dhex, once again, i'm not arguing that it's a simple solution and i didn't miss the notion of 'opposition'. i am not offering a defining solution. what i am saying is that because it is so complicated, that you can not automatically blanket-ban the practice as pro-life proponents would like. that would totally ignore the beliefs of one side in full favor of the other side and with no basis on which to put that decision.

the slavery thing is still not working. even if people believed that black people were not human at the time, there was irrefutable evidence to the contrary. in fact, the proponents of slavery who claimed black people were less than human were doing so on a basis of pure misguided belief.

the double murder thing never made sense to me either, but that's not important here. if you keep harping on how complicated it is, you simply paralyze the debate. i never argued that. i am saying that because it is so complicated and there is no widely held ar legal basis for it, that a blanket ban is not a fair or reasonable solution. in order to claim that abortion is murder (which you would have to do for your analogies to work), you would first have to define when life begins and simply saying 'i believe' is not good enough when there is strong opposition to that belief held by people directly affected by the matter.

nola, i don't like spendy programs any more than you and i don't think abortions should be subsidized by the government. however it sounds like you fail basic democracy. why should i pay taxes to murder iraqi civilians when i am morally against the practice?

"Why should I be forced to do something against my will?"

well, because we live in a republic and shit like that happens. it's basically deciding on the line where your rights and my fist and your nose, et al, begin and end.

The CHOICE to have SKANK HOE SEX AND KILL MY FUTURE MOOT POINT BABIES is very important to me too.

Dear nola,

We ALL pay taxes to support programs we don't necessarily believe in. (Me? Corporate welfare, abstinence only sex ed programs, the war in Iraq, etc., etc.) It's an unfortunate complication of a little thing we call here in America "DEMOCRACY." Your individual "will" is irrelevant in the political-juridical sense. Collective will reigns, for better or for worse.

And I must reiterate a point that has been lost in this debate: abortion is also about women's REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS. At this time, neither science nor philospohy can determine with any degree of certainty whether or not a fetus is a human being. This is a moot argument. But I can tell you that scientifically, philosophically, and LEGALLY that the women who carry these fetuses are, beyond a shadow of a doubt, full-fledged human beings. Human beings with rights. Rights granted by the law and protected by the law.

For me, CHOICE is about women and men having the right to decide their own reproductive destinies and future lives.

Strikes twice,

The Hall Monitor

Curmudgeon - I didn't make the comments you are attributing to me. Dumbass.

hijiki - Again, you flunk basic biology and law. There are virtually no limits on when someone can kill their fetus, and a fetus is viable outside the womb well before the end of 9 months. So in many cases what is being killed is not a cluster of cells or something that could not live outside the womb.

By the way, why should I have to pay taxes to support programs I don't believe in? If you want more generous social programs you can pay for them. Why should I be forced to do something against my will?

Nola clearly needs a biology lesson; unless they're reproducing by asexual means, those "Long Island hoz" aren't getting pregnant by themselves. As I recall, they need Long Island man-hoz to actually insert their penises into Long Island vaginas in order to ejaculate little Long Island sperm. Said Long Island man-hoz should be more than capable of wrapping Long Island penises in condoms.

But then again, by looking at Nola's body of work here, it's understandable why he/she/it isn't familiar with the whole process.

Is it Pro-life or anti-choice?

Is it pro-choice, pro-death, pro-abortion or anti-life? what's the dealY-O?

not hipocrisy...it misses the whole point of opposition. especially because at the time of slavery, the distinction you're making was only held by a small minority of people, just as 50 years ago what was considered reasonable child rearing and discipline is now child abuse. viability is not necessarily a great distinction to use as your guiding line, as i'll illustrate below.

but since the line isn't clear, it makes it that much harder to draw a distinct line. it leaves open the possibility that it may or may not be murder. again, if you would arrest a woman who beat an infant to death, even if it was only 1 day old, why wouldn't you arrest the woman who kills the child 3 months before birth? (on the line of viability)

also: why does the state charge someone who shoots or otherwise kills a pregnant woman with two murder charges sometimes? i've always thought that was weird. it's like "well, if she wants it it's a human, if not, it's a clump of cells." which is both callous and weird if you think about it.

anyway, like i keep stressing, everyone has a line in which the fetus stops being "it" and becomes "he or she." and without any actual measurement outside of feelings and a moral sense of right and wrong...etc etc and so forth. that leaves a lot of wiggle room.

and surviving outside the womb is NOT a good line to use, man. as neonatal critical care gets better children can survive outside of the womb longer and longer...does this mean that abortion rights should be scaled back accordingly (since that's what you're using as a metric)?

and at the same time, there are many adults who cannot survive without artificial means...since this constitutes a de facto womb, are you saying that they're less deserving of life than you or i? (to bring up the most obvious objection analogy)

the issue is complicated, to say the least.

nola, you think choice supporters have never seen an ultrasound and that you understand the nature and value of life more than anyone who disagrees with you? you claim to value life yet your position on corporate protections, civilian deaths in war, etc says to me that your morality is no better than anyone else's. forget the cluster of cells comment if you don't like it. the fact is, a foetus can not survive outside the womb.

again dhex, you're missing the point, as is nola. the child abuse and slavery comparisons are not working in the same way. there is no debate at all that living, breathing children and black people are full human beings deserving of human rights. killing or beating them is the same as killing or beating any other human. agreed? there is however, no consensus on where life begins despite endless religious and scientific study. so we can't automatically jump to abortion=murder as we can child abuse/slavery=human rights violation. you think it's murder? that's a belief, not a matter of fact. why should your belief that abortion is murder overpower my belief that it is not?

like i said, the fact that there is massive disagreement and no current way to come to a rational conclusion on where life begins, then the fair solution would be to leave it up to the individual to make an educated decision, not to give one side blanket control based on entirely subjective belief systems. i'm not saying no regulation whatsoever, but an outright ban is not democracy.

you're trying to make 'don't want one, don't have one' look like a hypocrisy, when it's not. it says that we all have a right to interpret this issue in our own way. anti-abortion is one thing, but anti-choice is dictatorial.

"or it could lead to a federal law banning abortions everywhere in the fucking country."

i have my doubts on that. the whole point of overturning roe v. wade would be to say the issue is not a federal one, and therefore would fall back under state by state jurisdiction.

also remember pre-roe that abortion was legal in some states. the back alley thing is overstated, which is not good because i don't think the state has a right to interfere with abortions (to a certain extent, since the line between viable and unviable keeps shrinking due to better neonatal critical care, etc), even if i do think abortion is essentially murder. at a certain point, so are other forms of contraception, if one wants to stress the metaphor.

anyway, due to the manichean resurgence of political thought in this country (i can't find scare quotes big enough to go around thought, sorry) we get into a position where everyone who supports abortion is a baby murder and everyone who opposes it wants to oppress women. there are plenty of women who want to restrict or ban abortions because they see fetuses as children, which supercedes the wishes of any mother, just as there are plenty of men who feel abortions should be legal, and not just because they want to "avoid taking responsiblity" and other forms of claptrap.

ok, since the slavery thing is fucking shit up (if anyone can draw a line between clump of cells and viable fetus, the ob/gyn world would like to hear from you) let's try this "against child abuse? don't beat them"

Cluster of cells? Check out an ultrasound some time. If you want to debate whether someone should be able to kill their fetus within the first month or so of conception, fine. But the "cluster of cells" stage is very brief and right now there is virtually no limit on when a fetus can get sliced and diced. Anyone who has traced the development of the fetus knows we are talking about a human being and therefore the slavery analogy is appropriate.

What if someone agrees to be my slave (or indentured servant)? Unlike the fetus, they've made a choice. So stay out of my business if I start collecting slaves you sanctimonious busybody.

nola, read my earlier comment. the slavery comment doesn't hold water and repeating it won't seal it up. or do you really think black people are the same as undeveloped masses of cells incapable of surviving on their own?

I'm going to start a movement to bring back legalized slavery and I know all you pro-choicers are going to support me. After all, if you don't think slavery is cool, don't own one! Those anti-slavery busybodies should mind their own damn business.

Wow, based on many of the flippant comments above, I'm shocked at the number of junior high kids that read and respond to gothamist.com.

The majority of readers here go apeshit if the city wants to search their bags in the subway. But deny American women their reproductive rights? Who gives a crap! It's so effing hip to be blase, right? Let's laugh about this! That would be so effing cool, right?

I suggest some of you stop reading gothamist and go back to junior high...

How dare you, white baby talk about the glory of his holiness GOD like that. Have you watched my show on PAX network? I teach that if you hold the benevolance of Jesus and his father within your heart that you can overcome anything. Jesus Christ, His Son, is the only way to God. Only He can reconcile us to God the Father. Mankind may seek other solutions and worship other gods, but Jesus Christ, alone, died on the Cross for our sins and rose in triumph over the grave and eternal death. He paid the penalty for our sin and bridged the gap between God and mankind. Please attend my seminars and see me perform the miracles in my miracle crusade. With the power of God clutched to my bosom I am able to lift cancer from within the body if the spirit inside is willing. Jesus himself has given me the ability to extract tumors from within the body. People have attended my seminars in wheelchairs and have left standing on their owne 2 feet. Please attend. only $59.99

Holy cow White Baby! I used to be a christian and after your whole rant on the ridiculous superpowers jesus had I totally renounce my religion. I never thought about how crazy that mythology was. I always just accepted the fact since my parents were christian and christmas was pretty cool that christianity was where it's at but now that I actually think about it. Christianity is BONKERS!

C'mon "THE POWER OF THE HOLY GHOST"- fucking loony

The real issue in this is not women aborting babies. the underlying fact is that WHITE WOMEN with good eugenics are aborting their babies. The wealthy good looking CAUCASIAN women who are smart and are career oriented are disposing of their fetuses. Those are future WASP republicans that they are killing. C'mon think about it. If blacks aborted their babies at a high rate I don't think those senators and congressman would bat an eyelash. ALso, babies turn into children, and children are highly susceptible to the cult of christianity. Think about it. How do they convince college educated adults into believing that a caucasian male with blue eyes from the middle east was the son of god, could heal the sick, walk on water, turn water into wine, cure blindness, and rise from the dead? NO FUCKING WAY. They get your babies and inculcate them with their christian programming. Grooming them into future GOP strategists. REPUBLICANS WANT YOUR WHITE BABIES!

agreed, but encouraging them to care is part of education. prevention is better, and often cheaper, than punishment.

please, i never claimed that the pro-lifers are merely religious maniacs.

i think your slavery analogy is still flawed. we agree there is no basis for denying basic human rights. that is a universal value in civil society. the difference between slavery and abortion is that it is well proven and universally accepted that black people are in fact conscious, independent human beings with thought and emotion whereas an unborn child is obviously not proven to be the same or we wouldn't be having this debate.

the point of the 'don't want one, don't have one' statement is valid. if nobody in the world can come to a consensus on where life starts except at birth, then the grayness of the situation shows that the pro-life argument is an unfair imposition of subjective values. it is not based on universal values or morality but purely a mandate from one side.

sure, overturning roe v wade could lead to an interesting "frisson" on the state level. or it could lead to a federal law banning abortions everywhere in the fucking country. hello back alley, nice to see you again.

hijiki: no, it's spot on. it's about having a moral concern over a private party's behavior that doesn't necessarily affect you directly.

if you honestly think abortion is murder, can you go on subsidizing it, even slightly, or not trying to stop it in some way? like i said, it's more complicated than that. pretending that everyone who opposes abortion rights is simply some sort of religious maniac is a good way to keep missing the point. people impose their beliefs on others in all sorts of crazy legalistic ways, for better (and mostly worse) results.

and again, even if there were unanimous support for abortion rights, wouldn't they stop somewhere around viability? and why is that? because it's far more complicated than one day being a person and the day before having been just "a clump of cells."

addendum: pro-abortion rights, then. sorry. having done work with planned parenthood - who despite their origin generally do good stuff in often crappy situations - i can tell you that just "educating" people doesn't really work all that well. everyone knows what does and does not cause pregnancy, with some exceptions of course. whether they care or not enough to do something about it is another question entirely. (same deal with HIV, etc)