Reflections of a stormy petrel

Of course not. The person who did something was wholly unknown to me, and I have banned her from further posting to this LJ.

How do I say this? There are many subjects on which I feel strongly but am open to debate - if nothing else, for the purpose of confronting my arguments with those of opponents and so sharpening them. There are a couple of things, however, that revolt me to the core of my being. Partial-birth abortion is one, euthanasia is another. And I would point out that my LJ, including my friends page, is my own space. As a private citizen, I am under no obligation to give a forum to anyone who wants it. Consider, too, that my blog is so wholly insignificant that nobody can feel a need for their views to be heard on it. It is not like sending an angry reply to The Daily Kos or Little Green Footballs, which have readerships in the hundreds of thousands. My readers are I and a small circle of friends. And my hatred for these things is well known - not by you, who have only known me for a few weeks, but by most of my readers. It follows that if anyone feels the need to defend the slaughter of babies or old folks on my pages, they can only be doing to affect one person: me. And I see no reason to put up with it.

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becomethesea.livejournal.com

Bravo! If people wanna rant, they can do it in their own bubble. :)

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To be fair, it wasn't a rant. It was someone referring me to some sort of personal account of partial-birth abortion on the Boston Globe, obviously defensive and positive. It was done without any offensive manner, but I have no intention to even hear arguments in favour of partial-birth abortion - it is one of the things I will defriend even people I like for, as I said a couple of entries ago.

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jennilee.livejournal.com

You should put that in your userinfo. :P

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Good idea, thank you.

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agatha-s.livejournal.com

I support euthanasia. Please defriend me. I have defriended you.
I should have done this immediately when I read the post you made last week.

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It's completely despicable that you have to put up a post like this.

I have different views from you, but I'm not asinine enough to try and debate them over your journal. Your personal livejournal is like a diary for you thoughts. You shouldn't have to defend your opinions, beliefs, or faiths in your own personal space.

If people want to argue with you, they can do it in one of the many open forums that you post in. And leave it there.

Morons.

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(I don't know you, you don't know me: I saw a link to the HP fic you posted a few posts before, and thought I'd have a look at your LJ.)

Could you define 'partial-birth abortion' (as mentioned by you in a comment on this post) to me? It sounds like a deliberately icky-sounding term made up by anti-choice people, but I was just curious as to what you actually meant.

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redcoast.livejournal.com

I agree; not necessarily about the politics, but with the principle of the thing. One thing I learned while modding my comms is that it's best to set rules, post them in a place where everybody can see them, and then be tough while enforcing them.

It doesn't matter how many times I would say "Don't feed the trolls," and "If there's a problem, don't respond in the comment, tell me about it," people still insisted on wanking in the comments. I learned the value of the "freeze comments" option, not to mention ban_set.

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Oh - sorry: I've just read some more comments that suggest that you aren't prepared to discuss this. If you feel unable to explain your stance then fair enough: completely understandable, under the circumstances.

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Done. That is very sad, because you are one person I would not have wanted to lose. I still have a high opinion of you, and if you ever need anything from me, I am at your disposal. But unless you change your mind on the murder of the old and sick, I cannot do anything else.

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Ho ho ho. No, I can assure you that I am not "unable to explain [my] stance." The implication that I am feeble of mind and feeling does not please me, but that is what I can expect on this sort of subject. Partial-birth abortion is a procedure, illegal in nearly every European country, by which a viable foetus of seven to nine months - a baby capable of being born alive, in other words - is artificially forced out of the womb. Its brains are then sucked out of its head and the rest of the body is disposed of. Nice "choice".

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Well, I am open to debate on most things, and I have had long clashes on all sorts of things before now. I will, for instance, debate abortion, though I am radically against it, with anyone, so long as the properties are respected. But on these two things I have a revulsion so intense that I simply cannot maintain normal contact with people who do not see that there is a problem with them. At least realize that it is possible to feel disgusted at the thought of a tired old man being given poison rather than help, or of a baby being destroyed in the monstrous way that partial-birth abortion prescribes. Realize that these are things on which a perfectly ordinary person can feel disgust. On such grounds, it would be even possible to argue; but I feel that our world has been utterly desensitized to the sheer ugliness of these things.

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Well, no. I will see if I can write a post on this subject, because it is one on which I have a lot to say. But as I often promise posts I then neglect to finish, I will just say, here and now, that I am against it in every instance except, one, soldiers in time of war for treason, cowardice or sleeping on guard duty; and two, mass-murdering tyrants in a Nuremberg Trial situation. I will try to justify my views later on.

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I know what you mean.

I don't neccessarily believe in euthanasia. I think if all alternatives have been exausted, and a terminally ill patient has no other choice, they should be allowed to choose assisted suicide. But I'm not going to force that opinion on anyone. Plenty of people don't believe in having that choice, and they have the right to do so!

I believe that partial birth abortion is murder. As a matter of fact, I believe that abortion after 15 weeks should be disallowed. And in my personal opinion, I don't believe men should be able to decide for women whether or not they should have that choice, as men will never be pregnant. But again, my own personal opinions that I try not to force upon people. I just state what my opinions are, and I really don't like to debate those subjects, as they are two things that my mind will never change on, no matter how much you try to do so.

Hence why I believe you should not have to defend your own personal opinions on your own personal journal.

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Oh: I'm sorry! I wasn't for a moment implying that you were 'feeble of mind'! I just meant that a lot of people with strong anti-choice views feel that they are unable to explain their views in any terms except circular ones that reference and reinforce their own beliefs. Obviously, that doesn't apply to you, as you feel that you *are* able to rationally discuss it!

As someone who doesn't know much about this topic, I'm afraid that your explanation didn't really tell me very much. Instead, I googled and found a lot of anti-choice rhetoric and spam on the subject, much of which was almost word-for-word what you said, but I did manage to find a BBC article (sorry: I'm a Brit, I do rather trust the BBC more than the websites of evangelical christian groups, and random spam on unrelated forums), which said that almost all D&X terminations (I believe that that is the medical term for what you are refering to, and there seem to be vanishingly few of them - maybe a thousand per year in the whole of the US) are for medical reasons, generally to save the life of the woman involved.

Do you object to that, or am I misunderstanding your terms? Do you object similarly to other forms of late-term abortion (I didn't realise that there were so many methods, I must confess! Isn't scientific research astounding)?

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That proves that the Brutish Broadcasting Creeperation is as mendacious in the matter of abortion as it is in, say, its notoriously Arabist reporting from the Middle East. YOu are welcome to believe their lies, since, as you said, your choice is not a matter of checking the facts but of believing the news source you find more flattering to your own beliefs. But please, stop bothering me.

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Well, I have a very strong objection to one thing you said: men may never be pregnant, but only men may be father. I am past the time when I could afford to have a baby unless I was rich, since to have a child you have to have either lots of energy (like at 20) or lots of money (to hire a 20-year-old or two to do all the hard part of the minding), but I would have loved to be one. And I have to tell you that that sort of statement makes me feel reduced to some sort of sperm donor.

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Interviewer: "So what is the worst part of being an artificially conceived child?"
Interviewee: "Knowing that your father is a wanker!" 8-)

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By the way, isn't it lovely how abortion apologists talk about their opponents being 'anti-choice'? It's an even more misleading label than 'pro-choice'. Every one of us, man, woman and child, makes choices every day, but to the pro-abortion zealots the only choice that matters is the choice to kill an unwanted child between conception and birth.

I, for instance, fully support a woman’s right to choose not to have children. The best time to exercise this choice is before conception, by keeping the legs together and refraining from sexual congress. The next best time is after birth, by putting the baby up for adoption (and there are, in most developed countries, long waiting lists of thoroughly vetted and highly desirable candidates waiting to adopt children). In third place (the Catholic Church, to which I belong, strongly disapproves, but I take no umbrage upon either side of the point) is the use of various forms of physical contraception, such as condoms and diaphragms — keeping in mind that they are not 100% effective. I believe anyone using them should be held responsible for the risk in case they fail. Fourth is the use of chemical contraceptives such as the Pill, which some view as abortifacients and others do not; here we are skirting very close to a definable line. The very worst way of exercising this choice is by waiting until one is already pregnant and then procuring an abortion. Yet I have known many an abortion apologist to positively deride the first two methods of making this choice, and subordinate absolutely every other ethical question to her (almost always her, rarely his) support for the last and worst. And since I believe that the choice should be made at an appropriate time — when it does not involve the killing of a living creature, a member of the human species, at a point when it is totally defenceless and therefore should have the greatest claim on our protection and compassion — I am labelled ‘anti-choice’ by zealots.

So I’m afraid

flickgc can add me to the list of ‘anti-choicers’, since her rhetoric shows her to be one of those for whom the only ‘choice’ that matters is the ‘choice’ to have an abortion.

I was tempted, when I sat down to write this comment, to put on my Screwtape hat and defend abortion and euthanasia by ironical and diabolic arguments. But I find that my sense of visceral revulsion will not even allow me to do that, and so I have written this entirely earnest and unamusing screed instead. For which I cry you pardon.

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I didn't say that men shouldn't have any say in what happens if a woman is carrying their child. I just said I don't believe men should be responsible for deciding whether or not women get a choice.

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Funny. The court that passed the Wade vs. Roe decision was all-male.

Anyway, we will not agree, so let us end it here. (It is half past midnight where I live.)

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As you are unhappy at this being earnest and unamusing, I will add Steve Martin's advice for the perfect contraception. The perfect contraception is for the female partner to point at the thing between the male partner's legs and become convulsed with laughter.

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ani-bester.livejournal.com

I've found this amazing technique which I think deserves more study.

I don't have sex when I don't want to have a baby.
I've found this to be 100% effective and at 25 years of age I've never once been afraid I was pregnant.

The scientific community should look into this more as it also works well against STDs.

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I agree that we will not agree, but I respect your opinion, and hope you sleep well, Fabio.

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But please, stop bothering me.

Ah, so you *do* feel that you are unable to explain your stance. Fair enough, then! I'll stop asking you to do so.

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As I pointed out, you listen to things that agree with you. Please go on doing so, AND PLEASE STOP BOTHERING ME. And sending your little helpers along, too. You are not wanted here and neither are they.

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seph-hazard.livejournal.com

I know exactly what you mean by a 'sense of visceral revulsion', as it is exactly what I feel after reading the bigoted, ignorant, hurtful, ridiculous bile you have spewed in the above comment.

fpb, if you quite seriously cannot behave in a manner rational and intelligent enough to accept that there are views other than your own insensitive and outmoded beliefs, I would request that you remove me from your flist. Before you do, however, there's one thing I would like an answer to-how can you possibly be justified in writing this entry after everything you said to me and my friends here?

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I am speaking of partial-birth abortion. I am against all abortion, but abortion of what is in effect a live baby is a revolting procedure. And I am very surprised that you should find this surprising, since one thing I thought I had made clear was that I regarded abortion as wrong in itself. What, in the name of Heaven, did you think I meant?

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As for my belief being outmoded, you are only seventeen, so I will excuse your apparent belief that ideas of right and wrong depend on "mode" - that is, on fashion. But I suggest you ask yourself whether date has anything to do with morality. If you had been born in Germany in 1930, would that make killing people right for you? Because, you know, the fashion in Germany in the thirties was to kill Jews and Slavs any enemies of all kinds. And the fact that that was the up-to-date idea must have made it right. That is what you say when you say that moral ideas can be "outmoded".

That is not to say that you should not argue in favour of abortion if you really think it is just and right. If you want to defend a right to abortion, that is one thing; but you have to say that it is a right that exists at all times and for everyone, or else it is not a right at all. Fads and fashions, mode, do not have anything to do with it at all.

You also have to realize that this sort of argument simply robs you of the ability to argue. When

superversive attacked this supposed right, you could say nothing in favour of it except that it is "outdated" to oppose it. You did not say anything that seriously threatened

superversive's reasoning or pointed out weaknesses in his argument or stated alternative views: you simply thought that to impose this supposed chronological scheme, that opposition to abortion is "outdated", was enough to silence his points. That is both irrational and very poorly conceived. I would like you to try and set out an argument of your own on the matter, rather than to foolishly rely on dates.

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If you want to blame

fpb for a comment I made, go right ahead; it proves that you are a fool. And if you feel a sense of visceral revulsion because you feel insulted, and none at a fully-formed human child having its brains sucked out through a tube and its body flung into a disposal, then I suggest you may need to have a competent neurologist examine the reactions of your viscera.

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Since there is no trace of logic in the rhetorical claim that anyone opposed to the particular choice of killing one’s offspring is therefore opposed to ‘choice’ in general, I’m not surprised that any rational explanation would fail to reach those who make that claim; and emotional explanations are worse than useless.

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If men can’t decide whether women ‘get a choice’, then logically, no man can make or prevent that decision with respect to any woman, even if the child is his own.

This may not sit well with those whose reasoning is based upon emotion rather than logic (which might be a wholesome thing in a case like this), but alas, the law cannot be written to take such emotions into account. The existing laws in every country that I know of make no allowance for the status of fathers, and nobody has seriously suggested that they should or even could.

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kjell-bjarne.livejournal.com

to be fair, it's just as unreasonable to use the term "pro-life", as it's not life that "pro-choicers" (the vast majorlity of them, anyways) are against, but the restriction of the right to choose upon the subject.
I don't want to get in the middle of this argument as nothing good will come of it, I just wanted to point out that there will be mislabelling jargon used on both sides of any hot issue.

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Well, no. The issue is, to us, when does life begin. And if we say that it begins from conception, then certainly anyone who advocates destroying it for any reason and at any point between conception and natural death can, from an opponent's point of view, be without distortion be labeled anti-life. Bear in mind that this is language I do not use: I speak of pro- and anti-abortion, period.

You might want to read this essay of mine: http://fpb.livejournal.com/69029.html.

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Never judge a person before you have walked a mile in their shoes. You know nothing whatever about

eyeliner297; I do, and I know that not only does she have a right to feel strongly in the matter - even if I think she feels wrongly - but that she has reason to feel angry about me in particular. This is not my story to discuss, but let me just say that other people would have de-friended me for one or two things I said on a certain occasion. That she is still speaking to me is more than I could have expected. And whether or not she did actually mistake you for me, she is right that I am responsible for whatever appears on my LJ. That is a principle I enforce. You are a friend and a person I hold in the highest esteem, but I ask you now to withdraw and apologize for the language you saw fit to use to her, or else I will do it for you.

Did you even notice, by the way, that I have already given her quite a firm reply without feeling the need to insult her?

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That’s quite true, and the dishonest rhetoric of the anti-abortion side disgusts me even more, because, frankly, it makes me ashamed to have some of these people agreeing with me. If you make a sufficiently fatuous argument for your position, you will eventually persuade people that your position itself is wrong, whether it is or not.

I think, though, that it speaks volumes about the fundamental nature of this issue that neither side wants to use the word ‘abortion’ when discussing it. There’s something deeply wrong when nobody wants to discuss the matter except in euphemisms, and yet one side claims it as a fundamental right.

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You’re quite right, my language was excessive and inappropriate, and I apologize for it. (And no, I didn’t see your own reply, because

eyeliner297’s reply appeared in my email and I responded from there. I was stung and acted in haste, which makes me more culpable, rather than less.)

I still feel that there is a considerable disproportion between feeling visceral revulsion at the actual occurrence of a partial-birth abortion, and feeling it on account of a purely verbal insult. I cannot help suspecting a degree of hyperbole in drawing the equivalency.

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johncwright.livejournal.com

Bravo and thank you. We are living in the culture of death, and you are right to be bold enough to say so.

My son survived the abortion holocaust. The doctors told me to kill him, on the grounds that he might develop a spinal malformations. He was born and is healthy, one of my life's best joys.

Is anyone here a fan of the Spartans? Here is a Lacedemonian practice in this regard, according to Plutarch:

"Nor was it in the power of the father to dispose of the child as he thought fit; he was obliged to carry it before certain triers at a place called Lesche; these were some of the elders of the tribe to which the child belonged; their business it was carefully to view the infant, and, if they found it stout and well made, they gave order for its rearing, and allotted to it one of the nine thousand shares of land above mentioned for its maintenance, but, if they found it puny and ill-shaped, ordered it to be taken to what was called the Apothetae, a sort of chasm under Taygetus; as thinking it neither for the good of the child itself, nor for the public interest, that it should be brought up, if it did not, from the very outset, appear made to be healthy and vigorous."

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