Letters to the Editor
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Have you noticed ...
... how everyone who is for abortion has already been born?
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Charge her with baloney-ious assault!
This is a massive intrusion into medical privacy that allows the Court and Congress to elevate their own opinions over those of trained medical professionals. This is a dangerous precedent.
-- mizbinkley
"Our panel could not find any identified circumstance in which the procedure was the only safe and effective abortion method."
Daniel H. Johnson Jr., M.D. President, American Medical Association Letter to the Editor The New York Times, May 26, 1997
(The American Medical Association supported the federal ban passed by Congress and vetoed by President Bill Clinton.)
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The personal isn't political?
OK, so I know that "News and Politics" and "Opinion" are for the big boys, and "Life" is, like, the other stuff. Why is this other stuff? Smacks of putting the "women" stories in a little weekly section and calling it "for the ladies." Which isn't fair at all to the quality of the Life section, by the way. Nor does it explain why Garrison Keillor's (beautiful) insights about snow, children, life, etc. reside in Opinion. But if a Supreme Court decision regarding women's bodies isn't considered news or politics, then what exactly is News and Politics? Boy stuff? A night at the Vagina Monologues for you all.
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More on "welcome parasite"
ATSJer, a newborn baby needs the care of another to sustain life. A toddler needs the care of another to sustain life. A severely mentally-disabled adult needs the care of another to sustain life. A very weak elderly person needs the care of another to sustain life.
The difference between all of these people and a fetus, an embryo or an "unborn baby," is that any of the people above could live and thrive so long as someone takes care of them. In the case of the fetus, embryo or "unborn baby," it can only be sustained by the woman's own nutrients, the woman's own body. She can't drop it off at the sitter or daycare center.
Hence the term "welcome parasite." It's a description with some merit, but more than anything I think it just inflames passions and alienates people. It also doesn't adequately take into account that this "welcome parasite" can mean a lot to a lot of people because of what it has the potential to become.
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They took some of our rights let's take some of theirs!!
Let's work on this gun control thing, seriously.
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Some frightening language from the opinion
"It is self-evident that a mother who comes to regret her choice to abort must struggle with grief more anguished and sorrow more profound when she learns, only after the event, what she once did not know: that she allowed a doctor to pierce the skull and vacuum the fast-developing brain of her unborn child, a child assuming the human form." Gonzales v. Carhart, p. 24.
Given this statement, it seems very apparent to me that the Court is just asking some state to pass an outright ban so that it may overturn Roe & Casey.
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To Jennilaya
Jennilaya writes "They took some of our rights let's take some of theirs!! Let's work on this gun control thing, seriously."
It's true. It's only a matter of time before we start hearing about fetal rights to bear arms. The fetus has a right to arm itself against abortion!
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Did you actually read your own letter?
If any potential life is equivalent to an actual life, then menstruation becomes murder. Any woman who allows an egg to leave her body unfertilized is de facto a murderer, because she denied a potential life the chance to exist....
See how messy it gets when you let emotion trump reason?
-- Howard K
Did you even read your letter to see how stupid you sound? Did you ever take, say, a high school biology course? (It's clear you've never take a logic course.) Menstruation is not "potential life" because it's the discharge of an unfertilized egg with only 23 chromosomes.
On the other hand, a baby growing in the womb is fully human because it has it's own complete set of human DNA unique from it's mothers, and at 8 weeks (often when the mother is not even sure she's pregnant) it has both a heart beat and brainwaves. In the old days, death could be pronounced at the absense of heart beat and brain activity. Therefore life can be announced at their presence.
I'm curious about your use of the word "potential," though. If it's only "potentially" human, by the very definition of the word it's potentially something else. What, precisely, would that be? A puppy? A goldfish? Or, given your apparent predelictions, dead?
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Re: Randomjd's point
I think RandomJD has certainly provided us a very good viewpoint from the "pro-choice" (to use a term I am not fond of, but I am not keen to spend the time coming up with a new one) camp, but I must correct what he or she terms a logical fallacy on my part. Contrary to what randomJD has written, fetuses do not need tender loving care to grow to term. What any OBGYN will tell a pregnant woman is that fetuses take all the nourishment they need, even if the woman herself is not eating well, for example. There have been cases of women delivering full-grown babies without ever knowing they were pregnant (and presumably therefore not taking the extra care that RandomJD seems to think is essential). My point of a fetus being "left alone" was precisely that: if a fetus is allowed to spend 9 months in the womb (not outside,yes, but you must concede that is an absurd point) without the mother either lavishing TLC upon it or sucking it out and breaking its skull, it will grow into a human being regardless. So treating abortion as solely an issue of a woman's sovereignty over her body is illogical at best. I agree with RJD's point about J. Kennedy's tangent about maternal bonding et. al. Ergo my point regarding birth control pills...surely an easier and less gruesome way to exercise sovereignty over one's body and rid yourself of any chance of having an unwanted child.
One doesn't need to be anti-abortion (and by definition a red-state, dungaree-wearing toothless hillbilly) to find the idea of a woman treating abortion as just another means of birth control distasteful.