Sadly I’m not sure that we can do that in this country right now, in the fervour of an election year party where past debates on s59, Civil Unions and Prostitution Reform have already spiked the punch of many Christian fundamentalists. This High Court decision will give groups like Right to Life and Family First the impression that their moral outrage is justified, when actually it’s sexist, factually dubious and frequently ignores the real consequences of outlawing abortion. I can already imagine the offensive placards, the pictures of fetuses being emailed to MPs, the harassment women will face outside abortion clinics, the abuse of all those innocent statistics, and the cyber-squatting aimed at those who express their support for a woman’s right to choose. A respectful debate seems unlikely.
I don’t think the medical profession is greedy (see below though).
MacDoctor,
Thanks for sharing your experience/insight. Combine ideology with the chance to make six figures pushing that ideology (I think there were 10 or 12 who made $100k or more in 2005 or 2006) and it’s not a bad gig if you can get it.
MacDoctor: “Money is certainly A motive (doctors are motivated by money just like everyone else!)”
Yes, of course.
“The vast majority of doctors who are willing to get involved in abortion assessments are extremely pro-choice and believers in abortion-on-demand to a man (or woman).”
Commodification of specialist services does have this effect. It makes sense – just like the fact that tax accountants tend to believe in a person’s moral right to minimise their tax liability by legal means. Why would a pro-life doctor want to be involved in performing abortions?
I can see potential value in a diversity of opinion in this field, though I’m not sure how such diversity could be promoted without some sort of compulsion.
Sam: “It’s not about women’s rights, It’s about the right of the child inside her, to live.”
You haven’t actually read the rest of the thread, have you?
Scribe: “Combine ideology with the chance to make six figures pushing that ideology (I think there were 10 or 12 who made $100k or more in 2005 or 2006) and it’s not a bad gig if you can get it.”
Indeed; getting paid well to do something you believe in is great. But it says nothing about the quality of a person’s work.
One of the outcomes of this Miller judgement is likely to be closer official scrutiny of the Abortion Supervisory Committee, and in turn closer scrutiny by the ASC of practitioners. This should weed out rogue abortionists.
One of the outcomes of this Miller judgement is likely to be closer official scrutiny of the Abortion Supervisory Committee, and in turn closer scrutiny by the ASC of practitioners. This should weed out rogue abortionists.
I hope you’re right. I hope it also weeds out a HUGE conflict of interest — an abortionist sitting on the ASC.
Scribe: “I hope it also weeds out a HUGE conflict of interest — an abortionist sitting on the ASC.”
Since the ASC is appointed by Parliament, this seems unlikely unless Dr Fenwicke can be shown to have acted unlawfully. But there is no case to restrict abortion practitioners from serving on the ASC given appropriate credentials, unless you are suggesting that anyone with professional interests in a field be barred from serving in a regulatory or governance capacity in that field, which would significantly drain the talent pool.
Oh FFS ‘sod! WTF did you have to go and get yourself banned for a week when you were the only other person here perceptive enough to spot the creepy similarity between Dumb Ox’s pro-life monologues and the Intelligent Design debate.
It’s become a familiar “modus operandi” which I have learned (much to my own detriment during the Section59 debate last year) it is pointless to engage with. And it’s not like I can even apply one of my fave old “Don’t argue with a pig cos you only end up covered in shit and the pig enjoys it” quips to other barnyard animals males like this because of the way they devalue real (fully developed cognitive adult) human experiences is like from some parallel holier-than-thou universe where you can’t even picture what colour the sky is in that world.
But you will know them by the fact that they suddenly turn up as a fanatically verbose enthusiastic new commentator to a blog where one of their fundie soapbox topics is at the fore, presenting themself as the “gentle voice of moderate compassionate reason”, craftily avoiding use of the “G” word their arguments, and then proceed to plant themself centre stage into the thread by meticulously breaking down every single sodding sentence of anothers opposing viewpoints (and always with quotes – ZOMG don’t you just want to SCREAM OUR LOUD when you see people presenting their counter-arguments in that format ARRGGGHHH!!!!) in some way that eventually makes those of differing opinions want to give up – but NOT because they have actually been persuaded by the evangelistic browbeating eloquently composed argument to mentally shift to a more “enlightened” position on the matter.
It’s a style that is not even sophisticated enough to warrant being called “fisking”, although Lew’s effort to debunk one of Ox’s more recent monologues certainly was worthy of the title. Good on ya for the effort Lew, and good on ya for actually being willing to introduce some REAL personal experience from your own life into your argument, but honestly I don’t think these kinds of evangelising trolls are worthy of oxygen let alone a civil response to their faux-fisking endeavours…. well yanno, unless you are really seriously bored and the kinda person who thinks the Pythons “Argument Sketch” is the funniest piece of comedy ever.
Ultimately tho, what it comes down to for me is that these kinds of mass-debating males are just plain fucking spineless and insulting.
Spineless….
Because, as ‘sod so accurately pointed out above, do you think we are idiots Dumb Ox for not recognising you as a true believer who has “god on his side” just because you don’t actually USE the “G” word????
Oh give me a fuckin break mate! Your every sentence reeks of evangelising godly righteousness and “blessed are the little zygotes” so why don’t you have the male reproductive organs to front up and actually declare your personal agenda?
At least I had the “nuts” to front up with facts about my real personal history and declare my personal interest in this subject – which is my right to control my own female reproductive organs and my own timing of when (or IF) I decide to spawn a little mini-me onto the planet.
So what’s YOUR real personal interest – what’s honestly motivating your dogged verbosity? To reframe the debate to make a case for “murder”, thus superseding the entire issue of women controlling their own reproduction – cos god forbid you might have to actually engage in a debate with one of us if that was the case. ZOMG!
Otherwise you better show some genuine sign that your “love for life” extends to all the other “creatures great and small” on this planet who are being denied THEIR right to life because of the over-populating of the planet with even more unwanted homo sapiens…. or, yanno…. I’m gonna feel like strapping you inna chair with your eyes pinned open a-la-Clockwork Orange and force you to watch the PETA video “Earthlings” for 48 hours.
Insulting….
Because there are REAL human females here who have made it known that they are in the audience – many of whom I know from other blogs who have had their own experiences of zygotes and here are you preaching in front of us like we do not even exist in this conversation or know anything about our own damned bodies and what happens/happened to them during our pregnancy(s) like you are some goddamned amateur gynaecologist.
Well here’s a newsflash you and your faceless statistical no-choice supporting theories…
The ONLY damage that happened to me as a result of my abortion was the mental torture that I was put through by pompous pricks like YOU (some of them actually REAL gynaecologists) who tried to manipulate me (by similar methods to how you argue above) to feel like I was a murdering whore, and made me jump through hoops for my right to SAFELY terminate an unwanted pregnancy that I otherwise would have chosen to terminate with a knitting needle or other such back-alley method.
The ONLY emotion that I felt (despite what you and your be-testicled ilk fantasise were all the “wondrous feelings of new creation unfolding inside the blooming garden of eden that is my uterus”) was revulsion, and when subjected to my 10-wk ultrasound (as a form of guilt therapy my moralising prick of a gynaecologist) I had no more sense of maternal connection to what I was looking at on the screen than if I was looking at the kirlian photograph of a mung bean sprout.
The ONLY depression I felt after the abortion was the despair at how I was treated because I made a decision that was the best thing for me to do in the crazy mess that was my life back then, and all the sniggering shaming crap from workmates who speculated about the reason for my sick leave, and then still at the end of it all having to deal with the state of my life that made a pregnancy totally infeasible at that time exhausted and ALONE.
So how DARE you be such a patronising preaching prick here in a mixed gender audience with all this THEORETICAL (cos if you haven’t experienced this inside your own damned body then that’s all it is) blathering about what happens in MY body and the risks of MY choices like I am some fucking faceless statistic who doesn’t count in your view of the world because I am only a fucking rented UTERUS to you.
You can’t even bring yourself to address any of the women who were open to participating in this discussion as if they are anything more than that either. So yeh… spineless and insulting is what you are Dumb Ox (and a few other things that I would probably get a holiday with ‘sod for mentioning too).
Puhleeeeease just piss off and go give birth to your own preaching patriarchal soapbox blog so we can have some feminist-focussed discussion… which, after all, was the point of getting a woman guest blogger to introduce the subject wasn’t it FFS?
My concern with Dr Fenwicke is that she is responsible for making decisions on payments etc. If I was on the board of my company, I think I know how I’d vote on any mooted pay increases. Well, I don’t actually, but can you see the potential problem?
Gary Oldman (Sheldon/Shelly Runyon in the film) plays the right-wing houlier-than-thou perfectly. Kinda reminds me of some of the commentators on this thread.
The movie itself is pretty cheesy and patronising but Oldman’s performance is gold.
Sheesh this is a hard thread to keep up with when you are a lady with a baby (not to mention another blog to run)!
Z you are an inspiration, not only are you right you are witty too
I wanted to particularly express my agreement with your point about
your 10 week ultrasound experience. I had a scan at 8 weeks and certainly it looked like an it, not a he/she human. Besides which is appearance really the benchmark for humanity? In which case what about those lifelike sex dolls, just to give an absurd example.
Miles back somebody asked me when life began. I don’t know. I don’t even pretend to know. But Deborah has a great post on this part of the debate so I’m going to tap to her (this is one of the great things about being on team blog!): http://thehandmirror.blogspot.com/2008/06/speaking-up-for-abortion.html
As for miscarriage, I assume you are speaking from experience when you (sorry can’t remember who) said reference to it weakened my argument and that what was miscarried, and maybe grieved for, was a life? No? Perhaps come back when you have then sweetie, because I can tell you that it is possible to grieve for something that is not a life. You grieve for the lost potential, and that is entirely commensurate with my argument.
Alrighty, not sure I’ll be able to get back to this thread, which seems to be winding down anyway. Just wanted to finish by saying thanks to the team at The Standard again for the chance to guest post here and thanks to all for a reasonably civilised debate (extra thanks to lprent for hovering overhead and keeping it so!).
As a general proposition, I am pro-choice, however I differ about the point at which the choice is made. If a woman consents to sex, then becomes pregnant, she chose to do something which has as a natural consequence, pregnancy.
If she is raped, her choice has been removed, so in that situation balancing her interests against those of the unborn child,an abortion should be an option.
Unfortunately our society’s lack of value for children and mothering means that a woman’s interests and an unborn child’s interests may be at odds.
I have read a moving tale of a woman having an illegal abortion in the 1950s which appeared in the report of the Royal Commisission in the 1970s. Fortunately the stigma she would have suffered from continuing with the pregnancy no longer exists.
The tale of an unborn child being removed from a womb and denied life is also a sad tale. And one that can never be told by the victim.
I am as big a ‘lefty’ as any of you guys, and am spending as much time as possible working to help get Labour re-elected. But I have never been able to get my head around the way the left turns its back on some of the most vulnerable in our society, the unborn. And how if you speak up for the unborn, you risk being villified by the left.
Hillary thanks for charging in without reading the thread, when really this argument was pretty much over (well that’s my perception anyway).
I think your stance would be more accurately labelled pro-life not pro-choice. Language is one of the major battlegrounds in the debate about access to abortion, in my humble opinion, so to claim you are pro-choice when you are in fact pro-life is disingenuous at best. Anyway, up to you what you call yourself of course, just saying.
Speaking of language, interesting to me that a number of pro-life commenters, here and elsewhere, have now claimed they will be “villified” for expressing their pro-life views. Is that the recommended word in the handbook or something? I suggest a thesaurus folks.
Hillary talks about an ‘unborn child’. A fetus is not a child. Dividing cells don’t qualify as a ‘child’ either. A fetus is not self-aware, has no conscious thought. It is an it. That sounds harsh but its science. This applies equally if a women has had consensual sex or been subject to rape. That sounds harsh as well but its a fact.
Late term abortions are another matter and should require the opinion and consent of medical professionals in such cases.
Next point a women?s body is her own, her own private property. What she chooses to do with it is her own business no one else?s. Wombs are not the property of the state/community.
Lastly, if you would excuse me I would like to borrow from you a bit Hillary, I am a centre righty and am spending as much time as possible working to help get Labour out of office but I have never been able to get my head around how the religious/ conservative right turns its back on our ever vulnerable individual rights when it comes to women and abortion and if you speak up for it you risk being vilified for doing so.
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Lew,
I don’t think the medical profession is greedy (see below though).
MacDoctor,
Thanks for sharing your experience/insight. Combine ideology with the chance to make six figures pushing that ideology (I think there were 10 or 12 who made $100k or more in 2005 or 2006) and it’s not a bad gig if you can get it.
MacDoctor: “Money is certainly A motive (doctors are motivated by money just like everyone else!)”
Yes, of course.
“The vast majority of doctors who are willing to get involved in abortion assessments are extremely pro-choice and believers in abortion-on-demand to a man (or woman).”
Commodification of specialist services does have this effect. It makes sense – just like the fact that tax accountants tend to believe in a person’s moral right to minimise their tax liability by legal means. Why would a pro-life doctor want to be involved in performing abortions?
I can see potential value in a diversity of opinion in this field, though I’m not sure how such diversity could be promoted without some sort of compulsion.
Sam: “It’s not about women’s rights, It’s about the right of the child inside her, to live.”
You haven’t actually read the rest of the thread, have you?
Scribe: “Combine ideology with the chance to make six figures pushing that ideology (I think there were 10 or 12 who made $100k or more in 2005 or 2006) and it’s not a bad gig if you can get it.”
Indeed; getting paid well to do something you believe in is great. But it says nothing about the quality of a person’s work.
One of the outcomes of this Miller judgement is likely to be closer official scrutiny of the Abortion Supervisory Committee, and in turn closer scrutiny by the ASC of practitioners. This should weed out rogue abortionists.
L
Lew,
One of the outcomes of this Miller judgement is likely to be closer official scrutiny of the Abortion Supervisory Committee, and in turn closer scrutiny by the ASC of practitioners. This should weed out rogue abortionists.
I hope you’re right. I hope it also weeds out a HUGE conflict of interest — an abortionist sitting on the ASC.
Scribe: “I hope it also weeds out a HUGE conflict of interest — an abortionist sitting on the ASC.”
Since the ASC is appointed by Parliament, this seems unlikely unless Dr Fenwicke can be shown to have acted unlawfully. But there is no case to restrict abortion practitioners from serving on the ASC given appropriate credentials, unless you are suggesting that anyone with professional interests in a field be barred from serving in a regulatory or governance capacity in that field, which would significantly drain the talent pool.
L
Oh FFS ‘sod! WTF did you have to go and get yourself banned for a week when you were the only other person here perceptive enough to spot the creepy similarity between Dumb Ox’s pro-life monologues and the Intelligent Design debate.
It’s become a familiar “modus operandi” which I have learned (much to my own detriment during the Section59 debate last year) it is pointless to engage with. And it’s not like I can even apply one of my fave old “Don’t argue with a pig cos you only end up covered in shit and the pig enjoys it” quips to
other barnyard animalsmales like this because of the way they devalue real (fully developed cognitive adult) human experiences is like from some parallel holier-than-thou universe where you can’t even picture what colour the sky is in that world.But you will know them by the fact that they suddenly turn up as a
fanatically verboseenthusiastic new commentator to a blog where one of their fundie soapbox topics is at the fore, presenting themself as the “gentle voice of moderate compassionate reason”, craftily avoiding use of the “G” word their arguments, and then proceed to plant themself centre stage into the thread by meticulously breaking down every single sodding sentence of anothers opposing viewpoints (and always with quotes – ZOMG don’t you just want to SCREAM OUR LOUD when you see people presenting their counter-arguments in that format ARRGGGHHH!!!!) in some way that eventually makes those of differing opinions want to give up – but NOT because they have actually been persuaded by theevangelistic browbeatingeloquently composed argument to mentally shift to a more “enlightened” position on the matter.It’s a style that is not even sophisticated enough to warrant being called “fisking”, although Lew’s effort to debunk one of Ox’s more recent monologues certainly was worthy of the title. Good on ya for the effort Lew, and good on ya for actually being willing to introduce some REAL personal experience from your own life into your argument, but honestly I don’t think these kinds of evangelising trolls are worthy of oxygen let alone a civil response to their faux-fisking endeavours…. well yanno, unless you are really seriously bored and the kinda person who thinks the Pythons “Argument Sketch” is the funniest piece of comedy ever.
Ultimately tho, what it comes down to for me is that these kinds of mass-debating males are just plain fucking spineless and insulting.
Spineless….
Because, as ‘sod so accurately pointed out above, do you think we are idiots Dumb Ox for not recognising you as a true believer who has “god on his side” just because you don’t actually USE the “G” word????
Oh give me a fuckin break mate! Your every sentence reeks of evangelising godly righteousness and “blessed are the little zygotes” so why don’t you have the male reproductive organs to front up and actually declare your personal agenda?
At least I had the “nuts” to front up with facts about my real personal history and declare my personal interest in this subject – which is my right to control my own female reproductive organs and my own timing of when (or IF) I decide to spawn a little mini-me onto the planet.
So what’s YOUR real personal interest – what’s honestly motivating your dogged verbosity? To reframe the debate to make a case for “murder”, thus superseding the entire issue of women controlling their own reproduction – cos god forbid you might have to actually engage in a debate with one of us if that was the case. ZOMG!
Otherwise you better show some genuine sign that your “love for life” extends to all the other “creatures great and small” on this planet who are being denied THEIR right to life because of the over-populating of the planet with even more unwanted homo sapiens…. or, yanno…. I’m gonna feel like strapping you inna chair with your eyes pinned open a-la-Clockwork Orange and force you to watch the PETA video “Earthlings” for 48 hours.
Insulting….
Because there are REAL human females here who have made it known that they are in the audience – many of whom I know from other blogs who have had their own experiences of zygotes and here are you preaching in front of us like we do not even exist in this conversation or know anything about our own damned bodies and what happens/happened to them during our pregnancy(s) like you are some goddamned amateur gynaecologist.
Well here’s a newsflash you and your faceless statistical no-choice supporting theories…
The ONLY damage that happened to me as a result of my abortion was the mental torture that I was put through by pompous pricks like YOU (some of them actually REAL gynaecologists) who tried to manipulate me (by similar methods to how you argue above) to feel like I was a murdering whore, and made me jump through hoops for my right to SAFELY terminate an unwanted pregnancy that I otherwise would have chosen to terminate with a knitting needle or other such back-alley method.
The ONLY emotion that I felt (despite what you and your be-testicled ilk fantasise were all the “wondrous feelings of new creation unfolding inside the blooming garden of eden that is my uterus”) was revulsion, and when subjected to my 10-wk ultrasound (as a form of guilt therapy my moralising prick of a gynaecologist) I had no more sense of maternal connection to what I was looking at on the screen than if I was looking at the kirlian photograph of a mung bean sprout.
The ONLY depression I felt after the abortion was the despair at how I was treated because I made a decision that was the best thing for me to do in the crazy mess that was my life back then, and all the sniggering shaming crap from workmates who speculated about the reason for my sick leave, and then still at the end of it all having to deal with the state of my life that made a pregnancy totally infeasible at that time exhausted and ALONE.
So how DARE you be such a patronising preaching prick here in a mixed gender audience with all this THEORETICAL (cos if you haven’t experienced this inside your own damned body then that’s all it is) blathering about what happens in MY body and the risks of MY choices like I am some fucking faceless statistic who doesn’t count in your view of the world because I am only a fucking rented UTERUS to you.
You can’t even bring yourself to address any of the women who were open to participating in this discussion as if they are anything more than that either. So yeh… spineless and insulting is what you are Dumb Ox (and a few other things that I would probably get a holiday with ‘sod for mentioning too).
Puhleeeeease just piss off and go give birth to your own preaching patriarchal soapbox blog so we can have some feminist-focussed discussion… which, after all, was the point of getting a woman guest blogger to introduce the subject wasn’t it FFS?
zANavAShi: Thank you.
L
Lew,
Thanks for continuing the good fight, personally I find you perseverance amazing.
Oh, and what zANavAShi said.
Lew,
My concern with Dr Fenwicke is that she is responsible for making decisions on payments etc. If I was on the board of my company, I think I know how I’d vote on any mooted pay increases. Well, I don’t actually, but can you see the potential problem?
zANavAShi,
I don’t know where to begin, so I won’t.
Anyone seen the movie The Contender?
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0208874/
Gary Oldman (Sheldon/Shelly Runyon in the film) plays the right-wing houlier-than-thou perfectly. Kinda reminds me of some of the commentators on this thread.
The movie itself is pretty cheesy and patronising but Oldman’s performance is gold.
Bravo zANavAShi, I couldn’t agree more!
Sheesh this is a hard thread to keep up with when you are a lady with a baby (not to mention another blog to run)!
Z you are an inspiration, not only are you right you are witty too
I wanted to particularly express my agreement with your point about
your 10 week ultrasound experience. I had a scan at 8 weeks and certainly it looked like an it, not a he/she human. Besides which is appearance really the benchmark for humanity? In which case what about those lifelike sex dolls, just to give an absurd example.
Miles back somebody asked me when life began. I don’t know. I don’t even pretend to know. But Deborah has a great post on this part of the debate so I’m going to tap to her (this is one of the great things about being on team blog!):
http://thehandmirror.blogspot.com/2008/06/speaking-up-for-abortion.html
As for miscarriage, I assume you are speaking from experience when you (sorry can’t remember who) said reference to it weakened my argument and that what was miscarried, and maybe grieved for, was a life? No? Perhaps come back when you have then sweetie, because I can tell you that it is possible to grieve for something that is not a life. You grieve for the lost potential, and that is entirely commensurate with my argument.
I acknowledge that there is no “agree to disagree” when debating abortion. For that reason I’d encourage those who are holding up the pro-life banner to consider the realities of a world without safe and legal abortion on demand. And to that end I’m going to shamelessly self-promote:
http://thehandmirror.blogspot.com/2008/06/lets-get-practical.html
and shamelessly friend-promote too:
http://thehandmirror.blogspot.com/2008/06/being-catholic-and-being-feminist.html
Alrighty, not sure I’ll be able to get back to this thread, which seems to be winding down anyway. Just wanted to finish by saying thanks to the team at The Standard again for the chance to guest post here and thanks to all for a reasonably civilised debate (extra thanks to lprent for hovering overhead and keeping it so!).
As a general proposition, I am pro-choice, however I differ about the point at which the choice is made. If a woman consents to sex, then becomes pregnant, she chose to do something which has as a natural consequence, pregnancy.
If she is raped, her choice has been removed, so in that situation balancing her interests against those of the unborn child,an abortion should be an option.
Unfortunately our society’s lack of value for children and mothering means that a woman’s interests and an unborn child’s interests may be at odds.
I have read a moving tale of a woman having an illegal abortion in the 1950s which appeared in the report of the Royal Commisission in the 1970s. Fortunately the stigma she would have suffered from continuing with the pregnancy no longer exists.
The tale of an unborn child being removed from a womb and denied life is also a sad tale. And one that can never be told by the victim.
I am as big a ‘lefty’ as any of you guys, and am spending as much time as possible working to help get Labour re-elected. But I have never been able to get my head around the way the left turns its back on some of the most vulnerable in our society, the unborn. And how if you speak up for the unborn, you risk being villified by the left.
Hillary thanks for charging in without reading the thread, when really this argument was pretty much over (well that’s my perception anyway).
I think your stance would be more accurately labelled pro-life not pro-choice. Language is one of the major battlegrounds in the debate about access to abortion, in my humble opinion, so to claim you are pro-choice when you are in fact pro-life is disingenuous at best. Anyway, up to you what you call yourself of course, just saying.
Speaking of language, interesting to me that a number of pro-life commenters, here and elsewhere, have now claimed they will be “villified” for expressing their pro-life views. Is that the recommended word in the handbook or something? I suggest a thesaurus folks.
Hillary talks about an ‘unborn child’. A fetus is not a child. Dividing cells don’t qualify as a ‘child’ either. A fetus is not self-aware, has no conscious thought. It is an it. That sounds harsh but its science. This applies equally if a women has had consensual sex or been subject to rape. That sounds harsh as well but its a fact.
Late term abortions are another matter and should require the opinion and consent of medical professionals in such cases.
Next point a women?s body is her own, her own private property. What she chooses to do with it is her own business no one else?s. Wombs are not the property of the state/community.
Lastly, if you would excuse me I would like to borrow from you a bit Hillary, I am a centre righty and am spending as much time as possible working to help get Labour out of office but I have never been able to get my head around how the religious/ conservative right turns its back on our ever vulnerable individual rights when it comes to women and abortion and if you speak up for it you risk being vilified for doing so.
Late in the threat but wow zANavAShi, woman I love you and the way you write
A question to the Dumb ox (such a fitting name)
Where do you stand on the war in Afghanistan?