Men must speak up on abortion debate

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More bullshit "informed decision" euphemisms:

Washington Post, Feb. 1
The Virginia Senate passed a bill Wednesday that would require women to have an ultrasound before an abortion, the first of several legislative measures this year that are expected to dramatically alter abortion law in the state...Republicans, in control of both chambers for only the second time since the Civil War, are looking to pass a slew of bills in the 60-day session that take on abortion.
The measure passed Wednesday would require a woman to undergo an ultrasound to determine the gestation age of the fetus and be given an opportunity to view the pictures. A woman who refuses to view the ultrasound would have to sign a statement—which would become a part of her medical file—saying she was given the option. The bill also would require the abortion provider to keep a printed copy of the image in the patient’s file.

...The Senate vote came after a lengthy and impassioned argument by Democrats. “I really don’t want to be in the position—as a clinician—where I say you need to have this diagnostic test done and the patient asks me, ‘Doctor, why? Why do I need that done?’ ” said Sen. Ralph Northam (D-Norfolk), a pediatric neurologist. “And I would say, ‘Sir or ma’am, the reason is a group of politicians in Richmond are telling you, you have to have it done.’ That is not our place as a government.’’

[Gov. Robert F. McDonnell's (R)] spokesman Jeff Caldwell said the governor supports the bill “as it provides women considering abortion to have additional information that can help them make an informed decision.’’
Six states have similar laws, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a nonprofit reproductive-health research center that gathers data on abortions in the United States.
 
This is probably a can of worms that's already been opened a myriad of time, but I'm curious: What defines life to you (everyone in this thread)? I'm not talking specifically about abortion right now. In general, what are the main characteristics of life?
 
I'm assuming you don't literally mean any life--biologists specializing in them can't agree whether viruses are alive, for example, and I hardly see where anyone here would be better-placed than a biologist to provide definitive criteria for determining whether any given 'thing' is rightly called alive. I'm not aware of significant debate as to whether fetuses (human or otherwise) are alive. The abortion debate is really over whether human fetuses warrant legal personhood i.e. have natural rights, not over what the definitive characteristics of "life" in general are. Hence the attempts by pro-life groups to get "Personhood Amendments" on the ballot in various states.

But yeah, TBH I doubt many regulars here would be enthused at the prospect of rehashing their personal take on fetal rights vs. women's rights. We've kinda done that one to death...
 
I'm assuming you don't literally mean any life--biologists specializing in them can't agree whether viruses are alive, for example, and I hardly see where anyone here would be better-placed than a biologist to provide definitive criteria for determining whether any given 'thing' is rightly called alive. I'm not aware of significant debate as to whether fetuses (human or otherwise) are alive. The abortion debate is really over whether human fetuses warrant legal personhood i.e. have natural rights, not over what the definitive characteristics of "life" in general are. Hence the attempts by pro-life groups to get "Personhood Amendments" on the ballot in various states.

But yeah, TBH I doubt many regulars here would be enthused at the prospect of rehashing their personal take on fetal rights vs. women's rights. We've kinda done that one to death...

Fair enough! I haven't followed this thread too seriously, but yeah i figured it had probably been discussed a lot. I wasn't really aware that there was no debate on whether a fetus possessed life or not though. Maybe that's just a debate with the fairly uneducated Christian masses I know :wink:

edit: realized this sounded like a shot at christians. It's not. I'm a christian myself. Just saying the ones i know aren't always that educated in the matters they argue for.
 
^ 'Tis...
I wasn't really aware that there was no debate on whether a fetus possessed life or not though.
Just to clarify...I meant I'm not aware of any pro-choice argument that fetuses literally aren't alive, as opposed to whether fetuses possess an inherent right to life (insofar as that could infringe on rights a woman, as a legal person, would otherwise normally be assumed to possess).
 
maybe they can pull funding for cancer screenings in VA as well?
This at least was a pleasant surprise:

CBS, Feb. 3
Three days after pulling its funding for cancer screenings from Planned Parenthood, the Susan G. Komen for the Cure Foundation on Friday apologized for the decision and announced it is reversing course.

...The cancer charity initially announced it was pulling funding for the women's health organization because Planned Parenthood is the subject of investigations by Republican members of Congress for allegedly using federal dollars toward providing abortions. The Komen Foundation said its decision was not political, and in her statement today, [Komen CEO Nancy] Brinker maintained that it was not about politics. "Our original desire was to fulfill our fiduciary duty to our donors by not funding grant applications made by organizations under investigation," she said. Brinker said in her statement that the Komen Foundation is amending the criteria of its new policy to make clear that it will only bar funding for organizations under investigation if that investigation is "criminal and conclusive in nature and not political."

The Komen Foundation's decision to cut ties with Planned Parenthood spurred a strong backlash against the charity, with more than two dozen senators calling on the organization to reverse its decision. Planned Parenthood also saw a surge in donations in response to the news.
 
agreed.

it really was amazing to see the outrage on Facebook. a great example of how social networking actually can have an influence.
 
My conservative brother was the one lone voice of "Well, now I WON'T be donating to Komen" on my Facebook feed this morning. Heh.

I donated to PP this morning. Happy that I've never given my money to Komen - they've got quite the racket going with that pink ribbon crap, and the articles that have come up in response to this kerfuffle have been eye-opening.

My money goes to American Cancer Society, who supports the events my breast-cancer-survivor mother participates in. :up:
 
I heard a story a while back too about how the Susan G. Komen fund also got all bent out of shape because some other cancer awareness group used the phrase "race for the cure" or something for their organization. 'Cause, you know, those four words exclusively belong to one organization, I guess. It's pretty disturbing how one can allow politics to trump little things like helping people get better.

I should do some donating myself.
 
I think of SGK as a corporation now, they lost credibility a long time ago. But to allow this woman to play politics with the health and lives of women, that just disgusts me.


Karen Handel, Susan G. Komen's Anti-Abortion VP, Drove Decision To Defund Planned Parenthood

WASHINGTON -- Susan G. Komen for the Cure, the nation's leading anti-breast-cancer charity, has insisted that its since-reversed decision to pull funding from Planned Parenthood arose from a routine change in criteria for grant eligibility that had nothing to do with abortion politics.

But a Komen insider told HuffPost on Sunday that Karen Handel, Komen's staunchly anti-abortion vice president for public policy, was the main force behind the decision to defund Planned Parenthood and the attempt to make that decision look nonpolitical.

"Karen Handel was the prime instigator of this effort, and she herself personally came up with investigation criteria," the source, who requested anonymity for professional reasons, told HuffPost. "She said, 'If we just say it's about investigations, we can defund Planned Parenthood and no one can blame us for being political.'"

Emails between Komen leadership on the day the Planned Parenthood decision was announced, which were reviewed by HuffPost under the condition they not be published, confirm the source's description of Handel's sole "authority" in crafting and implementing the Planned Parenthood policy.
 
Male opinion here. :wave:

Abortion is not just a black or white issue. I think people should take the necessary precautions to avoid a pregnancy if they don't want/cannot afford to have a baby. I also understand that nothing is 100% effective. As for it being a women's issue, I'm even more torn. If I was married (I will be getting married this October) I would never want my wife to go and get an abortion without involving me. I would hope that we could talk things through as a family. I disagree with the notion that it's a women's only issue because, when you are married to a person and committing your life to them, they should be involved in those sort of circumstances. I'm not saying that a spouse would need my permission to have an abortion, just that it's a family matter.

Personally I don't think I would go for an abortion. However, it's not my business to tell other people what to do. I'm pro-choice.
 
Salon, Feb. 13
Last Friday, some of the most distinguished scholars and litigants working on gender and the law gathered to honor a foremother and inspiration, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, as Columbia University Law School marked the 40th anniversary of Ginsburg becoming the first tenured female professor there. But there was another 40th anniversary as well, one less-known, but very much on Ginsburg’s mind.

It has been 40 years since she filed a brief before the Supreme Court for a case she wishes had established the abortion right instead of Roe v. Wade. That was the case of Capt. Susan Struck, who had become pregnant in 1970. The Air Force demanded she either terminate the pregnancy—abortions were being conducted on bases back then—or leave her post. Struck, a Catholic, said she wouldn’t have an abortion but would put the child up to adoption without taking off any unusual amount of medical leave. Though she lost both at the district court and the circuit-court level, she appealed to the Supreme Court, which agreed to hear her case until Solicitor General Erwin Griswold persuaded the Air Force to simply waive her discharge and change the rule.

Ginsburg was disappointed. “I thought if Susan’s case came first,” she said—before Roe, which would be heard a year later—it would be preferable for the goals of women’s equality, because “her choice was birth. Solicitor General Griswold saw to it that we did not have that opportunity.” (This was the same Griswold who, as dean of Harvard Law School, asked the rare women in Ginsburg’s class how they justified taking spots that should have gone to men. Ginsburg later transferred to Columbia Law School.)
Yale reproductive rights scholar Reva Siegel wrote in a recent essay celebrating Ginsburg’s brief in the Struck case—it was overlooked in part because she never got to argue it—that “Ginsburg and the women’s movement talked about pregnancy discrimination in a way that ties together pregnancy discrimination and women’s equality, and women’s equality and reproductive freedom, before the Court split them apart in cases such as Roe v. Wade, Frontiero v. Richardson and Geduldig v. Aiello. The Court made some fateful choices in those cases: to focus its sex equality jurisprudence on cases other than pregnancy, and so to develop its sex equality jurisprudence in isolation from its abortion jurisprudence.” That was also true of many of the litigants at the time, Ginsburg said Friday, including the ACLU, which had been involved with Griswold vs. Connecticut, the case overturning a state contraceptive ban with a substantive due process argument that focused on privacy. Ginsburg preferred “women’s change to chart their own life course,” consistent with her idea that full citizenship meant the right to choose a life distinct from sex-role stereotypes.

But an abortion rights case involving a woman who wanted to choose to give birth would also have been consistent with the current reproductive justice framework, which is about bodily autonomy and a woman’s right to moral dignity and self-determination. And Ginsburg, who brought several sex-discrimination cases with male plaintiffs, clearly understood the power of framing these choices with potentially surprising reversals that showed how traditional gender roles limited everyone.

It wasn’t to be. Ginsburg called Struck to try and see if there was any way to press on with her case once the Air Force changed its policy. “‘My dream is to be a pilot,’ she said, but the Air Force doesn’t give flight training to women.’ We both laughed because in 1972 that was an impossible dream. That’s one sign of how much things have changed.”
 
Ginsburg preferred “women’s change to chart their own life course,” consistent with her idea that full citizenship meant the right to choose a life distinct from sex-role stereotypes.

This is pretty much how it should be, and I don't get why this is so difficult for some people out there.

It would've been quite interesting to see how that case would've aided in the debate. I feel for that woman in the Air Force, sounds like she was in a crap situation no matter what she did.

Ginsburg called Struck to try and see if there was any way to press on with her case once the Air Force changed its policy. “‘My dream is to be a pilot,’ she said, but the Air Force doesn’t give flight training to women.’ We both laughed because in 1972 that was an impossible dream. That’s one sign of how much things have changed.”

Stuff like this makes me really glad I was born when I was. Things still aren't perfect, no, but my god, I can't even begin to imagine having to deal with some of the crap women in the past had to go through. I'm glad I missed out on that BS.
 
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