This is Not a Difficult Concept! *Re-Posting*********

[sheshe2]

“Life begins at conception”: Reducing complex reality to a slogan actually minimizes the personhood of women

In the end, when you hear the phrase “life begins at conception,” remember the implications. In debating the “personhood” of eggs, embryos, and fetuses prior to viability, we are also implicitly and explicity debating the personhood of women. Because if you have no choice and control over your body, you are less than an actual person in the eyes of the law. If the right is so worried about abortion the closer a pregnancy gets to viability, then anti-choicers would be making sure both contraception and early, safe abortion were widely available. That really is not their actual concern.

The development of a potential human life requires conception as a first step. But that is not the same as either pregnancy or personhood. You can’t reduce complex reality to a slogan, and when you try to do so, you actually minimize the personhood of women.

http://thepoliticalcarnival.net/2012/11/25/life-begins-at-conception-reducing-complex-reality-to-a-slogan-actually-minimizes-the-personhood-of-women/

Why the Re-Post? Because it cannot be said enough, it bears repeating. AGAIN!
This is one of the issues that needs to be in all our minds when we go to the voting booths in 2014.

It's time, past time in fact, to Stand Up and Take America back!

[The Magistrate]

1. That, Ma'am, Is A Thing Of Beauty

[bunnies]

2. Love that graphic.

KnR.

[Jamaal510]

3. I wish Republicans would at least be honest with what they stand for.

I have said this repeatedly, but a political party cannot claim to champion freedom while telling women what they can do with their own bodies. A political party cannot call itself "pro-life" if they also support the death penalty and oppose expanded access to health care.

[Buzz Clik]

4. I don't think the anti-choice crowd is couching their opposition to abortion as championing freedom.

They think abortion is murder. They honestly, deeply feel it is murder.

I disagree and disagree strongly, but I make it a point to not wrongly characterize their position.

[Rex]

11. I know what you mean, this is deadly serious material to fundamentalists.

I don't think it is lip service at all - as a matter of fact I know a few people that believe abortion is murder, plain and simple.

[RudynJack]

19. That's true for some.

But I've met many male anti-choicers who get apoplectic at the thought of sex going unpunished. Read the right wing site... any woman advocating for choice is a slut who can't stop spreading her legs.

No, I don't see it as a reverence for life. It's a disdain for women and sexuality.

[Buzz Clik]

22. You are correct -- I have run into both male and female conservatives.....

... who say exactly what you are saying.

[Buzz Clik]

45. Case in point.

Warning: clicking the following link and reading the material will make you stupid:

http://tinyurl.com/n8r9zz9

[Iliyah]

21. I know - Buzz Clik

and they also believe wholeheartedly that gays are an abomination which equals to bestiality and that GAWD's reasoning for a women is for procreation purposes so therefore same sex persons will end the world as we know it.

[Buzz Clik]

23. Well... I think you can be okay with gays and still be anti-abortion.

I've never really equated the two nor have I seen them tightly intertwined. Not that such attitudes are impossible.

[Fumesucker]

24. I know of several fundies who had their own abortion and yet are against others doing the same

At least one in my own extended family that I know for an absolute fact had an abortion and yet is virulently anti abortion.

[Jamaal510]

25. My point was that they're touting freedom on different issues

and making it seem as if they are always such big advocates of it. Like with guns and taxes. They've been accusing the Left of infringing on people's gun freedoms, and saying that we want higher taxes so that the so-called job creators will have less spending freedom. Plus, some of these same people were even invited to speak at a place that has "freedom" in its name--the "Faith and Freedom Coalition", even though they could care less about the personal freedoms of women.

[Buzz Clik]

33. Ah. You were pointing out their glaring hypocrisy. I could not agree more.

[Mushroom]

30. Their position?

Anti-choicers talk as if having no value compared to a fertilized egg should be a no brainer. It's over-compensation because I happen to know anti-choice people too. Do I ever know them. Once they experience parenthood, the next time they abort. You think the married anti-choice person who screws the next door neighbor isn't going to get unpregnant? The stories I could tell you. I would love for honesty to enter this fight. It's been pure psychological bs.

Murder, my butt.

[Buzz Clik]

34. Well, yes. There are those types.

Funny thing is that there are a lot of pro-choicers who wouldn't have an abortion in a million years.

[Mushroom]

41. Yes! Go figure. n/t

[Buzz Clik]

43. My point being, as it was to Jamal, that people are difficult to pigeonhole.

[Major Nikon]

44. I'd settle for at least consistent

The same people who are OK with placing an undue burden on a constitutionally protected activity reject the exact same premise when it comes to teh guns.

Very telling that.

[HeiressofBickworth]

5. Hypothetical outcome of "life begins at conception"

There you are, lying in a hospital bed, bleeding internally from a ruptured fallopian tube caused by a fertilized egg growing in the wrong place. The doctor leans over you and says, "the fertilized egg that caused the rupture is considered a human being by law. Removing it would be an abortion and I'm not allowed to do that. There are no exceptions for the life of the mother. You have about 15 minutes before you bleed out and die. Sorry about that."

[okaawhatever]

8. Amen. These laws will have serious repercussions. There are a couple of excellent articles on the

fetus as person laws. They show where women have been jailed for murder for taking drugs while pregnant and having a miscarriage. Also, a woman who tried to commit suicide and failed but lost the baby being charge with murder.
People aren't considering what will happen when a woman has a miscarriage. It's not a simple as many think. Will women stop going to ob-gyns once pregnant out of fear? The case of Bei Bei Shuai shows not only what can happen, but also what the anti-choicers have been preparing to happen. All the actions have been suspect in the case. I can't remember all the details, but it seems the hospital tipped off the prosecutors when Shuai entered the hospital. There was a special pathologist (w/ties to anti-choice groups) available 3 hours after the death of the baby, etc. The pathologist didn't look for other reasons for the death, etc. It's not very promising the actions that follow the laws discussed here.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jul/15/indiana-abortion

[Freddie]

29. Women will die because of these laws

Wait for the first death because her life was not in "enough" danger, I'm sure it's already happened. If doctors and hospitals are threatened with loss of licenses if they do any abortions outside of strict guidelines, you know damned well they will practice CYA medicine and women will die. Will it take an American "Savita"? I actually don't think a case like that would move the Fundies one bit. Human sacrifice is just fine.

[Rex]

6. Even if life begins then, it is still a absurd argument to make.

Today I murdered thousands of future apple trees by throwing away some seeds (not a good idea to eat the seeds). Tomorrow, I plan on going all gangbusters on a bunch of bananas! Someone stop me I am out of control!

[Major Nikon]

9. If that were true, an IUD is an automatic abortion machine

Certainly there are folks who believe IUDs cause abortions, but they are the creme-de-la-dumb even among wingnuts.

Both IUDs and Plan B work post-conception and are widely considered to be birth control by just about everyone north of a room temperature IQ.

[Rex]

10. I live in Texas.

My governor is Rick (slight wretch) Perry...need I go on?

[Major Nikon]

12. Same here

I wouldn't piss in Gov Goodhair's ear if his brain was on fire. He's worse than Shrub ever was as governor.

[Rex]

13. That is exactly what I said to my dad yesterday at lunch.

I never thought we would see a more inept and callous governor then Bush Jr.

I hate it when reality likes to come along and prove me wrong.

If you had to pick one, which do you think is the worst governor;

Rick Perry or Rick Scott from Florida?

[Major Nikon]

16. It's a toss up

Both are crooks. Perry is dumber.

[Rex]

20. I agree Perry is far dumber.

nt.

[KittyWampus]

7. As a woman who is vehemently pro-choice… those pix/analogies are erroneous. A tree sprout or

fertilized egg would be more appropriate.

Would you give someone a handful of corn sprouts and tell them to exist on that corn for a month since it's corn meal/food?

[gollygee]

14. If an egg is fertilized, it looks very much like an unfertilized egg

except that there is a tiny white dot on the yolk, and after a couple of days a small bullseye. I can't tell from that photo whether it's fertilized or not.

[KittyWampus]

15. Ah, you have a point. So corn sprout.

[Iliyah]

17. ALSO

Since the GOPers are so concerned about life than they need to outlaw oral sex because isn't it killing little 1/2 persons huh? They can't, not yet, condemn women for having menstruations or can they??????

[NutmegYankee]

18. I wish i could Super-REC this post!

[MotherPetrie]

26. K&R

[libodem]

27. .

[MH1]

28. Excellent ... please do re-post from time to time.

It cannot be said enough, that is true.

[Chan790]

31. But but but...

[Cha]

32. Exactly, she.. sometimes it's easy to forget

that if the republicons are allowed to continue in the House Majority it's only going to get harder to fight back their War On Women and their Assault on the Poor. Not to mention allowing Kochs and the NRA to run House.

Mahalo for your relentlessness, she!

[The Straight Story]

35. So it is ok to destroy all of those things? Or do we let nature run it's course?

Except for chicken eggs of course, need something to go with my bacon. And maple trees, need those for my syrup.

[gollygee]

38. Yes, it's OK to destroy them

and in the case of pregnancy, it isn't just "nature" but a woman's body that's involved. That woman gets to decide what course is run regarding her body.

[Nye Bevan]

36. Is this a person, though?

I am pro-choice but I think the OP oversimplifies the issue a little. (The picture is an embryo at 16 weeks, BTW).

[JaneyVee]

37. No, that is a fetus. It cannot survive outside the womb.

[reformist2]

40. It all comes down to how much it looks like a person.

[gollygee]

39. Nope

and it certainly shouldn't have more rights than the woman who carries it in her womb.

[BlancheSplanchnik]

48. THIS, right here.

There will never be a black or white answer to this issue.

What MUST become the center of everything is, is a WOMAN a human being, and DOES A WOMAN'S SUFFERING COUNT?

[BlancheSplanchnik]

49. Is a WOMAN a human being? and DOES A WOMAN'S SUFFERING COUNT?

That's the question that is totally absent from the general argument.

The whole "choice" meme that got coined decades ago, and the fact that Roe v Wade is argued as a Privacy issue really galls me.

It is NOT about choice and it's NOT about privacy.


It's about a woman's right to security within her body. The right to NOT BE FORCED TO REPRODUCE. And the right to guard one's health, safety, life and livelihood.


Who suffers more? What is a real life about and what does that mean? Suffering is a given in life--the goal must be to reduce actual, real life suffering. Not create more suffering because our ideology says Life in the Abstract is more important than the reality of a woman's life.

[HereSince1628]

42. As a biologist and an evolutionist I really find this approach disappointing.

I do understand the importance of legal definitions of "person" and "human". And I understand that these non-biological terms are used as rhetorical tools by those who would deny women full reproductive rights.

Legal personhood isn't a biological concept, nor, strictly speaking is humanness.

Painting arguments about legal definitions and legal rights onto a calendar of the life cycle and development of Homo sapiens isn't a function of biology or science. It is a political act and it is applied from outside biology and science.

This rather popular line of argument typically incorporates lack of understanding about the haploid-diploid nature of the Homo sapiens life-cycles. It mistakenly incorporates the idea that gametes are not living, and do not come from living cells. It is, therefore, in conflict with "Cell Theory". It rather intentionally clouds empirical realities of mammalian gestation and the development of diploid individuals. And, perhaps most seriously, it ultimately ends up in conflict with the central organizing paradigm of biology: evolution. Evolutionary Theory rather critically depends upon acceptance that, biologically speaking, life most definitely does not begin with birth or conception.

[colsohlibgal]

46. Just Another Hypocritical Right Wing Stance

All that preaching about the sanctity of every life or would be life and most of them are all in with zeal on capital punishment. Dubya and now Rick Perry can't kill them fast enough in Texas, likely killing an innocent person or two and without a doubt snuffing mentally challenged men along the way. Somehow their little brains can't get the contradiction there.

Plus they are dead set against abortion yet want to restrict birth control.

[BlancheSplanchnik]

47. KICK!!

thank you sheshe, that's excellent!!!