I prefer the more biology-geek version:

"An earthworm has ten hearts. The law says anyone can stop all of them at will."

Ah yes, I remember that.

It as from McAppleruiner vs. Inch, right?

was*

Alon, that was awesome. I vote for making a poster that says that and posting it next to every pro-life poster we can find.

Feministing.com might be a good place to put up point-for-point rebuttals of the 'Second Look' assertions.

So once a baby is born, it's no longer human (and, thus, no longer has a human heart)? Is that what that ad is assuming? Because, in reality, an abortion stops an embryo's heart for eternity.

Actually, maybe we're living in an alternate universe where a doctor can stop an embryo's heart and 244 days later the heart starts beating again. Yikes, that's creepy.

Hmmm, actually, looking at that poster, it's inflammatory on an additional level.

A "human" heart starts beating at 22 days, does it? Silly me, I thought it was the fetus' heart. Last I checked, it was still debatable whether a fetus was "human."

"Heart began recording in 1976..."

Soo...do they mean 22 days after conception, when the fetus (you are correct, Law Fairy) is just a tiny clump of cells, that there's an actual "human heart" in there somewhere that starts beating?

Not only is this ad tacky anti-choice crap...it doesn't even make any logical sense.

I thought that the debate was whether or not a fetus was a person. Unless science has progressed farther than I was aware, a fetus growing in a female human being is, in fact, also human. Likewise, a fetus growing in a female canine is still a canine fetus.

Oh, AWESOME. I saw one of these on the DC Metro the other day and leaned against it for the duration of my ride. Pathetic.

On another note, I've been seeing signs at the DC bus stops for the Stacy Zallie Foundation. They show a picture of a young woman with the words "Not Pro-Choice. Not Pro-Life. Just Support." or something like that. Anyone know anything about them (besides the general stuff on their website)?

Here's some links about the Stacey Zallie Foundation. As someone whose seen a few friends have a really hard time after their abortions, I think it sounds pretty damn good.

http://www.stacyzallie.org/home.htm

http://www.citypaper.net/articles/2006-03-16/cb2.shtml

That should be "who has" not "whose".

All mid-terms and no fun make Manda's brain work funny.

"Unless science has progressed farther than I was aware, a fetus growing in a female human being is, in fact, also human. Likewise, a fetus growing in a female canine is still a canine fetus."

...and her appendix, liver, skin cells, etc. are also still human or still canine. That doesn't make them separate people or separate dogs themselves either.

A fetus is a separate being from the mother. It has different DNA. I'm not trying to start a pro-choice/pro-life argument, I was just clarifying that a human fetus is still a human.

Sorry, I didn't finish that thought...

The rights that a human fetus is entitled to is, from what I understand, the point of contention between pro-lifers and pro-choicers.

Sometimes I wonder how many Pro-Lifers adopt any of the children out there whose mothers decided to carry them to term. It seems to me like a lot of the rhetoric is dismissive to the very real discomfort of carrying a child to term and giving birth. Not only that, I've never heard of any pro-life resources available to help pay for doctor's visits, baby supplies, etc. I'd be a lot more sympathetic to their viewpoint if they actually appeared to care what happens to these babies after birth.

I would love to live in a world where there's no reason for abortion ever. Where birth control and emergency contraception were 100% effective, where a mother's life was never put at risk by her pregnancy, where rape and sexual assault didn't exist, where people only got pregnant when they wanted to. However, the reality is that women will have unwanted or dangerous pregnancies, and because of that I strongly feel that they should have the option to abort. I want to carry pro-choice bumper stickers around with me now and just stick them over all these posters. They're just emotionally manipulative crap.

I'm pro-choice, but I find the earthworm thing profoundly creepy.

The thing is... I'm pro-choice but I think that abortion is sad. Sad like when my friend had an operation that allowed her to speak normally and not be in pain, but fused the bones in her jaw so that she could no longer play the flute (true story). That kind of sad, the kind where someone has to make a choice they'd rather not make.

I resent the pro-life camp for pushing the pro-choicers so far that we have to act as if we don't care at all about fetuses. I do care. It's just that care more about people. I don't mean to speak for anyone else here.

I think that a woman is entitled to a safe abortion and does not need to feel any shame whatsoever. But I also think that I should be allowed to coo over my sister's sonogram pictures. And I'll be damned if I'll compare the heart of a human fetus with the heart of an earthworm.

I'd've written "Without the woman attached to it, it would stop beating all on its own."

How about the fact that a the heart doesn't friggin' matter. It's the brain that allows consciousness, and that's not well-formed until shortly before birth. Even some preemies can't be considered conscious.

"A fetus is a separate being from the mother. It has different DNA."

I had classmates in high school and college who had the same DNA as each other.

Yes, but it's unlikely they had the same DNA as their mother. :)

"I resent the pro-life camp for pushing the pro-choicers so far that we have to act as if we don't care at all about fetuses. I do care. It's just that care more about people."

Well said, DT! I usually get so irritated by the cavalier tone used here when the topic of abortion comes up that I have to close my browser and stew for a minute.

As pro-choicers, we don't have to throw away all compassion and simplify our reactions into callous shrugs. Why does it seem that so many people's comments here leave no room for the complexity of human emotion?

paleblue, well, see my last comment. I'm Catholic and I love babies, I want to have several of my own one day and I know that an abortion is not something I could ever go through, for my own mental well being. That said, I do believe that there are many legitimate reasons for a woman to want to terminate her pregnancy and fully support any woman doing so.

I do think that the Pro-Life movement is deceptively callous in many ways though. I would hope the majority of Pro-Lifers are also in favor of universal health care and the abolishment of the death penalty for obvious reasons. Experience has taught me that this is not the case. In this way, I almost find the Pro-Life movement more heartless than the Pro-Choice movement. Why fight for the rights and well being of the fetus if you won't fight for the rights and well being of the child once it's born? Or for the health of the mother? Why hold the life of an unborn infant sacred if you do not, in fact, hold every life sacred? These are the questions I would ask the agressively Pro-Life politicians and organizations.

Not only that, I've never heard of any pro-life resources available to help pay for doctor's visits, baby supplies, etc.
The fact that you haven't heard of Catholic Charities sounds like a personal problem.

Pro-lifers need not adopt to be consistent in their views; they only need not have abortions themselves. For universal health care? Why aren't you a doctor? Or is that line of "reasoning" complete b.s.?

Law Fairy: if it's not a human, what is it? A frog? Puppy? Algae? The heart is distinctly human. If it's not human, you're not pregnant.

How about the fact that a the heart doesn't friggin' matter. It's the brain that allows consciousness, and that's not well-formed until shortly before birth. Even some preemies can't be considered conscious.
I sincerely hope you are NOT saying that preemies can be killed at will. If consciousness is what matters, why not?

I'd be a lot more sympathetic to their viewpoint if they actually appeared to care what happens to these babies after birth.
That's what the pro-family, anti-crime, anti-drug, pro-education, pro-middle America movements are all about. Pardon me if I missed some, but there's more to caring about kids than welfare.

I would hope the majority of Pro-Lifers are also in favor of universal health care and the abolishment of the death penalty for obvious reasons.
Nope. First of all, I hate the idea of universal health care, because that means government-rationed health care. That means that the gov't could save money by not funding birth control or IUDs or could limit access to mammograms. I don't want my health care depending on who is in power. You've won the right to access, but your prize is only what Congress grants you.

As for the death penalty: there's a difference between innocent life and the life of a murderer. A person who stays in prison for life could escape or be pardoned and go on to kill others. To the extent that the death penalty is a deterrent and provides an incentive to plea-bargain to life, that's great.

There is a huge moral difference between killing someone whom you don't particularly like and killing someone in self-defense. In a very abstract sense, the death penalty is society's way of killing in defense of itself.

Of course, the death penalty is also part of that tough-on-crime thing that makes the world a bit better place for those babies.

I sincerely hope you are NOT saying that preemies can be killed at will. If consciousness is what matters, why not?

Because premies are in the gray area between an earthworm/ant/cow/15-week-old human fetus and a self-aware organism. The same of course applies to 26-week-old fetuses, but those are parasitic on their mothers while premies are free living organisms, even if they need serious assistance.

But if you ask me, in certain extreme cases it would be moral to kill premies. They don't generally arise in developed countries, but in third-world backwaters where it's impossible to get an abortion, it makes sense not to enforce homicide laws against women who commit infanticide right after giving birth.

What I said about infanticide is sad. What I'm saying about abortion isn't. You have every right to be conflicted about it yourself; but telling women that they should be conflicted or ashamed, too, is just callous. When I asked my mom about hers, she said, "It's the most wonderful thing I've done." Why is it so important to muzzle women who have that attitude?

oenophile: Since when is the death penalty an adequate deterrent? Countries without the death penalty have comparatively less murders than the US.

Those movements you listed will do very little to help an unwanted, poverty-stricken child. With universal health care, the child's mother wouldn't have to choose between taking him/her to the doctor and eating. I've experienced healthcare in the US and universal health care, and I have to say that the latter is far superior (and contraception is free).

Anyway, I'm getting off-topic. The truth is I will never understand the pro-lifers. The idea of placing more value on a potential life than an existing one just makes absolutely no sense to me. I'm really glad there are no similar ads where I live. I'd be very tempted to write something similar.

Alon, you pretty much answered exactly how I would, but I would add one thing. The inherent value of a fetus (or a preemie) is that it may become a self-aware being. In the case of abortion (up to a certain point) the mother's right to autonomy trumps a fetus's right to future consciousness. Preemies don't depend on a woman's body, so there are fewer things to weigh against their future consciousness.

You feminists are not consistent. I thought women were equal to men (actually you are superior in some ways and inferior in others, but I digress)?

If women are equal to men, and men must bear the responsibility for the new humans they make - why do women get to kill them if they want to?

Except for rape, doesn't a woman make her 'choice' when she opens her knees?
If men and women are going to be equal, then be equal.

"To the extent that the death penalty is a deterrent and provides an incentive to plea-bargain to life, that's great."

Are you kidding me? It *would* be great, if it were true that the death penalty were a deterrent, but as someone mentioned above, statistics consistently show that it is in fact not at all effective as a deterrent.

"In a very abstract sense, the death penalty is society's way of killing in defense of itself."

That is so abstract that it makes no sense in the real world. The death penalty is all about punishment and retribution. And I'm not denying that the retribution aspect has value, at least for the people who were wronged/victimized. But beyond that, it is less expensive and just as effective a deterrent (if not moreso) to replace the death penalty with life sentences (without possibility of parole, of course).

"Of course, the death penalty is also part of that tough-on-crime thing that makes the world a bit better place for those babies."

And for the most part, getting tougher on certain crimes is also ineffective and in a lot of ways harmful and actually make the world a worse place for those babies (and everyone else). The song lyric "all research and successful drug policy shows that treatment should be increased, and law enforcent decreased while abolishing mandatory minimum sentences" sums up what's going on with "getting tough" on drug crimes, for instance. But it doesn't matter what is successful, sadly, because politicians get elected based on ideas, whether those ideas are actually effective or not. I agree that there are crimes that it IS better to be tough on, such as rape, murder (without the death penalty) and how bout some of that white-collar crime while we're at it. But that just doesn't make sense for all crimes.

"That means that the gov't could save money by not funding birth control or IUDs or could limit access to mammograms."

I will admit that I too am wary of the government's ability to manage a universal health care system. But consider that it was only recently that many insurers included birth control in their plans (many of those were forced by state laws), when the fact is that it has always been significantly less costly for them to offer birth control than to subsidize pre-natal and pregnancy/birth care for the unplanned/unwanted pregnancies that would have been prevented by the birth control. But of course they still provide for the health care of pregnant women and babies, because those are future customers. I think the government would behave in much the same way.

Oooh, goody, Oenophile is back with his/her fake "165 IQ" and same provocative, populist garbage. Love that vague "pro-middle-America movement" reference - Lou Dobbs, is that you? Can you explain what exactly that IS, and how exactly it benefits, say, disenfranchised, impoverished urban communities? Or do we only care about unwanted pregnancies and quality of a child's life if they are white, have a good Puritanical work ethic, and live in the corn belt?

As others have already noted, the death penalty has NOT been shown to be an effective deterrent to crime, and the current tough "anti-drug" and "anti-crime" punishment-oriented system, merely creates the need for supermax prisons and within them, cultures of alienation and structural violence, to be spilled back out on the streets when sentences expire. It does nothing to identify and remedy the factors contributing to crime and drug use in this country, so to the surprise of no one but you, they will continue, and this is the mess our children will inherit. If there is still an earth at all, of course, but the same folks who mindlessly champion the most concrete and simplistic "tough on crime" and "pro-education" (i.e. standardized test score bonanza) "movements" typically choose to ignore small things like global warming.

It's also quite telling that you have such confidence in the legislative and judicial systems on matters of life and death (determinations of who is deserving of life based on being sufficiently "innocent"), yet you wouldn't trust Congress with your health care. Conveniently, you also choose to believe that in the current system, there is magic, unrestricted, affordable, no-wait access to things like birth control, mammograms, and other health services for women--that is, women who have already made it over the threshold of HAVING health insurance in the first place. You also believe that the government hasn't ALREADY had any influence on your health care...those HMOs and big Pharma / other special interests and their unprecented and unchecked power and influence plumb did come out of nowhar, I guess!! Again, well done on preserving your Devil's Advocate title! Next!

Nice post, Charity. I wanted to summarize the ultimate point of my post above but you've already done a good job of it. Namely, pointing out the hypocrisy of not trusting the government to manage health care, while completely trusting their competency in determining the guilt of a person and then putting them to death.

Oh, and of putting arbitrary restrictions on a woman's body. Restrictions based on other people's beliefs and ideas, enforced by the government, but completely ignoring the health care (not to mention personal autonomy and freedom) implications of such laws, no matter how many "exceptions" there are.

Anything related to a woman's reproductive capacity is ultimately a medical and personal decision, and the government has no business restricting that with laws based on the ideas and beliefs of a subset of the population, with no legitimate medical or health reasons involved. If there are other potential lives involved, you can scream and proselytize about it all you want, but when it comes down to it, keep *your* laws off *my* body.

"If women are equal to men, and men must bear the responsibility for the new humans they make - why do women get to kill them if they want to?"

short answer is: women and men are obviously not equal when it comes to pregnancy cuz um, men dont get pregnant. if abortion were outlawed, it would be granting the fetus more rights then the women (which would hurt the women, and really the fetus if shes poor). if there was some law that exempted men from responsibility then that would be unequal to the woman and the child. its all about being realistic. but since this is one case where women are actually controlling what happens to them without male influence, of course some dudes are gonna scream "unequal" since there not exactly at the top of the chain in that matter.

The problem with your logic is that the woman's health (physical and mental) is at stake not only while she's pregnant, but also afterwards when she faces the very real risk that the father will abandon them and leave her to raise the child alone. These are not risks that the father faces. The fact is that (and I make no judgement here as to "inferiority" or "superiority") women have evolved with the capability to bear children, and men have not. Therefore being pregnant is an experience unique to women, and it doesn't make sense to talk about it as if that was not the case.

Unwanted pregnancies occur for lots of reasons - relevant to your argument, failed contraception, for example. Who made the "choice" in that situation?

Sorry, that was directed to Hank.

Rhetorically, what are the problems with being born into poverty? Lack of health care. Drug-ridden neighbourhoods. Crime. Lousy public schools. Domestic violence (especially the boyfriends of single mothers).

Conservatives ARE trying to address those issues. You just happen to disagree with their methods. They prefer charitable hospitals, school vouchers, anti-drug & violence laws, and, of course, anti-rape & DV laws. It was actually the Reagan Justice Department that founded the victim's rights movement, which lead to DV being prosecuted as a crime and not treated as a marital matter. How much more feminist and pro-good-life-for-living-people do you want than chucking rapists and abusive husbands in prison?

...but conservatives don't care about people who are alive. If you stick your fingers in your ears, sing LA LA LA at the top of your lungs, and snark at the methods you don't happen to agree with, I could see how you could arrive at that conclusion. Ultimately, though, conservatives do a tremendous amount to promote a good environment for those who are already alive, but they don't do it via social welfare.

The issue is not one of "caring," but one of methodology.

Oenophile is back with his/her fake "165 IQ" and same provocative, populist garbage.
Closer to 160, but jealous much? :-) Here's the offer: I proved to Miss Marcotte that I'm a woman. I have no problem proving my intellect to you. Give me ANY objective standard and your email, and I'll happily send back whatever you want. :) Of course, I do reserve the right to rub it in your face publicly. :)

Charity - You would prefer to pretend that you know my intellect better than I, much as Miss Marcotte likes to think that she knows my gender better than I. Don't worry, though - I'm sure you'll find a way to ignore basic realities to suit your liking! :)

I find it absolutely ironic that the people who profess that women know themselves and their own circumstances best seem to think that they should dictate basic, objective facts of my life to their liking. ;) Oh, the irony. So delicious.

Narcissistic much? You must have "missed" (or chosen to ignore, more likely) the other post of mine in which I refuted your IQ based on my knowledge of the most valid, widely used assessment of intellectual functioning in North America and its scoring range. I'm not questioning your own *belief* that you earned a 160...perhaps someone lied to you to spare your feelings or to explain why the other children didn't *understand* you. Now, it's entirely possible you were tested with some other, less valid and scientifically accepted IQ measure, maybe on the Internet, in which case your score is meaningless. As much as it is irrelevant to many areas of functioning and intelligence, including, obviously, social intelligence.

I don't think anyone here is trying to dictate the objective facts of your life to our liking, or to ignore basic "realities"...but don't be surprised when others do not immediately accept your statements as "reality." You don't own the privilege of defining reality. This is a space for discourse and people are entitled to refute your opinions. It's unfortunate that many conservatives, and blog trolls, have mastered the art of hypocrisy in feeling entirely justified to challenge or debase the opinions of others but then crying foul when those challenges and degradations are not immediately accepted and glorified. Sticking your fingers in your ears and singing la, la, la, indeed.

And I'll thank you to remember it was an effective, multidisciplinary grassroots movement that garnered support for domestic violence victims' rights, not the freaking Reagan administration acting in a vacuum. Governments don't "found" victims' rights movements. That's absurd. Next!

Oenophile, the problem with conservative solutions for social ills is that they don't work. We tried 'em. They don't work. Poverty has increased dramatically since the 1970's, when it had been on a downtrend; abstinence-only education causes a higher rate of abortions and teen pregnancies; anti-drug laws don't stop drug addiction, but they do destroy families and leave more people enmired in a hopeless cycle of poverty and drug abuse; the death penalty is not only not a deterrent, but disproportionately kills black men who kill white people, meaning that white murderers and murderers of black people do not see the same "justice", while black men who shoot in self-defense to protect their baby daughter from what they think is an intruder end up on death row for shooting a cop who got the wrong address and didn't annouce himself. (And who was on a drug bust.) Liberal ideas generally get results. Conservative ideas generally don't.

The government could less easily decide to stop covering your mammograms than a private insurer could, and since insurance is not a free market -- you either pay out the nose for very bad policies, or you are stuck with what your employer buys for you -- you would have more recourse. Governments are responsive to citizen pressure. Companies are responsive to stockholder pressure and customer pressure, but the customers of insurance are employers, not actually the users of the insurance. The current system gives insurance companies *no* incentive not to screw people over for a buck.

And Hank, what are you talking about? Men and women are exactly equal. A man has just as much right as a woman to kill a human child that's living inside his body feeding on him. The fact that the man is never in that situation? Well, too bad. If a lesbian donates her egg to her partner, and then they break up during the pregnancy and the egg donor demands that the partner abort the child or take her off the hook for child support, guess what? She can't do it either. It's not about being a woman, it's about being a pregnant human. When men can be pregnant humans, we'll protect their right to abort too.

The Law Fairy,

Last I checked, it was still debatable whether a fetus was "human."

This is not debatable. Whether or not the fetus (embryo, blastocyst, etc.) is a person is debatable.

AlaraJRogers,

It's not about being a woman, it's about being a pregnant human. When men can be pregnant humans, we'll protect their right to abort too.

I have never seen this put so eloquently, thank you.

"If women are equal to men, and men must bear the responsibility for the new humans they make - why do women get to kill them if they want to?"

Women don't get to kill new humans, we get to avoid making new humans in the first place. Abortion is really a form of amputation, not a form of homicide.

"Therefore being pregnant is an experience unique to women"

Well, unique to women and girls. For example, an 11-year-old is not an adult, no matter how many months ago her husband got her pregnant and no matter how much "you're a woman now!!!" crap her parents said when she had her first period.

"abstinence-only education causes a higher rate of abortions and teen pregnancies"

Also, do we know how many divorces it leads to, as when a teen who accepts no birth control but abstinence becomes a married parent who doesn't want more kids...?

Conservatives ARE trying to address those issues. You just happen to disagree with their methods. They prefer charitable hospitals, school vouchers, anti-drug & violence laws, and, of course, anti-rape & DV laws.

That's one way of looking at it. The other is that conservatives prefer a health care system that costs a trillion dollars more than it should and still can't cover everyone, sending kids to private schools that spend $20,000 per student and still are no better than schools that spend $8,000, and taking credit for drops in crime that happened years before they came to power.

I believe oenophile's IQ shouldn't be a matter of contention.

If you have an IQ score greater than 100, it means you are smarter than a lot of other people. It doesn't necessarily mean that everything you say is right or founded on a rational basis. Not to mention the fact that it isn't indicative of social skills, common sense, or anything that isn't pretty much directly related to intelligence.

Furthermore, bragging about one's intelligence is, in my opinion, pretty freakin' lame. Some people with higher scores will turn it into a pissing contest, some people with lower scores will think you're full of yourself, and everyone else will just yawn. Nobody "wins".

I know someone else brought it up in THIS thread, but that means that at some point, oenophile him/herself introduced it in a previous thread. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm guessing it wasn't a thread about polling for poster's IQ scores.

I am still waiting for an explanation of how oenophile reconciles his/her trust of the government and its agents/systems when it comes to sentencing people to death (and then killing them) with his/her mistrust of the government and its agents/systems when it comes to things such as health care and social welfare. I truly am interested.

I walzted over to the website of the group responsible for these ads. One of their ads claims that women can get an abortion as late as they want in the pregnancy, this seems like bull to me. I guess they missed the news on this one guy who ran a fake abortion hotline and kept putting women off until they were too far along to get a legal abortion.....I think I recalled reading this in Ms.
It porbably varies from state to state, but their assertions are crap

Ambidextrous Amazon, I could not agree more. A return to the original topic is more than warranted. I did cheekily introduce the asserted IQ score in this thread. I base my doing so on a number of things, including what expertise I humbly bring to the table here...just as I relish contributions from folks like the Law Fairy when posters make claims to legal knowledge that are factually incorrect, or contributions from folks like Alon Levy when posters make statistical claims that are inaccurate or unfounded, I similarly feel compelled to identify claims I recognize to be false, based on my expertise. The IQ score was in fact introduced by our oenophile in a previous thread as a basis for undermining another poster who dared to question her logic. In challenging the IQ score I am not contesting character, but noting the impossibility of the score itself.

In my very enjoyable interactions with this blog and its community, I forget that my own sense of continuity, which is necessarily based on my personal contributions and not the sum total of all postings, is not shared by others and would then make some references seem quite out of place.

Oh yeah, and I also get frustrated by disingenuous individuals who vacillate between various online personas for their own amusement, and avoid addressing legitimate challenges to their arguments in favor of condescension and contempt. I wouldn't hold your breath for that explanation...:)

"If you have an IQ score greater than 100, it means you are smarter than a lot of other people."

...but smarter than them at what? Isn't it possible to be very bright in some areas and very dense in others at the same time?

"If you have an IQ score greater than 100, it means you are smarter than a lot of other people."

...but smarter than them at what? Isn't it possible to be very bright in some areas and very dense in others at the same time?

Smarter at taking tests, I think. In my experience, performance on exams indicates the subject's ability to...perform well on exams.

I walzted over to the website of the group responsible for these ads. One of their ads claims that women can get an abortion as late as they want in the pregnancy, this seems like bull to me.

It is bull. It's impossible to get an abortion past about week 26. This isn't a matter of legality; it holds even in Canada, where by law abortion is available on demand at any point before birth. The most sophisticated abortion technique, dilation and extraction, can only be performed through week 26; if it's banned, abortion will become available only through week 22, the upper limit of dilation and evacuation.

Exactly, Alon, that's what I was going to say. I've always been wary of politicians imposing limits based on viability; for the most part, they are not doctors, and if they are, they have been politicized to the point where their words can no longer always be trusted. (Bill Frist, anyone?)

I have another problem with this; 22 days or prior is within the first trimester, and that's when most restrictions apply. It's just the old strategy of delaying women past the point where they can get an abortion in different packaging.

Lastly, I'm pretty smart (not 160 IQ smart, but bright enough) and I do and say stupid things ALL THE TIME. I've done it on here. Why, just this morning I couldn't get my key out of the ignition, and I was struggling with it for about five minutes before I realised that I hadn't shifted into Park when I turned off the car. Oops.

I still deserve the rights to self-determination and access to quality healthcare. And I have no problem with the govt providing it, because I would rather deal with that than know that somewhere in my wealthy, first world country, a small child is dying because healthcare is inaccessible.

Trilby, put down yer milkin’ pail and have a look over here! One ‘o these gals on the interweb has a IQ of about a bazillion! Hurry now, there ain’t too many smart folk like that around!

But wait, she said that school vouchers help folks like us that’s in poverty. Hmmm. But we caint afford to send our kids to private school, so how would vouchers help us? I thought they’s only for the rich folk, to make private skools cheaper, so their kids don’t haveta git dirtied up in the same classroom as ours. I must be all wrong about that.

But hang on agin, she’s sayin that Ronald Reagan is the one what decided to start puttin rapists into prison. Jeez, I didn’t know that. Who knew that rape was legal before Ronald Reagan? Wow, this gal is so smart, I just cain’t follow along. But wait, didn’t some o them conservative folk try to make it legal for rapists to become daddies up in South Dakota, even if the victim was…you know…sort of opposed to the idea? That’s not realy very pro-good-life-for-living-people, is it? Is that caring? Or maybe I got that rong. I knew I shoulda finished 4th grade. Well, I guess it’s my turn at the milkin pail.

oenophile:
There is a huge moral difference between killing someone whom you don't particularly like and killing someone in self-defense. In a very abstract sense, the death penalty is society's way of killing in defense of itself.

And this is different from a woman defending her continuing health, life, or future by terminating a dangerous or unwanted pregnancy how, exactly?

Hank Dagny:
Except for rape, doesn't a woman make her 'choice' when she opens her knees?

Hey, that's right! Let's follow your argument to its logical conclusion, shall we? Obviously, women should only have sex when they specifically want to become pregnant and are certain that they will.

You guys'd LOVE that, wouldn't you? Calluses are super-cool!

*checks bag*
Damn...almost all out of Troll Munchies.

As far as IQ scores go, EG has the right of it:

"In my experience, performance on exams indicates the subject's ability to...perform well on exams."

Let me just add that I'm *very* good at taking tests, but have never considered pulling that out in an argument. One proves an argument with facts and reasoning, not by attempting to silence others with one's superior whatever.