but would you carry it to term for 9 months as the kid used every function of your body for its own personal life support?

didn't think so.

when the demand for "transparency" comes from the most secretive administration since Nixon, it's hard to take it as anything more than a cheap attempt than to mine for excuses to support bush's non-science based intrusion into medicine.

it's not an innocent request for data. when other medical disciplines release data, it's for the purpose of focusing research and treatment efforts, not to make political decisions about under which circumstances HIV treatment should be outlawed.

Wow, space cowboy. You're living proof aliens walk among us. I don't know how your species' xenoanatomy works out, maybe ya'll have male pregnancy like seahorses and pipefish, but we humans rely on the female to bear her fetus from conception to term.

I've gotta ask: how's it feel to squeeze out a pup? I imagine your species possessed of smaller heads, much like the cloners Obi Wan meets in Episode II, so maybe it doesn't hurt quite so much.

We're all lucky you haven't procreated, but "your girl" is especially lucky. With your use of the possessive "your", I'm assuming your culture allows enslavement of mates? On second thought, if your species has male pregnancy like seahorses and pipefish, maybe it is a good thing you haven't knocked up your slave. If you did, then she'd be slam dunking that fertilized egg in you for gestation.

"Ballistic?" Would aliens like yourselves shoot someone in the name of the sanctity of life? That seems rather contrary, illogical, even, Spock. But still it's silly of her to have an abortion anyway. I mean, it's just a little blastula that all "your girl" has to do with is inject in your carrying sack, right? You're the one carrying that little cleavage of cells to term, anyway. And I'm sure you would nobly, happily edure "economic hardship, social embarrassment, plain inconvenience." Solo even, if your slave mate fled her master.

You're greyish green, aren't you? Ahhhh... I've watched X-Files. I know what color aliens are! But, you're right... you knocked your alien slave bitch up! She's your property, so everything inside her is your property too! When dogs piss on something on our planet, it's theirs, damnit, and nobody's gonna begrudge a dog for growlin' and fightin' if'n someone tries to take something from him! I can only imagine your alien baby batter is just as precious to you.

And a penis does, by god! Hey! Can I go to your homeworld and lord my cock over some alien slave bitches of my very own? That'd be sooooo rad!

Maybe you've confused our Planned Parenthood for the Planned Parenthood on your homeworld, E.T. I organized for both Planned Parenthood and NARAL in the midterm elections, and, let me tell ya, there's no "for profit" in it, Alf. The c3 and operational side keeps strict separation from the c4 an PAC side. You're either on another planet, or your alien metabolism has made you very, very high on the flouride in our drinking water.

Strange that a gender swap would be such a big deal to a species with male pregnancy. Did your homeworld exile you here because of mental illness? Is there a whole Alien Nation of you nutjobs on asylum Earth?
And, civil liberties issues aside on the right to safe abortion and medical privacy, your Earth tax dollars are not "your" tax dollars once paid. They're "our" tax dollars, which we spend through a Democratic process. I don't want our tax dollars to fuel Bush's Crawford, Texas Airforce One trip, but I have to bite the fucking bullet on that one. Don't be such a... baby.

You're blurring that line between secular political beliefs and religious beliefs? Your GOP buddies are already on that: outlawing abortion is just another "faith-based initiative."

Ya know, if ya don't like Earth, well, NASA's ready when you are.

[Edited on Apr 19, 2004 by jakob_sweven]

thats what i was trying to say, just in a more condensed form. thanks!

This is the way I see it. If a man freely and gladly gave a woman $10 and she invested it into millions of dollars, he wouldn't have a claim to a single cent of that money. If you received a blood transfusion, the donor wouldn't be able to dictate your actions because there was a little bit of him in you.

Although the majority of kids do come from a man and a woman having sex, it doesn't mean that the man has any intrinsic claim on the baby. If we lived in a world where a woman who didn't want a fetus could transfer it to the willing male partner (or if jakob accidentally hit the nail on the head) it would be a different story. As it stands now though, no matter how willing you might be to take over that responsibility, God or nature has denied you the option to.

Any man with a middle-school knowledge of human biology knows how the reproductive cycle works, so every time a man chooses to have sex with a woman agrees to these terms by default. If you want to make sure that a woman never aborts a fetus that contains your genetic material, the only 100% certain option is to never have sex with a woman, because once you do the choice is out of your hands.

No, abortions are special, because of a little something called historical context. There is no ongoing national debate about whether or not people have the right to be treated for tuberculosis or get a nose job. Dr. Zizmor's office, to my knowledge, has never been firebombed, nor have anti-mirodermabrasion activists ever protested in front of said office or harrassed patients going in and out of it. There are no fringe groups advocating the murder of prominent cardiologists.

Like it or not, abortion is not bunion removal. It's a highly controversial procedure that still carries a largely negative stigma. If it were the same as other surgeries, I expect you would go as "ballistic" on your girlfriend if she had an appendectomy as if she had an abortion. Right?

And yet the taxpayers don't subsidize abortion. Planned Parenthood receives federal funding for doing pap smears, routine exams, etc. The abortions are paid for with private donations.

Also, there are plenty of federally funded things that we have no "legal" right to know about. Otherwise, the Sierra Club wouldn't have had to sue Cheney's energy task force to try and get at its records. Beware of those blanket statements, counselor.

Above: SG member Ecto_One celebrating the arrival of his first child.

That would come as quite a surprise. Unfortunately for your assertion, ejaculation isn't "having a kid"

Fortunately, the laws of this country don't really care what your opinions are, either. I'd suggest that you and your "girl" have a heart to heart talk about this before you get "unlucky".

Sure you get a say, you just don't get a vote.

And penis doesn't give you a veto.

The bottom line is that you have two people and one decision. Tiebreaker goes to the one whose body it is. That's not you.

I'm sorry but what world is that that you live in? I absolutely positively guarantee that our government funds something somewhere that each and every taxpayer finds repugnant.

Why? Because a moral line-item veto is stupid and would have us all living in caves.

Whoah. I drop an honest opinion about being a guy and wanting to take responsibility and raise a child should my girlfriend become pregnant, and all of a sudden I'm Rush Limbaugh and Rick Santorum rolled into one.

I would say check your knee-jerk reactions, but at least a beatdown like that is also a healthy sign of our freedoms in this country.

In any case, comparing a pregnancy to a blood transfusion or an organ donation doesn't work. Blood transfusions and donated organs don't grow up to be people.

This stuff is just unnecessary:

Wow, space cowboy. You're living proof aliens walk among us. I don't know how your species' xenoanatomy works out, maybe ya'll have male pregnancy like seahorses and pipefish, but we humans rely on the female to bear her fetus from conception to term.

And this is flat-out wrong:

Also, there are plenty of federally funded things that we have no "legal" right to know about. Otherwise, the Sierra Club wouldn't have had to sue Cheney's energy task force to try and get at its records. Beware of those blanket statements, counselor.

Because if we're refused access to one thing, everything should be sealed. Let's just throw freedom of information out the window.

And speaking of general statements, why do you assume I agree with Bush and Cheney limiting access to certain documents? Really, why should that matter in this case? Shouldn't we make efforts to get as much public information as possible, including abortion statistics AND the behind-the-scenes goings-on of the Bush administration? What are you afraid of if aggregate abortion statistics become public knowledge? If we're going to debate the issue, shouldn't we educate ourselves first?

I guess you could say I'm a little surpised I've been written off as an extremist because I would want to commit such a sin as to raise a kid. I'm telling you right now -- insisting that men have no say in this matter is bullshit. It may not seem like that here, because the membership of this site is far removed from mainstream opinion, but that will not fly among the general population. And I say this as a guy who was raised by a single mother, from an area and culture that could use more adult male role models and fathers. One.

This is tooooo brilliant!
HA!

Is that what you think you said? You didn't want to take responsibility, you wanted to take control.

Those statistics are freely and publicly available already. The objection is to putting sensitive personally identifying information that the government does not have any legitimate need for into the government's hands and trusting them to be responsible with it.

I think it was more the forcing a woman to bear that child because of your preference that people are reacting to.

Yeah, you're going to win a lot of friends with that sophisticated argument. Why exactly is it that you think your wishes override those of the woman who actually has to have the kid, because thats what you're arguing.

Ummm, not only does it fly among the general population, it happens to be the law in every state in the union. You have no legal say in the matter. Period.

I just hope more people get aware of the terrible things the bush regime does, and we stop them before they destroy democracy.