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400 Comments
- atdigg, on 10/12/2007, -21/+224Just finished completing the millionth death certificate for my sperm today.
- floridiot2, on 10/12/2007, -25/+124How can you die before you're born?
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -16/+113@SquekyWheel:
"Those wishing to adopt would have been happy to give the baby a name and a home."
Talk is cheap. How many children have you adopted? - howdareyou, on 10/12/2007, -8/+94So the person having the abortion will have to give the fetus a name?
- redcard, on 10/12/2007, -5/+83Anyone who says "Try adoptions" obviously has never been in the system.
I was adopted. Roughly half of the kids who are put up for adoption stay in the system until 18, and then are released.
Now, imagine adding all the "aborted babies" to the adoption mix. Now, 3/4 of the "babies" would never see a real family.
The adoption thing is just a smoke screen. It doesn't solve anything - blogger1947, on 10/12/2007, -10/+85Interesting question. In most states that I'm aware of, a BIRTH certificate does not have to confer a name on a child. There are many people whose births are recorded as "baby girl" Smith. In fact, the entire proposal begs the question whether you could legally issue a death certificate for someone for whom no antecedent documents exist. It will be argued that this is no problem, since there are many recorded deaths of people who had been born before recording births was a nearly universal practice. Still, I think it's rare that even an illegal alien invader (read: "undocumented worker") dies without having left SOME paper trail.
The psychology behind this proposal is interesting, though. Having a death certificate issued makes it more difficult for those involved in the abortion to argue that they have simply disposed of biological waste, internal tissue, or any of the other comfortable euphemisms used to refer to an aborted fetus.
I doubt this bill will pass, and it's even less likely it will survive a court challenge, but I think its having been proposed just might provoke some thought and discussion between the two sides in this perennial controversy. - vuke69, on 10/12/2007, -9/+70"Just finished completing the millionth death certificate for my sperm today."
Damn, your hand must be really sore. From writing of course... - varmit, on 10/12/2007, -6/+54What about miscarriages, those people would need to register too for a death certificate. Which will cause even more emotional scaring for the woman that lost the baby.
- atdigg, on 10/12/2007, -6/+53There are plenty of children in the world who die of hunger, why not adopt them?
- wobitnobby, on 10/12/2007, -4/+51A healthy ejaculation should contain at least 40 million spermatozoa.
http://www.netdoctor.co.uk/menshealth/facts/semenandsperm.htm - Bikil, on 10/12/2007, -18/+59I know I will probably get dugg down for this, but I find this kind of ***** rhetoric disgusting.
I'm sick of people telling me what I can or cannot do with my body. And for those of you who argue that people like me are advocates of murdering innocents, guess what? It's MY body, MY choice and MY view that I'm not. - wobitnobby, on 10/12/2007, -2/+39theneal, I would like to quickly address what I see as a claim that abortion leads to infertility (am I reading you right?)
Abortion in the care of a physician is ten times safer than full-term pregnancy in the care of a physician (sources on APA website linked below). Illegal abortion in a back alley with no medical supervision does result in infertility, but complications of legal abortion a very very rare, much more so than hemorrhage, hysterectomy, stroke, etc., as a result of full-term gestation.
And here's the American Psychological Association's web briefing and statement that there is no such thing as "post-abortion trauma syndrome". A woman who is appropriately given options counseling and not pressured into anything, and has an abortion, may actually be less likely to suffer from PTSD than a matched control from her age and demographic that did not have an abortion.
http://web.archive.org/web/20050304001316/http://www.apa.org/ppo/issues/womenabortfacts.html - sathias, on 10/12/2007, -5/+38I will never be able to understand how Christians in the government can forget their religous morals when it comes to directly causing the deaths of thousands of men, women and children in Iraq, yet think they are crusading for Jesus when they try to stop a woman who they have never even met from choosing whether she will give birth or not. I guess "Thou shalt not kill" only applies when it is politicially advantageous for it do so.
- Dominatus, on 10/12/2007, -10/+42I'm so sick of people ignoring the *science* behind the issue.
There's the science behind the issue, which can't be refuted. Then there are the ethical concerns, which are pf or debate.
Of course the fetus dies. You don't need to be born to die. You need to be alive to die, and the fetus is alive. There is not one *not one* biologist in the world with a PhD that would claim a fetus is not alive. The debate is not whether it's alive or not, but whether it's a *human life* or not. - smackhero, on 10/12/2007, -8/+39what about all the miscarriages--otherwise known as spontaneous abortions--that happen to 3/4ths of all fertilizations? most miscarriages happen without the woman even knowing they were ever pregnant. would 90% of all women become outlaws just because of their natural biology?
- wobitnobby, on 10/12/2007, -5/+312ndrevolution,
I would like to politely differ with your statements.
Abortion doesn't cause breast cancer, any more than infertility does. The process of glandular differentiation that the breasts go through in order to nurse a child offers a protective benefit as compared to a woman without biological children. In the middle ages, breast cancer was known as the "nun's disease" as they were the nonchildbearing women that got it. The more months you nurse total, in your life, the greater the protection offered.
Here's a US government summary on that matter:
http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/factsheet/Risk/abortion-miscarriage
The rest of your statements I find largely irrelevant as they pertain to your own religious beliefs. Other people don't share them. I find the Jewish understanding of a "partial life" to be very sensible. A conceptus grows into a zygote grows into a fetus grows into an infant much like a relationship between two people. At first it is a hope and a special possibility, and gradually it gains strength and distinctive characteristics.
A unique karyotype is something that any tumor has, that doesn't cut it for me. - neeyo, on 10/12/2007, -8/+33I hope these "all life is sacred" people also are vegetarians. If you ate a hamburger today, that cow went through a lot more suffering when its throat was slashed then a collection of cells ever will. All life is sacred = human only.
PS. I didn't get laid today, so one more child will never exist. Sign me up for a death certificate for my nonexistent child. - wobitnobby, on 10/12/2007, -2/+27I'm glad to find people that enjoy civil discourse without name-calling, or caps lock. ;)
I'm a second year medical student, and so I've spent practically every waking moment for the last two years trying to figure out the mysterious processes of life, disease, and reproduction. And I'm quite convinced that there are some oversimplifications going on in most people's minds.
There are really amazing, powerful, pleuripotent cells in many parts of us. Really amazing generative and regenerative events going on all the time, maybe not starfish level but still profound. Sexual recombination of chromosomes is a really precarious and wild event, totally crucial to our evolution as a species. I have seen a lot of growths and tumors and zygotes, too. Each has its own typical progression and common variations.
What's different about a zygote is the social and religious weight we put on it. The concept of personal differentiation and ensoulment is an important part of religion and like other religious matters, oughtta be kept out of government.
I have a whole 'nother perspective on it that derives from meeting so many older physicians that are still traumatized by the steady stream of women coming in, so certain that they cannot bear to complete their pregnancy that they'd do anything to avoid it. It has been an entire generation since those days, so we have a generation that does not know that pain. It's only natural, I suppose, to revisit the idea of abortion without the background noise of every family, every neighborhood having a woman who was hurt or killed or molested trying to exercise control over her uterus. The idea of refusing to provide compassionate care to these women is repellent to me.
My own interests don't lead me toward Ob-Gyn, I will probably not become an abortion provider. But I will certainly be supportive and loud about it. - twinklyJesus, on 10/12/2007, -6/+30More than anything, this is another in a long line of attempts by the right-to-life movement to force the courts to recognize the unborn fetus as a living person with rights equal to those of a full-term birth.
A stated above, it probably won't pass, but it is an interesting attempt. - blogger1947, on 10/12/2007, -6/+29I would be the first to admit that it is easy for me to adopt the attitude I have, since I have no dog in that particular fight. Our marriage (33 years and counting) did not result in children, through no particular effort one way or another. But that does not un-do what I have observed among other people, not only women who have aborted babies, but other women who gave birth to babies with serious medical problems, and fought tooth and nail to save them.
On the other hand, I think that to brand women who have aborted a pregnancy with a scarlet letter only adds to their emotional burden. And I am not so certain that social shunning, although practiced widely among Old Order Amish, would have any positive effect on the person shunned, much less serve as a deterrent to others' making the same decision. - there, on 10/12/2007, -5/+28
I'm not sure how the right feels a small piece of protoplasm is "sacred life" while killing thousands of Iraqis in a war for "WMDs" is OK? - shadus, on 10/12/2007, -8/+30> The choice was made when they had sex.
That pretty much says what your opinions are.
People have sex for many reasons, not everyone is of the belief that sex should only be something done when you want to procreate or only with a person you choose to marry. Many of us have sex just for fun and don't want kids because of it. Even if we do want kids we want them on our own time not on random chance... when accidents happen it is the right and should be the right of the people involved to terminate the pregnancy. - wobitnobby, on 10/12/2007, -5/+26Globally, abortion rates do not correlate with abortion legality. Abortion rates correlate with rates of unintended pregnancy. Seems like public illegality or shaming merely drives women to silence, and unsafe terminations, which particularly offends me. If a woman is deeply certain that she can't manage to be a good parent or gestate responsibly, at least give health care professionals a chance to discuss future abstinence or contraception with her and prevent recurrence.
- TrevorBradley, on 10/12/2007, -3/+24Women attempting to conceive frequently (more often than not) have fertilized zygotes in their menstrual flow that never implanted in the uterine wall.
Are we going to start filling out death certificates every time a woman has her period? - wobitnobby, on 10/12/2007, -9/+30Tennessee House Judiciary Chairman Rob Briley called the bill the "most preposterous bill I've seen in eight years in the Legislature."
Zealot Stacey Campfield is proposing something so outlandishly ridiculous in order to make ordinary rightwing views look sane. Either goal still infringes on people's privacy. I admire Blogger1947's easy philosophical attitude but doubt all listeners will be so calm. - aikahanyou, on 10/12/2007, -7/+28@4wheel: I'm saying that despite the fact that the fetus *does* have half of the father's DNA, it's the mother that has to carry that baby to term. Many mothers can't afford to have children, due to either financial or health reasons. And what if the father leaves her? Does she still have an obligation to go through it all alone?
When a woman doesn't want to have a baby, she usually has a good reason for it. And if the only reason was, "I just don't want to," she probably would have made a horrible mother anyway. - wobitnobby, on 10/12/2007, -7/+274wheel, I simple don't agree with your terminology. A human child is not the same thing as a small clump of cells which may or may not be developing into a distinct human being, slowly, over the course of many months. A tumor has a unique karyotype and circulatory system. I agree that a conceptus is special, and holds a world of hope... but so does every dawn, and every new friendship, and every new collaboration between friends. It can be special without being identical to a human.
I understand that you are still very very mad with your ex-wife, and I'm truly sorry for how much you've been hurt. - wobitnobby, on 10/12/2007, -2/+21This argument just strikes my heart! I sometimes feel actually nauseated thinking about what we could accomplish with all this energy, even here in the US. If other people's babies are your favorite cause, there are programs you can help out with for teen moms choosing to parent down at your local YWCA, or in the high schools. Teach nutrition, mentor the fathers of the teen babies to encourage their (statistically poor) involvement. Go into the hospitals and volunteer to read to inpatient children in the evenings.
If you are a really really good and patient soul, get involved in foster care. - wobitnobby, on 10/12/2007, -0/+19Here's the snopes backstory on that photo:
http://www.snopes.com/photos/medical/thehand.asp
The procedure that our friend antifederalist refers to is a troubling one, but one that occurs in about 2% of all abortions. Many times, the termination has been put off so long because the woman couldn't get access to an earlier, less involved procedure or because her decision rested upon data not available earlier in the gestation. The argument is not relevant to most procedures, 88% of which occur in the first 13 weeks. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+20"Right. Life is NOT sacred. Abortion should be retroactive. Your mother should kill you."
I never understand why a common pro-life argument usually involves them telling pro-abortionists they're better off dead, be it hypothetically or if they really mean it. I value the life of a functioning human being, and I dont believe anything reaches that stage until late in pregnancy, - wobitnobby, on 10/12/2007, -4/+22Argh. Abortion isn't sunlight and puppies, or anything else heartwarming or fun. But sometimes, for medical or other reasons, it is the right choice for a woman. If she is appropriately counseled and allowed to make her own choice (and not be forced into it by partner or parents) there is bound to be a normal grieving period of some months, but that's it.
Although there are individuals that speak out about their own beliefs, the American Psychological Association has compiled more than 20 years of research from all over the world on the topic of the supposed "post-abortion trauma syndrome" and concluded that it doesn't exist. They studied all age groups. Please do go look at their website, it has good bullet points and links to abstracts of the actual papers:
http://web.archive.org/web/20050304001316/http://www.apa.org/ppo/issues/womenabortfacts.html
Here's one little excerpt:
"Well-designed studies of psychological responses following abortion have consistently shown that risk of psychological harm is low. Some women experience psychological dysfunction following abortion, but post-abortion rates of distress and dysfunction are lower than pre-abortion rates. Moreover, the percentage of women who experience clinically relevant distress is small and appears to be no greater than in general samples of women of reproductive age. A recent study showed not only that rates of disorders, such as depression and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), were not elevated in a large sample of 442 women followed for two years post-abortion, but also that the incidence of PTSD was actually lower in women post-abortion than the rate in the general population." - wvdavis, on 10/12/2007, -6/+24Isn't this in violation of HIPA laws?
- wobitnobby, on 10/12/2007, -4/+224wheel, it's an odd coincidence but just this week there was a large study in the New England Journal of Medicine about a small but still alarming fraction of physicians that wouldn't let their patients know about abortion, or some other controversial topics. The study clearly found that this extreme moral stance correlated with being male and religious.
http://digg.com/health/Some_Doctors_Don_t_Tell_You_All_Treatment_Options
(I think you mean "alluding"). - dick-richardson, on 10/12/2007, -21/+39"how can you die before you're born?"
Same way you can win court cases before you're born, I'd guess. - GeneralFailure0, on 10/12/2007, -2/+20@4wheel
An IQ of 128 isn't bad, but it's not really anything to go around bragging to everybody about either. Also, I'm not taking sides, but you can still be hateful and close-minded regardless of your IQ. - wobitnobby, on 10/12/2007, -7/+244wheel - I passionately believe in fact-based sex ed, including pushing abstinence as the only completely effective and safe method. I also believe in providing contraception, as people have the right to the pursuit of happiness and while I choose to practice sex within the confines of my marriage, not all do and I'm not going to chase them down.
The sad fact is that the CDC reported this year that 50% of pregnancies in the US are unintended, whether those people knew what they were risking or not. This is a huge problem. Educated white women have a steadily declining rate of accidental pregnancy, while blacks, hispanics, and those without health insurance don't. What is going wrong here? What are we missing? - koonchu, on 10/12/2007, -1/+16Agreed. 4Wheel = BLOCKED.
But before I block you:
You make it sound as if you have a RIGHT to speak on behalf of an unconceived child. As if you have more right to pass judgment on the consequences of an individual, moreso than that individual does. As if, because of your infinite compassion, you have more right to a woman's childbearing process than she does. If you, 4Wheel, say abortion is murder regardless of the individual woman's opinion, then you have more of a right to take away her choice. Correct? You might even say that she *relinquishes* her right to personal freedom of choice if she becomes pregnant and refuses to have it, no? Get pregnant and you should suddenly have LESS freedom than 4Wheel.
If a woman becomes pregnant, you suddenly get the RIGHT to protect the life of her unborn child. If this is the case, then what makes you think you have any right to YOUR OWN child? - noreturn, on 10/12/2007, -1/+16"I value human life, i just have a different opinion of when human life begins."
Exactly what I would say. It' not a religious issue for me, but I still think that life begins at conception. I don't feel this should be a religious or moral or emotional issue.
"What's different about a zygote is the social and religious weight we put on it. The concept of personal differentiation and ensoulment is an important part of religion and like other religious matters, oughtta be kept out of government."
But when it comes down to it, the only thing special about humans is the weight we put on it. Don't get me wrong, I'm not just knocking you. But really think about what we are. We're multicellular beings with the ability to reason, and essentially a really, really, really complex organic chemical reaction. That is all. There's nothing special about us other than the fact that we exist. Chickens exist, as to vegetables, and are equally as improbable and astounding.
Of course we have to draw the line somewhere. Where to draw it is the difficult question.
And for the record, I think this bill is stupid. I'm for abortion, but after a whole lot of consideration and not just because having a baby would be inconvenient. - floridiot2, on 10/12/2007, -4/+194wheel's face should be on every box of condoms saying "Don't let this happen again."
- aikahanyou, on 10/12/2007, -1/+16@blogger: I agree, having women disclose their identities and register for a death certificate would only add to the emotional pain. What about women with health complications that needed to abort the child for the safety of both of them? Will they have to be forever reminded of what they had to do?
- kingatrock, on 10/12/2007, -9/+24lets just get it over with and rename America - ChristianLand
- 3dom, on 10/12/2007, -2/+16@wolferz:
It doesnt matter if it has the potential. Sperm has the 'potential' to be a human life, millions in fact.
My personal opinion is we care far too much about human life. I don't really care about people I don't know and won't have any influence over my circumstances. Some might see that as selfish but noone has the time to care about 6 billion people individually, no matter how hard you try. Caring about the dead person in the headline you hear about and not the one you don't is a double standard. Far too many of us on the planet for our own damn good. - pisceanmars, on 10/12/2007, -3/+17I don't understand the controversy surrounding abortion. "Actual" children die every day of preventable diseases, but I've never seen a group of fundamentalists spend their free-time firebombing doctors who withhold malaria vaccines.
- totorototoro, on 10/12/2007, -0/+14BZZZT! Sorry, you just ***** yourself with that bogus and unsubstantiated 40% breast cancer statistic. I am disgusted, by your ***** statistics.
- fredxor, on 10/12/2007, -4/+18@4wheel:
How else am I supposed to classify those people who harass people who get abortions and bomb abortion clinics? (mostly the former). I'm "pro-choice" to a certain extent. If a person waits until the third trimester to decide, it's their problem. If a person is raped, is too young, is endangered by the pregnancy, or has only been pregnant a few months, they should be allowed to get an abortion as long as they're psychologically prepared for it. I don't see a young fetus as any more deserving of life than a full grown pig. Full grown pigs are much more intelligent than a fetus (I hate PETA, btw) and we eat them all the time (I'm more of a beef fan myself, but you get the point). - thebaron2, on 10/12/2007, -16/+30If you can't die before you're born, how can you charge a murderer with double homicide for killing a pregnant woman?
Something has gotta die if it's a homicide. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -2/+15Your point? I'm in my last few months, and I've seen girls that have had to drop out for their mistakes, it's kind of funny how you support that these girls that arent even 18 yet now have to support a baby for that long. This is all just one giant ad-hominem fest. It's easy for you to take the moral high ground and accuse everyone pro-choice of murder without taking into account that lives are also ruined by unwanted babies.
- goodoldharris, on 10/12/2007, -0/+13Eventually, abortion will become little more than a medical procedure throughout the USA, and a non-issue, as it should be, and like it already is throughout the rest of the developed world. 4Wheel and 2ndRevolution, opinions like yours are what are called historical residue.
- fredxor, on 10/12/2007, -6/+19How can one die if they were never born? Do we need half death certificates for every sperm that doesn't make it or every egg that goes unfertilized? That would be a lot of names.
Anyways, I'm against it. It sounds like a method that pro-lifers can use to get the names of people who they want to harass. - xutopia, on 10/12/2007, -5/+17And they say that it's Atheists who are on the attack. ***** those fundamentalists.
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