Opinions of a Wandering Waif

This is an article that examines what makes life meaningful.  It was posted at my board, in a discussion about abortion and personhood. 

IMO, the article establishes, in its own terms, very clearly, that a fetus cannot be a person, before 24 weeks:

A quick answer is that we need receptors in the skin to detect threats to tissue and those receptors need to be connected to parts of the brain that can interpret the threat. The receptors, the connections and the relevant parts of the brain are all developed by about 24 weeks gestational age. Thus the fetus can feel pain after 24 weeks but not before. You can perform this same trick with respect to other sensations such as vision, hearing, taste and so forth.

[…]

My retort to the idea that the brain does it can be stated simply – whatever it is that nervous tissue does I am quite certain that it does not feel because cells cannot feel. Only persons can feel.

[…]

The beginning of explicit intent is there in the act that now picks out specific stimuli and organises the various responses into a form of action. Initially, it is the stimulus and caregiver that controls the infant’s action through interaction and reward. The intent is explicit for the caregiver but also implicit in the scenario. As the infant increasingly absorbs the rules of the game she is able to shift her focus from the toy to the caregiver and to herself thus stepping between different points of view within the act. The infant begins to emerge to herself as she absorbs the implicit intent of the action and adopts the viewpoint of each external element.

The outline of an ‘I’ (or a self) develops. It is this ‘I’ who experiences.

[…]

I think Derbyshire is also saying that until the concept of “I” develops, the critter is on shaky grounds in its bid for personhood, too. 

I remember reading of some cultures that don’t consider a born human a person until after the age of 3.  And in Judaism, we may not ritually mourn the death of an infant, less than a month old.

Arguing that a woman has no right to rid her body of a parasitic clump of insensate cells is misogynistic.  After 24 weeks, there is a sliver of a chance that there is concern for the fetus, but before that, and most certainly to claim its personhood at conception, is just bullshit to cover the misogyny. 

—emphasis mine ~ waif

banditoincognito:

In no specific order of importance, here are some facts about the pro-choice movement that pro-lifers and on-the-fencers should know.

1.) Pro-Choice does not SUPPORT abortion, but rather the option to have it. Pro-choicers do not force anyone to do anything unlike in pro-life, where unless it’s…

More’s the pity that Pro-choice does not support abortion. Because of that stance, access to abortion is being more and more limited. 

If you want to keep abortion safe and legal, you fucking better well support it.

I am pro-abortion so that women can have the choice. ~ waif

(Source: allthehorcrux, via boots-on-newts-deactivated20120)

(Source: vicariousrockstar)

Keep up the pressure on YellowPages.com and SuperPages.com

Thanks to activists like you, YellowPages.com and SuperPages.com have taken down almost all of the deceptive ads for CPCs on their sites. But we’re not at 100 percent yet. As long women continue to use YellowPages.com and SuperPages.com to find reproductive-health centers, we won’t stop until all the misleading ads are removed.

YellowPages.com and SuperPages.com monitor their Twitter accounts closely and have thousands of followers – so we’re taking our campaign to Twitter.

Tweet at YellowPages.com and SuperPages.com and urge them to remove all the misleading CPC ads.

@SuperPages @YPmobile Deceptive anti-choice ads hurt women - it is time to remove ALL misleading CPC ads from your site! @NARAL

BUT IT IS A LIE THAT THE RTL WANTS FEWER ABORTIONS. PERHAPS THE MORE CORRECT NAME FOR THEM IS ‘RIGHT TO LIE’.

How can I say that?

RTLs need abortion the way fire fighters need fires.

Picketing an abortion clinic to try to stop abortions is as effective as picketing an airport to try to get more people to vacation locally. It’s all show. And it is a cruel, bullying, vicious, smug and self-righteous show.

We all know that the RTL movement has enough politicians (mostly Republican) who vote lock step with them that they could change women’s reproductive health care overnight. All they would need to do is to support a few measures that are already supported by most Democrats. Here in no particular order, are a few simple things they could support that would be guaranteed to result in fewer untimely pregnancies, and hence fewer abortions in no specific order:

1. Make long-acting, effective reversible birth control methods like IUDs available free of charge to any women who want them. These birth control methods are effective for 5 to 10 years and don’t require a woman to remember to do anything in order to be protected from pregnancy. They can be used by women of any age. If a woman wants to get pregnant, she simply has the IUD removed and her normal fertility returns. This birth control method is widely used in Europe, but quite expensive and less frequently used in this country.

2. Cover all reproductive health care including all methods of birth control, infertility, tubal ligation, and vasectomy, under affordable health insurance.

3. Create excellent and affordable childcare so that women who want to have children can also make a living to support them.

4. Make sure young people learn how to create successful relationships as well as how to be responsible with their sexuality. That will give them the tools to create healthy families and be good parents with enough resources to care for their kids when the time is right.

5. Promote vasectomy as a very safe and inexpensive method of permanent birth control for men. This would be especially helpful for couples who have completed their families so that a late and unexpected pregnancy doesn’t through everyone into emotional turmoil.

6. Increase research into developing safer, more effective and long lasting methods of birth control.

7. Make sure the Morning After Treatment is easily available, inexpensive, and covered by health care insurance.

8. Require by law that all pharmacies either fill prescriptions for birth control and Morning After Treatment, or else inform over the phone, in advertisements, and by posted signs that they are Anti Choice Pharmacies, and the location of the nearest pharmacy that respect a woman’s choices.

Of course it’s a grand hoax.  It’s not about a right to life, never has been.  It’s about controlling women’s sexuality. It’s about keeping women vulnerable, hobbled, and living in fear.  It’s about punishing women with children by making the care of children damned near impossible, as a single mother.

So, of course, it’s about making and keeping male protectors necessary. ~ waif

(Source: azspot)

Sign @NARAL’s petition: oppose new abortion-coverage ban in #hcr high-risk pools. It’s bad 4 women http://bit.ly/c2ylOJ Pls RT #p2 #fem2

You should read the whole Q&A with the reverend, it’s wonderful.  Here are a few favorites from his answers:

Q:  You’ve talked about the right of a woman to make a choice. Does the fetus have any rights?

A: First, let me say that the religious, pro-choice position is based on respect for human life, including potential life and existing life.

But I do not believe that life as we know it starts at conception. I am troubled by the implications of a fetus having legal rights because that could pit the fetus against the woman carrying the fetus; for example, if the woman needed a medical procedure, the law could require the fetus to be considered separately and equally.

From a religious perspective, it’s more important to consider the moral issues involved in making a decision about abortion. Also, it’s important to remember that religious traditions have very different ideas about the status of the fetus. Roman Catholic doctrine regards a fertilized egg as a human being. Judaism holds that life begins with the first breath.

Q:  What about at the very end of a woman’s pregnancy? Does a fetus acquire rights after the point of viability, when it can survive outside the womb? Or let me ask it another way: Assuming a woman is healthy and her fetus is healthy, should the woman be able to terminate her pregnancy until the end of her pregnancy?

A: There’s an assumption that a woman would end a viable pregnancy carelessly or without a reason. The facts don’t bear this out. Most abortions are performed in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy. Late abortions are virtually always performed for the most serious medical and health reasons, including saving the woman’s life.

Q:  Some in the anti-abortion camp contend that the existence of legalized abortion is a sign of the self-centeredness and selfishness of our age. Is there any validity to this view?

A: Although abortion is a very difficult decision, it can be the most responsible decision a person can make when faced with an unintended pregnancy or a pregnancy that will have serious health consequences.

Depending on the circumstances, it might be selfish to bring a child into the world. You know, a lot of people say, “You must bring this child into the world.” They are 100 percent supportive while the child is in the womb. As soon as the child is born, they abort the child in other ways. They abort a child through lack of health care, lack of education, lack of housing, and through poverty, which can drive a child into drugs or the criminal justice system.

So is it selfish to bring children into the world and not care for them? I think the other side can be very selfish by neglecting the children we have already. For all practical purposes, children whom we are neglecting are being aborted.

liberal-lad:

hishighnessricardo:

…

No one is pro-abortion. Those of us who support the right for women to be able to have an abortion also overwhelmingly support measures that would reduce the number of abortions that happen. We support better sex education (for all ages), improved access to…

Bullshit.  I am fiercely pro-abortion. If we do not take a stand and support abortion, forthrightly, it will cease to be a choice.  Access to abortion has been vastly diminished in recent years, precisely because we shy away from being pro-abortion and instead opt for the weasel word, “pro-choice.” 

Fuck that.  I am pro-abortion so that women can have a goddamned choice. ~ waif

Just yesterday, the Obama administration published its new policy banning abortion coverage in the temporary high-risk insurance pools.

Now is your chance to speak out. I need your name next to mine on our petition opposing this new policy.

The new health-reform law has the potential to improve women’s lives. But this new policy announced officially yesterday means that women who are part of these pools for the next three years because they have significant health problems, such as diabetes or cancer, will not be able to access abortion care, even if their health is at further risk. 

More than 38,800 activists have already called on the Obama administration to remove the abortion-coverage ban from high-risk pools. Now, the policy has been published, and it’s time for public comment.

Help us send a clear and powerful message that women’s access to abortion should not be used as a bargaining chip in the new health-care system.

Add your name by Friday, August 6 to the petition we will send to comment on the policy that bans abortion coverage in high-risk pools.

Thanks for standing with us as we stand strong in support of women’s access to insurance coverage for abortion.

Nancy Keenan
President, NARAL Pro-Choice America

abbyjean:

Of nearly a thousand patients who had abortions at a large clinic in Iowa, nearly one in seven women reported one or more instances of physical or sexual violence in the previous year. The study says, “Abortion patients experience high intimate partner violence rates, indicating the need for targeted screening and community-based referral.” There’s rarely little nuance in the abortion “debate,” and anti-abortion advocates do as much as they can to try to bring up babies as often as possible so that the issue seems more about them than it does about the women whose bodies are held hostage by abusive partners, poverty, or lack of access to birth control. Women in these situations often don’t have much of what we think of as choice, though obviously it would be OK if they did. They’re exercising the best option of a plethora of bad ones. Efforts to curb choice wouldn’t change the range of options available to wealthier women, but it would hurt the most vulnerable more than we can imagine.