Originally posted by Matt Black:
Well, fuck you. More words fail me...
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quote:Can you believe that the sperm that brought Todd Akin and George Galloway into being were really the fastest of some five to ten million?
Originally posted by Matariki:
Well Todd Akin on the rabid right and George Galloway on the loony left seem to have a lot in common.
Pseudo scientic bollocks about women who are 'legitimately' raped being less likely to concieve; a sperm is a sperm is a sperm.
quote:
Originally posted by Sioni Sais:
Can you believe that the sperm that brought Todd Akin and George Galloway into being were really the fastest of some five to ten million?
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quote:This has also been bothering me. I assumed his intention was to indicate that it had to be a "genuine" rape (stay with me, here) which presumably (in his eyes) means one that has been "proven" by some legal process. However, by the time that has taken place, it would be apparent whether or not the victim was pregnant, which by his reasoning would imply that it wasn't a "legitimate" rape in the first place but a consensual act (I'm starting to sink in this vortex of illogic now) in which case the only "legitimate" rapes would be those which didn't result in pregnancy, which in the absence of third-party witness evidence would be unprovable. I think.
Originally posted by Tortuf:
What the hell does he mean by "Legitimate?"
quote:Were this true, there would be considerable fewer people on the planet.
Originally posted by Firenze:
I suspect this may derive from Galen: it was for many centuries medical orthodoxy that conception required female orgasm. Therefore, if there was a child, the woman had enjoyed the sexual encounter, therefore....
quote:Of course. And we can't let the sluts get by without accepting the consequences of their sluttiness.
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
It appears the "legitimate rape" is code for no abortion under any circumstance in Akin's case. If a woman gets pregnant, she must kinda wanted to have sex.
quote:From the quites it looks like he meant something like "rape according to the legal definition of rape" .
Originally posted by Tortuf:
What the hell does he mean by "Legitimate?" Is it not rape if the guy doesn't restrain the woman?
quote:Yep, that's about the sum of it. It's just sub-pseudoscientific bullshit designed to deflect the "are abortions OK if the woman was raped" question by asserting that a woman can't get pregnant after being raped.
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
It appears the "legitimate rape" is code for no abortion under any circumstance in Akin's case.
quote:As for Galen and the Mallards, please tell me you aren't really trying to understand the reasons for this neanderthal's obscenity.
Now you want to say that you misspoke when you said that a legitimate rape couldn't get us pregnant. Did you honestly believe that rape sperm is different than love sperm, that some mysterious religious process occurs and rape sperm self-destructs due to its evil content?
quote:There is almost a Handmaids Tale element to this accurate point by MtM. Maybe in their mad thinking :- "If she gets pregnant it proves it was not rape."
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
quote:Yep, that's about the sum of it. It's just sub-pseudoscientific bullshit designed to deflect the "are abortions OK if the woman was raped" question by asserting that a woman can't get pregnant after being raped.
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
It appears the "legitimate rape" is code for no abortion under any circumstance in Akin's case.
The really scary thing is that there are probably people out there who actually believe it. For values of "believe it" that equate to "latch on to it with religious fervour because it supports their pre-judged opinions", that is.
quote:I take it all back. It seems that he didn't go to some odd sectarian religous school, he wasn't home-schooled and he certainly didn;t go to the ordinary state schools, he went to one of the best-known and poshest private schools in his state. A place with a liberal tradition (and the old school of people like Martha Gellhorn and believe it or not William S Burroughs - both a little before Mr Akin's time) And he must have paid attention to his science classes because after that he studied engineering at a decent university.
Originally posted by ken:
Either way, he seems to be a living, breathign example of why schools should have sex eduication lessons. Because if we don;t we are abandoning innocent children to the ignorance ity of people like him. And, presumably, his parents.
quote:I'm not sure that your latter sentence necessarily follows from what he said.
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
It appears the "legitimate rape" is code for no abortion under any circumstance in Akin's case. If a woman gets pregnant, she must kinda wanted to have sex.
quote:Even accepting all that, the notion that whether it's rape or not has ANY relevance to the probability of getting pregnant is just completely stupid.
Originally posted by Scotus:
quote:I'm not sure that your latter sentence necessarily follows from what he said.
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
It appears the "legitimate rape" is code for no abortion under any circumstance in Akin's case. If a woman gets pregnant, she must kinda wanted to have sex.
Unfortunately his poorly chosen words have overshadowed the consistent logic that if human life exists from the moment of conception, then it is still a human life, however conceived.
'No abortion under any circumstance' has been set up as the most extreme position possible, but it is entirely consistent. Of course, rape is horrific and creates a situation of unimaginable awfulness. Anyone who has been there needs prayer and support, rather than condemnation. Indeed, I hope that is exactly what someone going through this horror would find in the Catholic Church. However it strikes me as odd that making an exception to allow termination in the case of rape has become the yardstick by which someone is judged to be a 'reasonable' rather than 'extreme' pro-lifer - and this seems to be the position adopted by the interviewer.
The most sensible thing Mr Akin said was that in cases of rape it's the offendor who should be punished not any child who may have been conceived.
As for the question about rarity - I do not have the statistics, but is it not the case, as he said, that as a percentage of the overall number of terminations carried out, those where rape is involved are relatively small.
quote:Apologies: I edited my post while you were replying to add this:
Originally posted by orfeo:
Even accepting all that, the notion that whether it's rape or not has ANY relevance to the probability of getting pregnant is just completely stupid.
quote:Perhaps stupid, I genuinely don't know enough physiology to rule such a notion completely out of court myself. But offensive? (Which is what people seem to be saying)
I don't think actually said that it wasn't possible to get pregnant through rape, merely (and perhaps incorrectly) that the stressful circumstances of rape make a less conducive context for conception to occur. I don't know if its phyisoloigcally possible or based on any sort of evidence, but is that such an offensive suggestion per se (apart from the way it was expressed)?
quote:I'm struggling to think of a more extreme one, to be honest. Unless you start going down the road of "women should be forced to have babies whether they want to or not", or something...
Originally posted by Scotus:
'No abortion under any circumstance' has been set up as the most extreme position possible
quote:It's exactly that position that Akin was seeking to mollify with his sub-pseudoscientific bullshit. Which means that, be it consciously or not, even he recognises that it has merit. If he thought it didn't have merit then he'd have stuck to your position of "no abortions ever" rather than effectively saying "well yes, abortions in the case of rape would be OK - but it's a moot point because pregnancy is impossible in cases of rape".
However it strikes me as odd that making an exception to allow termination in the case of rape has become the yardstick by which someone is judged to be a 'reasonable' rather than 'extreme' pro-lifer - and this seems to be the position adopted by the interviewer.
quote:Are you sure about this? I think there may be some evidence for this mechanism in insects, but in birds it is probably just postulation. This paper
Originally posted by monkeylizard:
Female mallards can "shut that whole thing down" as gang raping is a common activity in the species.
quote:
Chapter Two experimentally examines the relevance of postcopulatory female control of male fertilization success in comparison to sperm competition. By artificially inseminating groups of four sisters with a sperm mixture containing equal sperm numbers of one brother and one unrelated male we did not observe any effect of parental relatedness on gain of paternity.
quote:Allow me to assist. In physiological terms, it's complete and total bollocks. A woman's emotional state has no effect whatsoever on how well sperm cells can swim along her fallopian tubes.
Originally posted by Scotus:
quote:Perhaps stupid, I genuinely don't know enough physiology to rule such a notion completely out of court myself.
I don't think actually said that it wasn't possible to get pregnant through rape, merely (and perhaps incorrectly) that the stressful circumstances of rape make a less conducive context for conception to occur. I don't know if its phyisoloigcally possible or based on any sort of evidence, but is that such an offensive suggestion per se (apart from the way it was expressed)?
quote:That's not quite true, as it happens. Irrelevant to this argument of course. Women who have been raped can and often do get pregnant.
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
In physiological terms, it's complete and total bollocks. A woman's emotional state has no effect whatsoever on how well sperm cells can swim along her fallopian tubes.
quote:Project yourself into the place of a pregnant victim of rape. How would you feel about the sentiment expressed by Mr Akin in that case?
Originally posted by Scotus:
But offensive? (Which is what people seem to be saying)
quote:As ken has pointed out, if you move beyond the headline ans read what the man actually said, it is quite obvious that this use of the word "legitimate" is intended as a reference to the rape claim. He worded it badly and he admitted as much.
Originally posted by Matt Black:
Well, fuck you. More words fail me...
quote:Whether its irrelevent to the argument depends on what we are arguing.
Originally posted by ken:
quote:That's not quite true, as it happens. Irrelevant to this argument of course. Women who have been raped can and often do get pregnant.
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
In physiological terms, it's complete and total bollocks. A woman's emotional state has no effect whatsoever on how well sperm cells can swim along her fallopian tubes.
quote:What Akin said was;
Originally posted by Scotus:
Whether its irrelevent to the argument depends on what we are arguing.
quote:The implication of it is that a woman who is pregnant is unlikely to have genuinely been raped. I agree he didn't say it was impossible, but "really rare" is quite strong. If I was a pregnant rape victim I would take the implication that I was unlikely to have been genuinely raped badly.
It seems to me, from what I understand from doctors, that is really rare. [re pregnancy after rape] If it's a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down."
quote:This all seems strangely reminiscent of a purgatory thread about Mary!
Originally posted by Porridge:
Here's what I cannot understand:
The thinking that seems to run as follows . . .
quote:Hmmm.
Originally posted by passer:
Considering who he is, you'd think George was familiar with the CPS guidance on this sort of assumption.
quote:And while I disagree with that view I recognise it is possible to hold that view with intellectual honesty.
Originally posted by Scotus:
The starting point for the Catholic Church's teaching on abortion is the dignity of human life, which begins from conception.... From this starting point it follows, quite logically, that once a woman is pregnant, any decisions she might make about that pregnancy are no longer simply about her body, but about the life that already exists in her womb.
quote:I agree that insisting that a woman should not have an abortion even if with-holding the procedure results in the inevitable deaths of both mother and child, as has recently happened in the Dominican Republic, is an extreme position.
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
quote:I'm struggling to think of a more extreme one, to be honest. Unless you start going down the road of "women should be forced to have babies whether they want to or not", or something...
Originally posted by Scotus:
'No abortion under any circumstance' has been set up as the most extreme position possible
quote:Quite possibly, but that's not the same thing as concluding that
Originally posted by mdijon:
That he couldn't do any better either marks him out as incompetent, insensitive, careless, or all three.
quote:If he did truly mean the latter, then he is certainly wrong.
The implication of it is that a woman who is pregnant is unlikely to have genuinely been raped.
quote:...is pretty irrelevant, given that Akin isn't a Catholic.
Originally posted by Scotus:
...the Catholic Church's teaching on abortion...
quote:Ah. But 'murder' is an extremely loaded term. It implies the wilful and intentional killing of another human being. One can admit these cases are difficult, maintain that terminating such pregnancies is the same thing as ending a human life and therefore morally wrong, but also show compassion to those who make such decisions in hideous circumstances.
Originally posted by mdijon:
One can admit that those cases are difficult, but point out that one genuinely believes that ending the pregnancy is murder and therefore cannot be countenanced.
quote:Seems a perfectly reasonable challenge to me. He dealt with it badly. He could have explained why the implication was wrong without saying what he did.
Originally posted by Scotus:
he was initially being challenged on the question of whether an exception should be made for rape, with the implication that if he opposed that exception then he was holding an extreme position (rather than a consistent one).
quote:It is consistent only if he has worked as hard to shut down fertility clinics as he has to shut down clinics that do abortion.
Originally posted by Scotus:
But as I said above, all this is losing sight of the fact that he was initially being challenged on the question of whether an exception should be made for rape, with the implication that if he opposed that exception then he was holding an extreme position (rather than a consistent one).
quote:Perhaps I am letting my prejudices show, but it never occurred to me that his words could have any other meaning.
Originally posted by Scotus:
quote:If he did truly mean the latter, then he is certainly wrong.
Originally posted by mdijon:
The implication of it is that a woman who is pregnant is unlikely to have genuinely been raped.
quote:That works for me. I say it works, I disagree with it, but I wouldn't call someone to hell over it.
Originally posted by Scotus:
One can admit these cases are difficult, maintain that terminating such pregnancies is the same thing as ending a human life and therefore morally wrong, but also show compassion to those who make such decisions in hideous circumstances.
quote:I can see where you're coming from, but after the definition you get this:
Originally posted by The Scrumpmeister:
quote:Hmmm.
Originally posted by passer:
Considering who he is, you'd think George was familiar with the CPS guidance on this sort of assumption.
I think that categorising some of the ideas on that list as "myths", after defining the word as it is defined on that page is essentially saying that those things are not true, and is just as misleading and dangerous as assuming that those statements are always true.
quote:I read that as guidance to a prosecutor as to how to engage with the jury, along the lines of: "This is what the defence will use to ameliorate or dismiss the allegation, and this is the clear way in which to dismiss such attempts."
It is an unfortunate fact that myths about rape and sexual violence are brought into the jury room, and form an obstacle to obtaining convictions. It is therefore imperative that we recognise these myths and challenge them at every opportunity.
quote:No? Then what else was he saying? On the face of it that's exactly what he's saaying. What else can "First of all, from what I understand from doctors, that’s really rare. If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down." even mean? Do you think he was saying anything at all? Or did he just stand up and say stuff almost calculated to offend at least 80% of the American people even though he had no actual meaning to convey?
Originally posted by Scotus:
If we are arguing whether its possible to get pregant by rape (or, vice-versa, whether pregnancy proves it wasn't really rape) then its irrelevant - but I don't think that is what Mr Akin said.
quote:That's true, but he is male just like the decision makes within that religious denomination, and would evidently agree that men are the only legitimate determiners of what women do with their bodies.
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
quote:...is pretty irrelevant, given that Akin isn't a Catholic.
Originally posted by Scotus:
...the Catholic Church's teaching on abortion...
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