Laurie Penny

Pop culture and radical politics with a feminist twist

Rick Santorum and the sexual counter-revolution

To call this a culture war would be to imply that more than one side is fighting.

By Laurie Penny Published 25 February 2012 11:19

Almost a century ago this month, women's rights activist Emma Goldman was arrested in New York for distributing "obscene, lewd, or lascivious articles". What she was doing was handing out pamphlets about birth control, with the aim of freeing women sexually and socially from the burden of unwanted pregnancy, and she got a spell in a prison workhouse for her trouble.

Walk around Lower Manhattan today, as I did this morning, and you'd think that history had vindicated Goldman's long campaign for sexual freedom.

Pop songs promising a catalogue of horizontal delights pump out of the doorways of shops selling dildos and cheap knickers in the early mornings. Men hold hands with their husbands in SoHo. Wall Street workers in skirt suits jostle on the subway with excited teenagers in tiny shorts defying their parents and the winter chill.

Everywhere, on billboards and bus-stops and hoardings a hundred feet high, images of female sexual availability bulge and shine and flutter their perfect airbrushed eyelashes. Thighs glisten, legs spread and giant red lips open wetly for the latest low-calorie yoghurt. Surely, you'd think, this is a sweaty shangri-la of erotic liberty. Surely this is one place where the sexual revolution of the 1960s was allowed to reach its logical conclusion.

Step into any coffee shop or diner that carries the rolling news, however, and you'll find that in the land of the free not everything is as free as it seems. Over the past few weeks, right-wing politicians have launched an all-out assault on women's sexual and reproductive freedom and LGBT rights, attacking not just gay marriage and abortion but contraception, too.

In 2012, the morality of hormonal birth control is now a serious hot-button issue in the Republican presidential race. Last week, not a single woman was allowed to testify before a Washington hearing on reproductive rights and "religious freedom" -- which includes allowing bosses to deny their female employees contraceptive health coverage on moral grounds.

Meanwhile, the state of Virginia debated whether or not to force every women seeking an abortion to submit to vaginal probing with an ultrasound device, a policy that campaigners called "state-sponsored rape" -- one state representative commented that he couldn't see what the problem was, as these women had already consented to being penetrated when they got pregnant.

As panels of terrifying old men gather on national television to debate whether and how far women should be punished for having sex outside marriage one could be forgiven for thinking that American politics had temporarily been scripted by Margaret Atwood. As the recession crunches down, the country is awash with anti-erotic, anti-queer, anti-woman rhetoric that goes beyond 'culture war' into the territory of sexual counter- revolution.

The Republicans know that contraception in particular is a losing issue for them - a New York Times poll found that two thirds of voters, including 67 per cent of Catholics, support requiring employee health care plans to cover the cost of birth control, and Obama is up ten points with women from August- but they can't help themselves. One whiff of an uncontrolled pudenda and they start scrapping like housedogs who have been sprayed with pheromones, which makes for such classic TV moments as candidate Newt Gingrich, currently America's most famous serial adulterer, seriously participating in a debate about sexual continence.

To call this backlash a culture war would be to imply that more than one side is fighting.

This is far from the case. Compared to pageant of homophobic and misogynist pants-wetting going on on the American right, all the Democrats need to do to make themselves look like a sane and useful political outfit is to sit back and watch the Republicans engage in auto-erotic asphyxiation.

Americans have short memories, particularly in election years, and most seem to have forgotten that it is barely two months since President Obama stepped in to restrict the sale of the morning-after-pill- to girls under 17 -- move seemingly designed to reassure the increasingly suspicious, sexist American centre-right that he hates sexual freedom a little bit, too. Just not as much as those crazy Republicans.

Curiously enough, precisely the same arguments seem to be at play when British conservatives attack abortion rights and sexual health - they might be gradually reintroducing fear of female sexuality into mainstream public life, but at least they're not as bad as those crazy Americans. Meanwhile, the public conversation about women's rights and sexual freedom is creeps back, inch by inch, towards conservative censoriousness.

This new sexual counter-revolution is bigger than America. The rhetoric of god, marriage, morality and little girls learning to keep their legs closed has crossed the pond with all the tooth-aching tenacity of a Katy Perry song. Last week, we had Baroness Warsi going to the Vatican to announce that Europe needs to be more 'confident in its Christianity'.

This week, it's a campaign by the Telegraph to remind women, their doctors and the government that abortions are not available 'on demand', a move that follows two years of attacks on sex education and the legal right to choose in parliament. Just like in the United States, the effect of this mission creep of legislative misogyny is to chip away at public support for women's right to control our bodies and our destinies.

It's worth reminding ourselves what birth control and abortion actually mean in political terms. The hormonal birth control pill was the first step in a technological revolution that, within living memory, liberated one half of the human race from functional dependency on the other. With legal abortion as the other side of the equation should birth control fail, women can finally be the mistresses of our own reproductive systems, rather than the slaves of it.

We can choose when, if and how many children we want, we can be sexually active without fear of pregnancy, and we can participate, at least in theory, in every area of public and professional life- we can have, in short, all the advantages that men have always enjoyed through accident of biology.

Pro-choice campaigners speak of a woman's right to "control her own body", rather than have it controlled for her by her husband, the church or the state, as if that right were a social given rather than something that our mothers and grandmothers fought and went to prison to win.

When conservative head-bangers like Rick Santorum complain that birth control encourages women and girls to have sex outside marriage, the appropriate response should be "yes, and?". Of course we want to have sex outside marriage without fear of social or economic punishment. Of course we want to control our fertility and, with it, our future.

These are precisely the technological advances that make real equality a possibility, and they are precisely the advances that players in the big boys' throwback club of modern politics wish to curtail when they complain of "moral decline" in public life.

The sexual counter-revolution is all about control. It's about control of women, control of desire, and control of political space at a time when elected representatives have nothing to offer voters beyond sops to our most fearful prejudices. As for those dirty billboards, they are part of the equation. A culture of objectification is part of managing and monetising the social fact of desire.

Anglo-American culture has never had a problem with sex as long as it is carefully managed -- as long as it is enjoyed only by straight men and endured by women, guiltily,in the dark.

Tags: Republican Primaries

More from Laurie Penny

226 comments

Tue, 2012-02-28 17:12 — Buckskins (not verified)

Jackass, you sure got me there. I feel shattered. Yet one more thrust into my aching heart from your rapier like wit.
Skewered again, the pain...the pain.

Sat, 2012-03-10 10:34 — andyg (not verified)

"But, good my brother,
Do not, as some ungracious pastors do,
Show me the steep and thorny way to heaven;
Whiles, like a puff'd and reckless libertine,
Himself the primrose path of dalliance treads,
And recks not his own rede."

Mon, 2012-03-12 22:37 — jankaas (not verified)

(in parts as per usual...)

evening andyg. i see you remain of the opinion i am trying to prove something i most certainly am not. of course i realise the link i provided states categorically that the cause can't always be determined. i knew this because, well, because i supplied the link...i also tried to make it clear that your blinkered focus on this ratio is a bit silly. time to change the record pls.

but in answer to your natural vs un-natural causes; old age parenthood is clearly a natural cause, and getting pissed is not. and whatever either parent was doing at conception, the days/weeks/months/years leading up to it is just not that relevant.

Tue, 2012-03-20 18:48 — andyg (not verified)

Jankaas my little honey baby, can you just tell me what I am supposed to do with your no 2?
How have I played games with the Holocaust victims? Let me tell you young man that what you say you have very little knowledge of. Have you anything worthwhile to say or are you finished?

Sun, 2012-02-26 13:04 — jankaas (not verified)

@Sir M

(my longish post just won't go 'live' so a brief version)

"Once we start arbitrarily deciding who does and doesn't have the right to life based on such things as disability we are basically assigning different values to different people."

i don't agree. aborting a foetus we know will become a disabled human being, is not the same as assigning different values to humans. and to conflate this testing with sex selection is disingenuous as being female is not a disability.

you then, as ever, post a stunning bombshell of profound observation;
"Then you'll get these same nutters who are anti abortionists screaming that abortion is justified if the fetus is gay."

brilliant. (though we should reflect on the proximity to Red Haired Decapitation claims a la Sam Harris..?) nevertheless i think your vision is entirely possible.

Thu, 2012-03-15 01:02 — jankaas (not verified)

i repeat; why can't you just give a straight scientific answer?

seriously. all this Joda shite is ever so underwhelming andyg. calling your bluff now, you appear to know sweet fa about biology. prove me wrong and answer the question about evolution. please.

Tue, 2012-02-28 17:19 — Sir Michael (not verified)

"...where you see the problem of an end that aims at perfection, i want and end to suffering."

Isn't this the same problem just in the opposite direction? Suffering can be considered to the opposite end of the scale that pleasure sits on. Minimizing suffering while maximizing pleasure is indeed a worthy goal, but it is can be very utilitarian when the principle is taken too far (indeed Bentham used this as the very definition for the utility of humanity).

I go through some pretty nightmarish times. A dark depression can seep into every part of me and make me utterly incapable of being as useful, or being as able to feel pleasure, as any blind or severely disabled person. Times when getting up takes a monumental effort, when I just can't find the will to eat anything more than the odd snack for days, and I spend all the time wondering about whether or not it'd be a good idea to splatter my plasma all over the carpet. To eliminate that suffering, would it have been better that my initial larval form had been halted before I became life? (Note: I am asking this as an academic question not as an emotive one, so please don't be worried about offending with any response).

The definition of suffering is as nebulous as value, or ability, or joy. I still think that when you take this road, as noble as it is, you are still seeing people as a means to an end, not an end in themselves.

Sun, 2012-02-26 13:15 — Babz (not verified)

While I'm all for women and gay rights, I doubt celebrating women trying to wear the shortest skirt possible no matter the weather should be celebrated as progress.

Thu, 2012-03-01 19:28 — jankaas (not verified)

again this thread is preventing anything and everything....will try smaller chunks...

just to clarify that yes this is an emotional topic, but i'm not out of control nor do i think you are.
i can't find your definition of when life begins. i did provide my version, in 2 parts no less. and i am currently of the conviction that 22 weeks is a cut off based on available medical evidence.

Sat, 2012-02-25 12:49 — Spud Middleton (not verified)

"..fact check Emma Goldman: she was more than just a women's rights activist."

Laurie knows this. All her mates are anarchists. She's goes to the cinema with them and they find themselves curled up and desiccated by the trauma of sitting through schlocky bio-pics...and you don't much much more radical than that.fact check Rudolph Rocker: he did more than rock; and like all cultured people spent a fair bit of time in Liverpool.

Thu, 2012-03-01 19:32 — jankaas (not verified)

"Unfortunately the creator doesn't."
who is this creator? why does he/she create appalling disability? why does he/she abort 1/3 of the unborn?

Mon, 2012-03-12 22:41 — jankaas (not verified)

so i am more than happy for us to continue this discussion with a ratio you would accept. and if you want we will say that all spontaneous abortions are entirely caused by man's activities. ok? i really can't think what else to do to get you to move on, so i'll try and do so now.

Thu, 2012-03-01 19:33 — jankaas (not verified)

"Didn't the Nazis have a go at natural selection and destruction?"
oh purleaze.....to equate my position with that vile doctrine is most offensive. but perhaps this is what you meant? i wish for severe disability to be removed, and before you know it we're all doomed unless we look like Ken and Barbie?

Mon, 2012-03-12 22:42 — jankaas (not verified)

i tried to point the big finger at what really matters by use of that cytogenetic study. you know the one who's authors you accuse of knowing sweet fa...? what you seemed to have missed is that these abortions show aberrant chromosome constitutions. our bodies, all by themselves, get rid of pregnancies that have genetic errors. what caused the abnormality ranges from the entirely natural (older parents trying to conceive) to the un-natural (drugs, depleted uranium, flying planes), but the spontaneous abortions tend to be similar in that the genetic code is flawed.

that is nature doing the sorting out and removing the damaged ones. most of them in any case. vast numbers of them. but those that slip through we can now identify and deal with as we choose.

and that's my point. any questions Teacher?

Sat, 2012-02-25 12:51 — Gerry Tierney (not verified)

A good article, and welcome reprieve from your misandry.

Thu, 2012-03-01 19:34 — jankaas (not verified)

"Imagine that one of your children had an accident that left them physically impaired or/and deformed in some way. What is your decision now?"

i answered this already in my definition of life. so of course that life is no less precious to me than before the accident. but that is not the same as, for argument's sake, i knew in the 1st trimester that my child would be born in a vegetative state. you don't see a difference?

Sun, 2012-03-11 11:22 — andyg (not verified)

"1) 1/3 of all pregnancies spontaneously abort; you believe this is not a natural ratio, but caused by man's activities."
A. I explained that man plays an indirect part of some of these statistics. You fail to evidence either where these statistics come from and at the same time agree that man has had an impact on the environment when it comes to health. You've failed to answer the Iraq question that I put to you and also the Ophelia question.
Given your repeated 1 in 3 question and the fact that you agree that man has played some part could you now tell me statistically or otherwise which man does play a part and which abortions you refer to as "natural?"
Don't go onto anything else just answer this question and only this question.........apprentice.

Sun, 2012-02-26 13:57 — Sir Michael (not verified)

@Jankaas - "i don't agree. aborting a foetus we know will become a disabled human being, is not the same as assigning different values to humans. and to conflate this testing with sex selection is disingenuous as being female is not a disability."

That's my point though. Who really determines what constitutes a disability? Is being a female a disability. Absolutely not because we are posting from England. The same question asked in Saudi Arabia might yield a different result. They'd certainly be considered less than the men there. What about deafness? If we find out that a fetus is destined to produce a deaf child do we abort? Some might think that's a tough call, this couple would vehemently disagree...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/1916462.stm

What about cognitive ability? If it could be determined that a child would be of a low IQ (Forrest Gump style) what should we do? There are many who would abort, but I find the very idea of this horrific. Compared to Einstein we are all functionally retarded, yet would he assign us to the reject bin of humanity? If we allowed that to happen we'd effectively be just having a scale of what is acceptably smart for a human, and putting the bar beneath us. Who's to say that someone like Einstein shouldn't just move it above is?

I am pro choice for the woman and her life. She has absolutely not obligation to carry any fetus until it becomes viable any more than my disused yogurt pot has rights because it still has slime in it. I am very anti "designing" the future of the human genome, especially on the basis of whatever the current cultural norms deem to be a disability or acceptability. Remember genetic variance is vital to a healthy species, yet we have sperm banks and egg donors being selected on height, weight, IQ and even hair colour. Biotechnology, being new and having arrived during a time of moral and ethical ambiguity, have not been tested at all in this way, and it's only going to get worse as the technology improves.

Once its decided the parasitic spongy soup growing inside a woman is destined to be given a shot at life then let's not judge from that point. Let's throw the dice and accept the number that comes up.

Thu, 2012-03-01 19:37 — jankaas (not verified)

lastly, you sidestepped my question why the parents and siblings don't count in the decision to bring a severely disabled child into their midst. could you have another go?

Sun, 2012-02-26 14:01 — andyg (not verified)

"Once we start arbitrarily deciding who does and doesn't have the right to life based on such things as disability we are basically assigning different values to different people. It's not just *her* future she is deciding, but everyone elses."
I strongly agree with your point(s) Sir Michael but there is a huge debate from a moral and ethical point of discussion, a fine line of acceptabilty and disgrace. One example is that of rape and pregnancy. Disabilty is a wider field than people imagine. A lively debate I'm sure should it arise.

Thu, 2012-03-15 18:40 — jankaas (not verified)

i see you have nothing sensible to say about an honest question regarding evolution. you could just say that you have absolutely no idea about the science, but instead you pretend you've already answered. not good enough.

you imagine that a severely disabled person, one who is so disabled they can't reproduce, has an effect on the human genome. to call that claim nonsense on stilts is an insult to both nonsense and stilts. if you had even a cursory grasp of evolutionary theory, let alone the relatively lofty GCSE level, you'd never have made such a stupendously flawed claim. it's basic science, it's basic biology; a human who can't reproduce is an evolutionary dead end. fact. no amount of poetry and paintings will change that.

but i do now finally realise that you had no intention of dealing with facts or a frank & honest exchange. my bad for overestimating your desire to understand another contributor. so it goes.

unless you deal with that single elementary evolutionary question we are done. it's up to you andyg.

Thu, 2012-03-15 03:00 — wachtner (not verified)

After the introduction on the market of the pill as a simple way to manage birth control, religions and the societies they have justified, based on morals and values that are conducive to limiting sexuality in order to avoid unwanted children, have become useless and obsolete.

It is to be expected that this new reality is disturbing for many people since the existence of the birth control pill and its consequences constitute the basis of a revolution that subverts truths and traditional values that have been used to govern societies for several thousand years.

Sun, 2012-02-26 14:54 — Discuss[n] (not verified)

"This week, it's a campaign by the Telegraph to remind women, their doctors and the government that abortions are not available 'on demand'...Just like in the United States, the effect of this mission creep of legislative misogyny is to chip away at public support for women's right to control our bodies and our destinies".

This, I'm afraid, is completely wrong and is either a lazy or deliberate misreading of the paper's investigation. What the Telegraph exposed was the offer of sex-selective abortions, which are illegal and for obvious reasons. More often than not, sex-selective abortions are carried out to eliminate female foetuses. Yes there's a reproductive liberty argument, on the part of the woman, but there is a much more pressing gendercide argument. We cannot complacently dismiss gendercide as an Indian or Chinese problem. Asian communities here, in Canada and the US abort female foetuses too.

Sat, 2012-02-25 13:47 — K Rodgers (not verified)

I see a mostly male response here and I am embarrassed by what they have to say - I hope it is only because I am not a misogynist.

I do think Laurie missed a trick by not comparing what is going on in the US to that which has gone on for years in countries such as Iran (substitute Iran for you favourite right wing Muslim lead country)

When I saw that panel of men making decisions on what women could or couldn't do with their bodies I was immediately struck by the similarity to seeing a group of Mullahs sitting there making laws that prohibit the personal freedoms of women in their countries.

I was horrified when I saw that bunch of men sitting there discussing what rights women should have over their own bodies and I really don't care if they were elected or not, they should only get a say when they have a womb - it really is that simple.

To my fellow men, if you really don't get the argument then try imagining a world where you as a male are still considered a second class citizen when it comes to the rights you have over your own body. Imagine a world where a bunch of women could force something into your body (rape you) and implant a parasite inside you, and then if you decide to have that parasite removed you have to undergo a procedure where a group of female doctors insert a large metal rod up your ass just so as you can look at the parasite you want removed. If you really can imagine that and you still don't get it then you never will and you should remove yourself from the discussion.

Wed, 2012-02-29 16:11 — Buckskins (not verified)

"you're much more honest when you just post about cocks and crap."

Jackass, I defer to your expertise on cocks and crap.

Tue, 2012-03-13 20:32 — jankaas (not verified)

well one of us had to do something to get to what matters. and hadn't put you down as someone who is after victory? rather odd teacher training course you've been on... ;o)

ok, so there appears to be a natural process by which a pregnancy is aborted. these tend to have genetic abnormalities of a type that would mean a severely disabled person would have been born. you have made it clear that you don't think there is any problem with this fact of nature. after all, it's nature doing the sorting.

but this natural process is not perfect, and some of these genetically damaged pregnancies are not sifted out. we however can now find them, and remove them, just as nature intended. we are merely giving a helping hand.

discuss.....teacher.

Wed, 2012-02-29 16:15 — Buckskins (not verified)

I agree with Andy. Obviously Jackass was born without a full deck. So are we to abort the likes of him ?.....On second thoughts...

Sun, 2012-03-18 18:03 — jankaas (not verified)

^
i already dealt at length with the definition of disability and who decides. not going to start all of that all over again with a person who thinks the Holocaust is a useful tool to beat others up with.
you don't like me? fine. you despise me? so be it. but to abuse the memory of those millions of children, women and men just to score petty points is grotesque.
and hear from you that this somehow fits in with your Christian faith and the teachings of Christ is utterly obscene in my opinion.
which is why you and i are done with sensible adult debate, but by all means keep casting stones just as Jesus intended his followers to do.

Sun, 2012-02-26 16:53 — Spud Middleton (not verified)

"Compared to Einstein we are all functionally retarded, yet would he assign us to the reject bin of humanity?"

Is this actually the case? Consider Newton. It's been estimated that for about 10 years after the Principia, there were perhaps only 20 people in Europe-so presumably the world who could fully grasp the significance of the work. (Leibnitz and his counter-claims notwithstanding.) Today, anybody embarked upon an A level course will have digested Newton within the first year. Likewise with Einstein: the first year of a degree course in Physics.
It's not the cognitive ability per se but the creative, imaginative faculty required to make these discoveries in the first place. I'm not sure these attributes can be tested for...whatever Neuroscientists-'a la Sam Harris' might tell you.

However, the discussion is fairly pointless. The majority of abortions are performed out of 'convenience' for want of a better word...I'm certainly not advocating it, but given that, why wouldn't-or shouldn't-deafness or other disabilities tip the scale on the side of 'inconvenience'. If you accept abortion on demand then you're accepting de facto abortion on account of disability or 'aesthetics' in the ginger/gay example.

Sat, 2012-03-03 17:42 — andyg (not verified)

If you're referring to the 1 in 3 ratio and you are stating that this is high then what can be done to lower this ratio? If it is natures way of natural selection then so be it. Unfortunately that's life. There is a debate that argues that the world is overpopulated therefore natural selection must be low in ratio, however this does not give us the right to decide who lives and who doesn't.
"so i mean that we can now sift out bad genetics from our gene pool. this may require aborting a foetus where we know that carry terrible genetic codes."
A. But wouldn't the parents have known this beforehand?
"dinosaurs laid eggs, so there's your answer."
A. And the dinosaur came from what?
"is there a reason for your avoidance?"
A. Not at all.

Tue, 2012-02-28 19:24 — andyg (not verified)

Any harm or suffering that is inflicted upon another human being;
Is harm and suffering that is inflicted upon me.
For I am a member of that Human race.
So never send out to see for whom those bells toll;
For those bells,
they do toll...........
For thee.

Sat, 2012-02-25 14:14 — Sidney L (not verified)

Just an aside for Spud: claiming a marginalized person's anger over being marginalized is illegitimate is a form of oppression.

Thu, 2012-03-08 19:34 — jankaas (not verified)

my this is hard going, not really sure that less is more if you get my drift?

"These are my views of morality."
which you derived from thin air? my morality comes from reading theism/deism/spirituality, science, history, philosophy and art. as a result i do not use the term creator as it isn't of any value beyond filling in gaps and making excuses where a simple "i do not know" will do.

then this leaves me scratching my head, so if you could expand. i just have no idea;
"A. Sickness and ill health are socially constructed."

"A. What is this consistancy?"
that you allow the creator to abort 1 in 3 pregnancies but you won't allow a single medical one is absolutely inconsistent.

"A. I think not."
then i misunderstood what you meant when you wrote "the status quo should apply until that day arrives."
so what is the status quo according to you?

Tue, 2012-03-20 21:05 — jankaas (not verified)

as i predicted exactly 2 days ago andgy; you just can't stop yourself from disrespecting the Holocaust victims. such repellant behaviour, but on and on and on you go. to you all is fair game apparently, as long as you feel a little better about yourself. well done you eh?

Tue, 2012-03-13 00:19 — John Cheese (not verified)

^08 March 2012 at 12:33
You're still a whiney liar, nutjob...

Tue, 2012-03-20 21:17 — andyg (not verified)

I haven't the faintest idea of what you are writing about dear and I dare say neither have you.The truth is that you have run out of steam aswell as ideas. Unless positively prompted you lack the ability to form ideas. You, instead have to resort to childlike insults and tantrums like a spoilt little boy. Have you anything to write or not?...........apprentice.

Sat, 2012-02-25 14:40 — Spud Middleton (not verified)

"Just an aside for Spud: claiming a marginalized person's anger over being marginalized is illegitimate is a form of oppression."

Well I couldn't ever agree with that. Unless your definition of 'oppression' is 'not agreeing with somebody'. However, I'm intrigued. Which marginalised person's anger have I claimed to be illegitimate?

Incidentally, quoting vague but pithy little maxims with universal application 'is a form of oppression'.

And what's your definition of 'marginalised'...and what if you doubt the validity of somebody's self-elected description as marginalised?

Sun, 2012-02-26 17:38 — Mitch (not verified)

@ Sir Michael and Spud.

Would either of you agree that making your own choice, regardless of what that was based upon, is better than not having any choice. Natural selection has been replaced by no selection at all. We can complain about it being wrong to have designer babies but that is all nature has been doing, constantly tweaking the design to find what works, what fits. We no longer have natural predators to help make the choice of what lives and what doesn't, so the question now is only 'who should decide' - I would say it is down to the individual. As Sir Mike's example shows many people will want many different things. Deaf lesbians may want to have a deaf child because it would be more like them. As the state is being run more and more like a business I don't think it is wise to let them have the final say. What if it was found that a certain gene made for people who did what they were told and accepted drudgery more willingly: perhaps a race of 'Workers' who could sleep rough, eat only bread cheese and water and still offer a full 18 hour day's work. You can bet the Tories would be encouraging them to bread

Thu, 2012-03-08 19:36 — jankaas (not verified)

though i managed to post 1st go, it's a bit messy, so to clarify, this is the bit that i don't get;
"A. Sickness and ill health are socially constructed."

Sun, 2012-03-11 13:40 — jankaas (not verified)

i never said you don't know what you think yourself.

i need you to describe what YOU think MY position is on those 2 items.

i did so yesterday around 4pm with what I think is YOUR position. was i right, or even close?

Sun, 2012-02-26 18:01 — Spud Middleton (not verified)

I'm not anti-abortion. I'm just saying that as long as you get one on demand there's little point quibbling at the reasons offered. If the technology ever arrives, I doubt anybody's gonna actually say: "I just don't want a ginger kid" or "he looked a bit gay/shifty/ugly in the scan".

Sun, 2012-02-26 18:16 — Buckskins (not verified)

Hi Jonathanjk, where I come from...we don't eat fetus. We do eat apple pie. The apple portion of the pie starts as a viable apple seed. Without that, there's no apple in the pie. Think of the apple seed as a fertilized egg in a mother's womb, and the Mother to be as the life support that is needed to have the fertilized egg ultimately manifest itself as a healthy baby. The apple seed will go through the same process but of course with a different life support system until it becomes an apple tree. Awe, ain't this lovely. Now then, anyone care for a five star apple pie recipe with vanilla ice cream served over the hot apple pie...

Pollen + Apple seed = Apple for pie.
sperm + Egg = Baby.

Sun, 2012-02-26 18:26 — Buckskins (not verified)

Jankass, please don't tell me what I do and don't believe. As with the fact that every apple seed does not mature into a beautiful apple tree. Every unborn child not given the right of life. We are animals. Not robots. And if you have a beef with God, that's between you and him.

Sun, 2012-03-11 13:52 — jankaas (not verified)

on to Michael Brooks then.

read that article, and like a couple of the comments to it his article is slightly flawed. specifically by claiming that a 3% difference is highly significant is a nonsense. statistical sampling usually has an error rate between 2% and 5%. also Michael is a Physicist, which isn't exactly the most suitable expert for medical matters?

but on the social construct piece, yes i am fully aware of the false positive issue with medical treatments. this is do fear is one giant red herring with regards abortion for severe genetic abnormalities. hence i still need your post describing what YOU think I stand for.

Tue, 2012-03-20 22:31 — jankaas (not verified)

"You, instead have to resort to childlike insults"

at least in know where the line is andyg, unlike you i don't use the species shame that is the Holocaust to try and win arguments with. i could never sink that low. i know Holocaust survivors, and relatives and friends of those who didn't survive.
nor do i post lies as you do about me. and you call yourself a Christian?
it's a shame no other posters can see what you are doing here, what you are really like. no doubt they still think of you as that kindly old lady who does such good work. but as these threads tend to stay around for ages, there will come a moment to link to this vomit you've been writing.

Sat, 2012-03-03 20:01 — jankaas (not verified)

"If you're referring to the 1 in 3 ratio and you are stating that this is high then what can be done to lower this ratio?"
yes i do think this is insanely high, but you don't think that 1 out of every 3 human lives (your definition from conception onwards) being taken by this creator is high? by comparison the amount of additional termination i advocate is minuscule. but that tiny addition is not permissible as far as you're concerned. that makes very little sense to me in the absence of an explanation from this alleged creator. where is his/her take on this? what is your source for the aims and desires of this creator?

"If it is natures way of natural selection then so be it. Unfortunately that's life. "
that reasoning means by definition that we should not attempt to cure illness, or alleviate suffering because after all "that's life". do you agree with that logic? if not, why not?

"the right to decide who lives and who doesn't."
how come we are not allowed to make decisions for ourselves as a species? where does it say that human autonomy is not permissible or desirable?

"A. But wouldn't the parents have known this beforehand?"
as per your lottery analogy, clearly not. but now that we can test a foetus for severe genetic abnormalities, why does the creator not want us to use this knowledge to sift these errors from our gene pool? how do you know that the creator has not created us with the intent to figure out such basics as; "If you can improve your lot, then you must do so, even if this means aborting those foetuses that i missed out in my imperfect and wasteful system of procreation."

"A. And the dinosaur came from what?"
are you going all the way back to Abiogenesis with this? i thought you asked which came 1st, the chicken or the egg? and i answered, with much evidence in support, that it is undeniably the egg. what do you want me to answer here?

"A. Not at all."
so......you're answer is?

$fracman's picture$

Sat, 2012-02-25 16:24 — fracman (not verified)

I enjoyed this. Spirited as ever. But subs shouldn't have let this through:

'With legal abortion as the other side of the equation should birth control fail, women can finally be the mistresses of our own reproductive systems, rather than the slaves of it.'

hmmm.

Sun, 2012-02-26 19:06 — Sir Michael (not verified)

"Would either of you agree that making your own choice, regardless of what that was based upon, is better than not having any choice."

No. I don't.

I think women should have the option for a completely free, easy, anonymous, and entirely hassle and unintrusive abortion at their whim within the 22 week time frame (or whatever it happens to be).

I don't think there should be any gender examination or exam made to determine disability before then, or if there is the parents shouldn't be made aware of such things. Let them take their choice and take their chance.

I know exactly how this sounds, and I know how, right now, I'll look very isolated on this. The option to have a child or not is fine. The option to have a perfect child, and by extension attach value to that child beyond it simply being another human in the world, should simply not exist.

The idea that "We can complain about it being wrong to have designer babies but that is all nature has been doing, constantly tweaking the design to find what works, what fits." isn't accurate at all. In fact it is just the opposite. Nature never designs perfection, nature fucks around with things and hopes they work. It isn't even looking for perfection, and doesn't try to sculpt an entire species into one mold, prefering instead to make so many variances and differences that single species eventually start splintering and turning into different things.

Look at what we are doing. Some sperm banks only accept donations from supermen of over six foot, IQs of a 150, white with blonde hair and blue eyes.

http://www.cryobank.com/How-It-Works/Donor-Qualification/

Women face similar stringent tests for their eggs.

The best donors are paid extra to supply more. Why would any donor need to supply more than two or three times in their entire life? Because they are better? It's not impossible to imagine a particularly healthy "specimen" being the genetic father of 50 or 60 children, easily. Even without that happening if characteristics are all genetically similar the result could effectively be the same as inbreeding. You know what nature has done to populations of creatures which have failed to foster genetic variance?

This whole bioethics thing really has to be thrashed out before some moron goes and finds a way to extend life by 400 years or something.

Thu, 2012-03-08 05:18 — John Cheese (not verified)

^27 February 2012 at 20:09
@jank: look who's the idiot- you've had response problems on this site too, you liar...

Sat, 2012-02-25 16:36 — vincent reed (not verified)

I agree that women should be able to choose when and with whom they have sexy with we are all human after all. I don't think it's a good thing that semi-naked women are used to sell yoghurt etc. I also think that killing children (described as a parasite by one post) is wrong. If your stance is life doesn't begin at conception, fine. When does it start? and therefore when is the cut-off point for the kill feotus/baby? It's not about restricting choice. It's about saving lives. (In case your wondering my son is disabled. He lives with me not his mother. Should I have killed him before he was born?)