abortion classic or dud?

that while the letter was clearly meant to intimidate Means, it wasn't a threat

So, in the interest of free speech, as long as you don't make a specific (and I assume credible) threat you can refer to the legitimacy or even the desirability of harming someone?

There is bad news on this front every day. Every single day now. Total radio silence from the Democratic party - it's never a good time for a Democratic politician to stand up for reproductive rights; this is ground they have decided to give. Actual underground strategies (clinics, etc) are going to be necessary during the next twenty years, in my opinion.

People who believe in the right to choose should make it clear to their elected reps that they will not vote for any politician who does not actively work to support the right to choose. That includes filibustering any bill that seeks to limit that right. This is one are in which "the other side will be worse" is visibly, clearly false: both "sides" are allowing this right to be eroded.

one area

So, in the interest of free speech, as long as you don't make a specific (and I assume credible) threat you can refer to the legitimacy or even the desirability of harming someone?

― Periblepsis occasioned by homoeoteleuton (Michael White), Thursday, April 21, 2011 1:02 PM (5 minutes ago)

um actually yeah. this particular case probably isn't protected though

There is bad news on this front every day. Every single day now. Total radio silence from the Democratic party - it's never a good time for a Democratic politician to stand up for reproductive rights; this is ground they have decided to give. Actual underground strategies (clinics, etc) are going to be necessary during the next twenty years, in my opinion.

People who believe in the right to choose should make it clear to their elected reps that they will not vote for any politician who does not actively work to support the right to choose. That includes filibustering any bill that seeks to limit that right. This is one are in which "the other side will be worse" is visibly, clearly false: both "sides" are allowing this right to be eroded.

― five gone cats from Boston (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Thursday, April 21, 2011 1:04 PM (5 minutes ago)

not news to anyone but: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/post/newsflash-gops-anti-abortion-drive-continues-unabated--on-the-state-level/2011/03/04/AF5GphDE_blog.html

That stuff started at several state levels during the health care debate, as soon as Democratic willingness to trade abortion coverage for bill passage became clear. It's been ongoing throughout the present admin; it seems clear to me that people who support abortion rights are on their own now, politically.

so the guy who currently occupies the louisiana state legislature seat previously held by davids duke and vitter filed this stupid piece of shit. obviously pointless but, i mean, fuck this dude.

metairie, louisiana: the worst place in the world. i wish they'd just build a wall around it.

"I beleive it would be in direct conflict with them ... and immediately go to court. That is the goal of the individuals who asked me to put this bill in."

Unexpected truthfulness.

lol what a dipshit

Pro-Life is all very well if you don't have to make the choice. It is an issue for the individuals involved if they decide to terminate a pregnancy. There are always mitigating reasons why a pregnancy should not go to full term and numerous situations for a why a child should not be born into the world. This douche from metairie, louisiana is nothing more than ignorant.

I'd love to turn him into a 15 year old girl, from a rough estate, with no support or money and get him knocked up. Do you think he'd feel differently then?

Is that a bit harsh? It just makes me so angry.

'Today, illegal abortions are the leading cause of death among young women in Latin America.'
http://english.aljazeera.net/programmes/birthrights/2011/04/201141275013687249.html

just incredibly sobering

sometimes I am proud of my city

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_ABORTION_BILLBOARD?SITE=FLTAM&SECTION=US&TEMPLATE=

I thought Shakey lived in NY. huh. Good on them. I had to go to one of those places last year with a girl I was working with. I wrote about it on the 77 thread I had about that job but I'll quote it here because it was too funny not to:

"Today I had to take one of the girls I am working with to get an ultrasound to determine how far along she is in a pregnancy that she has decided to terminate. We went to a local place that turned out to be one of those pro-life pregnancy help centers in disguise where they lure ppl in and then try to convince them not to terminate by showing them pictures of aborted fetuses and feeding them a bunch of propaganda. So I was in the waiting room while they did the initial intake and all of a sudden I get a text from her saying "We've been together for 3 months". I was sorta O_Oconfused for a few minutes when the lady came out and said, "Erica? You can come in now, Sweetie".

I go in and M. has this ridiculous smirk on her face and I just looked at her like oh shit what did you do. I sit down and the lady says to me, "So, this is an interesting situation!" at which point M. grabbed my hand. It turned out that when she figured out what was up at the place, she told them that she just wanted a confirmation of pregnancy do show her doc and that I was her lover with whom she would be raising her child. She had told them this elaborate story about our relationship and gay love child and I got to sit there and listen to them suggest parenting classes for me since I've never had kids and our situation was so unique. They asked if I was excited and I sort of just stuttered at which point M said, "She is but she's just a little shy since she's new to this whole thing." I nearly burst out laughing about 200 times in that 10-15 minutes and we walked out with the docs she needed and a pack of free newborn diapers for our impending arrival."

Also that billboard story is fucking awful. Jesus.

omg that story

hahahaha omg that story is awesome!!!

Yeah, it was amazing. I think I broke the skin on the insides of my cheeks that day from biting them so hard to keep from laughing.

that is a tremendous story

Yay to the power of quick thinking!

http://blog.cagle.com/2011/06/rick-santorum-when-the-anti-choice-choose/

is this true? who will be my fact-checkin cuz

this seems to confirm it:

http://oursilverribbon.org/blog/?p=188

Upon their son’s death, Rick and Karen Santorum opted not to bring his body to a funeral home. Instead, they bundled him in a blanket and drove him to Karen’s parents’ home in Pittsburgh. There, they spent several hours kissing and cuddling Gabriel with his three siblings, ages 6, 4 and 1 1/2. They took photos, sang lullabies in his ear and held a private Mass.

“That’s my little guy,” Santorum says, pointing to the photo of Gabriel, in which his tiny physique is framed by his father’s hand. The senator often speaks of his late son in the present tense. It is a rare instance in which he talks softly.

He and Karen brought Gabriel’s body home so their children could “absorb and understand that they had a brother,” Santorum says. “We wanted them to see that he was real,” not an abstraction, he says. Not a “fetus,” either, as Rick and Karen were appalled to see him described — “a 20-week-old fetus” — on a hospital form. They changed the form to read “20-week-old baby.”

or, wait, i'm seeing that it's the "the labor was induced" aspect being called into question

right.

so if it was a 20-week old baby, does that mean it woulda been 9 months old when it came out the womb?

i mean honestly if life begins at conception we should start counting those days in our age. except that'd make me 31 now so fuck that.

that santorum thing is weird but no weirder than a lot of practices in various cultures. doesn't bother me that much, though i don't want that guy to be legislating anything. thankfully there's little chance of that happening.

i want to know about the weird practices of other cultures! would feel more charitable to santorum if i knew of another group of human beings somewhere on the planet that would force their children to play with a "dead" fetus

be the most boring game of tag ever

fwiw I personally think it's pretty strange but I know two families that had stillborns and did very similar things insofar as dressing up the babies and letting the other children get to hold them and hang out with them for a day or so after the delivery.

personally what people wanna do in those situations is up to them, it doesn't affect me in any way. as long as they aren't preaching to the world that everybody else should be too, which is an important caveat.

yeah, exactly

me, personally, I'm terrible around dead things. funeral viewings are ok but when I saw my grandmother after she just died with her mouth still open it haunted me for days.

i think its basically insanely gross and weird, i want to be compassionate and kind but i cant

if someone tried to put a dead fetus in my hand I'm pretty sure I'd drop it and run screaming...

you could probably manage it if santorum weren't a raging asshole tho

xp

if someone tried to put a dead fetus in my hand I'm pretty sure I'd drop it and run screaming...

― Motel Kamzoil, P.I. (Neanderthal), Wednesday, June 15, 2011 6:02 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark

not a ob-gyn doctor huh?

honestly there's something very moving about that story.

i dunno. maybe. its hard to separate the santorums in their actuality as a grieving couple from their status as representatives of the repellent "culture of life."

like i said, i would rather be compassionate. but this is just a bridge to far for me. i would actually be interested to know if that kind of... dress up your fetus/stillborn baby ritual has any precedent in (world?) culture

i couldn't be a doctor whatsoever mostly due to the shit that scares me.....

i honestly don't know anything about hospital protocol when it comes to these matters but i was kind of amazed the hospital let them even take the fetus home with them in the first place?

honestly i don't know, but i feel like human society has the whole spectrum of practices surrounding death.

i honestly don't know anything about hospital protocol when it comes to these matters but i was kind of amazed the hospital let them even take the fetus home with them in the first place?

― badtz-maruizm (donna rouge), Wednesday, June 15, 2011 6:09 PM (6 seconds ago) Bookmark

well they dipped it in rubbing alcohol first. /gallows humor

my bio prof in college had a fetus in a jar that he would bring into class when it was broadly relevant.

omg I probably shouldn't say that but I have a number of very Catholic conservative relatives who miscarried and wouldn't DARE do that. It's a sad occasion and holding the miscarried child just seemed kind of morbid and theatrical to them. I hope I don't offend.

would actually be interested to know if that kind of... dress up your fetus/stillborn baby ritual has any precedent in (world?) culture

yeah thats the only precedent i could think of. i suppose viewings operate on a slightly similar level? but theres a level of ritual and distance there that separates it from... cuddling with the corpse

again tho ive never been in that situation, so

it's sorta awkward that this whole thing is pinned on the specific case study of that one couple, let alone that they're a couple tangled up in the guy's distasteful pro-life bs, because trying to understand the actual feelings & attitudes & intentions involved is impossible, whatever kind of external impression you have of them. like, devoid of any of the context of who they are and what meaning they attach to it, i can understand having some sort of reflex to involve your family in this having happened; if you have young kids & have been talking them through an on-going pregnancy and it ends prematurely and everything's changed, then, while in this case it seems graphic enough to be inappropriate, i can sort of see why showing them the foetus is a part of that ongoing process, of the narrative of 'you're going to have a sibling' -> no you aren't, this is what happened. to me, the narrative in that scenario is, this would've been your little brother & it didn't ever make it to personhood in the way it would've, rather than, this is a fully formed person, get this kid a social security number stat, etc, but to each their own (while outside of the legislature). i don't buy in to notions of foetal personhood, at all, but i feel like this is more about the existing family unit & the effects of a big change, maybe. carrying a foetus around day after day and then things ending, i think trying to get over the deep physical & metaphysical meanings of that is gonna be a pretty heavy undertaking sometimes.

like - i don't know at what point this becomes a matter of degrees; it wouldn't be as alien to you to consider the couple having some time alone with a foetus after delivery, in the hospital, would it? with that being sorta i'd imagine not at all uncommon (although maybe, i am guessing, moreso after stages as early as 20 weeks), is it only becoming weird that there's this element of transport & clothing & photos & so on? because yeah they end up taking you to a weird place but some of them i can sorta see how you get there - clothing so the thing isn't naked, transport to get to yr family, etc.

i don't know why i am going to bat here. the '20-week baby' thing is sorta beyond, to me. & the thrust of the original article re: the guy's hypocrisy is obviously otm.