Way to go Kate and Marta and all you callers!
I only wish you didn’t have to fight such an ugly fight, against such ugly foes.

Right On, Womens!
I came very close to joining the Marta phone bank today, but due to flu, weather, other commitments (cooking and music), I just couldn’t get it together.
And, here you, front page and all, looking so Fabulous.
Go, go, go and give my best to those tenacious souls who showed up today.
Thank you to Kate for hosting. Smart Cookie.

Talked to a guy who’s wife is pregnant last week.

Like me, he’s a pro-choice guy.

I’m pro-choice for practical reasons.

I don’t want my daughter or her friend Amanda to bear an unwanted child.

Yet, a fetus is close to a person.

Tell me this is not true.

I’m pro-choice. But I think abortion is an act of killing.

Closer than what? A turtle? A Flower?

I don’t know where I am on abortion. It’s a tough one. i tend to agree with you. It’s not my call, ya know. I can think that at some point -who knows what point? i don’t – an abortion will be a killing. But that’s not my call to make. I’m pro-choice also.

oh yeah. and Stupak blows. that i do know. whadda douche nozzle.

My wife and I were sorely disappointed that our eldest decided to abort… We respect her decision, as a master’s pursuing her doctorate… It was truly her choice…! We don’t have to like it… But, we respect(and love) her, nonetheless…! 8-(

I’ll defer to physicians, but it seems to me a fetus has all the characteristics of a human.

It has always been a difficult question, but your opinion might solidify if your 14 year old daughter or granddaughter became pregnant – let’s say by rape.
Your hesitation would last about 1 minute, I think. Don’t think for a minute that women take this lightly.

yeah. i’d like to think i’d feel the same if it was my daughter – and it could be soon. her choice and it’s one that shouldn’t be taken away from her.

I don’t defer to “physicians”.
*
This is really a discussion about citizens doing what they can for what they believe.
I hope this doesn’t dissolve into a discussion about what guys believe about abortion. But, of course, it will be what it turns out to be.

But that’s not my call to make.

We 3-legged variety of the species are grossly unqualified to intervene in this debate, IMHO.
What could male Senators and Critters possibly know about what this decision is all about?

And when they start talking to God, civil discourse and civic responsibility are out the window. Bart Stupak and his ilk should be deeply ashamed of themselves, but they just can not manage to summon the humanity.

first off, I don’t think women take that decision lightly. most women anyway. i don’t think my opinion would change if my kid got pregnant.

should be ashamed. doubt Stupak knows any shame.

now how is the phone banking work? who is being phoned? the reason I ask is that the Stupak amendment I have a handle on. but are senators being called? what’s happening with the senate bill and similar language? There were unpleasant surprises courtesy of Harry Reid every few hours it seemed yesterday.

Interestingly, I thought the choice had a larger impact on my wife until my daughter came back on a break…! It really had impacted her…! It is not a choice that is made lightly or callously, as numerous Repigs seem to think…!

yeah. hope she and you all are doing well.

Raising another of my age-old Qs. Human’s DNA is 99.something identical to chimps. So tell me, exactly at what percentage did god insert the soul? And is the soul in the egg and the sperm, or does it just miraculously appear at the very moment when the egg and the sperm combine?

And if an embryo is a human and shouldn’t be killed, then I guess we shouldn’t allow people to drive cars and cross streets, both of which are pretty significant killers of humans.

…as numerous Repigs seem to think…

I think you give them too much credit. It seems to me that this is one of the Right’s many lashes with which to flog a confused and bombarded public. I don’t for a minute think that most of them, and certainly the money-train that underwrites their crusade, gives a damn about life, or lives.

Not sure. But, like, the soul is, like, real important, so I would assume it comes from the guy. Just my guess.

Beats the shit out of me. I don’t know. I don’t even know why mature, living humans make the decisions they do.
I don’t believe an embryo is a human. I do know that about what I believe. Anymore than I believe a germ of an idea that I have is a concrete and followed through achievement.

Oh, how stupid of me not to realize that only sperm have souls. *g*

i’m just guessin’, now. but it makes sense yes?

I’m a pragmatist. Don’t have any beliefs about the extraordinary nature of humans. Seems like just a continuum of nature that is at the top of the food chain because of greater brain power (which may, in the end turn out to be too clever by half if that brain power destroys the planet). And there are plenty of examples in nature of species allocating members of their own for the grave (my current favorite is the workers ejecting the drones from the hive in anticipation of winter and the drones’ uselessness under that circumstance). Don’t think it’s a particularly important subject.

For a species that is chimp patterned, how could that not be so?

did i read right? tiger woods’s wife bought a house in Staten Island?

Link? Or snark tag? How could that not be funny as shit?

it’s an island. and it has a Scandinavian type sounding name. that’s the only one i know.

Hannah is upstairs!
“Corporate Personhood”: An Oxymoron All Progressives Should Know About

well, it’s a wonderful life and rudolph just came on. gotta run

It would be one of the best clashes of stereotypes ever. Staten Island (Dutch origin) is the lower middle class bedroom community of NYC, right wing, ethic segregated. At least that’s the stereotype. OTOH, a glamourous divorce (to be?) billionaire of mixed race couple would be as out of place as one could imagine.

The netherlands has FEDERALLY SUBSIDIZED ABORTION ON DEMAND!!1!

Yet their abortion rate (as most countries) is less than the US.

Close to half of all pregnancies in the U.S. are unintended, and 40% of those end in abortion. The U.S. still has one of the highest teen-pregnancy rates in the developed world — nearly twice as high as England and Canada, eight times as high as the Netherlands and Japan — and in December, the Centers for Disease Control reported that the teen birth rate rose for the first time in 15 years. Likewise, the U.S. abortion rates are disproportionately high: Rates in Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands are less than half that in the U.S. — fewer than 10 abortions per 1,000 women aged 15 to 44.

Thinking abortion is wrong has nothing to do with whether it should remain legal. Of course this would have to assume one actually cares about fetuses rather than controlling women.

As soon as “pro-lifers” start talking about ways to reduce the abortion rate(sex-ed, etc), I’ll stop thinking they are full of shit.

As long as they’re hell-bent on exercising control over women’s bodies, they’ll still be full of shit.

It’s good to see that many people, although acknowledging it’s not a choice they would make, respect the right of others to make that choice for themselves.