Hard News: Medical Matters
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"Anon for obvious reasons", that is a terrible sad tale. I think you did the right thing, and you have my every sympathy.
James: it seems to me that if you're prepared to acknowledge exceptions for certain causes of pregnancy, that totally undercuts any argument based on "unborn babies' rights". Accepting the notion of unborn children and their rights for the moment: if you have a right to life, how can it be contingent on how you came into being?
The effect of these exceptions, whether intended or not, is to punish women for having the wrong kind of sex, ie voluntary.
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Anon for obvious reasons - a tragic tale, please let me express sympathy as the others here have.
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For me, as a mother, some of each POV rings true. It seems obvious, but bears repeating - life doesn't go according to plan. I did use contraception right up until I wanted a baby. I believed in one's right to choose abortion. Had a miscarriage, second wanted pregnancy was spina bifida. I was given the choice to have an abortion. It should have been an easy decision - knowing he would be paralysed from the neck down and other problems. It's never easy. The maternal drive kicks in bigtime. My baby died in utero and saved me the decision.
Do I still believe in the right to choose? Yes.
I have two fine sons now. And divorced. As Shep points out - society has little time for single parents. As half of all kiwi women will be single parents at some stage in their lives, this is not a small issue. That's alot of blokes being single dads as well.
The govt taxes child support payments from liable parents twice. The liable parent's income is taxed, then the child support payment is classed as taxable income for the recipient parent, so they get less WFF.
If two income families are struggling - how does anyone think single parent families are doing? To do the right thing and stand by your kids and bring them up well isn't actually supported. I often think that if I had dumped them on their father and gone to Aussie, my quality of life would be so much better - harsh but true. We're living in very judgmental, selfish times and children are suffering for it.
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Anon for obv. rsn.,: Sympathy, agreement -- and appreciation for sharing your experience with us.
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Anon,
Thanks for your post. Half of the abortions in this country are preformed on women who have already had children and around 40 per cent are in a relationship.However we very rarely hear about those experiences.
Thank you for sharing and my profound sympathy for your loss.
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"I think 98% of abortions in NZ and about 90% in the UK are performed on the basis that it is necessary for the mental health and well being of the woman. If this research is confirmed, it will force a major rethink and rewrite or abortion laws."
yes, amazingly abortion is not the happiest of operations and quite possibly one of the reasons is because a women’s motivations are subjected to this kind of mistrusting interrogation. It is an event that has long term mental repercussions due to it's controversy.....and as many have pointed out here it is a controversy that is based on supernatural objections as opposed to the rational study of how we work.
….and thank you for your story and education anon
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"Anon for obvious reasons", thanks a lot for sharing your experience.
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The mental health criteria means that women seeking an abortion need to convince a couple of certifying consultants that continuing a pregnancy would harm their mental health. Like anon above, I'd choke at having to declare I was a mental health risk in order to make a perfectly rational decision, but that's by the by.
The group of women who've had abortions in NZ are therefore selected to include a large proportion of women who have already declared themselves at risk mentally. It's hardly surprising, therefore, that after what is at least a big upheaval in their lives, they continue to report mental health issues. Perhaps there's something about the study's methodology that's excluded that effect - I've not heard about it though.
I wonder what the study says about the mental health of new parents. Post natal depression is a far more widely recognised condition than "post-abortion syndrome."
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“so boring that people wear condoms” mark.
Well men wear condoms, so your saying it’s a male problem?no, i'm saying i hope people have a more responsible attitude to sex
btw, are you the same jeremy eade that bought us this?
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no, i'm saying i hope people have a more responsible attitude to sex."
amen mark and yes as a young man I once worked for a time in the short focused industry of music exploitation. I even won a few prizes. It was a work scheme for at risk young offenders.
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nice work, respect. the last wave of the true flying nun sound flying nun acts.
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"the last wave of the true flying nun sound flying nun acts."
oh buddy don't start that debate, but thanks...it was the east auckland sound.
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How about we leave the angels on the head of a pin stuff around conception and all just agree that human beings are not as altruistic as they would like to think they are, life isn't as black and white as we would wish it to be, and people have been making decisions regarding their fertility and responsibilities vis-a-vis conception and birth control since time immemorial?
Not eveyone who can live has lived. Not everyone who has a right to live has lived. This world isn't fair. That is an immutable fact of our existence. Romans left their unwanted kids on the rubbish tip, Uniuit left theirs out in the snow, we have abortion which to my mind is a million times more merciful to everyone concerned than the infanticide and other such practices of previous generations of humans. Given the generally flawed nature of the human condition, that's about as much as I want to think about the issue.
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ok, won't go there..
back to the topic, The thing I don't understand about what you're saying Danielle" is that there is a very tiny group of affluent women who currently have reproductive rights.
when i think of the single mothers I know, none of them are affluent, 3 of them were kids who grew up with the express career ambition of reaching 16 and having a baby, having the the state pay for the upbringing of that child. One found her father at a real estate cocktail party, one chose a flatmate to sire that wippersnapper, another maintained the relationship with the father as long as possible, and the fourth just left the country with the kiwi studded child, at which point the stud immediately and i'm told accidentally knocked his rebound up.
instance one, was a good investment for the state. No significant problems, father was none too nonplussed at merely being a sperm donor.
Second case, the father suggested an abortion, but accepted his gf's decision, and was utterly devastated when not long after having the child she denied him visitation rights and soon after moved city. The guy was a wreck, he was happy to provide child support and really wanted to be a part of that child's life, but was and still is on the whole denied this right on the basis that he is a 'loser', no more of a loser than when he was hoodwinked into fathering the child, but a loser all the same, allegedly. child is fine
Third case, the relationship was going ok, sure the father was taking a horseload of drugs, and experimenting with bisexuality, but that 21st century life, father still has a role in this child's life. child is fine
fourth case, well, the kid is 1000s of miles away, the second mother wants nothing to do with the guy,
I feel that perhaps despite strong arguments for the mother's autonomy, Sometimes abortion can be
Thing that strikes me about your argument Danielle, is that in the first three cases here, it was the females who saw them selves as baby incubators and the subsequent parenthood as their career, where as in the fourth case i'd have to admit the guy could be classified as a baby incubatorer or at the very least someone who needs to aim that tool with a little more care.
I mention this simply in that Danielle, you seem to be a sexist.
and seem to want to make this about specific genders, You speak of men seeing women as ' Your Very Special Baby Incubators' overlooking the fact that statistically there are females who look on their own body as their own Very Special Baby Incubators.arguing that 'women are people' is an outdated mode of provocation, especially on the internet, where, we're all just words. I don't think an argument suggesting men have slightly minutely better rights with regard the raring of children to be a denial that women are people, I consider it more an argument for humans are humans.
And why would I come back to this and post about it,
well, for the primary reason that you express the skewed assumption that men blindly grip to the outdated concept that women are seen solely as baby incubators, or that my or another man's argument is with your rights of autonomy over your body, womenhood, sexuality child bearing or raring. When it's far more about someone's right to life under the burden of a man hating mother, among other negative possible scenarios
I'd even posit that if men actually had more of a say, it's likely they'd be more abortions
correct me if i'm wrong but really....
very special baby incubators?
it's the most sexist term i've heard for ages
and i heard it from you
Danielle. -
seems like most of the right to life lobbyists are already part of a religion that teaches humility, they're just poor students
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Steven relax , your post seemed sensitive and measured,
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Heh. I want equal rights for all adult human beings regardless of gender, which means I must be 'sexist'. Honestly Mark, are you getting this from the Trolling the Feminazis 101 course you did, or what?
You don't get my point, which I'm sure is deliberate on your part: I'm talking about a really broad gender-based historical context for reproductive rights, and you're talking about... four dudes you know. Where do you suggest we go from here?
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Stephen Judd wrote:
James: it seems to me that if you're prepared to acknowledge exceptions for certain causes of pregnancy, that totally undercuts any argument based on "unborn babies' rights". Accepting the notion of unborn children and their rights for the moment: if you have a right to life, how can it be contingent on how you came into being?
The effect of these exceptions, whether intended or not, is to punish women for having the wrong kind of sex, ie voluntary.
Fair point. Abortion is a very difficult subject with plenty of grey areas, any set of rules will have downsides. Either extreme, not at all or no restrictions whatsoever are wrong, so the issue will be where do you draw the line and what exceptions (if any) are allowed. -
Reasons Tony gives for babies at conception not being human:
The most fundamental difference is that a foetus is totally dependent on a woman's body to survive. It is common to argue that born human beings can be entirely dependent on other people too (e.g. disabled persons), but the crucial difference is that they are not dependent on one, specific person to the exclusion of all others.
Independence is a pre-requisite for being a human? How does that work? Why all the qualifiers for what is and is not dependence? Why not simply acknowledge the truth? At conception a baby is entirely dependent upon his mother and removing him from that environment will kill him.
I have no problem admitting that people are dependent upon others for the entirety of their life for different things. Why do you make a judgement on the humanity of people based on a very limited aspect of this dependency?
Another key difference is that a foetus doesn't just depend on a woman's body for survival, it actually resides inside her body. Human beings must, by definition, be separate individuals. They do not gain the status of human being by virtue of living inside the body of another human being. At some point the embryo is capable of surviving without it's mothers womb. I would argue that this is closer to the point when an embryo becomes a human being.
Why? Why does dependency or location affect human nature? Do you have any scientific facts to back up this proposition?
Early embryonic forms do not share basic commonalities that define us as human beings. For example, zygotes and blastocysts are barely visible to the naked eye and have no bodies, brains, skeleton, or internal organs. Foetuses cannot breath or make sounds, and they cannot see or be seen (except by shadowy ultrasound). They absorb nourishment and expel waste via an umbilical cord and placenta, not via a mouth and anus as do all other human beings. At various stages, foetuses have eyes on stalks, notochords (instead of spines), fish-like gills, tails, downy fur, distorted torsos, spindly legs, giant heads, and alien-looking faces. Finally, the foetal brain is not yet capable of conscious thought and memory (which aren't fully actualised until two or three years after birth). But our complex brains are what set us apart from animals and define us as human beings. The human brain is the essential seat of our humanity.
Wow. You're very inventive. But you've simply insisted that people cannot be people because you don't agree that they look like people. Personally I am not surprised that a newly conceived person does not look like a person similarly to the way that a newborn does not look like an adult. Are you really prepared to deny personhood to people based on how they look?
This is not to say that human life doesn't have value. Of course it does, but only the value that we bestow on it - in biology, life is cheap, life is wasteful, and death is vital. Nature does not value humans any more than worms, and in all species, vast numbers of eggs and seeds don’t stand a chance of reaching maturity. Life has been cheap throughout human history too - it's only modern medicine that has allowed us to keep most of our babies alive for the first time. All human beings are valuable, important and special. But (of course) not all human cells are necessarily human beings.
I do not claim that all human cells are human beings. I only claim that babies at conception are humans for the rest of their life.
An acorn isn’t an oak tree and the egg you had for breakfast isn’t a chicken. Neither is a blastocyst a human being.
You don't do well at those logic tests do you. Try this one:
Acorn is to Oak as Baby is to _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
A: Adult
B: Alien
C: Anchovy
D: ArachnidBe well. :)
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once again Danielle
You don't get my point, which I'm sure is deliberate on your part: I'm talking about a really broad gender-based historical context for reproductive rights, and you're talking about... four dudes you know. Where do you suggest we go from here?
I was talking about four males, four females, four children. Once again, you can make it about 4 'dudes' if you need to, but it ignores everyone else's roles
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And in reply to Peter's 'lots more words':
Your statement shows clearly that you have not understood. Try reading what I have written again. I did not ask you to choose amongst events, but *processes*, it is processes all the way down. The cortical reaction for eg is clearly a process since there is a time window within which if another sperm binds before the calcium wave reaches that part of the membrane it too will fertilise the egg resulting in polyspermy and an inviable conceptus/embryo.
When I say "at conception" that is a layman's term to acknowledge conception as the first instance of a new human's life. I understand my terminology may not be acceptable in your workplace, but I would hope that my meaning is clear. Would you mind telling me what might be the point of being so pedantic about the process of conception? Are you going to propose legislation based on what you know?
Then you are unaware of the raging debate in science over the fact that we have been unable to come up with a working, bulletproof definition of life.
I probably am. Sounds like a philosophical debate to me.
All the ones we have break down when it comes to the viruses. After all some are no more than naked rna, which is why incidentally we secrete RNAase from our skin. I have isolated and indeed made RNA many times without ill effects so clearly there is something about some RNA sequences that make them viruses while others are harmless. RNA is just a chemical polymer, you can crystalise it, turn it into a rock iow. Still sure you know the boundary between what is alive and what is not? care to share your definition?
Nope. As I implied before we are discussing a baby at conception. If you think the fact that you can't tell the difference between rocks and viruses means that I cannot tell the difference between a baby and 'not a baby' then I cannot help you...
Ah but without viruses you would not have a baby. Not only is there a surge of endogenous retroviral expression post fertilisation but there is good evidence that the mammalian placenta owes it existence to a viral infection. Which is just part of the reason biology views mammalian embryos/foetuses as parasites since that is in fact how they function, even using similar tricks to turn the maternal immune system down so it doesn't cause rejection of the foreign tissue.
Sounds like you don't quite have a full grasp on all the differences between your example and your analogy. Either way you don't seem to be making any relevant point. How is the fact that scientists regard the process as a viral infection evidence that a baby at conception is not human and not alive?
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E: human being
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Davida:
You say: 'How is the fact that a baby can die evidence against the fact that a baby is alive and human!?!?' But the argument was that there is no way to actually keep these embryos alive outside of the womb. Completely different.
I agree! It is completely different. So why would someone bring up the argument that things can die in order to refute the statement that something is alive and human?
You say: 'Is consciousness a pre-requisite for being human?' Maybe not, but a lack of conciousness doesn't necessarily make you human either. What's your point?
What's yours? I'm not the one depending on consciousness for anything.
You say: 'How is the ability to die evidence against humanity?' You know that wasn't the point being made.
I know. How about someone actually makes a relevant point?
You say: 'My position is simple...' You got that right, at least. What a shame we don't live in a simple world.
Actually we do live in a simple world. It's made difficult by people who do not want it to be so. Simple - At conception a baby is alive and human. Not simple - Everything so far in the way of a response.
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E: human being
:rotfl:
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F: homo sapiens
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