maybe moral for the state to intervene and force a c-section, just as it would be moral for the state to try to stop an deranged parent from risking the life of child.

If we don't use viability is a standard and say that a fetus is only a person once it leaves its mother, by force or naturally, then the above would be immoral, but then you can't use viability as an argument for or against personhood, and all previous arguments using viability as a standard are void, even hypocritical statements. Other ethical consequences would be that it becomes morally acceptable to kill a perfectly viable fetus as long as it is done while in the womb. For example the D&X abortion procedure (which is now banned in the USA) involving pulling the fetus partially out of the womb, leaving it head in the womb then jabbing in an aspirator that sucks the brain out of the skull to collapse it and then pull the whole thing out, dead. If viability is used as the standard then that is immoral, if having to leave the women completely is used as the standard that is acceptable.

Of course we can use multiple metrics and standards to create and ethical framework. We could say that if the fetus is deformed and likely to live a short and painful life, abortion-euthanasia is morally acceptable.

Most mother's we assume that are in late term pregnancy would likely feel inclined to do what ever it takes to optimize their survival and their child survival, and thus conflicts with the state would be rare even if viability is the standard (as Roe Vs Wade allows) also since this does not apply to women in general only pregnant women in late stage pregnancy that are on drugs or mentally deranged, there is no effect on women rights or legal equality, since anyone, male, female, pregnant or not, can be arrest for drug use, drug manufacturing and child endangerment by those activities.

Some of this I already said before, now watch it ignored.

 

Damnedest Thing

Haven't you figured it out, yet? The mother is irrelevant to their consideration.

You know ... it's one of those things that you don't really want to talk about, because in a way it's not fair. To the other, it's rather quite important.

Say what we want about my focus on the Super Bowl, today, but I did in fact encounter a point that I would never have expected.

An anti-abortion advocate wondered where I could possibly have invented this LACP question. After being advised that several states, and even a bloc in Congress, are pushing LACP bills, that advocate actually demanded that the LACP question be pushed aside in order to discuss other aspects of the abortion debate, and even went so far as to complain that ignoring those changes of subject was evasion of the topic.

I know, it sounds like propaganda. I know, it's anecdotal. It's the sort of thing I wish I was able to prove to these anti-abortion advocates who want to keep the gains their colleagues win but don't want to be associated with how those gains are won.

Really, though, did you ever notice the anti-abortion demand that we restrict the discussion to exclude the events and processes that are actually occurring, in reality?

When it comes down to, "Since legislatures and the House GOP are trying to pass these laws, so, what happens if they do?" the appropriate answer is supposed to be something like, "Why can't you change the subject?"

No, really, how the fuck am I supposed to take that sort of cowardly dishonesty seriously?

It's starting to resolve clearly, now: Let's talk about anything but reality.

I mean, when the refusal to discuss a woman's humanity became apparent, that was what it was.

And when people complained about accusations of misgoyny, that was what it was.

While I can no more prove the accusation than I can prove that I experienced the confusion and disappointment of wondering what the hell I was watching as my hometown, lifelong team cruised to its Super Bowl victory, I find myself ever more convinced that the anti-abortion movement really has nothing, since they're down to demanding that it is impolite to start a conversation that they don't have an answer to and thus must change the subject in order to accommodate their comfort.

The thing about sociopaths and other APDs is that they generally don't think there's anything wrong with them. What separates them from this crowd is that the anti-abortion movement knows it's wrong, knows it has nothing, and wants what it wants anyway.

I actually had to ask another person, today, if they were actually unaware of the LACP bills in Congress and several state houses.

You know, those things I dervied the topic proposition from.

And the answer? Apparently, I'm supposed to ignore those. It's unfair to the anti-abortion movement if I don't, or something insanely stupid like that.

I wish I could objectively prove this cowardice to people.

But, yes, I had this experience today. Damnedest thing.

 

Again I don't believe in this triage model, more so I don't believe in making abortions illegal. If the fetus was not viable an abortion would be the most logical option, if the fetus was viable c-section of the fetus care in an incubator would be the next option assuming viability is the stage used to start add rights as a person.

Again if we use viability as the stage to start adding rights then yes, if the women is dying, extraction of the fetus makes sense. Of course if we add in more standards like a few morals from eugenics, we could say "well if the fetus is deformed or defective in *some* way, then viability does not apply." of course this means admitting that deformed and crippled people are less of a person to you.

Heck she might have lived longer had she been forced to get an abortion far earlier, just saying. These scenarios your present, introduce many different ethical problems beyond abortion rights. Is quality of life or extension of life better? What rights in wishes does a dying person have?, can they for example take with them to death one of their children just because it would comfort them? Again for this kind of scenario if viability is the standard then it should be extracted, if eugenics are added in then it should die with the mother, the problem is not the rights of the fetus or the rights of the mother it the conflict of both rights, and for different situations and different ethical standards who morally wins that conflicts changes. If you use the standard that it must be completely outside the mother body to be a person, then in that situation she has the right to die how over she wants. Also a mother has the right to kill a perfectly viable fetus, these scenario being probably more common then the former of terminally ill pregnant women.

I believe that some people would be better off forced to undergo certain kinds of treatment, pregnant or not, male or female, for example mentally insane people for would be better off put on drugs and forced therapy then roaming the streets homeless and talking to walls. Again since I don't use this triage model I can't say that what the outcome would be for that. It all depends on what standard you use to start applying rights, if the standard is that it must be outside the mother's body to be a person, then accept the ethical consequence that it allows the mother the right to kill perfectly viable fetuses, regardless of how rare that is, it is morally acceptable to you, but that means your previous comment on viability are all null and void, and need be replace line by line with "its feet aren't dry". Anyways I think this is a point for you to make some progress with your ethics, we have now determine that threat to the women's rights are still possible because of viability, therefor viability is not a standard for you, you now moved to Tiassa dirty/eer "dry foot" standard, now all you need to do is accept the ethical consequences, such as 3rd term abortions are morally acceptable for you, or that a mother who in labor can decide for what ever reason, valid or not, to kill the fetus and have it vacuumed out rather then risk her life in child birth, now you can say "well that never going to happen" but that does not change that it is morally acceptable to you via the ethical framework of the "dry foot"

If viability is the standard, then during late stage pregnancy, a mother right to determine her own medical care could be waived, assuming what she has determined is consider too risky for her self or her child by medical experts. Tell me do you agree with seat-belt laws, why should the state fine me for not wearing a seat-belt, is that not violating my rights to care for my self how ever I want?

If viability is the model the goverment need only take over so long as to remove the fetus. The doctors could thus force a C-section but not force a women to continue a pregnancy.

I would disagree with increasingly,what time span is that over, years, decade, centuries, all of which I would wager women in generally have been gaining rights not losing them, I would need to see statistical evidence not just select cases to believe otherwise.

Again if we use viability as the standard, then a women could be held accountable for child endangerment, regardless if it still inside her or not, as long as it viable. Also the state would have to ensure life saving surgeries, not threatening, what ever optimize the chance for both the mother and child survival, if guess if the situation really had to come to kill one or the other then we would need to consider many other moral standards adding in ethical questions beyond the range of normal abortion debate, if the mother was consider terminally ill and the fetus was consider viable and healthy, and the mother wanted it to die with her, then I would say the state has a right to intervene, as neither the viability, extension of life, quality of life, or eugenics standards would side with her.

Well then don't ever bring up viability as an argument for pro-choice, you obviously don't believe in it. A fetus is only a person as soon as it leaves the mother, that is your moral stance, accept it, accept the ethic consequences of it, state clearly "If a mother want to kill her fetus at any stage of pregnancy even if its halfway through the cervices in birth, that her right, because it not a person until it leave her body!"

I disagree, the mother rights are important, it just post-viably the fetus has rights are well which can conflict with the mother's right and a decision has to be made per situation. The choices after viability should be limited to either let the mother have her way or cut it out of her and declare her an unfit parent, cases of forcing her to remain pregnant in a manner she does not wish would be immoral, in-viable fetus though would have no rights. Add in other standards like eugenics and forced abortions become possible for criminal or insane mothers before viability, why should the goverment pay to have this person born into becoming a ward of the state? Then again eugenic standards can be applied with dry-foot at any point in pregnancy. Since such individuals are striped of some of there rights as a person (as they are criminals, prisoners or under state guardianship) why can't abortions or c-sections be forced?

In the cases of corpses if viability is the standard then a beating-heart-cadavers with a viable fetus would warrant keeping a corpse alive only so long as needed to extract the fetus, if not viable it should die with the corpse. Then again if "dry foot" is the standard then as soon as the women dies as long as her wishes were not to be resuscitated the fetus should die with her, regardless if it could be save or not, regardless if it was just minutes way from full-term birth, "Nope can't cut it out of her, we have her DNR here on file, sorry sir, but since we won't remove it you can fit them both in one casket."

 

I don't see why we could not improve on the asylum system rather then jsut drop in the 1980's for budg/eer I mean "free rights" reasons. Some of these people with proper treatment could be made into productive, long-lived happy citizens, but leaving them to their own devices means a much short life jabring crazy. I ment them in Berkely, one pulled me asside to give me a 20 minute long life story about how she was from another dimensions, I gave her some change and tried to get away as politely as possible. How about this if a psychological commitee beleives that said person is, not a threating to society and is incurably insane, let them go, but if medication that they refuse because they beleive it is part of a goverment-alien join conspiricy to control their minds, can in fact bring them to sane status where they can work a job, continbute to society and become of self value other then the value gained jabbering at people about how to get back to their home dimesions, then it should be done. If not why try to rehabilate drug addicts or criminals for that matter? I beleive prision it self is fundmentally arachaic, like time-out for grown ups, statistically it is very poor at rehabiltating criminals, recidivism rates for most crimes are very high, rather then place a criminal in a cell "to rot" acutally train and model them into productive citizens, and if that requires force medications, castration for rapists, cybernetic implants to inhibit anger disorders, what ever, so be it, better then leaving them "to rot".

The problem is a diffrence of valuing freedom verse happiness, if freedom is paramount then sure the insane are best left on the street, but if freedom does not always produce happiness, if being restricted can produce happiness, even more then having too many options then as a utilitarian it is my obligation to accept that some restrictions on freedom may be nessisary in order to make people happier over all.

What about pro-life women? Are you saying you have to be women to have a say in this? I think it rather sexist to say that moral decisions should be segregated by gender, how about this we let only women decide if abortion should be legal or not and we let only men decide if they need to pay child support.

Two wrongs don't make a right, what your asking for is reverse sexual discrimination, not gender equality. It like saying "men hiting women is wrong, but a women can hit a man" the gender equal statement would be that it wrong to hit anyone. Likewise if we demand speical rights or special restirictions for any gender we are demanding the opposite of gender equality.

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  We do prosecute people for child endangerment, there is of course limits to what we can proescute for, we can't force every parent into a cookie-cutter mold of the perfect parent, but we can say you need to buckle your child up.
  
  

But if they are abused by their mother's, that ok, because as we all know mothers are incapable of abusing their children?

Everything is degress, everything arbitrary at a fundemental level. Like I was saying before by a few diffrent standards infanticide is moral. What I have been getting at is lets look at each standard and what ethical consquences they produce, and we if we can agree they are tolerable or not. For example if Bells was to say she can tolerate the possibility a mother could morally kill her fetus even moments before it natural full term birth via the "dry foot" standard, or that a dead mother with a viable fetus can still have it killed morally per her last wishes, or that a women could grow fetuses to any term only to be torn apart for science and a good profit... then Bells would have a consistant ethical framework, she can apply and demand for the that standard and stick with it no matter the consequence, rather then inconsistantly stating viability for a reason a fetus in not a person when it does not matter to her if they are viable or not. Such arguements leads to the conclusion that many pro-choicers do not have a thought out ethical framework, not to say pro-lifers do, but everyone should regardless of their stance, have thought these things through.