That's a snippet of the illustration — by Ruth Gwily — which you can see enlarged and in full here. The op-ed, by Katha Pollitt, is "How to Really Defend Planned Parenthood." Pollitt's op-ed is somewhat interesting, because she does seem to be struggling over what to think and how to talk about abortion in the wake of the disturbing Planned Parenthood videos. ("[T]he videos do cleverly evoke visceral feelings of disgust — graphic images, physicians using the words 'crush' and 'crunchy' — to activate the stereotype that abortion providers are money-grubbing baby killers.") Pollitt wants pro-choice people to speak up, loud and clear, rather than to keep their head down and only pipe up when there's something — like these videos — that needs a response. But in the end, I don't think Pollitt has said anything that will change the low-profile of the pro-choice crowd.
We need to say that women have sex, have abortions, are at peace with the decision and move on with their lives. We need to say that is their right, and, moreover, it’s good for everyone that they have this right: The whole society benefits when motherhood is voluntary. When we gloss over these truths we unintentionally promote the very stigma we’re trying to combat...There are truths on both sides, pro-life and pro-choice, and the truths on the pro-life side lend themselves to loud, passionate assertion. On the pro-choice side, there's more reason to exercise restraint. These are hard truths. The whole society benefits when motherhood is voluntary can be paraphrased as That dead baby would have been a bad citizen anyway. And the pro-choice side got its passion extracted when abortion became a right. Rights are supposed to make you feel secure, and, feeling secure, why should you have to yell about what you want anymore?
But let's talk about that illustration. I thought some right-wing website was portraying feminists as creepy, ugly jerks! The rat teeth, the sneering nose, the greasy, stringy hair, the misshapen ear that seems twisted a few notches to the left. That's the pro-choice image of a pro-choice woman?! I don't get it. Why make her repulsive?
It also makes no sense to use a tiny megaphone to express the idea that her voice is not being heard. Pro-choicers can get all the social and mainstream amplification they want. They are choosing to be low-key. That's Pollitt's point!
I'm assuming that you immediately perceive the thing in the woman's hand as a megaphone. I called Meade over to look at the illustration, and at first glance, he "saw" a little baby about to be eaten by the woman.
I did a Google image search for a megaphone to get an idea of how accurate the illustration is and I came up with this Planned Parenthood image:
I strongly suspect that Ruth Gwily (the illustrator) used that photo as her reference. I think it explains the protruding teeth and the sneering nose. It seemed, I'm guessing, like a good idea to turn the pretty model into a "real" woman, and nobody with decision-making authority had the perspective to notice how awful she looked.
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283 comments:
1 – 200 of 283 Newer› Newest»... to activate the stereotype that abortion providers are money-grubbing baby killers.
Well, certainly it's now Planned Parenthood's image, and it's an image that's going to be pretty hard to shake. I hope that's not how every abortion provider operates, but the tone of the Times article suggests that selling baby parts is a common practice (blunder!!!). Planned Parenthood and Kermit Gosnell are things that sooner or later the pro-choice folks are going to have to deal with, like it or not. And I can see that they don't like it.
Anyone defending Planned Parenthood at this point is literally a ghoul.
This weekend we are doing our summer pilgrimage to Canyon Ranch/The Berkshires. It's all about finding our third eye, Tanglewood, Jacobs Ladder, getting our chaka khan's in alignment, yoga, hiking, swimming in ponds, manie/pedie, facial, lighting candles, rubbing Budha's tummy, chi, waxing, massage, bodywork by trainer, vegan, and minimal speaking.
Yes, there will likely be Gwennie/Apple sightings but like we don't even look because...I mean...this is the berkshires.
The rare clumber will be receiving the "special dog" treatment.
So, I won't be able to post much here.
Miss you all already!
Keep reaching for the stars!
We are both getting our expensive lofts micro cleaned this weekend.
Summer season really can be grueling.
Namaste....
One can be pro-choice and still be uncomfortable with abortion and wish they didn't have to happen. They understand that a life is lost.
Those are not the people speaking for the abortion movement. The ones doing the talking are those who think abortions should be celebrated and in PP's case, a resource to be mined for profit.
"but the tone of the Times article suggests that selling baby parts is a common practice"
The pro-choice position is that there was NO discussion of selling body parts. There was a patient who wanted to DONATE the tissue and PP collected a shipping and handling fee.
That's the legal argument why there is no crime here.
Refusal to acknowledge this argument is dishonest. Maybe pro-lifers are so sure they are morally right that it's acceptable to engage in that dishonesty. But it hurts their cause to those of us who support abortion rights.
"We're not selling baby parts for profit because we're a non-profit! Nanny nanny boo boo!"
That dead baby would have been a bad citizen anyway.
That argument aside, it doesn't address the buying and selling of body parts. Rather than ignoring the obvious, PP needs to say "look, this or that disease has been conquered" or "this many lives have been saved." The veracity of the claims can be judged.
"These are hard truths."
Brother, I can tell you about promoting hard truths. It's damn hard. Any "truth" promoted by the mainstream opinion-shaping industry (news media, entertainment media, social media and academia) ain't a hard truth to defend.
"PP collected a shipping and handling fee."
Shipping and handling always includes the cost of a Lamborghini, everyone knows that.
"Refusal to acknowledge this argument is dishonest."
-- I acknowledge that's the argument people are making. The people making that argument are, however, buying a load of bull from the people selling it. I've read the transcripts, but not watched the videos for the first two -- have not watched or read the entirety of the others. There's no doubt that the people in those videos have a profit motive in mind.
There's also no doubt that they have admitted to altering procedures to better procure samples, even delaying abortions to get better samples.
Those are all illegal -- and lying to your patient about the kind of procedure you're about to perform HAS to be unethical.
I don't like the idea of abortion, but it is the best of a series of bad solutions. But -- there are legal, ethical ways to do it that follow existing laws. The procedures being described in these videos are not that.
And feminists can just forget their anger at the "video sting" angle unless they are willing to walk back their glee at Romney's surreptitiously-obtained "47% remarks."
I'd say the illustration is merely apt.
"Refusal to acknowledge this argument is dishonest."
When has PP ever acknowledged the pro-life side of the argument or even those who are in the middle and want abortion legal but limited? PP has reaped what it has sowed.
It just totally blows my mind that the inherent right of a baby to life is not protected by our constitution and liberals accept this. It just blows my mind that the "right to privacy" trumps the right to life itself in the minds of liberals.
I'm sorry I cannot get excited about the nuances of how arguments are presented when the argument for life itself is so utterly profound and is ignored by liberals.
"Aborted fetuses would have grown up to be bad citizens" is probably not an argument anyone on the pro-choice side wants to make--it gets a little eugenic-y. And the same argument could be made for killing toddlers who have odds stacked against them!
Really, the best argument pro-choicers can make is that abortion is preventing an undifferentiated blob of cells from becoming a feeling, thinking being, rather than killing a feeling, thinking being. Anything short of that and you basically have to argue that there are cases where killing a child is okay (and there are, as the majority tends to agree--e.g., a child that would kill the mother if the pregnancy is not terminated, or a child with such severe birth defects that it will not live long outside the womb).
The pro-choice position is that there was NO discussion of selling body parts. There was a patient who wanted to DONATE the tissue and PP collected a shipping and handling fee.
And you've looked at their books, Professor, to verify that there's no profit generated for Planned Parenthood? I understand that you are a law professor and no doubt you feel obligated teach your students how to erect a thin layer of legality over thoroughly unsavory practices. The rest of us can see through it.
Believe it or not, Professor, I'm pro-abortion. But it seems as though some regulations are long overdue, whether to be put in place or simply to be enforced, it's not clear which.
Sorry Professor, we cross-posted. I understand the Planned Parenthood argument; the problem lies in the basic fungibility of money. These conversations were basically sales pitches; no one was discussing "this woman is donating her fetus to science and we need X dollars to ship it to you." These were preliminary negotiations on bulk quantities over time. I could be wrong, but I bet the check box on the form women sign is bland beyond belief about what their "donations" mean in the real world.
I don't think Planned Parenthood should be shut down over this. "Safe, legal, and rare" may just have been a pretty lie, but I believe it's the best ideal out there. So keeping it "safe" means having competent practitioners around to perform the abortions if they must be performed. "Legal" means oversight, and right now the lack of real oversight isn't helping keep it rare. So Planned Parenthood needs to feel a lot of heat for this, and apologists for these practices need to be confronted.
To me, the problem for the pro-abortionists is not the technicality of whether selling "parts" is legal, it is this: talking in euphemisms like "womens' health" issues, and "choice" makes for nice clean legal arguments. But as soon as you start talking about the nitty gritty of what's actually going on in the OR, people, even pro-choice people, get squeamish. It's hard to talk about because it's hard to think about, because something bad and wrong is happening and everyone knows it. The "parts" issue emphasizes the fact that you're crushing little babies to death, not "tissue."
"And you've looked at their books, Professor, to verify that there's no profit generated for Planned Parenthood?"
That's unnecessary. They've already told us they don't profit. Their policy says they don't profit. What else can you possibly want? Some kind of independent verification?
Neither side seems willing to recognize that abortion at two months is a very different thing than abortion at eight months. There are conflicting values: respect for the woman's autonomy and reverence for life. At some ill-defined point (20 weeks, "quickening," whatever)the balance shifts. Since that point is ill-defined, the best policy is to let the states make their own laws. Bus fare is quite inexpensive these days.
Refusal to acknowledge that the haggling wasn't about shipping costs is also dishonest. Maybe Althouse is so convinced that killing undesirable (disproportionately African American) babies is so morally superior that it's acceptable to engage in that sort of dishonesty.
...Nah. It's just her characteristic inability to question herself.
Either way, it hurts her cause among people that value intellectual honesty.
Typo alert, Professor:
>>That dead baby would have been a bad citizen anyway.
sed -i 's/dead baby//nigger' Althouse.post
//gypsy
//Jew
//lebensunwertes leben
"I don't think Pollitt has said anything that will change the low-profile of the pro-choice crowd."
Huh? Low profile? The crowd that dominates the Democratic Party, the media, and the Supreme Court? The crowd that has its preferences inscribed in con law and $500M for PP?
"On the pro-choice side, there's more reason to exercise restraint."
PP and its minions exercise restraint? Since when?
"These are hard truths. The whole society benefits when motherhood is voluntary can be paraphrased as That dead baby would have been a bad citizen anyway."
What's "hard" about wanting motherhood to be voluntary? No one disagrees. The disagreement is not about a "truth" but about the inference that voluntary motherhood in itself justifies abortion.
"That dead baby would have been . . ." is a "truth"? Considering the racial disparities in abortion, that would be an, umm, dangerous argument to make--or a harder truth than you would be willing to defend.
"The pro-choice position is that there was NO discussion of selling body parts. There was a patient who wanted to DONATE the tissue and PP collected a shipping and handling fee. That's the legal argument why there is no crime here. Refusal to acknowledge this argument is dishonest"
I acknowledge the argument as an obvious falsehood, intended to keep PP officials out prison. If PP only "collected a shipping and handling fee," that "fee" would be set and there would be no need for discussion of price; yet parts of the released videos clearly show PP folks engaged in negotiating the "fee."
That dead baby would have been a bad citizen anyway.
Yeah, right... und die Juden sind unser Unglück.
Black lives do NOT matter when it comes to abortion.
Mark said...
...the problem lies in the basic fungibility of money.
Yeah, I think we need to set aside what people are saying on both sides of the issue. If you want to determine if they are selling the body parts, then you need to follow the money.
At this point there seems to be enough evidence that a prosecutor could go to a judge and get a warrant to open up Planned Parenthood's books to a forensic accountant. If the prices gotten for the organs are less than or equal to the costs of handling, shipping, etc of the organs, then that sounds legal. If the prices exceed those expenses, then the parts are being sold, and a lot of people are involved in that criminal conspiracy.
Would this be federal or state law? If state, surely some red-state prosecutor will step up to the task.
Whenever I see something that sticks out like a sore cheek, like the photoshopped interior of that pretty model's mouth, I assume that somebody did that because it looked weird the way it was originally.
The problem is that 'non-profit' is taken to imply low-paid and somehow more honorable than a profit-making business.
An organization can have a large income stream from (at best) morally dubious activities and still be a 'non-profit' as long as it makes sure to spend all that income internally. The easiest way to do that is to pay employees so much they can afford Lamborghinis. There's really nothing inherently virtuous about being non-profit.
Her hands would make Lazlo's penis look small.
Society also benefits when commerce in organs is legal and voluntary.
"Neither side seems willing to recognize that abortion at two months is a very different thing than abortion at eight months. There are conflicting values: respect for the woman's autonomy and reverence for life. At some ill-defined point (20 weeks, "quickening," whatever)the balance shifts."
I agree with this. Two questions:
1) How old are the fetuses involved? It seems to me they'd have to be pretty old to have usable organs, but I don't know (hence the question).
2). Can anybody point me to a review article on the research utilizing the harvested organs?
To actually hit the substance of the NY Times article, I don't doubt that somewhere out there are some women who are "out and proud" about how they had an abortion and it improved their life, but I've never met one.
And I agree with Prof Althouse - that illustration looks like it was picked by a pro-lifer.
"They've already told us they don't profit. Their policy says they don't profit. What else can you possibly want? Some kind of independent verification?"
Please explain the Lamborghini comment.
You could say it's a baby-sized megaphone.
I was kidding, jelink.
Shipping and handling? From Omaha Steaks for under a hundred bucks you can get five or ten pounds of prime meat overnighted on dry ice. We're talking about shipping something the size of a McNugget or at most, a Cornish hen.
PP is charging s&h like Capone sold fire insurance.
Don't you fear hell, Althouse?
Original Mike- the babies involved in the videos are 17-22 weeks in gestation. That's 5-6 months. And yes, they have identifiable parts- little limbs are held up for inspection. The abortionists mention the eyeballs, the brain, the spinal cord, lungs, hearts. The latest two videos are very gruesome. Even I, a medical doctor who is used to looking at body parts, was sickened by them.
Re: research. These are the parts used for embryonic stem cell research. Whenever you read an article that mentions "donated" embryonic tissue, this is where it comes from. People like to think that the tissue for this research just comes from an undeveloped clump of cells, but they need cells that have already developed into the needed organ to be of use to researchers. Thus, the older babies.
This is the reality of the abortion industry- it's for profit, not charity.
This is the reality of the embyronic stem cell research industry.
It isn't pretty. And it isn't humane.
There was a patient who wanted to DONATE the tissue and PP collected a shipping and handling fee.
When I was in college, I never bought pot, I just paid my dealer a shipping and handling fee.
If it is only a shipping and handling fee, why do different parts and organs have different prices?
The pro-abortion argument was done by Marge Piercy and is what ought to be argued.
Marge Piercy.
"PP collected a shipping and handling fee."
Those TV offers that proclaim "Order now and get a second one free, just pay an additional shipping and handling fee" are really sucker bets that the buyer won't realize that the profit for the "free" item is built into the shipping and handling fee. A handling fee can be anything that the seller wants it to be. If a heart or liver takes more handling than a kidney then the handling fee is adjusted accordingly. And so a multitude of Planned Parenthood sins are very conveniently lumped into a handling fee.
Thanks, sydney.
Claiming the pro-choice position is "Motherhood should be voluntary" is dishonest. It implies that people are going around forcing motherhood on people who don't want it. When in reality, motherhood occurs when women have unprotected sex in a world flooded with birth control.
My position is "If women choose A while refusing B, C, and D; and E happens... then an abortion is nothing more than murder for convenience. Ban abortions. You had plenty of opportunities to prevent creating a baby, you did not, and you do not get to kill an innocent person because they are inconvenient for you."
Whereas the pro-choice crowd likes to dishonestly portray this as "Women should all be forced to have children."
"Refusal to acknowledge this argument is dishonest. Maybe pro-lifers are so sure they are morally right that it's acceptable to engage in that dishonesty. But it hurts their cause to those of us who support abortion rights. "
Althouse - we don't need to convince you or be concerned with how you perceive our arguments. Our arguments won't change you- we know that.
You need to think about whether the organization and its managers [who you can clearly see on these videos] are truly worthy of continued support from you and libruls and from the taxpeyers. That is the crux here not how PP opponents argue. Do you believe what your eyes and ears communicate to you? And what is the message you got from the videos?
Lies, lies, and more lies. And the dear Prof laughs as she signs her PP donation check. PP is a ghastly organization. Abortion is sometimes the best choice, but killing babies for fun and profit is gruesome business, and the whole of PP should be indicted and tried for crimes against humanity.
If you want to argue against fetus=baby, you're right but you won't convert the opposition because the opposition isn't into dual problems, namely things that hinge on how the ordinary becomes ordinary, namely following what interests people.
I don't know that the pro-choice crowd is much into it either.
The quickest summary is that you learn to be human.
rhhardin said...
The quickest summary is that you learn to be human.
After watching the PP video I would have to say that learning to be human would be a stretch goal for some.
As to selling organs, that ought to be legal, as any economist would tell you.
There's an organ shortage. Look at the waiting lists for everything. People die waiting. You can't have a shortage without government intervention.
For some reason, doctors can profit on organ donation but donors can't.
Combining this problem with the abortion (when does human life start) problem is annoyingly dishonest. But that's how strategy goes in public debate these days. Everything for soap opera appeal.
The rat teeth, the sneering nose, the greasy, stringy hair, the misshapen ear that seems twisted a few notches to the left.
Tsk, tsk...face-shaming is the new fat-shaming.
I called Meade over to look at the illustration, and at first glance, he "saw" a little baby about to be eaten by the woman.
"About to be"? She's already bitten off the head and one arm.
Sociopaths are at peace with lots of things, Ann.
What else can you possibly want? Some kind of independent verification?
After the "Lamborghini" comment, f**k yes. You have a problem with that?
"The quickest summary is that you learn to be human."
After watching the PP video I would have to say that learning to be human would be a stretch goal for some.
The inclination proves my point. It's very common to say "He hardly seems human" of an adversary.
Something learned, or not learned, or forgotten.
Does a fetus have it?
Does language get it wrong? Or does human mean something other than what the pro-life side represents it to mean.
Blogger Ann Althouse said...
"but the tone of the Times article suggests that selling baby parts is a common practice"
The pro-choice position is that there was NO discussion of selling body parts. There was a patient who wanted to DONATE the tissue and PP collected a shipping and handling fee.
That's the legal argument why there is no crime here.
Refusal to acknowledge this argument is dishonest. Maybe pro-lifers are so sure they are morally right that it's acceptable to engage in that dishonesty. But it hurts their cause to those of us who support abortion rights.
This is why we need to be so thankful for Christ's sacrifice on the cross.
Otherwise, nothing is saving Althouse from an eternity in Hell for such evil.
And some people don't even believe in Hell. Who wants to live an eternity in Heaven with people who support such evil?
I'm sure her argument is we want wanted babies. Because look how good this has worked out so far.
Disgusting and despicable. It's worth going to war over.
The current abortion debate, carried on since 1972 without much change, is not an honest debate. Each side refuses to accept premises demanded by the other side.
An honest dialogue between the sides is not possible until the pro-choice side admits that at some point in a pregnancy, a uterus contains a viable human being, and the pro-life side admits that ending a pregnancy is something a woman should be able to do, at least up to some point in the pregnancy, even if the fetus is considered a human.
Then we would have abortion proponents arguing about when one can kill a human in utero, and abortion opponents arguing about when one can kill a human in utero.
That is a debate that has the possibility of reaching a conclusion.
Until then, I'm ignoring both sides. They don't want to reach any conclusion, they want merely to protect their turf.
I really wonder about how a woman can wait until her second trimester to get an abortion. That essentially means missing her period for 4 or 5 months and not noticing or doing anything about it. By the second trimester we're taking about a tiny but real looking baby. Is that who you'd want raising your baby?
I got a fundraising call from Planned Parenthood the other day and asked what percentage of abortions were first, second, third trimester and the representative couldn't provide the information. Said she didn't know.
She told me that only 3% of their overall activity involves abortion, but PP didn't get around to finding that out until after a Republican senator accused them of being 90% abortion based. It took them a year to check and provide the documentation. PP isn't really good about record keeping, and unfortunately flagrant about ignoring rules. The women they are trying to help end up suffering because of that.
Big Mike- I think Diamondhead was being sarcastic.
Original Mike, I had the same question, so I too thank sydney.
Perhaps the phrase "donated embryonic tissue" should become more specific.
the pro-life side admits that ending a pregnancy is something a woman should be able to do, at least up to some point in the pregnancy, even if the fetus is considered a human.
Why?
Why, especially even if the fetus is considered a human. Why does a woman have the right to unilaterally kill what you, by your own standard, recognize as a human being.
If a patient suffers from a painful and terminal illness, I think hospice workers should be able to offer the option of assisted suicide. I do not think hospice workers should be given a bounty for each patient who chooses such a course of action. The way capitalism works, the hospice workers will be a little too eager in telling their patients about the salubrious effects of euthanasia........Why can't pro-choice people admit that abortion is a slippery and dangerous slope and that even people as intelligent and well intentioned as they are capable of sliding down it.
R. Chatt:
PP is a healthcare services organization so they have to use CMS standard clinical procedure codes [CPT codes] when they bill a patient and insurance companies. Any one of their insurance providers could demand they give a detailed list of CPT codes, number of transactions and how much they charged for each code. My point is most healthcare providers are scared to death to be unorganized and incapable of providing timely responses to CMS, state regulators and insurance company.
Perhaps, PP feels protected and a bit invincible due to its crony capital connections in the Dem party?
The founding, mission, leadership and targeting of minority neighborhoods to place their centers makes the Planned Parenthood story profoundly ugly. The mean spirited, short-haired Cecile Richards with her cigarette tuned voice perfectly reflects this ugliness professionally and personally. They are evil people on an evil mission given cover by politicians who covet their donations.
None of it is about womyns health. "Health" is their code-word for killing as many minority children as possible. If they can sell the parts and make some extra Democrat Donations on the side all the better in their twisted worldview.
Oh, I get it, the woman's strident (and on the correct side, of course) but isn't speaking up enough, so it's as though she has only a tiny megaphone. A baby-sized megaphone, you might even say. Or, oops, I meant a fetus-sized megaphone. Hey, who speaks up for the unborn, anyway?
Yeah, visual metaphor fail, illustrator.
@AJ Lynch, I know.
Hilariously, mikee position is that we can only discuss whether abortion is right or wrong if we concede that a woman has the right to perform one. In which case, what are we bargaining for at the table, anyway?
Gotta love Pollit's insistence that the response (against PP based on the videos) isn't logical, it's all emotional, and how unfair that is...'cause we all know pro-abortion agitators and/or Leftists in general NEVER rely on emotional appeals to overcome logical arguments, no ma'am.
By PP's own services graph, they only murder babies 3% of the time.
@AJ, PS.
I liked the little stinger at the end of your comment at 10:47
@William (10:47), not to mention that the hospice staffers might quietly replace the patient's painkiller meds with a placebo, giving them the opportunity to sell the prescription painkiller on the black market while earning a bonus for "convincing" the patient to opt for euthanasia.
"Perhaps the phrase "donated embryonic tissue" should become more specific."
I'd still like to have an idea what research is being done with the tissue. You hear claims ranging from "life saving" to "worthless".
Alexander said...
Hilariously, mikee position is that we can only discuss whether abortion is right or wrong if we concede that a woman has the right to perform one. In which case, what are we bargaining for at the table, anyway?
I see your point, Alexander, but I don't think it's as ridiculous as position as you imply--I think it ought to be Constitution for someone to march in a Nazi parade or burn an American flag, for example, but I simultaneously think both things are wrong and ought to be discouraged, frowned upon, socially condemned...just not made illegal. I'm not necessarily putting abortion in the same category as "odious speech that ought nevertheless to be legal," but the logic of someone who did would be the same.
You can settle the whole abortiong thing by arguing about the soul, strange as it seems.
Soul has a discoverable grammar that more or less lines up with relations to others.
So, the argument filled out would go, whether the fetus has a soul is a fact about the parents, not the fetus. If they're setting up a nursery and buying little baseball mitts, the fetus has a soul. It's part of a life.
If not, not.
When a baby is born, it has relations to all of society who are wired to want to care for it. That's a relation too. That's why birth is a bright line. It lines up with society's interests.
To the extent that a fetus can be pictured as baby-like, you can push this line back into the pregnancy.
It some point that becomes dishonest. Those wanting to care for the baby don't want to care for the baby, but only want one thing : that the fetus not be aborted. A theoretical fact rather than a comittment. It goes dogmatic.
So some line will be drawn, the baby picturers against the mineral rights claimed against the mother.
The discovery of a dishonest argument pushing the line one way or the other is not to be celebrated, though.
About dishonest arguments, they are much easier to direct when there are few facts to base assertions upon. Gee if the news media maybe:
- Interviewed a random sample of "happy customers" who knowingly consented to "donating" their baby's parts to science so we can evaluate PP's claim that their paperwork is in order
- Actually looked into the companies who promote their services (brokering body parts) to PP affiliates by telling them they can "improve the bottom line" (which is business speak for MORE PROFIT)
- Facilitated an honest discussion instead of obscuring the story with the cloud of euphemisms that always infect any PP story: i.e. "breast cancer screening" means they refer the patient to a real doctor/radiologist because they don't actually do mammograms, although they want you to believe they do, and the media wants that impression out there as well
How does all this obfuscation and lack of reporting help the discussion? PP is like Hillary, the more you see the more despicable and revolting the thing looks.
Pollit says the significance of the videos is that they "activate the stereotype that abortion providers are money-grubbing baby killers." I think that's a side issue. I would be no less opposed to abortion if it were always performed by people who received no payment for their services. I would be no more opposed to it if the bodies of the aborted were auctioned off on e-Bay. (That doesn't mean that it doesn't matter whether PP is selling human organs. If the organization or some of its employees have been breaking the law in that regard, they should of course be prosecuted.)
What the videos do is give the lie to the claim that what is being killed is not a human being. The pieces under discussion look like pieces of humans. It's the fact that the parts being discussed are human that makes them useful, isn't it? So we arrange to kill the unborn human child in such a way that the pieces of human that someone wants will be undamaged.
Can anyone really look at this and not conclude that there is a point in fetal development when he or she is so unquestionably human that it must be wrong to kill him or her for mere convenience (or profit).
PP's PR sounds more like Baghdad Bob.
If PP is altering the medical procedure to obtain more revenue from the remains of conception, it's no longer about women's health or being a nonprofit. The patient is not getting a discount for donating, the state is not seeing the financial saving either.
My young teenager daughter can get implant birth control at her pediatrician's office....
... If you want to consider the right to burn a flag or march in a Nazi parade with the right to kill an infant, that's your business.
But my definition of civilization, to say nothing of right and wrong, is that one doesn't actively choose to kill a baby because its existence inconveniences you. Or that a woman has some inalienable right to do so.
You know what's really sick about that logic. It boils down to "the mother (what a twisted use of the term!) can kill a baby because it is completely dependent on her. So she can make that choice."
Yes, pro-choice advocates believe that the more vulnerable a person is, the more right of the caretaker to kill them. That's sick.
As a long time employee of prominent non-profits, I would just like to point out that just because you are a non-profit doesn't mean your organization doesn't value money.
I watched the latest video that dropped on Tuesday. I, a pediatrician who once cared for the tiniest premature infants born at a gestational age as early as 24 weeks in a Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, almost lost my lunch. The baby parts on display included eyeballs, tiny hands attached to part of a forearm, kidneys, brain tissue.....
The baby parts were gleefully displayed and price for parts discussed. Intact baby cadavers were also available but mercifully not shown...
maybe next week we will get to see that item for sale.
Before I saw these videos I never could have imagined that Planned Parenthood trafficked in baby parts. Not in this country. Never.
"Women aren't the only ones who need to speak up. Where are the men grateful not to be forced into fatherhood? Where are the doctors who object to the way anti-abortion lawmakers are interfering with the practice of medicine?"
The men often never know and the doctors get deniability by sending their patients to Planned Parenthood. It has become the institutionalized back alley.
KRAMER: You ever get a woman pregnant?
SEINFELD: I'm sorry, Kramer. Those records are permanently sealed.
KRAMER: What would you say if I told you I never impregnated a woman?
SEINFELD: Really? You never slipped one past the goalie in all these years? Boy, I'm surprised. You've slept with a lot of women, I–
mikee said...
An honest dialogue between the sides is not possible until... the pro-life side admits that ending a pregnancy is something a woman should be able to do, at least up to some point in the pregnancy, even if the fetus is considered a human.
How could an honest dialog require one side to admit something that they honestly believe to be untrue?
Someone has probably already said this, but once the dead fetus/baby leaves the woman's body, so should the ownership of the fetus/baby. At that point the woman should have no more rights to the fetus/baby than the father.
The woman no longer has an absolute right to say how the remains of the fetus/baby should be used.
The abortion provider has no intrinsic rights to use the fetus/baby for any purposes.
Since the fetus/baby can't give consent, the remains should be treated with respect and given a proper burial.
It seems your concern with the NYT piece is primarily over Gwily's unattractive graphic, and the negative way it portrays the strident pro-choice voices. I think that may be Gwily's point, perhaps unintentionally. PPA has worked hard to get women to believe that abortion merely removes undefined "products of conception." What many of us who are more honest knew, and these videos show quite graphically, is that abortion kills a baby, whose human organs are then harvested (at some profit) for medical research. The legalities aside, we see clearly (some of us, anyway) that abortion is a dreadfully immoral and grotesque practice that is aggressively, even angrily, defended aggressively women who are willing to go as far as necessary to enjoy their sexuality while remaining unencumbered by motherhood. The graphic is ugly, but what is being defended is downright hideous.
"The whole society benefits when motherhood is voluntary can be paraphrased as That dead baby would have been a bad citizen anyway."
The argument I hear more often is that the mother couldn't afford to take care of the child, which can be paraphrased as the poor are better off dead.
mikee said...
An honest dialogue between the sides is not possible until... the pro-life side admits that it's a woman's right to murder her baby if the baby is inconvenient, and stick the father with 18 years of child support if the woman wants the baby, both of these choices made with no reference to the man's desires.
FIFY
As for the picture? It's like "fat acceptance". Most of the feminists look as hideous as that image, or worse, so they're "proud" of it.
At this point if someone told me Cecile Richards somehow used the products of conception in her beauty regimen, I don't know if I could feign surprise.
Althouse is surprised that PP, or their supporters in the media, would want to be perceived as angry harpies screaming through a megaphone. Why is she surprised by that self-image? That's what they encourage their supports actually be. Because being angry and shouting at somebody else through a megaphone is the opposite of thinking and being open to persuasion or new facts. They don't want their supporters to be thinkers because they might think about what they are supporting.
They just want them angry and yelling. Easier to control that way.
I liked the illustration it's approach to the article's substance which was that the loudest voice in the room is the one with AUTHORITY.
Since the SCOTUS bestowed legal authority on abortionists to prevent poor women forced into back alley butchery to kill their problem pregnancies, the issue of a moral authority to preserve the weak and helpless human life has become a louder voice in the room.
The writer says speak up loud and proud and trash the easily adoptable little lives to save the women from embarrassment and inconvenience.
Besides, slaughtering his children is also the original nuclear option of patriarchy haters since Ancient Greece.
Blogger Ann Althouse said...
The pro-choice position is that there was NO discussion of selling body parts. There was a patient who wanted to DONATE the tissue and PP collected a shipping and handling fee.
That's the legal argument why there is no crime here.
Refusal to acknowledge this argument is dishonest. Maybe pro-lifers are so sure they are morally right that it's acceptable to engage in that dishonesty. But it hurts their cause to those of us who support abortion rights.
No, Ann, the problem is that argument is an out and out lie, and no one who's paid attention to the videos believes it.
1: The woman wants to donate? Seriously? You're claiming that PP has a talk with each and every single one of those women, and only collects baby parts from women who affirmatively and knowingly state they want to donate their soon to be dead baby to research?
2: You don't haggle over the price if you're just collecting a shipping and handling fee. You know what your costs are, your costs are supposedly 1/10 the market value of the parts, so you simply state "this is what it costs us to do that. Pay or we'll get someone else to pay that amount."
That's not what PP is doing. Which is why these videos are clear evidence of criminal activity by PP.
3: And that ignores the PP people clearly stating that they change the way they do the abortion in order to get the most parts. Which is yet another violation of Federal law.
So, sorry, but the only dishonesty is coming from anyone who claims that PP's "defense" has any connection with reality
Nichevo said...
Typo alert, Professor:
>>That dead baby would have been a bad citizen anyway.
sed -i 's/dead baby//nigger' Althouse.post
Typo typo alert: that should be
sed -i 's/dead baby/nigger/' Althouse.post
Alexander said...But my definition of civilization, to say nothing of right and wrong, is that one doesn't actively choose to kill a baby because its existence inconveniences you. Or that a woman has some inalienable right to do so.
And fair enough, Alexander, I don't have a problem with the way you define civilization, but as you know it's contrary to the repeated holdings of the Supreme Court. Justice Kennedy's famous quote says that "at the heart of liberty is the right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.." so according to him (when speaking for a majority of the Court, understand) Constitutional protection of individual liberty demands giving a woman the ability to define an unborn child (of any age, presumably) as a non-human and to therefore dispose of it if she wishes.
You don't have to change my mind, but you do have to change Kennedy's.
Christopher said...
"The whole society benefits when motherhood is voluntary can be paraphrased as That dead baby would have been a bad citizen anyway."
The argument I hear more often is that the mother couldn't afford to take care of the child, which can be paraphrased as the poor are better off dead.
The argument opens up whole avenues on how to deal with societies undesirables.
You want motherhood to be "voluntary"? Great!
So let's outlaw rape. At that point, motherhood and fatherhood are both equally voluntary. IOW, use birth control.
("[T]he videos do cleverly evoke visceral feelings of disgust — graphic images, physicians using the words 'crush' and 'crunchy'..."
...by cleverly pressing the RECORD button.
On the pro-choice side, there's more reason to exercise restraint.
...because defending infanticide and organlegging requires finesse.
The whole society benefits when motherhood is voluntary can be paraphrased as That dead baby would have been a bad citizen anyway."
The argument I hear more often is that the mother couldn't afford to take care of the child, which can be paraphrased as the poor are better off dead.
The argument opens up whole avenues on how to deal with societies undesirables.
Sanger's precise purpose in founding Planned Parenthood was to reduce the number of undesirable births through birth control and abortion.
Other eugenicists promoted sterilization, and the worst of them supported final solutions.
"...PP collected a shipping and handling fee."
With the fees varying by organ type. Outside Faculty-Lounge-Landia that's known as "Pricing".
>>The argument I hear more often is that the mother couldn't afford to take care of the child
Yes, because there is no social welfare system in this country. None at all.
"It's good for everyone when motherhood is voluntary" let's compare that to....
"It's good for everyone when fatherhood is voluntary"
Why is it that only irresponsibility by women is considered acceptable?
I think it would be a lot more accurate if the named were changed Unplanned Parenthood. Because I can't think if any case where someone would go to them because they were planning to have a child. Rather they become necessary when someone fails to plan.
We need to say that women have sex, have abortions, are at peace with the decision and move on with their lives. We need to say that is their right, and, moreover, it’s good for everyone that they have this right: The whole society benefits when motherhood is voluntary. When we gloss over these truths we unintentionally promote the very stigma we’re trying to combat...
How about colorful T-shirts along the lines of "Mistake Aborted" or something. Maybe a colored wristband for women who have had an abortion. Or a "I had an abortion and I am OK" day? Some sort of show of solidarity.
"It's good for everyone when fatherhood is voluntary"
Unfortunately, fatherhood is extremely voluntary.
"With the fees varying by organ type. Outside Faculty-Lounge-Landia that's known as "Pricing"."
At least it's neither peevish nor nasty.
That dead baby would have been a bad citizen anyway.
Is anyone actually making that argument? If so, it's hard to see how that wouldn't justify infanticide.
Perhaps at some point the remaining sane people in this country will be sufficiently sickened by the willingness of the high priests of the left and their minions to engage in and/or overlook monstrous behavior, criminal conduct and corruption in order to promote their cultural revolution to turn them out.
OTOH, Obama's 40%+ approval rating suggests that the number of sane people is dwindling.
The whole society benefits when motherhood is voluntary.
My grandmother was pro-abortion. She had 8 children, and most of her friends had 6-10 children. They really didn't have a choice. If they wanted to enjoy sex with their husbands, then conception was almost certainly going to happen every couple of years until they hit menopause. If my grandmother were alive today she would be 100 years old.
Times have changed since my grandmother was a fertile woman. There is an abundance of contraception available in this country. Insurance companies are now required to pay for it. Medicaid covers it. The argument that abortion is required to make motherhood voluntary no longer holds water.
Refusal to acknowledge this argument is dishonest.
Agreed -- the rote reference to "heavily-edited videos" is dishonest because both the transcripts and the full recordings are made available online simultaneous with each video's release.
Ferdy, thanks. I thought // because of the space, no? As if a punctuation mark.
Hood,
Justice Kennedy's famous quote says that "at the heart of liberty is the right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.."
I see no emanation or penumbra there which would exclude changing his mind with a 168-grain 7.62km Sierra Match King, delivered at the speed of thought or ~2800 fps, whichever your handloading can achieve.
You don't have to change my mind, but you do have to change Kennedy's.
I have to do no such thing - Justice Kennedy will one day answer to a judge greater than he.
And if you expect to change my mind or anyone else's based on the infallibility of the Supreme Court, good luck. That life is somehow a subjective quality in the eye of the beholder is such an absurd position that it could only exist in the modern west. So it's no surprise at all that we've codified it into law.
Let's talk about the illustration.
It is a bad illustration if your goal is to make the pro-choice movement look good or sympathetic. Perhaps this is more of that famous New York Times photo-editorializing, but with drawing instead of photos. Perhaps the editor in charge of illustrations is not so sympathetic with pro-choice.
Question to one of the doctors commenting -- do the abortionists use feticides prior to harvesting or are the unborn effectively vivisected? Or harvested as fresh kill? If vivisected would the unborn feel the pain of harvesting?
at the heart of liberty is the right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life
One's own... perhaps. The quote is nonsensical anyway - we observably don't have the right to simply live by our own rules regarding the meaning of the universe and the mystery of human life. No society on earth ever has. But even Kennedy hedges himself with one's own and not one's own, and in the case of pregnant women, one's own and another's.
One has read PP's position, Professor (at 0922); give us some credit. It's just that no one on the activist pro-life side believes them.
Do you defend the federal subsidies PP receives? That, after all, is an entirely different question than the one about the so-called right/Supreme Court-Discovered right found in Roe v Wade etc etc. (Sorry if I'very missed a post or comment about this.)
"You could say it's a baby-sized megaphone."
At that stage, it's still just a clump of megaphone molecules.
The most cogent argument against abortion: Why is it, when a pregnant woman is murdered, the perpetrator is charged with TWO homicides? Is that not legal proof that a "fetus" is actually a PERSON?
("[T]he videos do cleverly evoke visceral feelings of disgust — graphic images, physicians using the words 'crush' and 'crunchy' — to activate the stereotype that abortion providers are money-grubbing baby killers."
Planned Parenthood. Kermit Gosnell. Shouldn't they eventually prove that they, in fact, are not? Why must people just ASSUME they aren't? Did the media show such nuance towards, say, people who fly the Confederate flag? Oppose gay marriage?
And if simply showing what happens causes disgust, so be it. Slave owners didn't like that issue with their preferred practice, either.
The pro-choice position is that there was NO discussion of selling body parts. There was a patient who wanted to DONATE the tissue and PP collected a shipping and handling fee.
That's the legal argument why there is no crime here.
But there IS evidence that they change procedures and delay them to procure parts. That, I'm fairly sure, IS illegal.
And if they weren't selling --- why the negotiation? They often don't have any remotely concrete price structure for transport?
An honest dialogue between the sides is not possible until the pro-choice side admits that at some point in a pregnancy, a uterus contains a viable human being, and the pro-life side admits that ending a pregnancy is something a woman should be able to do, at least up to some point in the pregnancy, even if the fetus is considered a human.
How about this --- I'll even CONSIDER abortion as being acceptable when MEN are given the same standing as women. Women can change their mind on a pregnancy? Then a man should as well.
Until then --- no.
Gotta love Pollit's insistence that the response (against PP based on the videos) isn't logical, it's all emotional, and how unfair that is...'cause we all know pro-abortion agitators and/or Leftists in general NEVER rely on emotional appeals to overcome logical arguments, no ma'am.
Yup. "You can't expect abortion clinics to abide by the same rules as other 'real' medical facilities! You just hate women!!!"
I am glad I read Meade's comment first. It was funny and spared me reading the rest of this thread.
We need to say that women have sex, have abortions, are at peace with the decision and move on with their lives. We need to say that is their right, and, moreover, it’s good for everyone that they have this right: The whole society benefits when motherhood is voluntary. When we gloss over these truths we unintentionally promote the very stigma we’re trying to combat..."
This is the perfect opportunity for a Libertarian leaning Republican candidate to take this to its conclusion by throwing a few verbal hand grenades by arguing for the abolishment of mandatory child support and presumed paternity along with government paid for child support. Its all your choice lady to stay pregnant. It's all your choice. Motherhood is voluntary. Incidentally why do we have welfare? If those people can't support themselves then they are a parasitic drag on the political body every bit as much as a fetus is to a woman. Cut them off as well.
Furious-a:
The babies are torn apart in the womb. They are not killed beforehand. They probably feel pain. Most certainly the older the baby the more likely they feel pain. The pro-abortion groups have had some success at refuting the claim that a fetus feels pain.
"Is anyone actually making that argument?"
Yes. Pollitt made it. I just translated it into blunt language.
The artist used a small megaphone because Whining is Anger coming out through A Very Small Hole.
George Carlin - pro-life is anti-woman
Althouse: "That's the legal argument why there is no crime here.
Refusal to acknowledge this argument is dishonest. Maybe pro-lifers are so sure they are morally right that it's acceptable to engage in that dishonesty. But it hurts their cause to those of us who support abortion rights."
8/6/15, 9:22 AM
As you well know, Professor, there is a difference between acknowledging the existence of an argument and conceding its efficacy. Virtually every criminal can offer up a defense. Most, like this one, cannot, or should not, carry the day.
There is nothing dishonest about opining that a proffered "legal defense" is bullshit. In this case it is not a matter of pro-lifers being "so sure they are morally right." It is a matter of being sure that PP is not. After 50 million, or so, homicides, what's the big deal about a phony defense?
As for hurting our cause with those "who support abortion rights," people who are not disgusted by the videos and are insufficiently savvy to "shipping and handling" scams are lost to us and to reality anyway.
The shipping-and-handling argument is not something im saying is necessarily believable, but it must be acknowledged. That's my point. Saying it's obviously commerce in body parts is dishonest or not fully informed. If you are interested in convincing people who aren't already on your side you should be informed and honest. Some of you here are ridiculously bad at that. Calling me evil and threatening me with hell make it clear that you're only preaching to the choir.
God help us, so many of our women are consummately evil.
And there are so many helpless fools among men who cooperate in that evil in the hope of getting laid.
Just look at Althouse. She can find an "argument" for butchering, parting out and selling near full term babies. Of course, she spent the past five years or so scapegoating heterosexual men for the problems of homosexuals, when those problems are simply the result of being homosexual.
What an evil, rotten woman. She's often asked me why I've forsaken intellectual, feminist women for religious Filipinas. The answer is to escape evil, rotten white women like Althouse who can justify any kind of butchery and lying for their own convenience.
Is it any wonder that she's stuck with a hair shirt wearing back stabber like Larry? Who else would have such an evil, rotten woman? Her money and status cannot make up for putting up with her vicious, evil, rotten selfishness.
Getting laid and living off a rich fag hag isn't worth being involved with rotten feminist women like Althouse.
Men, you can find a self-sufficient woman and enjoy a good sex life without stooping to consorting with such detestable women.
Alexander said...I have to do no such thing - Justice Kennedy will one day answer to a judge greater than he.
Ok, fair enough, I should have said "if you want to change the law of the land w/r/t abortion you'll have to change Kennedy's mind."
I'm concerned that you don't see that I'm more-or-less on your side here, Alexander--I don't think you're wrong, I'm just acknowledging the reality of the world we live in and pointing out what legal obstacles exist preventing your POV from prevailing.
Ann Althouse said...
If you are interested in convincing people who aren't already on your side you should be informed and honest.
While I'm interested in being informed and honest, I'm not interested in convincing people of anything.
I will point out, as loudly and as clearly, as I can, the consequences of ones actions. "If you keep driving towards that cliff, eventually you're going to go over."
Once they find themselves in a smoldering wreck of a car, and perhaps still alive, then they can gain some wisdom by looking back and asking themselves, "Why didn't I listen when I was told the truth about my actions?"
I'm not here to convince you of anything. I'm here to help you become wise once you've hit bottom. And for your sake, I hope it happens before it's too late.
Again, thank God for Christ, otherwise, none of us would have a chance.
Ann Althouse said...
The shipping-and-handling argument is not something im saying is necessarily believable, but it must be acknowledged. That's my point. Saying it's obviously commerce in body parts is dishonest or not fully informed. If you are interested in convincing people who aren't already on your side you should be informed and honest. Some of you here are ridiculously bad at that. Calling me evil and threatening me with hell make it clear that you're only preaching to the choir.
I acknowledge PP has said they don't price parts and aren't engaging in commerce, that instead they only charge shipping and handling. I think anyone who considers that argument with even a shred of critical thinking, however, will see that the facts do not support that argument. Most plainly the PP people on tape discuss the widely varying cost/price for different parts/organs. Since the shipping costs for these parts are VERY unlikely to differ much (a fetal heart should cost about the same to ship as a fetal liver, etc) and since the PP people don't put the cost differential down to any difference in the cost of extracting or obtaining the parts/organs, it's very obvious that something other than "shipping and handling" is driving the price PP receives for the parts. That something, of course, is the market price for the organ (determined by the intersection of supply and demand, don'cha'know), which means "dealing" in those parts (selling them, arranging for their sale, agreeing to a price, etc) should properly be considered engaging in commerce.
I acknowledge the argument, but it's false on its face. I hope you don't think we should have to pretend otherwise in order to engage with the other side, Prof.
It looks like '80s clip art.
The shipping-and-handling argument is not something im saying is necessarily believable, but it must be acknowledged.
OK, fine.
Their argument that they are just getting funding for shipping and handling of the fetuses is absolute, unmitigated, intellectually insulting bullshit.
I don't think you're going to be made happier by ACKNOWLEDGING that a vapid argument is vapid.
Saying it's obviously commerce in body parts is dishonest or not fully informed. If you are interested in convincing people who aren't already on your side you should be informed and honest.
Explain the negotiations on the price or the plan to alter or delay procedures to procure certain organs. Shipping and handling cannot begin to do so and nobody on your side has really made an effort to do it.
Please note, eventually, you couldn't CONVINCE people that owning slaves was wrong. It required copious bloodshed to end that practice.
Can you explain how something that is really only a clump of cells can provide organs for fully developed humans? Logically, it shouldn't happen.
Saying it's obviously commerce in body parts is dishonest or not fully informed.
Denying that negotating "shipping and handling" rates depending on the body part is either dishonesty or cluelessness about "Pricing". Probably both. Plus bonus points for faculty-loungism.
What's going on within the abortion abattoirs is not an intellectual issue.
It's a moral issue.
Stop arguing over pettifogging.
Pettifogging and elaborate legal theorizing is the weapon Althouse found to disguise her own evil self interest. She's a master of diverting attention from what gives her power.
Quit buying into it. She's using these tactics to divert you from the horrific evil she wants to support because it serves her self-interest and convenience.
Althouse and her Weird Sisters must be defeated and removed from their positions of influence and power because they are doing evil. Fuck, the pettifogging.
The whole society benefits when motherhood is voluntary.
Sexist bullshit.
You believe the exact opposite for us splooge stooges: society benefits when fatherhood is compulsory.
Substitute "women" for "whole society" and we're at your true position.
Here's what I don't understand about the abortion argument--
The waitlist for adopting a baby is around 5 years long. That's for any baby - black, white, green, healthy or living with a chronic illness.
So, if you don't want to be a mother, why kill the kid?
Heck, if you're 20 weeks pregnant and really can't stand it, wait 2 weeks, find a doc to deliver the baby early, pop her in the NICU and terminate parental rights. That kid will be snatched up by a loving family as soon as she's legally parentless.
Bam. You don't have to raise the kid. You don't have to know the kid.
Why is dismemberment preferable to early delivery and adoption?
"Saying it's obviously commerce in body parts is dishonest or not fully informed."
Again, thanking God you're not an econ prof.
Blogger Levi Starks said...
"It's good for everyone when motherhood is voluntary" let's compare that to....
"It's good for everyone when fatherhood is voluntary"
Why is it that only irresponsibility by women is considered acceptable?
It seems to me that no one should be able to have an abortion. However, if women get to have them when they don't want to be a mother, then men should have some say when they don't want to be a father.
Considering that it'd never sell to be able to force a woman to have an abortion (And who would want to do that anyway?) there should be an option B. The father should say, "I want you to have an abortion." and if the mother says, "No." then the father is released of all of his rights and responsibilities to that child.
Put that in your pipe and smoke it.
The shipping-and-handling argument is not something im saying is necessarily believable, but it must be acknowledged.
I acknowledge that Planned Parenthood is lying when it claims that they are only charging shipping and handling.
That's my point. Saying it's obviously commerce in body parts is dishonest or not fully informed
No, for thinking people, it is obviously commerce, despite Planned Parenthood's lies. You cannot watch those videos honestly without acknowledging that.
"Calling me evil and threatening me with hell make it clear that you're only preaching to the choir."
Only God can truly threaten Hell. We Christians however are required to warn you and everyone else at risk out of charity. We often fail to deliver the message gently. That is a just criticism, but I expect the message is deeply unpopular no matter how politely it's offered.
I've forgotten, is the price for shipping and handling of a kidney more than a liver, or vice versa? Where does a gall bladder fit in?
Why is dismemberment preferable to early delivery and adoption?
Convenience
Blogger Deirdre Mundy said...
Here's what I don't understand about the abortion argument--
The waitlist for adopting a baby is around 5 years long. That's for any baby - black, white, green, healthy or living with a chronic illness.
So, if you don't want to be a mother, why kill the kid?
Heck, if you're 20 weeks pregnant and really can't stand it, wait 2 weeks, find a doc to deliver the baby early, pop her in the NICU and terminate parental rights. That kid will be snatched up by a loving family as soon as she's legally parentless.
Bam. You don't have to raise the kid. You don't have to know the kid.
Why is dismemberment preferable to early delivery and adoption?
I've never understood this either. It's so hard to adopt in the United States that people go to foreign countries to adopt. And even then, it's tough.
My sister-in-law sold her baby. Technically, that's illegal. So she never got directly paid for her child (This was about 15 years ago) but she did get reimbursed for her non-existent expenses for $20,000.00.
Plus I'm sure there was a shipping and handling fee in there.
I mean, who DOESN'T know a preemie these days? In the past, these kids would all have been 'born and died' on the same day. Now they're on your kids' soccer team, in line at the ice cream stand, and mowing your lawn over the summer.
In a world where preemies routinely survive and thrive, it's really difficult to come up with an argument for why kids the same age can be dismembered with impunity.
I mean, "because their mom didn't want them?" Then why do people like Andrea Yates get put on trial?
But the continuous and blatantly false "highly edited" meme, welp, there isnt any need whatsoever for the pro-choice side to reconsider using a "dishonest or uninformed" argument if they want to convince any pro lifers, is there? Nah. Once again, only the Right must adhere to principle and honesty (in this case, honesty requires that a defense of the videos that is directly and repeatedly contradicted by the videos must be "acknowledged"), while the Left (including our hostess) is under no requirement to "acknowledge" that every single one of the videos has PP refuting their "legal defense" out of their own mouths. Funny how that works.
.
I guess you could say "Well citizenship doesn't begin until birth, so they have no rights until then,' but.... then you'd be able to kill illegal immigrants with impunity.
Haha, George Carlin. Why didn't you settle the whole debate earlier by posting that clip closer to the top of the thread?
Kidding aside (Carlin was an unfunny douche who performed for seal claps instead of laughs), it does illustrate why people on the pro-life side tend not to give a good faith hearing to arguments like those of planned parenthood. If a pro-choice person begins a discussion by saying, "hey, i have empathy for your position" the pro-life person will respond in kind. If a pro-life person begins a discussion by saying, "hey, i have empathy for your position" the pro-choice person says, "Ah. So why do you hate women?"
Althouse said:
"Saying it's obviously commerce in body parts is dishonest or not fully informed."
EMD said:
Again, thanking God you're not an econ prof.
Again, thanking God Althouse isn't a CFO or a Fund Manager.
eric said... [hush][hide comment]
Blogger Levi Starks said...
"It's good for everyone when motherhood is voluntary" let's compare that to....
"It's good for everyone when fatherhood is voluntary"
Why is it that only irresponsibility by women is considered acceptable?
It seems to me that no one should be able to have an abortion. However, if women get to have them when they don't want to be a mother, then men should have some say when they don't want to be a father.
Considering that it'd never sell to be able to force a woman to have an abortion (And who would want to do that anyway?) there should be an option B. The father should say, "I want you to have an abortion." and if the mother says, "No." then the father is released of all of his rights and responsibilities to that child.
Put that in your pipe and smoke it.
8/6/15, 1:06 PM
Nice try but no go.
Society needs men to pay for kids. Society needs it so badly that children that have been raped by older women that then result in babies have been forced to pay child support to those same women and babies.
As others have pointed out, in this area the man is ALWAYS wrong. It is only a baby if the mother thinks it is a baby and if it is, some man somewhere owes her for it. If she does not think it is a baby then it is not and there is nothing any man can do about it.
Welcome to "equality".
It is obviously commerce in body parts.
I am not being dishonest.
I am entirely informed.
If you have evidence that it is not commerce in body parts, other than PP's claim, you have not presented it. As far as I can tell, you havent even tried. PP's statement to that effect, despite its obvious self serving nature, is apparently sufficient evidence that anyone who doesnt believe it is "dishonest or uninformed". This double standard is so overwhelmingly egregious that I'd argue it represents evidence of mental illness.
I want whatever job Ann thinks will let you buy a Lamborghini off shipping and handling.
What a program Althouse and her Weird Sisters have for us.
They want to faggotize and pussify young men. The educational institutions they work for are terrorizing and destroying young men for the sin of wanting to stick their dicks in a pussy instead of some guy's shitty asshole.
And, they want the right to butcher near full term babies, part them out and sell them so that they can enjoy the benefits of stem cell derived medications.
What do you call this madness?
Ann Althouse said...
The shipping-and-handling argument is not something im saying is necessarily believable, but it must be acknowledged. That's my point. Saying it's obviously commerce in body parts is dishonest or not fully informed.
Sorry, Ann, but you are wrong. The claim (it doesn't even rise to the level of an argument) is not believable by anyone who's paid the slightest bit of attention. In fact, it's so pathetically unbelievable that anyone who hadn't heard it would think you were making up a straw man if you brought it up first.
When someone brings it up, we shoot it down. As we've done so thoroughly that even you aren't attempting to defend the claim. Then we go back to our starting position, which is it is obvious that PP are a bunch of bloody handed butchers chopping up babys and selling their parts in violation of multiple Federal laws.
If you're ok with that, there's nothing to discuss with you. If you not ok with that, instead of throwing up a smokescreen address teh actual points we've raised.
"The pro-choice position is that there was NO discussion of selling body parts. There was a patient who wanted to DONATE the tissue and PP collected a shipping and handling fee."
Why does she have this right?
Althouse acknowledges that abortion is murder, but justifies it by its unique circumstances of possession. But once the baby is removed from the mother's body, why do any rights continue?
It seems to be rather lame to argue she and she alone has the right to dispose of the baby, once it is no longer in her possession so to speak.
Althouse said:
"Saying it's obviously commerce in body parts is dishonest or not fully informed."
Taking PP at their word, if it's all about reimbursement for Shipping and Handling then PP would present a price schedule for biohazard container shipment from a carrier or carriers to their Feedstock customer instead of haggling over price by body part. Would make for a pretty boring video, and fewer of them.
Still, I'd hate to be the A/R clerk typing up that sales order.
But please, Professor, more of your faculty-lounge, stompy-foot schoolmarm-ism.
Saying it's obviously commerce in body parts is dishonest or not fully informed.
Being fully informed in this case means watching the videos and acknowledging that it's obviously commerce in body parts.
Calling me evil and threatening me with hell make it clear that you're only preaching to the choir.
You're probably not evil, but you are definitely more comfortable being disingenuous than being introspective.
EMD said...
"It's good for everyone when fatherhood is voluntary"
Unfortunately, fatherhood is extremely voluntary
Perhaps, but child support payments are not. And go on about 20 times longer than pregnancy does.
Althouse said:
"But let's talk about that illustration."
Banality of evil. Frau Goebbels who murdered her six children, at the end of WWII, rather than let them live in a world without National Socialism, would be proud of all the pro-abortion apologists. Woe be unto you who call good evil and evil good.
"The waitlist for adopting a baby is around 5 years long. That's for any baby - black, white, green, healthy or living with a chronic illness."
I really don't understand it. I mean, I know the justifications--much of that money goes for legal expenses to gain parental rights, and background checks, etc.--but you'd think if the government thought it was a societal good to encourage adoption (and it obviously is!) they would pass laws protecting the legal rights of adoptive parents so they don't have to spend so much on legal fees, and lower the bar (slightly!) on background checks so it becomes easier to adopt. It shouldn't be just for the rich.
"Heck, if you're 20 weeks pregnant and really can't stand it, wait 2 weeks, find a doc to deliver the baby early, pop her in the NICU and terminate parental rights. That kid will be snatched up by a loving family as soon as she's legally parentless."
That might be harder--while NICU technology is better than ever before, I think it still presents a lot of risks and can be very expensive. Also, giving birth is probably a lot more painful, risky and involved than having a very early abortion. But I do think if adoption was made easier--and hell, let the adoptive parents offer cash to the mother for her pain--we'd reduce the number of unwanted kids and abortions. I don't see how anyone could disagree with that, but instead all of our focus is on abortion laws as though that's the only option.
I also don't get why these videos are so problematic for the pro-choicers. If an abortion is going to happen anyway, does it really matter what they do with the body part? Isn't it better that the body parts go to some good use? And if money exchanges hands, isn't that better as it encourages better use for discarded body parts?
If they don't like the fact that the ugliness of abortion is being put on display, then tough--this is what abortion is! It often is quite gruesome. Don't defend it if you don't like knowing the details.
That dead baby would have been a bad citizen anyway.
"Abortion reduces crime." That's one of the arguments made in "Freakonomics", regarding crime rate declines in high-abortion-rate vs. low- states.
"Why is dismemberment preferable to early delivery and adoption?"
Make this argument to the woman who has dominion over her own body.
While discussing PP's "ethics", it might be worth while to seek comments from Karen Handel and The Susan G Komen Foundation.
It show what kind of thugs PP really is.
That dead baby would have been a bad citizen anyway.
Pre-recidivism mitigation.
HoodlumDoodlum,
It is then a question of what the current objective is.
To abolish abortion, yes, that is not in the cards right now - that will not happen tomorrow, and it will not happen with the current court.
But the question of whether federal dollars should be going to support a baby chopshop.
That does not require a ruling by the Supreme Court. Cutting the money to the practitioners, bringing legal pressure where they are clearly outside existing law, and bringing social pressure on the practice of abortion are all doable and will lead to the final destruction of the modern Baal.
Consider this: the pro-abortion have no reason why you wouldn't do what PP is doing. If you truly consider the baby to be 'parts' or 'tissue' or 'waste' - as more than one pro-choice advocate has said - a 'parasite', then why wouldn't you look at how you could turn this 'useless' byproduct into cash or further medicine with it?
Seriously, it's like if you accept as a given the Jew isn't human, then why on earth is it upsetting that you'd take the gold out of his mouth before you throw him in the trench?
Forcing them to address this issue brings to the ordinary man the full monstrosity of the act into plain view. Once pro-abortion people are having to draw a line between acceptable uses for what they consider nothing more than organic matter, then we have caught them in a trap from which their barbarism has no escape.
Do not let the pro-abortion crowd demoralize by setting a false standard that since abortion will not be outlawed because of planned parenthood today, the battle is not worth fighting. If they held themselves to that standard Roe v Wade would never have happened in the first place.
I'd argue it represents evidence of mental illness.
I even have the diagnosis...feminism.
Make this argument to the woman who has dominion over her own body.
We're not talking about the woman's body,..we're talking about the baby's body...you know, the one being cut up for parts.
Gahrie said...
"The whole society benefits when motherhood is voluntary.
Sexist bullshit.
You believe the exact opposite for us splooge stooges: society benefits when fatherhood is compulsory"
Well, technically, the argument here is "A man made his choice when he ejaculated."
Yes, this is just a little too convenient (as is the argument that "child support" is for the child, when there is no mandatory accounting of how the "child support" money is actually spent). But as Althouse noted, one must at least acknowledge the counter-argument (no matter how specious it may be).
In any case, arguments claiming "the whole society benefits" would seem to have a very high bar to clear, considering that precedent here is heavily biased toward personal autonomy and freedom over "the whole society." At least one might ask, "When do the needs of the whole society trump those of the individual, and why do you think that's the case here?"
"I want whatever job Ann thinks will let you buy a Lamborghini off shipping and handling."
What joking have you ever indulged in when you didn't believe you are being recorded?
Those engaged in serious work do not always speak of their work in somber terms. There is humor, there is irritation, there is stupidity. That is the way human beings adjust to their work and deal with the routine pressure of day to day life. They don't expect a casual, crude snippet to be displayed to the world.
The Lamborghini remark was an offhand joke/stupidity that has been used for everything that it's possible to use for to stir up outrage. I am not impressed with this. Many people speak privately in ways that can be made to look terrible by their opponents. This is life amongst the humans. This is the weird world into which we invite the innocent infants who survive the trip through the body of the pregnant woman who has the power to shut life off forever.
Make this argument to the woman who has dominion over her own body.
Make your argument to the baby that ought to have dominion over his.
Of course, women don't actually believe in dominion over the body: if they did, they wouldn't shame men who do not risk their own bodies to defend a woman's, they would oppose the draft, and they would oppose the idea that the rewards of labor from a man's body can be taken from him to raise a child he does not want to raise.
Likewise, I wouldn't hear the lefties cheering California's vaccination initiatives. Or demonization of Big Gulps, cigarettes, or private healthcare.
Feminism is a hairy leg in a stiletto stomping on a human face, forever.
I'm still trying to get my head around the only way I can have an honest discussion with someone who is pro-abortion is to concede the argument first. Then they'll listen. ??? If I agree they're right before we start, what is there to talk about?
Saying it's obviously commerce in body parts is dishonest or not fully informed.
No, it's not dishonest OR not fully informed. The parts are there. They're talking about the prices for them. That's commerce in its simplest form.
You really are bending way backwards to fit this all into your personal narrative. It ain't working.
Blogger Ann Althouse said...
"Why is dismemberment preferable to early delivery and adoption?"
Make this argument to the woman who has dominion over her own body.
But whatever you do, don't answer the question. Because we would be horrified by the answer.
Make this argument to the woman who has dominion over her own body.
Or, to put it more bluntly... "my life is more important than a near full term baby, so it's my right to commit murder."
I don't have any difficulty in calling Althouse evil.
She is. She demands the right to commit murder.
Althouse said:
Those engaged in serious work do not always speak of their work in somber terms.
Those who don't think anyone's watching will let the mask fall, is that what you're saying? That they'll drop their practiced pretense and let the truth slip?
When I saw that picture, my first thought was "Phew! Ted Rall landed another gig!" Because we all know that with the cops putting a price on his head, he wouldn't have lasted a week out in the streets.
Ann Althouse said...
What joking have you ever indulged in when you didn't believe you are being recorded?
Well, for starters, I never took a job at what appears to be a human rendering plant. You?
And if the Lamborghini comment were the only evidence of commerce in body parts, that might matter Ann.
But in the context of all 5 videos, which prove the point over and over and over, its... well... I cant think of any way to describe it other than "dishonest or uninformed."
How much of the videos have you watched, Ann? I dont believe youve said.
Unless the answer is, at least, "most of the unedited videos", on what possible basis do you get to claim that WE are uninformed?
Please answer this question, as it will give us a valid basis upon which to judge your slur against your readers as "dishonest or uninformed."
Director Line Item in Houston brags about adding to the bottom line of the "non-profit." Curious statement IF you're talking about recouping shipping and handling!
Many people speak privately in ways that can be made to look terrible by their opponents. This is life amongst the humans.
I don't recall you saying this during Romney's 47% scandal.
Of course, he's just a splooge stooge.
"But whatever you do, don't answer the question. Because we would be horrified by the answer."
The answer is that under American law, the individual whose body is subjected to the burdens of pregnancy and childbirth has a right to determine for herself what is preferable. She is the decisionmaker. The rest of us are free to believe that it is preferable to deliver a premature baby and give it to willing parents, but we are not free to impose that preference on her.
Personally, I think it's a terrible option, deliberately making a child begin in intensive care, and I don't like the idea of paying the medical cost of intentionally created premature babies and their possible lifelong disabilities. Either go through with a pregnancy and do what you can to produce a healthy child or don't, but I wouldn't build a freakish medical industry around prematurity. I've never even seen that proposed before.
But maybe some day we will know how to grow fetuses outside the womb, Brave-New-World style. Would you experiment upon thousands of little creatures toward the end of achieving that goal? That doesn't seem right!
Infanticide has been practiced by many cultures.
We've really passed the threshold long ago.
What Althouse proposes is the right to commit infanticide, and that is precisely what we are practicing.
Ann Althouse said...
What joking have you ever indulged in when you didn't believe you are being recorded?
Organleggers are known for their irreverent sense of humor.
Given Ann's apparent belief that the Lamborghini line is the only evidence in the videos of commerce in body parts, Id be willing to bet that our hostess's "informed" opinion rests on a few minutes of the first video and nothing but the headlines of articles from the remainder. Anyone want to take the bet?
What joking have you ever indulged in when you didn't believe you are being recorded?
Good question
Ugly is as ugly does. Abortion happens sometimes. I've known at least three women who are or were close to me who have had them. So I'm not going to say that abortions should never happen. And I think that the abortions should be performed by competent physicians (Planned Parenthood Florida is having a little problem with that this week).
The fact that they should happen sometimes does not make me happy with the idea. At some point that "clump of undifferentiated cells" that PP likes to talk about becomes a human being--and that happens before that "mass of tissue" gets extracted in either crispy or crunchy form.
The Planned Parenthood folks got caught out talking in terms that would have made a Dr. Mengele blush, and they are suffering some well deserved criticism for ugly behavior.
Personally, I think it's a terrible option, deliberately making a child begin in intensive care, and I don't like the idea of paying the medical cost of intentionally created premature babies and their possible lifelong disabilities.
So, how do you square this with the enormous burden in public health costs that we are all paying to keep alive gay men who deliberate engaged in the reckless orgies of anal sex that set off the AIDS epidemic?
I worked in clinical drug trials, so I know the cost. The cost of keeping one HIV infected gay man alive would feed tens of thousands of starving kids in third world countries.
Well, technically, the argument here is "A man made his choice when he ejaculated."
No, Althouse goes much farther. She supports making men and boys who have been raped pay child support. They're just splooge stooges after all.
Althouse supports forcing men victimized by fraud to pay child support.
She supports forcing men who ejaculated into a condom, but the woman later used the contents to impregnate herself to pay child support.
She supports forcing men who received oral sex, but the semen was saved and later used to impregnate the woman to pay child support.
Women have rights, men have obligations.
Women = good
Men = bad
Eleanor said...
I'm still trying to get my head around the only way I can have an honest discussion with someone who is pro-abortion is to concede the argument first. Then they'll listen. ??? If I agree they're right before we start, what is there to talk about?
It is possible to believe someone has a right to do something, while also believing that they should not do it. You can think of a hundred examples of this. The law now is that women have the right to decide (at least through six months, sometimes longer). The best anti-abortion approach is to show them why they shouldn't do it. I believe these investigatory videos work toward that end, by calling attention to what abortion is really about.
The answer is that under American law, the individual whose body is subjected to the burdens of pregnancy and childbirth has a right to determine for herself what is preferable.
Only during the first trimester.
After that, society can begin to protect the babies.
but I wouldn't build a freakish medical industry around prematurity
But you are entirely comfortable with one built around infanticide and organ peddling.
The answer is that under American law, the individual whose body is subjected to the burdens of pregnancy and childbirth has a right to determine for herself what is preferable. She is the decisionmaker.
That decision was made when she got pregnant. Now it's her and the baby, and if the baby could talk, it wouldn't want to be ripped, crunched and torn to pieces so someone else could make a salary and buy themselves a nice dinner every once in a while.
When we are living our lives in darkness, our eyes become adjusted and it seems like light to us. You're so far down the path, you don't even need to open your eyes anymore because even if you did, you wouldn't be able to see anything anyway.
Given Ann's apparent belief that the Lamborghini line is the only evidence in the videos of commerce in body parts, Id be willing to bet that our hostess's "informed" opinion rests on a few minutes of the first video and nothing but the headlines of articles from the remainder. Anyone want to take the bet?
Heck, no. She doesn't want to be honest or informed. She wants to criticize pro-lifers for exploiting the Lamborghini comment, and protect herself from the hard work of re-examining her politics, or reconsidering her arguments' validity.
Would you experiment upon thousands of little creatures toward the end of achieving that goal? That doesn't seem right!
No it is much better to just kill the "creatures" (the sane amongst us call them babies) and cut them up for experiments.
Althouse suffers from a problem that is common among leftists and feminist... continuing to believe that they are the underdogs fighting against entrenched power.
Leftists and feminists like Althouse are the entrenched power, have been for a long time, and they are abusing that power to the max.
You aren't little Annie in the Village walking down the street hand in hand with Dylan.
You are the oppressive power of the state.
The Lamborghini remark was an offhand joke/stupidity that has been used for everything that it's possible to use for to stir up outrage. I am not impressed with this.
@Althouse, I'm impressed that you're not impressed, but probably not in the direction you'd appreciate. Why crack the joke if there's no money being made?
Also, your comment at 1:58, can you explain the 3rd paragraph. What I'm reading into it is along the lines of it's expensive to keep a premature baby alive so better to abort the fetus. I trust I'm misinterpreting you.
And, Professor, I don't understand how, 'the whole society benefits when motherhood is voluntary can be paraphrased as that dead baby would have been a bad citizen anyway'-- I certainly didn't think that Katha Pollitt was intending to mean that. Who argues that women who may have abortions are likely to bear children who become bad citizens? There may be some eugenicists out there somewhere... but I think I'm just missing your point.
Blogger Ann Althouse said...
"I want whatever job Ann thinks will let you buy a Lamborghini off shipping and handling."
What joking have you ever indulged in when you didn't believe you are being recorded?
If it were racist "jokes" they were telling, would it excuse those jokes because they didn't know they were being recorded? Make them any less racist?
We tend to spill the truth when we don't believe we are being recorded. Therefore, by your own standard, they must have been speaking the truth, joking or no.
"Given Ann's apparent belief that the Lamborghini line is the only evidence in the videos of commerce in body parts..."
There is no basis for the belief you call "apparent."
Ann Althouse said...But maybe some day we will know how to grow fetuses outside the womb, Brave-New-World style. Would you experiment upon thousands of little creatures toward the end of achieving that goal? That doesn't seem right!
Wait a moment, I thought what PP was doing was for the sake of medical science, Professor...maybe some of those "donated" fetal organs could be used for research towards an artificial womb capable of sustaining preemie life! I mean, if harvesting thousands of little creatures for medical experiments (where harvesting = aborting, then carving up for parts) seems right to you, but using medical science/experiments to further the goal of creating a device or methods that would obviate the need for abortions (killing thousands and thousands more little creatures) doesn't seem right...then I'm not sure I understand how you judge "right" at all.
Why aee prochoice friends defending the practice that fetal brain cells are being impanted into the brains of mice to make them smarter....
This is not about a woman's body.
http://www.marymeetsdolly.com/blog/index.php?/archives/1433-Scientists-Transplanting-Fetal-Brain-Tissue-from-Abortions-into-Mice.html
The answer is that under American law...
A very strange comment indeed from someone passionately intent on ignoring what American law says about trafficking in body parts, and adjusting abortion techniques to maximize profits.
Tell us more about being dishonest and uninformed.
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