I'm coming to the conclusion that talking head applies to more than those it is normally applied to and that common sense and reasoning ability have truly gone the way of the dinosaur :(.

Rated for quicksand.

The whole thing is based on religious beliefs and not anything tangible. So, our by-design secular government should NOT make laws determining when life begins for human beings unless that benchmark can be proved scientifically...Meanwhile, the religious have a right to and should help promote their beliefs to each other and endeavour to recruit the non-believers as they can. Otherwise, stay out of government.

There will, yes, be a formal attack on Griswold v. Connecticut which in the 60s gave women the right to contraception. r.

This comes from the same Republicans who have introduced a bill in the House that will cut funding for WIC. For those of you who are unfamiliar with this federal program, the Women, Infants and Children Nutrition program gives nutrition education, growth monitoring, and vouchers for nutritious foods like milk, cereal, peanut butter, fruit juice and tuna to pregnant women as well as children age 5 and under. Since 1974, it has consistently been one of the best administered and most scandal-free national assistance programs.

Don't fool yourself. Reproductive rights are not the only issue here. This, combined with the dismantling of labor laws, is an organized attack on women and children by a few wealthy and powerful white men whose agenda is to keep their riches through the mere cost of holding persons they consider to be lesser citizens in a Dickensian hell of fear.

Let me tell you, Kent, I also resent that Google has chosen to implant ads on this page that tout adoption as "a loving alternative." To what? Being a fully enfranchised citizen of the United States with the freedom to control my own body?

Seer, there does seem to be a dearth of common sense and reasoning sprinkled about these days, yes. Thanks for visiting.

Linnn, to some extent I think these are ploys expected to lose. But, as has been suggested of violence in movies, they have the effect of dulling the senses if we let them. They make the extreme seem ordinary, and although not initially acceptable, over time they become “what is expected.” I also think they're intended to appease the base and get the really hard core to turn out for elections. In that regard, it's like shooting the moon in the card game Hearts (certainly an ironic name for a metaphor in this venue); it's a longshot strategy to win votes by focusing on the minority. If the Left is apathetic and fails to be equally incensed, it will win.

Jonathan, it's almost a too-easy prediction at this point. They seem not to be limiting themselves in any way in their extremeness and instead to say “if we're going to be out, we might as well really be out.” They're probably figuring that if they win on only 10% of these, they can make that be more than they usually win on by just running more than ten times as many attempts.

Coyote, you're absolutely right. You should post about it. I indeed intended to refer to the WIC issue but I didn't have time to write enough detail. I figured it would come up in comments, though. That along with Michele Bachmann “winning” the recent GOP debate by, among other things, promising to repeal recent gains in health care coverage... Sigh.

And yes, I wish I had control of the Google ads. I didn't get that particular ad chosen for me. But I know the effect you're talking about.

Very frightening. I can't believe how intense reactionary and misogynistic politics has become.

Tony, as people have fled the Republican party, the “purity” of those remaining has increased. It's an odd effect. You'd expect it to leave them feeling less certain of their “mission”, but anyone less sure is the ones who are the ones jumping ship, so the effect is counterintuitive. The mistake would be if the Democrats and Independents continue to deal with this new Republican party as the Grand Old Party of days gone by. It's really a new animal and worthy of careful scrutiny.

I heard about this on a piece on NPR, the man who was interviewed was one of the leaders of this "Birth begins when the sperm hits the egg" movement was calm and calculated, quoting science instead of religion, trying to not sound like who he was. The story also mentioned ectopic pregnancies and he was adamant that the fertilized egg there was a life not a woman killer. Miscarriages would be crimes, and birth control pills would be illegal because they pre-kill life.
This is an insidious movement that I hope does not gain any kind of power.
rated with appreciation

Poetess, hi. Thanks for visiting and offering the extra perspective.

The information is indeed very scary. It's still very puzzling that among all the most important issues which significantly influence the lives of people (i.e., people going into poverty, unable to pay for medical services, losing their house, etc.), this one always comes on top. Where I live, the state government spent a lot of energy passing a bill forcing women who want to have an abortion to look at a picture of their fetus at least two hours before the procedure.

Kanuk, it's because pleasing specific voter blocks is most important. And clearly that party is bought and paid for by certain special interests. You can tell this because (a) they all move in lockstep and (b) even strong-willed people who've stepped out of line (like Gingrich) have been forced to recant. One would like a window into the place where the centralized pulling of those strings goes on.

" Emerging Republican policies are certainly are not pro anything that follows birth, since from the moment of birth, needy children are not a priority to protect, care for, or educate."

YUP... good to see you here Kent. Rated of course.

Kent, I think it would be helpful to "untangle" these issues. I believe we are talking about several distinct issues, and each of these need to be considered separately. These include

1) whether a fertilized human ovum is a "person," or at what point it becomes a person or should be considered a person.

2) what it means to be a "person," what inherent rights, if any, a person should have, and what obligations we owe to a person.

3) whether a fetus should have some legal protection, even if we do not consider it to be a person.

4) does the moral status of the fetus change as it develops, and if so, what we are obligated to provide to the developing human before birth or after birth.

5) who should make these decisions -- only the mother, the courts, or the people through their elected representatives. A related question is the point at which the State has as legitimate interest in protecting the life of the developing human.

I'm sure there are many other questions that need to be considered, but the answers to the above questions would at least provide a basic theory for how these issues should be considered.

Without such a theory we end up putting the cart before the horse, trying to resolve higher-level issues before more fundamental issues have been addressed.

Thanks for bringing this to light here on OS. I try to refrain from politics here, but I must comment on this. Good luck to anyone who hopes to win elections banning contraception.

It’s all just shameful.
Kent.. you're absolutely right!

These people make me furious and sick!
rated

There is still a part of this that's a gray area for me. "... the term “persons” as used in the Code of Alabama 1975, shall include all humans from the moment of fertilization and implantation into the womb."
As I recall from high school science (a word unfamiliar to the drafters of the Alabama Code), there is a time period between fertilization and implantation. Would this delay create a half-person when both requirements of the code haven't been met?
Strict constructionists could have a difficult time with this concept. Since it took a constitutional amendment to change the 3/5 rule for slaves this might be a good question to tie up the courts with for 8 or 10 years.

"And clearly that party is bought and paid for by certain special interests."

Bingo. And those interests do not include any of their constituents. People vote for these clowns thinking, "Hey, that politician agrees with me about being pro-life; I'll vote for him/her." But the truth is that the politician is not working on behalf of the voter; s/he is working on behalf of the corporate overlords who are paying the bills. It's in their interests to have a desperate, ignorant populace who will take whatever jobs they can to keep from starving.

Life begins at ejaculation and ends at birth, indeed. Once you're born, kid, you're on your own if you didn't pick richer parents. Your own fault, you know.

Since the fight against homosexuality is slowly sinking in the west, the religious right no doubt wants to do more dead horse beating by continuing to campaign against womens' rights. For the time being, the checks and balances system of government has prevented these wingnuts from instituting Christian sharia law in this country, but it's a never ending struggle.

Trig, thanks for the support.

Mishima, whatever you and I think of the answers to those questions (and we probably disagree), it seems clear that something blunt like changing the meaning of an ordinary English word already in play in various places is not the way to make the change. Doing so does not clarify anything, it just forces a lot of confrontations in a lot of odd places. As Rachel noted, an implication of this is that 5 minutes after conception, someone can legally drive in the carpool lane. That's just one silly example, but it illustrates the folly of assuming that what was meant by “person” at some past time was in any way “obviously” what is being suggested now. This legislation is clearly founded in a notion that this is a common sense interpretation of the word, and it clearly is not. However distasteful, each of the uses of person is a political matter and must be resolved politically. Changing the meaning of person retroactively is precisely the mechanism used once before in getting us to the Citizens United problem, where we are asked to consider that corporations are “legal people” because someone was too lazy to specify a lot of more specific issues, like how corporate liability and the ability to sign contracts should work for corporations. I want no more of that.

Muse, I hope it turns out to be as much of an uphill battle for these people banning contraception as you suggest.

Shiral, thanks for stopping by and weighing in.

2_lazy, I think the intent of the wording is to just draw a bright line. It might, as you say, still create ambiguities. But I'm sure whoever got as far as making this much law would be happy to intercede with more ... if we let them get so far. Which I hope we don't.

Noble, thanks for visiting and underscoring my point.

Lefty, it may be some of that, of loss of control due to one thing being replaced by another. But they seem to be going all out with a lot of different approaches. It seems a machine gun style approach hoping to just score almost any victory, perhaps figuring this is a lost election anyway and why not try for the moon? They may learn a great deal about tactics from just trying now while perhaps they know they could lose. The worse danger may be later when they've done that learning.

Kent,

Much of the logic of your piece escapes me. For example, most estrogen/progestin birth control pills work to prevent ovulation and to thicken the cervical mucus. Both these effects combine to forestall fertilization in all but the rarest cases. Consequently, it’s unclear how the Alabama law would prevent this type of birth control.

Further, implicit with implantation would seem to be a desire to become pregnant and, hence, an absence of any intent to abort a pregnancy, again, in all but the rarest cases. In advance of such efforts are usually in vitro fertilizations or the use of frozen sperm to induce a pregnancy in situations where sexual intercourse that is more natural is ineffective.

As another example, your criticism of those who believe that life begins at conception extends to every adherent to the tenets of the Roman Catholic faith, many of whom are both registered as Democrats and think as Liberals. So why tag as “ . .outrageous . . . the party that thinks we don’t have enough money to take care of our entire population [and] insist[s] on policies that allow and encourage that same population to grow without bounds.”? Such is clearly NOT the case, since you missed over a billion people who also believe as you falsely claim all Republicans do.

This seems fuzzyheaded thinking at its worst. These seems arguments so inapplicable and misapplied, that they belong among fans at a soccer game, not in any serious minded political debate.

However, even discarding all of the foregoing, Kent, let me ask you a straightforward question, which I hope you will answer. What do we do with a government program like Medicare that collects an average of $150,000 in premiums from Americans during the course of their lifetimes, but now disburses an average of $450,000 for them? Do you believe we ought to keep such programs in their current form?

Argue all you want about what government should, and should not, do, just use a little common sense, please.

Chris

UncleChri, regarding your question about Medicare costs, I'm a bit at a disadvantage because I'm not familiar with the particular number you cite. And I'm busy with other things unrelated to this post tonight, so I don't have time to research it. So I'll answer as if the number you offer is correct, reserving the right to dispute that if I later find it's not.

Even if it is right, the fact is that it wouldn't be surprising in an industry that shows no price elasticity—there is no way of correlating prices charged and costs incurred because these things are profit-making organizations and there's massive amounts of non-health-care-related expenses that are passed on simply because it can be. In my view (and I don't doubt you'll disagree), medical care must not be a commercial endeavor. The entire system needs to be reformed in order to make that so. Single payer universal health care would fix a lot of that in my opinion (and, frankly, I think it would simplify business in ways some businesses don't want to acknowledge, perhaps because the present system gives some businesses an untallied edge over others that they'd just as soon hold onto). The prices should be negotiated and that would bring things down a lot. If there's going to be business competition, it needs to be on specific issues for which we want people to compete, but competing on who can charge the most for the least care (that is, insuring the healthiest and ignoring the others) is simply not acceptable.

Universal health care would offer a lot of opportunities for consolidation and reduction of stupid expenses unrelated to actual coverage. It would mean we wouldn't have to employ people to push programs on people. It would mean each business (not medical businesses, regular ones) wouldn't need on-staff experts to interpret a plan or navigate among them. It would mean that providers wouldn't need interface people to negotiate about how to best bill. It would mean no expenses to train people in how to do that billing in the optimal way. It would mean no people employed for the purpose of trying to find ways to exclude people. It would mean no lawsuits about the failure to get covered, saving legal costs on both sides. It would mean no people at insurance companies whose job it is to call and harrass you into going back to work earlier than your doctor says is prudent. And so on. It would mean you wouldn't have a town with three MRI machines each that are used 1/3 of the time because they are competing entities that each have to have them for competitive purposes but who can't actually use resources offered by one another. It would mean that if a machine was going unused, there would not be an economic penalty to using it more. (Right now, you price these things on what makes the best total revenue, not what gets the best amount of use.) And there are indirect savings from having more cared-for people in the workforce and for having people who are healthy not stay home from working to take care of people who are sick but can't afford care (which loses productivity in the workplace). There are a lot of savings for having universal care.

I actually also agree with some critics of the present system that the costs of malpractice should be addressed, though I disagree most of those same people that the way to fix things is to simply eliminate lawsuits. That would lead to poorer care and corporations run even more out of control than they are now. Rather, we need to find a non-lawsuit based way of assuring that due care is used. One example that's occurred to me, for example, is a kind of libertarian approach: to simply disallow malpractice insurance. In that case, doctors would have to pay out of personal funds if they made irresponsible mistakes, with perhaps some adjustment to standards so that people didn't have to be superhuman. Mistakes are going to happen, and the fact of a mistake should not be a lottery win at the expense of others. But on the other hand, irresponsible mistakes need to be addressed, and they will not be addressed if the courts are locked out. So there are complications.

I want to be clear. I don't really want to find myself debating the individual details of my reply here. I have responded not to open all these cans of worms for debate here and now, but only to tell you that I do think these are things about which one can have a non-trivial theory that addresses your concern. If you want to take me to task or otherwise debate me, I invite you to make your own post. Maybe I'll even visit. But that's my answer to your question so you don't think I'm being non-responsive.

I'm going to opt not to respond in detail to your criticisms of saying that it might have an implication on birth control other than to note that I did not say it would definitely have the effect of making birth control illegal. I don't know how courts will rule. But it seems fair to assume that it might become an issue, as more than one person has suggested. And certainly there are people pushing a “the pill kills” message. So you may or may not be right that it wouldn't come to outlawing birth control, but since I didn't say it definitely would end one way or another, such a statement is not strictly in conflict with what I said.

Thanks for visiting.

Hi Kent. Jonathan Wolfman also wrote about this a few days ago and I took issue with old new lefty whom I thought underrated the perniciousness of the anti-right-to-abortion movement.

You take is spot on and as I read somewhere, legislatures should not appoint themselves as arbiters of philosophical questions.

Abrawang, yes, that's my position as well. There's an art to creating a pluralistic society and these kind of single-position views that force confrontation on things that are not widely agreed upon are a way of turning us against each other, which is no good for any of us. Or, said better, is only good for people trying to raise political money in inappropriate and divisive ways.

There are other forms of contraception--most notably the IUD and morning-after pill--that would be illegal under that definition because they prevent the fertilized egg from being implanted. For women who cannot take birth control pills for health reasons, this would leave them with limited options, all of which have a higher incidence of unintended pregnancy.

There would be other implications of that law, if passed, that would erode women's rights. Essentially, as soon as a woman becomes pregnant she would move from being in control of her own body to being an incubator. Everything she does could be scrutinized for its effect on the fetus, and given how little we really know about the effect of all sorts of things on a developing embryo/fetus, the potential for ridiculous and oppressive litigation is enormous.

It's interesting to watch the trend of Republican State Governments eliminating rights, one, five , and ten issues at a time. The strategy is to wear down the public and the press, so we are left with the continued enslavement of women, and the subjugation of the working classes...

A point that is often overlooked is not the details of any one particular law, or attempt at passing one - Kent's post is valid on all fronts for one simple reason - it's called a 'slippery slope'.

The hardest thing is that first step (and there have been many desperate attempts at locomotion in this issue). But once that first step is achieved successfully all that follow it are more easily made.

And words, terminology, the importance of language can't be over stated, especially in legal matters. Largely because people's eyes often begin to glaze over when confronted with a barrage of language that they don't encounter in common usage - and so things happen (laws get passed) due to this aversion we have for making sure we understand just what that barrage of 'legaleze' might actually mean in the real world.

We leave it up to those we think do understand without really knowing if they might have their own agenda, or what it might be and could mean to the rest of us.

But firstly and foremost, making a change is difficult in theory - once it's no longer theory but written down (law) making change then is considerably more difficult. Law makers know this. They're counting on 'us' to continue to be averse to further and more explicit education on these matters.

I hope we disappoint them.

Tilapia, I've moved your remarks (and my replies to them) to The Cornfield.

Yes, that is fine, you are still not dealing with the issue. Enjoy the bubble.

Susan, I think your remarks are spot on. Thanks for stopping in and offering your perspective.

Gary, interesting choice of word. I'd have said “pretty scary” but OK, we'll go with “interesting.” Would that it were interesting enough for the mainstream media to do some more regular stories on the movement. I like Rachel Maddow and the whole MSNBC lineup, but I often wish they were not on cable, since I think a lot of people end up missing them there.

Seer, it's a good point about slippery slopes and figuring out when to sound the alarm. It's the frog in boiling water problem that Al Gore mentioned in An Inconvenient Truth. I should note on top of these attempts, even if the move to change the law fails, they'll probably still argue that the word person means what they suggest notwithstanding a failure to enshrine that interpretation in law.

Those that label themselves pro-life fail to address several aspects of what should be considered pro-life.

In addition to being pro-life they should also consider pro quality of life. this should start by stopping child abuse and providing a good education. the problem is that the religious upbringing that they're taught involves using strict disciplinarian methods to "teach" their children. This often involves beating the truth into them although that isn't what they call it. this is why those that label themselves pro-life are often quite violent and angry.

They also fail to consider many other threats to life including war, industrial accidents and perhaps your favorite the fact that without the environment the human race will die off.

How do we criminalize stupidity?
Rated.

Thank you for posting this.
It means so much more to have this written by a man, hate to say it but it's true, things mean more when those other than the ones being attacked speak.

I just wrote about the third state to cut funding for Planned Parenthood.

EXTREME. We should be better than this.

Rated.

Zachery, excellent points. Thanks for making them.

Dave, sad to say, it's something we have to live with. Then again, it strikes all of us at one time or another—just some harder than others.

Isalina, glad to be able to offer some support.

SkinnyDave and Gary J both make excellent points. I am glad to know more about this and the times they sure are a changing.

Thanks for posting...the sad thing is that the people in our government actually trying to pass this type of legislation will not be affected by it. The people with enough money and connections will be able to get whatever services they need for their families, whatever laws are in place to block the majority from having access to decent reproductive healthcare. That's how it was before R. vs. W.

It's easy to have a cavalier attitude about other peoples' lives and bodies if you will never have to face those hard decisions yourself.

p.s. Just wanted to add, this is already happening right now...I doubt the families of the governor of Indiana and his cohorts, who blocked funding to Planned Parenthood in that state, rely on the health education, birth control, and Pap smears, which Planned Parenthood provides.