Tag Archives: Abortion

by

10th Anniversary with WordPress

Today I got a notification I have been flying with wordpress for 10 years now. To celebrate, I will share links and a question.

First, the question. On the abortion debate, is it possible to make an argument for personhood and when it begins without making a religious argument? What is life, when does it start?

On links, the first one is on history. The post is quite long but is worth a read. The comments are also quite good.

The last link is from WEIT on god and mathematics and maybe Neil will have something to say as he is this site’s to go mathematician.

Tell us your thoughts.

by

Without apology: the abortion struggle now

Is a short book by Jenny Brown, that is free to download ( for now) on verso that speaks to the question of abortion in quite a very powerful way. In it she links the abortion rights issue to the reproductive rights debate, in a way that is both convincing and powerful.

Some light bulb moment for me was to learn that some phrases that i use often have their beginnings in feminist organising. ‘The personal is political’, ‘consciousness raising’ among others.

It also does seem that capitalism is antithetical to women reproductive rights. That whenever countries become more capitalist, the more restrictive their reproductive laws.

Ain’t it absurd that a country as the Uneducated States of A would ban distribution of sex ed, birth control and other material on reproductive health to women while expecting cases of unwanted pregnancies to go down.

One other thing to note is what Brown calls the feminism of 1%. The pro-choice feminism. If you get pregnant its your choice and you should deal with it as being inimical to the overall struggle of the women. Something which i have read somewhere else.

If you have two hours on the train, or at home after mowing the lawn or doing dishes, pick this book. You will be the better for it.

by

on abortion: a follow up

A few days when  I shared a link about abortion, I added it is one topic that I prefer not to indulge in. VioletWisp wrote about it, and there have been various comments.

But, this one

On the contrary, I am here to agree with VW that abortion must be a difficult and often horrific experience, and that there is much more involved than some men will allow.

Many women go there because they believe that is the only option they have. My view is that that is to our society’s shame, and that better options ought to be offered. Many of us “forced birthers” have nothing but sympathy for women who are compelled to have abortions, and it is the pro-life community which recognizes that there is often trauma at the end of that experience. It sure ain’t the pro-abort; they tell women in the US to shout and be proud. There’s no room in their agenda for feeling something negative about your abortion.

Is one of the reasons I don’t write about it. There is, here, a clear shift on what the debate is about. Madblog has decided to shift the debate to be whether those women who for whatever reason have an abortion feel horror at the experience and not whether they had a right to make that choice. She wants to make it sound those arguing for pro-choice do not think it is a hard decision to make, mostly a traumatizing one for most if not all the women? And that it is those one the pro-choice side who in the long run are concerned with the life of both the mother and child. So I don’t, for the life of me, understand where madblog gets her idea. I also suspect she didn’t read the link that was in my post. All those anecdotes are of women who were against abortion but were able to rationalize their abortion as being the only moral abortion.

In that article I shared, the doctors say plainly that they ask the women if they really want an abortion. And I would guess this must be the practice in any health facility.  I didn’t know there were forced birthers. That’s a new one for me, but then again America is a strange place, what with he who cannot be named being a presidential candidate.

It is, in my view, wrong to call those who are pro-choice pro- abortion. That is shifting the argument completely. I am yet to see news items where people are told how to feel or not feel about their abortion.

We must begin to be reasonable. No one wants women procuring abortions as a contraceptive. Well, I know I don’t want that. We must address the issue soberly and rationally. The solution must begin or at least include proper sex education, provision and education on use of other contraceptives, education to empower everyone, access to resources among others.

Maybe, just lastly, the discussion is not whether women who chose to have an abortion are not horrified by the decision but whether women have the right to chose to have an abortion. This, I think, is the question.  But maybe I am wrong and I am more than glad to be properly instrcuted. As I have said several times before, it is a topic I may not be making pronouncements on.

by

an apology for atheism? Really

On this site we hardly write about public figures unless they are politicians and this is to ask them to stop being idiots politicians and for once act like statesmen and we refer them to the lives of such men as Solon, Lycurgus, Gandhi, Lincoln, Cato and Cicero. We have read a few of Dawkins’ books and they were good reads. We are not writing this in defense of Dawkins, on the contrary, we intend to correct a misrepresentation of atheism not by him of course.

apology – a formal written defense of something you believe in strongly

Having dealt with matters definitions, an apology for atheism would be something written with the aim of defending atheism. In this post, Darwin’s non apology is an apologetic for atheism where the OP first gets the name of Dawkins wrong and brings Darwin into a question that has nothing to do with him and lastly drags atheism into the whole picture, as they say, from the backdoor.

We mentioned Dawkins because he wrote a tweet to which he later wrote an apology/ explanation on his site. We have read his apology and we think it is fine. In it, he clearly says to have or not have an abortion is to be made by those concerned. This is the position I think that most reasonable people would hold.

The OP to which we refer to writes, emphasis by us,

Without God, the highest achievement can only be one’s own temporal happiness. Without God, person-hood is endowed on a sliding scale according to a child’s growth toward (or an aging person’s growth away from) usefulness, a “a gradual, ‘fading in/fading’ out definition.” Without God, humanity has no value beyond what some men consider useful, so “the decision to abort can be a moral one.” Without God, there is no objective moral standard for good and evil, right and wrong, yet the moral law written on every fellow human heart created in God’s image compels even atheists to reason about “moral” choices, despite the reductio ad absurdum. That Law on our hearts can be suppressed for a lifetime, but ultimately convicts. Atheism is in every case a temporary state

As we have repeatedly noted, the theist has to demonstrate the following things;

  • what god is
  • whether god is
  • what are objective moral values
  • whether the gods love the pious because it is the pious, or whether the pious is pious only because it is loved by the gods

Having mentioned the above, what other duty has man apart from his happiness, temporal or a-temporal whatever the case maybe. If pro-choice is seen as endowing person-hood with a sliding scale of usefulness, its corollary must be that with god, the value or morality of a woman is dependent mainly on how many number of children she can push into the world regardless of whether they stand a chance in life or not, as long as they are born! I think this is a warped way of thinking.

To write,

without god, humanity has no value beyond what some men consider useful

is to create a strawman of the pro-choice stand. The statement also assumes only the godless abort which every right thinking person knows ain’t the case. The idiots, Islamic State, that are on a killing spree are doing it in the name of a god they believe supports their cause. To tell us that without god such and such is the case is really to be an idiot of the first degree. It is to act like one who is not aware of the things believers to do to each other every day to get ahead.

To the universe, I would hazard, whether there is life or not, would not make a lot of difference, in fact, in a sense, some places would be better without human beings. We have destroyed whole ecosystems, forced animals into extinction and continue to kill each other and the environment without a care for the future.

It is time we must change the statement to read

with god, everything is permitted!

For in most instances, believers have invoked the names of the deities they believe in as they commit crimes or its alter ego.

Dawkins apology has nothing to do with atheism. It says nothing about whether or not there is a reason to not believe in god. It talks about one issue and that is who makes the determination in the case of a pregnant mama. Is it some self righteous idiot who doesn’t know what it means to be pregnant or is it the couple concerned who understand what it means to terminate a pregnancy. This is the question we must ask. It has nothing to do with atheism. You can try to draw atheism into it, but it will not work.

This closing statement

Richard Dawkins’ pro-abortion statements make perfect sense on Atheism, which would make a genuine about-face apology quite unexpected anyway.

must be refuted for Dawkins did not make a statement about god belief or lack thereof. His apology which is in fact an apology, is about his strong held position on pro-choice. It is not pro-abortion. To call it so is a misrepresentation of others who hold onto the same position.

We here conclude that Dawkins did make an apology, this we agree, but it is apology for pro-choice and not atheism. Having said this, I invite anyone who thinks I got it all wrong and that Dawkins apology is in defense of atheism please show me the light, increase my unbelief.

by

Has this question been answered

when men contend for their freedom, and to be allowed to judge for themselves respecting their own happiness, it be not inconsistent and unjust to subjugate women, even though you firmly believe that you are acting in the manner best calculated to promote their happiness? Who made man the exclusive judge, if woman partake with him the gift of reason?

Maria Wollstonecraft to M. Talleyrand-Perigord

by

The Age of Reason

by Jean Paul Sartre

Covers two days in the life of Mathieu, a philosophy lecturer, whose girlfriend of 7 years has just announced to him that they are expecting a baby. It had been agreed between them, two years earlier, what to do in the case such a thing were to happen. Mathieu does not have the requisite money, 4000 francs, to pay the doctor so he goes first to Daniel, a friend who though having the money refuses to give him. He goes next to his brother Jacques, who offers to give him 10,000 franks on condition he marries Marcelle, an offer he rejects.

There is a twist to the story. It appears in the two years since they had the discussion about what should happen should Marcelle be pregnant, she has changed her mind but Mathieu fails to consult her thinking things are as they always have been. He talks to Boris, a young man so fond of him,who has a cougar, Lola, as a mistress. Boris asks Lola for a loan of 4,000 franks while they are dancing. She doesn’t believe and they end up having a bad altercation in her hotel room where she takes an overdose of some pills that make her pass out. When Boris wakes up, he thinks she is dead because she is pale and unresponsive. He runs to the bar where he had earleir left Mathieu to report what has just happened and entices him to go to Lola’s room to see for himself. To persuade him, he tells him about the money in her suitcase and this works since he, Mathieu, agrees to go and check on her.

Lola wakes up to find Mathieu in her room and he explains to her the circumstances under which he had come. He does not steal the money though. He regrets his cowardice. Later the same evening, he contrives to steal the money which he manages to do while Lola is out of her falt and takes it to Marcelle. She rejects the money and sends him away, marking the end of their 7 year affair. He leaves asking himself if he is really free and wonders for what has he left her.

Lola comes charging to his flat, looking for Boris thinking he is the one who pinched her money because she is old and threatens to press charges. She doesn’t find him at Mathieu’s. He calms her down and explains that he is the one who stole the money and that he is the one who had earlier asked Boris to borrow the money. She doesn’t believe him at first but then a few moments elapse and then demands to have her money back, money which he doesn’t have for they had remained at Marcelles. Daniel comes in just as they are ending their conversation. He hands over the money to Lola telling her it’s from Marcelle and she departs and promises not to press charges. She still misses Boris, who appears to have disappeared albeit briefly.

When they remain the two of them, Daniel tells Mathieu he plans to marry his Marcelle so she gets to keep the baby. Mathieu doesn’t seem hurt or even in the least surprised. He (Daniel) presses on and tells him he is a homosexual and will marry Marcelle so that she gets to keep the baby. It is this revelation that seem to annoy Mathieu but its effect doesn’t last for long as he realizes that he has lost her forever. He finds himself alone and as the book ends, he declares he has reached the age of reason.

It’s an interesting read and for those of you who have some time to spare, I would advice you add it to your reading list.