Thing is, I never have. I have never done anything out of hatred towards women:
Yeah... I do not hate women. As my wife could tell you that I'm actually rather violently inclined towards those that harm women, especially out of violence. It is my personal belief that one should never raise his hand to a woman in anger, and that the bare minimum of force should be used should the need to defend yourself from one arise.
Bitch, Queen Bitch, Hyena, Little Miss, Little Princess, Miss Lollipop..
These terms are demeaning and as I kept explaining to you, were not welcomed but you kept doing it repeatedly.
When I argue with a sexist, there's an inevitable point at which he will call me "sweetheart". (I like to think of it as shorthand for "you're winning".) If I'm really making him feel foolish, he may resort to "bitch". "Ugly" is the last refuge of the hopelessly destroyed.
I've been writing about feminism on the internet long enough that these names don't really bother me. But nothing is more grating than when a man I don't know - in comments, Twitter or real life - calls me "Jessie".
It may seem odd that I'd prefer a curse to a cutesy nickname. Like most things men call women when they want to diminish them, "Jessie" is meant to remind me that no matter what I accomplish – the number of books written, articles published, speeches given – I'm still "just a girl". But it's the overly-familiar infantilization that really makes my skin crawl. Very creepy Uncle Chester.
As it turns out, it's not just me. Behind every female with an opinion is a man with a sneering nickname for her.
The good news is that no matter what they call women – bitch, slut or "Jessie" – name-calling is all sexists have in a debate. Calling us something other than what we are does not make us less right, and it won't make them more just. When misogynists resort to name-calling, they're labeling themselves more than they ever could disprove us.
To reiterate, so that you understand.. When you refer to me by these labels, such as Princess, Little Missy, Bitch, Love, and all the other ones you used, they were not welcomed and I let you know each time they were not. Instead of respecting my wishes, you kept doing it. I am not your love, your bitch, your little princess, your little Miss, your little miss lollipop and all the other ridiculous names you decided to call me because I dared to challenge you. You used those terms specifically to remind me of my place, or the place you seem to feel women belong in. And you made sure I knew it, because each time you did it, I told you how it was being perceived and you kept calling me even more misogynistic and sexist demeaning names. Why? Because you went for the terms and names that reduced me to the role of a little girl, which I should not need to remind you is sexist and demeaning. When you reduce a woman to the role of a little girl with such condescending terms, it is sexist and misogynistic.
I'll put it this way.
If you did this in the workplace, if a woman challenged something you did in the work place and you started to call her that, you could very well find yourself on your arse out on the street.
It isn't acceptable. It certainly is not acceptable to keep doing it when you are told by the recipient of those names that it is unwelcome, not acceptable and especially after I told you how they were being received and perceived.
Your defense of your behaviour is tantamount to racists who claim they have black friends too when they are accused of racism.
Do you understand now?
Except that is exactly what the conflict is - they have proven the pain receptors are there, proven that the brain is developed enough to recognize pain, they have even proven that the pain centers of the brain activate when a fetus is subjected to a noxious input... their big question is, in essence, two fold: Is pain a physical (reflexive) response, or is it an emotional response, and is the fetus "conscious" enough to form an emotional response. To the first, I would say pain is a physical response to damaging stimuli, not an emotional response. To the second, I can't answer that - I would think the sense of "self" isn't developed enough for an emotional response... but they have shown in coma patients that the pain centers light up just the same.
The scientific research clearly states that there is no proof that a foetus is able to respond to pain as you would respond to pain.
They showed that a foetus reacts to stimuli but they also clearly state that they have no proof if this reaction is reflexive or if it is capable of having the emotional response and recognition that it is "pain".
So why are you still asserting that a foetus can feel and be conscious of pain?
The only thing I'm offended about is the twisting and spindoctoring of facts that keeps happening.
Excuse me, but you are taking scientific research and inferring things from it that is clearly not there based on your own emotional needs and desires. The researches even openly state that there is no evidence to support what you are attempting to assert as fact.
So please stop doing it.
I simply believe that if she has waited that long, and allowed the fetus to develop and grow for that length of time... perhaps she should have a reason for the sudden desire to terminate it, especially knowing how much more dangerous and complicated it is.
What the hell are you on about now?
You were provided with ample evidence that women don't just get to that point and simply change their minds.
So why are you still continuing with this fallacious misrepresentation?
Simply - with logic and reason. Up until the point of personhood, the mother has every right to abort without needing to provide justification. After that point (which, IMHO, isn't until the 7th or 8th month) a simple reason should be given, and the alternatives at least explained. If it is a medical reason (danger to the mother, fetus unlikely to survive, etc) then yeah, do the abortion without any further questions. If it's a matter of being able to afford to raise a child, provide information on the various assistance programs that exist as well as the option of adoption. At that point, if she is still insistent upon having an abortion, make sure she is fully aware of the potential risks, but if she wishes do it. If it's a simple matter of "I don't want it"... as much as I would claim, at that point, that there is an air of irresponsibility (both for waiting that long and for getting pregnant when you didn't want a child in the first place), do the same as if it is a financial concern - provide the alternatives, explain the risks. If she still insists... fine, do it.
It isn't so much that I want to ban it altogether... I just feel it is unnecessary in a lot of cases where better alternatives exist.
You are still skirting the issue and still incapable of answering the question.
If you deem someone a person, then by that very definition, they gain full protection and rights. In other words, the very moment personhood is granted to the foetus, then it gains full protection and all the inalienable rights that a person has, this is protected under your Constitution and its human rights must be protected. It is then deemed a person.. Completely separate from the mother.
How do you do this when it is still existing inside of another person who also has the exact same Constitutional and inalienable rights? Once you assign personhood to a foetus, then the mother has absolutely no rights, even if she is sick, even if she was raped, even if she was coerced. The very moment you arbitrarily apply personhood rights to a foetus, then the mother is immediately denied any rights over her body that may infringe on the rights of the "person" residing in her uterus. Therefore, when you happily claim that 'of course there would be exemptions'.. Once you apply personhood, once that foetus reaches 27 weeks and is classified legally as a "person", then by its "personhood", the exemptions would be an infringement on
its rights. So even, for example, if the mother is diagnosed with cancer at 27 weeks, or she develops a form of pregnancy cancer that women can develop during pregnancy, you cannot even do anything that could even harm the foetus. Since a c-section or inducing labour at 27 weeks increases the risk of mortality or risks injury or permanent injury to a premature baby, then you are instantly breaking the law because you are infringing on the rights of the "that person" who is the foetus.
I'll put it this way. You are a person. By that very definition, you have rights to be free from being harmed, endangered, killed. So this means that if someone falls ill, they have no right to kill you for your organs, for example. You have constitutionally protected rights and a Bill of Rights that protects and enshrines your "personhood". Once you declare a foetus a "person", it obtains the exact same rights you have and all the legal protections that come with it.
Understand now?
The mothers personhood must still be given consideration, but so should the baby. As above, I don't feel that, after that point, abortion is necessarily the best "go to" option, especially given the alternatives. I will concede though that, so long as she is making an educated decision and has considered the alternatives, then it is, ultimately, her choice. However, I don't like that so many people seem intent to "pressure" people, especially young teens, into abortion.
Refer to above.
To me it isn't just a matter of viability (as you say, this is possible at 24 weeks, possibly sooner given medical technology such as artificial incubators and such). I still believe, based on what I have seen, that the fetus can, in fact feel pain. Not only that, but this late in the game the chance of the abortion failing, especially if an extraction technique is not used (it did rather surprise me to learn there were abortion techniques that, basically, simply caused a stillbirth to occur) and causing severe deformation and other complications upon birth. Comparing those risks with, say, simply putting the child up for adoption... it seems to me like it would make more sense to carry to term, give birth, and give the child up, assuming there are no medical issues at play.
And the very moment you assign personhood, even medical issues will prevent the mother from aborting.
And really, this whole pain thing.. Once more,
there is no scientific evidence for it. So please, for the love of God, stop carrying on as if it is fact. There is no proof.
And also, you're so hung up on the pain thing, do you think all births should now be via c-sections? Because natural childbirth = the cervix and vagina squeezing the baby's skull and body in ways you don't even want to imgaine - think of squeezing your head in a vice until the plates of your skull moved.. If the "baby" is conscious of pain and feels pain as you seem to believe, despite scientific evidence that clearly prove there is no proof of your beliefs, few babies would come out of the woman's vagina without suffering in some severe way, if not stroke or heart attack, from the pain of their passage through the woman's vagina.
I have to ask, though, why would it be so? As far as I can tell, the primary reasons for a late term abortion seem to be among those less financially stable coming to realize they cannot afford a child... in which case, wouldn't adoption be a better option?
/Facepalm desk..
Just refer to above.
I don't know if you are being deliberately obtuse or you really are incapable of understanding this discussion and what personhood actually means.
And this is what I meant above - we are trying to define pain. To me, pain is the physical aspect of it... the emotional response is just that, an emotional response. The immediate desire to remove ones self from the source of the pain is an instinctive and autonomous action. The emotive response is what you learn from it, the thing that keeps you (or tries to keep you) from repeating the action that caused you pain.
And some people, they really believe there is a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow and if they make a wish while blowing out candles on their birthday cake, that it will come true. But there is no evidence to support it.
How do you figure? Is it because of the action of being forced through the birth canal? While I have no links readily available (I will see if I can find some), I recall reading before that during childbirth, fetal heartrate and other vital statistics taken during and immediately after birth indicate the possibility that the child does feel pain as it travels through the birth canal. The interesting thing is, though, that these same changes in vital signs have been noted in fetus's still within the womb.
Okay..
Put your head in a vice.
And then get someone to turn the lever. Let me know how well you cope with the pain once your skull plates start moving.
A vaginal birth squeezes the baby and reshapes their heads. If they were capable of conscious pain as you seem to believe, then that level of pain (no, really think about passing a smallish watermelon through something the size of the hole in a bagel and tell me that squeezing that watermelon shaped head to fit would not be excruciating for the one sporting the watermelon sized head?), the really.. It would suffer a stroke or heart attack, because the rush of hormones through its body as it tried to cope with that pain would kill it (think of the guy who suffered the botched execution and died of a heart attack later after suffering excrutiating pain for so long).. It can take a very long time for the baby to pass down through the cervix and down through the vagina. Imagine that squeeze and what it would be like if they could feel pain as you believe they can?
There will likely never be any actual "proof" on it either way, simply because, as stated, something like this can only be measured through non-definitive means. We KNOW the pain centers of the brain react... but because of how little we understand consciousness, we don't know if the baby can "feel" it, if it is a purely reflexive action, or if it is something else entirely. My stance; since we know the pain receptors function, the nerves transmit, and the brain receives, I would prefer to err on the side of caution and say yes, the fetus DOES feel it.
Science?
What's science?
Additional studies I have found on the matter:
http://www.nrlc.org/uploads/fetalpain/AnandPainReport.pdf
Note - Dr. Kanwaljeet S. Anand holds the following titles:
MBBS – Mahatma Gandhi Memorial Medical College, University of Indore, Indore, India
DPhil – Jesus College, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom
FAAP – American Academy of Pediatrics, Elk Grove Village, IL
FRCPCH – Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, London, United Kingdom
FCCM – American College of Critical Care Medicine, Anaheim, California
Rather impressive all said and done.
Okay..
You REALLY need to check your sources. Because this is becoming an unacceptable joke.
NRLC stands for
National Right to Life Committee.
I hope those are... official and unbiased enough representations for you, Bells?
Fine... if you wish to dismiss those, then see the above referenced scholarly articles.
See, I know what site you got them from. Because I just searched and saw that you copied and pasted it from. Why don't you link the site?
Secondly, it still does not prove that a foetus can feel and have the emotional reaction to pain or be conscious enough to recognise it as being "pain".
Well, again, i don't think that doctors should be pressuring them either way... that isn't their place or what their job is there for.
I swear, your continued misrepresentation of scientific research on this site is embarrassing..
For example, you quoted this from the Doctors on Fetal Pain website (I will get to your sourcing form this site in a second), a website that has all these little quotes,
taken out of context, posted as though it's saying that a foetus can feel "pain" inutero:
Rosen, 2009, p131-132, “Although we do not know exactly when the fetus can experience pain, noxious stimulation during fetal life causes a stress response, which could have both short- and long-term adverse effects on the developing central nervous system.”
Mark A. Rosen, “Anesthesia for Fetal Surgery and Other Intrauterine Procedures,” in Chesnut’s Obstetric Anesthesia: Principles and Practice, ed. David H. Chestnut et al (Philadelphia: Mosby, 2009), 131-132.
Here is a study completed by Mark A. Rosen which once again confirms about foetal pain,
this time, from an actual scientific website:
Pain is an emotional and psychological experience that requires conscious recognition of a noxious stimulus. Consequently, the capacity for conscious perception of pain can arise only after thalamocortical pathways begin to function, which may occur in the third trimester around 29 to 30 weeks’ gestational age, based on the limited data available. Small-scale histological studies of human fetuses have found that thalamocortical fibers begin to form between 23 and 30 weeks’ gestational age, but these studies did not specifically examine thalamocortical pathways active in pain perception.
While the presence of thalamocortical fibers is necessary for pain perception, their mere presence is insufficient—this pathway must also be functional. It has been proposed that transient, functional thalamocortical circuits may form via subplate neurons around midgestation, but no human study has demonstrated this early functionality. Instead, constant SEPs appear at 29 weeks’ PCA, and EEG patterns denoting wakefulness appear around 30 weeks’ PCA. Both of these tests of cortical function suggest that conscious perception of pain does not begin before the third trimester. Cutaneous withdrawal reflexes and hormonal stress responses present earlier in development are not explicit or sufficient evidence of pain perception because they are not specific to noxious stimuli and are not cortically mediated.
Now.. The website where you pulled these quotes from..
"
Doctors on Fetal Pain"..
Is a pro-life site..
On their "
The Basics" page, they state this, even in direct contradiction to scientists they even quote on the page you linked from their site:
A wealth of anatomical, behavioral and physiological evidence shows that the developing human fetus is capable of experiencing tremendous pain by 20 weeks post-fertilization.
So, 20 weeks now.
And then after detailing how a 16 week old foetus is apparently able to feel pain and be aware of it, and a slew of other misrepresentation and misinformation, we have this gem:
Abortion at 20 weeks
Despite the fetus’s advanced development at 20 weeks, the following abortion procedures are the most commonly used:
Dilation and Evacuation (D&E): Sharp-edged instruments are used to grasp, twist, and tear the baby’s body into pieces. This continues until the child’s entire body is removed from the womb. U.S. Supreme Court Justice Kennedy describes the procedure saying, “The fetus, in many cases, dies just as a human adult or child would: It bleeds to death as it is torn limb from limb.”
Digoxin abortion: A drug called digoxin is injected directly into the baby’s heart, giving the fetus a fatal heart attack. The dead baby is then removed from his or her mother by dismemberment.
So I am going to say it again.
You are a moderator of a science site.
Please, for the love of all that is fucking holy. LEARN TO CHECK YOUR SOURCES.
How long does an ultrasound take? I don't understand how it forces a delay in anything to be honest... I mean, when I went with my mother when they had the ultrasound of my little brother done, the whole process took... I dunno, maybe an hour or two tops? Maybe I'm misunderstanding?
The laws require a waiting period after they have the ultra-sound done to when they can book and find a place to take them to do the procedure.
Again, though, wouldn't an ounce of prevention be worth more than the pound of "cure"?
Fair enough, but I expect you to do the same. On that vein, what is your response to the studies and citations above?
Fair enough - accepted and noted.
As I said.
The studies you presented would be akin to my claiming there was a black hole in the center of the Earth and linking to Victor as proof.
*smirks* Actually, it was inferred from my time practicing archery. Real feathers for fletching are... stupid expensive. Given that one of my favorite local dives (Neato Burrito) utilizes only plastic cups made entirely from plant-based plastics, and that I have seen carpets and other fibrous materials made using plastic, I figure making plastic-based feathers from plant matter is probably feasible.
Truth be told, I'm not sensitive enough for feathers to have much of an impact on me... much to Alerya's dismay
Last time I tried archery, I nearly impaled my own foot.
