378 Comments

I have been saying for a while now, from the unprecedented release of an opinion draft to the news media around that leak leading right up into the actual decision. All of it seems like a planned release intended to directly pit the two sides of the abortion wedge issue against each other in the streets just before the mid terms. In 2014 when the gay marriage decision was announced Obama and the bipartisan leadership were signing the modification to the STOCK act to make it legal fopr congress critters to use insider trading again.

There is a long history of socially powerful but governance irrelevant decisions used to distract the populace.

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At last, someone is laser-beamed in on the Issue Behind the Issue! Thank You.

This is all about Divide and Conquer (while we once again beat down the women).

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I share the same sentiments.

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It is not a wedge issue and it's not irrelevant. This legislation is a boon for rapists. It will allow them to spread their degenerate seed far and wide.

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That is the dumbest argument I have ever read, rapist are not known for being strategically intelligent, they are driven by hormones and emotions to act violently towards others regardless of the consequences. That is a long desperate reach to a straw man argument.

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They don't have to be intelligent or strategic when the Supreme Court and the oligarchy are doing all the heavy legal lifting for them. This Supreme Court ruling is known as the God Loves Rapists Ruling.

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While I know that this isn't your focus, here, I feel obliged to add a bit of fundamental biological science to the entire scenario. It's the gigantic pile of crap that some folks want to use as an argument about "when human life begins". Biologically, this is all uninformed rubbish. At the most basic level, life is always CONTINUED (after it began around 3 billion years ago). Metabolism -- the use of chemical-potential energy in foods to power the myriad biochemical and biophysical processes required for cells to sustain their functionality is the most basic (although admittedly reductionist) measure of any animal cell that is alive. Both sperm (not so much) and eggs (bigtime) have a vigorous metabolism, using food energy to power their lives. In other words, they are very much alive, especially the egg, a giant cell with a considerable metabolic rate. In their combination during fertilization, life is therefore continued. I raise this because the "life begins" argument is, among several others, one of those anti-scientific tropes that one regularly hears in defense of the anti-body-autonomy position. It's reminiscent of the autocrats who rubbished that I should get vaccinated for the good of society -- with a vaccine that had a negligible efficacy of preventing transmission. Beware --- the know-nothing science crowd with its autocratic pronouncements seems to be everywhere, these days.

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Jun 27, 2022·edited Jun 27, 2022

Science has not yet established how consciousness is even produced. And no one alive (or dead) has figured out how 1) Life began, 2) How consciousness exists.

Therefore, as Caitlin writes here in Number Two Thought:

"the state has no business forcing unevidenced beliefs about metaphysical personhood upon people's reproductive systems"

This is where I stand as well. Even Science does not have all the answers when it comes to some metaphysical issues. And something as intimate as bodily autonomy of a woman and religious/spiritual metaphysical beliefs should be separate from State control.

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I was listening to a podcast that suggested that California once was considering 'abortion' 28 days -after- birth. I read once long ago, that some societies considered it 'abortion' up to 3 years old.

What is consciousness?

I'm not posting this to have a bunch of idiots declare me stupid. I'm pushing the boundaries of their beliefs so they can think about it and come up with their own choice; just as Caitlin has done here in this article.

The only way to achieve a consensus on when abortion is to be permitted is to consider the extremes of the continuum, each of us staking out a point along that continuum, then making compromises with one another.

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No. There is no need for a consensus on when a woman gets to have bodily autonomy. That is at the start purely illogical and bullshit. There is no requirement that women make compromises with their bodily autonomy.

The fact that you start out calling everyone who disagrees with you "idiots," tells me that you need to go back and re-read the part about MEN telling women what's what about WOMEN. That you've got it so backwards is just typical of the arrogance that is Patriarchy. Nope, men are NOT superior. If anything WOMEN are superior because women don't have to manipulate Nature in order to give life. Women naturally do that, without any added organs. It's where babies come from, like it or not. And MEN need to stop with this bullshit that they have ANY say in what women do with their own bodies.

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Where did I say "men are superior"?

You've staked out your position but then arrogantly insist you are right and everyone else wrong thus assuring continued conflict with large segments of society.

The definition of an idiot.

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You didn't say that. At least, not in so many words. I'm on a thread where MEN are telling WOMEN what to do with their own bodies, all about how life is, and when it starts, and calling everyone that disagrees with them "idiots," even before anyone has responded... The idea that we should all form a continuum and make decisions about how women are to be allowed to live/behave/make choices tells me that you feel that somehow you have a say in that. You don't. Simple as that. This is about controlling women, nothing more. If there were more to it than that, we'd see how ALL unwanted children are well-cared for, loved and cherished, and don't go to bed hungry, don't live in a lousy, impoverished setting, don't get sold into sexual slavery, and so forth. Because it's mostly MEN that make the laws and run the govt, and so why do we see those things so much? Do all you guys complaining about abortion give a rat's backside once that child is born? I just don't see the evidence for that. It's about the act itself, abortion. And it's about the idea that women can have the same kind of sexual freedom that MEN have. Men can pretty much disappear after spreading their seed. Women are the ones who deal with all the repercussions. And then, of course, so do the kids, when they're forcibly carried and born. The point is, it's none of your business what someone else does with their own body, male, female, there is no difference in the right to autonomy. It's NATURAL LAW, and it doesn't matter what MEN THINK about WOMEN. End of story.

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Gee, I thought you just said that declaring "everyone else is wrong" is idiotic.

Too bad you just did it again because you might otherwise have persuaded people you have a point to listen to.

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And I never said that "everyone else is wrong." Obviously, that would be idiotic.

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“If anything WOMEN are superior”

That isn’t very gender equality of you.

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Infanticide is practiced in several indigenous tribes throughout the world, even today. Especially if twins are born whereas the mother can survive with only one child. Ethics I believe are more important than arbitrary morals. Peace

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I actually read that the younger twin is killed because it is believed he is possessed by a demon, so bad luck. At least it is one tribe I read about. So, there goes tribal wisdom!

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Can you prove that you're not just a clump of cells?

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I urge you to not take the attitude that "just a clump of cells" is not a meaningfully intelligent aggregate; and I mean any such grouping, not just in our brains. If you had a map of every reciprocal communicative interaction among that clump of cells, it might blow your socks off with its information-processing complexity. I find it depressingly telling that in this age of infatuation with information technology, there seems to be very little appreciation for the original innernet, the dense nexus of information processing displayed by all cooperative cellular groupings. And unlike computer chips, the signalling pathways don't even need to be contiguous. For example, our immune systems display a distributed body-wide computational system, which parenthetically is also involved in active information processing with gut bacteria and other microbiomes (yes, your white blood cells "discuss" issues with those bacteria). The Janus-faced reality of life as reciprocal regenerative biochemistry accompanied by nearly endless information processing should be chapter 1 of bio texts. And sure, the "how life began" and the origins of consciousness are open questions, but micro/nano computation as a fundamental property of living systems at all levels of organization is very well established.

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Micro/nano computations are also fundamental to radios. Does not prove the radio is the source of the music.

Correlation is not causation.

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The causation is a systems property, which I grant you that we understand poorly because complex adaptive systems are underpinned but not determined by their computations; hence causation is probabilistic; no surprise that it's difficult to even fathom. The problem with your analogy is that a radio is not a complex adaptive system of systems, it's deterministic, not stochastic. As such, it's so much junk compared to any biosystem.

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Wow. The discussion between you and jamenta is way over my head.

May I suggest you guys figure out how to contact one another and write a paper on this, then dumb it down into a book "the rest of us" might comprehend?

May I also suggest that "so much junk" is a rather pejorative dismissal of the point.

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Jun 27, 2022·edited Jun 27, 2022

There is currently no material evidence (at all) that electrical/chemical activity can produce what we know as consciousness. The fundamental properties of chemical compositions, of electron spin, of electro-chemical energy provide no indication (whatsoever) consciousness as we know it can be produced by these elements. Self-awareness, and the 'qualia' question of consciousness (at the heart of the mind/body problem), such as perceiving the color 'red' i.e. what makes red red, is also one of the most baffling and unanswered questions regarding the science of consciousness.

Once again, correlation is not causation. Just because the brain is a complex phenomena does not scientifically prove it is the cause/produces consciousness. Just because a computer can be built to be a highly complex series of electrical signals and computations, has not proven a computer can become 'self-aware' or conscious. In fact, some recent attempts to do just that have failed.

I am not saying it may eventually be proven consciousness is produced by fundamental properties of electricity and neurons. But what I am saying is science currently has not established this is the case. And therefore, the question is a philosophical mind/body problem remaining unresolved scientifically and ontologically.

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The most recent theory about consciousness is that neurons are fired by a naturally collapsing quantum wave function. The paper can be found searching for consciousness-is-the-collapse-of-the-wave-function. It is an interesting idea but far from solid evidence, really just a thought experiment.

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Jun 27, 2022·edited Jun 27, 2022

Science has not proven reductive materialism. In fact, there is plenty of new scientific evidence which appears to point to consciousness being a fundamental aspect of reality - such as the last 3 decades of NDE research, with over 60+ retrospective and prospective scientific studies by such academics like Bruce Greyson and Sam Parnia.

I know one thing absolutely for sure John Carter: you cannot prove, no scientist today can prove consciousness itself simply can be reduced to a "clump of cells". That has not been scientifically established at all. As far as we know, the body can just be a conduit for consciousness like a radio is a conduit for a Mozart symphony, but not the source (nor did a radio write Mozart's Sonata Semplice).

Therefore, you and others have no right to foist your own belief system on the rest of us based on just your ideological framework that really has no scientific basis at all.

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I'm honestly baffled by what your argument is. For the record, I'm a panentheist: I believe that consciousness is primary, and intrinsic to reality down to the subatomic scale. I'm certainly not a reductionist.

How you jump from there to 'murdering babies is fine' is just weird.

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One thing Caitlin gets right, with her Thought One: The Elites and propagandists and corrupt Democratic party are going to exploit this divisive issue for all its worth, while the economic plunder of US citizens and the world's ecosystem will continue unabated.

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Yes, I agree wholeheartedly that they will exploit this for all that it's worth.

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All of that doesn't make the issue any less valid.

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The most recent theory about consciousness is that neurons are fired by a naturally collapsing quantum wave function. The paper can be found searching for consciousness-is-the-collapse-of-the-wave-function. It is an interesting idea but far from solid evidence, really just a thought experiment.

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And I'm honestly baffled by your declaration that a fetus is a baby.

Show me when "the divine" has entered "the radio" as jamenta put it.

Or tell me that you've never squished a bug. If you have, your pantheist beliefs are inconsistent.

Heinlein showed us that "Thou art God", but he had no problem destroying the evil manifestations of what that meant. (in fact, he was a fervent believer in the second amendment)

Certainly you don't believe all of creation is "Good".

I view it much more simply. I am just one of God's experiments to discover what is "good" and what is "bad". God hasn't figured it out.

When (s)he does will he experience eternal light or eternal dark? How will any experience happen without the contrast between the two?

Like the second law of Thermodynamics that says entropy will rule, when everything breaks down to the same thing how is that different from one thing? how is it different from nothing?

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At one time the US congress believed that a fetus regardless of gestation age can be a victim of violence.

The Unborn Victims of Violence Act of 2004 (Public Law 108-212) is a United States law that recognizes an embryo or fetus in utero as a legal victim, if they are injured or killed during the commission of any of over 60 listed federal crimes of violence. The law defines "child in utero" as "a member of the species Homo sapiens, at any stage of development, who is carried in the womb."

If they are only clumps of cells how can they be a victim of violence as a member of the species Homo sapiens ?

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Where does it say that acknowledging the presence of consciousness in other entities means you can't kill them? That's obviously absurd. All life needs to eat, and all life, one way or the other, feeds on death. You don't get to wash your hands clean by pretending that it's fine because the thing you killed doesn't have consciousness; equivalently, killing something doesn't (necessarily) mean your hands are dirty.

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"I think. Therefore, I am," Descartes. The only thing we know for certain is our own existence.

Does a fetus know it exists?

People are sentient. Fetuses are not.

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Does an 18 month old baby know it exists?

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It is my understanding that in some societies, the answer is "no" up to 3 years old.

Just pushing the boundary of the discussion not trying to suggest it as a solution.

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When I am asleep I don't know I exist, when not dreaming...what constitutes 'consciousness' here? Unborn fetus's respond to all kinds of stimuli. Some prospective parents sing, talk etc. to the unborn...and there is research to suggest this is advantageous to the development...Science harmonises with the Bible in telling us when human life begins (at conception) but it is a human debate as to who decides and when to decide that that life should be respected.

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Doesn’t make those societies objectively correct.

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Eighteen-m-o babies do not get aborted, since they're already "out."

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Says you.

Great job on displaying the arrogance that the extremists apply to the opposite poles of this issue.

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Jun 27, 2022·edited Jun 27, 2022

I think it more likely consciousness is a fundamental aspect of reality, and at some point, makes the decision to enter a growing physical structure. But (obviously) this is my own metaphysical/spiritual leanings at the moment. I have no proof either way this is absolutely the case.

That is why I think the most important point Caitlin makes in her essay here is that the State has no right to dictate to the rest of us an ideology which is only based on a metaphysicial belief system not every citizen in the US subscribes too, and that we are not free if we are subjugated to someone else's religious/metaphysical beliefs - no matter how much they think they are right and/or their God has spoken to them about it.

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When a baby is murdered in the womb, is it not being subjected to the metaphysical belief system of the mother?

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What is consciousness?

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No.

The fetus has no consciousness.

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Prove you're sentient.

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Prove you have a right to control another human being.

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You do realize that there are mutations of Covid that are resistant to some vaccines right? It has nothing to do with your tin-foil hat conspiracies about “vaxxers”.

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You do realize you are supporting Vin LoPresit's point, right?

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You think you know the answer, but you cannot, and do not.

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“after it began around 3 billion years ago”

Allegedly: https://youtu.be/stk-fE2TNVg

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"Men are never forced to sacrifice successful careers to raise children."

Would love to see solid evidence to support this claim. Please take a crack at it. You wrote "never."

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How about you show ONE example, excepting for a mother dying in childbirth, when a man has been forced to end a successful career to raise his children. (Hint: Does he not hire a nanny?)

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This is just silly, it sure isn't common but there are men who, for a variety of reason choose to leave their career and "stay at home". Like there are examples of women who abandon their newborns and leave.

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I didn't say there weren't. You say "choose to leave," when the original idea was about being forced. Nowhere did I DENY that either thing happens. I think you've entirely missed the point. Not surprising, with this insane thread.

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Jun 28, 2022·edited Jun 28, 2022

IMHO, you have described the complicated real world much more accurately than Caitlin's original statement.

It isn't hard for me to find examples from my personal experience where a Dad is "forced" to end his successful career, whatever "forced" means (my guess is she means an economic judgment "forces" someone who makes less cash than daycare costs to put their career on hold).

I know married couples where the man stays home and is the primary daily caregiver for the children because the wife's career is so much better paying and benefited. (e.g. the wife is a doctor and the man's successful career as a freelance roving artistic photographer didn't bring home much cash and lacked a health insurance plan, successful though he was. Or again, the man runs a very small, independent successful business but the woman is a unionized public employee working for a school district with steady pay, tenure, health benefits and a pension plan: his business goes on the back burner so he can raise the kids because they really need that generous government sponsored health plan.)

If Caitlin is trying to say that women never have more highly paying, well benefited, reliable career tracks than their husbands, I wish she would provide more evidence of that. What I see is a lot of married couples in the 21st century making rational economic choices based on who earns more, and a lotta times it's the woman.

Women in the US graduate from college more than men and pursue careers with more success than a hell of a lot of men now. This fact should not be ignored.

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I agree. Regardless of my personal view on the issue of abortion I think that what really irks me is the militant accost in which the polemic is being conducted. On both sides but "pro choice" maybe more so since that group seems to be much "louder". It's not "black and white" issue, never has been and never will be for the simple reason that we're dealing with individual

human behaviour and circumstances. I hear "rape pregnancy" being thrown around a lot, how many of those are at issue here? I'm not after the numbers but mindful that each of those is a tragic personal experience and obviously requires individual and specific approach. But it seems that even in what supposed to be be calm and rational discussions all and everything is being thrown together like there was no way out of it, like most just

enjoy proving themselves right instead of trying to find the best solution.

Sure the issue is highly emotive but let's not forget that majority of couples are perfectly able to negotiate the care of their offspring between

themselves and according to their priorities. And please, let's not

forget that profilactics are widely available to all and treat the issue more

as medical intervention and less as a solution to the lack of personal responsibility for our own actions. My view might be somewhat parochial since I'm in Australia and not in the midst of it.

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She asserted that men NEVER have to end their careers to take care of children. And she didn't provide an exception for a mother dying in childbirth, or a mother who abandoned the family, or a mother with a successful career that actually out earns the husband in his successful career, or any other exception.

She simply said never. All I asked for was evidence to back up that claim. She's confident so it shouldn't be hard to provide.

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I'm not here to back up Caitlin. I'm speaking for myself. Let's look at some statistics, and I'm just going to guess because I'm not really worried about being wrong...

Regarding mothers who die in childbirth and a "SUCCESSFUL MAN" being forced to care for his children... there's this idea called NANNY.

Regarding a mother who abandons the family... I'd say MEN do that probably MOSTLY, and RARELY do we see women do that. And again, with a SUCCESSFUL MAN... NANNY.

Regarding a woman that out-earns the husband... how is he FORCED to give up his successful career? Again... NANNY.

Regarding any other exception... can you really say that successful men are hardly EVER "forced" to give up their careers to raise their children? And, those nannies... are almost ALWAYS WOMEN.

I rest my case.

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We do. I've seen many men in artistic careers abandoning them because the family grew.

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"Men are never forced to sacrifice successful careers to raise children."

Wrong.

WRONG

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Biology is a thing. Parenting of small children falls on the mother's shoulders because biology has prepared her, and not the father, for that. Ideological wishful thinking doesn't change that.

If a man ejaculates into a woman, he has implicitly agreed to take responsibility for the child that may result. This is why society formerly encouraged monogamy, and required men who got their girlfriends pregnant to marry and provide for them. Part of the argument above is that women should be allowed to have consequence-free sex, and not have to take responsibility for their actions. Responsibility goes both ways.

The argument that a fetus is essentially a parasite on the mother's body can be easily extended - children are essentially parasitic these days until their 20s. This line of reasoning would therefore entitle mothers to kill their children at any age, not just in the womb. Pretty soon you're essentially back at the old pagan law, where the paterfamilias (although in this case, the materfamilias) has power of life and death over their children throughout their lives.

Taking it further: if the baby counts as parasitic upon the mother's resources, it also counts as parasitic on the father. After all, even if the father doesn't marry the mother, the state will enforce child support payments - extracting resources from the father to feed the child. If the issue is to be framed in terms of bodily autonomy, and the fetus is to be considered to have no rights in the matter, then surely the father gets a say? Therefore, by this logic, should the father not be entitled to demand an abortion? Or does bodily autonomy only apply to women?

When it comes to children, bodily autonomy is simply the wrong frame. At any age. Aborting a "clump of cells" by tearing apart a nearly fully formed baby in the womb during the third trimester is murder. One's desire for a career or whatever is not a valid reason to deprive another of their life. The fact that the left so rapidly dropped "my body my choice" as a principle in order to force needles in everyone's arms just demonstrates that they never really believed this.

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Jun 27, 2022·edited Jun 27, 2022

Not everyone agrees with your belief system - which happens to coincide with religious Christian beliefs. Not everyone in the US are "Christians" and may have different spiritual/metaphysical views than you do.

That is why Roe vs. Wade was passed in the first place, to protect the rights of all Americans - not just the Evangelicals.

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None of my arguments related to the soul or "metaphysical personhood". I'm simply taking the left logic to its logical conclusion. If a fetus is a parasite, so is a child; therefore a child can be killed at any age. If the fetus is a parasite on the resources of the mother, it is parasitic on the resources of the father; therefore men should have the right to terminate unwanted pregnancies (or unwanted children).

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A parasite on society until it leaves home. Just like a retirement savings plan is a parasite

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Guess that applies to you too since you are a child too, barely anybody here seems to realize they were all children once too.

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Yes. also, children are everyone’s future builders, medics, farmers…. The veritable soul of a society

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Okay boomer.

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i find john's argument well reasoned, fair, and full of emphathy, and has nothing to do with religion.

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I didn't see anything religious in Mr. Carter comments it seems that you are pushing the leftists view that this is being done by their arch enemies the evangelical right - which frankly is nothing but a boogey man used to scare the left.

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Jun 28, 2022·edited Jun 28, 2022

Pregnancy exposes a woman to a long list of possible complications that can result in physical injury or death. Each year, over 50,000 WOMEN develop pregnancy complications.

This is the reason a woman should have the FINAL WORD on continuing a pregnancy.

Physically, men risk absolutely nothing.

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I had an acquaintance who told her children she reserved the right to abort them until they were 26 years old. Then the West Valley City Police Department exercised the "right" to abort her. (Burnt her trailer home with her in it, and kept the West Valley City Fire Department from responding until she was dead.)

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Fair is fair.

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Threatening to kill and killing are not the same. Are you one of those eye for an eye types?

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Do I need to provide background details? Had nothing to do with what she told her children (who where out of town when she was immolated). She was a paralegal, and resistance to their legal abuses bothered the West Valley City Police Department.

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The "my body, my choice" argument is not invalidated by vaccine mandates. Abortions are not contagious. You can't contract abortion and spread it like you can COVFEFE-45.

The irony of those who resist containing the pandemic. These are the same people who claim the wealthy elite want to depopulate the world and there is no better way to do it than to spread a pandemic far and wide. Talk about Useful Idiots.

These fools think the Zionists in Israel would murder their entire population? Seriously? You are idiots to believe this. Israel being the first to board the vaccine train should tell you that these claims from the anti-vaxxers simply are not true. Considering many of them are anti-semites and believe the Jews intelligent enough and capable enough to control the world, they then contradict themselves and claim the Jews are so stupid they are suiciding themselves by receiving the vaccine.

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It seems like the pandemic contained itself with or without the vaccines and all the other stupidity.

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The typical method that an epidemic outbreak of a virulent virus ends itself is by mutating to be other more or less lethal. COVID has mutated to be less lethal to the point where nobody cares anymore. The only people catching COVID now are those with compromised immune systems, many of who have that issue due to vaccine injury.

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Don't be so absolutist. It (original strain) could have killed me, but then, an earlier standard flu could have also.

An unjabbed friend has near identical symptoms to twice-jabbed Steve Kirsch.

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Sorry to hear you caught some illness. Its questionable from my view if it was COVID or an alternate coronavirous. Anyone with the flu or a head cold has the exact same symptoms as a COVID patient and could test positive for COVID. Where did all the annual flu cases go during the pandemic ?

Far to many questions, far to much questionable data and too many instances of medical and pharma companies hiding data from the public.

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"Some illness". It was at the end of February 2020, and was most likely a coronavirus. I've never, ever, had infectious bronchitis before. No, I couldn't test positive for covid. One had to be admitted to a hospital to get a test, even a worthless test. I wasn't about to go get jabbed after the fact and pay for a serotest just so I could say whether or not I'd had covid. You think I'm a masochist? You also won't ream my nose and brain with a sharpened, probably-infected or poisoned, bottle brush. And I already answered whither the annual flu cases went during the "pandemic"; people rarely get both at once. (I think any viral infection cause hyperimmunity for a while.) I don't know what illness I had in January 2022. A lot of people had it (seemed to come from late-December chemtrails or something else simultaneously infecting people tens of miles apart). No bronchitis with that, but it caused fever, headache, lassitude, and some cough and sore throat. Very persistent until 3 days after I started taking a gram of vitamin C every waking half hour.

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My apologies for being somewhat dismissive. I am glad to hear you didn't get tested or admitted. I have never been tested for COVID, I had a few head colds and some kind of respiratory bronchitis kind of thing. Recovered and never thought about it again. I would think your a masochist if you went to the hospital and went through the standard COVID procedures.

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As I said somewhere just above, the symptoms of "Covid" are the SAME as the symptoms of EMF poisoning. That long swab up the nose puts things like graphene (also found in the jabs, along with mercury, aluminum, and other metals) right up near the blood/brain barrier, where it can be "activated" as they call it by EMF's, whereupon the metals shred the insides of the blood vessels... Nice, huh.

I know this all sounds insane... It IS insane, as you appear to be catching onto, judging by your post above... It's a CULL. And I've seen some pretty gnarly stuff coming from people's bodies post-mortem... white globby stuff out of their veins... clogs 'em right up... stroke time! Circulatory issues, respiratory issues...

And what's really scary, for those who are militant about getting jabs, is that after the jab came out, in 2021, THEN the death count went screamingly high, people dropping dead for no reason, no cause given, millions of them, over the globe, and life insurance companies FREAKING OUT because of all the payouts... Some serious rain is falling and will continue to fall... 2-5 years they say, for all these jabs to finish taking out a vast chunk of the population...

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You are insane.

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Did you know that the symptoms of "Covid" are the same as the symptoms of radiation poisoning? "Covid" is far more likely to actually be EMF's, and 5G is incredibly potent.

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There is no typical. It's a purely random process that can go any which way including loose.

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The pandemic is still very much active outside of China and consistently knocking on China's door. The vaccines have helped to slow it outside of China but that's only temporary until it mutates into a form that evades the vaccines.

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The vaccines don't prevent the spread but they do diminish the velocity of spread when coupled with other containment measures like proper masking for example. The vaccines also help diminish the severity of the disease which also shortens the window in which a vaccinated person can spread it.

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Enough with the BS talking points. Masks do fuck all. We've known this since 1981 when a definitive study was done, since confirmed multiple times in controlled experiments.

Get it through your head. Your side lost. You aren't forcing this shit on us, and if you keep trying, the results will not be to your liking.

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You sound just like someone who just listens to msm...

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How so? The large majority of the population is reportedly seropositive to it. Do you refer to mortality being grossly overblown?

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I am referring to the fact that all non-cause mortality measures haven't changed the total death count at all in the last 3 years. COVID didn't result in any spike in the number of deaths overall, it wasn't until the vaccine was rolled out that any significant rise in death rates was measured.

https://thehill.com/changing-america/well-being/longevity/588738-huge-huge-numbers-death-rates-up-40-percent-over-pre/

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Flu can also kill. Looks like people only get one or the other. The jabs are not an infection, but a poisoning (or sabotage of people's immune systems, etc.).

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The "flu" is also likely to be poisoning, or nutritional deficiency, or something of that ilk. There is no "catching" the flu. It's a long-term scam, so that pharma can continue to make trillions.

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If SARS-CoV-2 was actually dangerous (lol) and the mRNA treatments were actually safe (bigger lol) or effective (biggest lol) then your point would be less retarded, but overall it's basically just a collection of really dumb priors set up against a weak strawman (antivaxxers are antisemities! Therefore, murder babies.)

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A million died and then stopped dying after the vaccine, but the virus wasn't dangerous and the treatments were not worth taking because they weren't perfectly safe. Ok.

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That is a poorly reasoned argument, looking at the current data the number of people dying from the COV have accelerated in the vaccinated population. Claiming the vaccine saved lives is the thinnest of lies that are based on public relations not on scientific studies.

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"Weren't perfectly safe" is the understatement of the century, considering the mRNA treatments are the most dangerous medical product in history.

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So let me get this straight. You believe the million or more dead Americans from COVFEFE-45 is a lie?

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What is 'deaths from' vs 'deaths with' for a thousand, Alex?

But sure. A plague so horrifying the global population plummeted from 7.7 to 7.8 billion in the course of a single year. Worse than the Black Death!

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"COVFEFE-45"

Really? You expect to be taken seriously with that? Why don't you just call it the CCP Virus, like the hacks at Epoch News?

Point of order: A vaccine is supposed to protect YOU. If it works as advertised, then it makes no difference if I'm infected because you can't catch it from me. And please, no specious arguments about overloading the health care system when there are at least a half dozen effective treatments which curiously we're being told are so dangerous that they've been removed from FDA approval and doctors who prescribe them have been threatened with loss of their licence. That's the red flag that tells you this isn't really about public health.

Truth is, you're just one of those people who want to force their will on others, and throwing in a red herring like the "Jewish Question" does nothing to help your case.

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Good thing I wasn't drinking coffee, or I would have spewed it. Gotta love The Epoch Times!

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As universal principles go, this is among the most basic: Don't sip on a beverage while reading anything on your computer.

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Why would I call it the CCP virus? Trump let it run wild in America so this virus, in America at least, is on him. Biden hasn't helped matters.

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Which Trump was that? The "warp speed" Trump, or that other Trump that lives rent free inside your head?

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The McDonald that said at first it was a hoax and then the Kung Flu and then was hospitalized with it and almost died. That Trump. The former Criminal In Chief.

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You mean like how you want to force your “I don’t care if I infect other people” will on others?

You are a hyper-individualist.

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I cared enough that people like you had food on the shelves these last two years. I never stopped working, even though I don't have to as I'm financially independent. I did what I felt was socially responsible and kept up my end of the supply chain. However, I sure as hell would have parked my truck if you forced me to get vaccinated, and I wasn't alone in that outlook.

Again, if you believe the vaccines work, then I'm no threat to you. If you don't, then what is your point? That forcing me to take an ineffective vaccine with known serious risks is going to lessen my symptoms? Thanks for your concern, but IVM can do that, in fact it did when I eventually caught CV. Still want me to get vaccinated, now that I have natural immunity proven superior to your temporary vaccine protection? Be honest with yourself. What is it you're really afraid of?

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I don't recommend wasting your time on that shitlib. Speaking as somebody who's wasted too much time on them already.

Edit: And I ended up getting baited by them again and wasting more time shortly after I wrote that. *sigh*

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Fear makes people zombies. Don't even bother, you'll never crack the wall.

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Precaution is not fear. You seem to be the one who is afraid. You're afraid of big bad America and proclaim as much every day.

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Well, that's your opinion. Glad you can read my mind, it saves me from having to communicate any further with you with words. Which is fine! ^_^

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You cannot "infect" other people.

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That's as funny as COVFEFE-45. You're killing me.

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Laugh yer ass off then.

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What does consequence have to do with the ideology of bodily autonomy.

There are also wide ranging societal impacts to pro life or pro choice. Neither vaccines nor abortion affect merely the individual.

Bodily autonomy trumps all

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Are you serious? Abortion certainly only affects the individual.

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Are you serious?

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From a purely physical perspective, abortion only affects the woman having it performed. Not so with COVFEFE-45. Your choice because it's your body to forgo preventative containment of a deadly virus affects more than just you physically.

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Abortion absolutely impacts society in so many ways, would you also say that homelessness or crime or drug use don't impact society in any way ? Those are personal choices with personal results but the larger society has to deal with them. If a junkie dies from an OD, society has to pick up the body. The homeless guy decision to live in a tent may be his decision but society has to deal with his waste on the sidewalk.

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You really are a scumbag. For people born into poverty, there are few if any options and choices. Yeah, the above are choices for those, like yourself, who are born into privilege and entitlement. They are pretty much fate for those who aren't born into privilege and entitlement.

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I'd love to educate you, but you seem unwilling to learn anything. This is also the apparent case with your views on abortion and women, too, I imagine. I would guess that you spend a LOT of your time arguing because almost everything you say sounds like it's coming straight out of MSNBC.

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Yes, please educate me. Tell me about the Med Beds and the tunnel the Vatican has built to Israel underneath the Mediterranean that is two tractor trailers wide and full of gold.

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A great way to be taken seriously is to decide what your principles are, then apply it to all situations and all people

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All principles are not equal, what matters is absolute truth: https://youtu.be/Kjjzeib69FQ

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Tried that. It doesn't work either. Nobody cares about principles except as lip service.

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Societal behaviours definitely affects me too

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Physically, financially, mentally

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not when what you do with your own body affects others.

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That’s your ideology. You will need to change the nature of the countries laws and societies values to make medical coercion acceptable. Currently that is not how things are here, this new paradigm would require a national conversation and mass acceptance

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I value personal autonomy above safety. therefore, without a reasonable compromise, we will always infringe upon each other

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“I value personal autonomy above safety.”

YOUR safety, not others safety when you can spread Covid to them and mutate Covid to make it resistant to Vaccines.

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Even though it’s irrelevant.

Are you referring to the vaccinated or the unvaccinated? I always have trouble telling the difference

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You cannot "spread" Covid.

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you dismiss my "ideology" when we're discussing a law that has just been changed because my "ideology" doesn't align with the current law? eat the cake and have it too.

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I’m not dismissing it, it is just as valid as mine

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For all I know, the trade offs engendered by your ideologies may be better in the long term for society.

With my limited view, I simply don’t see it that way

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Yep, even then. If a man wants to get a tattoo of a swastika, he has the right to do that, even though a lot of people would object to it, strongly. But nobody tells that man he cannot do it, because it's his body, his right. Only women seem to have to FIGHT for the rights to control what happens to their own bodies.

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now you're equating a tattoo with a (potential) baby? desperate much?

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No, YOU'RE equating it. No, not desperate at all. Just want what's right.

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you know not what you're doing eh?

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Zionists kill Palestinians instead

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No; in addition.

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Right because experimental gene editing and exhaust filled masks are doing such a fine job containing infection. What a maroon.

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China has done an excellent job containing the pandemic. If the pandemic is the only judge, China has a stellar human rights record compared to America and Russia who have failed to properly contain the pandemic.

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Oh sure they did! Just like they contained Tianenmen Square. Gosh if only I could live in Shanghai!

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Soon enough you will. Shanghai on the Potomac.

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If America doesn't contain the pandemic properly. Vaccines alone haven't and won't get the job done. It must be the Full Monte.

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Jun 27, 2022·edited Jun 27, 2022

Neoconservative Jews throw nonneoconservative Jews under the bus. Grow up! Quit boasting about how famous you think you are. (Meaning of "Semite". Has nothing to do with "Jews", though whether or how many of them are the "hands of the Eternal" is another matter, and "Zionists" means "pricks". Look up the meaning of the letter Zayin. You sound like hands of the god of this world.)

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Hate to ruin your party, but you know what? Contagion has never been proven. Boom.

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Yes, and Angela Merkel is Hitler's daughter and so too is Theresa May.

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That is just a movie.

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Nope. It's not just a movie.

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Whatever you do don't stop taking your meds.

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lol

That's what all the people who have no information or any argument whatsoever seem to always come up with... insults. Amazing, how that is so common. ^_^ It's all good, honey. I'm not dependent on your opinions to be able to do research, or to be curious, or even to have my own opinion, and for that, I am thankful.

Perhaps a video would be to your liking? I will do your research for you, just this once, and just this ONE video. You can choose whether or not your curiosity is great enough to watch it... It's actually pretty interesting. But click on the little gear down to the right, and speed it up a tad, it's apparently recorded in a too-slow speed.

It's also worth noting that I said "proven." I didn't claim to have All Answers. But this is not the only place this information can be seen, they just do a pretty good job. Cheers.

https://www.bitchute.com/video/RpaBdalbgD2Y/

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Your not right in the head. Get help.

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And you're not right in the grammar. Get schooled.

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AFAIC, the question answers itself: Since the woman bears the pregnancy, it ought to be her choice, and I doubt a referendum of women (only) on that question would ever be defeated.

As for the male role in all of this, I make a point of asking before engaging, and if the answer isn't to my liking I move on. A woman can also change her mind - she has that right - and since we both participated, then the responsibility is shared. Everything in life comes with a cost, including getting laid. Don't like that? Get a vasectomy.

Let's be realistic here. Women of means always have a choice. The burden of this nonsense falls squarely on the poor and abused as Caitlin pointed out. Bottom line: no one is denying ANYONE the right to bear a child, however, this argument tilts very hard towards forcing one's will on others, and on that basis alone, I reject it. I am NOT my sister's keeper.

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ALL the arguments against abortion seem to revolve around emotional issues that may or may not have any relevance. The idea that a tiny little fetus would feel pain, or fear, or any of these other imagined "terrors," is extremely unlikely. If we lived in a truly compassionate society, the woman should have access to the medicinal means of taking care of herself VERY early on, without having to travel, or pay a lot of money... NONE of that kind of compassion ever seems to be directed at the MOTHER, only toward the BABY, and once born, it's on its own. One in five children go to bed hungry in the USA. While the middle class is destroyed and our country is run by billionaire oligarchs.

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Very many ideas in such a compressed space. Even with a few ellipses and some vertical space taken up by important words spoken in an elevated tone producing a tiny bit of wastage.

Herding Words One Abortion At A Time(TM)

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Jun 27, 2022·edited Jun 28, 2022

I had a man tell me that women were being big cry babies about abortion not being available in Texas, when they could just travel to another state.

He didn't know the Texas law aims to prosecute anyone who enables or assists with an abortion, so that includes the person who might ride with you to another state, or do anything to assist you in finding an out-of-state provider.

He doesn't know that a Texas representative has sent "cease and desist" letters to advocacy groups who were providing travel funds to poor women. This representative has vowed to go after these groups legally because of a pre-Roe Texas law still on the books.

He also doesn't know that Texas obstetricians have reported they are no longer providing the normal standard of care for pregnant women with wanted pregnancies. The ones who develop complications that require a life-saving abortion are now being sent home until they develop deadly sepsis . . . because the doctors are so afraid of making a timely decision and being accused of performing an unneeded abortion.

He doesn't know that in Texas, 3/4 of the women seeking abortions are poor or low-income.

BTW, this same man ASKED ME IF HOSPITALS KEEP BABY FOOD (jars) ON HAND TO FEED NEWBORNS. This man was 69 years old when he asked this. I had to compose myself before informing him that newborns can only drink milk for several months, and that they are not capable of eating baby food. And while I was at it, I told him that breastfeeding takes many hours per day.

But he has opinions, y'all.

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So many of our discussions around rights and freedom, in the Land of the Free, ha ha, seem to center around EMOTION and ignorance of actual science.

And it doesn't matter what a woman might know, have lived through, her education, life, etc etc etc, men always know better!! Okay, lots of men are pretty cool, but... look at this thread! It's sad. So many men just never seem to really grow up, and yet they look down on women anyway. That's a loooooong time comin' with all that patriarchy rubbish.

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Jun 28, 2022·edited Jun 28, 2022

Yes. I was never one to jump on a "Men Are Crap" bandwagon, but I have come by experience to realize that too many of them love to hear themselves talk. And they like to talk "at" you instead of "with" you.

They seem not to consider that you might even know more about a subject than they do. And I never want to hear that men are more logical than women ever again. I've known a lot of illogical men who are almost entirely driven by emotion.

The man I referred to, loves to call me and hold forth on politics or whatever subject strikes his fancy. It's a lecture; not a conversation. I marvel how how the words can tumble so rapidly from his mouth without him taking a breath. I put the phone on the table and can nod off for two hours straight before he notices I'm not talking. He loves the sound of his own voice.

I am not so much a person as I am a giant ear.

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Oh, my. Yes, I've had that experience, too. More than once. lol Well, you know, men are trained to be a certain way, and so are women. Socialized. Brainwashed. It's not entirely their fault, but when you're the top dog, it takes some serious cojones to step off the merry-go-round. And men make it very difficult for other men to step off... talk about peer pressure-- and believing the mythology! Same for women, tho, so many are just utterly trained... It's the few and far between of both sides, the rebels, who manage to escape and hopefully find each other. Truth is, I'm just as bored listening to female nonsense and blather as I am listening to the male side. But women don't generally treat me as if they own me, either, or are entitled to better wages, or what my "duty" is, or how to raise my children, etc etc etc And generally speaking, they don't often treat me as if I am in need of their sexual beneficence, and sex being part of almost EVERY conversation...

Have you ever read a book called "Men Explain Things To Me" ? Author is Rebecca Solnit. I think that's where the term "mansplaining" came from. She tells about how she went to a party with a friend, another gal, and they went to say hello to the host, whom they didn't know. The host spent some time telling Rebecca all about this book, which SHE wrote, and raving about it, and cutting her off when she kept trying to tell him SHE WROTE IT, and finally her friend cut in and said "SHE'S THE AUTHOR!!!" lol That's funny, but the book has some pretty dark stuff in it, too.

Anyway. Cheers, m'dear... And wondering if maybe some lectures back to your male phone friend... Maybe all about makeup, or the benefits of using a certain kind of dish soap, or maybe just fall asleep and drop the phone, somehow turning it off... ;)

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Jun 28, 2022·edited Jun 28, 2022

Yesssss, I did read that story about her trying to tell the guy she wrote the book he was praising!!!

Once in a while, when I can't take anymore, I will stop my caller cold and tell him facts he never thought about while forming his opinion.

Fun times.

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Points One and Four are particularly relevant today. I may disagree somewhat with some of your moral arguments, but agree that, legally speaking, abortion should be a private decision between doctor and patient, especially during the time before a developing baby is "viable."

It's worth noting that, in the absence of any state "trigger" law making abortion illegal as soon as Roe is reversed, the recent SCOTUS decision does not make abortion illegal. It returns the decision-making to the states, and realistically it's unlikely to be overturned anytime soon.

What can be achieved now is to protect the doctor-patient relationship and medical privacy at the state level. This needs to include both issues of pregnancy and the right of doctors to prescribe drugs "off-label" to treat conditions other than those originally approved by the FDA.

A doctor's right, nee obligation, to treat and prescribe under the Hippocratic Oath and right to free speech must not be restricted by the bureaucratic decisions of an employer, hospital, licensing board or certifying agency absent a long-standing pattern of malpractice, incompetence or abuse. Doctors must not be subject to challenge by such bureaucracies based on complaints by politically motivated entities or people who are not the doctor's patients. Individuals must not be subject to coercion of any sort to get them to accept any medical procedure.

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And if you live in a state like mine, where insane mandates for masking and denying people jobs without having a medical procedure they do not want, violating the US Constitution and the Nuremburg Code AND the Declaration of Human Rights, why would it be any more of a stretch to simply deny women a medical procedure that should also be THEIR CHOICE? That's what I'm seeing in my state regarding the lies around "Covid." I think a LOT of people really don't understand what's happening in the world right now...

And anyway, thanks for clearing up a lot of jumbled-up ideas regarding the situation.

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Curious timing I would say. Just before an election. Anyone think a Republican majority is a shoe-in now?

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I think you are way ahead of the game by noticing the Empire has again wiggled out of public scrutiny; the abortion push is just the degradation of the poorest and does nothing to affect the powerful, as you said. Pumping more oil, starving more people, selling more arms and controlling more of us by manipulation is the game to watch.

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Word. As long as they let the women be, too. Every time there's war or strife, the women get kicked around, and that's how it's been for millennia. It's a rotten deal, being treated as second-rate.

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The Unborn Victims of Violence Act of 2004 (Public Law 108-212) is a United States law that recognizes an embryo or fetus in utero as a legal victim, if they are injured or killed during the commission of any of over 60 listed federal crimes of violence. The law defines "child in utero" as "a member of the species Homo sapiens, at any stage of development, who is carried in the womb."

If they are only clumps of cells how can they be a victim of violence as a member of the species Homo sapiens ?

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This is how duplicitous this movement has been. This was a backdoor to further disable abortion rights. An appropriate punishment for Bob ladies, is for Bob to carry every single rape baby to term for all eternity and even that's not punishment enough as far as I'm concerned. F*ck your god, Bob for it is surely the devil.

****Although physicians who perform consensual abortions are not subject to prosecution under the UVVA, organizations that support a woman's right to choose opposed the act.7 These organizations asserted that the UVVA was part of a campaign to undermine the right to abortion. They argued that recognition of a fetus or embryo as an entity separate from the pregnant woman could obscure the U.S. Supreme Court's finding in Roe v. Wade that the word "person" does not include the unborn.8 If personhood could be established for a fetus or embryo, such entities' right to life under the Fourteenth Amendment would seem to be guaranteed.****

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This is why nobody takes you seriously, you can't be coherent long enough to carry a conversation. I am a lifelong atheist, well since I was about 12.

The court has vacated RvW but this is federal law, the right used the proper mechanism to write, promote and pass this law, something the left could learn from.

Wishing hatred, violence and pain on me because you don't agree with my opinion is the hallmark of the woke, you are a waste of skin. Goodbye.

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So you admit forcing a woman to carry a rape baby to term is forcing violence on her and therefore the law of the land per the coupling of the Supreme Court ruling and the legislation you provided reference too is intended as violence to women. Thanks for that validation.

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****The right used the proper mechanism to write, promote and pass this law, something the left could learn from.****

The "right" learned that from Nazi Germany that was, afterall, a nation of laws. What the Nazis did was all perfectly legal. So much for a nation of laws.

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Wow, an atheist since 12. Too funny.

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Since 3 would have been even funnier.

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again, biology and politics are like oil and water. they do not mix. like religion and science. one can't validate nor invalidate the other. physical/biological/chemical/geological science and mathmatical numbers are apolitical. sure, science and math can be and have been used for financial gains or political agenda, and the scientists as members of a society are as political -- with stakes in political debates -- as the clergymen or the teachers or anyone else. a communist biologist and a capitalist biologist can agree on what the life form, the fetus, the baby, etc are.

what we as a society are willing to accept is the domain of political discussion, not a scientific/biological discussion. this is why "pro-life" and "pro-choice" as two sides of the capitalist-individualist coin -- like the damns and the repugs, no substantive difference -- never excites me into participating in the debate and the fight. in communism, the debate will be entirely different. in capitalism, many women "choose" to go through abortion because they are on their own and want to survive. no one in the same system is qualified to blame them. mind you, that doesn't make those women righteous angels or super smarter heroes. just human beings caught in the machine.

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Religion is what started science though, it was a religious person who invented the scientific method. It was a Muslim scientist called Ibn al-Haytham.)

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a religious person can be a scientist at once. the two, religion and science, do not collide or invalidate the other as they exist in two dimensions that never meet. that doesn't mean his/her religion created science. s/he discovered a scientific universe, apart from his/her religious universe. i doubt one person "created" a scientific universe.

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I hit reply not like on your comment but for some reason I cannot remove the like as I do not agree with your separation of science and religion/spirituality.

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Science ilike quantum physics is getting closer to understanding many spiritual and religious beliefs. All is Consciousness. It is an Aware and mysterious Universe. The field is the thing. Everything is connected. When we get this we will stop hurting ourselves, our collective self.

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i wouldn't have bothered to write a comment unless many people including yourself mix unmixable things up and build a career, often very lucrative ones, on the intellectual mess that they themselves created, proclaiming that the problem in question is unsolvable and simply mysterious but we're getting closer everyday to the truth. sound familiar?

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I have no career in any of this. I have explored consciousness and been an activist.

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Not familiar at all. Science is a method of inquiry. How is spiritual inquiry so different? We ask questions and seek evidence and even do experiments. The overlap has always been there... an attempt to understand the universe. A mystery is something we do not understand... yet. Science, material, quantum or spiritual leads us to understanding.

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science isn't jsut a method of inquiry . science immediately involves various subject matters to inquire into, from physical matters to biological entities, from chemical substances to geological masses. philosophy is also called science (vis a vis ideology), a method of inquiry, or a systematic way of studying and understanfing, and its subject matter is human society, aka history. mathmatics, in general, is a pure logic. without getting into details, knowing the difference (in subject matter) among those three (material science, social science, pure logic) helps you understand where people get all confused and lost. not doing so brought post-everything-isms, neoliberalism, and identify politics, which have served the capitalist-imperialist-zionist agenda very well.

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The kidney argument is a good one, and honestly one I had never considered before I first saw it in the Narrative Matrix post a day or two ago.

To continue the analogy, if the person who needed your kidneys--or mine or whoever's--ended up dying, that would be bad. But it would also be bad to force somebody to basically be joined at the hip to someone else for nine months. Assuming that at some point before birth a fetus grows a brain that gives it the ability to think--changing it from simple "life" to "intelligent life"--then past that point, there is no "good solution", and IMHO it then becomes a question of which solution is less bad, of who matters more. Ideally, there would be no unwanted pregnancies in this world and nobody would ever have to make such a decision.

I wanted to respond to the statement about motherhood being more worthwhile than your career according to the guy on Twitter, so I stopped reading to comment on that too:

In addition to it being unreasonable to ask anybody to give up their livelihood in order to raise a child (and yes, it's worth asking why men are never encouraged to do so--I do happen to have an uncle in San Diego who raised the children full-time while their mother worked, but I think that was more a case of "She was working at the time and he was between jobs, so it just made sense" than anybody pressuring him to do so), I'm a man who understands something that evidently lots of other men do not, and I hope that doesn't sound like bragging. But I understand that being a parent is hard, and being pregnant is even harder.

I know I'm not cut out to be a parent, because I don't believe I could strike that perfect balance between not being too strict and not spoiling the kid rotten. I don't think I'm patient enough to respond to a child making a lot of noise or doing something else to get on my nerves without overreacting. I think that if I consistently missed getting a full night's sleep and was woken up again and again during the night because the baby needed something, I'd be a complete wreck. There are probably a bunch of other things I'd need to do or at least do half of that I haven't thought of, but yeah, it would be really hard work. Even if I had no career to give up, I wouldn't look forward to it. And I'm betting that of those people who do think it's worth it and that the joy of having a child makes up for all of it, they'll still acknowledge that yes, taking care of a baby and later a child can often be frustrating.

And all of that is before I even think about what it would be like to carry a baby to term for nine months before all of that hard work starts. Do I like the idea of throwing up in the morning? Of carrying the extra weight and not being able to move around as well as I used to? Of giving up booze and caffeine and anything else I'm accustomed to ingesting that would be bad for the fetus? Of cramps? What about the pain of actual labor, and having to endure that somehow for dozens of hours?

I don't know how anybody who's pregnant gets through it without losing their minds. I highly doubt I could do it. And so I will never tell anybody else they are *obligated* to do this thing that I'm sure would be too much for me.

And now I will read thoughts 6-10...

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agreed that no one should have the authority to force anyone else to go beyond what the person is willing to do or capable of doing. it reminds me of the argument that "i worked harder, overcame discrimination, and succeeded. so can you. so affirmative action is unnecessary or it's reverse discrimination."

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100%. While it's natural for people to think "I did it, so anybody can do it" or "I couldn't do it, so I shouldn't expect anybody else to" the way I said above...even if I *could* handle something (whether that's being the first person sans uterus to carry a baby to term or climbing Mount Everest or whatever the case may be) then I realize that others can't.

Ideally, everybody would realize it. We all have our strengths and weaknesses. Something that comes easy to me might be extremely difficult for somebody else, and vice versa.

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