Actually, simple Biology tells one that pregnancy comes from sex.

(Where did you think it came from?)

That sex can be divorced from pregnancy risk is a fallacy. Sure, you can try to interfere in what your body does naturally during sex (processes related to procreation), but you should not be surprised when the 'interference' doesn't work and procreation succeeds.

It is simple Biology that if you do not want to become pregnant, you do not engage in sex.

That some people recognize this does not make them 'fools' and 'butts for jokes.' Such people actually 'live in the real world' and know that sex, while pleasurable, is also serious business. It is 'fools' who think sex and procreation aren't connected and treat sex (and their partner) as nothing important.

Ah, our single-issue sex tr0ll is back.

If contraception is so consistently unable to do what is says on the tin, why make such a fuss over it, then?

I would like to have a word with your supervisor. You're not very good at your job.

People who use contraception don't care about their partner? What? Seriously I'd also like to make a complaint.

People who use contraception don't care about their partner?

Good catch. I overlooked that jewel. The use of contraception demonstrates responsible, forward thinking. That is hardly a sign of a lack of concern for one's partner.

One of our sex tr0ll's many problems (another being an unhealthy obsession with other people's sex lives) is that he (I'm assuming it must be a he) is purely reactive. He's not making arguments. He's just stringing statements together in reaction to whatever is currently pinging off his cranium.

Accidents happen. If you don't want to ever have an auto accident, don't drive.

Many people find driving pleasurable and often necessary. Many people, with the exception of the pathologically repressed, find sex pleasurable and even necessary. That's why there's contraception, and that's why there's a woman's right to privacy and right to choose.

Unless, of course, you think a better solution would be burkas.

another being an unhealthy obsession with other people's sex lives

Me...obsession? Obsessed is showcasing it in the Healthcare mandate and forcing all citizens (many of whom are really quite tired of hearing about your sexual lives) to pay for your sex. If it's a right to privacy - keep it private, and stop asking me to pay for it.

What are you talking about mater? No one is forcing you to pay for anything. The insurance company offers a variety of coverages including contraception. Heart surgery is also covered, but you don't consider yourself paying for other people's heart surgery now do you? Of course not. This is because that person has to pay a premium for the services they are given. All the law had to do w/ was mandating what was included in those services. The law did not change to whom the burden of cost fell upon: it still belongs to the consumer. Additionally, mater, had Newt Gingrich never brought this issue up you would have never known about it and therefore would've never complained. Why? Because it doesn't affect you personally if you aren't using contraception. Just like you're not affected by all the other things that your insurer provides, but that you'll never use. However once you were informed that your insurer provided something that you don't personally like then you became obsessed w/ decrying it. So yeah...this does have a lot more to do w/ your personal obsession about what other people who aren't you are doing in their bedrooms. Sorry, but that's how it is. If you don't like contraception then don't use contraception. Stop telling other people what they can or can't do.

Plus, m&m, contraception is all that you are willing to talk about. Every single comment you has ever made since registering on Newsvine has been on the subject of contraception. If there is only one thing a person is able to talk about, that counts as an obsession.

And Mickey is absolutely correct: the root of your objection is that other people are allowed to do something that you objects to. The idea being, I suppose, that if you are offended that something is happening, then it should not happen. That the preferences objecting party must constrain the activities of all other people.

Well, tough. If you don't like contraception, then you are at liberty not to use contraception. But you may not use your personal liberty to restrict the liberty of others. Your restricted comfort zone does not define the boundaries within which other people are allowed to operate.

The acceptability of contraception is effectively a settled matter. Nearly all women use contraception at some point in their lives. For plenty of women, hormonal contraceptives are also just medicine for other health matters. The majority of Christians, including Catholics, and with the single exception of evangelicals, are in favor of contraception.

In the face of that overwhelming consensus, what have you got? Just that you personally don't like contraception, and you don't like paying into an insurance pool that covers contraception, and you think that your personal preferences should take precedence over the health and personal liberty of everyone else.

Too freaking bad, is all I can say about it. The social consensus is simply not on your side. You can make your case to the contrary, but you can't make anyone see things your way. You can't even stop people from disagreeing with you. You certainly can't make people do as you like. You're not my mother and you're not my teacher, so lay off trying to tell us what we can and can't do.

You don't know what quotation marks are for, do you.

Rape occurs when penetration is nonconsensual. If a woman is going to have a procedure in which her doctor recommends an ultrasound and she gives her consent, it is not rape. If a man suggests having sex and the women gives her consent, it is not rape. If, in either of those instances consent is not given and penetration still occurs, then it is rape. The Virginia would be mandating rape because penetration with an ultrasound probe would occur without even considering the woman's consent necessary, and it would occur even without her doctor's recommendation, violating both the woman's body and the doctor's medical ethics. Penetration in and of itself is not rape. Otherwise, all penetration, even with the woman's consent, even for consensual sex with the intent of reproduction, would be rape.

It's obvious you want to have your way no matter what, logic and facts be damned. I will not let you have your way. If you want to keep tr0lling the blog, expect trouble.

Red herrings are fun aren't they meter?

The Virginia would

"The Virgina law would..." Ugh. Brain moves faster than fingers.

Rape occurs when penetration is nonconsensual.

Actually, in VA, to consent to an abortion is to consent to an ultrasound. Therefore, it isn't nonconsensual, and is not rape.

materetmagistra

None of what you've mentioned makes it OK for government to order medical tests without consent, no matter what test is demanded.

What happened to the outrage over government overreaching?

You cannot require that someone consent to medically unnecessary procedures that are against the advice of the doctor and the patient. That would make it forcible rape. Again I don't think you're comprehending the term 'rape' and 'consensual' here.

Look at it this way. If you went to the doctor to get a rectal exam and the state required that at said time the doctor vesectimized you, would that be consensual or non-consensual? I mean you probably didn't ask for the condition that made it necessary for you to get the rectal exam to begin w/, but now you have it so you have to deal w/ it as much as possible. And that means going through the humiliation of having a long tube stuck up you know where while lying on a cold table for an hour as they search for the tumor or the obstruction or whatever the problem is. You didn't ask for this, but you're doing your best to manage it. Now the doctor says 'by state law, even though it's completely unnecessary and I don't want to do it, I have to vesectimize you.' You say 'no I don't want to be vesectimized, I'm simply here to have my rectum examined to see if I have cancer!' The doctor replies 'sorry, but the Virginia state legislature says I have to do it.'

Sometimes it helps to walk in someone else's shoes before casting judgement, mater.

None of what you've mentioned makes it OK for government to order medical tests without consent, no matter what test is demanded.

Just consider that the State is acting as ward for the unborn child.

"Your money or your life." Pointing a gun. If you hand over your money, it's not voluntary. "Well, he handed it over," is not a defense. No, IT'S COERCION. What VA. is mandating is coercion, figuratively pointing a gun at the head of women seeking LEGAL abortions. This would tend to support the argument many have made here that it is tantamount to rape.

"Unborn child." (See ) I've said it before: Repub Patron Saint Ayn Rand was pro-choice. She said valuing a potential life over an actual one was immoral. Ayn Rand would think you're immoral. Guess what? She'd think Ayn Rand acolyte Ron Paul is immoral, too!

Just consider that the State is acting as ward for the unborn child.

No, it is not. It is acting as a bully attempting to coerce women into making decisions contrary to their own wishes.

However, if the Virginia law and all similar laws were really about making all developing embryos and fetuses wards of the state, then that would raise all sorts of objections, primarily involving the due process clause of the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution. If a fetus or embryo is assumed by these laws to be the ward of the state, then the state has taken legal custody of said fetus or embryo simply by fiat. That's not legally or constitutionally kosher after a child is born. If the state seeks to take custody of a child away from a parent, due process has to be followed for that to occur, and the state must prove to a court why the parent should no longer have custody of that child. You would have us believe that in the case of an unborn child, the state automatically has custody of that child. Why would you think it would be legally more acceptable before birth occurs than after?

As I've said before, you are not making arguments. You are simply making reactionary statements in opposition to whatever is in the air at any given moment. Frankly, if I were participating in a Turing test right now, you would be failing.

Monk - please, as I'm sure you agree with my post above, and the self-referent link therein, refrain from using the phrase "unborn child,' which is a Repub demagogic neologism, kinda like "death tax" or "partial-birth abortion." I think you are unwittingly giving validity to the use of the phrase. The correct word, I assert, is "fetus."

Indeed, if it's not a child, but a fetus, just what is it the state is taking custody of, and, for that matter, what agency should be responsible for its care? In line with your argument above, the more you think about the state having custody of the fetus (do we keep the pregnant woman under house arrest so we can safeguard the fetus?) the more preposterous the position of mater becomes.

materetmagistra

I think you would find more success in reducing abortions without subjecting women to submit to unnecessary, NON doctor ordered, medical procedures codified into our laws designed to shame AND violate Bill of Rights.

That is really where I stand. It is not my business to intrude into or onto another person's body- as one person voting for representatives that vote for such invasive laws to force women to give birth.

There is no changing that fact for me. I cannot be made guilty, like so many want me to be. It's our way in this country, we have pesky privacy laws regarding those who are definitely on this earth now. The government does not belong in the exam room with patient and doctor. Neither does Insurance company, but they say "we aren't paying for that".

I think you are unwittingly giving validity to the use of the phrase.

I don't think there's much danger of that, particularly when I was using 'fetus' and 'embryo' up until the point where I need to demolish the idea of a fetus being a ward of the state. If I were to counter that a fetus is not a child, I would simply be playing to the assumptions of the other side. In their framing, they are the ones who value life and we do not. That is why they use the words they do, and when we employ a counter-vocabulary, which is what they are trying to provoke us into doing in these cases, we are accepting their framing and following their script. I prefer to subvert that framing, and make my counter-argument (in this case) about due process and stay away from the reductionist moralizing the other side prefers.

I think that if you can shred their "arguments" while employing their own terminology, all the better. I see value in subverting their framing of the issues by violating their expectations of how the debate should go. If this person wants to think of a fetus as a child, fine by me. I'm perfectly happy to beat him with his own club. If he thinks that calling a fetus a child will make us accept that the state has a natural right to be it's ward, and I can destroy that while yet calling the fetus a child, then that is potentially a far more potent response than simply being predictable and getting into a twist about 'fetus' versus 'unborn child'.

Or it would have been more potent if you hadn't gummed up the works by insisting on following the other side's script, provoking me into explaining the trick I'm playing. He said 'unborn child' and you just had to insist I always say 'fetus'? How Pavlovian. **sigh**

MeddlingMonk

I agree with you and this:

http://www.medterms.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=3424

oops

#39.11 should read:

representatives that vote AGAINST such invasive laws.

just to clarify. I sometimes word things different from what I think..

....we have pesky privacy laws regarding those who are definitely on this earth now.

An unborn baby is "definitely on this earth now." That's is the problem, no? An unplanned baby is now here....and to get rid of it, you need to kill it.

Scientists most certainly can tell that an embryo, a fetus, a toddler, an infant, an adolescent and an adult are all ALIVE, and that they all have human DNA separate from their mothers and fathers. Matter of fact, a scientist can find 'a whole, separate, unique living human being' from the point of conception.

(Don't bother with the but it is "dependent" business - so is Stephen Hawking.)

Done talking with you now. I told you my stance. I gave my reasons. Accept it, as I accept that you will not change your mind.

Just know that these proposals are in fact inconsistent with the Bill of Rights.

The reason I stop is: you are now making demands about what I can say. I don't accept that. I do not accept the authority you give yourself to control. That is the point.

......mater you do realize that by making that statement about an embryo and a fetus you just essentially stated that it is a parasite and that the woman is an incubator, correct?

Please people emotionally shooting from the hip instead of thinking through the consequences of the policies you advocate is not a good idea!

M&M, so what if an embryo/fetus is alive? Of course it's alive. It grows, it develops, it metabolizes. That's never been an issue, except in the dank recesses of the "pro-life" mind. What is the issue is only the matter of who is competent to make decisions regarding the progress of a pregnancy, and on that question the only one fitting the bill is the pregnant woman herself.

If you wish to think of an embryo as a cute little bambino in pink or blue fuzzy jammies, you go right ahead. It changes nothing. If a fetus is developing with lethal abnormalities, or if the pregnancy is in some way a threat to the mother's life, or any other contingency arises which raises of the question of whether or not the pregnancy should be terminated, are you going to ask the fetus? No matter how alive it is, it can't give an answer. Should the state decide? Should the church? I don't think any of these entities should have a say in a private medical matter. I don't even believe the father should have a say. It's the woman's body, the woman's health, and the woman's pregnancy that is at issue, therefore it is the woman's choice regardless of how alive or how human the embryo or fetus may or may not be. The metaphysical crap you're trying to peddle is only a distraction.

The sole reason that people like you, M&M, keep harping on the aliveness of a fetus is that you wish to reduce a morally complex and ethically murky issue to absolute simplicity. So simple that only one choice, the one you advocate, is the only one possible.

I am quite willing to stipulate the vitality and the humanity of a fetus, and at the same time assert with virtually fundamentalist certitude that it is the woman's and only the woman's prerogative to make any and all decisions about a pregnancy, including termination. If that is morally too messy for you, then just too freaking bad. Life is messy, death is messy, and sometimes there are no good decisions, only necessary ones. No one is in any position to judge what is necessary for another person.

(Mickey, I've sent you a private message. I'm not all that certain that the contact feature works. Hope you get it.)

AND apparently so is Alabama...da Gov claims he wasn't aware of it being in play and couldn't comment since he was at the Gov's event in D.C.!

Ummm, YEAH, RIGHT!!!!

It seems these folks that demand to be all for States' rights and federal overreaching always have Governors' conventions where they are brainstorming/conspiring to implement the same changes in their own state.

They don't stop there, but also intrude into other states' laws.

Case in point: I saw the list of donors to Prop 8 in CA. A multitude, I mean millions of dollars from out of state pouring in to convince Californians that it will be the end of civilization if we do not STOP/block same sex marriages. I saw in Catholic church, a yes on 8 flyer when I attended a funeral there. I am in one of those legal marriages. But federal tax filing status is different from my State. They tax for health benefits as imputed income for my spouse, but do not allow the use status of spouse in federal tax. This is just one law that is unequal because of the desire to micro manage others.

Thanks Utah and Texas for intruding into my marriage. Do you see that you are wasting money and validating hate every time you try to stop something that exists in your own and in OTHER states? These authoritarians remind me of old school variety show where they keep many plates spinning on top of a long stick. Each plate being some issue they feel authorized to control other people (in every sense of the word). Make SURE people feel outraged about something, when initially, it was not so bothersome until you keep throttling and spinning.

When the day comes that federal court says something that invades privacy or denies rights is unconstitutional and DOMA is unconstitutional, believe it! AND be sure to remember when you or your neighbor intruded into others lives, manipulating other states' laws.

Picking and choosing about this right overrides other peoples' rights.

Same for these personhood bills that wish to control women.

I see these Governors' meeting are very worrisome, to say the least.