When Rachel excused the ladypeople from the room last night so she could explain a few things to Mitt Romney in the man cave, ladyperson Alex Alvarez hung around. And that's really so good, because her description of the lesson Mitt Romney in the man cave got should go on its own poster:
Maddow ... gave a very thoughtful shout-out to us straight ladies, noting that, at times, we engage in activities where sperm — courtesy of a gentleman — may find itself approaching an egg — provided by the lady — even though neither party hopes for these two elements to come together and form a blastocyst. Hormonal birth control can stop this by, say, stopping the production of eggs (ovulation), so that the sperm have no one to welcome them. They also make it more difficult for a gentleman’s sperm to even get close enough to a lady’s egg to drop off his calling card. It’s all incredibly civilized, I assure you. Now, should a gentleman manage to leave his calling card successfully, some forms of birth control work to make sure the resulting blastocyst doesn’t implant itself on the uterine wall, a thing for which I don’t have a nice metaphor. Dropping off his coat and hat? That works, yes?
Mama said don't drop off your coat and hat unless you're invited to stay.
This blog post is dedicated to Beth Schopis of Iowa, who heroically asked Mitt Romney about birth control and his support for personhood and would not let the question go, in the best possible way.
Plus: the man cave guide to lady parts, for printing out.
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I watched this last night and hooted because it finally "dawned" on a republican woman that this whole "personhood" amendment is about to make any form of contraception illegal - brava for her!! Now, when will these thoughtlessly emasculated men stay out of my womb, bedroom, doctor's office, and sex life - and actually do something positive for this nation they've brought down to it's knees?! Just asking...
At the root of this issue is the question of when does life begin. Is it a scientific determination? Is it a moral judgement? Can it be defined by law? Is it up to the individual?
If the question "when does life begin" could be answered satisfactory, then we could move on from there.
Isn't it better to err on the side of caution when it comes to someone else's life?
A quick glance at her Twitter feed, as linked above, shows that Beth Schopis is pretty well familiar with this particular issue. It's not explicitly stated anywhere that I've seen what her party affiliation is, but she doesn't come across as a social conservative at least, and it didn't just dawn on her. She went there to make Romney speak on the issue. Maddow's right. She's a hero.
When a group of undifferentiated cells can slip from my uterus and sustain life independent of my womb, THAT is when personhood begins. Otherwise it's just a late visit from Auntie Flow! @_@
wait, wait. So, if every egg is a person, does that mean that there is a moral and legal obligation to sustain life for each egg? So every single month, a married republican man has committed murder by not impregnating his wife, due to negligence??
And one more thing - WHEN DO WE MAKE MEN RESPONSIBLE FOR WHAT THEY DO TO US???
Don't see any efforts ever to make boys and men understand women were not created to be your sex toys! If we agree to any type of relationship, "practice" safely and then, if that fails step up and take responsibility.
While the Repugs want to stop women from using birth control, not ever, ever have an abortion (wonder how they will stop Mother Nature from natural miscarriages), at the same time they want to cut Medicaid and State's health care for women, children and the poor. Have any of them ever had a really rational thought???
Wow, I certainly like how everyone recognized that the real issue in all of this is not birth control but when life begins. Great answers! Oh, wait...no one answered it!!?
J. Jones says life begins at birth or either when the baby can maintain life outside the womb.
I guess that would be some time into the 6th month of pregnancy, so up until then it is not a person, not an individual, etc.
Any other attempts to define when life begins?
RobDon, the answer is that there isn't an answer. There is no consensus to be made. It's up to the individual woman to decide if what is inside her is a life or not. It is a part of her body for as long as it is inside her.
One woman may decide that the embryo in her body is a life after 8 weeks. Another woman may decide that a day old zygote in her body is a life. Both are correct. Maternal instinct is very strong. Nature tells women when they're a mother. And that's part of why it doesn't make sense to try to define life before it's even possible for a woman to know there's a fertilized egg in her.
Fertilized eggs are discarded by women's bodies all the time because they're fertilized too soon or too late in the cycle. Especially if she uses the Rhythm Method. If you want to call them all dead babies and weep for them, that's your call. But women can't will their cycles to be precise.
no you got it. When it is sustainable on its own.
GrrrlRomeo, then that would be the answer: It is up to the individual woman to decide. That would be the answer, the definition, the standard used by law.
To me, the answer is either in the form "I believe life begins at...." or "I don't know when life begins." Based on your comment, it would seem life begins when the woman says it begins.
Not "life" just that particular life in that particular woman. There isn't a universal definition of life. It changes depending on one's perception. You could be talking about living cells, or you could be talking about consciousness.
But laws, medical ethics, and many other things depend on finding a way to define these things.
Medical ethics leaves it to the individual. When a person is brain dead or on life support, they leave the decision to the next of kin.
Sometimes I feel like this debate really isn't about where the bookends of life are, but about the value of potential life. It's like embryos are more valuable than the born.
I get the appeal of the clean slate an embryo offers. A life that knows no sin and hasn't made any mistakes, the purity and the innocence. But it saddens me that there are so many human lives wasted every day in prisons, wars and poverty...wasted because they're guilty of being human.
But laws, medical ethics, and many other things depend on finding a way to define these things.
No, it doesn't. Laws, and medical ethics are based on what a 'reasonable person' would do. Laws and Ethics are based on societal norms, not definitions of words.
And yes, In the medical world, the decision is made by the individual or the next of kin. This would leave every decision about the embryo up to the mother if we bothered to follow the current laws that exist. Instead the republicans have to come up with new ones to invade that principle.
Nice sentiments but inaccurate.
In this situation, it is first left up to the individual themselves. The person whose life is at stake has the first say! Living wills, information gathered before life threatening surgery, all focus on what does that individual want. In case of the unborn, that opportunity is never given.
Laws and ethics are usually very specific. Yes, they are based on a what a "reasonable person" would do and in situations where the laws/ethics have not addressed it, the "reasonable person" scenario may be the default, not the ideal.
Applying this logic though, when would a reasonable person say life begins? There can only be one standard for a reasonable person, not multiple widely varying standards.
Because blastocysts aren't legally people to whom any "say" must be given.
Roe vs Wade does a very reasonable, logical job of weighing the rights of a potential life against the already-existing undisputed rights of women and applying a uniform standard. Give it a read.
My response then RobDon, if what we do is what a reasonable person should do. And if medical treatments are left up to the person, lets ask the zygote! oh, we can't get a response...guess we should ask the person who is carrying that potential person what we should do...eh? And there we have it. It's left up to the mother.
It appears as though you've answered your own question. It also appears to me that defining when life begins, has become irrelevant in this argument.
I think to get to your answer RobDon, you first need to define "Life" for us.
Legislating the personal bodies of any human being is, not only the ultimate form of arrogance, but totally immoral.
Not human being: *person*. It has already been legislated that one doesn't need a body at all to be a person, just the paper corpus of incorporation. It will soon come to pass that corporations are the "norm" for persons, and "human beings" a special class of person needing further regulation.
so....if an abortion is the removing of a person from the institution which provides it life...and a corporation is a person....and a person is provided life by working for a corporation....is it abortion to fire that employee, subsequently terminating that person, who is dependent on said corporation/"person" to provide it with the essentials of life?
just curious. or is this another double standard of personhood?
Ok enough....New Rule...."No Sex unless you are married and are planning to have a baby. Recreational sex of any kind is prohibited, married or not." Everybody good with this? Good, now next problem...I've got world peace and hunger to fix!!!
It is the ultimate goal of the TeaGOP party to make gubmint small enough to fit inside every woman's vagina, apparently.
Eureaka! That is it! The male Tea Folk have small gubmints! I knew there had to be a simple answer. Being an unreconstructed Liberal I have a big gubmint and therefore nothing to prove.
If birth control is regulated and "illegal" i want viagra to be illegal as well.
"Every Sperm is Sacred, la, la la, la"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U0kJHQpvgB8
Enjoy. We sing it in church.
I suppose that's better than making gubmint big enough to act a s a condom around every man's imagined penis! (I am male, btw)
;-)
JM
What church do you go where it's alright to sing a Monty Python song?
Scientology
Vampire Press--- your new rule is unfortunately not new.. I was taught that 70 yrs ago in a monastic school that I attended from grades 4--12. "All sex is a sin except between hsband and wife and then ONLY when actively attempting procreation. Sex is never to be performed for pleasure." As for medical judgement , there is only one answer in a RC run hospital. NO abortion, against Religious standards. By the way, I do not agree with any of the above. I am a lifelong batchelor without the worries of offspring. And yes when I said 70 yrs ago I was right , I am 82yrs old.
Why not, and what do you think the purpose of such teachings were? Just curious.
IF THE MEN HAD THE BABIES, THIS WOULD NEVER HAVE BEEN AN ISSUE!!!!
Why can't they put themselves in our shoes for a minute?!?!?
It is NOT the Federal (or State) government's call to make decisions about ANY PERSON'S BODY!!!
I don't want them in my uterus, or my shoes, either.
FIVE STARS for Ms Maddow's brilliant presentation last night!
To be fair, even if the government was all women this would still be an issue.
Evangelicals will be evangelicals.
True. And as long as there are people out there denying their own children the right to comprehensive sex ed, there will be new generations willing to fight on principle and damn the facts.
But it's ok, because if you pray hard enough, you/she won't get pregnant, right?
IF THE MEN HAD THE BABIES, THIS (and CHOICE) WOULD NEVER HAVE BEEN AN ISSUE!!!!
Why can't they put themselves in our shoes for a minute?!?!?
It is NOT the Federal (or State) government's call to make decisions about ANY PERSON'S BODY!!!
My 12 year old son was in the room during the man cave segment and he found it pretty sad that he now has a better understanding of contraception then a grown man wanting to be President.
Sounds like you raised your baby right.
What's even more sad is that he probably had a better understanding *before* seeing that segment.
Um, do they realize that over 50% of fertilized ovum/zygotes never implant in the uterus? Maybe they need anatomy class
Actually Jenifer, it is more up in the 80% range, meaning that for every one of us consciousness persons, 4 other zygote persons died. This means that in this generation alone we have lost more Americans than would be lost if we had suffered a full scale nuclear war 4 times. (citation and more detail in yesterday's thread)
I expect that after Rachel's lesson, Mitt will realize that the Moral Majority is in a full scale war and the battle ground is the American womb. I explored some of the strategic initiates Romney may thrust forward in order to establish a beachhead in the womb and rescue all the American citizens dieing needlessly due to a callous disregard for life.
That's assuming, of course, that Mitt saw the segment. I think we all need to call or email his office and let him know how things work. Since he likes preventing pregnancy, he should know that the legislation he supports prevents that. He should know.
Save your powder until August- then pelt the centrist GOP leaning women with it.
If you do it now, the firestorm will cause Romney to backpedal this, excusing himself that he understood the question on the personhood amendment to be asking if he was for an amendment that was restricted to making abortions illegal.
Tactically:
Once again I am reminded of how uncannily the female reproductive system resembles the logo of the Texas Longhorns. I find that more than a little disturbing.
But seriously -- way to go, Rachel! Hope at least a few men picked up some useful info.
My solution for all of these men who would like to control women's uterus: the only form of birth control that protects you from an unwanted pregnancy as a woman, and - at the same time - satisfies the GOP politicians in terms of NOT using hormonal or intrauterine birth control: NO MORE SEX FOR MEN..... period. Shut the "door" and just leave them to their own imagination..... NO more birth control - no more sex for them.
Men will never accept that when it comes to unwanted pregnancies they are half the problem.
I'm tired of seeing this response half a dozen times on any abortion thread here. It assumes women never want sex and all men do constantly. In other words, it's premised on gender-essentialist bull@!$%#.
Tosa- If you haven't already, you would probably enjoy reading/watching an updated version of the ancient Greek play Lysistrata. Here's a synopsis:
http://www.sparknotes.com/drama/lysistrata/summary.html
I think it is eminently applicable to the topic.
@ Mech, You mean men don't constantly want sex?
Honestly though, I'm sorry if you feel put off but when most male politicians discuss abortion they very rarely mention the man's role. Maybe if attached to every piece of abortion legislation there was some amendment that dealt with child support then we women would feel as though the entire burden was upon us.
Don't feel sorry for me. Feel sorry for all the straight women who won't be having sex b/c of the brilliant idea to deprive straight men of it. And while you're at it, maybe you could think about how this automatically sets up victim-blaming for women who "break" the no-sex code. As an actual solution it is impossible. As a thought experiment it fails on several levels. As a bit of implied schadenfreude, it works, but only by, as my original comment said, hewing to gender-essentialism that has no place in a progressive agenda.
Put more simply, the answer is not punishing men an equal amount as women and people with uteruses are currently punished. The answer is to stop punishing anyone. Sex is not a crime.
We're on the same side, the only men (and women) I want to punish are the dumb-ass politicians who don't get it and want to run the country using their bible instead of the constitution.
I hear you. I'm just adamant we do it in a way that doesn't disenfranchise anyone on the basis of gender.
Let's just amend that to "No more sex for 'pro-life' men." Which probably means more sex for pro-choice men. Mech has a point on behalf of straight women, and reward is a better motivator than punishment anyway.
Personally, I have followed this guideline for the last 30 years. :^)
Except that withholding sex is also inherently an act of self-objectification. It doesn't get us taken seriously as thinking, rational adults with functions above the waist. It does however, feed into "battle of the sexes," "us vs. them" thinking. Also, I imagine it makes a certain percentage of men think about all the sex they aren't having, rather than the ladypersons attempting to engage in political or ethical discourse.
Also also, I already HAVE a No Sex For Anti-Choice Men policy. I imagine a lot of pro-choice women do. And very few of us are having sex with Mitt Romney, so there would be little personal impact on him. And there are lots of women who already don't have sex with ANY men, but who rely on the Pill for other reasons.
Perhaps the answer is mandatory sex education for both genders prior to each contemplated sexual act?
@Glaze: I was totally going to recommend Lysistrata, but you beat me to it. :)
I think it must not be just men that don't know the details of how hormonal contraception works. I think if you did a survey you'd find that a majority of people of both sexes think the pill stops conception.
The pill does stop conception. That's its primary purpose. During the normal female cycle, blood levels of estrogen start to drop right before menstruation. It is this drop that triggers follicle-stimulating hormone to recruit a dozen or so ova for ripening. The pill, which has much more estrogen in it than women normally produce on their own, keeps that from happening.
It is also true that in the event that ovulation occurs, part of the point of the progestin in the pill is to prevent implantation in the uterus. But implantation is a rarer event than is spontaneous abortion of the blastocyst, even in unaltered uterine environments. The other purposes of the progestin do not have this effect (and there are two: one makes the cervical mucus hostile to the passage of sperm, and the other inhibits enzyme activation that promote conception when the sperm unite with the egg, if it should happen).
@ bob, well I guess Planned Parenthood is a bunch of liars then. According to their website "the pill" prevents sperm from joining with an egg...
What's being said here is that the Pill DOES stop conception, except that sometimes it doesn't. And when it doesn't, it works in other ways to keep conception from turning into actual pregnancy. And those other ways are, in the eyes of Personhood-ists, murder. Because they don't know the difference between a blastocyte and a zygote and an embryo and a fetus and a child.
There's actually no scientific data to back the 50yo idea that hormonal birth control also works by preventing a fertilized egg from implanting. That's what's so frustrating about the Personhood-ists. It's not just junk science, there IS no science on it. And what's doubly frustrating is people like Maddow who SHOULD know better are repeating this.
What I thought I obviously meant was that they believe that the only thing the pill does is stop conception. That it also might stop implantation sometimes is, I strongly suspect, not widely appreciated. Actually, I wouldn't be surprised if most people think the pill simply stops ovulation.
That IS the widely held misapprehension. It's not only the basis of the "personhood" movement behind the proposed "life at fertilization" laws, it's being repeated by people who really ought to know differently. Including the drug manufacturers who started printing that on their products.
Rachel, you missed a Golden Opportunity! (As a straight man, I understand that the window for such opportunities is generally very short, but don't dispair, even a followup history lesson might still get the point across.) During the brief moments when you had the men in the Man Cave and they understood how babies are made, their role in it, etc., you should have given them a short history lesson. The Pill, as those hormonal contraceptives are generally referred to, are credited with fueling the Sexual Revolution of the 1960s which today's sexually active individuals continue to enjoy the benefits of. The real wake up call here would have been to point out that without The Pill, the opportunities to get their wigglers in the neighborhood of a lady's eggs will undoubtedly be sharply curtailed by the lady in question! That surely would recruit the vast majority of sexually active men in opposition to legislation that would outlaw contraception. (I'm personally old enough to have directly observed the change in behaviors that occurred.)
I love your show, and consider you and your staff to be a genuine national treasure. I'm especially proud of your stand against the Koch brothers and their efforts to destroy democracy in America!
I literally laughed out loud at this, well said!
Rachel as usual was brilliant on this subject. The scary thing is that while it seems irrational to want to outlaw birth control, this is really one of the goals of the radical evangelicals behind legislation like this. We can't let a crazy minority hijack this country to try to impose their christian equivalent of Sharia law, which appears to be what they want.
So true. If women are denied contraception they will be too leery to have sex with sperm-bearers. Women do not want to be continually pregnant. Consequences, gentlemen, consequences.
This is why I had a tubal ligation while I still could. I don't trust that the procedure will necessarily be available in the future.
Frightening, depressing, and in the realm of possibility. :(
That was postulated back in the 1960s when the pill first came out. There is NO scientific data to back up the "hostile endometrium" mechanism of action of any type of hormonal birth control, including emergency contraception. It's the very basis the PersonhoodUSA folks are using to justify banning birth control and everyone should stop repeating this falsehood.
Here is some information from a Princeton paper on emergency contraception.
---meant as response to #4
I would suggest changing the argument:
No one (born or unborn) has a constitutional right to someone else's body without their approval, and not one person, male or female, is required by law to give their body to another person so they may live.
A mother may donate a kidney to her child so it might live, but she is not required by law to do so. We need to start looking at this argument a different way.
It's basic self defense to remove someone from your person if you don't want them on you or in you (assault or rapists). It's not illegal for me to use self defense to get a man off of me, why should it be illegal to use surgery to get an embryo/fetus/baby out of me?
You can argue that a fetus has a right to life, but if it does, then so do I. And it doesn't matter if the fetus is a person or not. It doesn't change the fact that it/they have no constitutional right to be attached to someone if the person doesn't want them to be. And if detaching them kills them because they cannot survive outside of a woman's body, then you're back to the kidney argument. No person is constitutionally required to give their body to someone else so they may live.
Message from the man cave....What is conception?? Is it climax? Is it just the act?
Maybe Mitt can explain it to me....
Too bad we don't have a pill that stops the formation of sperm. We could then have a constitutional amendment requiring mandatory use of that pill, with a special permit to stop taking the pill for a specified time period to allow for reproduction.
Too much government interference for you? So is the government crawling inside my uterous! Can the Tea Party/Republicans get any more ridiculous? Nationwide, in a four month period, they've offered up 916 bills designed to ban abortion/birth control, and the only national media that's really covered this has been the Rachel Maddow show.
That in itself is scary!
There is a hormonal medication that stops sperm production.
This also reduces testosterone. It is injected several times/month.
I'm not certain this is legal in the USA.
The following reduce testosterone, which shrinks your man-parts and makes conception more difficult.
Maybe the government should start subsidizing vasectomies.
Or maybe stop subsidizing erectile dysfunction medications, such as Viagra? Why haven't we heard a call for a Hyde amendment type regulation halting federal payment for those types of medications? Or making it illegal for even private insurance to cover their cost? (Thanks to whomever posted the link to 'Every Sperm is Sacred. Very appropriate.)
And thanks, Crackhead. I had no idea there was something available to halt sperm production. We need to make that an over the counter drug, and we could have mandatory testing for it, just as we do mandatory drug testing for certain segments of our population. :} Think of the jobs that will be created!
(/so)
Not my original idea, but I don't remember to whom I should give credit:
"If men got pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament."
This is what you get when you're against teaching sex education! Instead of the next GOP debate, can we sit these guys down in a class room and educate the idiots about sex?? It would be a service for the country!!
Too true! I know gay men who know MORE about how a woman's body and reproduction works! I see the world of the Hand Maid's Tale on the horizon!
I hope he is the republican nominee, the women in this country vote a lot more than the men do, we can run him 'out of town'
I do hope that Rachel will also acknowledge that if a women has made a "CHOICE" to have sex and that she has "CHOSEN" to have a child. Though man cave rhetoric would go off on a tangent with the next comment, the only true purpose of sexual intercourse is for perpetuating the species. No birth control, other than abstention, will prevent pregnancy 100 percent. This is a part of the lesson that Rachel left out and the nasty little fact about birth control that the "Pro Choice" crowd does not want to have to fess up to. And I do wish the "Pro Creation" crowd would acknowledge that they are using the pill for reasons other than to "regulate their period". Such as having sex just for the fun of it. Very unchristian.
O'Doul's? Really? No respected man cave would ever have that swill stored.
Very funny! Tell me another.
Seriously Steven(n)- please step gracefully into the 21st century and leave the bad religious dogma behind. I know you are being sarcastic, right? Sex for the fun of it sounds good to me!
"Sexuality, by means of which man and woman give themselves to one another through the acts which are proper and exclusive to spouses, is not something simply biological, but concerns the innermost being of the human person as such. It is realized in a truly human way only if it is an integral part of the love by which a man and woman commit themselves totally to one another until death.
"The acts in marriage by which the intimate and chaste union of the spouses takes place are noble and honorable; the truly human performance of these acts fosters the self-giving they signify and enriches the spouses in joy and gratitude."145 Sexuality is a source of joy and pleasure.
"The spouses' union achieves the twofold end of marriage: the good of the spouses themselves and the transmission of life. These two meanings or values of marriage cannot be separated." (emphasis mine)
Catechism of the Catholic Church
Even Catholic doctrine, the Big Bad when it comes to opposition to birth control, acknowledges that sex is for more than making babies.
I'm sorry, Steve(n). Isn't the man making a "CHOICE" to have sex, too? You know, it turns out that there are extraordinarily low rates of pregnancy that result when women choose to have sex with female partners.
But in the case of men and women having sex, I'm shocked at how frequently the finger-wagging is directed at women. I'm particularly shocked at how infrequently this finger-wagging takes into account that many women in those situations are NOT making the choice to have sex and that choice is foisted upon them by men, and no one is doing any finger-wagging at any men who are making the choice to have sex with women who didn't or couldn't consent.
So by your logic, the infertile, the post-menopausal, married people who already have as many children as they want should not be allowed to take part in an action which fulfills our social identity needs? Anyone who can't have or doesn't want a child should be doomed to be lonely and untouched for life?
Sorry, Charlie, but this is the USA, and no matter how hard you Are A Christian at me, not everyone in this nation is Christian, or even your brand of Christian. You can't legally require me or anyone else to go to church on Sunday, take communion, pray, etc., and you can't enforce YOUR idea of what sex "is for" on me. You want that life? Move to Rome.
If sexual intercourse was exclusively about reproduction the human species would not have invented so many ways to pleasure themselves that DO NOT result in pregnancy. Other then our masturbating primate cousins, we are the only animals that copulate outside of estrus "heat" You're using psuedo-science to justify a biblical position on sex, it doesn't add up under observation.
Sex ed teacher - he's making a choice for which he's liable for the next 18 years, with no further recourse, and no legal "mulligan". Perhaps it is justified, perhaps it is fair -- but it is also a double standard. So yes, it very naturally falls upon women to justify a status quo that is perceived to favor them at the expense of others.
Rape is a very serious crime with penalties much greater than "finger-wagging". Who exactly is defending rapists? What is your point? Are you suggesting that reproductive law be based upon the assumption that sex is a violent act perpetrated by men against women?
Costard,
My point is very much that our entire culture defends rapists, especially if the woman who was raped was in the wrong place, drinking too much, or wearing the wrong thing. Indeed, there's a lot of evidence to suggest that it is rapists, not victims, who have our support (and I'm not talking about the rarely sighted jump-out-of-the-dark-alley kind of rapist here; I'm talking about the far more mundane and more likely date rapist, who in fact is likely to have a history of coerced and unconsented sex with a number of women). Do you have any idea how often those serious crimes get punished? About 2% of the time--both the alley and the date rapists combined--and it's also pretty hard on the victims who decide to prosecute, I might add.
I am suggesting that in a culture where 1 out of every 4 college students and 1 out of every 6 women experience coerced sex, that yes indeed, the fact that sex can be a violent act perpetrated by men against women should inform any law about reproductive outcomes. Unlike what my church taught me way back when, it's very clear that pregnancy results from rape at the same rate that it results from any given act of consensual sex without contraception.
It is worth reminding everyone here that women still die of pregnancy and childbirth related causes. Not many, but the pregnancy and childbirth related causes of death are more likely than the contraceptive and even induced abortion related causes (up to 16 weeks, anyway).
Furthermore, you don't need a mulligan if you are having sex with a person who shares your values and your intentions with regard to sex, which I would argue is what we should be doing every single time we engage in the act with another person. The only sense in which it is a double standard that women can (currently, anyway) control whether they have babies and men cannot is essentially a semantic argument. No one who has actually ever experienced pregnancy would dare suggest that carrying a pregnancy is in any sense the same responsibility as having an ejaculation. There are ways that men can keep from having the babies they don't want to have, and those ways are to say no or to enact their own birth control strategies. I spend a lot of time talking in my class about the importance of communicating about what your intentions are, because obviously there are consequences to engaging in sexual behavior.
If sex is purely for procreation, why do women have an organ that is not necessary to procreate, but that produces pleasure?
When a woman is forced to have the baby of a rapist instead of getting an abortion society is defending the rapist.
I'm pleased to see people chewing holes in the armor worn by the God Squad.
Didn't I just hear that the Reps. want to do away with sex education in the schools? Will all the kids have to watch the Rachel Maddow Show to get their education now- sex, politics, and otherwise??????
I really think some people want to go back to the dark ages- why I don't know.
It is high time we women-folk band together and demand legislation that controls and limits a man's use of- and rights to- his testicles!
Of course, studies show right-wingers have difficulty grasping irony.
The point is, it would never fly.
We need many more women in legislatures and in Congress. Show your support by donating to Emilyslist. They financially support women candidates. God bless 'em!
Thanks for the man cave chit-chat, Rachel. These are physiological things that I take for granted. Maybe the marriage/genital/uterus police can increase their worldliness (to the magnitude of an 8th grader) if they open their minds up to your presentation.