My one Insider piece this week covered my opinions on the best pitcher tools in baseball. ESPN’s chat software was inaccessible this week, so my Klawchat has been postponed to next Thursday.
And now, the links…
- Minneapolis Star-Tribune writer Amelia Rayno
tells how disgraced former AD Norwood Teague harassed her. There’s no way his superiors were unaware of this activity, right? - One of the most famous longreads in history – written before “longreads” was a term or even a concept worth mentioning – is now online, John Hersey’s 1946 New Yorker piece on Hiroshima survivors. Hersey had just won the Pulitzer Prize for the Novel for A Bell for Adano
, which is on my to-be-read shelf right now.
- Why are we letting infectious diseases make a comeback? This story isn’t about vaccines, but about our lack of preparedness for new diseases creeping up from warmer regions.
- This isn’t new, but it came in handy with a Facebook argument with a high school classmate who threw out a little climate-change denial: The polar ice caps aren’t “recovering.”
- The FDA doctor who blocked thalidomide’s rubber-stamp approval died at 101 this week. Frances Oldham Kelsey – yep, a woman doctor, the kind that chauvinist José Mourinho has such a problem with – said “no” in the face of resistance from multiple sides. Only seventeen cases of thalidomide-related deformities were reported in the United States, compared to thousands in Europe.
- If you’ve seen Going Clear and want to see the IRS revoke Scientology’s bogus tax exemption, former Scientologist Tony Ortega tells you what to do. I sent one; the more of us send it … well, we can only hope we get some response, as a $3 billion for-profit entity shouldn’t have any tax exemption.
- Miles Teller’s publicist might want to find a new client after this self-immolation in Esquire. I don’t feel great about the writer’s role, either, as she takes a pretty slanted view of him even considering his boorish behavior.
- Pedro Moura, one of the best beat writers in the country, has a series on Brazilian baseball, looking into why a country that has a baseball tradition and produces tons of athletes for other sports hasn’t become a huge MLB pipeline. Hint: It’s corrupt as hell.
- The New England Journal of Medicine came out in support of Planned Parenthood, and against the “radical antichoice group whose goal is the destruction of Planned Parenthood” which “continues to twist the facts to achieve its ends.”
- Tiling the plane – gleaming the cube, but for math majors – is at the heart of a series of unsolved problems in mathematics, but a recent advance found a new solution among convex pentagons, the first such discovery in decades.
- Via my friend and frequent dining partner Kiley McDaniel, a piece on how restaurants can’t find enough cooks, a phenomenon that’s at least partly the result of a drop in immigration from Mexico to the U.S.
So I finally saw Birdman yesterday, and thought it was full of great performances but the story was hackneyed at many points, while the ending didn’t work for me at all. I’m sure many if not most of you have seen it already; what did you think? Did this deserve the Best Picture win, or was it a combination of a movie about movies that used a cinematography/editing gimmick that won the prize? And what, if anything, happened at the end?
I didn’t know who Miles Teller was before reading the article. I’m not sure what was so bad about what he said in the article though. Seemed pretty consistent with what I’d expect from a 20-something self absorbed actor. A little dbag-ish but pretty uninteresting overall. I was hoping for a serious train wreck based in Keith’s summary.
Keith,
I enjoyed Birdman when I saw it and thought that both the soundtrack and camera work, despite being ostentatiously in your face, added to the atmosphere of the film. I also thought it was interesting in its dealing with the search for artistic integrity and as a critique of Hollywood’s current obsession with franchises at the expense of individuality.
However, I agree that there were flaws. Some of the characters, particularly the theatre critic, were drawn from the laziest stereotypes.
I forget–ESPN chat software is proprietary or bought from a 3rd party?
Proprietary, but the issue this week was logging into the server where it runs.
“radical antichoice group whose goal is the destruction of Planned Parenthood”
Just about anyone who has watched those PP videos would argue that the term “radical” should also be placed in front of Planned Parenthood.
Sad to see the New England Journal of Medicine repeating nonsensical arguments.
First off, the trope that free contraceptives will limit the number of abortions. (Megan McArdle explains why that’s untrue: http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-08-07/free-contraception-can-t-end-the-abortion-debate).
Second, the idea that Planned Parenthood deserves funding because they do some good things. They are also the largest abortion provider in the United States. The organization should absolutely not receive federal funding. Critics of Planned Parenthood are not the problem here. If these non-abortion services that Planned Parenthood provides are so great, and abortion is only 3% of what they do (which is also untrue, but is a repeated talking point by Planned Parenthood supporters – thankfully the NEJM didn’t use that stat in their editorial) then why don’t they just, you know, STOP PERFORMING ABORTIONS? This way, all the awesome things PP does can continue on with federal funding, and taxpayers aren’t paying for the “crunchy” stuff.
Douthat sufficiently explains why you can’t really be anti-abortion and pro-PP. http://nyti.ms/1KQzIda
Sorry, this was flagged for moderation because it has multiple links. all good now.
Not to mention the fact that Dr. Nucatola makes it pretty clear that Planned Parenthood intentionally alters abortion procedures for the purpose of preserving fetal organs, which is illegal.
Craig,
Abortions are a medical procedure that is legal in this country. As such, why should it be subjected to different funding rules than any other medical procedure?
1. The Hyde Amendment (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyde_Amendment)
2. As far as I know, abortion is the only legal “medical procedure” that intentionally ends a human life. Feel like that distinguishes it from something like knee surgery. If you believe that inserting forceps into a uterus, and using the forceps to crush a fetus’s skull, then extracting the fetus limb by limb once its heart stops beating… If you feel like that is analogous to an appendectomy, I can’t argue with you there.
I mean, the New England Journal of Medicine disagrees with me, and in their eyes I’m “shameful”, so what do I know?
Begging the question: you say it ends a human life, but that’s neither a scientific fact nor a consensus opinion.
Sure, if you don’t believe a 2-month old fetus is alive, then abortion becomes something close to an appendectomy. You are more than free to believe that.
If that fetus is not alive, however, do you oppose the Unborn Victims of Violence Act? (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unborn_Victims_of_Violence_Act). Should someone who assaults a pregnant woman, resulting in a miscarriage, be charged with murder?
So if life begins after conception, but before a baby is brought home from the hospital (as Barbara Boxer once famously contested), then it becomes a life at some point in between. Would you care to share your thoughts on where that point is?
That a fetus is a living human being is a metaphysical fact. To deny this because “it’s not a scientific fact” (or worse, to appeal to “consensus” as though that has any bearing on the validity of an objective truth) is to completely fail to understand what science can and cant’ tell us. Science can tell us when a fetus has a heartbeat, or when its feet and toes are formed, or when it responds to sound. But it can’t tell us whether or not any of that counts as life because that requires a philosophical interpretation of those scientific findings. As Craig says, if you think humanity is a trait bestowed sometime after conception, then you need to provide a metaphysical justification for that position. I really don’t see any rational way to view a fetus as anything other than a human being in the earliest stages of development.
Craig…
You are trying to have it both ways… pointing to both a (non-applicable) law while also ignoring other laws in favor of your personal moral preferences.
Paulie,
I have watched them. Please feel free to explain how an organization dedicated to women’s health, and that likely prevents thousands of abortions a year, is somehow “radical”.
I’m glad we have your handwaving “prevents thousands of abortions a year” nonsense as opposed to, you know, the hard data that PP peforms about 300,000 abortions a year. Totaling those numbers with the other services they offer pregnant women (prenatal care and adoption referrals) and assuming that none of the women who received those non-abortion services eventually chose to have an abortion, we see that well over 90% of pregnant women who receive pregnancy-related services at PP end up getting an abortion.
@BIP: Planned Parenthood performs 149 abortions for every 1 adoption referral.
Source: http://plannedparenthood.org/files/4013/9611/7243/Planned_Parenthood_Services.pdf
Craig: I’ve seen numbers as high as 340 to 1.
Maybe it’s because the award push soured me on it, but the second time I watched Birdman it grated on me so much. Like you, I found most of the performances to be strong–it really did a disservice to Naomi Watts and Andrea Riseborough, whose only reason to be there was so they could eventually make out–but the screenplay was so annoying. The portrayal of the critic was so annoying, though Inarritu wasn’t exactly trying to hide his disdain for that particular group. Not every wannabe-profound thought needs to be shouted at the top of your lungs, while the “single-shot” effect eventually wore too thin to be anything more than just a cheap gimmick. It was beautifully shot by Emmanuel Lubezki, for what it’s worth. Boyhood, Whiplash, Selma and Grand Budapest Hotel were vastly superior films and achievements in 2014, but can’t beat Hollywood honoring the awesomeness of actors.
Since you asked, I liked Birdman, but Whiplash was one of my favorite films of the decade (so far).
Re: Birdman.
Pretty clear to me he commits suicide on stage, the rest is Keaton’s “afterlife dream sequence”. Evidence:
– Everything goes right for him after the gunshot
– We know from earlier hints in movie that he doesn’t have superpowers so he didn’t fly out the window
– The “single-shot” effect disappears completely after the gunshot. Rest of movie is shot in a more traditional style.
For me, the reason I loved Birdman was its take on depression. I found the self-loathing embodied in the superhero side of Keaton to be one of the best visualizations of that inner voice that keeps repeating how a person will never be good enough. The scene at the top of the building was almost a trigger for me because as I felt the movie built to that moment, I understood his desire to kill himself and as an audience member, I could just watch from the sidelines and do nothing, much like the revisionist histories in our hearts when someone close commits suicide. I felt the movie aspect served as a metaphor for any person’s struggle with a job and personal and professional expectations. I haven’t watched it since seeing it in the theater and I admit I’m scared to watch it again. That inner voice can be too powerful at times.
This is me “liking” this comment.
Slow clap for JT. I can’t say I’ve ever really experienced depression, so this is probably the closest I’ve ever come to getting even the most cursory idea of the experience. Very well done.
I know it was a bit of a throwaway line, but I was very happy to see most British press, as well as football/soccer fans, come out in support of Eva Carneiro this week, over Mourinho. There were only a few “some Jose’s best friends are women and even his wife and mum are” articles.
Birdman had some nice elements, but it was overly-gimmicky, kind of pretentious, and the ending was a train wreck. Outside of Emma Stone and Ed Norton, I found the performances to be largely unremarkable.
One should keep in mind that the Academy voters are disproportionately old, white, and wealthy. They like their movies artsy, but not TOO artsy or edgy or groundbreaking. They tend to favor films that are about Hollywood or else reference classic Hollywood genres. They like films about the Jewish experience/the Holocaust, and about those who have mental and physical challenges. They enjoy “progressive” films about race, by which I mean films where people overcome racial oppression and/or racism. More frank examinations of race–those that suggest an ongoing/challenging problem–are not favored. They tend not to prefer films about alternative sexualities, films about class, foreign films, or highly-stylized films (Baz Luhrmann, Wes Anderson, even Quentin Tarantino). Films that explore technology and its impacts (or potential impacts) sail right over their heads.
Point is: Birdman was in the Academy’s wheelhouse (it’s about Hollywood, it’s a little edgy but largely conventional, it’s pretty white). So, its win was not a surprise, at least not to anyone in LA. That does not say a lot about whether it is or is not a great film.
I agree with all of this, although I have no specific knowledge on films or awards that makes my opinion a particularly useful one. It just seems very logical.
I hope I did not seem to be claiming to be in the business, because I am not.
However, I am a historian who specializes in popular culture and sociology. Further, as a resident of West Los Angeles (and a graduate of and lecturer at UCLA), it is somewhat inevitable that one will end up friends or colleagues with people who ARE in the business. One of my colleagues, for example, is married to John Lithgow (whom I’ve chatted with many times). One of my grad school cohort was Steven Spielberg’s brother-in-law, another is married to the composer who did most of the music for ST:TNG, another is married to the guy who produced the American Pie movies. My closest friend (a doctor) is the nephew of Jim Carrey’s manager. And so forth. I do not suggest this conveys any honor or status upon me; I merely wish to illustrate that there are going to be far less than six degrees of separation from “Hollywood” when you live and work where I do.
Keith…you recently tweeted out a photo of a peach pie you made. Your own concoction or did you find the recipe online? Love to give it a go here soon. Also, have you made peach bread? I can find recipes online but like anything on the internet, I need a vetted recipe.
Thanks for the long read on Hiroshima. Amazing piece of history there and a real tough read.
It’s all from Baking Illustrated. Never made peach bread; when I get fresh peaches, I make pie and preserves and then we eat the rest straight.
I don’t know that there’s much worth pointing things out here, but, a lot of the facts provided by the anti-abortion posters here are simply not true. First off, 3% of the services planned parenthood provides are abortions, based on actual numbers of services provided. 1/9 of women who see planned parenthood get an abortion, as they see about 2.7 million individual women per year and provide ~300,000 per year. Free contraception and counseling on how to use it does, in fact, reduce abortion rates by something like 60-70% depending on the study. This is done by comparing within a specific population. Comparing country to country is…a really stupid way to look at whether or not contraception lowers abortion rates. Also, yes, most people who have an unwanted pregnancy end up getting an abortion… an abortion in the first trimester, which is when the ridiculous majority of pregnancies are ended means 6-8 months of not being pregnant, which is a significant savings on money, energy, health, inconvience, time, and other resources, compared to adoption.
None of this says whether or not abortions should be legal… they should be. After watching my wife go through pregnancy, I more firmly believe this than ever before.
1. Three percent is a lie. http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2013/05/07/_3_percent_of_planned_parenthood_s_services_are_abortion_but_what_about.html
2. Read the McArdle piece I linked to earlier about free contraceptives and the abortion rate. Can you cite a specific study for your 60-70% stat?
Craig, I read your McArdle piece you linked to earlier. Its CRAP. The reason that its crap is you can’t say one factor is the cause of differences in abortion rates when you look across cultures. What you CAN do, and what numerous studies DO is introduce contraception to a population and observe the population that has access compared to the population that doesn’t have access, such as this study. https://medicine.wustl.edu/news/headlines/access-to-free-birth-control-reduces-abortion-rates/
2. The slate article you just linked to notes that the 3% is a technically correct number. 3% of the service incidents they provide are abortions. Calling it a lie is, well, something that I expect from people who want to defund planned. It is a technically correct number, that if you read the document it comes from, is contained within a larger context.
Technically correct and intentionally misleading.
Hey, I’m on your side re: free and/or over the counter birth control. I don’t think it will have a big impact, but sign me up. But don’t act like it is a package deal with abortion. If PP is only 3% abortions, then again I ask why they don’t just cut out that tiny part of their organization? That way we can continue to give them all the funding you could ask for, and the public isn’t forced to support an organization that provides 300K abortions every year. Win-win!
Craig,
What on Earth makes you think that if they stopped providing abortion services Congress (and taxpayers) would gladly give them “all the funding they could ask for”? This is a slippery slope. Doing so would just result in yet another battle over providing contraceptives. Are there still people out there who believe women won’t attempt to (dangerously) terminate pregnancies if abortion were to be banned in this country? I am quite content to avoid a return to the Dark Ages.
As far as funding abortion procedures, the Hyde Amendment of 1977 dictated that federal Medicaid funds can be used “only in cases of rape, incest or to protect the life of the mother”. 17 states currently allow exceptions if the procedure is deemed “medically necessary”.
Just push play. Keith, Mat, Paul… Give 3 minutes to see what it is.
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=099_1403018623&comments=1
Gross or disturbing doesn’t mean morally wrong. Appeals to emotion are the refuge of the scoundrel..
Paul, you beat me to it. It comes as something of a surprise that people think we have a history of rescinding rights and not expanding them in this country.
Sorry I’ve been absent from this conversation (which has been quite civil all around, so thank you all). I was in five states in five days and barely had any time to write anything.
I think I owe you all two answers. The first is the question of when life begins in the womb, and Craig’s insistence that I “share (my) thoughts on where that point is.” That’s a bit of a burden of proof fallacy; why shouldn’t someone arguing for any sort of abortion ban have to demonstrate when a fetus is a human? Is one fertilized cell considered a human life? Before or after implantation? When it has two cells? Four? When it “looks” like a human? If we’re imposing the burden of proof on either side, why isn’t it the side seeking to ban a safe medical procedure?
The second is kind of an open question to BIP and Craig, and anyone else speaking out against PP here. In Paraguay, a 10-year-old girl was raped by her stepfather, and because that country bans nearly all abortions, she was forced to give birth to the child (she was 11 by the time the child was born). She was made pregnant without her consent, is at an age where she could not possibly give informed consent, and is so young that she can’t be reasonably expected to care for the child on her own. Should the Paraguayan authorities have allowed her to get an abortion?
“why shouldn’t someone arguing for any sort of abortion ban have to demonstrate when a fetus is a human? Is one fertilized cell considered a human life? Before or after implantation? When it has two cells? Four? When it “looks” like a human?”
The burden of proof rests on those who are attempting to deny what basic embryology texts have taught for years: that the fertilized egg is a new and unique organism. It’s certainly alive, and it’s certainly a human organism — it can’t start out as some different kind of organism and then change to a human, right? It’s not inert material that suddenly becomes alive later in the development, right?
So I guess my question is why the pro-abortion camp attempting to muddy the waters with respect to settled scientific matters?
What is a “human organism?” There’s some semantic game going on in there, to say nothing of your begging the question with “certainly alive.”
A fertilized egg is not a human. It cannot survive outside of the womb, and can’t even maintain full homeostasis within the womb. It may not even develop into a human, depending on its genes (for example, some genes may cause spontaneous abortions). It may be a future-human, but why are we defining that as human?
I thought I was fairly straightforward with my language, but we can go through it point by point if that helps:
Is a fertilized egg a unique organism? Embryology texts say it is. Do you disagree?
Is it a human organism or is it some other kind of organism? If it’s not a human organism, I’d like to know to what other taxonomic classification it belongs, and at what point it changes classification. It would be a unique thing for an animal to conceive a different kind of animal that later turns into the same kind of animal as its mother and father.
Is the fertilized egg alive or dead? It’s not inert matter, right? It is living tissue?
I thought I was fairly straightforward with my language, but we can go through it point by point if that helps:
You were straightforward in avoiding the central question: Is a fertilized egg a living human being? Your second answer avoids it again, but with sarcasm.
I’m not sure which part of my comment you believe was sarcastic. The rhetorical questions are intended to demonstrate why I come those conclusions.
So, yes, my reply is that a zygote or a fertilized egg is a living human being. From a scientific standpoint, the zygote is unique, it is human, and it is living. I struggle to imagine what it could be other than a living human being.
Whether that means it has a soul, or is viable outside the womb, or has property rights, or anything else is a different debate, it would seem to me. But the matter of it being a unique, living, human organism is inescapable, at least to my powers of reason.
So, yes, my reply is that a zygote or a fertilized egg is a living human being.
There’s a logical leap in here that I can’t accept. The egg can’t survive outside the womb or even maintain homeostasis. It can (but will not absolutely) become a human being, but it is not a human being at that point; calling it one seems a sort of logical fallacy via synecdoche.
Why is survival outside the womb or homeostatis a prerequisite for the status of a human being? It seems like that’s asking a different question — whether it’s a mature human.
When premature babies are delivered via C-section and require immediate and dire medical attention to survive for even those first few minutes — would you say they are human beings or not?
A collection of cells that has no nervous system – no senses, no awareness, no ability to even regulate its own body temperature – does not meet the criterion that a human being be an individual. It has neither identity nor existence outside of its host.
Outside of the womb, yes, such a baby (well further along than the embryos we’re discussing) would be a human being. But when such a baby dies in childbirth or just before doctors can deliver it, do we think of its death the way we’d think of the death of a child who’s lived even a few days?
The existence of such differences in opinion is, to my admittedly libertarian leanings, a strong argument against the heavy restrictions on abortions that the hard right would like to enact. Such policies deny access to women like the Paraguayan girl I mentioned above, or to this woman whose fetus was not going to survive to term.
A collection of cells that has no nervous system – no senses, no awareness, no ability to even regulate its own body temperature – does not meet the criterion that a human being be an individual. It has neither identity nor existence outside of its host.
That’s an assertion, not an argument. Again, you’re describing the immature development, but I see no justification for why immature development means it’s not a human organism. Biologically speaking, the zygote most certainly is an organism unique from both parents.
Outside of the womb, yes, such a baby (well further along than the embryos we’re discussing) would be a human being. But when such a baby dies, do we think of its death as some kind of involuntary manslaughter?
No — why would we? Parents, caregivers, and doctors are not held legally responsible for failing to provide care that is not available.
I don’t want to misread you here, so please correct me if I’m mistaken, but if you are pursuing a definition of human life that is contingent on the ability to survive outside the womb, does that ability to survive include or not include medical intervention?
Welp, you edited your post while I was replying — to address the rewritten sentence:
But when such a baby dies in childbirth or just before doctors can deliver it, do we think of its death the way we’d think of the death of a child who’s lived even a few days?
Before I answer that question, can I request a clarification? Are you suggesting that our reaction to those deaths informs whether or not those children had human life?
“Had human life” is another subtle shift in wording that changes the whole meaning.
I posed a question at the start of this new thread that no one has answered: Should that pregnant pre-teen rape victim in Paraguay have been granted an abortion?
It wasn’t intended to shift the meaning. I’d happily rephrase the question as:
Are you suggesting that our reaction to those deaths informs whether or not those children were human lives?
Supposing we retained the “had human life” phraseology, however, I’m not sure I see how it changes the meaning. As I discussed above, having seen that the zygote is a unique organism from its mother, is human in classification, and the cells are alive, I don’t know what category I can logically put it in other than a human life. The fact that it needs support, or is early in development, or doesn’t physically resemble a mature human, or whatever, doesn’t change what it is, what category of things it belongs to.
Keith,
I love your chats on ESPN, but is seems obvious they are phasing these out by the lack of other chats, and no shows from the few that are advertised. I have tried sending feedback (I am an Insider), but have not heard anything back. So, two things, any advice on whom to write to, and if the chats stop at ESPN, would you consider starting them here?
They haven’t decided to phase them out (yet), but we’re having an ongoing technical issue that they’re slow in fixing – I can’t access the chat admin server at all from home. If the chats do end at ESPN, I will do them here. That’s a pledge.
Periscope chat was entertaining today, even though I don’t have a Twitter account and couldn’t participate. The cameo appearance of your cat was only exceeded by the constant questions about a certain ESPN employee (seemed to entertain you as well).
They did, very much so.
Rhetorical questions are arguments now?
The latest video shows an ex utero baby moving its arms and legs and then describes the dissection of a baby’s skull for brain tissue while its heart is still beating. This is vivisection of born, living human beings.
The Planned Parenthood discussion is not about whether or not a seconds-old or minutes-old cellular process constitutes a living human being. Besides, that is all moot when discussing abortion, because you cannot abort a baby unless you know you’re pregnant, which cannot happen until a few weeks after conception. At that time, if a doctor says “you are pregnant”, then it’s pretty clear the pregnancy involves a living human being. A woman is not pregnant with a clump of cells.
Keith, by posting twice articles complimentary of Planned Parenthood and critical of those who reveal their previously unknown practices, you are complicit in the continuing disgusting practices of PP.
And regarding the Paraguayan girl, the only way to resolve your objection that she did not consent to the conception and cannot care for the baby now that it has been born is to kill the baby. I don’t suppose it matters whether that happens in utero or ex utero – it certainly doesn’t matter to Planned Parenthood.
Jeff: First of all, you can know or at least strongly suspect that you’re pregnant as early as six days after conception, due to the bleeding and mild cramping that accompanies implantation. Even at four weeks, it’s not “pretty clear the pregnancy involves a living human being;” that is begging the question. At four weeks, the ultrasound picture doesn’t look like anything more than a clump of cells.
As for the Paraguayan girl, you’ve ignored the question. She was raped at age 10, knew she was pregnant, and was denied an abortion. Do you agree with the decision to force her to carry the baby to term?
Aren’t we both begging the question? Your premise is that a pregnancy involves only one human, the mother, and that what’s in the womb is, well I’m not sure what you think it is. My premise is that a pregnancy involves a mother and a baby. Therefore we’re not discussing the same thing. If there is no baby in the womb, then of course the Paraguayan girl should get an abortion and the Paraguayan laws are ridiculous. If there is a baby in the womb, then an abortion ends a human life, no matter what the circumstances. (I suppose there’s also the possibility that we both believe the baby is a human life; you support killing him/her and I support not killing him/her. But I don’t think that’s what you’re arguing).
I’m still not sure what your belief is on when a human life begins in the womb. So instead of begging the question, I’ll ask it. When does human life begin?
So, a ten-year-old rape victim – someone who did not and could not consent to intercourse – has to carry the fetus to term, regardless of whether she can take care of the child that results from the rape? Even though pregnancy itself carries medical risks, and that carrying that fetus would be a daily reminder of the trauma that brought it into existence? I find that shocking in its cruelty and inherent misogyny.
I do not believe that a fetus that cannot live outside of the womb is a human being. I do believe, however, that there is no single, objective, evidence-based answer to this question, and therefore the appropriate policy is to leave the choice up to the woman who has to bear the child and raise him or her, likely with little or no financial assistance from the government that may have made her have it.
Yes, all that you mention is cruel. More cruel was the rape itself, which regardless of what follows, can never be undone (killing the baby cannot make the rape un-happen). Most cruel is ending an innocent life.
I find the concept that viability determines that status of humanity to be exceedingly unscientific. If the baby is determined to be viable on day x, what happened between day x-1 and x that changed its status from agglomeration of cells / product of pregnancy to human being? And if the doctor overseeing the pregnancy and therefore declaring viability is the determiner of what a human being is, what if s/he’s off by a few days? If there is no objective answer to the overall question, then I posit if the baby is a human being now, what was s/he five minutes ago? I’d answer that as “human being” going all the way back until something fundamental and basic has changed, which leads me to conception.
It’s also worth noting that if you pin human status on viability, as Keith appears to do, it means that as medical interventions have gotten more advanced, the point as which a fetus becomes human has changed. A 5 month old fetus wasn’t a human life in the 1500’s or the 1800’s, but it is a human life in the 2000’s, simply because our ability to support its life outside the womb has advanced. This was the direction I was heading in the conversation above when I asked Keith if his definition of viable included medical interventions, though it seems Keith may have abandoned it.
It also creates some other apparent absurdities as well — if a premature baby is delivered because the doctor believes it can survive outside the womb, but it dies a day a later — would Keith support a post hoc conclusion that it wasn’t a human life after all, since it was demonstrated that it couldn’t survive outside the womb? An unfortunate error by the doctor, perhaps, but not the loss of a life?
You’re the one pinning viability to technology; I’ve done no such thing. Yet calling a cluster of cells with no brain stem, no senses, no ability to survive outside of a womb a “human being” that an unwilling woman (who may not have even consented to intercourse) must carry to term is the absurd position here. You may choose for yourself to treat that cluster of cells as a human being with a life that must be preserved, but forcing that choice on another woman – or, as in Paraguay, on a child – is the greater atrocity, and one that is structurally misogynistic to boot.
I asked you a direct question in the conversation above whether your definition of “viable” included medical intervention or not — you either missed the question or intentionally chose not to respond. If you have some way of defining the “viability” of a fetus that does not include medical interventions, I’d be curious to hear it.
And again, you’re merely describing the immature development of the zygote, as if somehow it were deficient, when the scientific position is that it’s entirely normal and appropriate for a zygote at that stage to lack a brain stem. That’s exactly what a human zygote is supposed to be at that stage.
The charge of misogyny is a bit of a cheap shot. Arguing over conclusions when the other side doesn’t agree with your presuppositions doesn’t help anyone. If I were to charge you with supporting infanticide because I believe that the unborn child is still, well, a child, I imagine you would not find my argument persuasive, because you disagree with the presuppositions that lead to my conclusion.
If we all agreed with your presuppositions, then a charge of misogyny could rightly be laid at my feet. And if we all agreed with my presuppositions, then I’d be justified in accusing you of supporting infanticide. But we don’t agree on the presuppositions.
I don’t answer every question asked of me – not here, not on Twitter, not anywhere. I receive too many questions and don’t have enough time.
You keep switching your terminology, as I’ve pointed out before. Is a “human zygote” with no brain stem a human being? Is aborting that fetus murder, even though it’s clearly nonviable outside of the womb and has no means of cognition or consciousness? And are you so certain of the answer that you’re comfortable restricting the physical liberty of women across the country? I’m sure as hell not.
You might also address the valid point Kazzy raised below.
I certainly understand that you receive a lot of questions. But if I ask a question in order to clarify your position, and you choose not to answer it because you’re too busy (but remain engaged in the conversation anyway), I’m not sure why the “You said that, I didn’t say that” response was warranted. I wanted clarification and asked for it. Receiving no answer, I suggested the position I thought more consistent and responded to that hypothetical.
Regarding the terminology/viability/misogyny questions, I’ve answered these and responded when you raised them previously. I’m trying to follow a single logical thread to determine what you think a zygote is if it isn’t a human life (and defend that position, since it’s in conflict with modern biology), while also responding to your numerous challenges that are really contingent on whether we have any common ground regarding what exactly a zygote is.
Kazzy’s post seems rather beside the point — I’m not sure why bad laws about custodial rights for rapists would be or should be solved by abortions. Some victims of rape choose not to abort the child; the problem Kazzy describes is still present for them.
Dan Savage made a great point about a potential consequence of denying rape victims access to abortions: in 31 states, rapists who impregnate their victims have custodial rights. Which means they can maintain a presence in their victim’s lives for decades. If we outlaw abortion, including those for victims of rape (something several GOP candidates openly support), we are offering stalkers, rapists, and others an opportunity to torture their targets well beyond the initial violence.
I’m curious if those who oppose abortion even consider this.
I am always curious if those who support pro-life causes have actually adopted or fostered kids or are just moralizing for others. Can the individuals here state that they have or will there be excuses as to the reasons they can’t? And if those reasons come up why does the woman who doesn’t want the kid get the same reasons in order to abort?
There are lots and lots of kids ready for adoption. We want to add to that number? Courageous.