I would like to apologize for suggesting today that it is a bad idea for children to influence the political and medical decisions of adults. Based on the comments I got on Twitter, I now believe they can't do any worse than adults.— Scott Adams (@ScottAdamsSays) January 22, 2019
I've heard him express his opinion about who should determine whether women have access to abortion. He's been saying that the answer should be what women decide is the right answer, because only women get pregnant. So he'll defer to women and he recommended that all men and all children shut up about it and, in any case, he's not interested in what anyone other than adult women think.
I've always had a problem with his idea because he jumps to saying that the majority of women should make the decision that should then bind all women. But why? I'm not even sure he's recognized that he's making a big jump there. Under the current law, where there is a right to have an abortion, no woman is required to have an abortion, and all women get to choose for themselves. 100% of women get decision-making power over their own bodies.
Under a majority-of-women approach, abortion could be outlawed, 50% + 1 get to make the choice for everyone, and presumably that group includes mostly people who would not choose an abortion for themselves, so nearly 100% of the women who want to have the power to make the decision with respect to their body (and only their body) would have their preference overridden by outsiders to their body.
But today, with his "apology," he seems to have forgotten his own reasoning. He's not talking anymore about who is most interested in the question of the legality of abortion and giving the power to women because only women can get pregnant, he's switched to who's smart and who's dumb. Let the smartest people decide. In the comments to his own tweet he adds — responding to "At what age would you allow opinions on the important issues of the day?" — "Apparently it doesn't matter. I have learned today that voters don't get smarter over time."
I know he's being funny, sort of. But abortion is completely unfunny. Adams has had a work-around to having an opinion, and he hasn't even seriously examined his work-around. I understand the fun and the freedom of exiting into comedy whenever you like. But we are talking about a profound matter of life and death, and many people believes abortion is murder, and many people (sometimes the same people!) believe that access to abortion is crucial to the equality of women.
By the way, the very next thing in my Twitter feed was an ad for a horror movie that plays on the primal fear of the intrusion of the baby into to the life of a woman:
Déjà vu, much? #HappyDeathDay2U is in theaters February 13.— Happy Death Day 2U (@UniversalHorror) January 21, 2019
❤️ to make a date with Babyface, and he'll be in touch soon. pic.twitter.com/AklrUd98dO
Posts
120 comments:
I have the right to express my opinion on abortion because I used to be a fetus.
I'm only interested in the opinions of fetuses because they are the only ones who get aborted.
"100% of women get decision-making power over their own bodies."
Except the aborted ones. Not sure what percentage that would be.
Hey campy, remember Reagan's line? "I can't help but notice that all the people in favor of abortion have already been born."
But abortion is completely unfunny.
Well, you got that part right.
I know he's being funny, sort of. But abortion is completely unfunny.
He's demonstrating the male power of deep analysis, contrasting it with the females' short circuit to feelings.
Scott Adams was a big early supporter of Trump. I don't know that he has much else to recommend him.
Since you like hypotheticals, prof, I'll ask one.
If homosexuality is, indeed, the result of a genetic trait, I suspect that it will be eradicated via selective abortion in the future.
Parents will choose to bear children who give them the best chance of producing heirs.
Do you think such selective abortion should be legal or prohibited?
Abortion jokes never get old.
the primal fear of the intrusion of the baby into to the life of a woman
That's not a "primal" fear. Human beings have been reproducing for tens of thousands of years. Pregnancy is not an "intrusion" and the creation of a baby is not some attack on a woman's body.
She might indeed be afraid, if the father doesn't love her, and she doesn't love him. She might be aggravated or annoyed. She might be feeling anything but love for the child she has created.
But this idea that having a baby is some basic fear that all women have had since the dawn of humanity? Bah. You might as well say "the primal joy at the news that you are a mom."
Your emotions reflect the state of your relationships and the state of your heart. Nothing is programmed. So if you are feeling fear when you find out you are pregnant, maybe think about what is making you afraid.
"But abortion is completely unfunny"
I've got some pictures of feminist protest signs having a good 'ol laugh at abortions expense with fetuses as punchlines. So maybe not "completely" for some sickos.
"all children shut up"
Well, not all. Just the ones who are aborted.
What if a supermajority of women decide that it’s illegal to abort a female fetus after 12 weeks, but male fetus ca be aborted any time?
I mean, it will eventually be very good for sales of vibrators.
The only reasonable justification for prohibiting abortion is the belief that the fetus is a living human being with a right to life.
Women are in no better position than men to decide whether or not the fetus has a right to life.
He's been saying that the answer should be what women decide is the right answer, because only women get pregnant.
In any other context, this would be referred to as a conflict of interest, and would be considered a reason to discount the conflicted person's opinion.
I think the men should get together and decide what they should do about paying alimony and child support for children they didn't ever want.
You women need to butt out.
St Croix said:
Your emotions reflect the state of your relationships and the state of your heart. Nothing is programmed. So if you are feeling fear when you find out you are pregnant, maybe think about what is making you afraid.
Excellent advice.
"access to abortion is crucial to the equality of women"
It's the opposite: legal compensation for the fact that they were too weak to take responsibility for their own sexuality.
Adams would probably have no problem saying "Get rid of it" if the GF got pregnant.
But that's personal.
"I have the right to express my opinion on abortion because I used to be a fetus."
Only the former fetuses who entered the world through a woman who didn't have an abortion are here to talk about it. The fetuses on the losing end of the abortion decision are all gone. You are not one of them.
Abortion will eventually be outlawed for population decline reasons.
Until then it's a battle over when is a fetus cute enough to attract a majority's concern.
Some of you are here because your mother had an abortion (or had more than one abortion) and had not exhausted her childbearing efforts before you came along.
Every abortion has a father. Every pregnancy has a father.
Feminism pretends there is no baby. And there's no father. Feminist rhetoric is that a woman is just removing some tissue from her body. Like she's choosing plastic surgery or something.
Asshole men use this rhetoric to pretend like sex is just sex. And baby-making has nothing to do with us males. It's a woman's choice that doesn't concern us.
Think about how insane this is. We are teaching young boys, young men, that pregnancy doesn't concern males.
Do you think negating fatherhood is helpful to girls and women? Or is it stupid as shit?
'Primal fear' of an 'intrusion' is one of the silliest Althouseries of all time. Females' urge to bear young is primal. It's only the modern notion of deeming pregnancy as an inconvenience that makes women want to abort.
Althouse I adore your legal writing and in this case you make another compelling argument.
But in addressing Scott Adams, you seem to have forgotten that since the day that federal search warrants were executed on the home and office of Michael Cohen, Adams “no longer care[s] about the fucking law.”
Some of you are here because your mother had an abortion (or had more than one abortion) and had not exhausted her childbearing efforts before you came along.
Possibly the worst [and stupidest] pro-abortion argument I've ever heard.
"Abortion will eventually be outlawed for population decline reasons."
Wrong.
The answer to that problem is (and should be) economic incentives. You just change the taxing and spending until you get the result you need.
What if women who have a baby and stay home to take care of it were given a stipend equal to minimum wage, with additional money for additional children — and all the health care and schooling (including college) were free, so that instead of having to spend money to have a child, you were better off?
Making abortion illegal would just lead to a lot of illegal abortion (and more aggressive birth control). You wouldn't get more children.
Some of you are here because your mother had an abortion (or had more than one abortion) and had not exhausted her childbearing efforts before you came along.
"Be glad your mother killed your sister or she might have killed you."
Happy Mother's Day!
"Let the smartest people decide."
I don't think Adams meant it this way, but "Let the smartest people decide" is the definition of Progessivism.
And it's based on some ridiculous assumptions: That the people who will decide who's smart and who's dumb are smart enough to know.
That people who have been certified smart will make better decisions.
That the certified smart people won't make decisions to benefit themselves, their wives, children, mistresses, in-laws, cronies, business associates or their black mailers.
That the vast majority of certified dumb people will just happily do what the smart people tell them to do.
An uncertified child could see that the whole idea is a formula for disaster.
I'm here precisely because my mom got pregnant accidentally and chose to keep me.
"Some of you are here because your mother had an abortion (or had more than one abortion) and had not exhausted her childbearing efforts before you came along."
Funny how the aborted one's aren't considered at all in this calculation. Just an appeal to selfishness of the one allowed to live.
"Good thing they decided to shoot those others first and that they didn't want to shoot YOU, buddy. Be sure to thank them for that."
Does a woman need a man to have a baby and abort that baby in the same way a fish needs a bicycle to move from one stream to another more elegantly than just flopping about?
Asking for a friend...
I have never understood why all political decisions should not be subject to collective self-governance aka the democratic process. I know the members of the chattering classes, like Prof. Althouse, pretty much uniformly believe that (some) decisions about sexual matters should only be made by the elite, not the masses, but I have never seen a coherent explanation of why sex is different from money or food or narcotics, where democratic decision-making is the order of the day. You certainly can't get to where Prof. Althouse stands from Carolene Products.
What do militant feminists say about the results of abortion in China (and probably much of Asia)? They're losing a lot of potential wives.
What if women who have a baby and stay home to take care of it were given a stipend equal to minimum wage, with additional money for additional children — and all the health care and schooling (including college) were free, so that instead of having to spend money to have a child, you were better off?
Explosion of lower class births.
Outlawing abortion selects for everybody. Unplanned pregnancies are enough to repopulate the country.
If Ms. Althouse wants to have an abortion, OK, since this is a "free country," but I should not be compelled to pay for it. That is not "free" for me.
"Think about how insane this is. We are teaching young boys, young men, that pregnancy doesn't concern males."
Only men's wallets.
Except in Japan, where the males don't seem to be interested in the females at all.
“Some of you are here because your mother had an abortion (or had more than one abortion) and had not exhausted her childbearing efforts before you came along.......”
WOW.
I believe that women who have had abortions spend the rest of their lives trying to justify abortion by highlighting all the positives derived by ending the life of that unwanted baby—I mean unwanted fetus.
Even while they talk about equality, it isn't really about equality. It's always about advantaging and privileging women's sensibilities and decisions.
When a woman decorates a room, she's "decorating a room". When a man decorates a room, he's "making a man-cave", simply because his tastes will not reflect that of a woman, or that of dominant fem-centric notions about home décor.
My views on abortion have always pretty much been summarized as follows:
It's existence is unfortunate
I don't like that it exists while acknowledging that legal or illegal, it will happen.
I find it regrettable that for many women, they will likely appeal to it as a solution first rather than give other options more thoughtful consideration.
I find it disgusting that such a regrettable thing has been politically weaponized as a stand-in and catch-all for other philosophical and political issues.
Its existence represents a fundamental failure of responsibility at the individual and public level, a sort of tragedy of the commons, for which we all have a small share of the blame.
It's existence is unfortunate
I do not think it should be illegal. I just wish being legal, it would never be used.
Does a woman have the absolute right to abort a fetus because the child will be female? That's not a hypothetical question. It happens.......I'm not against abortion, but there are downsides to the practice. I much prefer to live in a society that discourages the practice.
The most depressing aspect of the abortion issue is that the discussion hasn't advanced or elevated one iota although the science of procreation has. Roe v. Wade was a logical trimester abomination. Since then, the science of procreation has rocketed ahead. But, the pro-choice lobby views the discussion as limited to women's bodies. Accepting that a woman's body is all her own, why can't the pro-choice and pro-life factions focus next on the preservation of life? Clearly, the science allows life to be preserved and nurtured while respecting a woman's right to govern her body and choose.
" It's only the modern notion of deeming pregnancy as an inconvenience that makes women want to abort."
Let's bone up on The History of Abortion (Wikipedia). It goes back as far as there is history.
"Many of the methods employed in early cultures were non-surgical. Physical activities like strenuous labor, climbing, paddling, weightlifting, or diving were a common technique. Others included the use of irritant leaves, fasting, bloodletting, pouring hot water onto the abdomen, and lying on a heated coconut shell.[5] In virtually all cultures, abortion techniques developed through observation, adaptation of obstetrical methods, and transculturation.[6] Physical means of inducing abortion, including battery, exercise, and tightening the girdle were still often used as late as the Early Modern Period among English women.[7]
"Archaeological discoveries indicate early surgical attempts at the extraction of a fetus; however, such methods are not believed to have been common, given the infrequency with which they are mentioned in ancient medical texts.[8]
"An 8th-century Sanskrit text instructs women wishing to induce an abortion to sit over a pot of steam or stewed onions.[9] The technique of massage abortion, involving the application of pressure to the pregnant abdomen, has been practiced in Southeast Asia for centuries. One of the bas reliefs decorating the temple of Angkor Wat in Cambodia, dated c. 1150, depicts a demon performing such an abortion upon a woman who has been sent to the underworld.[4]
"Japanese documents show records of induced abortion from as early as the 12th century. It became much more prevalent during the Edo period, especially among the peasant class, who were hit hardest by the recurrent famines and high taxation of the age.[10] Statues of the Boddhisattva Jizo, erected in memory of an abortion, miscarriage, stillbirth, or young childhood death, began appearing at least as early as 1710 at a temple in Yokohama (see religion and abortion).[11]
"The native Māori people of New Zealand colonisation terminated pregnancies via miscarriage-inducing drugs, ceremonial methods, and girding of the abdomen with a restrictive belt.[12] Another source claims that the Māori people did not practice abortion, for fear of Makutu, but did attempt abortion through the artificial induction of premature labor.[13]
"Much of what is known about the methods and practice of abortion in Greek and Roman history comes from early classical texts. Abortion, as a gynecological procedure, was primarily the province of women who were either midwives or well-informed laypeople. In his Theaetetus, Plato mentions a midwife's ability to induce abortion in the early stages of pregnancy.[14][15] It is thought unlikely that abortion was punished in Ancient Greece.[16] However, a fragment attributed to the poet Lysias "suggests that abortion was a crime in Athens against the husband, if his wife was pregnant when he died, since his unborn child could have claimed the estate[17]...
And on and on.
Really, your statement couldn't be more wrong. I'm just at a loss to go on. You can believe what you want to believe, but what you said is like saying humanity began 5,000 years ago with Adam and Eve. Care to change your position? If not, I will leave you alone with it.
But we are talking about a profound matter of life and death, and many people believes abortion is murder, and many people (sometimes the same people!) believe that access to abortion is crucial to the equality of women.
Why are we censoring abortion photographs?
We normally don't run photographs of homicide victims in the media, because it upsets people. But abortion is a different matter entirely. That's because killing people is a crime. But aborting a baby is not a crime. It's a constitutional right, or so are we are told.
So why are we hiding a constitutional right?
The state is officially telling us, nobody is killed in an abortion. These babies are non-persons. There are no homicides to hide.
Is this a lie?
So maybe that's why we're hiding these aborted babies. Yes, because the violence upsets us. But also media people want the violence to continue. So it's like hiding the atrocities of war. You want the war to continue. So you censor the ugliness of war. We want abortions to continue. So we censor the decapitations and the dismemberments.
I believe a huge number of people are being lied to by a culture that has been hiding the bodies for 45 years.
So, Althouse, if you believe that a woman has a right to choose, and this is a life-or-death matter, shouldn't this woman be highly informed about the choice she is making?
Shouldn't her choice be informed by facts and truth?
Why the secrecy and the deception? And how does a choice made under false conditions protect a woman's autonomy? Why is it so important to feminism that we lie to women?
so that instead of having to spend money to have a child, you were better off?
So women really are as mercenary as their ex-husbands believe?
Louis CK opened one of his Netflix specials with "Soo.....Abortion" and it was really funny. The rule of comedy is, everything can be funny.
But now Louis CK can't be seen because he gave some women a choice they became sorry they made. In the meantime, you can make the lives of high schools students a nightmare and still keep your tv job.
There is something wrong with a society that encourages abortion, be it for economic, social or personal reasons. As William said, I prefer to live in a society that discourages the practice.
Infanticide is as ancient as slavery.
And just as bad.
Should people who do not pay taxes be allowed to vote on how the government spends its taxed money?
I have no problem with women making their personal decisions as to whether to bear a child or not. I keep waiting for the Supremes to divine a similar right for men to make a personal decision as to whether to bear the expense of raising that child. It smells of involuntary servitude to me. But splooge-stooge denouncing feminists rarely make the case for sexual equality in family court.
Making abortion illegal would just lead to a lot of illegal abortion (and more aggressive birth control). You wouldn't get more children.
I'm pro-choice, but I see more aggressive birth control as a really positive thing. I'd much rather there be more birth control and less abortion.
I call planned parenthood molochs minions btw the 5th circuit reversing the abortion matter in Texas doesn't get nearly enough attention.
Agree, Lucid-Ideas.
The system we have now is that only judges are allowed to make any decisions about abortions.
Since no judges are children, this question is moot.
Childbirth used to be pretty dangerous for the mother, so ancient abortion attempts are understandable.
Blogger Mike Sylwester said...
Should people who do not pay taxes be allowed to vote on how the government spends its taxed money?
No. I’ve thought this for a long time.
Of course it’s very difficult to avoid paying taxes completely. You pay taxes in dozens of different ways almost every week.
In any legal system that uses the power of the state to force men to pay child support (including some small number of men proven NOT to be the bio father, simply because they married the mother), it is logically inconsistent to say only women get to have an opinion on abortion. Besides, as we all know (because "it's 2019"), there are women with penises and men with uterii. So who gets to define who's a woman - and therefore, who is allowed to opine?
FWIW, I'm pro-choice (but only b/c I don't trust the state to make sensible policy on this issue). I have no use for men who evade their parental duties, whether that means helping to raise their progeny or providing for them. But fair is fair.
Childbirth used to be pretty dangerous for the mother, so ancient abortion attempts are understandable.
Abortion used to be pretty dangerous for the mother, too. All of those abortion strategies outlined by Althouse at 9:07 either failed to kill the baby, or did tremendous damage to the mother as well.
That's why killing newborns was a common practice among non-Jews and non-Christians.
Choose life.
"so that instead of having to spend money to have a child, you were better off?"
I meant better off financially, as is obvious from the context, but I understand the sentimentality and force of necessity that leads people to say that you're always better off with a child and that the love and joy outweighs the huge financial burden of rearing a child in modern America.
But many people, including the more educated and self-controlled, consider economics when they are deciding whether to have children, and if there were a time when there weren't enough children being born and the country wanted to affect the decisionmaking, the way to do it would be with economic incentives. These are very powerful.
If I had been offered a stipend enough to live a middle-class life when I was in my 20s, I would have sprung for it and never gone to law school.
@MayBee
Agree on the birth control thing. I alluded to the issue of responsibility in my earlier post. Abortion represents a fundamental failure of responsibility in my view...the idea that it should never have gotten to that point. Other scenarios aside, with proper planning (family or otherwise) the idea is abortion as a tool of family planning sits idle, an archaic holdover from a time when people were less responsible.
The even worse aspect to abortion - one that people work hard to gloss over - is the racial disparity between those who preach for the right for people to have them while an entirely different class of people are the ones that end up using it.
Multiple waves of mostly white feminists have fought for decades for the right of black women to have abortions and black fetuses to die in great quantities.
"Justice is the will of the stronger." Who is the stronger: the woman or the fetus she is carrying?
Scott just doesn't want to deal with abortion. It's a pain in the ass. IMO women should have the right to an abortion, for any reason whatsoever, up until a certain month.
The problem is like the gun lobby, abortionists will not be happy until they are torn out of the womb during labor. Which is at least barbaric and inhuman at worst.
A society that would agree with aborting a baby during labor has lost all humanity. But that's what it is.
In his initial tweets he didn't limit the topic to abortion, though: he said minors shouldn't be working to politically influence any policy that would apply to others. That's very broad and would mean all sorts of civic activity by minors is wrong.
I asked if he expressed that sentiment during the Media push to get the Parkland kids' gun control message out or during any one of the many youth-led climate change action events but he didn't give a response.
Given his ideas regarding persuasion I thought it a strange position to take. Working as a church volunteer for Habitat for Humanity or doing service projects as a Boy Scout would, in the expansive definition of persuasion, act to shape other's political views and could influence how they feel about laws, etc. I'm not sure if Adams believes all such activities are wrong, as well.
"If I had been offered a stipend enough to live a middle-class life when I was in my 20s, I would have sprung for it and never gone to law school."
And there you see the insidious and damaging effect of socialism and the democrat platform. Your life would have been greatly diminished.
the primal fear of the intrusion of the baby into to the life of a woman
Ann, do you seriously think that men don't fear the intrusion of a baby into their lives?
I understand that one out of six women used to die in childbirth, generally after a hideously painful ordeal. The human race would have died out if women had made free and rational choices regarding pregnancy.
The answer to that problem is (and should be) economic incentives. You just change the taxing and spending until you get the result you need.
Get rid of Social Security and Medicaid. You want financial security in your old age? Raise productive children.
Let's bone up on The History of Abortion (Wikipedia). It goes back as far as there is history.
I guess your definition of 'primal' is different from mine. Yes, infanticide has always existed in both human and other species. But it is not primal.
This question is culturally determined.
In a communal culture for instance nobody is exempt from duties, especially those that matter for group survival, like bearing children. As an example of a culture closer to the earth, so to speak, consider the Philippines - and you could include here much of Southeast Asia. The worst monster in its folklore (out of many horrible things in its rich array of bogeymen) is the aswang, of which one sort specializes in sucking the fetus out of pregnant women. There is also the concept of miscarried, stillborn or abandoned babies turning into evil spirits. This all is pre-colonization, pre-Christian. The inherent value system of the ur-culture was and still is intensely pro-natalist, and its fears show up in its stories.
As modern cultures developed beyond a reliance on small groups I think the communal values that are native to the human animal have been purged, deliberately or inadvertently. They are not being replaced by any coherent system based on reason or science, as none of this is reasonable (reason cannot justify existence) and we are very far from understanding any of this scientifically.
This is of course caused by technology. Tech changes faster than the human animal can adapt, causing all sorts of problems, including many that may cause human extinction. I keep recommending E.M.Forsters "The Machine Stops" as the first parable, probably, on that subject, of humanity overwhelmed by the benefits of its own technology, dwindling and dying of over-reliance on it. You could also call it an addiction. I see plenty of people today turning into infertile out of touch shut-ins, precisely as in Forsters story.
In any case, babies are the only way out of extinction. Anything that persuades or assists people not to have babies is anti-survival and inherently inhuman.
Althouse said... The answer to that problem is (and should be) economic incentives. You just change the taxing and spending until you get the result you need.
What if women who have a baby and stay home to take care of it were given a stipend equal to minimum wage, with additional money for additional children — and all the health care and schooling (including college) were free, so that instead of having to spend money to have a child, you were better off?
Re: economic incentives. You'd have more women staying home given a stipend equal to the minimum wage with additional money for additional children receiving all the health care and schooling (including college) free.
Althouse's allusion to "stay home to take care of children" tends to conjure images of a two-parent, one in the workplace nuclear family.
But insert the words "married" between "if" and "women" to create those kinds of economic incentives, and it becomes a non-starter for Democrats, obviously.
Democrats want Democrat Party voter incubation at taxpayer expense.
Professor, I read most of your stuff because I find you intelligent, diligent, thoughtful, thought provoking, and (more than most) able to see and articulate good arguments, even for positions with which you do not agree. All good characteristics, and seemingly so rare these days.
But ‘boy oh boy’ do you have huge blind spots.
The feminist “schtick” about which Thomas is always Shouting, homosexuality for obvious reasons, and this one...Abortion. Maybe it’s just part of the feminist ideology, or maybe its separate, but your staunch stance on this seems at odds with your typically well balanced, deliberate, analytical self.
Or as Thomas might say, “the feelz”.
He's been saying that the answer should be what women decide is the right answer, because only women get pregnant. So he'll defer to women and he recommended that all men and all children shut up about it and, in any case, he's not interested in what anyone other than adult women think.
Is there any issue on which only men get to decide? Or Blacks? Or Catholics?
In ancient cultures, babies were sometimes sacrifice to gods. Was it due to a primal urge to kill one's children? Of course not. While there are aberrations, maternal instinct is primal.
Some people believe the right to abortion is so important it overrides the right to freedom of speech.
Making abortion illegal would just lead to a lot of illegal abortion
"Why outlaw murder? People are still going to kill."
"Why outlaw rape? Then people will just do it in secret."
Liberals who talk about the uselessness of outlawing things are hypocrites. Why the hell go to law school--or teach law--if outlawing things is useless and unhelpful?
and more aggressive birth control
Good! What the fuck is wrong with that? Why are liberals opposed to a world with less abortion and more birth control? Maybe outlawing abortion will cause people to take their sexual reproduction--and their sex lives--way more seriously. And they make better choices.
Why is pushing people away from abortion bad? Why would anybody think that birth control and abortion are the same thing?
Why do liberals pretend that abortion is necessary, and we will live in a Handmaid's tale if it disappears? Can we get some sanity from the left, please?
What if women who have a baby and stay home to take care of it were given a stipend equal to minimum wage, with additional money for additional children — and all the health care and schooling (including college) were free, so that instead of having to spend money to have a child, you were better off?
And the mask comes off and we get to the truth of the matter....women demanding that men and the government support them and give them money and free stuff because they are women.
"But abortion is completely unfunny." Guess Althouse is joining the "Era of That's Not Funny." Here's my favorite abortion joke:
"What’s the best thing about abortion jokes?
"They never get old."
What if women who have a baby and stay home to take care of it were given a stipend equal to minimum wage, with additional money for additional children — and all the health care and schooling (including college) were free, so that instead of having to spend money to have a child, you were better off?
It's too bad that society never created an institution that would provide those things for women.....perhaps we could have called a marriage...….
If there were financial incentives to staying home and raising children, who would pay for it?
Of course, we already have our Great Society and we pay for it.
And if you are being paid to stay home and raise children, wouldn't the people footing the bill be able to tell you how to raise those children? Just like in any other job.
Scott needs to take a few days off...
Economic advancement as a result of technology is messing with the stuff thats hard-coded in the brain, which evolved for a very different situation. The human animal is versatile and adaptable, but there are limits.
Most of human culture, any culture, is an empirical social adaptation to agriculture, necessary because, arguably, human biology has not kept up with agriculture.
That has worked, more or less. But things have gone much further than basic agriculture and the environment has changed faster than the animal can keep up.
Feminism can be seen as a cultural adaptation to technological change, but a perverse one, as it is a reaction to perverse incentives.
Let me try again:
http://thefederalist.com/2019/01/21/fifth-circuit-lifts-injunction-providing-new-hope-pro-life-advocates/
A fetus
shouldn't
inconvenience
right?
Only the carrier counts... Scott had nothing other than horse laugh to back that up
Saying only women should discuss abortion is like saying only drivers should discuss the speed limit.
Why should he bind all women?
He didn’t. Women who argued that do.
There is a real possibility - technologically speaking - that humans will be able to reproduce "asexually" by the end of this century. "Asexually" as in not needing a 2nd human in the picture at all and simply grafting your existing genetic material to a substrate while using an incubator to grow a new human.
I think often about what this possibility would do to our entire culture and the very fundamentals about how we interact with humans in general. You could argue that such an invention would effectively cleave men and women apart forever, almost creating them as separate species moving forward. If one of the fundamental values women bring to the table - throughout history - is their capacity for selection and veto of who gets to pass on their genetic material into the future, and they lose this, what purpose does any and all of this societal baggage designed around and support of natalism do anymore?
If I as a man had the power and ability to pass on my essence into the future without needing a woman, what would that look like? Obviously women could do this too. I find the whole possibility and the idea to be very dystopian. I'm very certain this is coming.
January 22 is the birthday of Roe v. Wade, by the way.
Roe v. Wade is a middle-aged man, not quite 50. Nine men wrote the case. Very toxic and poisonous. They killed a lot of babies. When they came under attack for their callous disregard for human life, all of a sudden they pretended they were feminists.
I imagine if Roe v. Wade was actually a man, he'd be very confused right now.
"I'm resolved. I'm resolved. Why is everybody fighting? I'm resolved. I'm settled. I'm totally settled and resolved. There is no fighting. I don't see any fighting. Why is everybody fighting? I'm resolved. Not sure why a rapist was put on the Supreme Court. Or maybe he's not a rapist. It's very confusing. Has nothing to do with me. I'm resolved. I'm settled. Wait. Is it five to four? I'm resolved. I'm so resolved. It has been decided. Nothing to talk about. Because I am so resolved and settled."
> Making abortion illegal would just lead to a lot of illegal abortion (and more aggressive birth control). You wouldn't get more children.
Making projections based on an idea that legality has zero control effect?
> ut what you said is like saying humanity began 5,000 years ago with Adam and Eve. Care to change your position?
and a blatant straw man?
Somebody is an emotional abortion warrior...
Anyone here persuaded by the above?
Native Hawaiians practiced infanticide. No risky abortions for them. 100% effective population control
Even if each woman has a monopoly on the "Right to choose" - the circumstances of her choice aren't. What's the cutoff date for abortion six months? Nine Months? 2 years?
And who's paying for the abortion? It'd better not be the taxpayers.
You are both wrong. The central issue of abortion is, is the fetus a person. My own opinion, based I think one idence, is no, at least not in the first few months of pregnancy, but yes in the final weeks of pregnancy. As long as the answer is no I think we must leave it to the woman to choose, but not in the final weeks where society has an interest.
I'm all in favor of handling this social issues with big uni-sex votes. For example, men buy and own 95% of the guns. So lets have a big referendum on Gun control. Men only.
Why not apply the regulation Lefties desire for the 2nd amendment to the judicial invention of abortion?
- have a background check first
- search social media to make sure she is in the right frame of mind
- have school kids tell you what to do on the subject
the womb: the ultimate 'safe space'
You have the right to free healthcare, education, guaranteed living wage,etc,
but not the right to exist
Being wanted makes you human,a precious baby, being unwanted makes you a cell-clump?
n.n. is going to be so pissed that he took this morning off.
Althouse is vindicating Hardin again here.
Adams: Jeez these adults are less thoughtful than 5 year olds.
Ann: How dare you!
Native Hawaiians almost died out.
People forget that by the time the US took over the place, there were under 20,000 natives left, under 10% of the population pre-contact, and a very small minority of the residents of Hawaii in 1898.
The collapse of the Hawaiian people is not a well understood phenomenon.
Here is some fantastic journalism from a female journalist. She could not get her report on the airwaves.
17,000 bodies found in shipping container.
By the way, the litigation over a funeral service for these babies ended up in the Supreme Court.
It’s a dopey position because men and women oppose and approve of abortion at the same rate.
Murder isn't funny, and abortion is murder. PERIOD!
Planned Parenthood makes BIG money on aborted fetus parts.
[Scott Adams] been saying that the answer should be what women decide is the right answer, because only women get pregnant.
He'd have a point if only women got aborted.
This only women have a stake class of pro-choice argument leaves me wondering what we'd say to those who would have left the fate of the Jews entirely to the SS.
“I know he's being funny, sort of. But abortion is completely unfunny.“
60 million slaughtered and counting is way beyond unfunny. In civilian homocides it is also likely beyond Hitler, Stalin and Mao combined.
You go, girls!
Blogger Ann Althouse said...
“Some of you are here because your mother had an abortion (or had more than one abortion) and had not exhausted her childbearing efforts before you came along.”
Krikey, Professor. “... had not exhausted her childbearing efforts...”? My dad had nine brothers and three sisters. I’m not sure when Grandma had her “exhaustion prevention abortions”, but I’m sure Pop, who was the youngest, was grateful.
Small wonder you think Occasional-Cortex is a serious person.
"Under the current law, where there is a right to have an abortion, no woman is required to have an abortion, and all women get to choose for themselves. 100% of women get decision-making power over their own bodies."
What an odd way to present the issue:
"all women get to choose for themselves" - yes, where there is a right.
"100% of women get decision-making power over their own bodies." - yes, where there is a right.
In Wisconsin that right ends at around 20 weeks gestation:
"No person shall perform or induce or attempt to perform or induce an abortion upon a woman when the unborn child is considered capable of experiencing pain unless the woman is undergoing a medical emergency. For purposes of this subsection, an unborn child is considered to be capable of experiencing pain if the probable postfertilization age of the unborn child is 20 or more weeks."
Decision-making power over her body and the body and life of their child. Pro-Choice is two choices too late. Selective-child is less honest in motives, methods, and apologies than its one-child counterpart.
17,000 bodies found in shipping container.
Aliens? The truth is out there.
an unborn child is considered to be capable of experiencing pain if the probable postfertilization age of the unborn child is 20 or more weeks
When a human life first becomes sentient is disputable. However, a coherent nervous system is observable at around 4 weeks. And, of course, evolution begins at conception. The so-called "big bang" of a human life.
Catholic League v. Feminist Health Ctr., 469 U.S. 1303 (1984)
The Catholic consistency over time and space with religion and science is worth noting.
So if you are feeling fear when you find out you are pregnant, maybe think about what is making you afraid.
Exactly. Sex is the easy part. However, you're not "children" anymore.
Small wonder you think Occasional-Cortex is a serious person.
Good one, hombre. Except I'm not sure the Occasion has yet arisen. Unless I've missed something.
Per Lucid @10:18: The problem with technology is that we have the idea that, if it can be done, it should be done.
I just finished a very thought provoking book "The Wish Child" by Catherine Chidgey. I couldn't put it down. I got some real insights into what happened and what is happening now.
Why does the bicycle keep demanding a fish?
Dunno Ann. I have no illusions about the life of some non-aborted kids. My husband is a police officer in a large US City, and has spent most of his career in the worst parts of it. It's tempting to think that the majority of those kids would be better off if their mom had decided that they were an inconvenience and aborted them. But then it is so heartbreaking when they or their boyfriends perform a post-birth abortion, via neglect or straight up violence.
Is one to consider the children better off, and the mother relieved of a burden?
As I expect you are quite aware, the "well raised and intelligent young woman who has an abortion to prevent disrupting her promising career as a doctor, and who goes on at a more convenient time of life to have two lovely and lovingly raised children" is the exception, not the rule, of abortion. (To the extent that I consider framing the issue in those terms to be somewhat disingenuous...)
"he seems to have forgotten his own reasoning." Don't see the problem so much. He chose to drop out of this issue since he doesn't have "standing" as much as women. Doesn't mean everyone else needs to drop out.
As for children, I also don't see the problem. Children don't vote, but they sometimes mix in. When they do, the rest of us often point out that they don't know anything. There's some reason why the voting age is set at 45 or wherever it is.
Do post menopausal women have a voice? Do those who have had hysterectomies or had tubal ligation have a voice? Do those who for some reason can never become pregnant for whatever reason have a voice? I don't think the man realizes how many different reasons women have for not having a say about pregnancy in others if the vote is limited to women.
jerpod:
There's a certain well-established order to these things: Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. The prerequisite for a viable society under this order is men and women capable off self-moderating, responsible behavior.
Ann wrote, "where there is a right to have an abortion... 100% of women get decision-making power over their own bodies."
To put it much more accurately, 100% of women get decision-making power over someone else's body. When the violent act of abortion is chosen, it's not the woman's body that gets dismembered; it's someone else's body – namely, that of her daughter or son – that gets dismembered.
Later, Ann wrote "Under a majority-of-women approach, abortion could be outlawed, 50% + 1 get to make the choice for everyone, and presumably that group includes mostly people who would not choose an abortion for themselves, so nearly 100% of the women who want to have the power to make the decision with respect to their body (and only their body)".
By asserting that the choice to abort affects "only" the woman's body, is Ann attempting to make people give no thought to the body that is much more drastically affected by the choice to abort (the body that gets dismembered; the body of the woman's daughter or son)? No, I think the answer is both more and less insidious than that.
It's more insidious, in that it doesn't even occur to Ann that when a woman chooses to abort, someone else (the woman's daughter or son) suffers the ultimate human rights violation. (To apply capital punishment to a complete innocent is to commit the ultimate human rights violation. That describes abortion to a T.)
And it's less insidious, because this is merely a reflection of Ann's thoughtlessness, rather than an overt attempt to brainwash.
For some objective statistics, check out www.NumberOfAbortions.com, which reveals that "worldwide since 1980," 1.538 billion people have been killed by abortions.
Some have called abortion a "new Holocaust," but since the number of deaths is orders of magnitude greater than the Holocaust, comparing it to the Holocaust really trivializes the effect of abortion.
Significantly more than 50% of the 1.538 billion people killed by abortion were female. That's mostly because sex-selection abortions are rampant in China, where the culture says having a son is far more valuable than having a daughter.
Since more than 50% of the people killed by abortion were females – who would have grown up to be women had they not been aborted – it is arguable that women who aren't in denial about the 1.538 billion people killed by abortion should have more say in the matter than men who aren't in denial about the 1.538 billion people killed by abortion.
Neither women nor men who are in denial about the 1.538 billion people killed by abortion, of course, should have any say in the matter – just as Holocaust deniers rightly had no say in whether the Potsdam Agreement of August 1945 would resolve to "denazify" German society.
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