GOP: Female body has natural defense against pregnancy in case of legitimate rape

#1 it is not germaine to the thread topic.

#2 Once he said abortion was killing a baby, I did not need to read anymore.

 

I fail to see how this is low in relation to the other garbage you have posted.

 

You are not capable of violence... other than wanting to crack a poor lady returning a camera your wife aborted.

 

No abortion + no social services = Sub-Saharan African kinds of Third World problems. Also, had my mother never had an abortion for an unplanned pregnancy, it's highly unlikely I would have been conceived a few years later.

I probably would not be alive were it not for abortion.

 

Love it!

From the Obama camp:

“I think Hurricane Todd has already borne down on Tampa, and the damage has been done,” “It’s highlighted what is a completely out-of-step, out-of-touch Republican Party when it come to these issues and I don’t think they can put that genie back in the bottle even if they put Akin off the ticket.”

“It is true that Paul Ryan is … on these issues, Todd Akin’s ideological twin,” “They can run away from Akin, but it’s very hard to run away from that position.”

 

It is true that the GOP won't be able to finesse the issue any more. A very strong majority of Americans are against the state making abortion a crime in the case of rape and incest just cause a small majority's religious beliefs.

Many folks have religious believes that are not majoritarian, but that does not give them the right to impose them on all of us.

For instance the state does not require circumcision, though it is required by some religions.

It should be interesting to see how the Romney campaign plays the Ryan-Akin position without pissing off the sizeable minority and perhaps even the majority of the GOP who have the same beliefs.

 

Killing to stop abortions would be terribly hypocritical. This does not even get into the religious prohibition on killing.

 

If you are right about how and when life begins, then it is.

If you aren't right about that, then it isn't.

And nobody has any mechanism for determining the time that the soul (let's say) enters the foetus. So we use the somewhat arbitrary time at which a foetus or baby (depending on your belief) is viable and can live on its own, without the support of the mother, and we call that late-term abortion and we ban it.

But nobody can say when life begins and since women are going to have abortions, legally or not, as they always have I would prefer that they be safe. Of course, if I believed that life definitively began at the time of conception I would feel abortion was manslaughter at least and perhaps even murder. I get that; I just don't think we can say.

So there is no easy answer to the abortion issue. Should the father/sperm donor/whatever have some rights? I think so. Should the pregnant woman have the ultimate say? I think so. Those two things cannot both be true so we can never arrive at a proper solution.

In the absence of a perfect answer I defer to the woman and so I am "pro-choice" although I really don't like that term just as I don't like the term "pro-life." Everyone except a legitimate fascist is pro-choice and everyone except a sociopathic murderer is pro-life. These terms are propagandist ones, designed to divide us bitterly on the issue.

There is a place the two sides can come together to great, great effect. To greater effect than any ban on abortion, because abortion is not the source of the problem; unwanted pregnancies are.

There is so much we can do, that the government, religious institutions, everyone could do to help prevent unwanted pregnancies beginning with increased access to birth control for all, the admission of the now-proven failure of abstinence-only programs to cut down at all on premarital sex and all that goes with it, and sex education starting at whatever age our nation's children are lately having sex.

I don't care if the kids are ten years old; if they are sexually active they need to be talked to.

Preventing unwanted pregnancies (in lieu of outlawing abortion) also has the advantage of less unwanted babies being born. How many people that were well-loved babies are on death row? I'd venture some. How many unwanted children are on death row? I'd venture a lot more.

But we can all agree that the main factor leading to an abortion is an unwanted pregnancy. Stop or significantly reduce those pregnancies and we're not even talking about this.

 

We must also make it easier for loving couples or singles to adopt, even if they're gay .

Any person or institution that both opposes any loving person or couple from adopting an otherwise unwanted child and also opposes abortion is a low hypocrite.

If you care about these "unborn children" as you call them, you must do all you can to see that they are cared for if the pregnancies are brought to term.

I don't care who your Holy Text told you to hate; you want the babies to be born, you need to support them being cared for and loved.

 

Well said and repped.

As I've said before we might never agree on when life begins and never be able to definitively prove it but we can all agree that reducing unwanted pregnancies is a good thing.

What does bother me though with hard core conservative position though is that they primarily focus on stopping abortion through changing the laws while arguing against the things that we know work, sex ed and contraception. Also in the case of someone like Paul Ryan while they oppose abortion they want to cut the things that might make it more likely for someone to consider having a child, social programs that make it easier for people to raise children, health care, day care, and etc.. So on the one hand we get the argument that we value life while on the other hand they argue that we aren't going to make life any easier. In fact if we take the Randian view (Ayn Rand was very much for keeping abortion legal) that it is a crime to help raise families raise children. Rand's heroes are actually those without families like Howard Roark who essentially raised himself. That is hardly a 'Pro-life" agenda.

 

No, it still isn't. A humanitarian position would affirm the rights of a woman to have autonomy over her own body. The argument goes like this:

A: Women are not obligated to lend their bodies to the development of babies.

B: But if they didn't want to have a baby, they shouldn't have had sex!

A: What about rape?

...and you know the rest.

 

That's the standard argument, but that argument's really not getting anywhere.

I suggest that we assume the best instead of the worst about each other. giddyup believes life begins at conception I think and so to him this is a person living inside another person. (Hence all the "personhood" noise lately -- the entire issue could ultimately turn on that semantic.) And that's a more complicated situation than the most avid advocate for abortion rights really wants to consider.

It is not simple if there is a person living inside of another person. I don't believe that that is the case, I don't have the feeling that life begins so early, and so of course I favor full abortion rights up to the third trimester, but giddyup does believe that and there can be no empirical evidence as to who is right and who is wrong on this central question. There is a spark of a mysterious sort that animates a body and that leaves it when it dies, and we don't know when that spark gets into that organism, changing it from merely a foetus but to a baby as well. I say it's not a baby until it doesn't need its mother anymore which is really at the point of the cutting of the umbilical cord, the time of birth. But giddyup doesn't believe that and neither of us can prove the other wrong.

I might still be in favor of the woman's primacy in all choices regarding her body even if I agreed with giddyup about when life begins. I guess I posted in error earlier, in the bit you disagreed with me about, because I'm into government being just a little less intrusive than to make laws regarding vaginas and uteruses.

But I can also at least understand giddyup's position and, in this case, not even hate him for it as long as he's not out at clinics harassing the poor women that, many of them, are there for the pleasure of having one of the most traumatic experiences of their lives. Because those people can definitely go to hell.

But, on this issue at least, I can see the other side's point.

And, on this issue at least, I wish we could work together on unwanted pregnancy, the root of nearly all abortions. For the reasons that rocketsjudoka pointed out, this has been difficult, especially in recent years. That should change tomorrow.

 

Dennis Kucinich, while being left of left on all other things (in other words, being sane), previously struggled with the abortion issue. He was formerly in the pro-life camp.

 

I think there's a conflict that conservatives have that they can't really see. Part of it is the religious element that dictates to them that humanity is sacred and therefore all life is sacred. The idea of life beginning at conception is a purely religious one - there is no science that says what "life" as we know it is. Scientifically, a bacterium is as alive as we are. There is an elevation of faith over reason here - and it reflects in the disdain for evolution, climate science, ivory towers, teachers, etc. Do they feel threatened by intellectualism?

But then on the other hand, you have the Randy philosophy of individualism set free and that socialism is the greatest evil there is. Reason over faith is dictated here - that our world is dog eat dog- social Darwinism to an extreme. People should be allowed to do what makes them happy.

It's a strange polar opposite of philosophy when you think about it. One has to wonder how they are brought together into the same party. Unless they aren't. The republicans who embrace Ayn Rand for her espousing the free markets and the right to pursue happiness...the idea of taxes being terrible..aren't intellectuals and thus dont really dive that deeply beyond that...and don't realize her message applies to any institution, not just gov't. They take what is convenient...how many of them have actually studied her philosophy and not just read her books?

The tea party definitely doesn't study or read Ayn Rand, so they don't know better. Their whole philosophy is to reject any kind of intellectual thinking or to question their beliefs. So it's quite ironic when they quote a philosopher who was very much an intellectual who's ideas were pretty much anti-thesis to everything they stand for.

Paul Ryan personifies that contradiction in the best way possible. He takes the half of Ayn Rand that is against gov't and crosses it with the ultra conservative institutions. But because he doesn't think that deeply - he's not an intellectual after all - it works.

All in all, the whole Republican party is built on this fascinating contradiction that requires an almost self-imposed ignorance to keep it sustainable. It truly is sadly ironic.

 

The "easiest thing in the world" is to be pro-Choice. There is no face, no fingers, no cooing voice with which to become enamored-- unless you really take a look.

As a pro-Lifer, I'm well aware of why this is considered an intrusion. However, we intrude on the rights of others pretty regularly-- often without a life at stake. I find nothing but supreme irony in the "it's my body" argument. Yes it is but what about that body growing inside of you? With nothing but the power of an opinion that that is not a human being..... yet..... we allow the destruction of that little life. What if your belief is wrong on that matter? Seems like since that is a question that can't be answered, some don't even want it to be asked.

Can we "prove" it's a life at conception? Not at this time. All I've ever said is that the humane thing is to err on the side of caution. Is there any reason to think it's not a human at conception? Nothing but a living or dead human being ever resulted from the birth process. We are batting a thousand on that.

Were it not for the desire to end the pregnancy, I don't think we'd be obsessed with the question about when life begins-- with a hidden agenda to seek justification for destroying it.

 

Yes, err on the side of caution and give women the right to decide for herself instead of imposing one's moral dilemma onto them.

Is this human or not?

 

I am not really sure where to put this since this has to do with the Assange case and not really sure this deserves it's own thread. I am going to put it here since the Galloway's statements are more controversial about redefining rape than about Assange.

Summary UK Minister George Galloway redefines rape in defense of Julian Assange.

http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/...icians-defense-of-julian-assange-sparks-storm

'Bad manners' but 'not rape': UK politician's defense of Julian Assange sparks storm

LONDON -- As U.S. Congressman Todd Akin fights for his political life over his "legitimate rape" comments, a high-profile British politician has ignited a storm on the other side of the Atlantic over the definition of rape.

George Galloway, a member of the U.K. parliament and former leader of the left-wing Respect Party, waded into the debate around the allegations faced by WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

During a 31-minute podcast, Galloway discussed the claims made by two Swedish woman against Assange in graphic detail, claiming that his alleged behavior was at worst "bad manners" but "not rape."

The colorful Galloway -- who has been dubbed "Gorgeous George" by some U.K. tabloids -- is no stranger to controversy. He grabbed headlines around the world after he shook hands with Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein in 1994 and praised him for his "strength, courage and indefatigability." He also appeared as a contestant on "Celebrity Big Brother" -- where he famously pretended to be a cat.

This week's "Goodnight with George Galloway" video podcast put him back in the spotlight.

"Some people believe that when you go to bed with somebody, take off your clothes, and have sex with them and then fall asleep, you're already in the sex game with them," Galloway said, gesticulating emphatically. "It might be really bad manners not to have tapped her on the shoulder and said: 'Do you mind if I do it again?' It might be really sordid and bad sexual etiquette, but whatever else it is, it is not rape or you bankrupt the term rape of all meaning."

Cue gasps all around.

His comments provoked a furious response on Twitter and were blasted by women's groups and newspaper columnists.

Writing in the Daily Telegraph, British broadcaster and journalist Christina Odone said that Galloway "should be punished at the ballot box" for his views. "When it comes to rape, misogyny is rife in politics," she added.

Scotsman columnist Emma Cowing wrote that Galloway's comments were "about men redefining serious crimes against women to suit a political agenda."

"Rape victims have a history of being ignored and accused of lying," she added. "They have a history of feeling terrified of speaking out in case they are not believed, or are ridiculed, or have to face their attacker and relive the crime. This is why so many rape victims never report their crimes and why so many find it difficult to speak out in court."

Telegraph assistant comment editor Tom Chivers wrote that "the situation Galloway has just described is absolutely, 100 per cent, no-ifs-or-buts definitely rape."

He added: "Listen, George: it is possible to think that WikiLeaks have done some good things without believing that Assange can do no wrong, or that all attempts to make him face trial are some sort of grand conspiracy."

Galloway is not the first British politician to get himself into hot water over the issue of rape.

A year ago, U.K. Justice Secretary Kenneth Clarke kicked off a similar controversy when he differentiated date rape from "serious rape." Calls for his resignation came in fast, but the storm settled after he clarified the comments.

'Both have acted like fools'

An editorial in the left-leaning Guardian newspaper compared Akin and Galloway. "They have three things in common. Both are men. Both encourage rape deniers. And both have acted like fools."

The messages about rape from the highest echelons of political life come just after the 20th anniversary of legislation that made marital rape in the U.K. a crime.

Victoria Derbyshire, the British radio host who took Clarke to task on his views a year ago made one point that resonates as the debate rages on both sides of the Atlantic this week.

"With respect," she told him in a flat tone, "rape is rape."

On Tuesday, the 58-year-old Galloway sought to clarify his comments and released a statement.

"No never means yes and non-consensual sex is rape. There's no doubt about it and that has always been my position," he said.

"Julian Assange, let's be clear, has always denied the allegations. And this has all the hallmarks of a set-up. I don't believe, from what we know, that the Director of Public Prosecutions would sanction a prosecution in Britain. What occurred is not rape as most people understand it."
It remains to be seen if the same will be true in the U.S. for Rep. Todd Akin.

 

Not. That's a two-dimensional drawing.... although it is in color!

BTW, with what degree of certainty do you make all these declarations?

 

Once again you show your lack of understanding of rights. You are correct that we restrict rights but most often those have to do with a conflict of rights. For instance the right to free speech is limited in regard to where that speech can prove a threat to public safety. Your argument makes it out that we do so for trivial reasons. That is not the case at all.

If we even accept the argument that life begins at conception if you are talking about rights then we still have a conflict between rights. Assuming we say life begins at conception pregnancy is a situation where biologically one person's body is responsible for the survival of another person's. Considering that we don't force people to give blood transfusions even when someone else's life is at stake it seems clear that we do recognize a right to control our bodies. If we are talking about the upbringing of children while we have child neglect laws we do allow for giving up parental rights and adoption parents aren't forced to raise children. This is the essence of the rights argument is that the pro-life position is one that subsumes the woman's right to control of her own body to that of the fetus inside of her.

In regard to this specific thread and pregnancy from rape that is a situation where the woman's rights have been doubly violated by one being raped and then two, having her right to control her body subsumed to having to carry the pregnancy to term.

In other words the woman is actually punished for the rape by being pregnant which isn't exactly an easy thing to go through even when you want to be pregnant.

The problem with this argument is two fold. The first is that in your own statement you have a logical fallacy. Since you say first that you cannot prove that life begins at conception therefore then you cannot come back and claim that "Nothing but a living or dead human being ever resulted from the birth process." Considering that the "birth" process isn't something that only comes when the fetus has developed to full term. For a variety of reasons the birth process could occur far earlier.

The second problem is if you are going to argue on the side of caution consider that most conceptions don't end up as live births or even develop much beyond the embryo stage. My understanding is that even under the best circumstances that only 25% of embryos will attach to the uterine wall so they can develop further. At that point then you are left with all those embryos that fail to develop and get flushed out when a woman has a period? Women's own biology might actually be committing mass murder if you argue that life begins at conception? If this is a matter of erring on the side of caution, that at conception that is a human life, this would have to go beyond stopping abortion but figuring out a way to make sure all those embryos actually do attach to the uterus.

This is a contradictory statement. If people don't accept the idea that life begins at conception why would they have a hidden agenda of destroying life through abortion? Your statement only makes sense if there isn't a question about where life begins and that it is universally accepted it begins at conception. The problem with your statement is that you point out it is a question.