Matthew Yglesias » Scare Quotes

Oct 15th, 2008 at 11:39 pm

Scare Quotes

Here’s McCain deriding women’s health as some kind of ruse:

He doesn’t even try to spell out the argument conservatives make on this point, he just kind of asserts it as if (a) everyone is familiar with the argument and (b) it’s obviously correct when in fact neither is the case.

Comments
84

84 Responses to “Scare Quotes”

pacer521 Says:
October 15th, 2008 at 11:45 pm
I agree, matt. Great post and live blogging, by the way.

http://culturedecoded.wordpress.com/2008/10/15/analysis-the-third-and-final-presidential-debate/
Gabriel Says:
October 15th, 2008 at 11:47 pm
Christ – air quotes? In a presidential debate?

McCain needs to step aside right now. Let Huckabee see if he can salvage something for the party.
Roschelle Says:
October 15th, 2008 at 11:50 pm
McCain is the one that’s hurt and angry! Very ANGRY!!
raft Says:
October 15th, 2008 at 11:52 pm
he’s done. It’s over.

Time for the Republicans to start writing the concession speech. Just make sure you don’t put the doddering old man behind the green screen.
Mo Says:
October 15th, 2008 at 11:52 pm
Coz women get those ectopic pregnancies just to be able to get a guilt-free abortion!

Do these people live in some sort of bubble where pregnancies never go wrong? I know of several among my acquaintances. I think that conservative women must just have “miscarriages” and never admit that they were surgically induced. Just sayin’. Because I know they aren’t all risking their lives for the sake of their unborn child.
DTM Says:
October 15th, 2008 at 11:52 pm
If I recall correctly, there were a nontrivial number of people who were unaware of McCain’s positions on abortion. And I am assuming some of those people just found out.
fletc3her Says:
October 15th, 2008 at 11:55 pm
I hope this puts the nail in the coffin of the idea that McCain supports or has ever supported a women’s right to choose. He is in fact, far to the right on this issue. He complains about government intervention and then swivels around and tells everyone that the government should make your most personal health decisions for you.
Delicious Pundit Says:
October 15th, 2008 at 11:58 pm
Someone close to me had to have a late-term abortion for her “health” (& then went on to have another, dangerous, pregnancy, she wanted a child so bad — it worked out, thank God), so this pisses me off.

He sounds like a guy at a bar in a country club telling you why the Naval Academy went to shit when they had to admit women.
Matt Says:
October 15th, 2008 at 11:59 pm
I don’t even bother with the post debate pundit analysis anymore. To me it was obvious. Voters saw Obama as calm, cool, and presidential while addressing their concerns. Voters saw McCain as angry, petulent and unfair with all the negativity.

I mean why does CNN bother with those curves if they won’t actually use them to make their analysis? While McCain is trying to be clever and take it to Obama in an attempt to win over the pundit class, Obama talks straight to the undecided voters.

Oh my – shocking that the polls confirm this once again. And now CNN is trying to dismiss its own poll. What are they paying all these guys for again?
55 Says:
October 15th, 2008 at 11:59 pm
I know I shouldn’t, but I kinda like Pat Buchanan. I think Maddow does too.
pseudonymous in nc Says:
October 16th, 2008 at 12:08 am
“My friends, I oppose all late term abortions unless Joe the Plumber gets to perform them.”
anonymiss Says:
October 16th, 2008 at 12:15 am
Fineman was on Chris Matthews, and his take-away was that this wouldn’t harm McCain because Obama already had those voters.

I think he couldn’t be more wrong. There are a LOT of women who weren’t aware McCain opposed abortion. And it’s horrifying to have an old man sneer at your “health” when you are a woman who has had or who may have a pregnancy.

And being pregnant is amazing and wonderful, but also SCARY. Someone sneering at your legitimate concerns…that’s awful.
Colatina Says:
October 16th, 2008 at 12:17 am
“I know I shouldn’t, but I kinda like Pat Buchanan. I think Maddow does too.”

Well, he doesn’t take himself too seriously, and he is pretty smart. And a toothless dog doesn’t have the same menace anymore.
jman Says:
October 16th, 2008 at 12:17 am
Obama looks over to McCain to listen to what McCain has to say and eventually looks away in disgust. I agree, this was a pathetic retort by McCain.
Thomas Says:
October 16th, 2008 at 12:20 am
Well Obama already made the case that “health” is interpreted too loosely. He took it back once the pro-abortion lobby objected, but I think that if Matt’s looking for the case, it’s been made.
pseudonymous in nc Says:
October 16th, 2008 at 12:24 am
And it’s horrifying to have an old man sneer at your “health” when you are a woman who has had or who may have a pregnancy.

The 0.08% of abortions that happen after 24 weeks are almost always a matter of health, with no fucking scare quotes.
aleks Says:
October 16th, 2008 at 12:26 am
I’m pro-life and I understand what he was trying to say and even I wanted to smack that smirking face when he said it.
DTM Says:
October 16th, 2008 at 12:48 am
Fineman indeed couldn’t be more wrong, because if Obama actually had all those voters he would be ahead by something like 30 points.

And I agree with the other posters–it is not just McCain’s position which is going to harm him, but his obvious contempt for anyone who dares to disagree with him.
MikeJ Says:
October 16th, 2008 at 12:57 am
I wish him good “health”. By which I mean “itchy piles”.
Colatina Says:
October 16th, 2008 at 12:58 am
“Fineman indeed couldn’t be more wrong, because if Obama actually had all those voters he would be ahead by something like 30 points.”

No, I don’t think so. People don’t just differ on the issue itself, they differ on how salient the issue is for their vote. “These voters”–pro-choice voters who base their votes on abortion rights, amount to less than 10% of the population, about the same as pro-lifers who vote this way. They’re also probably pretty informed about the views of the candidates already, and yes I’m sure they’re almost all already in Obama’s camp.

McCain got quite a few pro-choice people in the primaries. But my guess is that it’s as much that he doesn’t telegraph himself as the pro-lifer’s pro-lifer rather than some massive misunderstanding about his position. It’s also probably due to his support among independents rather than GOP activists, the former being less pro-life, and the abortion issue being less salient for the former.
Sine Rennehan Says:
October 16th, 2008 at 1:00 am
Colatina Says:
October 16th, 2008 at 12:17 am

“I know I shouldn’t, but I kinda like Pat Buchanan. I think Maddow does too.”

Well, he doesn’t take himself too seriously, and he is pretty smart. And a toothless dog doesn’t have the same menace anymore.

I kinda like Pat too. This has to be one of my favorite quotes of the day. Calling him a toothless dog is scream. I have been ROFL ever since I read it.
Dilan Esper Says:
October 16th, 2008 at 1:05 am
This was a classic Kinsley gaffe. Right-wingers, amongst themselves, talk all the time about how health exceptions are just a way women use to circumvent bans on late term abortions. But usually, they know enough not to say that in mixed company, because, guess what, even if that is true, most people don’t want some women to end up being maimed or debilitated or sterile or internally bleeding because of the fear that some other woman might try to game the system to get an abortion.

McCain said what a lot of pro-lifers believe. And hopefully he and the pro-life movement are going to take a big hit for it.
Suzanne Says:
October 16th, 2008 at 1:07 am
I was horrified by this. I’ve heard the argument so I knew what he was getting at, but he literally sneered, and showed no understanding of the anguish that a woman in this situation might be experiencing.

It was the dog whistle to the base, but he forgot to whistle.
Dilan Esper Says:
October 16th, 2008 at 1:07 am
I should make clear as well that it is not actually true that women use health exceptions to get non-medically necessary late-term abortions. There’s only 2 reasons anyone gets a late term abortion: (1) because of a serious health threat or (2) because of a serious defect or disorder in the fetus.
Matt D Says:
October 16th, 2008 at 1:11 am
And I agree with the other posters–it is not just McCain’s position which is going to harm him, but his obvious contempt for anyone who dares to disagree with him.

Yeah, that was a pretty revealing exchange. Obama delivers a rather gracious and thoughtful assessment of abortion, and McCain interrupts him, makes another snide comment about eloquence, stakes out a policy position far to the right of most Americans, and apparently sneers at the very notion of women’s health. All in 20 seconds!
Jane Says:
October 16th, 2008 at 1:24 am
I have been reading the news sites and blogs post-debate to get a sense of what everyone else thought of tonight’s debate and something surprised me.

I watched the debate on our PBS station – where there were no split screen shots during the debate. I had no idea that McCain had been making those faces. I heard him interrupt but he wasn’t in the shot. It seems to make a huge difference in how the debate was perceived.

I also couldn’t understand why pundits liked McCain’s performance tonight. Right when he was getting all attacky, he was muddled, unclear, weird. He lost me right there and, although some are writing that he did well in the last part of the debate, I never thought he did ok after that. Even without the view point of split screens.
DTM Says:
October 16th, 2008 at 1:26 am
Colatina,

To clarify, I was mocking Fineman’s analysis.

But I do think there is a legitimate issue here. From what I recall of the polling, specifically among pro choice Independent, Republicans, and Clinton Democrats, it appears that: (a) a lot of them are in fact misinformed about McCain’s views, and (b) if informed some of them may move their preference from McCain to Obama. Note that (b) doesn’t require abortion issues to be at the top of their overall issues list, but rather that they just be balanced enough between McCain and Obama already that learning McCain’s actual views is enough to tip them.

Now obviously that isn’t enough for a thirty point swing, but it could be worth a total of a point or two. And I do indeed think we shouldn’t overestimate how well-informed people are about McCain’s views on abortion issues–it is not like this has been much of an issue until now, and I suspect this is the first time a lot of people have heard McCain speak directly on the subject in such detail.
24AheadDotCom Says:
October 16th, 2008 at 1:33 am
You want to see something funny (or at least mildly interesting)? Go to this Ambinder thread, and count how many times you see a sockpuppet saying the same thing as MattY.

Maybe one of these days MattY can be turned and he’ll tell us what we need to know. Unless it’s like Skull & Bones and The Organization knows his deepest secrets.
Matt D Says:
October 16th, 2008 at 1:37 am
McCain got quite a few pro-choice people in the primaries. But my guess is that it’s as much that he doesn’t telegraph himself as the pro-lifer’s pro-lifer rather than some massive misunderstanding about his position. It’s also probably due to his support among independents rather than GOP activists, the former being less pro-life, and the abortion issue being less salient for the former.

That’s the thing–he’s managed to enjoy a relatively centrist rep on this issue. He needed to maintain that rep through this debate, and he probably would have, too, if he’d kept his mouth shut.
DTM Says:
October 16th, 2008 at 1:50 am
By the way, Matt D’s post underscored this passage for me:

[I]t’s as much that he doesn’t telegraph himself as the pro-lifer’s pro-lifer rather than some massive misunderstanding about his position.

I think that is a distinction without a difference: if you don’t understand that McCain is in fact a “pro-lifer’s pro-lifer”, you don’t understand his real position. And along the lines of what Matt D suggested, I think what we just saw happen is basically McCain forgetting that he wasn’t supposed to be “telegraphing” (or more properly “televising”) his position.
MoeLarryAndJesus Says:
October 16th, 2008 at 2:13 am
Of course McCain IS simply expressing the con-lifer point of view, and that point of view is reprehensible. If it hurts his campaign, that’s great.
JLRoberson Says:
October 16th, 2008 at 4:03 am
This was a moment McCain would have been best advised not to have belabored so much, because it left the impression that he thinks “health reasons” is a dodge, pure and simple. Maybe he does. But in principle it makes him a moral scold of the sort that would ask a rape victim how she was dressed when it happened, so this was going to win him no female voters outside his base.

Honestly, I think McCain is having revenge on the Republican party.
Miatch Says:
October 16th, 2008 at 5:04 am
best photo from the debate:
http://news.yahoo.com/nphotos/Republican-presidential-nominee-shaking-hands-Senator-Barack-Obama-presidential-debate/photo//081016/ids_photos_ts/r1772410910.jpg/;_ylt=AujAY6EXHmMQy5Zsha09SbsDW7oF
ye gods Says:
October 16th, 2008 at 6:27 am
holy shit. as a woman, that sent chills down my spine. CHILLS. Was it Germaine Greer who said “Women forget how much men hate us?” Because, you know, you can be aware of it as a kind of abstract concept but so few of the men who have this deepseated hatred of women ever communicate it in public when women are around to hear. I think McCain just did, though.

(disclaimer: McCain has always somewhat given me the creeps, even more than GWB did. So my visceral reaction is extreme but i am betting a lot of women had a diluted version.)
AlanC9 Says:
October 16th, 2008 at 7:30 am
Let’s give McCain credit for expressing his actual views, at least.

Hey, where’s Hector? I was sure he’d show up in the thread by now.
Hector Says:
October 16th, 2008 at 8:08 am
Alan,

I was asleep, genius.

McCain had no reason to flesh out what he meant. Anyone who has spent any time perusing pro-life arguments (particularly those of Harvard’s Professor Mary Ann Glendon) is familiar with the argument that the health exception has been greatly abused and stretched. Under “Doe v. Bolton”, the health exception has been invoked to cover ‘all factors relevant’ to the mother’s mental health, including social and professional circumstances. Moreoever, the bloody abortionist can be the one who makes that decision, instead of a neutral panel of doctors.

As all live births carry some risk of injury to the mother, I suppose every abortion ever perfeormed could be protected under Doe v. Bolton.

Abortion should be permitted only when there is genuine evidence of a SERIOUS threat to the woman’s health, and I would say that the burden of proof should get higher as we get later towards birth.

Of course, Barack “the Butcher” Obama disagrees.
Hector Says:
October 16th, 2008 at 8:09 am
OK, that was unfair. Obama is seriously in moral error but he isn’t a bad man nor a butcher.

I am seriously on the fence between Obama and McCain however and the fact that McCain appears to be serious about ending the abortion licence is making him much more appealing to me.
El Cid Says:
October 16th, 2008 at 8:22 am
I am sure that things like “the health exception” are occasionally used too frequently to justify abortions, but such stretches are necessary since the anti-abortion movement is a bunch of morally bankrupt manipulative fools who shouldn’t be allowed near a government, much less allow the U.S. and local governments to block in the most authoritarian manner the right of women to choose to undergo a personal medical procedure.

So, if it helps women avoid local and national level fascist patriarchal intervention into their bodies by using a “health exception,” much as people throughout Latin America regularly exploit various idiotic loopholes in idiotic Catholic theologies in order to do what is right.
RobDP Says:
October 16th, 2008 at 8:37 am
Speaking of quotes, I just read this: “How it was interpreted in the press was Obama talking to a bunch of wine-sipping San Francisco liberals with an anthropological view toward white working-class voters.”

It’s a sad testament to our contemporary predicament that I was actually overwhelmed by the possibility of a president who used the adjective “anthropological” in public discourse.
AlanC9 Says:
October 16th, 2008 at 8:54 am
Good morning, Hector. But gosh, you must still be half-asleep. Sure, McCain’s response works fine if you’ve spent a whole lot of time reading up on this stuff and know what it was shorthand for. But exactly what proportion of the electorate do you figure that to be?

My impression — and by all means, correct me if you’ve got the data — is that McCain already has most of the people who have “spent any time perusing pro-life arguments” and really care that the health exception is stretched. And Obama’s got the folks who pay attention to the issue and think such stretching is a cost worth paying (like El Cid at 38). There just aren’t all that many people that McCain can reach by making this case in this way.
Dan S. Says:
October 16th, 2008 at 8:58 am
“Abortion should be permitted only when there is genuine evidence of a SERIOUS threat to the woman’s health”

Because Prohibition worked so well. Look, Hector, banning abortion (except for some harsh and feverishly intrusive ’super-duper risk of death health exemption) isn’t going to make women stop getting abortions. It just keeps them (from less wealthy families, anyway) from being able to access safe and legal ones, so they end up with illegal and often very unsafe ones. You can look at history, or other countries, or just use common sense – it;s pretty unavoidable. The best you can do is have extremely generous social support for childbearing and raising (something the anti-choice crowd doesn’t seem to like at all, though there are individual pro-life exceptions), combined with brutally draconian punishments (something the anti-choice crowd seems to reject, certainly for PR, but often with seeming (if ludicrously unreflective) sincerity.) And even this would just reduce the number of women dying, maimed , or suffering from unsafe, illegal abortions – not stop abortion; meanwhile, some of the women who escape death will be imprisoned or whatever.

Now, you may feel this sacrifice of – done to – women, their deaths, maiming, mutilation, imprisonment, the theft of their possible lives and possible families, the crushing of dreams and freedom, is an acceptable price to prevent some percentage of fetuses from being aborted, and ensure (how? will we have special wards, with no sharp objects or hard edges, and restraints?) that they make it to their forced-birthing. But in that case, you have to own it. McCain should be your model, with his sneering at “women’s health” – Say it loud and say it proud; fetuses are a lot more important to women, and every daughter, sister, mother who dies terrified in an emergency room or huddled at home, who’s maimed for life, who suffers worse physical and psychological trauma that the post-abortion-syndrome hawkers can probably imagine – well, that’s the fucking face of Life, my friends.
low-tech cyclist Says:
October 16th, 2008 at 9:03 am
Pro-choice Republican and independent women may not be a huge voting bloc, but it could easily be 2-3% of the electorate, and I think McCain absolutely lost ‘em last night.

Like others here have said, many such voters didn’t mentally register McCain as being particularly strong in his pro-life convictions. To the extent that this video clip makes the rounds, that’s the end of that.

And being of the male persuasion, I certainly don’t feel this as viscerally as ‘ye gods’ @34 did, but in addition to his visible anger over the ‘health of the mother’ exception, his emphatic willingness to deny women agency in the decision of how to balance the risk to their own health against the life of their unborn child…man, that just says worlds about his attitude towards women. It’s right up there with the time he told Cindy, “At least I don’t plaster on the makeup like a trollop, you cunt.”

Good riddance to bad rubbish.
DTM Says:
October 16th, 2008 at 9:03 am
If McCain had argued for a narrowly-interpreted health exception, and maybe something like an independent panel of doctors making the decision, that would have been quite interesting.

But of course he didn’t do that.
Tyro Says:
October 16th, 2008 at 9:44 am
I, as an engaged voter, know what McCain means when he derides the exception for the health of the mother. So do many other engaged pro-life and pro-choice voters, even if they disagree with McCain’s stance. However, undecided voters just heard that sarcastic derision of “health of the mother” with McCain’s use of “finger quotes” and just got scared that “McCain’s policies will threaten my health.”

All of this indicates the oft-observed fact that McCain is always trying to tailor his questions to satisfy the debate questioner or the pundits. Obama’s responses in debates are always tailored to appeal to undecided voters. That’s why Obama always seems to do well in this format.
eriks Says:
October 16th, 2008 at 9:45 am
Scare quotes
jmack Says:
October 16th, 2008 at 10:06 am
psedonymous in nc has already covered the relevant issue of abortion. The overwhelming number of abortions are performed in the first 24 weeks. I have not seen more than unsupported claims that women have late-term abortions for birth control or lifestyle reasons. Advocating a way of judging the internal decisions for having an abortion is silly. What will we do then, ask women if they are having a late-term abortion as a lifestyle choice and then when women say “yes,” deny them the procedure? That sounds like Robin Williams’ character in Good Morning Vietnam talking about identifying the enemy. “Well, we ask them ‘are you the enemy’ and anyone who says ‘yes’ we shoot them.
daveNYC Says:
October 16th, 2008 at 10:52 am
The impression I got was that he considered the health of the mother argument to be BS. Between the tone and the air quotes I don’t easily see how someone could have watched and not have believed that he didn’t give a damn what happened to the mother.
Hector Says:
October 16th, 2008 at 12:42 pm
DaveNYC,

It would be fairer to say that he doesn’t give a damn what happens to women who try to game the system and abuse the good will of people who want to write a health exemption into the law.

In my ideal world, abortions would be legal to save the life of the mother. Regarding some other “hard cases”- rape, incest, when the mother risks becoming blind or crippled or whatever, or when the fetus is severely malformed and will not survive more than a couple weeks anyway- well we could legitimately debate those things. But other than the most dire medical or psychological emergencies, no one has the “right” to an abortion, any more than anyone has the right to own slaves.

The good consequences that you think will come from legalizing abortion cannot justify killing unborn children. No more than the (very real and true) good of ending World War II justified the incineration of the children of Hiroshima.
dilan esper Says:
October 16th, 2008 at 1:09 pm
1. prolifers cannot identify a single example of a woman and her doctor circumventing a health exception.

2.hector’s position that there’s something wrong with the doctor determining the health exception is idiotic. hey, hector, that is the doctor’s job
Robert the Red Says:
October 16th, 2008 at 1:10 pm
For a long time I’ve wondered why conservatives, who love free market incentives and loathe coercion (or so they say), want to use coercion and the threat of physical violence to stop abortions. Why don’t they use financial incentives? Say, $25,000 for every live birth to a US citizen or permanent resident? Or, if that’s too expensive (which it is), then $25,000 for every woman who gives up her baby for adoption? A million abortions a year prevented would be $25 billion = would be funded for 28 years by the bailout package. Only wimps don’t make such a proposal.
Hector Says:
October 16th, 2008 at 1:12 pm
Dan S.,

No one has made a convincing argument that abortion is unlike other goods- when you ban the possession of guns, or foreign cars, or U.S. dollars, then the supply goes down. Alcohol is a bad comparison- no one is ‘addicted’ to repeatedly having abortions the same way that alcoholics are addicted to alcohol. As for illegal drugs, I’m all for keeping those illegal as well, and beefing up the penalties for those who sell them.

Please see Potts, Diggory, and Peel, “Abortion.” Cambridge University Press, 1977. The authors appear to be pro-choice, but they list the range of estimates for illegal abortions in the U.S. (in 1970) to be between 400,000 and 800,000. This was in a country where contraception was illegal, sex education was absent, and even the tawdry provisions for pregnant women implicit in the Great Society were still a new thing. In 1980, the abortion rate reached 1,300,000, and today is (I believe) around 1,200,000. What this tells me is that yes, many people will have abortions even if they are illegal. However, even if we kept everything else equal, banning abortion would probably reduce the incidence by between 33% and 66%. Now if we made birth control more affordable, provided financial, emotional, and material support to pregnant women and mothers, and in general changed our economy and culture to be more supportive of young women with children, then we could probably reduce the abortion rate much further. A 33% reduction in the number of abortions seems to be the absolute minimum we could expect if abortion were made illegal. To me, that would be eminently worth it. I don’t support banning abortion as a stand-alone measure, I support it as just one plank in building a humane, Christian-socialist society, in which all of us are responsible for each other and in which individual advancement is de-emphasized in favor of cooperation and love.
Hector Says:
October 16th, 2008 at 1:17 pm
Robert the Red,

I believe that I have made such a proposal before. The Dilan Esper/ Amanda Marcotte crowd would probably oppose it, but I would support it. I don’t believe it would totally solve the problem, but it would ameliorate it.

Dilan, I want that decision to be made by a neutral panel of doctors, not by someone whose profession consists in legalized butchery and violation of the Hippocratic Oath.
Dilan Esper Says:
October 16th, 2008 at 1:41 pm
Dilan, I want that decision to be made by a neutral panel of doctors, not by someone whose profession consists in legalized butchery and violation of the Hippocratic Oath.

Hector, that’s a huge governmental interference in the doctor-patient relationship on a very sensitive manner. It’s funny that on this one issue, social conservatives have no idea that people don’t want their sex lives paraded in front of a bunch of strangers.

And stop with the Hippocratic Oath BS. Obviously, doctors DO NOT consider therapeutic abortion to be a violation of their duties. The fact that somebody centuries ago thought it was is not relevant to our discussion. The fact of the matter is that you can’t bring yourself to call a doctor who is sought out by a desperate woman with crisis pregnancy by his or her title.

Indeed, that doctor– the patient’s personal doctor– is the person in the BEST position to make the calls as to what her health does or doesn’t require. We don’t need another layer of bureaucracy and government regulation impinging on the relationship between a doctor and his or her patient.

And the bottom line is this– your position MIGHT have a little justification if there was really any evidence of doctors and women circumventing health exceptions. But there isn’t. This is something that only exists in the fertile fantasies of pro-lifers.
AlanC9 Says:
October 16th, 2008 at 2:04 pm
So a “neutral” doctor is one who never personally performs abortions, and wouldn’t ever do so? Pull the other one, Hector.
Persia Says:
October 16th, 2008 at 2:04 pm
Regarding some other “hard cases”- rape, incest, when the mother risks becoming blind or crippled or whatever,

Well, I’m glad ‘blind and crippled or whatever’ are so important to you. It’s obvious you don’t have the faintest idea what the health risks of pregnancy are, and you don’t really care. To take from Ye Gods’ initial thought, sometimes it’s easy to forget how irrelevant and trivial women’s lives are to men.

(No, not all men. But holy shit.)
Medium Dave Says:
October 16th, 2008 at 3:16 pm
Why, yes. The need of men to assert social control always trumps the need of women to preserve their well-being. It’s a law of nature, or something.
AlanC9 Says:
October 16th, 2008 at 4:16 pm
Hey, give Hector some credit, folks. He’s just witnessing for his ideals. Since he thinks that abortion really is the exact same thing as murder, it’s actually kind of shocking that he’s willing to consider a rape exception at all.
Hector Says:
October 16th, 2008 at 4:18 pm
Persia,

I’d forgotten how irrelevant and trivial the lives of unborn children are to you people.

Tell me, what separates you from the architects of the Cultural Revolution? Both of you had an ideal which was largely good and true. And both of them thought that they could sacrifice innocent men, women and children in the tens of millions to that goal.

By the way, I don’t think that men, any more than women, have the right to the things that people like Dilan claims that abortion can achieve. Nobody_ has a right to those things, and to assert they do is a flat rebellion against the natural order.
Hector Says:
October 16th, 2008 at 4:22 pm
Alan,

I said it was a form of ‘homicide’, not murder. Murder requires the element of malice, which is not present in the case of abortion, since most people in this society are unaware of the true nature of the fetal life. It’s more akin to manslaughter, which is a much less serious crime, although even that is not a perfect analogy.
Dilan Esper Says:
October 16th, 2008 at 4:50 pm
Hector:

Until you recognize that fetal development is a continuum (and that the embryos and fetuses destroyed in early term abortions are thus nothing like the people Mao killed), you really aren’t worth talking to on this issue. You could make an argument, I suppose, about late term abortions (a silly one, but an argument), but late term abortions don’t occur in cultural revolution-scale numbers. And when they do occur, they occur for good reasons.

As for what people have a right to do, while I do strongly endorse the sexual revolution, that’s only part of the story here. The other part is whether, even if you don’t think much of sexual freedom, you are willing to give other people the space to define their lives differently than you do. In other words, severing the link between sex and procreation is incredibly important to an incredibly large number of women, because it makes their sex lives, marriages, relationships, and careers function the way they want them to. So when you say “nobody has a right to these things”, you miss that the question isn’t whether anyone has a right to these things but whether, if people do these things, the government should respond by creating a regulatory climate that is designed to force them to change their lifestyle. It’s like the people who endorse legal discrimination against gays in the hopes that it will force them into the closet or to turn straight.

The government should allow anyone who wants to live according to Sarah Palin’s conception of sexual morality to do so. Nobody should be forcing her to take the Pill or have an abortion. But conversely, given that so many American women want to work and have satisfying sex lives that don’t result in being forced to carry pregnancies to term, the government shouldn’t be swooping in and taking that lifestyle choice away either. The regulatory regime that you advocate is about precisely that, and that is not a proper exercise of government power.
Dan S. Says:
October 16th, 2008 at 5:26 pm
Hector –

I wasn’t clear enough. It’s reasonable to assume that banning abortion would reduce the number of abortions a bit – perhaps even by as much as a third under the ‘best’ conditions. It will not reduce the need for abortion, let alone end abortion; what it will do is vastly, vastly increase the number of illegal and unsafe abortions. The number of women who would die or be maimed as a result – well, that’s hard to estimate.

“Now if we made birth control more affordable, provided financial, emotional, and material support to pregnant women and mothers, and in general changed our economy and culture to be more supportive of young women with children”

And if George Bush had done Iraq “right” . . . what’s the purpose of these counterfactuals? It’s academically interesting to muse about pro-natalist policies in some strange anti-choice Christian-socialist alternate America, but we here live in this world, where the essence of things means such outcomes are virtually impossible. The inherent nature of the campaign to get their war on more or less ruled out meeting estimated troop requirements, planning responsibly, factoring in vital criticism, etc. (Leaving aside the broader issues of what doing inflammatory “preventative” unprovoked wars of aggression “right” would mean). Likewise, any even slightly likely future America that has banned abortion (and is content to muse about women crippled by forced-birth policies) isn’t going to give two shits about providing any sort of substantial help to pregnant women and young mothers, let alone effective birth control. My god, you’re like the anti-abortion Thomas Friedman, tragically deluding yourself about the reality of the situation. Read Christina Page. Read Nick Kristof.

“in which all of us are responsible for each other and in which individual advancement is de-emphasized in favor of cooperation and love.”

It’s just happens that certain people’s individual advancements are going to be de-emphasized a bit more than others . . .

“In my ideal world, . . . rape, incest, when the mother risks becoming blind or crippled or whatever, or when the fetus is severely malformed and will not survive more than a couple weeks anyway- well we could legitimately debate [abortion being legal in these cases].”

“ just one plank in building a humane, Christian-socialist society”

A society that even considers as a legitimate subject of debate whether a woman should be forced against her will to carry and give birth to a severely malformed fetus that has no chance of survival, with a substantial risk that she’ll become blind of cripped or “whatever” – well, that’s an interesting definition of humane. Not familiar with that one.

I mean, Hector, my wife and I are thinking about having a kid soon. Heaven forbid, if things went horribly wrong – you’re sitting their musing about how your goal is a society where it’s quite possible that the State would force Mrs. S. against her will to continue a pregnancy that could leave her blind and crippled or “whatever”. (Was she to make such a decision herself, I would frantically attempt to dissuade her, but ultimately, bitterly, it would be her decision; what you propose is no better (and possibly worse) than laws that would forcibly abort the pregnancies of women who had chosen to take such a risk) While you certainly don’t say so directly, it’s hard to avoid the implication that Mrs. S. being crippled or blinded would be “eminently worth it”.

I had best stop here, I think, but just one more thing. In another thread here a little bit ago, I used a comment by Hector as an (inadvertent) window into the antichoice mindset, and here he provides another one. (Although as he implicitly concedes, his hypothetical emphasis on birth control and social safety nets are not representative of the movement). Especially in light of some polls arguing that choice is a fairly low priority for many liberal men, I really want guys here to take notice of this one. Your neighbors, your friends, your colleagues, your sisters, your cousins, your mothers, your wives, your daughters – any girl or woman you care about – that is what the antichoicers want for them. That is the world the antichoicers want to force them to live in; perhaps to bear deformed, dying infants in; perhaps to be crippled or blinded or whatever in; perhaps – if the anti-abortion review board judges wrong, or if they desperately try to take matters into their own hands – to die in. This is what they want for them. This is what they want.
Snarla Says:
October 16th, 2008 at 5:40 pm
Isn’t it bad enough that a woman giving birth in the US is ten times more likely to die in childbirth than a woman giving birth in Ireland?
Now we’re going to make fun of “the health of the mother,” too?
http://www.usnews.com/blogs/on-women/2008/10/15/too-many-infants–and-moms–die-at-birth.html
Hector Says:
October 16th, 2008 at 5:42 pm
Dan S.,

I don’t personally think that a woman should be forced to carry a terminally damaged fetus to term, and I don’t think she should be forced to carry to term a pregnancy that would leave her sterile, blind, diabetic, or seriously ill. I think the law should permit abortion in those cases.

When I say they should be debated, I mean that I would take the side of having abortion be legal in those cases. The Roman Catholic Church, presumably, would take the other side, as I don’t envision that they would moderate their position anytime soon. I don’t think the Church should be shut out of the public discourse.

Thaank you for granting that abortions would decrease by ‘a third’ in my ideal America. i said they would decrease by AT LEAST a third, and possibly by more than two thirds.
Jeff R. Says:
October 16th, 2008 at 5:53 pm
So, if the argument is in fact bogus and the Health Exception does not inevitably swallow the rule, could someone please point out to me, via a reliable source, a single case in which a woman was not able to get a legal abortion or otherwise override a law restricting abortion because it was deemed not to fall into that exception?
Dan S. Says:
October 16th, 2008 at 6:24 pm
Hector –

My apologies. I’m glad to see that you don’t personally support causing women to become blinded or crippled as a result of being forced by the State to continue high-risk pregnancies against their will – just empowering and legitimizing a movement that would do so.

“ i said they would decrease by AT LEAST . . . ”

Yes, I know you did. You also seem to imagine that a near-future U.S. gov’t/social trend that has banned abortion is going to be all about promoting birth control. Read Page and/or Kristof (linked above).
Dilan Esper Says:
October 17th, 2008 at 5:42 pm
When I say they should be debated, I mean that I would take the side of having abortion be legal in those cases. The Roman Catholic Church, presumably, would take the other side, as I don’t envision that they would moderate their position anytime soon. I don’t think the Church should be shut out of the public discourse.

You need to be more careful with your words. The issue isn’t shutting the Church out of the discourse– like anyone could do that anyway. The issue is whether anyone should listen to them, considering:

1. If the Pope is telling the truth about his sex life, he is a virgin (or has at least not had sex since his call to the Priesthood) and therefore not only doesn’t have the expertise he claims to have on this subject, but in fact, has far, far less knowledge on the subject than the average human being. It’s like allowing a spacecraft to be piloted by someone who can’t even figure out how to use a light switch.

2. The Church’s anti-birth control position means that it opposes condoms in Africa. In other words, the Church is in favor of a mass slaughter (of real people, not embryos) on the level of the Holocaust in order so it can maintain a theoretical point.

3. The Church believes in the medieval belief that any sex unconnected with procreation is somehow wrong. Very few thinking persons outside the Church think this is true, and this attitude is obviously terribly unhealthy because it makes seeking out sexual pleasures (a key part of one’s health) into a “dirty” act.

4. As Hector notes, the Church takes the position that a woman should be forced to be maimed and rendered sterile and sick and confined to a wheelchair with debilitating diseases, if the alternative is to destroy a zygote. Only an imbecile would believe that.

In other words, of course the Church has a place in public discourse. It’s just that it should be completely ignored on these topics.
Dilan Esper Says:
October 17th, 2008 at 5:45 pm
So, if the argument is in fact bogus and the Health Exception does not inevitably swallow the rule, could someone please point out to me, via a reliable source, a single case in which a woman was not able to get a legal abortion or otherwise override a law restricting abortion because it was deemed not to fall into that exception?

The reason there aren’t such examples is because women don’t get late term abortions absent serious and compelling reasons for doing so. There’s no rash of women and doctors circumventing the law, so there’s no reason why there would be denials.
Hector Says:
October 18th, 2008 at 9:41 am
Dilan,

Don’t be ridiculous. No one is forcing people in Africa to sleep around and contract HIV. If everyone in Africa adhered to the Church position, there would be much fewer sexually transmitted diseases around.

I don’t know if you have much experience wth sexual health in Africa, Dilan. I worked there for three years and sometimes helped give presentations on birth control and STDs. I was always clear in saying that, yes, condoms can help a bit, but the best way to protect yourself is by not sleeping around. Personally I’m not entirely convinced that condoms are morally licit, as they seem to negate the “one flesh” aspect of sexuality, but that’s bye the bye. I would not share the church’s position but i understand the logic of their position. The church does not hold that it is permissible to do evil in order that good may come of it. By the way, if you’re under the impression that its faithfulness to Catholic teaching that encourages men in Africa not to use condoms then you know even less about African culture then about Catholic theology.

The Church doesn’t say that sex ‘unconnected’ with procreation is wrong, as She explicitly endorses the fertility awareness method. This is the most common method of birth control in Poland, a country which has a below replacement birth rate, and is widely used in countries like Brazil which also have replacement level fertility. The church says that to actively take measures to prevent fertility is wrong, but that it’s licit to rely on the natural fertility regulating mechanisms of the body. I think they’re wrong to draw this distinction, but their point of view is thoughtful and may be worth listening to, even if you disagree with it.

Relying solely on condoms to prevent AIDS is as silly as relying solely on insecticide to prevent pest outbreaks, and for much the same reasons.
Dilan Esper Says:
October 18th, 2008 at 12:24 pm
Don’t be ridiculous. No one is forcing people in Africa to sleep around and contract HIV. If everyone in Africa adhered to the Church position, there would be much fewer sexually transmitted diseases around.

But they don’t, so it’s OK to kill them??????????????????

Really, you compare pro-choicers to Maoists, but I would suggest to you that this is the single most morally obnoxious position taken by any large group of people in the world right now. Africans shouldn’t be given the death penalty for violating their marriage vows. And the Pope believes they should, because the alternative would be HAVING TO ADMIT THAT HE WAS WRONG. And Popes aren’t very good at that.

And no, the issue isn’t relying SOLELY on condoms. ABC programs work fine, and the A and the B aren’t condoms. The issue is that these people in Rome– WHO KNOW NOTHING ABOUT SEX WHATSOEVER– think that it’s more important to murder 20 million Africans than to admit that condoms have any place in the solution whatsoever.

Listening to them on sexual issues is like getting advice from Stalin on how to run a prison.
Hector Says:
October 18th, 2008 at 2:28 pm
Dilan,

Your extremism on this issue is really laughable. Have you ever, actually, lived in Africa? Have you ever talked with African people about sexual health issues? Have you ever worked with any of the many Catholic health educators who work throughout the developing world?

The Catholic church isn’t trying to make condoms illegal, anywhere in the world, and they aren’t forcing people to have unsafe intercourse. They do hold to their historic position that forbids the use of condoms, and they do not fund or carry out sex-education efforts that encourage condoms. I mean, when I talked to people in my village about AIDS or birth control, I never personally encouraged the use of condoms, but I let my co-workers talk about that if they so chose.

That said, I’ve been to plenty of Catholic services in the United States and abroad, and have never heard a homily against birth control. It simply isn’t an issue that the church places a great deal of stress on these days. In the country I worked in, Catholic health workers with whom I collaborated were often unaware of the Church position on the issue. Lastly, if you think that African men would start using condoms because the Catholic church said it was OK, you have no acquanitance with African cultures.
Dilan Esper Says:
October 20th, 2008 at 1:05 am
Your extremism on this issue is really laughable. Have you ever, actually, lived in Africa? Have you ever talked with African people about sexual health issues? Have you ever worked with any of the many Catholic health educators who work throughout the developing world? The Catholic church isn’t trying to make condoms illegal, anywhere in the world, and they aren’t forcing people to have unsafe intercourse. They do hold to their historic position that forbids the use of condoms, and they do not fund or carry out sex-education efforts that encourage condoms.

1. Hector, we talking about the MORALITY of the Catholic Church’s position. Even if they hadn’t tried to get their morally obnoxious position enacted into law, it would still be morally obnoxious.

2. EVERY expert on AIDS in Africa, other than those on the extreme religious right, believes that condoms are a PART of the solution to the problem.

3. Indeed, the Church HAS interfered with the funding and implementation of condom distribution programs all over the world, and has done so for years. So your claim that the Church doesn’t try to enact its views into law is false– people are dying right now because the organizations which could have educated them or their husbands about condom use were unable to get adequate funding thanks to the Vatican. The blood is on their hands.

4. You act as if the fact that the husbands cheat on their wives absolve the Catholic Church of any responsibility. Hector, this position speaks for itself. First of all, bear in mind that the lives which are often saved by the condoms are THE WIVES, WHO DIDN’T CHEAT ON ANYONE. That’s the thing about STD’s– despite all the theological bullcrap spewed by conservative Christians ever since the HIV crisis came along, STD’s are not God’s punishment for anything, unless your God is a sadist who loves to punish spouses who are cheated on. STD’s are indiscriminate and they don’t limit themselves to the sexually promiscuous, but also get spread to their monogamous partners.

But second of all, we don’t stone adulterers to death. Indeed, the person who you allegedly worship as a God was quite clear in condemning the practice. The Church is simply advocating we restore the process in modern form, and you are defending it.

That said, I’ve been to plenty of Catholic services in the United States and abroad, and have never heard a homily against birth control.

Hector, since you are enjoying lecturing me about Africa, why don’t you talk to some folks in the international family planning movement– not about abortion, but about birth control. They will tell you that the Vatican exerts extreme pressure at the international and nation-state levels to prevent funding of contraception, to create “conscience clause” exceptions that in practice make it impossible to distribute or educate people about contraceptives, and to consolidate control of health care delivery in faraway parts of the globe with the Catholic ambit, with, of course, Catholic hospitals and clinics refusing to distribute contraception.

In other words, they don’t have to deliver homilies against birth control. They are busy ruining people’s lives, and murdering people, all over the world.

You didn’t address my central point, which is that the Pope could very easily say “We were wrong. While we aren’t convinced that condom distribution is necessarily the right solution to the HIV crisis in Africa, there is no moral basis for condemning a monogamous married person who insists on using a condom to avoid being infected with the HIV virus.” That statement would be consistent with any sort of Christianity that is worth adhering to. It would also be correct. But it would require the Pope to admit that they got it wrong. It took them hundreds of years to do that with Galileo. It will take them a billion deaths before they will do that on condoms.

These are clueless people who know nothing about sex and have no business lecturing the rest of us. They should be ignored. Tragically, they aren’t, and the result is an act of mass murder and genocide.
Michael N. Says:
October 22nd, 2008 at 4:17 am
Whereever there is an opportunity to con, there will be people that take this opportunity.
But that shouldn’t be the reason to ban something thats reasonable. nuff said.
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