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Letting women die because of unsafe abortions is awesome!
Isn’t is cute when our politicians decide that keeping the zany religious fruit-bats in their ‘base’ happy is more important that saving women’s lives? Just ask our lovely PM Steven Harper all about appeasing the religious zealotry that makes up a portion of his base on how the blood of women will appease their ignoble quest to save ‘life’.
“According to the World Health Organization, 21.6 million women experience an unsafe abortion worldwide each year. The 47,000 who die make up about 13 per cent of annual maternal deaths.
As part of Millennium Development Goal No. 5, which aims to reduce the maternal mortality rate by 75 per cent from 1990 to 2015, the United Nations secretary general came up with a global strategy for women and children’s health. Among other things, it includes saving the lives of women who experience unsafe abortions.”
Letting 47,000 women die from unsafe abortions is par for the course for our noble “pro-life” constituency (because they love fetuses more that women). I may have already commented on this untidy dilemma our pro-life friends find themselves in.
Now what is our besieged PM to do?
Step One – Waffle with vague generalities about consensus.
The PM:
“We’re trying to rally a broad public consensus behind what we’re doing, and you can’t rally a consensus on that issue, as you know well in this country,” he said.
“It’s not only controversial here, it’s controversial and often illegal in many recipient nations.”
Harper doesn’t agree with the suggestion that he is exporting his beliefs abroad to other countries by not funding abortion services.
“We’re really not taking a position on that. We have taxpayers’ money and we have great needs,” he said to Thibedeau.
Step Two – Concede that the anti-choicers have a large home in his base and pissing them off makes Harper have a sad.
“And frankly, there’s more than enough things that we can finance, including contraception, without getting into an issue that really would be extremely divisive for Canadians and donors.”
Step Three – Say that supporting contraception is enough and to those bitchez that do get knocked up, so sorry about your luck… luv Canada.
Melinda Gates:
“One of the things we don’t invest in enough, as a world, are contraceptives. We put women in that situation because they don’t have access and when you talk to them in the developing world, they say, ‘I want that tool, I want that shot I used to get,'” she said.
“We can work upstream on these issues to help women where they are, so you don’t ever put them in that situation, and to me, that’s the smart investment to make.”
So yah, enjoy your unsafe abortions wimmenz cause Canada just ran out fucks to give about your situation.
The NDP Hélène Laverdière critic rightly lambasted Harper and his anti-choice concerns.
“Well, there’s 47,000 women who die each year from unsafe abortions,” she said in an interview with CBC News.
“So, if we want to save every woman, we have to address that issue too.”
According to the World Health Organization, 21.6 million women experience an unsafe abortion worldwide each year. The 47,000 who die make up about 13 per cent of annual maternal deaths.
This from a letter sent to Harper on May 28th:
“Global parliamentarians recommend that women’s reproductive health can only be achieved when the human rights of women, girls and youth are realized.
So if the abortion debate is over in Canada and abortion is a legal and reasonable part of the umbrella of women’s reproductive health, then what exactly is your problem Stephen? Or do women get their rights only when it is politically expedient?
[Source for Quotes: cbc.ca]
Reasons For The Lowered Abortion Rate
- Available birth control
- Lessened stigma on birth control
- More education about birth control
- More comprehensive sex education than the past
Things That Barely (If At All) Lowered Abortion Rates:
- Pro-Life harassment and violence
- Sidewalk protesting
- Restricting abortions
- Banning abortions
Things That Will Continue To Lower Abortion Rates:
- Even more comprehensive sex education
- Even better birth control options
- Less stigma on sex, sex ed, and birth control
- More birth control options for those without a uterus
- Available and affordable (or free) birth control
Either Way:
- Abortion is not evil.
- Abortion is a responsible choice.
- Abortion should remain legal, no matter what.
- Sentient pregnant person > non-sentient fetus.
- Do not harass those who want an abortion or those who have had one.
- Abortion needs to be de-stigmatized, for the sake of the people who choose it or who need it.
When arguing about abortion and other moral topics, one is almost guaranteed to hear this lofty phrase trotted out. Like a a gentle desert sirocco, you only miss it when it isn’t there. People seem to have some very strange ideas about how we regularly treat each other here on Earth.
Realistically speaking, the phrase “sanctity of human life”is a misnomer. We here in the ‘Civilized West’ extinguish human life at a record pace whether actively though war or passively through indifference and neglect.
“But Arbourist!”, says the lay reader of DWR, “we in the West, have technology, capitalism and democracy that raises all of the boats and keeps our people well off. Well yes lay reader but, our relative prosperity is a direct result of our society almost always wielding the bigger stick and vigourously applying it to all of those people around us until they acquiesced or died under our not so gentle ministrations.
We laid waste other civilizations and then built our own in the blood soaked ashes of the wanton slaughter we perpetrated. There was no sanctity of human life then: it was us or them and jebus willing, it had better be them.
Yes, our lovely notions of morality are quickly set aside once it gets down to us vs. them. The best part is that “them” does not even need to be a threat; our benevolent political leadership will kindly manufacture a threat to dehumanize whomever stands in the way of our geopolitical goals (those damn Arabs having the temerity to live on top of our oil, for example). Sanctity of what again? If it wasn’t Churchill gassing the Arabs for being uppity for not subscribing to the benevolent British dictatorship administered by local satraps, it was those same Arabs who needed a good bombing/droning by the enlightened US of A to make them see all the benefits of a US sponsored benevolent dictatorship.
So many flavours of tyranny!
So many people that need to die before they understand what is good for them (us). All this respect for human life, and we’ve covered the ever so smallest part of the active destruction of humanity. For a change of depression let us flit over to the passive neglectful side of our deep commitment to the sanctity of human life.
From the Unicef site:
More than 70 per cent of almost 11 million child deaths every year are attributable to six causes: diarrhoea, malaria, neonatal infection, pneumonia, preterm delivery, or lack of oxygen at birth.
These deaths occur mainly in the developing world. An Ethiopian child is 30 times more likely to die by his or her fifth birthday than a child in Western Europe. Among deaths in children, South-central Asia has the highest number of neonatal deaths, while sub-Saharan Africa has the highest rates. Two-thirds of deaths occur in just 10 countries.
And the majority are preventable. Some of the deaths occur from illnesses like measles, malaria or tetanus. Others result indirectly from marginalization, conflict and HIV/AIDS. Malnutrition and the lack of safe water and sanitation contribute to half of all these children’s deaths.
But disease isn’t inevitable, nor do children with these diseases need to die. Research and experience show that six million of the almost 11 million children who die each year could be saved by low-tech, evidence-based, cost-effective measures such as vaccines, antibiotics, micronutrient supplementation, insecticide-treated bed nets and improved family care and breastfeeding practices.
Neat how that works. So much waste of human life, for what? A slight reduction in the standards of Western living? Well we certainly can’t see their suffering and dying, soooo…it doesn’t really count then right?
Right? Because sanctity of human life is such a important moral precept over here in the West. Because we value life so damn much and it is so important to us.
Bull.
Shit.
What most abortions look like.
Having laid down the smack on this forced-birther, he then laments being called on his misogyny and fundamental disrespect for the female portion of the species. This is Red Pen of Justice Territory folks.
Before he gets deep into the anti-choice bullcookery we detour into his deep important thoughts about the Olympics and human rights. Let’s see what he has to say.
“No religion but Christianity can support them[human rights]. (Atheism certainly can’t, as is becoming increasingly apparent.”
Oh wow… christianity the saviour of human rights, but only if you happen to be a white heterosexual male. Hmmm,women…submit to your husbands (because submission has everything to do with human rights) and heaven forbid if you are a homosexual. Oh you’ll be burning forever in hell? Atheists – have you made fun of the holy ghost? See you in hell too. The love of jebus is thick in the air, I can feel it!
We’ll skip the philosophical wanking and get down to what makes this religiously deluded liberal dude such enemy to women and and their rights.
“Talking about abortion as a right “to choose” or a right to “have bodily autonomy” is flagrant misrepresentation.”
Yes, those noises women make when defending their rights – just “misrepresentations”.
“I don’t have the right to choose to kill someone else. My rights over my body don’t give me the right to kill someone else’s body.”
Funny how badly forced birthers argue are when trying to be all moral and prescriptive. Of course, when it is not their body and their rights being effected, the holy jack boots of jebus are forcefully applied, despite reason and logic.
We here in civilized society prize bodily autonomy – the use of my organs by another is by my consent or not at all. Of course, being christian he and his god have no problem with slavery, so slavery for women is a-okay because Mr.Noble High Horse is preserving life, all the while taking a shit women and their rights.
I do love the smell of religious hypocrisy in the morning.
“Abortion advocates mostly know this though, so they try to portray the fetus as being somehow less than a “someone else.” Human rights are intended precisely to protect people from that sort of move. “
Well when legal and medical experts define someone as alive, you know like possessing brain function, which a fetus does not possess for a good part of its growth cycle, then we can talk about human rights. Medical facts aside, we don’t let other adults with full humanity dictate how our organs are used so…Mr.fetus you seem to be straight out of luck.
“We don’t get to say that someone else doesn’t count, we don’t get to say that someone else doesn’t deserve rights, we don’t get to set standards about whom we protect and whom we abuse. “
Wow. Much morality. Much pretense. Little connection withe real world. Go try your little speech to someone in Afghanistan or Iraq, or anyone in Central America they will tell you how much American’s value “life” and what they do to preserve the sanctity of it. My god man, you must bathe in naivety, to make such blithely arrogant pronouncements such as these.
We say who counts and who doesn’t count. Ask any black person in America as to how much they “count” and how many rights they have and if they are treated the same as you. In your “christian” nation under god seems to be just brimming with equality for all!
No. We’re not taken in easily as you. Your magical whitewashing of the world and morality might be fine for churchy-churchy time and your churchy-church friends, but outside the jebus-bubble in this place commonly termed as, reality, facts matter. The world is much more complex that your simple moral prescriptions and you can’t handwave-away the geopolitical reality we inhabit no matter what your sky-daddy says.
So, take your pious moralizing and settle it firmly back in your church,where I’m sure your illusive bullshite makes perfect sense and has a receptive audience.
“The last few posts I’ve tried to be objective and rational. “
Couldn’t fool me. Charity? WTF is that?
“They throw around deliberately inflammatory terms like “forced birth” and “a woman’s right to her body,” so that people react emotionally and don’t notice the treachery. “
Ah! Women, when speaking up for their rights demanding to be treated as human beings as opposed to incubators, are actually making ‘inflammatory statements’. Your fainting couch has arrived, please use it at the first available opportunity.
“They deliberately cloud the issue so that people won’t think about it. “
So sayeth the prophet from the side that regularly lies about medical facts such as stages of foetal development, pregnancy, and effects of abortion on women. I imagine that makes you quite the expert on clouding the issue, no?
“Suddenly it’s not death, it’s liberty. They trick us into thinking that maybe the human beings we abandon don’t actually matter.”
Oh, you mean like the women you conveniently erase while pining for a forced birth dystopia. Yeah-no, your fetus-fetish stinks from here and can only be seen as hatred toward women and their status as human beings.
“God help us. God help the ones we won’t help. God give them peace and a home with a Father that won’t reject them and leave them in the clutches of a monster.We ought to be willing to die to save them. What have we become?”
Yes, I think you should pray a lot more. Significantly more, maybe so much more than you won’t have time to post your misogynistic forced birth opinions on the interwebs and save me the time of refuting your mendacity.
So as it turns out women, mysteriously, don’t fall into the category of “life” that needs protection or saving. ‘Pro-life’ is anti-woman from snout to spade.
“Unsafe abortion is responsible for 13% of maternal deaths worldwide and represents one of the four major causes of pregnancy-related mortality and morbidity”
— WHO, Safe Abortion: Technical and Policy Guidance for Health Systems, second ed., Geneva: WHO, 2012.
Nice to have a handy reference poster to deal with our anti-choice, forced birth friends.
And here is why :
Abortion fails to meet the legal definition of murder even when abortion is illegal (Interesting huh?)
Here’s why:
Unlawful – Abortion is not unlawful in North America.
Person hood– A fetus is not legally defined as a person. Nor can it be defined scientifically as a person. Person hood is a purely philosophical position. Most philosopher’s agree that there are certain basic requirements that one must meet to be defined a person and a fetus fails to meet them all.
Malice – No one gets abortions to punish or kill fetuses specifically. Most people feel zero malice towards the fetus they are aborting. Some feel sorry for it, some feel nothing and yes, some (Maybe a few) feel angry that it exists (And I’m sure other emotions too), but malice is not one.
No one wants an abortion just to kill something.
Premeditation – Premeditation would require that abortion be the end goal before the pregnancy even begins. This means that the person would have to have sex just so they could get an abortion. No one does. Premeditation therefore does not exist.
Lawful excuse – You have a lawful excuse. The right to Bodily Autonomy. This is the right which allows us to decide who may use our bodies, what parts they may use, what they may be used for and for how long. This means if I do not consent to the use of my uterus by a fetus I have the right to remove said fetus. Bodily Autonomy is the most basic human right.
There you have it. Abortion fails to meet the requirements for murder at every stage. Yes, it’s gory and bloody when you use late term abortions (which only account for about 1.5% of abortions anyways and are dead fetuses that failed to be expelled naturally, fetuses that were actively dying and putting the pregnant person in immediate danger and fetal abnormalities.)
Yes, it’s unpleasant to look at -so is open heart surgery. Being unpleasant to look at doesn’t equal murder though, it never has.
So no. Abortion is not murder, hope you enjoyed my uneducated arguments about law, logic, philosophy and human rights.
Wow, it is nice to find this so clearly defined. The fetus-fetish signal will be turned on and set to 11 shortly, I’m sure.
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