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Friday, April 28, 2006

Blog Roundup - Bodily integrity, et al.

This one comes via LTI Blog via Jivin J: Git yer damn hands off my body, philosophically speaking

The argument the posting blogger is putting forth is nothing new. But one of the comments, by Paul W. is provocative:
My position is this: if a fetus is a person, the right of a woman to voluntarily get pregnant and her right to not give birth can’t both be absolute—or at least, she can’t have a very general, entirely absolute right to control of her own body that includes those things and other similar things.

Here’s the thought experiment: suppose that a woman could get pregnant, and stay pregnant indefinitely, while the fetus inside her did develop into an actual person. Perhaps a physically dwarfed person, the size of a baby, but developing the basic kinds of cognition and emotions that children and adults have.

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Suppose this physically dwarfed, stunted person lives in its mother’s belly for decades, fully aware of who it is and where it is—it is trapped in its mother’s belly. Suppose it wants to get out and live something like a normal life, but she won’t let it. She says “it’s my vagina, and I don’t have to let you through it.”

Suppose, even, that the woman chooses to do all of this on purpose, because she likes the idea of having a helpless small person stuck inside her body for its entire life. She lives to a ripe old age of 90, at which time the person inside her has lived a full 70 years of fully aware helpless misery—and then she dies and her 70-year-old “child” dies with her—because right up to the end, it’s her body and that’s how she wants it.

In that scenario, the child is the mother’s slave—its bodily autonomy is overridden by her rights, and it lives a miserable existence its entire life at her whim.

Supposing a woman had the ability to do that, would she really have the right to?

I really don’t think so. You do not have a right to voluntarily create a person and then refuse to grant that person human rights, to the point of creating a helpless slave and keeping it in that situation indefinitely.


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Again, thanks to Jivin J, I've been alerted to a great post by The Raving Atheist, CPCs and JFJs
Rep. Maloney couldn't round up any of the countless victims of CPC trickery for her press conference announcing the legislation. Apparently the ones who escaped with their lives were all busy at home abusing their unwanted, crib-bound future felons. That, or all the NARAL volunteers who had their sensibilities offended while pretending to be pregnant in prank phone calls to CPCS were in the middle of midterms.

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Maloney's site still boasts the ACLU's backing. At this point, however, that information may be a little untruthful and inaccurate. The endorsement apparently wasn't vetted by the organization's full board, and looks to have been withdrawn after an outcry by civil libertarians.

But you're allowed to be untruthful and inaccurate if you have all the best of intentions, i.e. if you are supporting the abortion lobby.

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The Evil CPC post is still making its way around, though it belongs on an Urban Legends site. Planned Parenthood is behind the story, and, just as a reminder of what PP does not consider worth bothering about, let's remember the women and girls who died because they trusted Planned Parenthood. Go here to remind Snopes that this is one story that needs to be investigated. If the story is true, PP supporters will be vindicated, and prolifers will crack down on the CPC in question. If it's false, maybe prochoicers ought to crack down on PP for lying.

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charm1ne brings a great collection of quotes by Mother Teresa. Some of the best:
"The greatest destroyer of peace is abortion because if a mother can kill her own child, what is left for me to kill you and you to kill me? There is nothing between."

"We are all pencils in the hand of God."

"Do not wait for leaders; do it alone, person to person."

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Sprucegoose lets us know that Minnesota may end public funding of abortions. Public funding of elective abortions is linked with a higher rate of complications for abortion complications in Medicaid-eligible women.

This is straight from a study from the Centers for Disease Control. They were hoping to find a rash of amateur-abortion hospitalizations and deaths:
We found no significant change in the number and proportion of publicly funded hospitalizations for complications of illegal or spontaneous abortions, but we did find a marked decrease in publicly funded hospitalizations for complications of legal abortions, from 19 (38%) to 2 (6%). (Centers for Disease Control Abortion Surveillance, 1978)

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Here's a good one, from somebody who is admittedly pro-abortion: Abortion, Hubris, and Moral Trust.

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Mary over at Abortion in Washington has a great post on Your Friendly Neighborhood EC Certified Provider. There's way too much to duplicate here. Go read it!

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