Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Of All the Rhetorical Questions You Could’ve Asked…
Cecile Richards, president of Planned Parenthood, writing in The Washington Post today:
While our opponents have been working to create scandal and panic where none exists, doctors and nurses at Planned Parenthood health centers have continued to provide care to thousands of women, men and young people every day — contraception, cancer screenings, testing and treatment for sexually transmitted infections (STIs), and safe and legal abortion. Whose efforts are doing more to help families and make our country healthier?
Whose efforts are doing more to help families than an institution explicitly dedicated to preventing their formation or expansion? Ms. Richards, virtually everybody’s.
Published in Culture
Then the Hyde Amendment is, like the Social Security trust fund, an accepted convention of Washington fiction. Of course, as one of many million pro-choice Americans, I consider legal abortion not a “taint,” but an historic improvement over the wire coat hanger days, which I’m actually old enough to remember.
Well the money needed does flow to those services. Fungibility runs both ways. That care — birth control, cancer screenings, etc. takes place in their clinics. But you make an important point: Planned Parenthood is a major Democratic interest group. If they would spin off abortion consultation and services into a separate dot org with a different name, then I should hope that both parties would support Planned Parenthood.
But I’m not going to hold my breath.
Troy, I’m sorry you consider Ms. Richard’s remark to be such a noteworthy outrage of the day. Planned Parenthood is not dedicated to preventing the formation of families. They are dedicated to delaying the formation of families — to letting parents decide the if and the when — which makes for better parenting with a sounder fiscal underpinning, and longer marriages. And couples without children are families, too.
My outrage of the day? Such a lopsided “conversation.” I may be the vegetarian at the BBQ on this issue, but if Ricochet wants to be a website for social conservatives only, it should just say so.
You never answered my question over at Paul Rahe’s post. If Planned Parenthood’s founder were alive today, should Ricochet be a platform for her views on eugenics and the racial inferiority of Negros to avoid the stigma of being thought of as a website for social conservatives only?
Jim, Ricochet is not only for social conservatives. I’m libertarian on many issues. I also have no doubt I can find common ground with everyday people who value women’s liberty and freedom over the interests of an unborn baby. But it’s an unborn baby- tiny and unable to assert its own interest to live and experience freedom to make choices. I hope we can acknowledge both interests, but as for me, I argue we have some duty to protect the truly weak and helpless from destruction.
Pardon me. With all of the smearing by association and “Nazi” references on this thread, I appear to have wandered into the comments section of The New Republic.
Hey there. When we use the term we actually mean it and understand what they stood for. If you listened to far left media outlets (using the term media loosely here) you would believe that Adolf Hitler and the Nazis were as far right as it gets….cough….they were on the left….cough.
In the bear in the woods scenario the hunter who fires on something he thinks is a bear still gets a manslaughter charge if it tums out to be Jeb Bush. Why, then, would this situation be any different? If you don’t know, then don’t shoot.
Do I get cake on the anniversary of my moral significance? I think I should get cake.
Who is Abby Johnson? Oh yes, that Abby Johnson. Former Planned Parenthood employee of the year 2008 Abby Johnson.
a fetus. Abortion rights aside, I’m sure we do have plenty of common ground.
I know there are members with me on abortion rights. They, like some in the PP-friendly media, may feel the best way to starve a fire is to cut off the oxygen supply. Maybe they’re right.
Avoiding the distress of this battle makes sense since social issue conversations when argued, tend to escalate. Without argument, they’re as pretty for the opposite side to watch as feeding time in the hippo building.
There have been some very harsh words said about those who work in the abortion industry on this thread, and that is totally understandable, but it is worth remembering: some of the most dedicated pro-lifers are people who used to work in the abortion industry. It seems safe to assume that many who currently work in that industry don’t even personally know anyone who is pro-life; maybe they never have. We should offer a message of forgiveness and redemption and hope. Those things do sometimes work.
Tom, if it became clear that a majority or better yet a super majority of women were opposed to abortion, would that affect your view? I ask this because over on Drew in Wisconsin’s thread it came up that just about everybody other than white men can be moved in a pro-life direction by an effective ad, but the same ads that move most people in a pro-life direction often cause a backlash with white men. I suspect that lots of men take a pro-choice position out of a misplaced sense of chivalry, and not wanting to tell women what to do. But I am curious to hear more about what you think :)
The best part about moral significance cake is that it contains no calories until you’re about 10 to 12 bites in.
Which is why I would not personally be party to an abortion, whatever the age.
However, the same uncertainty that limits the actions that I think acceptable for me to take similarly limits my actions against those who decide differently; simply put, I am not willing to treat someone as a murderer for killing a being whose value I’m unable to determine myself.
Now, I could ask you what the limits of the precautionary principle are in this. On what grounds are you sufficiently confident at the killing of a lion isn’t tantamount to murder? How do we know that lions arent ensouled? (for the record, I’m not arguing that they are)
Morally significant? Did I wander into another thread where libertarians are discussing the morality of taxes?
I repeat the question:
Doesn’t sound like that’s a tough question to answer given the current law on the matter.
I don’t think so, no. Again, I wouldn’t participate in an abortion and — if presented the opportunity — would counsel against one in almost all circumstances.
Just to reiterate, I think abortion should be legal up to 10 weeks and thereafter considered homicide; by Ricochet standards, this makes me very pro-choice, but most of my lefty friends think I’m a patriarchal chauvinist because I think it’s murder to dismember a viable baby who’s still in utero. They think I’m wrong on lots of stuff, so whatever.
On the misplaced civilary, you may well be right in many cases. The funny thing is, I’ve used that exact same phrase to describe pro-lifers who oppose prosecuting women who procure late term abortions for solicitation to murder.
But we’re not just talking about law.
And you may well be right in many cases, too: all of us probably suffer from misplaced chivalry of one sort or another. My main priority is ending abortion, or, if that isn’t possible, making it as rare as possible. Taking a heavy handed approach towards women who attempt to procure abortions would not save any lives, I suspect. Abortionists are different: taking a heavy handed approach towards them would save lives, I suspect.
There is a real concern that if abortion becomes illegal, and then a doctor gets hauled in for performing abortions, and then the police start investigating his patients, a lot of innocent people could be put through a great deal of hell. Late term miscarriages happen too.
Keeping it zipped in the first place would make things a whole lot more ethical, not to mention cheaper, on this front. It’s much better to give my neighbor a tax handout than to impose my morality on them. We certainly can’t expect self control these days, can we?
Carefully crush Planned Parenthood, just above and below the torso.
“Planned Parenthood health centers have continued to provide care to thousands of women, men and young people every day”….
Hummm…….young people?……….really?
Well, yes actually. Zippers inevitably descend, but free birth control under the ACA is reducing abortion demand in blue states.
If we ever repeal-and-replace Obamacare let’s keep that. Reducing abortions (and unwanted pregnancies which ultimately lead to welfare costs) by prevention is a no-brainer. A few government subsidies are cost-effective.
Helping families by preventing them. Nice.
The scenario above captures everything needed to make a moral decision on the matter in question and has the virtue of stating, quite clearly, the implicit “moral significance” in the question at hand. What, pray tell, is different from the case above?
#33 sounds like a firearm, doesn’t it? It’s a tool; how it is used depends on the character on the one squeezing the trigger….
Jim Kearney: Then the Hyde Amendment is, like the Social Security trust fund, an accepted convention of Washington fiction. Of course, as one of many million pro-choice Americans, I consider legal abortion not a “taint,” but an historic improvement over the wire coat hanger days, which I’m actually old enough to remember.
Did you actually used to hear about wire hanger abortions with any frequency? It’s such an exaggerated liberal trope. And why exactly is modern abortion such an improvement? Same result.
How they determine employee of the year is a really creepy thought.
Not the same result for the girls and women — very different. Please note I’m going to answer this respectfully, and expect same.
Illegal abortions were hush-hush and word-of-mouth. The coat-hanger represents self-administered, the unsafest method, still a global problem. The “back alley” abortion refers to those performed by lay women, medical students, nurses, or, ideally, a moonlighting MD with a nurse in a sterile environment. Critical hemorrages brought to ERs and deaths did occur. In 1957 there were 260 counted deaths of pregnant girls due to abortions. According to Dr. Mary Calderone, in 1960, 90% of illegal abortions were being performed by physicians. But how do you calculate that accurately, given the shame of the time?
Some doctors worked through reliable referral networks. This article is one of the few published accounts.
In my circle you heard whispers about the good work being done on the other side of this issue. For example, the New York Foundling Hospital provided pre-natal, obstetric, and adoption services for “girls in trouble.”
Birth control pills became available in the early 1960’s, just in time for the huge baby boomer generation. On June 14, 1967 (around the time I graduated high school) California’s pioneering Therapeutic Abortion Act was signed into law by Governor Ronald Reagan.
The portrayal of this issue was handled in a balanced way, I thought, in the film, and especially in the book, “Cider House Rules,” both of which were excellent. The arguments for doctors performing abortions in lieu of girls going to the back-alley practitioner, and the arguments for refusing to perform them, were both presented by sympathetic characters who believed in what they were saying.
@ Jim Kearney: you obviously care deeply about girls and women, and I both appreciate and respect that. Our culture has changed dramatically since the days of coat hanger abortions. It is not difficult to understand why the stigmas that used to exist in those days would drive some women to such a desperate act, but those stigmas have mostly vanished in America. There is no question, though: when we ask women to carry an unwanted pregnancy to term, we are asking a great deal from them.
What gets me is that most of the feminists who are so opposed to forcing women into giving birth have no qualms about drafting women into combat, and they will accuse any woman who objects of being a coward. Feminists implore girls and women to be strong and tough, except when it comes to pregnancy: nowadays, pregnancy is the one instance in which it is permissible for a woman to not be strong and tough. In every other instance, up to and including mortal combat, feminists expect women to face life head on, but anyone who suggests that maybe women should face an unwanted pregnancy head on is portrayed by feminists as cruel and abusive.
All of which is just to say, I believe that you and a great many other people are genuinely trying to do right by women. I think you are wrong, but well meaning. Unfortunately, that can’t be said about all who support legalized abortion.