Thursday 19 April 2007

Chipping away at a women's right to choose

Religious conservatives in the US Supreme Court have their hooks into abortion with what Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg correctly called in her own minority decision an "'alarming decision' [which] was an effort to 'chip away' at a woman's right to abortion."

The ruling marked the first time since Roe v Wade that the court has upheld a ban on a specific abortion procedure.
Details here at the Washington Post.

As Lindsay Mitchell says, "Some battles are never won." In this case, it's a battle between the rights of a woman to her own body, and the non-existent rights of a not-yet human clump of protoplasm, to whom the religionists wish to sacrifice any woman unwilling to accept their own religiously derived proscriptions.

Abortion is pro-life. It's true. This decision is not.

13 comments:

Lucia Maria said...

This decision makes illegal the act of partially birthing a baby so that only their head is out (so as to not be completely born), puncturing the back of their skull and then sucking the baby's brains out, and then completing the birth.

If there was just a "clump of protoplasm" involved, there would be no head to puncture or brains to suck out.

Lucia Maria said...

Sorry, I got that around the wrong way. I try not to remember the actual details most of the time.

The baby is pulled out feet first so that most of the head is left in the mother, and then the back of the skull is punctured.

Shout Above The Noise said...

Talk about macabre !

It sounds like a technique Josef Mengele would've dreamed up.

Anonymous said...

It sounds like a technique Josef Mengele would've dreamed up."

Funny you say that as I've always thought of the act of abortion as something almost medieval or Nazi like.I saw the abortion film Silent Scream when I used to hang out with a Church group in my teens (Brandy for Lucyna....quick!;-))and images from that have always bothered me.

I still believe its a woman's right as its her body and she has the rights ....not the potential being inside her, but I'm left thinking...why,in the 21st Century,in a Western country with freedom of information and access to decent basic medical care for pretty much everyone including contraception does abortion even need to happen on the scale it does?

It would seem unwanted pregnancy's should be so easily preventable without so many needing to go the extreme of an abortion....


Just a thought...

Greg said...

"protoplasm"

Not even remotely scientifically accurate.

"Protoplasm" is the substance INSIDE the cell wall (divided into cytoplasm and nucleoplasm). It is not a description for a clump of many cells.

However, it sounds eloquently dismissive doesn't it? "Protoplasm" - just rolls off the tongue at a cocktail party don't it!

Why do so many laypeople have such expert opinions on human development? Where are all the opinionated lay "experts" on nuclear fusion?

Pushing science through the sieve of politics again. Yee ha cowboy!
Very objective.

If objectivists really value the liberty of the individual why do you let the attitude of the most powerful determine what is human?

Anonymous said...

I've tried to twist my brain around the idea that the very same people who want no abortions, not even in self-defence by someone who is ill or has been raped, reserve the right to shoot at others should *they* deem that necessary self-defence.

Anti-abortion activists always want pro-choice people to remember the gruesome details of what happens in an abortion. But they don't want to think about the implications of the government making laws abridging freedoms.**Fundamentalists and others don't give a shit about implications

http://rudepundit.blogspot.com/2007/04/carhart-decision-keeping-women-moral.html

**Unless it is the freedom to hit those who have not been foetuses or embryos for some time.

The logic of the Right strikes again.

Berend de Boer said...

pc, what does a 13 week old lump or protoplasm look like?

Dare to put up a picture on your website? Just to make it clear about what kind of lump we're actually talking about. How "lumpy" it looks for example.

Anonymous said...

What it looks like is irrelevant.

Do you anti-choice screamers have any idea what a late term abortion is? It’s usually done because the baby has deformities and will probably not survive to delivery. An intact dilation allows parents to have a body to hold and mourn.

Abortions done in the last trimester are of children who were WANTED, by usually married parents, who were put in the horrible position of having a non-viable foetus. it’s not a case of a mother not wanting a child or not wanting to be inconvenienced. It’s a case of a pregnancy going wrong and endangering her life. A late term abortion/D&E may be necessary to save the life or health of the mother.

Christianists think that women’s lives don’t matter. Only innocents, and any woman who happens to be pregnant is by their definition not “innocent.”

Actually some of you need to have a vacuum inserted in the back of your skulls, except in this case they may not find any brains to be sucked out.

Anonymous said...

And there's more.

When those in the forced birth and forced pregnancy movement start caring about a life *after* it's out of the womb, maybe then they'll have some credibility on this issue, but if past precedent still holds, the only time those who favour forced birth squawk about life after the womb is in supporting the death penalty or the right to give a child a good clip around the ears. Ah the Right Wing...they love your foetus, but hate your kid.

BTW-- there's all sorts of kids in foster care, children and teens with mental and emotional problems, babies with serious medical conditions,and all are just waiting to be adopted, or have permanent placement. So when I see the forced-breeders start to clear this backlog, then I'll seriously consider what they have to say.

Until then the caterwauling is nothing but rank hypocrisy of the most easily debunked kind.

Greg said...

Tavern.

Analogy: If you have a drinking problem and an alcoholic accuses you of drinking too much, yes that is hypocritical but it doesn't affect the facts of whether you DO drink too much and whether you DO have a problem.

Yes, because the "moral right" dislikes pithing a late term child and sucking its brains out but might also cut pre-school child care funded it may make them hypocritical. It does not change the morality of pithing and sucking the brains of what would otherwise suvive in premature intensive care as the proc is done later than 13 weeks.

How human does one have to be to become human?

Still waiting for the pic of the 13-week or 22-week protoplasm!

Anonymous said...

I suggest you look at the Abortion is Pro-Life link in the original post to answer that question, and any others you have.

If a person does not have complete control over any and all medical
procedures they are willing to undergo, then the very concept of freedom is empty.

This applies to any society that would also force women to have abortions, which just shows the strange bedfellows of social conservatives and Chinese communists that a shared ideological mindset of total control and complete mistrust of women brings about.

Anonymous said...

"I've tried to twist my brain around the idea that the very same people who want no abortions, not even in self-defence by someone who is ill or has been raped, reserve the right to shoot at others should *they* deem that necessary self-defence."

An old argument - and one that's easily contradicted by 'the other side' (in your one-dimensional political world of left v right) that those who oppose, say, the capital punishment of vile (evil?!) individuals such as murderers, paedophiles and serial rapists are the same people who have no problem with the murder/destruction of a developing life.

That little example also shows the stupidity of both 'left' and 'right'. Thank goodness I'm a libertarian. :)


"Ah the Right Wing...they love your foetus, but hate your kid."

Emotive bullshit. And about as accurate as suggesting that the left believes the opposite.


"If a person does not have complete control over any and all medical
procedures they are willing to undergo, then the very concept of freedom is empty."

Absolutely. I trust you also believe that "very concept of freedom" applies to all other aspects of life? One's business, family, workplace, social club, place of worship, etc; good grief, even the freedom to grow what you like in your garden?!

Anonymous said...

"I've tried to twist my brain around the idea that the very same people who want no abortions, not even in self-defence by someone who is ill or has been raped, reserve the right to shoot at others should *they* deem that necessary self-defence."

And thanks for allowing me, as a woman, the right to an abortion, but not the right to act in self-defence should someone try to harm me. Particularly someone larger and stronger.

Typical lefty. Every bit as idiotic and bullying as the right.