Thursday, May 23, 2013

The Danger of Cultural Narrative

This is what I was on about.

Over in Mississippi, as in several other backwater states, women who suffer miscarriages and stillbirths while they are using drugs have been and are being charged with manslaughter.

That's a real danger that hasn't gone away -- and if Conservatives have their way, it's a danger that will increase.  Mississippi wants a law that will make the fertilized egg a legal person, so that every miscarriage will become a crime scene, every woman who loses a pregnancy a suspect.

Or, well, you know: every poor woman, every brown woman.  I don't imagine any of the law-makers women will have to worry much.

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

Who is going to feel sorry for a pregnant woman with a positive drug or alcohol test? Nobody is going to fight for her, but she doesn't even have to really exist. Legislators get to stick yet another rule to poor women on social benefits and look like heroes without having to accomplish anything. They make hospitals do the work and pay for the piss tests too because it's a law. They have an easy, unsympathetic target, a cheap target, and a phony cause that their churches will get behind to re-elect them even though everything else they are doing is in the best interests of the corporation backing their campaigns. It couldn't possibly be more slimy. --L

Anonymous said...

Chat sex webcam. Yeah, I should be writing for them. (sigh) --L

delagar said...

WTF is up with all the sexbots this post is attracting? It's like six a day!

delagar said...

It's probably (sadly) because I have the phrase "women who suffer" in the text. Arg.

Hector_St_Clare said...

Of course, the idea that some human beings are not persons deserving of legal protection, has a long an unhappy history. See the Nazis and their views of the Jews, for exampls.

delagar said...

Or -- for another example -- certain men and their views of women.

Hector_St_Clare said...

Oh, why, because I don't agree with this silliness about you having the right to kill your unborn baby?

Sorry, but *nobody* has the right to do that. Unless you can show me what crime the baby is guilty of.

Also, you need to learn to better distinguish the claim that some people should not enjoy a certain right, from the claim that they are *not people*. We don't extend children the right to vote, but that doesn't mean we think children are not persons.

There's really only one side here who is trying to argue that other human beings are *not persons* and outside the protection of the law- which is again, the tactic of the Nazis and the Confederates. You ought to be ashamed of yourself, if you were capable of shame.

William Shears said...

I think Hector is forgetting that woman are people too. He gladly argues that all humans are people, but denies woman control over their bodies. How would he feel if the government decided to start telling men where they could drop their seed or not. If the situation were reversed he'd have a different opinion. His lack of compassion for others is astounding.

William Shears said...

Seeing as how the children in question would most likely grow up in poor homes and shoved into Ghettos where they would slowly starve or die I think people who advocate that unwanted pregnancies be carried to term are more Nazi than people who don't. Also, seeing as how these children would most likely grow up to make up the unskilled labor force that gets paid below a living wage, basically slavery, I also say that anti-woman advocates such as yourself are more like the CSA.

delagar said...

I know, William, but seriously, what's the point in engaging with Hector? He's indicated already in the other threads (as well as in this one) that (1) he runs his intellectual life by the rules of a theocratic fantasy and (2) that he considers women property to be controlled by men and (3) he thinks he's smarter than everyone in the room [Dunning-Kruger Effect, anyone?]

Given all that, further conversation seems pointless.