Ted Rall for June 03, 2022

Complex life is the joining of two sets of chromosomes, from mum and dad. Masturbation gets rid of one set, not both, which haven’t even joined yet, so masturbation isn’t murder. Neither is eating an unfertilised egg.

No, Mr. Rall, that’s “christian science”, (like how man came from a handful of dust and woman from a rib). Not to be confused with what Science really is.

Ask Onun. Maybe he knows how many unwanted fetuses Rall has adopted.

Right on target, Ted! A glimpse into the twisted logic of a liberal.

See, everybody?

Ted Rall has, in 4 brief frames, proven conclusively that a fertilized human egg is a baby, abortion at any point is murder of a baby, (but what if a fetus is biologically unable to develop into an actual viable birthed infant, or will be unable to survive once born, or will cause the death of its mother during the birthing process, or any other pertinent negative circumstances? DON’T YOU TRY TO BRING COMPLICATING STUFF LIKE THAT INTO THIS SIMPLE FORMULA — IT MESSES IT UP!), and pro-choice arguments are equally simplistic and limited.

Why can’t we agree on and arrive at a simple binary choice between the wrong position and the (obviously correct) purity position?

Because only religious nut jobs and libertarian nut jobs (but I repeat myself) suffer under the delusion that purity is a real and attainable thing.

Life begins with that first independent breath of air.. before that it is, just.. a parasite living off its host.

I can’t decide if Mr. Rall believes this or is just being provocative. If it’s the later, then he’s doing his job of provoking discussion.

The Supreme Court had the best answer to this question when they decided Roe v Wade. In their decision they noted that they are not equipped to decide when life begins. It’s a philosophical/religious question that no one at that time had an adequate answer for. So they compromised – up until the fetus is viable outside the womb, it should be a woman’s choice to continue a pregnancy. They settled on 26 weeks ( my wife, who works in Maternity, says that’s really pushing it and baby born then has little chance at surviving with out serious complications). After 26 weeks the state has a compelling interest in the child’s birth and can make laws regulating that.

Obviously this compromise did not satisfy the extremes of either side.

Now Ted’s anti-choice? Geez, what’s happened to you, Ted?

It is definitely human as are fingernails and DNA, but whether it is a human being is the question. The larger question is, if it is a human being from conception, does it’s needs and the wants that society assumes for it make it more valuable than the woman who may be forced to host it at the risk of her life. ?

If abortion is murder, then every miscarriage is a suicide.

Huh???? What specious, deceptive and inane Rall is spewing.

The problem with this argument is that is has all sorts of assumptions baked into it.

A fetus is a human being. I don’t disagree. That doesn’t mean by default that an abortion is murder.

There are situations where a pregnancy complication can threaten a woman’s life. Self defense is a legally and morally accepted reason for killing a human being.

Life begins when you swipe right.

Dear Teddy: ONE DICK – NO VOTE!!!!

And just how are we going to know what’s going on? Will legislatures require women’s cell phone records to see who if they are calling abortion providers in states where it is legal? How about their search engine queries? Will we have laws requiring women to register when their periods begin and end? Will we have agents questioning friends, neighbors, and relatives about a woman’s sexual activity? And there is no doubt that miscarriages will be prosecuted as abortion, make no mistake.

This from a party that wants to keep the government out of our lives?

Anyone who cannot get pregnant should not have the right to tell someone who can what she should do. Let women sort it out; I’m sure the result will be much more acceptable to both sides.

It is about control and destroying the lives of women and girls. It’s not about babies. If it was, the man would have to pay for the birth, after all, the woman is already doing the hard work of carrying the baby. There should be a mandatory minimum child support, subsidized by the government to make up for poor and slacker dads. Child care would be a god given right, as would all the medical and education assistance the woman and child(ren) will need.

That is what real pro life looks like. Not Anti Abortion, where once the child is born, they don’t care if the mother or child lives or dies.

Zygotes and embryos are not yet humans. Those decisions are best made between medical providers and patients, not uneducated politicians.

We’d probably see something interesting happen if we equate abortion with murder and make the fathers equally liable.

In less than a hundred years, when we’ve killed off ninety percent of all life on this planet and the handful of human survivors are huddled in underground shelters eating their soylent greens, this whole pro-life movement will look like a cruel joke.

If you believe in souls, life begins with the creation of the universe. So, if I kill you, I have aborted every one of your descendants from now until the end of time. Billions and billions . . .

As far as so-called pro-lifers are concerned, life begins at conception and ends at birth. Where are they when people protest against gun violence or war, or for affordable health care? If they were really “pro-life” they would be fighting like hell to make sure every human mouth gets enough to eat.

I’m not sure this follows. After all, there are plenty of edge cases. Identical twins, for instance, arise from a single fertilized egg. If a single human comes into existence at the moment of conception, how does the new human life appear when the undifferentiated blastocyst splits into two embryos? And what about the case of chimerism, when two fertilized but undifferentiated eggs fuse and develop as a single individual? How did one life emerge from two lives? And then there are all the cases where things go drastically wrong in conception, such as molar pregnancies — a whole class of weird masses with full sets of chromosomes (or too many — sometimes they have triploid DNA) that don’t general develop into a recognizable fetus but do develop something like a placenta. Most never get beyond an unrecognizable mass of vesicles; would that be something you’d call a human being?

Meanwhile, “murder” is a legal concept. Even if we accept the premise that a human life exists at conception, it doesn’t necessarily follow that any termination of that life is murder. Even for fully adult human beings, there are plenty of forms of homicide that do not constitute murder and which may not even be criminal. For instance, a killing in self defense is seldom considered murder. If a person threatens to slash you with a knife and you are armed only with a gun and you attempt to defend yourself by shooting him in the chest, you will likely be acquitted, assuming you can produce evidence to back up your story. Considering the extensive invasion of the body’s tissues that pregnancy entails, I find it difficult to justify a self defense plea for someone defending themselves against an assailant but not a woman seeking an abortion.

Protoplasm isn’t a self-sustaining entity either. And … seems to me, like most American men … Mr. Rail has no beef with killing grown-up human beings on the battlefield if his government approves.

A potential human being. If you see the frame of a house, you don’t call it a house. On the other hand, being forced to carry a fetus in your body for months is a form of involuntary servitude.

Human life begins when the brain and brain stem start functioning together

There is much debate over when life begins. Pro lifers traditionally believe life begins at conception (when the egg cell is fertilized inside the mother’s womb) while pro choicers believe life begins at birth (when the baby leaves its mother’s womb and breathes on its own for the first time). Between those two beliefs, there are those who believe that life begins at gestation (when the fertilized egg cell, after floating about the womb for 3 to 5 days, attaches itself to the placenta and starts drawing nourishment from it. There are those who believe life begins with the embryo’s heart starts beating, others when the fetus’ brain begins functioning on its own. Whenever life begins, a woman should not have to be forced to bear a child she doesn’t feel she can raise or provide for. But that’s just my opinion.

All children deserve to be loved and respected. However, not every one is meant to be a parent. If you could prevent future child cruelty, wouldn’t you want that person to have an abortion and NOT a bad parent. Additionally, isn’t this a slippery slope to end contraception? You need a license to fish, drive a car, be a massage therapist, maybe we need a license to have sex?!

The horseshoe has bent & the ends are connected.

Ted, we’re near at the point where my toenail clippings are human dna that can result in a new human being. No one is arguing that my toenail clippings are a human being.

You’ve just fecklessly repeated the anti-choice talking point of conflicting 1st trimester abortions with late term abortions. Go talk to families that faced the dilemma of a late term abortion & come back on your knees to apologize to every woman who’s politely responded.

Otherwise, I’m just lumping you in as an ally of MTG & the rest of the Christian Nationalists.

I’m a lifelong lefty and atheist. However, to the dismay of my wife and most of my friends, I am unable to convince myself that a fetus—a unique genetic individual that has a life separate from, if admittedly dependent on, its mother—is just a collection of random cells like a toenail, and not worthy of some protection from society. (I recall that during an abortion debate at a university in the seventies, a doctor proclaimed that “We don’t talk about fetuses, we call them products of conception.”)

Looking at the problem this way, I see it as a conflict of rights, a well-known legal concept. This suggests that the best approach to the conflict is prevention—contraception—and also ameliorations of various sorts, like medical care and adoption services. There is also a concept of responsibility—to my mind, a woman who is pregnant from rape, or despite failed contraception, is different from one who is pregnant from irresponsibly unprotected sex. It’s a very complex and difficult issue, and I don’t see that it’s helped by those on both sides who claim absolute “rights” like personhood-from-conception or “a woman’s absolute right over her own body.” The latter sounds to me like the gun nut’s “argument” of “I have a right, and nothing and nobody else matters.”

I expect that this post might make me unpopular among many who I would otherwise agree with. Fortunately, I guess, this forum has fairly limited circulation…. (To quote a famous antisemite, Hier stehe ich…)

Mammalian embryos are all pretty indistinguishable on sight before a certain stage in development.

Imagine for a moment someone saving lives being called anti-woman.

It’s not science that life begins at conception. A fetus isn’t another species, but it’s not a separate alive individual either. Most people are trying to have abortions before the cells become a fetus anyway.

He deserves to be on the sh-t list for producing such sh-t.

When was the last time you were pregnant Ted? Then shut the hell up.