Re: GWB hates women
 

right.. i might not always cut up all 6 pack soda rings, doesn't mean I hate water fowl.

Re: GWB hates women
 

screw everyone. i'll take up the debate with anyone else woke up at 5 a.m. starving half to death with 4 legs kicking the shit out of their cervix.

i'm cranky. i'll apologize in october.

Re: GWB hates women
 

I almost want to agree with you just for that. ;)

Re: GWB hates women
 

i know sean is all about "call a spade a spade but only when it's undeniably a spade and not potentially a club in disguise" but i have to go with cacophony.
it's not the kind of hate that consumes someone and result in x legislation, but i think you have to have a healthy contempt for women, as religious views tend to coerce you into, to strip them of their right to do whatever the hell they want with their own body without crusty old men trying to thinly disguise their control issues over it with this sort of bullshit.

but also, just to prove how singular-minded this is:
any of the various procedures -- including the prescription and administration of any drug or the performance of any procedure or any other action -- that results in the termination of the life of a human being in utero between conception and natural birth, whether before or after implantation

means that masturbation is an abortion, and even more technically, millions of abortions. LOLOLOLOLOLOL.
there's a thousand things a fetus can do while it's developing. one of them is to actually turn into a cancerous tumor. sacred!

Re: GWB hates women
 

Point taken. ;)

Re: GWB hates women
 

Heh!

Yeah, babies have rights. Foetuses have rights when they start to be babies, although those rights need to be balanced with the mother's rights too. Unidentifiable lumps of cells that have no possible means of developing into a proper foetus without their "hosts", much less posess a brain or feelings, can't really be said to have rights that are dissociated from the rights of the "host" mother.


Cacophony - the last three months of pregnancy are pretty cool, as far as I remember, although I only had one of the little blighters practicing judo kicks and giving me a hiatus hernia. The time will fly by. I have two bits advice: 1) Get as much rest as you can now, because once they are born you will be tired for the rest of your life, no matter how much sleep you get and 2) Don't ever listen to anyone else's advice, including mine, because only you know how to be a mother to your own children :D

Re: GWB hates women
 

This is exactly where I tend to part ways with many on the pro-choice side of things - and please bear in mind that I myself am pro-choice, I just flatly disagree with assertions that this is about a woman's "right to do whatever the hell they want with their own body". The foundation of the argument from the pro-life side of things is built on the idea of providing rights for the unborn baby, not on depriving a woman of her right to do do whatever she wants with her own body. Clearly, the woman's body is involved in the deal, but that doesn't inherently make the position that fetuses have rights a misogynistic one.

And again, I don't agree with the pro-life stance overall, but I do think it's important to understand and acknowledge where your opponent is actually coming from in order to constructively move forward on issues. If we continue to throw around accusations like this that miss the reality, then all we're going to accomplish is more animosity as we spin off on unrelated tangents. A good analogy that's happening right now is conservatives continually accusing Obama of wanting to "surrender" in Iraq, when in fact his plan is not one of surrender at all. It's about handing control of Iraq back to Iraqis as we clearly should be doing, freeing up our troops to focus on al Qaeda, and finishing the job we started, and actually are currently beginning to lose in Afghanistan. To constantly call it "surrender" is untrue and derails the constructive dialogue we need to be having about it.

On this, you and I completely agree. This is extremely flawed reasoning on Bush's part, and I couldn't disagree with him more.

Re: GWB hates women
 

the crazy thing is, there's no saying i have 3 months left. with two it's sort of anyone's game. tomorrow is week 25, so we've hit viability, after that we keep our fingers crossed and i send psychic lectures to my uterus, telling it to stay put until at least week 36. but frankly, we just have to hold on and hope and be thankful for every week that goes by that they don't decide it's time to make their arrival.

BULLSHIT! i have no idea how to be a mother to my own children! i figure i'm just going to wing it.

Re: GWB hates women
 

this is my thinking, but you said it better than i would at this point.

Re: GWB hates women
 

if a man beats the shit out if his wife but believes it's for her own good, would you also believe he's not misogynistic?

this goes back to that same old argument about intent versus interpretation. holding someone hostage out of the belief that it accomplishes some good does not absolve you of the guilt of holding that person hostage. it doesn't make you "not a hostage holder."

stripping women of their right to control their bodies, particularly in this instance (because let's not forget we're talking about access to basic contraception) is tantamount to holding all women hostage. no matter how you slice it.

men have no equivalent. no other segment of the human population on earth has an equivalent. women are the only people who can be held hostage in this way. and we keep making excuses about the betterment of society or what god would want or whether fetuses have rights, but you can never ever ever ever abstract the discussion to the point where you remove the element where women are held hostage by these restrictions.

i say this as someone who has always been pro choice and will always be pro choice. but i also say this as someone who is currently in the midst of one of the most profound experiences that anyone can go through. i am just at the end of 24 weeks of pregnancy. that means over 8 weeks ago i started feeling two independent lives start moving inside of my abdominal cavity, and that right this very moment they even react semi-intelligently to outside stimulus. we are far beyond a cluster of undifferentiated cells.

but as someone at 24 weeks i am startlingly aware that legally these two lives could still be terminated if i so chose, both in the US and the UK. remember that 3D image i posted? is that a fetus or is that a baby? it's hard to say. for me, experiencing it first hand, it's an absolute rubber-meets-the-road point in the debate between the right to life and the right to choose. it would not be possible for me to make light of the issue, i promise you that.

so when i say a woman's right to control her own body and her right to choose and her right to have access to birth control are basic fundamental human rights, and when i say denying women that right is tantamount to holding every woman hostage, i say that without levity or blase dismissal of the issue at hand.

for once my intention is not hyperbole. you can slice and dice the issue and try to play devil's advocate and try to create definitions of misogyny that allow for the mistreatment of women so long as someone else stands to benefit, but it all boils down to one thing: when you remove a woman's right to control her own body, you hold that woman hostage and deny her the basic right of "self" that every man on earth possesses without question. that is misogyny. that is hating women. period.