another great comment on the silence of the turkeys
http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q…
She should tell the media that she apologizes and she’ll do her next interview inside an abortion clinic.
Which reminds me, by the way, of something that has always puzzled me – the way that pro-choice activists get upset at pro-life activists who want to show pictures of aborted babies.
If you’re confident in your position, then what’s the problem with showing pictures of abortions, and of the after effect ?
I’m pro-choice on the issue of elective gall-bladder removals, and if any anti-gall-bladder-choice activists want to parade outside the hospital with pictures of gallbladders, they’re welcome to it.
I’m pro-choice on the issue of kitchen renovation, and if any anti-kitchen-renovation-choice activists want to parade outside Home Depot with pictures of old cabinets being thrown into dumpsters, they’re welcome to it.
I’m pro-choice on the issue of basement cleaning (why, I once threw away a bunch of perfectly good flight cases and some white ceramic tile), and if any anti-basement-cleaning-choice activists want to parade take pictures of my refuse and then pass out flyers with that picture, they’re welcome to it.
…but when pro-life folks march with pictures of severed limbs and small corpses, suddenly it’s offensive
It’s just tissue – part of the mother’s body.
How could it possibly be offensive? Are tonsils offensive? Baby teeth? Hair clippings?
Some first trimester tissue:
Some second trimester tissue:
Some third trimester tissue:
November 27th, 2008 at 12:00 am
God…The world’s most prolific abortionist of all.
http://www.babycenter.com/0_understanding-miscarriage_252.bc
15-20% of all known pregnancies…times several billion…you get the idea.
Still Amen-ing?
November 27th, 2008 at 12:07 am
[quote comment="172952"]God…The world’s most prolific abortionist of all.
[/quote]
If you’re going to go that route, why not point out that, according to Christian theology, mortality is God-given, so every death is mandatory by God’s own rules.
Let’s go with that, as that argument dominates all the less versions, like yours.
Lemma:
* Your mom will die someday.
* There is nothing we can do about it.
* Therefore: it’s entirely cool if I strangle her, cut her body into pieces, wrap them in garbage bags, and put them in a dumpster behind the liquor store.
I don’t know about you, but I think there’s a logical flaw here.
So, let’s get back to your weaker form of the argument: yes, not all children live to delivery. Therefore … ?
What?
November 27th, 2008 at 12:08 am
Terrible pictures.
I’m here under a fake name and a fake address, different than I usually use when commenting here.
When I was young, infinite years ago, I and a woman I later married murdered our child in an abortion. I was able to ignore it for 20 years, through a second marriage, and the birth of a son. We adopted another boy.
Then the doubts, remorse and pain began.
I murdered my own child.
God forgives me, but I do not.
I forget for a few days and then it starts again. It wasn’t you today – the pro-life group at our local university is having its usual troubles.
Terrible pictures, and you are right to post them
November 27th, 2008 at 12:18 am
[quote comment="172954"]Terrible pictures, and you are right to post them[/quote]
Yeah, they’re terrible, but I’m going to be either scrolling down really ****ing fast, or maybe I’ll stop by again in a week or two, when they’re off the front page.
November 27th, 2008 at 1:36 am
something that has always puzzled me
Travis is entitled to an honest answer from a member of his pro-choice target audience, even though — blindsided and yes, deeply offended on religious grounds — I won’t be back here for quite a while.
So . . . from a Jewish perspective, human body parts, especially those containing blood, have ritual sanctity; embalming and open-casket funerals and crucifixes and impaled heads on pikes and probably other practices that I recognize are within your cultural tradition are appalling and intolerable to observant Jews. For some of us, it’s sitting quiet guard duty at a friend’s coffin overnight; for the ZAKA in Israel, it’s cleaning bits of victim (and, no less, of suicide bomber) out of the stucco, centimeter by greasy centimeter with dental tools.
Why of suicide bomber? Surely he’s even more guilty, and worthy of death, than a fetus who comes as a pursuer to attack a mother’s life, health or sanity — who cares about his body parts? Put him on a public gibbet, to testify mutely to the force of Roman law!
Well, you see, we’ve got this book. Even the Romans read it now. “And if a man have committed a sin worthy of death, and you hang him on a tree, his body shall not remain all night upon the tree, but you shall surely bury him the same day; for he that is hanged is a reproach unto God . . . .” Our medieval sage Rashi elaborates, quoting Rabbi Meir of the 2c CE. “To what is this matter comparable? To two twin brothers [who lived] in one city; one was appointed king, and the other took to highway robbery. At the king’s command they hanged him. But all who saw him exclaimed, ‘The king is hanged!’ ” We do honor to the form of the human body — even when it’s dead, and yes, even when it is merely the potential and not the actual vessel of a human life — not for the sake of the occupant but for that of the King whose image it is.
I hope this answers any sincere confusion, and gracefully covers my necessary exit. No hard feelings. Enjoy the wake, or whatever you call this tipsy celebration of grue.
November 27th, 2008 at 2:03 am
Well, it’s your blog and you’re, of course, welcome to post what you want.
For my part, I wish you hadn’t posted those pictures. I know murder is wrong, without seeing it. I know extra-marital sex is wrong without watching a porn film.
In fact, I wonder if pictures like these do the cause more harm than good. When I see them, I recoil at the sight of the gore, not the act that caused it.
I do appreciate the idea of showing the consequences of our actions. It’s something most movies lack and, therefore, negatively influence society. And, it does make it more obvious that, even in the first trimester, these are human beings we’re killing, not some amorphous lump of cells.
But, in the end, I think we want to recruit every possible supporter we can. And I believe there’s a bunch of people like me who won’t support the showing of these pictures.
November 27th, 2008 at 12:33 pm
FWIW:
I am a libertarian, and pro-choice. My pro-choice position, like my other moral and political positions, is based on libertarian concepts such as the sanctity of individual rights. In the case of abortion, my belief is that the right of the mother trumps the right of the fetus. I recognize that some libertarians (Travis included) disagree, and I recognize that most people don’t even view the issue through libertarian principles.
My wife and I recently had twin girls. They are everything in the world I hold precious and dear, and they have been since I first laid eyes upon them as milimeter-long fluttering specks on an ultrasound.
This has not changed my pro-choice position.
We had very frequent ultrasounds during the course of the pregnancy, and I observed their growth and development at every stage. I watched them very rapidly turn into shapes very clearly recognizable as human beings – well before the end of the first trimester.
This also has not changed my pro-choice position.
The pictures Travis posted serve as stark reminders that the result of an abortion is a dead baby, one deliberately killed. This isn’t something that abortion supporters should avoid (although almost all do). If you believe, as I do, that abortion should remain legal because the right of the mother trumps the right of the fetus, then you should be willing (as I am) to stick to that position no matter how sentimentally attached most people (including myself) are to babies and no matter how gruesome death is when presented in pictures.
November 27th, 2008 at 1:19 pm
Images like these are very powerful and I don’t think we should shy away from them, though I do think it’s tasteless to use them for shock and awe.
November 27th, 2008 at 10:52 pm
eddie – you say that you believe the right of the mother trumps the right of a fetus . . . right of a mother to what? To not be inconvenienced for a few months? Abort or not abort, but the mother’s not going to have to deal with the pregnancy for very long, less than a year!! Why should her right not to be inconvenienced trump the right of another human being to LIVE?
It’s the people who recognize the humanity of the fetus but still profess to be “pro choice” that horrify me more than anyone.
November 28th, 2008 at 2:24 pm
[quote comment="172958"]So . . . from a Jewish perspective, human body parts, especially those containing blood, have ritual sanctity. … We do honor to the form of the human body — even when it’s dead, and yes, even when it is merely the potential and not the actual vessel of a human life — not for the sake of the occupant but for that of the King whose image it is.[/quote]
I find this interesting because when I was 14 or 16 I heard something of the same argument as justification for an anti-abortion position (that is, you don’t need to argue whether the fetus is alive, you only need to argue that abortion defiles a human body; but if you go that route your position isn’t necessarily “pro-life” but at a minimum “anti-abortion”). I think it’s an easier argument to make.
November 28th, 2008 at 4:44 pm
[quote comment="172982"]FWIW:
I am a libertarian, and pro-choice. My pro-choice position, like my other moral and political positions, is based on libertarian concepts such as the sanctity of individual rights. In the case of abortion, my belief is that the right of the mother trumps the right of the fetus. I recognize that some libertarians (Travis included) disagree, and I recognize that most people don’t even view the issue through libertarian principles.[/quote]
I believe that my rights trump the rights of prisoners who live at my expense. I exchanged part of my life for the money I pay in taxes that keep those prisoners. In effect their living is taking my life. And my rights trump theirs. So we should kill them all.
Or is there a logical fallacy in that argument, too?
November 29th, 2008 at 2:57 am
I’m pro-choice to an extent.
Essentially I believe there are two major arguments against abortion
1) The extent to which a sentient entity is being exterminated
2) The extent to which such an action conflicts with our humanity (ie, even if a person is mentally retarded to the extent where they’re dumber than a dog you still can’t put them down like a dog).
Abortion becomes permissible to the extent that a foetus, or even a baby, does not yet have much sentience, and that while inside the womb that does form a clear division which allows us to mark it as slightly pre-human (I’d like to state this more elegantly but I’m sleepy) .
Early on there’s not much to relate it as either intelligent or human. At the extreme I find no moral qualms with the concept of the morning after pill (or the rhythm method) where only a small clump of cells is being terminated. By the end it’s pretty much a fully formed baby. At that point I feel the only valid reason to abort would be if there is a strong medical necessity (I’d be comfortable with this being in law).
I don’t really have the medical knowledge to know where to put the line in between.
Note that some European countries even allow newborns to be euthanized after birth in extreme cases where some very rare and horrific disorders are present. I think that policy is justifiable.
November 29th, 2008 at 10:35 am
“I don’t really have the medical knowledge to know where to put the line in between.”
This is a problem, in that neither do those with medical knowledge. The line will be drawn in an arbitrary fashion no matter what. The problem is that this is a moral decision, not a scientific one. Any human can make a moral decision. No expertise, other than that of being human, is required.
November 30th, 2008 at 12:37 am
[quote comment="173113"]“I don’t really have the medical knowledge to know where to put the line in between.”
This is a problem, in that neither do those with medical knowledge. The line will be drawn in an arbitrary fashion no matter what. The problem is that this is a moral decision, not a scientific one. Any human can make a moral decision. No expertise, other than that of being human, is required.[/quote]
They may not be able to make a perfect decision but I’m pretty sure a group of experts could draw a line and say, ‘before week X we’re 99% sure that nothing resembling sentience is going on”.
Your point strikes me too much as “because an expert cannot be sure they’re right it follows that anyones opinion is as valid as the experts”. That’s a line of argument that seems to come up when people discuss economists or social sciences.
Experts can still be a lot better than the public without being completely right. For the moral judgement you’re talking about an uneducated human like myself would be making a moral judgement on a complete unknown.
September 7th, 2009 at 1:52 pm
you cant nurture a gullbladder into a person, or a kitchen tile
and that’s all I have to say about your comparisons genius
December 30th, 2009 at 3:11 pm
how rude of you to post that crap that shows up when I did a search to show my kids a first trimester belly of a pregnant woman
sick disguesting rudeness to post graphic detail without warning when there are children on the internet.
I am apalled at you no one else right now!
January 22nd, 2010 at 10:48 pm
Unfortunately, these babies who have been torn from their mother’s womb cannot cry for help. These pictures speak for them. Everything happens so “quietly” in an abortion clinic, hidden away from the world. It’s not so quiet for the helpless child. Somehow, someone has to speak out on their behalf. Thank you for doing this by posting these pictures.
There is a precious little one rolling around in my womb right now who is perfectly safe and happy. If someone caused this little baby any pain I would want people to know about it! It would be wrong if my baby, or any other baby, was attacked and no one could know about it. Who cares if the pictures are unpleasant to look at? Those poor little ones experienced much more displeasure than any of us ever will when looking at their pictures.
If you don’t want your children to see graphic things, then don’t bring them to the computer when doing general image searches on the internet! Children should be protected at all ages. Do the research on your own and then bring them to the images you want them to see.
I can bearly stand looking at these pictures too, but let’s grow up a little and think of someone other than ourselves. That child was in horrible pain but no one was there to stop it. Should we, as grown human beings who are perfectly cable of defending and feeding ourselves ignore someone completely helpless? What about the poor victims of the Haiti earthquake? We don’t ignore their pictures. It’s okay to sympathize with them. Why not look upon and sympathize with the little babies who were torn to pieces too?
And don’t anyone argue that those babies were just tissue, unable to feel pain. Scientists have proven that babies in the womb experience pain just as well as anyone.
Abortion is unnecessary murder of the innocent. Since so many are ready to ignore this fact and focus on other “more pleasant” things, thank goodness someone is bold enough to post these pictures in an attempt to shake us out of our selfish clouds of comfort!
We live in a world with enough unnecessary death and violence. Let’s not add to it with more unnessary violent acts. Babies do not have to be taken from the comfort of their mother’s wombs (this includes those taken with the birth-control pill and morning-after pill). They can live and bring the joy of new life to the world through their beautiful innocence. Let the little ones live. They just wants to live.