queerbychoice | Unborn Victims of Violence

~~Dear~~ U.S. Government,

I hear you're concerned about "Unborn Victims of Violence." Well, so am I! I'm concerned about how after all the currently gestating Unborn Clumps of Fetal Cells who have not yet developed even enough of a brain to compete with a goldfish actually get born and, a year or so later, actually start catching up with the intelligence levels of the cats and dogs whose deaths in animal shelters are certainly never prosecuted as "murders" and, another decade or so after that, reach puberty and get raped or just have sex while massively uneducated about birth control options, the law you passed today will do violence to them. Because the females among those by-then-long-since-born people who, by that point in their development, will have completely fully functional nervous systems to feel pain and brains to feel fear and horror and degradation, will be forcibly strapped onto operating tables and their bodies surgically cut open without their consent by the same prosecutors who are already charging Melissa Ann Rowland with "murder" simply for having dared to refuse doctors their supposed "right" to cut her open. And you designed this law you passed today specifically to help doctors forcibly cut open women like her without their consent, which means you designed this law specifically to do violence to the same future females who you then have the audacity to be claiming to "protect" from violence.

Furthermore, I would like to hear your answers to the questions

wiredferret insightfully asks:

If you are certain that life begins at fertilization, what do you have to tell me about my early-term miscarriages?
There is no comforting reflection about non-viability, then, is there?
Every child washed out of a womb before birth is a death, isn't it?
Does God really kill a third of us before we even open our eyes in the womb? Does that work for you?

There are disturbing implications, then.

Does my low progesterone level mean that I should stop trying to conceive, because God means my children to die?
Can I be prosecuted for inadvertently doing something harmful, before I even know I'm pregnant?
What about not seeking medical treatment to correct my miscarriage problems, is that manslaughter?
Are you going to go after polluters that increase the rate of spontaneous abortion with the same ferocity?
What if it turns out that a husband and wife will always produce flawed embryos, because of their genetics -- are they guilty of attempted murder every time they try to have sex?

I would especially like to know the answer to that question about polluters, because it might result in a large number of the mostly male people who pass laws like this being convicted of mass murder. Please reply ASAP, preferably from prison. Not that you shouldn't still go to prison anyway for injuring people's reproductive organs without their consent, but now your having increased the severity of your own crime from injury against the people you've rendered involuntarily sterile to committing actual murder against the entire maxmum number of babies those people were capable of producing should get you an even longer jail term.

Disgust,
Gayle

And while waiting for a reply to that (ha, right!), I'm going to suggest that more people, especially Americans, sign a bunch of petitions. It takes less time than voting, and probably has slightly more chance of having some effect than voting, plus it helps relieve some of the emotional frustration of being helpless. Which, judging by the journal entries I'm reading this evening, is something that quite a few of you could really use right now.

The Freedom of Choice Act Petition
Stop President Bush from Declaring Fetuses as People
Tell the Court: Late Term Abortion Ban is Unconstitutional
Against Abortion Parental Consent Laws and "Teen Endangerment Act"
It's the 30th Anniversary of Roe v. Wade - Will It Be the Last?
Tell Ashcroft to keep women's medical records private!
The Bush Administration Threatens Access to Emergency Contraception
Tell Congress: We Want Insurance Coverage for Birth Control
Protect Freedom of Choice
March for Women's Lives in 2004!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

You don't appear to have read my comment very carefully at all, since not only did I not say that newborn/about-to-be-born babies do not feel pain, but I specifically stated that they do feel it. I also stated that they are alive and that I would mourn their deaths - but that they are not the same as adult humans, they are less intelligent than dogs or cats and as with the deaths of dogs or cats, our ability to guess at how they experience death is limited almost solely to our knowledge that they can experience physical pain. Well, physical pain can be relieved with medication, and I would be happy to support anaesthetizing fetuses before aborting them. That does not mean it's ideal to abort a nearly-full-term baby, but then it is not ideal to kill a dog or a cat either, and they can feel pain too, yet we do kill them in animal shelters when we can't find a home for them. And certainly if a dog or a cat was somehow embedded in a human's pelvis and dying there and the human refused to be cut open to allow the dog or cat to be extracted, I do not think most people would want the human to be forced to be cut open.

Perhaps you're just afraid that this argument tends to lead to implying it's okay to kill six-month-old babies too - but I don't believe it does. At most, it leads to accepting or partially accepting the practice of infanticide immediately after birth (did you know Canada already has laws that make infanticide immediately after birth a substantially more minor crime than murder of anyone else?), because there've been plenty of cultures that have accepted infanticide immediately after birth where abortion prior to birth was not available and finding an adoptive home was not feasible, and this has not led to also permitting infanticide after the baby is three months old. A line tends to get drawn usually within an hour or so of birth, because for people to actually get familiar with a baby and then harm it signifies that the act is motivated by dislike, and for people to go around feeling that harming people they dislike can ever be okay tends to be dangerous to society: babies certainly have to be treated well if they are going to grow up, because if they're abused then society will end up with a lot of physically brain-damaged/body-damaged or emotionally scarred people who society has to make special accommodations for.

I do not believe that infanticide immediately after birth needs to be legalized though, if the mother has access to abortion before birth instead - in that case, an even clearer and better ethical line can be drawn at the moment of birth. I also do not believe that many second- or third- trimester abortions would happen if women had better access to first-trimester ones. Unfortunately, people who object to them keep focusing on trying to make all abortions harder to obtain, which just tends to delay women's ability to get them sooner.

"Because the females among those by-then-long-since-born people who, by that point in their development, will have completely fully functional nervous systems to feel pain"

I read this as implying that the fetus didn't feel pain.

For the record, I think all of the dogs and cats being put to death in animal shelters does border on murder, and I am working to help bring an end to these unnecessary deaths in our local shelter.

I think that if abortions were limited to people with extenuating circumstances, I would feel much more comfortable with the whole thing. Unfortunately, Gayle, I personally know multiple people who were not careful enough to prevent pregnancy, and chose abortion over adaptations to their comfortable lifestyles. And, I also know plenty of parents who can't seem to figure out that they should put children first after they are born, much less before. I think way more people in our country are selfish than are victimized.

-angela

That line from my original post was referring to fetuses extremely early in development, who are included under the Unborn Victims of Violence Act. A zygote, for example, does not feel pain. It does not possess any nerves with which to feel it.

"I think that if abortions were limited to people with extenuating circumstances, I would feel much more comfortable with the whole thing."

Attempting to place legal limits on abortions requiring extenuating circumstances results in people having to prove they have extenuating circumstances, which, considering that about .0000000001% of rapes ever get reported to police (and no wonder, considering how Kobe Bryant's accuser has had her picture on the cover of the National Enquirer, her name all over the internet, and her sexual and mental health history published absolutely everywhere, that rape victims would not want to report they were raped) and an even tiner percentage of those ever go to trial and an even tinier percentage of those result in conviction, essentially results in withholding abortion from the HUGE majority of such victims.

"Unfortunately, Gayle, I personally know multiple people who were not careful enough to prevent pregnancy, and chose abortion over adaptations to their comfortable lifestyles."

And you know what? The women who do such things have to experience abortion, which is quite decidedly more physically painful for them than using birth control would have been. They already get punished for their carelessness, with no legal intervention at all.

"And, I also know plenty of parents who can't seem to figure out that they should put children first after they are born, much less before."

And that's exactly why I very much prefer that selfish parents abort their children instead of raising them badly - because I would prefer not to share the planet with a bunch of people who were raised by such horrendously awful parents that they grew up to be murderers, rapists, and sociopaths.

"I think way more people in our country are selfish than are victimized."

That's possible, but considering that approximately one in every four females in the U.S. gets raped, that adds up to a hell of a lot of both.

I really don't think most abortions are from rape. But, I support those women, of course.

And, I am not for making abortion illegal, or even setting legal limits. I am just sick of how easily people make the abortion decision.

Also, I think that women often feel like they "should" get an abortion rather than bring a child into a situation they hadn't planned on. I know many women who still grieve (myself included) for a baby they aborted.. because the pressure was to abort rather than to "mess up their lives". Well, now that I have a child of my own, I'll tell you, I wish my life was "messed up" a long time ago.

oops, that was me again..

-angela

Unborn Victims of Violence

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