Maybe since we've got men deciding whether women have the right to take the abortion pill after 2 women died, we should have a woman introduce legislation to ban viagra since 6500% more people have died from that.

"Whenever possible, Republicans title their legislation after high-profile victims."

This isn't something the Democrats do also? The Ryan White Care Act comes to mind (sponsored by Edward Kennedy, who by most reports has the intellegence of a box of hair.)

Personally, I'm an equal-opportunity politico-loather. Salon just tends to favor liberals over conservatives. Each side is rife with pandering sleazebags.

I wish they'd pander to me a bit more often.

i blogged this a few weeks ago. it's how i feel, like it or not.

Wednesday, 22 October 2003
yesterday the U.S. Senate voted to pass bill banning partial birth abortion. predictably, there are opposers. the democratic senator for NJ was quoted as saying, "President Bush will become the first United States President to criminalize a safe medical procedure."

safe. what an interesting term used to describe a procedure in which one out of every two patients dies. hm...

for those of you who don't know what partial birth abortion is, let me give you a quick little rundown. during a partial birth abortion the "doctor" literally drags the unborn child out of the womb with forceps. he pulls the entire body out of the woman, all except the head. he then takes a pair of surgical scissors and punctures the neck of the baby at the base of the skull and then opens the scissors, basically severing all kinds of important things that the baby needs to live and spilling his/her brains out onto the operating table.

i don't know about you, but Americans whine and cry about the mistreatment of KFC chickens and they are allowing this to happen day after day to thousands of our own! if someone did this to a cow, oh my goodness, the humanity! but a fetus? a baby? no one says one word b/c it's the woman's right. it makes me sick.

"It is a poverty to decide that a child must die so that you may live as you wish."
~Mother Teresa

A "child" is a fully functioning human. A fetus is not. It has potential to become human. From where do you get your statistics that "one out of every two patients dies" in this procedure? Many patients die in many procedures. Maybe two out of every two patients would die without it. Moreover, the right wing god squad's efforts to promote abstinence actually promote...abortion! Because kids who take an oath of abstinence don't carry condoms, and when many of them inevitably have sex, they do it without protection. I think I'm going to start a church of rationality. I've never felt so scared about being an American.

Regarding Mother Theresa, if you'll read Christopher Hitchens' work about her, you'll see what a creepy person she really was -- playing kissyface with dictators, etc. I'm in the Houston airport with few WiFi minutes left and a plane to catch, or I'd say more. But you can see Hitchens' work on MT if you google it. Might be on Slate.com -- or maybe the original piece was in Vanity Fair. Religion is, ultimately, a business that stays in business through the promotion of fear -- which is how it controls its little Tamis and the rest of those marching in Stepford-mind lockstep.

I believe the "statistic" that "one out of every two patients dies" refers to the idea that a mother and a fetus (considered by the writer to be a person) go into the procedure, but after the procedure, only the mother is still alive. At least I've heard it used it that way.

call it a fetus. call it a baby. semantics semantics semantics.

a child is a child the second it's conceived. in this country it's perfectly legal to kill a "fetus" in the womb so long as it's the mother's choice. but if a pregnant woman loses her baby in a car accident, the offender goes to court for MAN-SLAUGHTER.

so i guess it's being wanted or unwanted that gives us the right to be considered human. so maybe we should start euthenizing the homeless and old people in nursing homes abandonned by their families.

think through where your decisions lead you. respect for human life is what makes us human.

Um, actually semantics have nothing to do with it, unless you want to claim we should have no words differentiating between stages of life (throw out teenager and senior citizen - it's semantics!). A fetus is the medical term for what is growing inside a woman's womb from (I believe) 6 months to birth. Before that it's a Zygote, if I'm remembering my biology correctly. 'Partial ban abortions,' or 'Dial & Extract' abortions, are done for fetuses that are a) dead (yes, it happens, just as uninduced abortions do - they're called miscarriages by most people); b) the woman's life is in severe danger or she is in danger of becoming disabled, since most people agree it's more important to keep someone alive and hale than have a good chance of them dying, even if it means abortion; or c) the fetus will die after birth since it is malformed. Many which fall into this category have developed a very severe form of hydrocephalus. Apparently, in New Jersey there was a doctor who was performing D&E procedures outside of those above, but a reputable doctor wouldn't since the fetus is so close to term. The big concern with the current legislation passing is the number of women who will die because D&E is now illegal. Sadly, for some people, pre-birth life is more important than post-birth life. Also note that in most of these cases, if not all, the child would die upon being born or shortly therafter, so it's not like a life is being "saved" anyway.

Links: http://www.acog.org/from_home/publications/press_releases/nr02-13-02.cfm and http://www.religioustolerance.org/abo_pba1.htm

I would be a lot more sympathetic to pro-lifers if they showed interest in the children after they're born. Where are those pro-lifer's adopting the physically and mentally disadvantaged eight year old, dark skinned children that end up shuffled from foster home to foster home? Where are the rallys to 'Love the Children' that applies to children in our own country? There are thousands of children in the foster care and adoption systems that have little to no chance of being adopted because of their age, their skin tone, or their disability. I would be much more inclined to be sympathetic if the right to life included the right to a good life for these children born to parents who didn't want them.

(I'm pro-choice and have decided to not have an abortion unless my life is threatened by it, for the record. I also plan to adopt a 5-8 year old child, as well.)

Actually, I have quite a few pro-lifers in my social circle who have adopted 'unadoptable' children, and several others who do foster care. Don't be so quick to assume that they are not putting their money where their mouth is. It's not like it's headline news when someone adopts a kid.

Still, even though I'm pretty much pro-life (at least I won't have an abortion and I'd try to talk any friends out of having one that isn't to preserve her life), I am frightened that more and more rights are being taken away from us.

Life Development (This is so exciting!)

Fertilization: At this point, the father's sperm and the mother's egg combine to form a zygote that carries as much information as 50 sets of the 33-volume Encyclopedia Brittannica. This genetic information (DNA) will determine all physical characterisitcs and much about intelligence and personality.

Day 2: Our little friend is now three cells big. The cells will continue to divide as they start down the mother's Fallopian tube towards her uterus (womb), where they will get the food and shelter they need to grow and develop.

Day 6-7: Implantation into the mother's uterus begins and all the while growth continues. As cells multiply, they differentiate to perform specific functions -circulatory, muscular, neural and skeletal.

Day 14: Implantation is completed around this time and the mother misses her first menstrual period.

Day 20: Heart, brain, spinal column, and nervous system are almost complete and the eyes begin to form.

Day 22: The heart begins to beat.

Day 28: It is now approximately 1/4 inch long - 10,000 times larger than only three weeks ago! The blood flowing in the veins is completely different than the mother's.

Week 4: Muscles are developing, and arms and leg buds are visible. A large, distinct head is clearly identifiable, along with the major outlines of brain and eye vesicles, the beginnings of the central nervous system, notochord, mouth and pharynx, body cavity, and the basis of the skeleton.

Week 5: The face is taking shape; the forehead, eyes, nostrils and mouth are evident; external ears are beginning; hand and foot plates appear in the limb buds.

Week 6: The brainwaves can be recorded. Different muscles begin working together.

Week 8: The fingers and toes are fairly well defined, and fingerprints, a unique and defining feature of every human being, are permanently engraved on the skin. All of the organs are present, complete, and functioning (except lungs).

Week 9-10: All areas of the body are sensitive to touch. The fetus sucks thumbs, swallows, squints, frowns and puckers the brow. If the palm is stroked, the fetus will make a tight fist.

Week 11-12: The fetus (Can you really call it that at this point?) now has fingernails, toenails and working taste buds. It can also make all facial expressions, including a smile.

Week 13: Although this baby was already a boy at fertilization, his sex is now identifiable.

Month 4: This little baby's heart is pumping 6 gallons of blood every day, and his mom can now feel him jumping around and turning somersaults, exercising the muscles and lungs he will need to live outside his mother's womb. Rapid eye movement (REM) can be recorded while he's sleeping, indicating that he is dreaming.

Months 5-6: He now weighs about one pound and is a foot long. If he is born now, he would have a 50% chance of surving with the help of dedicated doctors and nurses.

Months 7-8: He can open and close his eyes and recognizes his mom's voice. His weight continues to increase and "baby fat" fills out and smoothes his skin. If he is born now, his chance of surving increases to 90%.

Month 9: When he is ready to be born, he will release hormones to trigger labor. He may weigh between 7 and 9 pounds, and can be between 18 and 21 inches long!

Amy, what's your definition of "fully funtioning"?

Born, living and breathing on its own.

so what about the people on breathing machines or people like Terri Schiavo? - www.terrisfight.org

do these people deserve the chance to live?

amy, it's nothing of your own doing that you're a fully functioning human being. just as they have, as you put it, the potential to be human, we all have the potential to become anything less. a car accident or any range of experiences could put any one of us on your "non-human" roll at any moment.

maybe your mom is/was your best friend or maybe she made your life a living hell, but, the fact is, she made a choice. her choice was a gift - her choice let you live. and that's something to be grateful for. doesn't everyone deserve the same?

I'm pro-abortion, not because I support a woman's right to choose, but because I love the taste of the brains that spill out onto the operating table after the surgeon plunges the scissors into the baby's skull.

YUM!! Baked beans!!

"Born" is nothing more than a change of location, "living" clearly occurs inside the womb, and "breathing on its own" isn't a solid criteria since many babies aren't breathing immediately after birth, yet they are resuscitated and go on to do just fine. To follow that logic, it should be legal for a child to be killed or allowed to die up to a few minutes after being completely born as long as it wasn't breathing yet. For that matter, why do we resuscitate anybody who stops breathing since they have stopped being human? You say a fetus isn't human, but has the potential to become a human. What is it before that? What is it that the baby morphs from to become human in the short time it takes to travel down the birth canal? By the time most of these babies are aborted in partial birth procedures, they are fully developed and undeniably human.

Tami knows more than neurologists, apparently, because she saw something on TV that looked like a vegetable smiling at its mother. Those were reflexes, darling. Because they look like the emotions of a cognizant human being to the mystically oriented religious fanatic doesn't make them so.

Deo up there is right. Those "pro-lifers" are "pro-life" until the little dark-skinned baby is born, then it's yank away any kind of support, thank you very much. Why don't we call them "pro-birth" instead? Seems more accurate.

When the thing can function, Dave, without the mother or other support, it's a person. Before then it's a potential person. I don't think most people wait until month nine to have an abortion. Moreover, if the fundamentalists running the country weren't so successful at denying funding for anything but dumbass abstinence education ("how to get fundamentalist teenagers to have sex without a condom," it should be called) maybe we could educate people to take preventive measures that don't involve a sperm partying inside an egg. Duh.

so, if you get in a car accident and have to rely on "other support" to live, i'll be sure to tell the doctors that you said yourself that you are not a person anymore. even if you can go on to live, you're not a person anymore because you need "other support" to live. i have a friend who has a little brother who has down syndrome. he is 20 years old, but acts like a one year old. you are saying that it would have been okay to kill him, but i bet he would disagree. if the babies could talk, i'm sure that none of them would want to die. what about those people who live past when the doctors say that they should die. why should we take their outcome as fact, they are not all knowing and are also sometimes wrong. don't blindly believe them, think for yourself. Pro-choice is only letting one have the choice. there are two other people who should be able to choose... the baby and the father. the baby is half his, why can't he have any say in the matter. because you don't want to inconvience yourself for nine months, don't be so selfish. nine months means a lifetime for someone else. if you can't support a child, practice self control. and what's so wrong with abstinence? are you saying that you can't wait until you get married to have sex, ummm are you an animal? it is very possible to wait. why is it okay to pass out condoms in school, but you can't pass out aspirin?!?! something is very wrong here. i don't want my rights taken away either, but you know what, somethings are here for our protection. we have many rules put upon us and we don't say a word... what if i want to steal something, or kill someone, it's my right to do so, but ahhh, i am not allowed to. it is for my protection, just as banning abortion is for the protection of the BABY inside the woman. i guess it can all be summed up as this, if you can't do the time, don't do the crime. if you can't support a child, don't have sex! and no, i'm not saying that sex is a crime amy, so don't even go there.

there's an old adage: "a man's right to wave his arm ends at the next man's nose." i'll correlate it for you. it's your body so, yes, you have a right to do what you want with it, but when you begin making choices that effect others (ie - your "fetus") it is no longer your choice alone.

ur all crazy

ur all crazy