Go get ím, Tiger.

I’m shocked that the New York Times would print a column like that.
Guess I shouldn’t be.

… this smug, little whey-faced brat …

Now hold on, one gosh darn minute, WT.
Ross Douthat is one of our most respected young opinion journalists.
He moved to the NYT from The Atlantic,
where he was mentored by Andrew Sull … oh, never mind.

Mr. Douthat (is he really old enough to vote?) seems to have missed a salient fact. In the vast majority of cases, a woman’s right to an abortion is constitutionally protected. Would he be so sanguine about political censorship of the press? About having his right to trial in a public court pursuant to open (not secret) laws abridged because the executive found his views embarrassing and Gitmo an attractive place in which to make that clear?

Mr. Douthat makes Mr. Brooks’ politely spoken radicalism seem restrained and genuine. I didn’t think that possible, though it’s hardly a success the Times’ editors should trumpet.

I think pro-choice forces should be more aggressive in their pushback against these people. For example, need to attack the idea that society currently does not protect the lives of the unborn. That is absolutely false -society increases the consideration and weight of the fetus welfare compared to the mothers, as the fetus becomes increasingly likely to become a living-born person in the third trimester. This attitude is completely in accordance with many long standing traditions and common sense.

Also, need to go on offense regarding the absurd implications of accepting their ‘life begins at conception’ slogan. That would imply homicide investigations for 70% of women who spontaneously abort before birth. And, I would guess, unless gender based oppression is the real goal, their male partners as well.

Also, pressing them on contraception, about which they are cagey. This guy has written that he finds women using contraception icky, and that attitude is wide in their movement and many of them have policy plans in that area as well.

The Gray Lady is soft and highly absorbent, so I’m told.

i’ve got the utmost respect for human life .. and i choose to respect the rights of the living extant human being over the rights of the as-yet-to-be-born ..

so what’s with all this .. do the wingnuts see the abortion issue as their ticket back to political relevance ??

do they think they lost the election and both houses of congress because they took a break from the “culture wars” ..

seriously .. the asshats are insane .. completely unhinged from reality .. roe has been settled law since 1973 ..when will the bastards give up the ghost and accept the law .. you know .. abide by our social contract ..

how the hell can anyone express a “respect for human life” when they had the pom-poms out and led cheers for a war of choice based on trumped up phony “reasons” ..which has killed and killed and killed .. and is still killing today ?? nutzoids …

and .. it’s just sad to see the old grey lady .. a former bastion of liberalism descend to the depths of publishing the kristols and douhats of the world ..

i used to buy and read a NYTimes every day..for almost 30 years of my life .. including forking over 5 bucks for the sunday edition .. but i quit after the judy-judy-judy fiasco on WMD’s and gordon too .. and i haven’t bought one in years now ..

and they wonder why their circulation is declining ?? really ?? too many asshats will spoil the zoup .. eh ??

and way to go WT .. slap ‘em silly ..

Arguments about whether and how to restrict abortions in the second trimester — as many advanced democracies already do – would replace protests over the scope of third-trimester medical exemptions.

This is actually quite funny on several levels. First, that foreigners, many of them European, and even worse the French should be cited by an American conservative strikes this flag waving patriot as, well, unAmerican, and kind of suspicious too. Second, even if I swallow my patrioic qualms, is Mr. Douhat advocating the social and healthcare systems that many of these “advanced democracies” possess?

OTOH, I can only applaud Mr. Douhat demand for “laws with more respect for human life.” It is good to see a conservative come out so strongly against the death penalty, senseless wars, and the greed of crony capitalists.

Rethugs do not believe in accountability but evidently they believe in hiring the mentally handicapped.

Last week there were protests at clinics all over the country with people carrying sign saying “The Pill Kills”. Then again the popester doesn’t want men to use condoms.

CNN reporting that Scott Roeder is receiving letters of encouragement from all over the country.

EDIT: Douthat DoucheHat

…this doesn’t really stop with abortion, now does it? The pill, the IUD, the sponge, and yes, the condom, would all be outlawed if these fanatics could have their way.

You know, I’m thinking Douchebag’s next column will go Something. Like. This.

“Every sperm is sacred
Every sperm is great
If a sperm is wasted
God gets quite irate”

These looneys fanatacism needs to be clinicly identified and treatment proscribed.

You know what’s the pisser? Maternal death rate in this country is something greater than than 1 in 3000 pregnancies. That’s right, there’s a risk of death attached to carrying a pregnancy. (Actually figure in 2004: 13 for every 100K live births, a total of 504 dead women.)

And Mr. DoucheHat (thanks, Petro) believes he has the right to tell all women, regardless of the circumstances surrounding their health and their pregnancy that we should just suck it up and carry all pregnancies to term, no matter the risk to our lives.

Fuck you, DoucheHat. Risk your own damned life.

Well, I like it when they are honest about it -but public needs to know.

Riffing off some commenters above:
If life begins at conception then -
1) fertility procedures should “as bad” as any, even very early, abortions
2) the tradition of familial patriarchical authority is history, when it comes to a women who has missed her period. the family unit needs same sort of regulation as a family caring for a helpless bed-ridden adult at home. No smoking in that home, or bad nutrition, let me tell you, or police will there ready for a criminal investigaton for child endangerment.
3) comprehensive prenatal care must be provided when any doubt about mother’s health.

But, I guess such proposals will be met with… what?

Need to be aggressive about the (what I firmly believe to be) heretical distinction between ‘innocent’ and ‘noninnocent’ life.

That would imply homicide investigations for 70% of women who spontaneously abort before birth.

I’m pro-choice, but that argument doesn’t make sense:
spontaneous abortions are, well, spontaneous. Which means “not caused by human action”. No actus reus, no homicide investigations.

uh yep. I got nuthin’

that we have to have a fundraiser for EW while this paste huffing fantasist collects the righteous cheddar – never mind

Hey, how about we add this to the democratic process, Mr. Douthat — a program which would take sperm from men against their will, donate this to fertility clinics, and then enforce a lifetime of parental obligation to any children born thereof.

Don’t like that idea? If men’s bodies are off-limits for the “democratic process” you propose, then women’s bodies must be off-limits as well. That means we as a society do not get to vote on what someone else is forced to do with his or her body.

Would that Douthat had been plucked from the womb before he was ripe, the world would be better for it.

I agree with the concept of providing prenatal care for those women who want to have a baby. I do not equate a fetus with being a human life, the potential for but not yet there.

The so-called “right to life” movement is actually an anti-woman and anti-sex movement. They wish to punish women for having sex which, gasp, results in an unwanted pregnancy, by forcing them to carry the fetus to term and thus produce an unwanted child.

Abortion is not murder. Abortion is the termination of pregnancy. These right-wing terrorists and their fellow-travelers and mass media FAux Noise hypesters are just like the German Nazi Party, who outlawed abortion a year after seizing power in the early 1930s.

It’s an existential necessity for conservatives to kiss the pro life ring. One can’t be a conservative if they don’t. Having to jump through hoops and then down the rabbit hole to do it is a shame but young guys like Douthat have an entire life of earnings they have to worry about. Or so they think.

He’d be smart to leave the punditing gig and attach himself the nuttiest wingnut politician that will have him.

It probably won’t happen, but if one of the women awaiting treatment by Dr. Tiller in the week after his murder (and you know there were some) should happen to die in childbirth, or have a baby that requires very expensive medical care, I think there would be a good case for a wrongful death suit against Roeder and the various anti-abortion groups.

Shorter Douthat: Let the terrorists win.

I disagree. 100% of us die sooner or later, but most deaths are investigated, by somebody -police, coroner, medical review board.

By their logic, any fetal death should be investigated. A death of an elderly person may be due to natural causes, but no one knows for sure until it is investigated.

So, I stand by my claim.

Think of Roeder as judgement proof. If there are links that can be established to groups that would work. What I would love to see is Billo in court defending an encitement lawsuit.

Imagine… men are expected to stay home and raise the children and keep the house,

Hi, single dad here.

are continually passed over for promotions

…because I can’t work the long hours that others can, etc.

The larger point is well made, but due to my own situation I’m a bit sensitive to these generalizations.

And yeah, Douthat is a horrible human being.

but most deaths are investigated, by somebody -police, coroner, medical review board.

Oh, if that’s true I agree.

But than again, if there are enough resources to have homicide investigations for every death, and e.g. ICU physicians and nurses can cope with being the permanent objects of homicide investigations, then “homicide investigations for 70% of women who spontaneously abort before birth” doesn’t sound all that “absurd” (especially if you include medical review boards), does it?

“Laws that respect” the lives conservatives find important, not for “life”.

If everyone got a chance at a healthy, gainfully employed life, it would be too hard to make more money than Croesus. The prisons, gun shops, highway underpasses and parks would be empty; the laws against predatory lending, monopolies and pollution, and for protecting labor, families and the vulnerable would be enforced. There would be less need for politicians to lie, and less money to be gained from doing it. What a horrible world that would be.

The notion that spontaneous abortions or fetus death would be investigated as murder is ridiculus. The medical diagnosis would be determinate. My DIL had the first two attempts die in the womb. After the second loss it was determined that she had a heart condition that was causing this.

“Mentally handicapped” hires with a male organ, I’d say.

Yeah. I can imagine how almost articulate Ross I-Doubt-That would get if he were pregnant with a third-trimester fetus that had died, and had been told by the doctors just to wait it out until his body “naturally” went into labor. THAT is what third-trimester abortion involves. Not convenience, not economics, but a mother in risk of her life, or a fetus that has no chance of viability. That is the law.

The notion that spontaneous abortions or fetus death would be investigated as murder is ridiculus.

Yes, of cause. There is by definition no actus reus in a spontaneous abortion, so there’s no probable cause for a homicide investigation (which impies law enforcement, not medical review boards).

Even if one would hold the strange notion that a fetus is a person.

That’s my whole point: that argument is a straw man. The rights of the woman over her body should be argument enough.
There is no need for “every woman will face homocide investigations for medical conditions” scenarios.

Sorry my little example caused so much fuss.
My point was that I think that if you take the extreme anti-abortion advocates’ idea that life begins at conception and combine it with their absolutist stance that any abortion at any time is tantamount to murder (even if their is a significant competing interest on the part of the mother), I said that their logic leads to monitoring and investigation of every women who shows signs of pregnancy.

The conclusion is absurd, but I think their logic is absurd and leads to absurd conclusions.

So, OK, I got carried away. Maybe not every miscarriage in a women would lead to a homicide investigation, but by their logic their should be an investigation, with potential criminal liability.

If abortion is absolutley illegal, you do not know how many women will try to induce an abortion early. You do not know until you investigate. And by their logic, such an attempt, is come kind of attempted manslaughter or homocide.

So, I still stand by my claim, even if my language was too colorful.

Well, we may have to agree to disagree. I think by their logic there should be an investigation, with potential criminal liability for every known miscarriage, and all pregnant women should be monitored.

But, sounds like some of you have legal knowledge that I do not, in which case, I plead guilty to not being a lawyer!

I will check back to see if I totally made a strawman on my opinion on the potential for a police state for women, if you go by the anti-abortion extremists’ logic. As I said, sounds like some here know more law than I do, and if the relevant parts of the law will not be assaulted by anti-abortionists, then I may have “strawmanned’ due to my lack of legal knowledge.

Fucking DoucheHat and the rest of the forced-birthers are nothing more than terrorist sympathizers. It iss time to label them as such (this column certainly qualifies as giving aid and comfort to terrorists). Operation Rescue and related organization, especially those with operational ties to actual terrorists, need to be officially declared terrorist organizations, have their assets seized, and their leadership imprisoned.

Ross is free to say all these things because he will never be in the position of impregnating a woman. Reality causes a lot of minds to change.

Doesn’t Steve Simels hold the copyright on calling people “whey-faced?”

If abortion were returned to the democratic process, this landscape would change dramatically. Arguments about whether and how to restrict abortions in the second trimester — as many advanced democracies already do – would replace protests over the scope of third-trimester medical exemptions.

And yet when we elected a president using the democratic process, the arguments about socialist islamofascist terrorist forged birth certificates just kept right on going.

Why, some of the disputants even want to use guns.