Tag Archives: Women’s Issues

Polemics

Analyzing four bad arguments in favor of abortion rights

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The post is here.(H/T Rational Theism)

Excerpt:

As a bioethics student, I’ve encountered several challenging arguments in favor of abortion.  In my research on the subject, there have been several authors who’ve forced me to think about the issue more deeply and to sharpen my arguments against it.

But there are also some pretty bad arguments out there.  In popular-level discussions about abortion, you’ll often hear pro-choice advocates use arguments that completely miss the point and that show a lack of familiarity with the arguments on the pro-life side.  In this post, I want to point out four such arguments and show how they’re really nothing more than red herrings.

  • The first bad argument for abortion is the idea that you can be personally against it, but you shouldn’t force your beliefs on others.
  • The second bad argument for abortion is that a woman can do whatever she wants with her body.
  • A third bad argument is that it’s a women’s issue, so men have no right to tell a woman that she can’t have an abortion.
  • The last bad argument for abortion is that it should be legal because women will keep having abortions even if it’s not, and we should at least ensure that they will have them in safe environments (instead of in back alleys with rusty equipment).

Click through to read the whole thing and get all the responses!

Commentary

MUST-READ: Robin of Berkeley explains why the left hates Sarah Palin

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Robin’s article is here at American Thinker. (H/T ECM)

Excerpt:

Like for most feminists, it was a no-brainer for me to become a Democrat. Liberal men, not conservatives, were the ones devoted to women’s issues. They marched at my side in support of abortion rights. They were enthusiastic about women succeeding in the workplace.

[…]Then along came Sarah, and the attacks became particularly heinous. And I realized something even more chilling about the Left. Leftists not only sacrifice and disrespect women, but it’s far worse: many are perpetuators.

The Left’s behavior towards Palin is not politics as usual. By their laser-focus on her body and her sexuality, leftists are defiling her.

[…]The Left has declared war on Palin because she threatens their existence. Liberals need women dependent and scared so that women, like blacks, will vote Democrat.

And so the Left must try to destroy her. And they are doing this in the most malicious of ways: by symbolically raping her.

Just like a perpetuator, they dehumanize her by objectifying her body. They undress her with their eyes.

They turn her into a piece of ass.

Liberals do this by calling her a c__t, ogling her legs, demeaning her with names like “slutty flight attendant” and “Trailer Park Barbie,” and exposing her flesh on the cover of Newsweek.

And from Atlantic Magazine’s Andrew Sullivan “Sarah Palin’s vagina is the font of all evil in the galaxy.”

Nothing is off-limits, not actress Sandra Bernhard’s wish that Palin be gang-raped or the sexualization of Palin’s daughters.

As every woman knows, leering looks, lurid words, and veiled threats are intended to evoke terror. Sexual violence is a form of terrorism.

Read the whole thing.

Do conservatives oppose women?

Conservatives think that men and women should make good choices and do good things. That is why on this blog hardly a moment goes by without me praising women like Michele Bachmann, Marsha Blackburn, Jennifer Roback Morse and Trayce Hansen for making good choices and doing good things.

For example, here’s Michele Bachmann speaking out about National Adoption Day.

Adoption is a good thing. Conservatives support the choice to love and nurture vulnerable children. We don’t support the choice to kill an unborn person. Conservatives support good choices, and oppose bad choices.

News

New Zealand researchers link abortion to higher rates of mental illness

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Story from Fairfax Media. (H/T Beretta Blog)

Excerpt:

New Zealand researchers who examined the medical history of more than 500 women have concluded abortion “leads to significant distress in some”.

Women reporting adverse reactions were up to 80 percent more likely than women not exposed to abortion to have mental health problems, the Otago University study found.

That finding has raised questions about justifying abortions on the basis of mental health.

The study, reported in the British Journal of Psychiatry, found the risk of mental illness was “proportional to the degree of distress” associated with the abortion.

[…]More than 85 percent of women reported a least one negative emotional reaction, including sorrow, sadness, guilt, regret, grief and disappointment.

[…]The study found that women who reported at least one negative reaction had rates of mental health problems “approximately 1.4 to 1.8 times higher than women not exposed to abortion”.

The report concluded: “This evidence raises important questions about the practice of justifying termination of pregnancy on the grounds that this procedure will reduce risks of mental health problems in women having unwanted pregnancy.

Read the rest here.