NEWS: And So Shines a Good Deed in a Weary World

CULTURE: And So Shines a Good Deed in a Weary World

When does life begin: with the chicken, or the egg?

A judge in New Jersey has a moment of sanity.

I am sorry for the woman in the case, and if her doctor actually said to her "don't be stupid" her doctor is an asshole. But it is up to her, not her doctor--and sure as shit not a judge--to decide if a six-week old fetus is a "baby" or not.

As it should be for every pregnant woman at every stage of pregnancy.

Bitch_PhD nominates Justice Albin for the SCOTUS.

Good call.

There was a starfish
Then there was five
She thought she did good
Coming from arkansas

Militant pro-lifer
Killing a soul
Who just wanted
To give a starfish

To her grandma
To her father
To her cousin
And her best friend
To her mother

You are bad, you are bad, you are bad
Were the words she heard
Those were the words she'll remember
About their trip to jamaica

So, what you gonna do
With that pro-lifer
There was a starfish
Then there was five

You were right, you were right, you were right
We all know you were so right, you were so right
It doesn't matter
'Cause she doesn't know why not

Kill more starfish
Kill more starfish
Kill more starfish
Kill more starfish
Kill more starfish

- Lisa Germano ("Starfish")

Yeah I'll decide for ya the "fetus" is a "baby" assholes.

Each individual person shouldn't be allowed to decide for themselves whether their unborn "baby" is a child or a thing. That should have a fucking definition. Stop walking around on eggshells and make up your goddamn minds! If you're gonna kill a fetus at least let the world know if you're killing a human or a "thing". Jesus.

It's funny because most of my friends who got pregnant decided that thier fetus was definatley a life, and they have become a little more pro-lifey (although none of my friends are actually pro-life, they started saying "oh women should have that choice, but I would NEVER do it) whereas when I got pregnant I really went the opposite direction. I really feel like a fetus that could not survive outside the mothers womb is more like a body organ that a person. The potential for life rather than actual life. I definatley became more pro-choicey. Its funny how people have no concept of the very unique individual aspects of pregnancy and think they should be able stick every woman in the same tidy little group.. It only gets worse after you actually have the baby, but thats a whole diffrent tangent, don't even get me started...

And therein lies the problem.

+ a billion

man, how did people answer unanswerable questions before assholes came along?

This news makes me so happy!

sorry, double post

I expect my doctor to be able to answer all of my philsophical inquiries for me, otherwise I plan to sue them for malpractice.

I always figured I'd be more apt to go with the pro-choice crowd if the Gov't didn't always charge someone with a double homicide for killing a pregnant woman and her unborn 6 week old fetus/child.

I'm not defending the murderers at all, but an old friend of mine was a huge advocate of pro-choice, and would be the first to shout "fry the bastard" in the case of a double homicide like I described above. I called her on it one day and all that she could come up with is that I was defending a murderer.

The question of "when does life begin" is, itself, the wrong question.

Life doesn't end or begin when a sperm and an egg combine to form a zygote. A sperm and an egg are alive as well, they're just the haploid phase of the human life cycle. Since the vast majority of our lives are spent in the diploid phase, in our typical egoism we just assume that any other way of being alive isn't being alive at all. Other organisms divide their time more equally in haploid, diploid and sometimes even tetraploid phases of life - for those types of organisms, suggesting that it is only "alive" in one of those phases would seem ridiculous.

A better questions is: can we draw a consensus as to when it is and is not acceptable for a mother to terminate her pregnancy? At least that doesn't pussyfoot around what is clearly an ethical issue by somehow clouding it in mysticism and claiming that science and philosophy are insufficient to answer it.

Do me a favor, write something coherent before you decide for me.

its funny because there is this kind of hypocrisy from both sides of the issue. i always like to callout "pro-lifers" who support the war in Iraq and the death penalty. i babble about this for pages, but i wont

haha. sweet. are these the same 'pro-lifers' who eat other living beings? 'Great table topic dear', said the pro-lifer to his wife, 'now could you please pass the chicken'...

gee, that's an inaccurate oversimplification. whatever your standpoint on abortion and when life begins, this dr's behavior was unacceptable. medical professionals have a responsibility to explain procedures and the effects thereof to their patients in full so they know what they're agreeing to and paying for. he didn't do that. and her question was not philosophical, she asked whether the fetus was in existence or not and his response was not only uninformative but rude. and to top it all off, he performed the procedure incorrectly and caused complications that required her to have a second procedure. he absolutely deserved to be sued for malpractice.

+1 and before anyone decides to attack me, i have both delivered a child and terminated a pregnancy, in that order, so retract your claws. i think the whole "is a fetus a human being" debate is a way for both sides of the abortion debate to cloud the issue. pro-choicers use it to downplay the seriousness of abortion and try to put it on the same level as say, a heart transplant. pro-lifers take it to the other extreme and try to equate abortion with wanton murder. having an abortion is a grave decision and shouldn't be taken lightly whether you feel a fetus is a life or not. the question shouldn't be "am i ending a life?" it should be "am i doing this for the right reasons? "

hmmmmm
think i'll go play video games.
i want nothing to do with another abortion discussion.

I liked the title.

You know you murder millions of innocent lives every time you clean your toilet or wipe your kitchen top?

Bitch_Phd said:

So the decision is left up to someone who 'believes' that her 6 to 7 week old embryo (yes), "is just blood"?

Sure sounds "stoopid" to me (doctor and woman).

These are technical issues.

Not moral or philosophical issues.
This is where the USA gets it wrong. Define technical limits, times etc. and everyone reads from the same page.

So using your logic, I can have sex (legally) with a 12 year old girl as "she can decide" - it is her body.

Make abortion a technical issue (like it should be, it is a medical procedure). In Australia, women have their last normal scan and amnioscentesis around 18 weeks, so an abortion can be done before 20 weeks (which is the time when a delivery is a recordable birth).

Everyone knows what the limit is and helps with choices.

We can't help with the choice of stupidity by the doctor or woman in this case.

And yet it was almost as long as the article.

You do realize that when the U.S. government does that, it's specifically because they're trying to get a fetus defined as a person so they can work anti-abortion legislation in through the back door, right?

Anyway, it's easy enough: just define murder or assault of a pregnant woman as a distinct crime, requiring (if you wish) extra jail time.

I disagree. I believe, instead, it should be up to science. Its wonderfully empirical and impartial nature is more capable a judge than any person is in their own case.

You are quite right, though. If the doctor said any of those things, he is "an asshole."