August 22, 2022

The lanternfly and the unborn baby.

Meade texts me the link to this NYT article: "In the Lanternfly War, Some Take the Bug’s Side/Even as the invasive pest spreads across 11 states and threatens agriculture, lanternflies are winning sympathizers who resist kill-on-sight orders." 

He pulls this quote...
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals offered a less than full-throated defense of the lanternfly. The advocacy group did advise people, however, to carefully consider their actions if it involves “killing any living being, no matter how small or unfamiliar,” said Catie Cryar, a PETA spokeswoman.
... and says:
"Killing any living being, no matter how small or unfamiliar"

Like an unborn living human being? 
He quotes...
The bugs “didn’t ask to be invasive, they are just living their own life,” [said Catherine Bonner, 22, a Temple University student in Philadelphia]. “I would be bummed if I suddenly started existing somewhere I wasn’t supposed to exist and everyone started killing me for it.”
... and says: 
Like suddenly existing somewhere like your mother’s body?

58 comments:

Meade said...

“I don’t like killing [human embryos], I love them,” she said. “But the spotted [unwanted fetuses] being here is our responsibility. It is up to us to fix it.”

Rusty said...

On the one hand we have people who are obviously mentally impaired. On the other you have an insect.
Hence the term,"bug nuts crazy".

RideSpaceMountain said...

PETA? Isn't this the organization that was caught euthanized thousands of dogs and cats?

Sebastian said...

At last we discover what can make Althouse reconsider her reverence for abortion: specious PETA arguments.

rhhardin said...

It won't go viral unless the lanternfly is cute.

Gusty Winds said...

Gather them all up for Nicole Kidman and Bill Gates. They can eat them for dinner.

Achilles said...

Whatever the problem is, I am guessing both sides have decided the government is the answer to it.

Flowers said...

Roe is dead. We won half the battle. Now, on to the states.

Cappy said...

What Gusty said.

I, for one, look forward to the inevitable civil war between insectivores and vegans.

Lilly, a dog said...

I live in Pennsylvania and they are everywhere. They are not cute. I have not squished any of them myself, but I love that scene in Starship Troopers where the kids do their part to fight the bug menace.

tim maguire said...

There has been no lion Napoleon, no chimpanzee Shakespeare or parrot Socrates. There has never been an individual animal that mattered to the other animals for more than a few minutes after its death. They all die and they all stop mattering almost immediately after.

Species matter, avoiding extinction is a worthwhile goal except in extreme situations (like smallpox or possibly the mosquito), but the individual does not matter. If a specific animal is a problem, it is not a tragedy to kill that animal. There is nothing wrong with feeding the petting zoo goats to the tigers at the end of summer to avoid the cost of feeding them over the winter.

Nobody is talking about eliminating the lanternfly as a species, they are talking about removing it from places it shouldn't be. One would have to be truly deeply misguided to have a problem with killing millions of lanternflies to keep the species in its proper ecological place.

tim maguire said...

Flowers said...Roe is dead. We won half the battle. Now, on to the states.

The battle to return the power to the people is won. Now its up to the people to decide what to do with that power.

narciso said...

Just bring on our ant overlords

Wilbur said...

Living in South Florida, I've never heard of a lantern fly, let alone seen one.

Per the USDA: "Learn how to spot it and report it. The Spotted Lanternfly (Lycorma delicatula) is native to China and was first detected in Pennsylvania in September 2014. Spotted lanternfly feeds on a wide range of fruit, ornamental and woody trees, with tree-of-heaven being one of the preferred hosts."

Creola Soul said...

Damn! Hoisted on their own petard…..again.

narciso said...

https://nypost.com/2022/08/08/biden-must-demand-timid-fda-act-as-baby-formula-shortage-grows-even-worse/

Howard said...

Crispr will soon be the norm for tics, mosquitos and invasive species. Then later on we will discover the unintended consequence of gene editing. Right now, it's insecticide - yum! Bring back Toxaphene and Chlorpyrifos

wendybar said...

We killed three of them (lantern bugs, not babies) this weekend in our yard. First that we have seen here at the Jersey shore.

narciso said...

https://www.risk.net/our-take/7953576/net-zero-pledges-bring-big-unknown-for-credit-risk

gilbar said...

i read a piece back about the turn of the century where a woman worried about the fact the she was:
a) a vegan
b) a pro choice (pro abortion) activist

She was concerned that IF she thought that killing a fly was MURDER, How could it be okay, to terminate a fetus? She squared the circle, by deciding that:
A fetus is not a living creature, it is an inanimate clump of cells.

But Then she thought about ultrasounds, and the fact that fetuses Obviously have heartbeats, and kick.
So then she decided (i am NOT making this up!), that fetuses don't have souls (unlike flies), and thus; it is FINE to terminate them.

I was impressed with her willful self delusion.. And MORE impressed that she made it into a national magazine

narciso said...


Well she has weedws herself out

https://thecountersignal.com/trudeau-officers-threatened-with-arrest/

Carol said...

The missing part is that the activists and their donors really, really hate humans, especially white ones.

Not themselves of course but those other people over there.

hpudding said...

Revealing one’s sympathies for the politics of forced gestation was unforeseen to me, but a good look for the blog! I applaud it.

Will forcing everyone else to use their bodies to provide blood, bone marrow or a spare kidney or two to the thousands who regularly die from a shortage of “willing” organ donors be next on your agenda for the state, or is that not misogynistic enough? All they did was commit the crime of existing. Just without working body parts that others could have helped them live by providing.

Etc., etc., ad nauseum.

Quick piece of trivia - in what 20th century decade was the guillotine last used in France, by whom, and for what reason?

hpudding said...

Roe is dead. We won half the battle. Now, on to the states.

What was the margin of loss on the stunt the forced gestationists tried in their vote on this issue in Kansas?

I see now why the fascist right want to leave these decisions (and elections in general) to their politicians instead of to referendums and voters. More easily corrupted and bought off.

Even in Kansas.

Aggie said...

"The software developer is made uncomfortable by the state-sanction campaign against lanternflies"

Well, there it is, yet again: My Feelz, my virtuous feelz are more important than everyone else's agriculture economy and food supply.

What a peaceful society we have, where only the predators have license for violent displays, while the righteous wait too patiently.

Mr. Althouse, my compliments on the fortitude of your moral compass!

hpudding said...

The text he sent provides an intriguing alternative to obstetricians who all this time thought they had the right answer for ectopic pregnancies.

The great thing about the forced pregnancy movement is it shows us how OB/GYNs really are obsolete and incapable of addressing any of the ethics that their new armies of armchair physician equivalents can handle much more adeptly.

So, ectopic pregnancies… also wrong to abort? Those fetuses just committed the crime of existing.

Richard said...

"Killing any living being, no matter how small or unfamiliar"

PETA is channeling Horton Hears a Who: "A person’s a person, no matter how small!"

Misinforminimalism said...

Gather them all up for Nicole Kidman and Bill Gates. They can eat them for dinner.

At first I thought you were suggesting they eat all the babies. Which kinda works, too.

Misinforminimalism said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
tim in vermont said...

"A person’s a person, no matter how small!"

Begs the question, because SCOTUS decides who is and is not a 'person.'

n.n said...

Masculinists/Feminists for the Ethical Treatment of Humans (METH)?

Interesting, social progressives used the same liberal apology (i.e. edge arguments) involving... insects? fish? in order to rationalize the political congruence ("=") of the transgender spectrum.

There is no mystery in sex and conception, a woman and man have four choices: sex or abstention, contraception in depth, adoption (i.e. shared/shifted responsibility), and compassion (i.e. shared/personal responsibility), and an equal right to self-defense through reconciliation (e.g. progressive risk to the mother, slavery including rape... rape-rape and perhaps social progress including incestuous relationships).

The Pro-Choice ethical religion denies the dignity and agency of women and men, and reduces human life to negotiable commodities (i.e. wicked solution) under Diversity, Inequity, and Exclusion (DIE) doctrine, in order to keep women affordable, available, and taxable, and the burden of evidence sequestered in darkness, at the twilight fringe.

Civilized society has compelling cause to discourage the performance of human rites (e.g. murder) for social, redistributive, clinical, political, and fair weather causes.

Six weeks to baby meets granny in state, in law, if not in process.

#RoesRegrets #RuthsRemorse #HateLovesAbortion

Static Ping said...

When your guiding principle is "whatever I want is good," everything falls into place quite easily. It also requires no thinking, which is a bonus for many people. Logic is icky.

It also makes it clear why they look down on religious people. Not only do religious people refuse to accept their ideas, religious people actually have to apply rules to their lives. You know, do work.

Static Ping said...

For the record, adult lantern flies can be a challenge to kill. They will see foot stomps coming and fly away, but they rarely fly very far, more or a hop, and when they land they do not seem to respond for a second or two. You need to go for the stomp, then see where it landed, then immediately stomp on it, repeating the process until you get it. In addition, they seem to survive solid foot stomps sometimes, so once you catch them you need splatter them good or they might get up.

WK said...

Lanternfly and the Unborn Baby. Thought it was an announcement for a new Marvel Comics-based movie. I’d be curious to see the trailer…….

n.n said...

"A person’s a person, no matter how small!"

Begs the question, because SCOTUS decides who is and is not a 'person.'


There are diverse precedents for States to deny or offer secular [religious] sanction of life deemed unworthy of life for social progress (e.g. DIE), redistributive change (e.g. equity), clinical cannibalism (e.g. personal or capital profit), political choice (e.g. one-child, selective-child), and fair weather causes (e.g. climate stasis).

Demos-cracy is aborted at the twilight fringe. Choose wisely, ladies and germs.

gahrie said...

So, ectopic pregnancies… also wrong to abort? Those fetuses just committed the crime of existing.

Ectopic pregnancies can result in the death of the mother. No one is required to sacrifice themselves to save another. Thus ectopic pregnancies are one of the few cases where abortion is justified to save the life of the mother. If it makes you feel any better, the unborn in the case are going to die anyway since ectopic pregnancies cannot result in a live birth.

Rabel said...

I thought the giant yellow spiders had already eaten most of the East Coast.

gahrie said...

The great thing about the forced pregnancy movement

Who's campaigning to force women to get pregnant?

What's emanating from your penumbra said...

It's only ethical to kill a lanternfly if the little critter is inconveniencing a woman.

RigelDog said...

I'm in the Philadelphia area and we got hit hard with the Lanternfly invasion starting roughly five years ago. But here's the good news: we hit a peak about three years ago and there are way fewer this year than ever. I live next to a forest and they used to practically cover the road in the summer but I am only occasionally seeing one this year during my walks.

When these otherwise-beautiful critters first arrived, I wondered why no other insects or animals were eating them. I learned that it just takes a while for local fauna to learn that newcomers ARE suitable for eating. I am optimistic that's exactly what has happened. It seems like most non-native species end up finding a place in the local ecosystems and balance will be restored eventually.

Jupiter said...

“I would be bummed if I suddenly started existing somewhere I wasn’t supposed to exist and everyone started killing me for it.”

Obviously, this woman has never been to Chicago.

CStanley said...

Will forcing everyone else to use their bodies to provide blood, bone marrow or a spare kidney or two to the thousands who regularly die from a shortage of “willing” organ donors be next on your agenda for the state, or is that not misogynistic enough?

I find it so strange that comments like these ignore the chosen activity that precedes every pregnancy, and the agency in most cases that exists to either avoid that activity or alter the means in which it’s done to prevent the pregnancy. Can it really be that some people actually don’t see that this is why blood and organ donations are not analogous to pregnancy (and why the use of the adjective “forced” only applies in the rare cases of pregnancies resulting from rape?)

Triangle Man said...

People form emotional attachments to all kinds of things. Imagine you are a lantern fly! Imagine you are an amoeba!

hpudding said...

No one is required to sacrifice themselves to save another.

I wonder how many of the states that enacted abortion bans legislated such exceptions. Did the Supreme Court even say that “no one is required to sacrifice themselves to save another?”

Of course, they didn’t. And of course, that’s A-OK with the Vatican that approved these theocrats’ decision - seeing as how they’ve been losing referendums on it even in staunchly Catholic countries like Ireland which ended their ban precisely because women were getting killed by it. Savita Halappanavar. Wonder which pope spoke up for women like her?

Finally, “sacrifice” is an interesting sleight of hand - or foot in mouth. Sacrifice financially? Sacrifice socially? Sacrifice the babies who would have a much better chance in life if their mother were allowed to get an education and proper husband first instead of being tied to one that was raped into her or resulted from an otherwise less fortunate series of circumstances earlier in life, before she was ready?

People aren’t even required to use their bodies to sustain already-living human beings with failing kidneys, bone marrow or other organs - regardless of how many die each year without them. Will the state force sacrifices for those people? Of course not. But it will for pregnant women. And why?

Misogyny, that’s why. Pregnant women have less rights than cadavers and fetuses have more rights than would-be donated organ recipients.

Rusty said...

hpudding said...
"Revealing one’s sympathies for the politics of forced gestation was unforeseen to me,"
Nobody forced you to fuck her, did they? Take some responsibility for your behavior.

1970 I think. The guy killed somebody or other. His wife? Her lover? There was alot of disappointment that it wasn't public. Somebody got photos anyway.
File this under;' things I find out on the way to looking up something else.'

Michael K said...


The great thing about the forced pregnancy movement is it shows us how OB/GYNs really are obsolete and incapable of addressing any of the ethics that their new armies of armchair physician equivalents can handle much more adeptly.

So, ectopic pregnancies… also wrong to abort? Those fetuses just committed the crime of existing.


OK you've reached Freder level of stupidity. You obviously know nothing and think these little excrescences are cute.

Joe Smith said...

So a hungry bear wanders into the room of her kids, she has a huge loaded gun.

Decisions, decisions...

Rabel said...

hpudding said...

"Pregnant women have less rights than cadavers and fetuses have more rights than would-be donated organ recipients."

Fewer.

HoodlumDoodlum said...

That Meade guy has a good head on his shoulders.

HoodlumDoodlum said...

That Meade guy has a good head on his shoulders.

hpudding said...

You obviously know nothing and think these little excrescences are cute.

I wonder how people who aren’t able to defend their values and contribute nothing but personal attacks get through life. Other than spending all of it online, I mean.

In any event, you’re hating on the wrong person. If you’re in favor of the “blow to reproductive health, patient safety” and worsened “morbidity and mortality” associated with the forced birth laws allowed for by the Supreme Court, direct your abuse against the obstetricians and gynecologists affiliated with ACOG, rather than random people on the internet. Tell them why they know nothing.

Tell them why you think the Indiana attorney general and other politicians like him are regulating obstetrics practices better than they would - why you feel all medical reasons for abortion are appropriately addressed by their states’ laws. Even when their laws don’t even mention them.

Michael K said...

I wonder how people who aren’t able to defend their values and contribute nothing but personal attacks get through life. Other than spending all of it online, I mean.

I've wondered the same thing. About you. Obviously you know nothing about ectopic pregnancies. They will never progress to term. When they rupture, the bleeding can kill the mother. Have you ever seen one or operated on one ? I have.

I don't understand "forced pregnancy" as birth control has been legal in this country longer even than abortion. You just sound like an idiot.

hpudding said...

No one here said ectopic pregnancies proceed to term, so you can dispense with that straw man. What they are saying is that real-life obstetricians and other abortion providers (not just some retired thumb twiddler who may have seen or even performed one 70 years ago) are being threatened into pretending they can trust an attorney general’s interpretation of a law that doesn’t even mention exceptions.

So the impact to them is real and if you disagree, again - you can tell the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists why their position is wrong. They’re the ones who would no longer have legal protection and instead rely on prosecutor opinion and knowledge of medicine in a court of law - about laws that don’t mention exceptions. Most are smart enough to not want to practice that way.

Finally, anyone who pretends to believe that birth control is 100% effective is either not a physician, a really bad one, or a guy who hates women enough to think that being forced to carry the resulting pregnancy to term is a a nice way to make them feel punished for a problem that he thinks results from behavior he personally disapproves of. And Clarence Thomas wants to get rid of even that right!

Kansas and Ireland know better than to trust their abortion laws to politicians or priests. A high-profile death was what reformed them in the case of the latter. Telling other physicians to just treat any pregnancy (ectopic, septic, or otherwise) as they normally would and “trust the (politically appointed) prosecutors!” To agree with what they pursued as the best course of action does not live in reality.

n.n said...

Roe etc. forces women to sustain their pregnancy past the threshold of "viability". Roe denies the dignity and agency of women and men that follows with consent, which is why underage girls and boys are discouraged from having sex. Elective abortion services provide for sequestration of the burdens of evidence in darkness. Abortion is a forward-looking risk for a woman without the consolation of a novel human life.

That said, there is no mystery in sex and conception, six weeks to baby meets granny under science and law. A compelling cause to discourage the wicked solution, human rites performed for social, redistributive, clinical, political, and fair weather causes.

Choose wisely, ladies and germs.

n.n said...

Plant Lives Matter (PLM) however unfamiliar their state of consciousness may be.

Some would say that precursors to organic life, including: eggs, sperm, and carbon matter, too, as well as carbon dioxide that is a first-order forcing of the global greening effect.

Michael K said...


Blogger hpudding said...

No one here said ectopic pregnancies proceed to term, so you can dispense with that straw man. What they are saying is that real-life obstetricians and other abortion providers (not just some retired thumb twiddler who may have seen or even performed one 70 years ago) are being threatened into pretending they can trust an attorney general’s interpretation of a law that doesn’t even mention exceptions.


Invincible ignorance speaks out. Ectopic pregnancies were used as a straw man argument about abortion. I am not a "thumb twiddler" like you as I spent many years practicing surgery. What were you doing ? Nothing important, I am certain.

Michael K said...

And Clarence Thomas wants to get rid of even that right!

More invincible ignorance. Reading would be good for you.

lostingotham said...

This is what passes for journalism these days in the paper of record? Wandering the Penn State campus asking random passersby whether they have any sympathy for persecuted insects?

The word "bummed" in the article caught my eye. Etymology.com suggests it derives from "bummer," a term of surprising longevity (dating from at least the mid-nineteenth century):

bummer (n.)
"loafer, idle person," 1855, possibly an extension of the British word for "backside" (similar development took place in Scotland by 1540), but more probably from German slang bummler "loafer," agent noun from bummeln "go slowly, waste time."

How terribly apt...