thessalian (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
thessalian) wrote2011-10-13 12:10 pm
thessalian) wrote2011-10-13 12:10 pm
Soylent Green is ZYGOTES!
Sorry. That title was in bad taste. (No pun intended, oh gods...)
So ... I have a question regarding this ... 'Personhood Amendment' ... thing that appears to be a deal in Mississippi right now. Y'know, the one that says that the word 'person' should apply from the time of fertilisation?
If someone has a miscarriage ... would that be manslaughter?
I mean this as a serious question. Manslaughter, if I'm recalling it right, can apply when you have killed someone accidentally - like if you hit someone with your car and maybe it was just that the conditions were bad and you really couldn't have helped it but there's also a chance that maybe you weren't paying as much attention as you should have done and that might have contributed to the accident. Note the 'maybe' and the 'might'. Technically, if this is the case, then anyone who miscarries in Mississippi could conceivably have every single aspect of their lives poked into mercilessly to see if they did everything possible to ensure a healthy pregnancy ... and who decides that, anyway? I mean, if you slipped on a flight of stairs and fell and had a miscarriage, could you be done for manslaughter because you shouldn't have been doing that anyway because of the possibility of accidents that might harm the 'person' within?
And what about when a fertilised egg just doesn't implant? Could the potential mother have prevented that? That's a 'person', dead, through no fault of their own, entirely because of what a woman's body did or didn't do. Is it the woman's fault that this 'person' didn't live? Who decides that?
I'm just ... having a hard time conceptualising this whole idea. And that's just at the very beginning. Then there's forcing rape and incest victims to carry on with a pregnancy that is entirely likely to do them serious mental and emotional harm just because the clump of undifferentiated cells classifies as a person and ending a pregnancy is murder. Then there's forcing people to carry on with ectopic pregnancies when it's essentially a choice between the mother or the child ... or quite possibly neither. And the people behind this bloody amendment say that under said amendment, "Mothers in crisis will be protected from a harmful medical procedure". So mothers in crisis will be protected from a harmful medical procedure ... because they're being forced to undergo a life-threatening pregnancy?
In the end, I don't know if I could personally go through with abortion. However, I am rather fervently pro-choice. Maybe not 'you're not a human being until you're in my phone book' pro-choice, but certainly 'if having a child is going to hurt you, then I sure as hell don't intend to make you' pro-choice. Or, more to the point, 'it's your body and it is frankly none of my business what you choose to do with your reproductive organs' pro-choice. No, I do not think that a fertilised egg is a person. It is a potential. No, I don't believe in sacrificing the physical, mental and emotional wellness and freedom of the person who is actually aware and self-sufficient for that of an unaware clump of cells undergoing mitosis and cell differentiation in a layer of tissue that may end up getting flushed out anyway. I don't even believe in sacrificing the rights of an aware and self-sufficient woman for something that is essentially a tadpole. And hell, while I don't think I could go through with an abortion if I had any interest in a functioning sexual relationship and a birth control accident meant that I ended up pregnant, you can bet your life that if there was an ectopic pregnancy involved, I would be going for the termination, because I am not giving up my life for a potential. And if I got raped, you can bet your bottom dollar that I'd be asking for the morning-after pill right then and there. And woe betide the doctor who denied me that option.
The news depresses me. There's this (and I think the most depressing part is that it has barely even seen daylight, this bit of news), and the snippets in the article talking about at one point, two separate states tried to pass something that would rule killing doctors who performed terminations as 'justifiable homicide'. There's Topeka, essentially decriminalising domestic violence because they don't want the cost of prosecuting (way to make the victims feel like they don't matter, guys. Way to make arseholes prove they're right to think that they can get away with abusing their spouses, children and families in general, and way to never let any of the victims feel like they're right in thinking that what is happening to them is bad and undeserved and that they should leave). And this is apparently more important than sorting out the economy.
I've met people who think that the future depicted in "Brave New World" was absolutely awesome and should be the ideal (yes, let's be locked into the niches we've been genetically designed to fill for the rest of our lives, filling the void with pre-programmed ideologies about rampant consumerism, drugging away any discomfort and having occasional orgies to deal with the pent-up stress with never an original thought or genuine emotion or passion of any kind). I think these guys, if presented with a copy of The Handmaid's Tale, would think that the future suggested by that story was awesome and flag it up as their manifesto or something. When people start using cautionary tale alternaverses as their personal visions for an ideal future, that's when I really start to weep for humanity.
Fuck it. Lunch. Ham salad bagel with a side of HATE, please.
So ... I have a question regarding this ... 'Personhood Amendment' ... thing that appears to be a deal in Mississippi right now. Y'know, the one that says that the word 'person' should apply from the time of fertilisation?
If someone has a miscarriage ... would that be manslaughter?
I mean this as a serious question. Manslaughter, if I'm recalling it right, can apply when you have killed someone accidentally - like if you hit someone with your car and maybe it was just that the conditions were bad and you really couldn't have helped it but there's also a chance that maybe you weren't paying as much attention as you should have done and that might have contributed to the accident. Note the 'maybe' and the 'might'. Technically, if this is the case, then anyone who miscarries in Mississippi could conceivably have every single aspect of their lives poked into mercilessly to see if they did everything possible to ensure a healthy pregnancy ... and who decides that, anyway? I mean, if you slipped on a flight of stairs and fell and had a miscarriage, could you be done for manslaughter because you shouldn't have been doing that anyway because of the possibility of accidents that might harm the 'person' within?
And what about when a fertilised egg just doesn't implant? Could the potential mother have prevented that? That's a 'person', dead, through no fault of their own, entirely because of what a woman's body did or didn't do. Is it the woman's fault that this 'person' didn't live? Who decides that?
I'm just ... having a hard time conceptualising this whole idea. And that's just at the very beginning. Then there's forcing rape and incest victims to carry on with a pregnancy that is entirely likely to do them serious mental and emotional harm just because the clump of undifferentiated cells classifies as a person and ending a pregnancy is murder. Then there's forcing people to carry on with ectopic pregnancies when it's essentially a choice between the mother or the child ... or quite possibly neither. And the people behind this bloody amendment say that under said amendment, "Mothers in crisis will be protected from a harmful medical procedure". So mothers in crisis will be protected from a harmful medical procedure ... because they're being forced to undergo a life-threatening pregnancy?
In the end, I don't know if I could personally go through with abortion. However, I am rather fervently pro-choice. Maybe not 'you're not a human being until you're in my phone book' pro-choice, but certainly 'if having a child is going to hurt you, then I sure as hell don't intend to make you' pro-choice. Or, more to the point, 'it's your body and it is frankly none of my business what you choose to do with your reproductive organs' pro-choice. No, I do not think that a fertilised egg is a person. It is a potential. No, I don't believe in sacrificing the physical, mental and emotional wellness and freedom of the person who is actually aware and self-sufficient for that of an unaware clump of cells undergoing mitosis and cell differentiation in a layer of tissue that may end up getting flushed out anyway. I don't even believe in sacrificing the rights of an aware and self-sufficient woman for something that is essentially a tadpole. And hell, while I don't think I could go through with an abortion if I had any interest in a functioning sexual relationship and a birth control accident meant that I ended up pregnant, you can bet your life that if there was an ectopic pregnancy involved, I would be going for the termination, because I am not giving up my life for a potential. And if I got raped, you can bet your bottom dollar that I'd be asking for the morning-after pill right then and there. And woe betide the doctor who denied me that option.
The news depresses me. There's this (and I think the most depressing part is that it has barely even seen daylight, this bit of news), and the snippets in the article talking about at one point, two separate states tried to pass something that would rule killing doctors who performed terminations as 'justifiable homicide'. There's Topeka, essentially decriminalising domestic violence because they don't want the cost of prosecuting (way to make the victims feel like they don't matter, guys. Way to make arseholes prove they're right to think that they can get away with abusing their spouses, children and families in general, and way to never let any of the victims feel like they're right in thinking that what is happening to them is bad and undeserved and that they should leave). And this is apparently more important than sorting out the economy.
I've met people who think that the future depicted in "Brave New World" was absolutely awesome and should be the ideal (yes, let's be locked into the niches we've been genetically designed to fill for the rest of our lives, filling the void with pre-programmed ideologies about rampant consumerism, drugging away any discomfort and having occasional orgies to deal with the pent-up stress with never an original thought or genuine emotion or passion of any kind). I think these guys, if presented with a copy of The Handmaid's Tale, would think that the future suggested by that story was awesome and flag it up as their manifesto or something. When people start using cautionary tale alternaverses as their personal visions for an ideal future, that's when I really start to weep for humanity.
Fuck it. Lunch. Ham salad bagel with a side of HATE, please.