Alabama has passed a bill, HB494, that allows fetuses to be represented by lawyers. It is, of course, a law designed to prevent abortions by having lawyers argue on behalf of a fetus that it should be born. You’ll find the relevant part on pp. 15-16 of the bill:
(j) In the court’s discretion, it may appoint a guardian ad litem for the interests of the unborn child of the petitioner who shall also have the same rights and obligation of participation in the proceeding as given to the district attorney’s office. The guardian ad litem shall further have the responsibility of assisting and advising the court so the court may make an informed decision and do substantial justice. The guardian ad litem shall be compensated as provided in Section 15-12-21.
In the video below, described by TPM, Daily Show correspondent Jessica Williams, a woman who is absolutely fearless, talks to “fetal attorney” Julian McPhillips (a civil rights lawyer gone off the rails) about the bill. The results are both enlightening and hilarious; although McPhillips accuses his interrogator of playing the “theater of the absurd”, the real theater of the absurd is the Alabama legislature.
NOTE: The YouTube video has been removed (damn you, Jon Stewart!), so click on the screenshot below to go to the Daily Show’s video of the interview:
By the way, HB494 also contains this disingenuous statement on p. 4:
It is not the intent of the Legislature to place an undue burden on the minor’s otherwise legal right to make a decision on whether to obtain an abortion of her unborn child; the Legislature’s intent is to provide guidance and assistance to minors who find themselves in the unfortunate position of having to make such decisions and to courts who must act in the place of parents in providing an alternative by-pass mode for decision making.
That’s pure bullshit.
h/t: Ginger K
video already “aborted”, too bad.
I’m guessing you can watch it at the Comedy Central web site.
Not if you don’t live in the US.
I’ve put a link in the new screenshot.
I can’t get the Comedy Central one either. 🙁
Same here, it objects to my Android version and refuses to play videos which is something I’ve never seen before.
Same here. I’ll try again later on my laptop. Fingers crossed and other superstitions!
I still can’t watch it on my laptop. The episode will be on in NZ at midnight, except I’m not sure if it will be this one – this one might already have been on. I’ll just have to DVR it and hope for the best.
On a MacBook Pro running the latest versions of OS X and Adobe Flash Player, I too am unable to view the video at the Comedy Central website.
When I clicked on the video when looking at this post in my email I got a message that the video had been removed, but once I came to the whyevolutionistrue site, the video worked fine.
I am sickened by some liberals that I have come across who claim to be pro-choice, but say that young girls should be forced to go before a judge, and be humiliated, because they must be held ‘accountable’ for having sex.
And then they claim that they are not misogynists.
The gall.
I’ve never heard a single liberal make that argument.
Me neither. Where have you come across those “liberals?”
Secular Pro Life Perspectives dot org
Claims to be atheist and liberal
Yet has no problem siding with Focus on the Family because, in the words of one contributor ‘FOF doesn’t do any more damage than abortion’
SPL also appears to have no problem with setting abortion doctors up for harassment and terrorism:
https://thetruepooka.wordpress.com/2014/04/07/secularprolife-abortionsafety-com/
The Friendly Atheist on Patheos has written about them in the past.
Above you wrote “claim to be pro-choice,” but here it is “Pro-Life Perspectives.” I think that explains some of the confusion. I can believe that there are some secular abortion foes, but not that there are liberal pro-choicers who act like abortion foes.
They claim to be socialist in every area *but* abortion.
Socialist?
Sounds more like conservatives playing dress up.
oh, yeah, there is a poster on Mother Jones, who claims to be liberal and pro-choice, and I had a long discussion with him, in which he stated that young teens who have unprotected sex should be humiliated in front of a judge as punishment for their actions.
I have a Catholic liberal pro-life Facebook friend who I can easily see making this argument. She’s a “Feminists for Life” type of Catholic who is very liberal on most issues. How a very liberal person can continue to support the international criminal conspiracy that is the RCC is beyond me.
If you think the fetus is a full human being then there is nothing odd about being “pro-life”. And thinking a fetus is a person has no logical connection to other “liberal” issues, such as high corporate taxes. (They are connected socially and demographically, which aren’t reasons.) The argument “you shouldn’t think that, you’re a liberal” is group-think straight up and unlikely to convince. She needs to be convinced that a fetus is not (yet) a human being is all.
She’s far too committed a Catholic for any progress to be made there, I’m afraid. It’s all she can handle, I think, to not unfriend this strident, shrill, “fundamentalist” (as she called me) atheist. 😉
I debate abortion on Secular Pro Life Perspectives and Mother Jones magazine, and there are people who claim to be liberal yet say that young girls who have sex should be ‘forced to think about their actions’ and ‘be held accountable for having unprotected sex’ and that going before a judge and humiliating said teen is perfectly reasonable.
What do they say about the young men who are involved?
They say that if men are forced to pay child support, women should be forced to gestate.
Generally speaking though, they only want to hold women *accountable* for ‘spreading their legs’, but they assure me that there isn’t any misogyny at play, because reasons.
In the end it all comes down to moralizing over what kind of sex is permissible and what isn’t. And if people, ie women, are having the impermissible kind of sex, they should pay for it by being deprived of their bodily autonomy, health, and perhaps even their lives (a man told me today that it was acceptable to kill a small # of women like Savita through forced gestation in order to save a greater # of fetuses). But he assured me that women and fetuses are equal, and that he isn’t actually arguing that women should be deprived of their rights at all.
And an attempt to conflate wage garnishment with loss of bodily autonomy.
Wage garnishment can be seen as a loss of bodily autonomy.
Wage garnishment only occurs if the guy’s a deadbeat.
So can a parking ticket, I suppose. If you have a bad sense of perspective.
Decades ago, I was assisting our surveyor in a country district (Mangamuka Bridge), staying at the hotel, and we got into conversation with a commercial traveller who reminisced about all the barmaids he’d shagged. Well that was okay, I was envious.
Next day, we were surveying on the road and he came past and stopped for a chat and conversation turned to the then-current bill to legalise contraceptive advice and abortion. And the guy turned out to be a Catholic and opined that women shouldn’t be allowed to shirk their responsibility for getting pregnant. I just had to go for a short walk to avoid saying what I thought of that.
They’re not liberals either as far s I’m concerned.
How does having a dubious moral stance and a shortage of empathy for a young girl equate to a hatred of women?
Hatred or fear or something of female sexuality, to be more precise
I totally agree with your position but not, that reasoning.
These types of people really seem to have a strong belief in the rights of a fetus. They really believe in that kind of equal right. I have argued with them about it.
Also there is a lot of moralizing, probably religiously inspired but not necessarily, so I think the hatred of women and womanly things is small component.
I spend a lot of time arguing with them too, and though some may truly believe in the rights of the fetus, many don’t, as they offer a rape exception. They claim that fetuses have an intrinsic right to life and that they are precious, and then they say that life has no value if the woman was raped precisely because she didn’t *choose* to have sex. The fetus is only precious if the woman chose to have non procreative sex. They speak of holding *sluts* accountable for their immoral actions.
That, to me, demonstrates that they don’t really care for fetuses, and that they just want to punish women for daring to be sexually free.
I don’t think that many give up their notion of the fetus having rights in the case of rape. It is more that rape is obviously so bad that they can’t defend it and the consequences, although some do. It is then the lesser of two evils but they still value the fetus.
If you think that the bulk of the anti abortion movement, including many women, don’t really care for the fetus and its rights but really only want to punish women for being sexually free, I think you are quite wrong.
Most of those people would not care about sexual behavior if it didn’t lead to abortion. Except maybe the general religious aversion to sex but that applies to both sexes.
No, I think that it’s really about punishing women for having the wrong kind of sex, since their *entire* argument hinges on ‘holding women accountable for their actions” and when I have asked them why the rape exception they say “she didn’t choose to spread her legs/pussy” (actual quotes) etc.
And they are also very unconcerned about infants and fetuses dying stillborn from lack of pre and post-natal care. Their wallets are suddenly *more* important than those fetal lives, because punishing women for having sex isn’t a part of it.
The true believers are the people who oppose abortion in every circumstance. The true believers are the people who are so concerned with the sanctity of life that they think that mandatory organ donation to save dying 5 year olds is totes legit.
The rest base their arguments on slut-shaming, and ‘keep your knees closed’ has nothing to do with care for fetuses, it’s ALL about controlling women.
If rights are inalienable, as they claim, then those rights should have *nothing* to do with HOW one is created. Those rights should be *intrinsic* to the embryo. So, why should it suddenly lose those precious rights based on whether or not the woman ‘spread her legs’ or was raped???
I agree with Muffy there.
I think much ‘morality’ is based on an instinctive Puritan/fascist mentality that thinks “Somewhere, someone is doing what they want to. This must be stopped. They must be punished”.
Oh good grief!
Look on the bright side. You may not be able to get an abortion in Alabama but you can always get a gun and lots of ammo.
It kicked, so I stood my ground!
+1
Initially I was just making a joke, but now I’m starting to wonder. According to Tuscaloosanews.com, the law “allows a person to claim self-defense in using deadly force if the person believes he or she is in danger.”
It doesn’t say you have to use a gun, just deadly force. So suppose abortions are now illegal in Alabama (just for this thought experiment), but a woman happens to have a Plan B pill lying around. Maybe her sister brought it in from out of state. She feels her life is in danger, so she takes it. That’s technically standing her ground, isn’t it?
I think technically you re absolutely right, but speaking as someone who lives in a stand your ground state, that’s not how the law is applied.There was the story of an African-American woman from Florida whom used a gun against her abusive husband and was still found guilty even though her trial took place after the passage of stand your ground, in fact it happened right around the same time as the Trayvon Martin case.
I wish I had more details, but I can’t remember enough relevant info to find an article about it.
No need to look it up, I remember reading something about that also. You’re probably right. Not only will stand your ground laws be applied by juries in a racist fashion, but in a sexist fashion too.
That case was complicated, and I think the sentence was heavy handed, but not equivalent to the Trevon Martin case. The detail there was that she went back to confront her husband, and fired a warning shot. She was eventually let out on appeal.
Sam Harris says (and I agree) that you should only use a gun to help you escape (if at all possible). If what you say is true, then she did not follow that principle.
See, that’s why I wished I had a source to cite, one tends to miss all the subtleties when trafficking in sketchy memories like that.
Hmmm, I must be thinking of a different case. In the one I’m remembering, she was in the house with her kid, saw someone approaching, came out of her house and told him to stop, he kept approaching, so she fired.
Ah I remembered many of the details wrong (especially the kid bit – I got their location completely backwards), but here was the case I was thinking about.
Plan B does not induce abortions, unless my understanding is wrong.
It supposedly prevents release of an egg, and thus prevents fertilization. Or it may prevent implantation.
It does not terminate a pregnancy.
Plan B is just an extra strong does of hormonal birth control and it will only prevent ovulation.
If the woman has ovulated it is too late and it won’t do a thing.
It prevents implantation of a fertilised egg. Pro-lifers consider it to be abortion because they believe that life starts at conception (i.e fertilised egg stage – but saying that, wouldn’t preventing release of sperm by using a condom also be considered abortion because the sperm could potentially have fertilised an egg?).
No, it does NOT prevent implantation of a fertilized egg. No bcp does:
Levonorgestrel, or Plan B:
There is zero evidence that LNG can cause a fertilized egg not to implant.
1. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20933113
“LNG had no effect on blastocyst viability or hatching and did not prevent blastocyst attachment and early implantation.”
This same study, incidentally, discussed a clinical trial of LNG and describes it as “ineffective to prevent pregnancy” when taking at the time of ovulation.
2. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23114735
This is a systematic review. It also discusses the Copper IUD (below) and UPA (below). A discussion of in vivo studies of LNG in other mammals notes that “Treatment with LNG in the rat and monkey does not affect fertilization or implantation.”
Ella (Ulipristal Acetate)
Many major scientific agencies-the International Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics, the International Consortium for Emergency Contraception-have concluded that the answer to the question “could UPA possibly cause a fertilized egg not to implant?” is ‘no’-it just doesn’t have a significant enough effect on the lining of the uterus, but while you can call the LNG question settled the answer to this one is more like “probably not.” You can read a contrasting view here: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24440997
1. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2971744/..
The main mechanism of ulipristal acetate is to inhibit follicular rupture. In other words, it prevents eggs from leaving the ovaries.
2. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22770536
This discusses the role of drugs in UPA’s class in general, including LNG and mifeprestone (RU-486). It notes that UPA causes a very slight effect on endometrial thickening if taken at a certain point in the menstrual cycle.
And finally, the IUDs, which HL objects to as well: Copper IUDs work because copper is toxic to sperm.
1. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8972502
“The current data do not indicate that embryos are formed in IUD users at a rate comparable to that of nonusers. The common belief that the usual mechanism of action of IUDs in women is destruction of embryos in the uterus is not suppor ted by empirical evidence.”
They also looked for spermatozoa in the uteri of women with IUDs and found that this confirmed the proposed anti-sperm mechanism of the copper IUD.
“Early signs of implantation have been investigated by measuring biochemical markers in serum during a menstrual cycle, comparing women with medicated IUDs, such as a Cu-IUD, and those with an inert IUD as well as controls. The results showed a strongly reduced incidence of implantation signs in women with the Cu-IUD, indicating its prevention rather than interruption of implantation.” In other words, there aren’t embryos there to implant.
Chill. I thought Plan B was the ‘morning after pill’ so I might be confusing it with something else. Since I have never lived in the US I am not familiar with generic names for contraceptives.
I am chill. I believe in providing evidence for my claims. Ru-486 is the abortion pill, and republicans don’t want women using it, and are trying to block it, because they want more late term abortions
Well, I didn’t plan on my comments being turned into a semi-literature review. Republicans don’t care how Plan B or Ru-486 works because they are anti-science when the science doesn’t back up their claims. Preventing implantation (which is how some contraceptives work by changing the structure of the uterine lining) to them is akin to abortion because they believe that life starts at conception. That is totally nonsensical, but we have to argue over their ideology (life starts at conception) rather than how the pills work because if you give in to that kind of ideological rubbish you have already lost the argument and give more ground than you need to. Most contraceptives are three-pronged: prevent ovulation, prevent implantation, and increase cervical mucous production so that sperm can’t penetrate into the uterus. Some Republicans are anti-contraception so it doesn’t matter if you explain how contraception works, because their position is untenable on many levels and you have to reason based on that. It wouldn’t matter if contraception happened to work by inducing a herd of unicorns to kill sperm cells, because the fact is having it reduces poverty, allows for people to plan families, frees women from the continual drudgery of taking care of many children, and reduces the size of the population so that we aren’t placing so much pressure on our environmental resources. Those are a whole load of benefits that are independent of how those pills work.
You should probably stop saying that contraceptives prevent implantation when my citations prove you wrong.
And an embryo doesn’t need a thick uterine lining to implant, which is why ectopic pregnancies happen. The thick lining is for the woman’s protection from invasive embryos.
I said some contraceptives, not Plan B. Your citations were specifically on Plan B. I rather think that this is getting pedantic and off topic so I won’t comment about this any more.
My citations covered the *only* contraception that has been accused of preventing implantation.
The science is correct. No form of hormonal BC can prevent imolantation.
What a dream job for the corrupt and greedy. You get to pick your cases, the government pays you for doing it, and your client never ever fires you, complains, or interferes with your legal strategy.
Can I just say, I love the new Professor Ceiling Cat. Not pulling any punches.
You are very much needed in this world.
Thank you
New? I don’t think he’s ever pulled any punches against religious or political targets. Maybe his willingness to comment on other atheist bloggers has changed, but he’s always been pretty brutal with republicans.
You can never really be to brutal with republicans, eh.
The old Prof. c.c. pulled his punches?
Had not seen too many of these before:
“That’s pure bullshit.” [at the end of this article].
It is sorely needed. I like that Jerry is using this language. I don’t think he is being offensive and I appreciate it.
There’s a new one? Did he regenerate? 😀
The seeming disconnect seen in these laws showing up in states that protect the fetus yet allow actual children to suffer is actually quite simple. There is no room in the uterus for the proper fitting of bootstraps.
It’s the old joke about the GOP: They care about people before they are born and after they die. Between those times? Not so much. Not much of a joke, actually.
Pro life GOP argue that the right to life is so very precious that women *must* lose the right to bodily autonomy, and suffer harm and even death for the precious life that is a human embryo.
Yet they complain if their precious tax dollars are used to expand medicaid which would undoubtedly *save* those very embryos from miscarriage, stillbirth and rising infant mortality rates.
So,I ask, why are human lives only precious in utero,and not in any other situation?
Because at that point, the hypothetical baby could magically turn into a wealthy Caucasian, who’s so much more important than a poor minority. Once the baby’s born and you’re able to confirm that it isn’t rich or white, the mom suddenly becomes a Welfare Queen who’s popping out brats in order to milk the system as she drives around in her 1976 Cadillac to by lobster and caviar with food stamps.
You’re not going to find any “sense” in the TeaOP’s stance on abortion because it’s rooted in religion, not rational thought.
Hence the part where said hypothetical baby might magically* turn out to be a wealthy Caucasian instead of a poor minority.
*The word magical was supposed to be a tip-off that I was talking about a spontaneous race-change rather than just a “we’re talking about these babies but not those babies,” but I realize in hindsight that it probably wasn’t that obvious.
I’d have no problem with there being a heavier burden to get an abortion if these groups actually wanted to fund programs that would actually lead to fewer abortions having to occur. Like proper sexual education and more readily available contraception including Plan B.
But they seem to fine with the status quo, and then complain about how all these people are on assistance programs because *gasp* it turns out having children is not only really expensive but consumes a lot of time/effort.
“I’d have no problem with there being a heavier burden to get an abortion…”
I sure would. There should be no barriers to women seeking this specific medical treatment, which the Supreme Court ruled they have a right to. That’s not really negotiable.
Yes. What Heather said. Right on.
There are literally barriers to me getting a tattoo, but abortions should have nothing.
This is what this debate has led too.
The actual getting of an abortion is probably barrier enough.
You could take your tattoo problem to the supreme court.
Literally barriers? You mean, walls?
They could be moats or barbed wire fences instead of walls.
For some reason I am reminded of the short-lived, rancid, Parker-Stone vehicle called “That’s My Bush”. So tough to believe it was so long ago. One of the episodes involved an aborted fetus that somehow survived and went on to lobby politicians for the pro-lifers. Complete with over-the-top laugh track, employed at some of the most cringeworthy moments. (if it doesn’t position you to the right place, the fun begins at t= 8 minutes.)
I wonder if attorney fees will depend on whether a zygote, morula, blastula, gastrula or fetus will be represented.
I further wonder if a spontaneous abortion during the legal proceedings will be problematic.
“Your honor, we seem to have lost… we request a 30 minute recess to establish if the plaintiff is, uh, still in situ.
If provision has been made for legal representation of the unborn, can we soon expect such representation for the undead?
We already have that: Mormons.
What’s next, a lawyer for your ovum and sperm? Will the lawyer grill you on why you didn’t have sex when you were the most fertile, or why that fertilised egg didn’t implant in your uterus?
On a side note I have heard that pro-lifers use the continuum argument for why they don’t like abortion i.e a fertilised egg becomes a baby with no breaks inbetween. But a baby can become, say, a murderer and it’s not like saying that they were once innocent as a child is going to hold in a court of law. So, yeah just because a fertilised egg can become a baby does not mean that more pain and misery (not to mention that a margin of society becomes the arbiter of half the populations right to decide what happens to their own bodies) will result from banning abortion or making it less accessible.
I don’t know why cancerous tumors shouldn’t be represented, too.
Pro lifers argue that a brain is *not* necessary to be considered a person, that only human DNA is.
So, by that logic, parasitic twins, brainless ancencephalic babies, braindead accident victims, and hydatidiform moles (which are grossly deformed fetuses) should ALL have personhood rights, and it should be a crime to remove them from their host or from life support.
How about warts? I’m sure they contain DNA…
But warts are not inherently rational!
The pro-life argument for zygotic personhood goes like this:
Every zygote has human DNA. That DNA contains all of the genetic information needed to make a person. That DNA just has to be expressed. Therefore, the zygote is already a person, because people are people based on what they are (h.sapiens) and not on how they can function.
So, I ask, how about those fetuses that are born without brains? How can you say that a zygote has the ‘inherent capacity for rationality’ if it fails to develop a brain? They say that ‘the capacity for a brain was in the genes, but external forces prevented it from developing a brain’.
So, by pro life logic, if human beings are known for having minds, and human DNA is what makes human beings, then the human DNA in a zygotic organism already has a brain/mind by virtue of being composed of human DNA.
Circular logic at it’s finest.
Of course, the geneticists here might have something to say about how genes have to be *expressed* for it to matter…