Wendy Davis became famous for filibustering an anti-woman bill in the Texas Senate that would have closed nearly every clinics in the state providing abortions services. But she's not about to let people say she's not "pro-life" -- especially since most who claim that term are not pro-life at all, just pro-fetus (since they oppose government help for children & the poor, support wars & the death penalty, oppose extending health insurance to more people, and generally oppose any government action that would make life better for ordinary citizens). Here's what she said last Tuesday at the University of Texas at Brownsville:
“I am pro-life. I care about the life of every child: every child that goes to bed hungry, every child that goes to bed without a proper education, every child that goes to bed without being able to be a part of the Texas dream, every woman and man who worry about their children’s future and their ability to provide for that future. I care about life and I have a record of fighting for people above all else.”
“This isn’t about protecting abortion. It’s about protecting women. It’s about trusting women to make good decisions for themselves and empowering them with the tools to do that.”
Biology 101: Life begins at fertilisation.
ReplyDeleteYou can call the bunch of cells concerned what you like but it is a living organism. People who wish to stop it living cannot call themselves 'pro-life' unless you're a practicing politician, of course, in which case language ends up in the bin as mangled as the living thing that preceded it!
Well duff that is a straw man argument and is silly.
ReplyDeleteAnd your very wrong...Biology 101 life was there before fertilization. And SO what!!
We sure can't call you pro-life until you stop killing all those cows, chickens, or carrots. When you start living on air and sunshine I'll listen to your arguments.
I would vote for her if I could, she's awesome.
There's a BIG difference between being pro-life, and just being pro-fetus.
ReplyDeleteA life begins at fertilization that has the possibility of developing into a full human being. At that point, it is still parasitic and requires a host to survive. The possible human being's rights do not take precedence over the bodily autonomy of an already-existing human being, because this is a question of bodily autonomy. Or is a woman's bodily autonomy less important that a dead person's whose organs cannot be harvested without permission before death because those cells might, if everything goes right, develop into a full-fledged human being.
ReplyDeleteThe anti-choice movement is not about "saving babies". Your type is interested only in punishing women for having sex or, even worse, being poor and having sex. The anti-choice movement seems to think that women are incapable of making such a weighty decision. In the anti-choicer's opinion, her “poor little head” just isn't capable of such hard thinking, and needs a “right-thinking” man to help her decide. Bull. It's a decision between the woman,her doctor, and her god if she has one. You have no say because it's none of your business.
So, as you, David, will never be faced with having to make a decision about whether to carry a child or not based on health, economic, family, marital, or personal situations, butt out.
If you really want to help minimize abortions – they'll never be eliminated, just pushed underground to become dangerous and unsafe and resulting in the deaths and/or mutilation of desperate women – then you can work to minimize abortions by providing real and affordable family planning (not abstinence) and support ways to help women with their children once born.
Somehow I don’t think that fits into your IGMFU world view and we’ll just have to continue to be “blessed” us with your opinions.
@bls because she puts forward a well-written and mostly cogent argument that is worth debating.
ReplyDelete"Words! Words! Words", as that gloomy Dane moaned - but they matter and I get cross when they are tortured. A life begins the second a sperm fertilises an egg. It doesn't matter what name or title you give to that entity but it is alive, it is energetic (in the scientific sense), it is almost certainly capable of developing from a bunch of cells to something of a different order of magnitude and possibility. Now, if you kill it, for however many good reasons you can muster, you cannot call yourself "pro-life". That is to take the words 'pro-life' and turn them inside out and upside down. And let me re-iterate, none of that is concerned with the pros and cons of abortion, this is simply me objecting to the murder of language.
And that reminds me to correct you, bls, when you refer to me as "your type". Alas, when Marx said (er, that's Groucho by the way not that ridiculously dim-witted German) that he would not wish to be a member of any club that had him as a member, he could have been speaking for me! Thus, when you imply that I wish to punish women for having sex you could not be more wrong. 'Back in the day' I did my very best to encourage several of them to have as much as possible, er, with me, naturally!
Finally, may I admit to a vested interest. You see, I am a bastard - yes, literally as well as metaphorically! - in that I was born to a single mother who herself had no family support and this was in 1939, the year that WWII was poised to erupt. Social security in those days was pitiful and so she had every excuse for putting me (yes, that bunch of pulsating cells was, er, me, actually!) to the knife. She chose not to - and I lived. If emotive reasons are important to you, then I have the ace!
Should you respond to this I would be grateful if you could explain "IGMFU" - I've never been very good at crosswords!
I still think the best abortion argument is 'If you don't have a uterus, shut the phuck UP!!!'
ReplyDelete... You see, I am a bastard -etc.... another straw man argument which has no validity as to whether you have any right to tell a woman what to do about some parasite.
Yes, words. Let’s look at other forms of life in the human body: cancer, human fungal diseases, fingernails, hair, bacteria. So if we kill any of those, by your definition, we can’t call ourselves pro-life, either. Yet it’s the anti-choice contingent who has done just what you said you didn’t like. They’ve turned the term “pro-life” inside out and upside down in order to make it give the impression that their opponents are pro-death. These anti-choicers are so concerned with the zygote/embryo/fetus before it’s born, but once it’s out of the womb, tough luck. How many of these anti-choice “pro-lifers” (like Rick Perry, GW Bush as well as lesser lights) favor capital punishment and continuing wars? Or does pro-life apply only to the pre-viable organism?
ReplyDeleteMy apologies if you're not part of the “punish the women for having sex” group. Purely anecdotal but I don't recall ever seeing a comment where an anti-choicer doesn't blame the woman in some way for having sex and/or for not being intelligent enough to know what an abortion means.
As for you being a bastard, the point is that your mother had a choice and chose to keep you, despite the pitiful state of social security and abortion being illegal at that time. She could just as easily have decided in the other direction but you would never have known because you wouldn't have existed. Your mother's situation makes a good case for keeping abortion legal so that it can be performed safely. Are you also pro-life when it comes to ensuring that real women do not die or suffer mutilation from botched abortions? Or does your pro-life definition only apply to fertilized eggs?
Finally, in addition to not being good at crosswords, you're not very good at googling either if you can't find IGMFU.
Another good point on this is that Wendy is for contraceptives. And the known BEST anti-abortion item is contraceptives which the religious women haters can't stand being there either. So as bls states they are for women to be punished for having sex.
ReplyDeleteDavid
ReplyDeleteI accidentally hit the wrong button and deleted your latest comment. I apologize. If you want to repeat it, it will be posted.
A Freudian slip, I suspect, Ted! Not to worry but I can't be bothered to drone it all out again. Suffice for me to say to 'bls' that I did respond.
ReplyDelete