Pure Naturalistic Fallacy

In case you can't see the screen shot, one Keith Wiggenton says this:

" Look, I did not make the rules. Nature and evolution made the rules. Like it or not, females have the organs for producing children, it's just a fact of life. Your stupid arguments that try to evade or avoid that fact are just silly. If you don't want to be burdened with that responsibility, go have your reproduction organs surgically removed. Until then, quit trying to play different cards than the ones you were delt by nature."

That is about the purest distillation of the naturalistic fallacy I've ever seen.

We DO NOT have to follow nature's "rules" that's kind of what technology is all about.

As for the solution that women have their organs "removed", most young women have a very hard time getting sterilized.  And the expectation that we ought to be willing to use our organs anytime if we ever want to use them at all, is a facet of rape culture.

The fact that women get pregnant is natural, the fact that you want to prevent them from stopping or interrupting it is a CHOICE you make to enforce nature upon them.

Anti-choicers Don't Understand Bodily Rights

A pro-choice woman posted a video of her toddler daughter promoting Planned Parenthood and Lienews shits all over it.

Now, obviously the girl is coached and I don't really care, but the article had some interesting takes on the Bodily Rights Argument (See this article for a good start on it).

"Three short years ago, this beautiful little girl was an unborn fetus (as abortion rights advocates demand they be referred to) in her mother’s womb. Planned Parenthood did not recognize her “bodily autonomy” that Chin says is the foundational premise of their movement."

Most Anti-choicers DO NOT UNDERSTAND the bodily rights argument. You can tell because they do things like bring up the baby's bodily autonomy. They don't get that it's about not having to use your body to sustain someone else.

• "Women don’t have obligations to strangers but we do have obligations to our children. Society accepts this de facto for born children but currently the law does not apply this obligation to those same children before birth."

NOPE. Parents NEVER have the legal obligation to even donate a drop of blood to born children, much less the intrusive process of pregnancy. How can we say the obligation is binding before birth, but not after? Do they lose rights? Are fetuses the most rights-having entities in the world?

• "The child is not an intruder or stranger inflicting himself/herself on the woman. Every human must start life inside their mother. Also, for 99.5% of abortions, the mother conceived through her own choice. The mother consented to have the child inside her when she took the risk of having sex. (It isn’t a popular statement to make on Twitter but the truth is we all learned in grade school that sex can equal babies.)"

All this is is a naturalistic fallacy and sex-shaming. Sex is not consent to pregnancy. 

• "A mother cannot simply remove support from an unborn child. She has to have the baby crushed or poisoned or dismembered in order to end her support. Instead of a passive act, like choosing not to give a kidney to a stranger, it is a violent, aggressive act that takes away the life of that “stranger.”

Actually, RU-486 and induction of labor are completely passive methods of fetal removal, but what does it matter how it's removed if it can't survive the removal? (And they don't feel pain before 24 weeks)

"Staceyann is doing a tremendous disservice to her daughter by leading her to believe that people are out there like boogeymen trying to control her body. We aren’t trying to control Staceyann’s body or Zuri’s body or anyone else’s. We are trying to stop them from controlling, from destroying someone else’s body.

Zuri’s body when it was inside your body was not your body, Staceyann."

If you strawman this badly, I'll just call you a liar. If pregnant people have to keep fetuses in their bodies, you're controlling their bodies! Just own it, already.

Catholic Hospitals should be Banned

I believe that Catholic hospitals should be banned. If the Catholic Church wants to set up a hospital, that's fine. But Catholic means it follows Catholic Health Directives. These are based on doctrine and not patient health. No hospital should be allowed to put ANYTHING above patient health.

Well, can't you just not go to a Catholic hospital? It's not that simple.

"Between 2001 and 2011, the number of American hospitals affiliated with the Catholic Church grew 16 percent, even as the number of public hospitals and secular nonprofit hospitals dropped 31 percent and 12 percent, respectively, according to an upcoming report by the American Civil Liberties Union and MergerWatch, a nonprofit that tracks religious health care mergers. In 2012, Catholic hospitals and health care systems were involved in 24 mergers or acquisitions, according to Irving Levin Associates, a market research firm. Ten of the 25 largest nonprofit hospital systemsin the country are Catholic, and Catholic hospitals care for 1 in 6 American patients. In at least eight states, 30 percent or more of patient admissions are at Catholic facilities."

Plenty of people do not live in an area where they could get non-Catholic care within a reasonable drive time.

There are 3 major areas where Catholic Health Directives affect gynecological care.

1. Post-Cesarian Tubal Ligation

Many women have scheduled C-sections for a variety of reasons, including breech position or having had a previous c-section (vaginal birth after c-section is a thing, but the risks should be weighed individually). If a woman knows this is to be her last pregnancy, tying her tubes while her belly is already open is efficient, safe, and effective. The American College Of OB-GYNs says that this procedure is standard of care. If a woman is denied this procedure in a Catholic hospital, she must undergo anesthesia again and faces more risk in the separate procedure. Women denied the procedure at the time of birth have a high rate of unintended pregnancy afterward.

Recently a woman with brain tumors for whom future pregnancy is dangerous was denied a post-cesarian tubal in a Catholic hospital.


2. Ectopic Pregnancy

Ectopic pregnancy is when an embryo implants somewhere other than the uterus, usually in the fallopian tube. It is one of the most dangerous pregnancy complications, as rupture of the tube can lead to catastrophic bleeding. Ectopic embryos are unviable and there is no saving them. There are 3 main treatments for it.

-Methotrexate. This is a drug that has been used in chemotherapy and in regular abortions. It inhibits the metabolism of folic acid, which will kill the embryo. This treatment is not always appropriate, depending on the size of the embryo and other considerations. This treatment can preserve fertility.

-Salpingostomy. This is the removal of the embryo from the fallopian tube, while leaving the tube intact. It has the potential to preserve fertility in that tube.

-Salpingectomy. This is the total removal of the fallopian tube with the embryo inside. It reduces fertility by at least 50%.

According to Catholic Directives 47-48, ONLY salpingectomy is allowed.

"47. Operations, treatments, and medications that have as their direct purpose the cure of a proportionately serious pathological condition of a pregnant woman are permitted when they cannot be safely postponed until the unborn child is viable, even if they will result in the death of the unborn child.

 48. In case of extrauterine pregnancy, no intervention is morally licit which constitutes a direct abortion."

This means that women walking into Catholic hospitals with ectopic pregnancies may have to accept a riskier and fertility-decimating procedure rather than more appropriate treatments.

According to one study:

"Participants from three Catholic facilities reported that medical therapy with methotrexate was not offered because of their hospitals' religious affiliation. The lack of methotrexate resulted in changes in counseling and practice patterns, including managing ectopic pregnancies expectantly, providing the medication surreptitiously, and transferring patients to other facilities. Further, several physicians reported that, before initiating treatment, they were required to document nonviability through what they perceived as unnecessary paperwork, tests, and imaging studies"

3. Miscarriage Management

This is the scariest area where Catholic hospitals are failing. You may remember the case of Savita Halappanavar in Ireland. Dr. Jen Gunter explains:

"Without access to the chart, “miscarrying” at 17 weeks can only mean one of three things”

A) Ruptured membranes

B) Advanced cervical dilation

C) Labor (this is unlikely, although it is possible that she had preterm labor that arrested and left her with scenario B, advanced cervical dilation).

All three of these scenarios have a dismal prognosis, none of which should involve the death of the mother.

 The standard of care with ruptured membranes (scenario A) is to offer termination or, if there is no evidence of infection and the pregnancy is desired, the option of observing for a few days to see if the leak seals over and more fluid accumulates...I, however, I have never heard of a baby surviving in this scenario. Regardless, if infection is suspected at any time the treatment is antibiotics and delivery not antibiotics alone.

 The standard of care with scenario B involves offering delivery or possibly a rescue cerclage (a stitch around the cervix to try to prevent further dilation and thus delivery) depending on the situation. Inducing delivery (or a D and E) is offered because a cervix that has dilated significantly often leads to labor or an infection as the membranes are now exposed to the vaginal flora....the mark of good medical care is that all scenarios are discussed, all interventions that are technically possible offered, and then the patient makes an informed decision. All with the understanding that if infection develops, delivery is indicated."

In case, you didn't follow all that, Dr. Gunter explains that ruptured membranes (water breaking) and cervical dilation are dangerous risk factors for infection and the only true cure is removal of the fetus.

There are numerous other cases where the presence of a heartbeat has led to a delay in fetal removal in Catholic hospitals.

A landmark study explains:

"Catholic-owned hospital ethics committees denied approval of uterine evacuation while fetal heart tones were still present, forcing physicians to delay care or transport miscarrying patients to non–Catholic-owned facilities. Some physicians intentionally violated protocol because they felt patient safety was compromised.

Although Catholic doctrine officially deems abortion permissible to preserve the life of the woman, Catholic-owned hospital ethics committees differ in their interpretation of how much health risk constitutes a threat to a woman's life and therefore how much risk must be present before they approve the intervention."

Confusion about Catholic Health Directives is often evident, so you may not know how strictly your local hospital adheres to these directives. Some allow uterine evacuation for prevention. others will make you get sick before offering it.

"the manual of Catholic hospital ethics committees, used to help them interpret and apply the directives, warns, “The mere rupture of membranes, without infection, is not serious enough to sanction interventions that will lead to the death of the child.”6 By contrast, writing in a leading Catholic health journal, other Catholic health ethicists offer a more liberal interpretation of Directive 47: uterine evacuation is indicated if abortion is inevitable and delay will harm the pregnant woman.18Therefore, the former—and arguably more authoritative—source approves of uterine evacuation only after a woman becomes sick, and the latter approves of it as a measure to prevent sickness. Our data indicate that despite Catholic leaders’ desire for strict standardization of Catholic-owned health services, varying interpretations and executions of Directive 47 exist both at the individual (practitioner) and institutional (hospital ethics committee) levels.

Cast studies from "When There's a Heartbeat"

"Dr B, an obstetrician–gynecologist working in an academic medical center, described how a Catholic-owned hospital in her western urban area asked her to accept a patient who was already septic. When she received the request, she recommended that the physician from the Catholic-owned hospital perform a uterine aspiration there and not further risk the health of the woman by delaying her care with the transport.

Because the fetus was still alive, they wouldn't intervene. And she was hemorrhaging, and they called me and wanted to transport her, and I said, “It sounds like she's unstable, and it sounds like you need to take care of her there.” And I was on a recorded line, I reported them as an EMTALA [Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act] violation. And the physician [said], “This isn't something that we can take care of.” And I [said], “Well, if I don't accept her, what are you going to do with her?” [He answered], “We'll put her on a floor [i.e., admit her to a bed in the hospital instead of keeping her in the emergency room]; we'll transfuse her as much as we can, and we'll just wait till the fetus dies.”

This doctor BROKE THE UMBILICAL CORD in order to begin treatment:

"I'll never forget this; it was awful—I had one of my partners accept this patient at 19 weeks. The pregnancy was in the vagina. It was over… . And so he takes this patient and transferred her to [our] tertiary medical center, which I was just livid about, and, you know, “we're going to save the pregnancy.” So of course, I'm on call when she gets septic, and she's septic to the point that I'm pushing pressors on labor and delivery trying to keep her blood pressure up, and I have her on a cooling blanket because she's 106 degrees. And I needed to get everything out. And so I put the ultrasound machine on and there was still a heartbeat, and [the ethics committee] wouldn't let me because there was still a heartbeat. This woman is dying before our eyes. I went in to examine her, and I was able to find the umbilical cord through the membranes and just snapped the umbilical cord and so that I could put the ultrasound—“Oh look. No heartbeat. Let's go.” She was so sick she was in the [intensive care unit] for about 10 days and very nearly died… . She was in DIC [disseminated intravascular coagulopathy]… . Her bleeding was so bad that the sclera, the white of her eyes, were red, filled with blood… . And I said, “I just can't do this. I can't put myself behind this. This is not worth it to me.” That's why I left."

This doctor refused to check a heartbeat in order to do proper treatment:

" Dr G also circumvented the ethics committee in her southern Catholic-owned hospital. She opted not to check fetal heart tones or seek ethics committee approval when caring for a miscarrying woman for fear that documentation of fetal heart tones would have caused unnecessary delays. This led to conflict with the nurse assisting her.

She was 14 weeks and the membranes were literally out of the cervix and hanging in the vagina. And so with her I could just take care of it in the [emergency room] but her cervix wasn't open enough … so we went to the operating room and the nurse kept asking me, “Was there heart tones, was there heart tones?” I said “I don't know. I don't know.” Which I kind of knew there would be. But she said, “Well, did you check?” … I said, “I don't need an ultrasound to tell me that it's inevitable … you can just put, ‘The heart tones weren't documented,’ and then they can interpret that however they want to interpret that.” … I said, “Throw it back at me … I'm not going to order an ultrasound. It's silly.” Because then that's the thing; it would have muddied the water in this case."

In another article, this chilling quote:

"Doctors told her about being forced to wait to intervene until a woman was at life-threatening risk. "We often tell patients that we can't do anything in the hospital but watch you get infected," one said."

Fortunately, people are fighting back. The ACLU has taken on the case of Tamesha Means, who was denied proper treatment while miscarrying.

"Tamesha rushed to Mercy Health Partners in Muskegon, Michigan, when her water broke after only 18 weeks of pregnancy. Based on the bishops' religious directives, the hospital sent her home twice even though Tamesha was in excruciating pain; there was virtually no chance that her pregnancy could survive, and continuing the pregnancy posed significant risks to her health.

Because of its Catholic affiliation and bindingdirectives, the hospital told Tamesha that there was nothing it could do and did not tell Tamesha that terminating her pregnancy was an option and thesafest course for her condition. When Tameshareturned to the hospital a third time in extremedistress and with an infection, the hospital once againprepared to send her home. While staff prepared herdischarge paperwork, she began to deliver. Only then did the hospital begin tending to Tamesha's miscarriage."

Her lawsuit was eventually dismissed over a technicality, but further litigation is expected.


This post doesn't even touch on Catholic Directives impacting other areas of care, but just this is enough to think about banning Catholic Directives!

Hitchens was not anti-choice

A common claim is that the late Christopher Hitchens was "pro-life."

To be clear, Hitchens being against abortion would not matter. I do not follow Hitchens. I can disagree with him, and did, on a lot of things. But people are misrepresenting his position.

Let's define some terms:

Pro-life: I don't accept this term at all, I don't think it means anything

Pro-choice: A person who accepts that abortion should be generally legal (we can get into specifics here later)

Anti-choice: A person who believes that at-least elective (non medical, non-rape) abortion should be illegal

Here's one of the "evidences" of him being anti-choice from 1989:

"I have always been convinced that the term 'unborn child' is a genuine description of material reality. Obviously, the fetus is alive, so that disputation about whether or not it counts as 'a life' is casuistry. The same applies, from a materialist point of view, to the question of whether or not this 'life' is 'human.' What other kind could it be? As for 'dependent,' this has never struck me as a very radical criticism of any agglomeration of human cells in whatever state. Children are 'dependent' too. […] Anyone who has ever seen a sonogram or has spent even an hour with a textbook on embryology knows that the emotions are not a deciding factor. In order to terminate a pregnancy, you have to still a heartbeat, switch off a developing brain, and, whatever the method, break some bones and rupture some organs."

Oddly enough, I agree. Fetuses are alive, fetuses are human, abortion is killing. It may not be the killing of a "person" (whatever that is), but it's killing. He's wrong that most abortions break bones or organs, but they do still heartbeats and brain development.

He is also supposed to have offered some sort of compromise to anti-choicers in a The Nation article in April 1989, but I could not find that article at all.

In 1990, this quote:

 "I can't think of a single circumstance in which I'd favor emptying a woman's uterus."

Ok...that would be the "personally pro-life" position.


The smoking gun, however, is this quote from 1991:

"There is, in my opinion, no choice but choice. There is no way of avoiding the choice position. What I said was that conditions could be created by politics, by actual state intervention, if you will, where people might wish to exercise that choice less, and that would be a good thing. That there should be, therefore, a presumption in favor of the unborn. But if that fails, obviously you can't push it to the point of saying, 'We will force you to carry a child to term.' Everything in one revolts against that."

That is not anti-choice. He did not support the overturning or Roe v. Wade or the criminalization of abortion unless quotes can be found to show that he changed his mind.

And in fact, a 2003 essay does not show anything contrary to the 1991 position. He talks about taking a partner for an abortion:

"at least once I found myself in a clinic while “products of conception” were efficiently vacuumed away. I can distinctly remember thinking, on the last such occasion, that under no persuasion of any kind would I ever allow myself to be present at such a moment again....The decision I took was mine and taken for myself alone. If it doesn’t have a moral basis, it does at least have a very strong instinctual one. But can I or should I be able to make it for anyone else?"

Besides the annoying implications that he is making the choice, he at least questions the idea of making it for another.

He also gets annoyed with anti-choicer antics and appropriation of him:

" Having once written a mildly “pro-life” essay, I now find that “christopherhitchens.com” links you instantly to a Web site called abortionismurder.org, emblazoned with a ghastly photograph of a dead 21-week-old baby. I resent this crude, uninvited annexation.)"

In the essay, he reiterates that embryos are human and alive, but dismisses any huge importance to them by saying that you can clone any cell and that nature wastes them all the time:

" For the theologically minded, this provides what they never much desired before: a scientific confirmation of “life from conception” morality. But then, in theory, any of our cells could be used for cloning. The merest drop of blood or piece of skin is also pregnant with the great secret of life. And, as I hinted when discussing Wodehouse’s codfish factor, this life is incredibly profuse. Men produce much more generative fluid than anyone can possibly require,...either god or nature aborts an enormous quantity of unborn children at an early stage, either because of some early warning of unviability or—given the high number of birth defects that make it to full term—not. Miscarriage and stillbirth have made mourners of as many women as abortion has. If there truly is a divine or natural design, it is a ruthless and selective one."

He also seems to praise or at least be neutral on RU-486

" And, just as refinements in medicine have made it apparent that a fetus acquires human characteristics earlier than we used to think, so competing refinements have blurred the distinction between abortion and birth control. The RU-486 abortion pill, initially developed in France, and more advanced emergency contraception induce an experience more akin to a heavy period than an abortion, and do not involve a surgical “procedure.” It’s a sure thing that such pharmaceutical solutions will become more advanced, and more available, which in turn will leach much of the pity and terror from the debate. It won’t even be possible to find out how many abortions, as opposed to how many live births, there have been in a given year. Nor will there be so many clinics to blockade, or shoot up. It really will become a “privacy” question."

He says we are better off for having to confront these life-and-death decisions and does not condemn his mother's abortions:

" It doesn’t seem to me that we have become any less human by confronting these decisions and finally accepting our responsibility for them. In the same way, I might have been better off as a younger brother than an older one, and I always did wish for a big sister, as opposed to the baby brother I did get, but if my mother had the heart and soul of a double-murderess, you couldn’t prove it by me."

And finally,

" By rightly expanding our definition of what is alive and what is human, we have also accepted that there may be a conflict of rights between a potential human and an actual one. The only moral losers in this argument are those who say that there is no conflict, and nothing to argue about. The irresoluble conflict of right with right was Hegel’s definition of tragedy, and tragedy is inseparable from human life, and no advance in science or medicine is ever going to enable us to evade that."

So, what was Hitchens? He was a man with a squeamishness about abortion. He was a man who did not have a good grasp on women's rights and bodily autonomy. He was a man who gave too much credit to the anti-choice side on it being about babies and not sex. He was someone who didn't like abortion. He was "personally pro-life." His position is the so-called moderate position of most Americans.

In other words, Hitchens had PERFECTLY AVERAGE views on abortion, which is pro-choice. He can't reasonably be claimed by anti-choicers.

Carol Everett thinks Polyamory is Rapey!

From the wonderful Right-Wing Watch:

"Planned Parenthood now allegedly also promotes thing like polyamory and open relationships, which is destroying not only people's hearts and minds but entire communities.

"It's sick," Everett agreed. "It breaks down all those natural barriers that we're supposed to have. Think about this: one woman sleeping with a man and she knows this woman living here sleeps with him too, how does she feel about that woman? That is not a relationship that fosters anything kind. And how does she feel about him? That, in my mind, is almost like rape when you're just having sex with two or three different women. It's just, what are you doing? It is a sick thing and the only thing that can help us recover is Jesus."

I....don't even know what to say to that....

Common Ground

Secular Anti-Choice is calling for "common ground" on abortion.

I don't accept that there's any such thing. Bodily autonomy is pretty clear. But if you're against abortion and want to hand out out birth control like candy, that's cool, but I still don't want you to control my body if those fail. (And Secular Anti-choice has no firm position on hormonal contraception).

Here are some of the common ground quotes from their facebook discussion question:

"Carmen J. - It's not really choice if there are no other choices. I would hope that all pro-choicers agree that coerced abortion should never, ever happen. Along those lines, many but not all pro-lifers would agree with many (most? but still probably not all) pro-choicers that changes need to be made to the fabric of our culture such that no woman feels pressured by circumstances to abort. Every mother who wants to keep her baby should be able to; no mother should feel she has no other option but to terminate the pregnancy for reasons having to do with money, maternity leave, flexibility of work schedules/circumstances, and/or quality childcare."

Ok, I give them some points for economic reform. But, you can make having a kid a lot easier economically, that still doesn't mean everyone will want to do it physically and emotionally. It's still too much to ask.

" Nadja W. - Polls suggest a large majority of Americans support banning abortion in the third trimester, so I'd start there."

There is no goddamn evidence of elective third-trimester abortion. Strawman.

" Brock H. - Compassion is the common ground. I think that generally speaking, pro-choicers and pro-lifers have compassion for mothers in difficult situations. Also (while they may not admit it often), pro-choice people tend to see that there is something precious and valuable within the womb or else they wouldn't talk about what a hard decision abortion is for an expecting mother (why would it be a hard decision if they weren't letting go of something worth holding on to?). The only real difference is that pro-life people see a child in the womb as a life deserving of protection."

So anti-choicers have compassion for the pregnant person, but just not enough not to FORCE them to be pregnant?

 "Bob M. - I think most people agree that it is wrong to kill a person. They disagree on when the person begins."

Actually, it's not always wrong to kill a person, you can kill in self-defense.

"Autumn A. - I agree with many pro choicers/liberals on a lot of things... Like marijuana policy, gay marriage, etc etc. Just not abortion."

So you like weed and gay people, but you're willing to throw half the human race under the bus. So liberal, much wow.

" Crystal K. - We both really like chocolate? In all seriousness, we *should* both be against forced abortions (like in China) or supporting the mother if she changes her mind (like with Abortion Pill Reversal), if the pro-choicer is truly pro-CHOICE."

I'm against forced abortions. Abortion pill reversal is not a thing, there's no evidence for it.

" Lauren M. - My pro-choice friend is a fellow disability rights activist and feminist and she was appalled when I told her how many nations legalized sex-selective abortion and abortion based on a child's disability."

If abortion is legal, the reason doesn't matter to the law. You have to fight these things with education.

" Kate H. - Caring about post abortive women, and women in general. "

If you take away my rights, you don't care for me.

Mere Pleasure

I do love when anti-choicers show their hand. I love it when they prove that this is all about sex.

As reported by Right Wing Watch, Dr. Monica Miller of Citizens for a Pro-Life Society said this

“Planned Parenthood from the top to the bottom is a corrupt organization,” Miller told Ave Maria Radio’s Teresa Tomeo, “corrupt in its view of the sanctity of human life and corrupt in its view of human sexuality. And I say even if Planned Parenthood didn’t perform one single abortion, just the mere fact that its sexual ethic is corrupted means right there, should be the reason right there, that they should not receive any federal money. The kind of sexual ethic that Planned Parenthood promotes is sex for recreation, sex for mere pleasure.” 

"Mere pleasure." Let that sink in.

What else would sex be for? Procreation, I guess. But even the Catholic Church recognizes the "unitive" nature of sex and how infertile humans are compared to other animals.

What is going through her head? Even if she's quiverfull, she has to have had sex far more times than she has children. Does she hate it? Is she asexual?

Sex for pleasure (and it is NOT mere!) is the default condition of humans, even in the absence of contraception. This ideology of sneering at pleasure is not normal. It's a very sick way to look at things, and I don't even think most religious people are as messed up as this about it. She betrays her reason for being in the anti-choice movement.