Michael Moore (4 Viewers)

[billygannon]

The Dyson Womb-Cleaner

It even cleans your conscience!

 

[Ed]

Aw, that's nice. I'm a pro-abortion (not just pro-choice anymore) chain-smoker, and we are more fun than those clear-lunged fetus-keeping non-smokers. When I finally do have kids, they'll come out stinking of some sort of gin-based amniotic cocktail, and will be wrapped in a rolling-paper placenta.

Speaking of tasteful illustrations, I posted this on Bored in Work, but maybe it's more suitable here:

http://www.godslittleones.com

I can't believe they STILL don't have a week 31 model!

Wow, lets just be thankful you've never been given the responsibility of teaching impressionable teenagers.
!ninjaaaa

 

[jane]

What do you mean pro-abortion?
Not attacking you, just don't understand what you mean ...

I was half-joking, really. I remember when, a few years after Roe V Wade in the US, my mother getting so fed up with pro-lifers that she used to go on these big rants about how she wished she could just have an abortion on principle. I feel the same way now. It's not something I would like to do, but I get so angry about the misogyny and the lack of trust in women that goes along with abortion legislation that it makes me feel very extreme.

I'm just so much less inclined to see abortion as a 'moral' decision these days. You can't 'prove' when a fetus becomes a real human life (though I suppose when it gets to a stage where it could survive outside of the womb, I would concur that it is a baby), so although maybe I would find it a difficult decision to make if I found myself having to do so, I think it would be more related to disappoinment at not being ready for motherhood than at destroying something I didn't really want yet. Being told what I can and can't do with my body, the ideas that came out around the referendum last year that women, when given a choice, will always choose the 'wrong' or 'immoral' one, just served to cement further what was already my strong belief in a woman's choice.

Barbara Ehrenreich wrote a great essay in the 1980s about abortion. She says (yes, the book was right in front of me):

'....biology will never have an answer to that strange and cabalistic question of when a fetus becomes a person. Potential persons are lost every day as a result of miscarriage, contraception, or someone's simple failure to respond to a friendly wink. What we can answer, with a minimum of throat clearing and moral agonising, is the question of when women themselves will finally achieve full personhood: and that is when we have the right....to choose not to be pregnant when we decide not to be pregnant.'

 

[jane]

Wow, lets just be thankful you've never been given the responsibility of teaching impressionable teenagers.
!ninjaaaa

Haha, who would let me do that!?

Wait....do you think I had an impression?

Billy, I am crying tears of aborted laughter. Dyson's a good brand, too. Dual-action and all that.

 

[Ed]

Wait....do you think I had an impression?

I'm not a teenager(despite the way i act) so i dunno

 

[jane]

I'm not a teenager(despite the way i act) so i dunno

I know you weren't impressed, but maybe someone, somewhere? Realised that gin and the acknowledgement of multiple readings of the past are two of the most important things in the world?

I don't act like a teenager at all. I'm more of a pre-adolescent with a shit fixation.

Regression is my aim, poop jokes are my game.

 

[egg_]

Potential persons are lost every day as a result of miscarriage, contraception, or someone's simple failure to respond to a friendly wink. What we can answer, with a minimum of throat clearing and moral agonising, is the question of when women themselves will finally achieve full personhood: and that is when we have the right....to choose not to be pregnant when we decide not to be pregnant.

I think this is trite bullshit

Here, as far as I can make out, are the pro-choice and pro-life arguments.

Pro-choice:
Those who are most affected by a decision are those who should get the most say in that decision. The persons who are most affected by the decision whether or not to continue with a pregnancy are the mother and the zygote/foetus/baby, but the z/f/b cannot communicate, therefore it is up to the mother to choose for both of them

Pro-life:
Taking human life is just fucking wrong, and that's it

I tend to come down very reluctantly on the pro-choice side - we cannot guess what decision the chlid would make, so I can't see any alternative. But the pro-life argument carries a lot of weight too, and meaningless shite about 'women achieving full personhood' only divides and confuses people

 

[krystal]

and meaningless shite about 'women achieving full personhood' only divides and confuses people

How is that meaningless exactly?

 

[egg_]

How is that meaningless exactly?

Well em ... what does it mean?

 

[krystal]

Well em ... what does it mean?

While phrased in an *incredible* wanky fashion, 'women achieving full personhood' could mean to me to mean, for example, some young wan getting knocked up at the age of 16 and having a kid she doesn't particularly feel old enough to have or want, and as a result of having said child be possibly rendered unable to go to college, get qualifications, and go onto have a career in which she is paid more than minimum wage, for example.

 

[jane]

Well em ... what does it mean?

To just touch on the issue a bit, there is a fundamental difference between the way a pro-life and pro-choice (in general, but not always) person define a human life.

A pro-life person is more likely to see the fetus as a child, and therefore see abortion as murder. A pro-choice person is more likely to see the issue as complex, as the defining 'moment' at which human life begins as something that cannot be determined and therefore see the aborting of a fetus as the decision to end a pregnancy, and not a human life. I don't see a fetus as a human life until pretty far into a pregnancy, and therefore I don't see abortion as murder.

No, we don't know what the 'child' would choose, but I don't see it as a child at that stage. It's tough to argue with someone who actually defines the argument in a completely different way.

And as for women achieving full personhood: when we are allowed to make decisions for ourselves about what happens to our bodies (which, if you define abortion as murder, is probably a moot point), instead of having the male-dominated government write legislation that enshrines negative attitudes as women as unruly and corrupt ( and a look at legislation for sexual assault will paint the same picture about women as 'naturally' unruly), then we'll be 'people' and not just 'women'. The whole bullshit leading up to the referendum scared the hell out of me. All of these letters to the Irish Times and editorials, etc, that talked about 'women' as if someone were referring in the third person to someone who was standing in the room when, in reality, we are half the population. It wasn't just men that were doing it, it was the discussion of 'women' in abstract, dehumanised terms that assumed we are all morally bankrupt and must be protected from our own seemingly innate urges to kill our children by bullshit legislation.

Pro-choice allows for all views. Pro-life does not.

That's me for the day.

 

[jane]

While phrased in an *incredible* wanky fashion, 'women achieving full personhood' could mean to me to mean, for example, some young wan getting knocked up at the age of 16 and having a kid she doesn't particularly feel old enough to have or want, and as a result of having said child be possibly rendered unable to go to college, get qualifications, and go onto have a career in which she is paid more than minimum wage, for example.

Yeah, true, too. It is difficult for women to compete for jobs when the idea that we might get knocked up and want maternity leave makes us less likely to stick around. If there were legalised abortion and decent maternity AND paternity leave, then it might level the playing field a bit more.

But I think there's a deeper ideology at work, too.

 

[egg_]

While phrased in an *incredible* wanky fashion, 'women achieving full personhood' could mean to me to mean, for example, some young wan getting knocked up at the age of 16 and having a kid she doesn't particularly feel old enough to have or want, and as a result of having said child be possibly rendered unable to go to college, get qualifications, and go onto have a career in which she is paid more than minimum wage, for example.

So you reckon Ms Ehrenreich reckons that unless someone is able to go to college, get qualifications, and go on to have a career in which she is paid more than minimum wage, then that someone is not a full person?
If that is what she meant than that's pretty out there

 

[egg_]

A pro-life person is more likely to see the fetus as a child, and therefore see abortion as murder. A pro-choice person is more likely to see the issue as complex

I think this is a red herring
A giant herring, maybe, but a red one nevertheless
The reality of abortion is that something-that-will-become-human-if-no-action-is-taken is destroyed. What you call this something doesn't change what actually happens. I think the pro-choice argument would be much more convincing if it faced up to this, and actually engaged with pro-lifers' very real concerns rather than accusing them of being control freaks all the time

The 'hard' pro-choice position would be even if the 'something' could communicate and make decisions, and wanted to live, it'd still be the mother's decision
The 'hard' pro-life position would be if the 'something' could communicate and make decisions, and wanted not to live, it would still have to

I think both of these positions are wrong

 

[krystal]

So you reckon Ms Ehrenreich reckons that unless someone is able to go to college, get qualifications, and go on to have a career in which she is paid more than minimum wage, then that someone is not a full person?
If that is what she meant than that's pretty out there

it's just an example
having a child changes your life and sometimes, I am proposing, not for the better.

 

[thegoone]

mostly for the better id say

 

[Goodbye]

or someone's simple failure to respond to a friendly wink.'

 

[egg_]

having a child changes your life and sometimes, I am proposing, not for the better.

I agree with your proposal
But doesn't it sometimes happen that an unwanted child can turn out to be a positive thing? And vice versa. These things ain't so easy to predict
Really though, I was just throwing the ball out of my court in order to get this reaction:

as for women achieving full personhood: when we are allowed to make decisions for ourselves about what happens to our bodies ... then we'll be 'people' and not just 'women'.

Cos then what I would have said was:
By your own logic aren't you guilty of thinking of pro-lifers as just 'pro-lifers' and not 'people'? Isn't it insulting and de-humanising to them to assume that their real agenda is control over women's bodies rather than genuine concern for the lives of things-that-will-become-human-if-no-action-is-taken? Well?

 

[Goodbye]

By your own logic aren't you guilty of thinking of pro-lifers as just 'pro-lifers' and not 'people'? Isn't it insulting and de-humanising to them to assume that their real agenda is control over women's bodies rather than genuine concern for the lives of things-that-will-become-human-if-no-action-is-taken? Well?

Fuck em... sorry to be harsh here egg... but, fuck em... i dont think it's their buisness to interfier with what a woman wants/needs/has to do with her own body particularly when they are waving bibles in their faces...

 

[egg_]

fuck em... i dont think it's their buisness to interfier with what a woman wants/needs/has to do with her own body

Ian, there's no reason to think that these people aren't genuine. I'm making a leap here, but I'd guess most pro-lifers are parents who are motivated mainly by the instinct to protect what they see as children. They see interfering with a woman's wishes as secondary to protecting the life of a person who is unable to do so themselves, and I think that's an honourable motivation, and a completely understandable way to feel about things.
And so what if they get preachy - pro-choicers are just as fucking preachy.