Big News there? A right wing conservative doesn’t understand medicine? In other news, water is wet and it’s hot in India.
In a poll done by Gallup earlier this year, the biggest complaint lodged against the Republican Party was “inability to compromise.”
No. I would point out that the Republican Party has forgotten what the term “republic” means and instead has thrown it’s lot in with the ultra rich, large business lobby and the ultra religious resulting in a deadly trifecta of pro-ignorance policies. It literally is the stupidest option. We saw that when they made a fucking torture victim run on a pro-torture (Sorry! Enhanced Questioning or whatever euphemism we are calling it these days) ticket.
No. I am afraid the Republican Party’s problem is that it is completely out of touch with reality and relies on people who are equally out of touch with reality to push it’s plans through.
And Star Parker’s abortion rant is just one more of these things.
When I read the daily headlines, I see this theme continue.
Republicans, particularly tea party Republicans, are portrayed as obstructionist, extreme, unreasonable, and unwilling to compromise.
Tea Party Republicans are borderline traitorous idiots who feared that Obama is a secret fucking Kenyan. I think if we are being polite they can be considered that. If we are being realistic they are imbeciles of the highest calibre who have been repeatedly proven wrong but as a testament to the power of stupid people in groups we have to satiate their moronic demands.
These are people such as Joe the plumber who opposed tax increases for the rich despite getting a tax cut himself because he was just that ignorant of what political changes meant to him. These are people who believe in Alex Jones and of secret societies and race wars and whatever bullshit you want. In short? We should not be taking these people seriously in any real conversation and instead be thinking about how to educate the future generations so we run out of these idiots.
The very notion of a poor person voting republican is like rats voting for the cat.
But let’s get perspective.
If we are talking about trying to decide what day of the week to collect the garbage, and one wants Monday and one wants Friday, so the side that refuses to compromise on Wednesday might but be considerable unreasonable.
But this isn’t the kind of national discussion we are having today.
No. We are discussing things like the right for women to have access to BASIC FUCKING HEALTHCARE. I have repeated this over and over again. Abortions are BASIC gynaecology. As are real and proper sex education rather than this “fear the cock monster” bullshit that American Right Wingers like pushing on us.
Some things are simply true and some things false. Some things are simply right and some wrong.
This kind of discussion does not lend to splitting things down the middle.
Few today would look back on the horrible national dispute about slavery and claim that the problem was inability to compromise.
You are right. We cannot compromise on Slavery.
The banning of abortions is nothing but forcing women and doctors to be slaves to a religious agenda.
As Abraham Lincoln put it so clearly in his second inaugural address, delivered while the Civil War still raged: “Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other.”
And if you think a wise and benevolent god sat and watched impotently as his worshippers shot each other over a stupid book rather than an ideological system then you must be daft. Abraham Lincoln may have wanted to free slaves to spite the Southerners but he certainly was not in favour of treating black people as equals. When the constitution was written, black people were not considered “human”.
Sometimes worldviews clash and resolution can come only from drawing the line in the sand and one view prevailing over the other.
We are having today a battle for the soul of our nation. There are a number of key areas of our national debate that are about principle, about right and wrong, that do not lend themselves to compromise. This is about which worldview will prevail.
One of these issues is most certainly abortion.
No it is not. It really is not. 95% of all abortion occurs in the first trimester (12th week) and the remainder in mainly the second trimester (24th week). The few “late” abortions that occur are tragedies. They are usually wanted babies OR are babies created in horrid circumstances. In such cases it is a kindness to the mother to terminate the unfeeling, unformed foetus rather than say bear it.
You will not prevail. We have science on our side.
We have a habit of portraying childbirth as elegant and beautiful. A miracle of nature.
Not the physiological attempt at passing a 2 to 3 Kg object through your pelvis through some muscular tetris. An act so traumatic that our body doses us with hormones that alter perception of pain in order to make the event seem pleasant. And an act once so dangerous that it was the biggest cause of death in women until the advent of modern obstetrics.
And Star here is not a doctor nor does she understand why abortions are needed.
The trial of abortion doctor and now convicted murderer Kermit Gosnell delivered a wake up call to the nation.
The Gosnell trial did for our national consciousness what ultrasound images provoke in a pregnant woman. Graphic pictures of a live child in the womb purge any sense that it is possible to be casual about abortion.
And John Wayne Gacy taught us to fear clowns….
No wait. That’s stupid. Fear of clowns is stupid as is the fear of “abortion doctors”. Kermit Gosnell broke various medical ideas on abortion and so is incorrect by the standards of medicine. However.
What Star Parker is creating is not fewer Kermits. But more of them. Why? If we have no Obs/Gynae willing to handle abortions then who do you think is going to be doing them? Oh right. Amateurs. Amateurs who are moore likely to do something like Gosnell.
Unfortunately, the abortion issue – the question about when life begins – is often left to dry and abstract argument.
It’s very simple. Viability is set in the west at 24 weeks. Not because of brains or hearts but because of lungs. The religious are so fascinated with brains and hearts that they forget you need other things to live. Like oxygen. Or indeed things like kidneys. And simply “lungs support life” is not enough. Quality of life is important too.
What’s the point of having a broken brain and a functional heart if you couldn’t breathe at birth and so had portions of your brain die? What’s the point of watching a 20 week old baby struggle to breathe and die slowly or worse live on with the neurological damage caused by that? Your lungs mature by 24 weeks. Which is why we see a marked increase in survivability in the premature.
But in the case of late term abortion, like ultrasound pictures, the truth is graphically clear. We’re talking about destruction of a live, feeling human being. The Gosnell trial showed the nation that in American today we have abortion factories where live children are being killed.
No. A moving baby at 14 weeks is not necessarily capable of life. Just because it looks like a baby doesn’t mean it’s developed internally.
No Lungs = Just As Dead as No Brain or No Heart or No Kidneys or Liver or GIT. Or Pancreas. In fact we are so fascinated with the brain and heart we would think that is all that’s needed to live.
It is alive but it’s not a human being yet. Even after birth the child is still developing and growing. Remember our babies are born “early” and under developed. The baby’s smile is a random one. A new born baby smiles because smiling babies survive more. Mummy likes smiling babies. If you replaced the mother with a cardboard cut out of a tiger, the baby would still smile randomly.
I spoke about this before. The first words of all babies are the same. Because we assign meaning to those words. They will make them anyways and we will encourage them to keep making them. So mama, amma, papa, appa, dada are all similar in structure. They are the same repeated syllable and normally said by babies while they make noises.
And this is the problem. We are assuming that all babies are as equally developed.
The Gosnell trial showed nothing, what Star Parker wants is a ban of medical abortions and so forcing women to rely on the coathanger lobby. Because pro-life yo! Well until you are born. Then you can rot in poverty.
The fact that a child of 21 weeks may still be in the womb does not make that child any less alive.
If delivered that child will probably die due to respiratory distress and even if it lives will be neurologically impaired. Mentally retarded has bad connotations in society but the term is medical. It’s growth is retarded. In short? The child if born at that point will not have a long, happy and fulfilled life to the best of it’s capacity and will be crippled by the choices made.
It is not a child. It is a foetus. It is unviable and so should be up for abortion without a medical reason.
But clear as this may be to some, it is not clear to all. Just as in 1860 it was not clear to all that this nation could not tolerate slavery.
It was clear to many parts of the world my dear. We knew Slavery was Evil. It was always evil. That same book that you claim to read that gives you a “Moral Justification” to reduce the rights of women and access to abortions also is pro-slavery. If you say that the book didn’t know any better then the same logic applies to abortions.
The current fight to ban late term abortion – abortion 20 weeks, five months, after conception – is by and large a partisan battle of Republicans against Democrats.
The Republican House has passed legislation to ban abortion after 20 weeks, with qualifications for the life and health of the mother. Now this critical issue must be taken for a vote in the Democrat controlled Senate.
Except those qualifications are hard to attain since many require waiting periods. Pre-Eclampsia waits for no man. As does abruptio placenta. We may save the patient’s life by immediate abortion.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has called this a “fringe” issue. Murder a fringe issue? Can there be any doubt that we are dealing with a clash in worldviews?
It’s not murder. The foetus is incapable of unique unsupported life. I am afraid we need oxygen to breathe and a lack of lungs means death. This is not up for debate or discussion. This is fact. If you don’t believe me then I suggest filling a basin of water and immersing your head in it and seeing how long you can hold your breath.
Can you do it for 3 weeks?
It is potential to be a human, not a human.
Republicans must carry this bill aggressively into the Senate. Pressure must be put especially on Senate Democrats up for re-election in states which lean pro-life. Democrats like Mary Landrieu from Louisiana, Mark Pryor from Arkansas, and Kay Hagan from North Carolina.
Yes. Let’s demonstrate how fucked up America is by offering women worse healthcare than fucking India.
Perhaps this is a good time to recall again George Washington’s words “that virtue or morality is a necessary spring of popular government.”
The same George Washington who kept slaves. Virtue and Morality be damned my dear, you know naught of either.
Abortions provide women with control over their reproduction. The problem here is the foetuses aborted at the 20 week mark to 24 week tend to be for medical rather than economic reasons. If it’s economic then it’s usually within the first trimester. Very rarely is it that late. All Star is doing is making it harder to get medical abortions.
She is in effect forcing women to often carry to term heavily disabled foetuses in a society that doesn’t provide for them. In addition she is forcing a decision on them. Not everyone is capable of caring for a disabled person. Not every mother or father wants that responsibility nor can they afford that responsibility.
We put more logic and care into the adoption of a pet dog than a child and Star Parker is part of the problem.
No, this is not a time for compromise. The nation is confused, far adrift from its moral moorings.
Republicans must grab the reins, aggressively, and provide, without compromise, the moral leadership that this nation needs so badly.
Women need to fight back. We know what happens when pro-lifers have to face the music. Many quietly slink into the very clinics they hate and have abortions then go straight back out onto the line to live a lie again.
Americans must realise that the choice between far right and right wing is not a real choice at all. And that for real democracy they must stop voting on stupid and pointless issues like this.
Star Parker’s argument boils down to “Won’t someone think of the children”, rather than actually thinking about the children. If she thought about the children then free education, free school meals, proper sports (School Sport seems to be the domain of the handful of talented kids rather than for health), free healthcare and plans to teach properly in schools.
Instead we are seeing her attack a medical practice that helps women in controlling the spacing of their children thus maintaining economic stability and being a stabilising influence by ensuring that women have as many kids as they want and can manage rather than having kids they cannot care for but trying their best anyways.
There are two things to remember here. There are third world nations who’s abortion laws are less stupid than what Star Parker wants and so women have better access to healthcare and that when you have food for 4 people but have 5 in your family then 5 people starve. Not 1.