The Liberal Politics & Current Events Book Club discussion

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2...

Jimmy,
This is so appalling, I don't even know where to begin, but I'm going to draw attention to it on the general discussion thread, as well.

The freaking GOP what a dumb a$$ idea!!

I am not sure where to even begin...can you imagine the stigma on the woman who is unsure of the father? Or a person who has been a victim of incest now has to deal with it publicly.

Sure I am sympathetic to the guy who wants a kid and the woman says no...it sucks but I wonder how often that actually happens.

What I really hate is how many people love these kids in utero but once they get her screw them. Pay for head start o heaven forbid support for food then it becomes WTF your mother should not be poor it is her fault.

Dawn wrote: "The freaking GOP what a dumb a$$ idea!!

I am not sure where to even begin...can you imagine the stigma on the woman who is unsure of the father? Or a person who has been a victim of incest now has..."

The GOP love foetuses up until the moment they're born, whereupon they do everything possible to try to kill them by denying them any form of health or nutritional support. What they actually love is the foetus as a pretext for controlling and oppressing the mother. Once it's born, it has no further use.

I have further comments on the issue, Dawn, in the "Chat" thread. You make numerous good points: thanks for weighing in, and please continue to post your thoughts.

If they really wanted to have fewer abortions, they would support unlimited access to all forms of birth control.

Jimmy wrote: "If they really wanted to have fewer abortions, they would support unlimited access to all forms of birth control."

Of course, you're right, but what they really want is tyrannical control over the bodies of half the population. Regarding foetuses, they couldn't care less, but they provide a great pretext for advancing the agenda of dragging the country back into the Ninth Century, and I think they are rather nostalgic for coathangers. Really, anything that causes more death, suffering and oppression gives them the warm fuzzies.

What they might also want is to get yet another source of residents for our for-profit jails by criminalizing pregnancy and abortion. We've seen pregnant women being carted off to jail for accidentally falling down stairs, having spontaneous abortions, refusing c-sections that may have resulted in the baby's death, etc. Once you start chipping away at person hood for the mother, anything is possible.

Furthermore, they probably want to encourage an increase in population long term to make sure wages stay low due to an excess of labor supply. We have seen birth and immigration rates in many other industrialized nations get very low to the point where workers have been able to demand and attain rights we can only dream of. I've been thinking that this is the only reason they would care to take away women's reproductive rights while making abortion illegal after years of also publicly denouncing immigration while having large meat packing corporations and agri businesses advertise for jobs in mexico, and then bus thousands here illegally with their border control friends.

Common theme: an excess of workers/citizens with no rights are unable to file suits, obtain benefits, whistleblow, etc. It means less hassle for our rich corporotocracy. (and just kill/jail/deport whoever gets in the way)

Nancy wrote: "What they might also want is to get yet another source of residents for our for-profit jails by criminalizing pregnancy and abortion. We've seen pregnant women being carted off to jail for accident..."

Now, that is a veritable cascade of cogent points, Nancy, and I'm ashamed to admit I hadn't given much thought to the profit potential of criminalizing abortion from the standpoint of creating yet another feeder into our private labor ca... er, prisons. And of course, they absolutely do want to "chip away at the personhood of the mother" (and all women, for that matter).

You're spot on, too, in observing that contributing to a surfeit of unwanted babies conveniently advances their paramount agenda of cheapening labor to the point of human prostration and immitigable despair. The last thing they want is to reduce the supply of expendable fodder, and thereby provide the peasants with leverage, or the ability to resist in any manner whatever their unending predations.

Further ominous news from Mother Jones:

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2...

Great quote from the second comment about Christian fundamentalism being A LOT like the Islamic fundamentalism we claim we are fighting against. I've actually been arguing exactly this with my husband for the past few months ever since Bill Maher's rants against Muslim culture (not Islamic fundamentalists).

"If they use the excuse that they aren't scientists as an excuse for not doing anything uabout climate change, they can't turn around and claim to be scientists as they write bills making medical claims, without evidence in order to restrict womens' right to keep her medical decisions between her and her doctor. By passing bills that requires doctors to lie to their patients, they force doctors to break their hypocratic oath, not to mention that the information is medically incorrect. These "not doctors" are making medical and scientific decisions for one half of American citizens but they have already told us that they are not scientists and we should take them at their word which means they are willing to put the lives of one half of Americans lives in peril simply to appease a group of uninformed and willfully ignorant ideologues. These morons are getting absolutely insane over being able to control every aspect of womens' lives and to change us from free citizens of this country with all the right's that go with that citizenship into chattel to under the authority of a male, either husband or male relatives. That sounds a whole lot like what we have been fighting against all over the Middle East. I guess all fundamentalists have the same extreme radical, misogynistic beliefs. Our fundamentalists are trying to drag s back to centuries past."

Nancy wrote: "Great quote from the second comment about Christian fundamentalism...arguing exactly this with my husband for the past few months..."

You're right, Nancy. The unifying elements here are misogyny, unreason, inhumanity and fervent, desperate devotion to irrationality, anti-intellectualism and the fundamental rejection of reality. These are the characteristics of all forms of fundamentalism -- and ultra-conservative dogma -- because they're borne of exactly the same atavistic mindset that is, in fact, most comfortable in the ninth century (if not the Neolithic Era). Everything that doesn't comport with the "received truths" that enrapture cognitive dualists, enshrine stupidity and empower megalomaniacal oppressors... gets stuck on one "Index Prohibitorum" or another. It really doesn't matter whether it's Galileo, the 99.9% of climatological research that demonstrates the human provenience of global warming, the observation that women are genetically human and might be entitled to rights, the fact that a blastocyst can't think but billions of humans suffering from diseases whose cures might be provided through stem cell research can... or the quaint observation that the Earth isn't flat. All of these are inconvenient truths to power-mad lunatics, and it's power-mad lunatics who have always run the world and thrown the rest of humanity into the furnace of the wars they fight with each other over whether 2+2=5 or 3x2=17. (You may take it that I'm rather annoyed with this sort of "thinking," as well.)

Personally, I believe in the freedom of choice. While I do not agree with abortion because it is killing a life form, the government should not have control on what women do with their bodies. Let alone their own children. Therefore, I am pro-abortion (pro-choice).

I am pro choice, but I think that abortion should be a last result. Both parties agree that it's bad for a mother to have a child she is not ready for, so why can't they agree on supporting better sex ed and even *whoa* birth control to prevent the potential mothers from getting pregnant in the first place?

A lot of very conservative people believe that birth control will just encourage teens to have sex, but the truth is, teenagers will probably just have sex more if it's so stigmatized they never learn how to have healthy relationships. Plus, politics or not, some teenagers will still have sex, and it's better to have some kind of safety (condoms, birth control etc) instead of just striving toward an unrealistic world.