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The Mathematics of 'Legitimate Rape' and Pregnancy
Hugh Pickens writes "James Hamblin, MD writes in the Atlantic that it's unclear how common the misconception that women rarely become pregnant after rape may be, but remarks by Missouri Senatorial nominee Todd Akin that 'if it's a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try and shut that whole thing down' (video) may provide some benefit as a learning opportunity. 'From a holistic perspective, one might hypothesize that a woman's body could respond to the extreme stress and trauma of enduring rape in such a way that she would be physiologically more likely to miscarry (or not to conceive at all),' writes Hamblin. After all there is a multi-million dollar alternative reproductive health market aimed at optimizing an environment for conception so there could be something to a theory that the other, much darker end of that spectrum functions analogously. But that hypothesis doesn't hold, to any relevant degree. A widely-cited 1996 study from the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology sampled over 4,000 women and found that the rape-related pregnancy rate was 5.0 percent and studies from other countries have reported the percentage to be even greater."
The dumb bitch had it coming. Women use sex as a weapon all the time. ALL THE TIME. This is just their comeuppance. In caveman days this was a perfectly normal way for our male ancestors to deal with the bewildering illogic of most females. We are merely forcing our cultural views on the situation.
how?
If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
Nice to see slashdot try to shoehorn this hot-button issue on a site ostensibily about news for nerds.
Bottom line, this isn't a math issue, its a political issue that you are using to drive your pageviews and flamewars.
-1 to timothy for this transparent attempt.
Had consensual sex with an ex girlfriend and she stayed in bed with me for about 5 hours. The next day I was accused of rape. Ruined my life.
Charges were dropped after a year and she apologized 6 years later.
Women lie about rape. Most rape accusations are lies from a slutty woman who regrets her decision after the fact.
Stuff that matters.
Or at least science can.
Maybe the 5% rape-related pregnancy rate is in part accounted for by "rapes" like the Julian Assange case, in which we can't really say that the victims are very affected.
The whole reason that this comes up is because you get guys, who ignore facts and place their bias out there are the truth. This is why you get Kentucky trying to get rid of evolution, stupid senators making dumb comments about rape. Throw in the good ole-boy network of reenforcing stupidity (on basically anything) we get these stupid statements and stupid laws.
If the mother is under the age of consent when giving birth, you can be sure she was under the age of consent at the time of conception. So we can be sure that in 100% of those cases, it was statutory rape.
"But that hypothesis doesn't hold, to any relevant degree. A widely-cited 1996 study from the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology sampled over 4,000 women and found that the rape-related pregnancy rate was 5.0 percent and studies from other countries have reported the percentage to be even greater."
A more likely explanation is that the women were already using some form of birth control or that they simply were not in the fertile period of their cycle.
Presumably James Hamblin is an older white male. He seems to be missing the point here. The problem with the statement isn't that it's factually / scientifically inaccurate. The problem is the term "legitimate rape." The senator's statements (if taken with any bit of truth) imply that if a women were to get pregnant in the case of rape it was not a "legitimate" or "real" rape.
This is just more from the "war on women" department. And while I don't agree with the stupid soundbite slogan "war on women" -- the disturbing trend which gives rise to it is a serious problem politically, but more important, socially.
There must also be 'illegitimate rape,' right? Send that clown packing back to the anti-woman nut house he escaped from.
The hypothesis is that women do not get pregnant through sex unless the sex was consensual, and the evidence is that in fact they do. I suppose some statistics would be involved if you wanted to do a hypothesis test. But it's not some complex mathematical model, nor hugely contested.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
One of the many books I've read on the subject - I believe it was O -The Intimate History of the Orgasm actually stated that in studies rape lead to a higher fertilization rate than consensual relations. I won't get into the theory of why, because it will potentially piss off feminists. I'll just say it is documented and statistically significant.
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
Take your science and your math somewhere else. If we were interested in facts and evidence we wouldn't have joined the GOP.
Yeah, the dude is a douche, no question. But even as someone totally opposite of probably everything he believes, I knew what he was saying was women forced to have sex vs those who lie about it afterwords. And what he thought might happen, as pointed out be earlier poster, isn't entirely unbelievable. If there is a market to help you get pregnant, there could be a 'mechanism' that prevents pregnancy. Possible, studied, and rejected. So he is an uninformed idiot. Beyond that there isn't much news to it, BUT in the world we live, were a company with less than 10% market share can be the most valuable company in history, there has to be something to make the news sell.
This my friends is a result of showing how easily you (the proverbial you, as a population) can be fooled into thinking something is important, when it is not. Everything you have seen on TV on this issue, is about selling commercials, nothing more. And from what I can tell, is working exactly as planned.
slashdot troll = you make a compelling argument I do not like the implications of.
What Akin said is the way he believes it works, as advised by someone who shares his beliefs in pro-life.
What Akin truly missed out on was a golden opportunity to keep his ignorant trap shut, other than to refer to medical journals. Elections are dangerous times to be spewing things you know little to nothing about, giving air to your personal views. He now has a snowball's chance in Hell of being elected, but doesn't seem interested in aborting his campaign.
There is Science & Medicine and there are the political ways people try to interpret, shape and steer what studies say, then there are idiologues, who even the mainstream can identify as nuts, particularly the gender who are saddled with an unwanted pregnancy and are forbidden to do anything about it.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
if she really wanted it, she'd keep it, otherwise she'd abort it... thats a nice backwoods theory. its nice that we have the people making the laws in this country coming up with this half-baked theories. Maybe they will use these half-baked theories to further take away women's rights? Lets take one step forward, and five steps back. :(
When you get pregnant after rape, you either secretly liked it, or it was consentual.
The bastards the US calls politicians never seize to amaze me with their vile.
and fully believes all kinds of impossible, stupid, and just plain unrealistic things. it's in his blood.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
The number is so insignificant it shouldn't even be brought up as any kind of argument for anything that could affect the population as a whole.
Subject says all. How the hell can rape be legitimate? This is not some abstract thing. It is a horrible.
how do they study this?
Based on no empirical evidence, I am guessing that rapes are actually more likely to lead to pregnancy than consensual sex because of modern family planning. A woman who is expecting sex is more likely to be using birth control than a woman who is raped.
-- IANAL, this isn't legal advice, and definitely isn't legal advice for you. Also, Squee!
If the odds of becoming pregnant through rape are 5%, that actually puts them at somewhat higher than through ordinary means (which are thought to be about 1 in 30). How does one account for that?
Honest question; I don't know how that would work.
Raise you hand if you, too, are tired of politicians - mostly old white men - spouting forth pretending to be obstetricians! Why bother advocating for certain policies from an informed and intelligent position, when ideology and wishful thinking will suffice!
What we need are politicians who aren't afraid to confront the real threat to society: that dastardly man in the red jacket that makes a career or breaking into people's homes, that twisted anti-thief terrorist, Santa Claus!
And that isn't statutory rape???
Anything to weed rapists out of the gene pool would be a good thing. Maybe genetic engineering can someday fix things so men and women have complete control over their fertility.
What's next? Discussing the validity of Hitler's final solution?
Some dip shit politician makes an ignorant offensive comment which is fine to report in the news but by discussing it's validity Slashdot adds credence to it.
Here's the facts. Some people have reproductive issues so there's an industry to help them. Evolution happens to favor procreation so for most of us if you combine 3 healthy specimens consisting of an egg, woman, & sperm guess what happens?
It's an insult to every rape victim that ever got pregnant to imply that it was anything less than rape and shame on this whole damn site for providing the opportunity to debate that maybe the victim wasn't "truly" raped.
Something that *never* gets brought up (and ignored in discussions when I bring it up) is this fact: my genetics prof. when I was a freshman in college pointed out that if you believe that conception starts at fertilization then about 3/4 of the people conceived never are even born. This is because of the body's spontaneous abort mechanism that ceases pregnancies that have genetic problems.
I wonder if Akin confused this with his idea that rape victims spontaneously abort. (Given Akin's lack of intelligence this is probably given him too much credit).
Of course this idea sets a lot of the anti-abortion arguments on it's ear, since if you believe it then hell is filled with unbabtised babies.
The summary cites a study showing 5% pregnancy rate from rape. But were those rapes "legitimate"?
"Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason."
If it had been anyone else who made this remark, even Obama, no one would care! The media is on the attack and will use any lame stupid excuse to attack someone they don't like. I'm sick of hearing it, I don't care, it doesn't concern me, just shut up already!
-- By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.
I'm confused about the numbers in the paper's abstract. They say the pregnancy rate is 5%, and the number of resulting pregnancies annually in the U.S. is 32,000. That means the number of incidents of rape is 640,000.
Other sources claim the number of reported rapes in the U.S. is around 90,000. How do we reconcile these numbers? Surely the authors don't claim that 86% of rapes in the U.S. go unreported?
So, no true rapist gets their victim pregnant?
Take it to the limit, everybody to the limit, come on, everybody fhqwhgads.
This topic is another right wing crapoid debate. One of their morons spoke poorly and now others jump in to try and lend legitamcy to the idocy by turning a screwup and criticism into some legitmate debate...
Obviously, the 5% knocked up were impure and secretly 'wanted it'.
Twenty-first century and straight-up hatred of women is still a common bedrock of most belief systems. The fact that is seems to be on the increase in the supposedly enlightened Western world sickens me and fills me with despair.
This has nothing to do with nerds and should not have been posted on this site. We all know Republicans are the idiots that got thrown out with the bath water.
It should matter to nerds and anyone else that a man who displays such little care of concern for the nature of reality is a member of the House and seeking office in the Senate of the United States. He represents a constituency the neither understands basic science nor believes that it is necessary to do so in order to make decisions that will govern your personal and professional lives.
Listen to what he is saying, and imagine the implications. A woman is raped... she is forcibly inseminated & the embryo is viable. In this twit's world (and that of others who want to force their 'values' on you) she would have no right to seek an abortion of this undesirable pregnancy. Period.
Furthermore, he's implying that he's been informed by doctors that, "there are ways the female body has of shutting this thing down." First of all, he doesn't understand basic biology. Secondly, he's sadly misinformed about the nature of the rights of the individual. Third, if this is the kind of leadership you want to see in Congress and you're a geek, how do you think it's going to effect your ability to seek federal funding for any research that runs afoul of the whims of a such a zealot?
If you still think it doesn't matter, then move to Missouri and see if can help Akin in his quest, but don't expect to be able to discuss science openly for fear that you'll be expelled from his inner sanctum of trusted keepers of the supreme knowledge.
From the NIH
CONCLUSIONS: Rape-related pregnancy occurs with significant frequency. It is a cause of many unwanted pregnancies and is closely linked with family and domestic violence.
Offer up your own daughter for sacrifice, Mr. Akin, but keep your simplistic, religious immorality out of my life!
Beyond being repugnant, Akin's comment is a window into how these politicians think. Akin is ready to believe, and say in public, a blanket statement about people-not-him (i.e., women) that is hurtful, divisive, and easily proven false with even the smallest effort.
But it advances his agenda. In fact, it covers up a gaping hole in the pro-life position that he thinks he needs to get re-elected.
Does he really believe the thing that came out of his mouth? I don't think he cares. To him, it's just sucking up to a loud (and sometimes scary) special-interest group. Talk's cheap, and it's easy to say what the pollsters tell you likely voters want to hear.
Proof will be in whether he quits. More proof if he gets re-elected. If he sticks around, then he truly believes that what he said, true or not, was proper in view of election politics. If he wins, then his belief will be justified.
The trouble will come when he carries that complete disregard for the facts into creating laws we have to live with.
People complain about government. But we elect idiots like this to run the government. Hmmm.
Take it easy, Charlie, I've got an Angle...
Akin's comments were tasteless and ignorant of current knowledge/data, but since no one else is coming to his defense, I will.
There are two aspects of his comments to which people take offense. To get the first out of the way quickly, "legitimate rape", the 2004 Maryland case of "delayed withdrawal of consent" is an example of "rape" that is not "legitimate".
Now, onto the pregnancy statistics. The theory that rape resulted in few pregnancies was common among conservatives, as TFA states. It came from the amlgamation of two scientific reports. First, studies have shown that female orgasm increases fertility because the vagina draws the sperm up like a conveyer belt as well as opens up the cervix. Second, until just a couple of years ago, rape victims reported orgasms in only 5-20% of cases. A recent study, however, showed that up to 90% of rape victims orgasm -- including those who could not otherwise normally orgasm. Women in previous studies were too ashamed to admit it (and in fact it's the greater psychological trauma than from having been penetrated).
This is an explanation for what was reported only in 2003, which is that the chance of pregnancy is greater with rape than with consensual.
Akin's information was out of date, was widely accepted by anti-abortion advocates (esp in the past), and had some scientific basis that was skewed due to rape victims' misreporting.
Well, at least some conservative d- who typically deny evolution are in the best position to deny rape as a presumed evolutionary adaptation.
However, from an evolutionary standpoint, there is no basis to deny the efficacy of rape regarding impregnation. This type of trait (ie. rape/aggression) quintessentially typifies normal natural "fitness".
I think what he was getting at is this:
I think what he meant was that "legitimate rape" is rape performed legitimately...within the sanctity of a marriage, and good old-fashioned family values. You know, not just rape, but the wholesome kind. And he was speaking from experience on the rarity of pregnancy happening from this kind of rape...after all, he only has six kids.
Now, as for all those sluts who get raped without marrying the guy first...well, extra double dumb-ass on them, I guess...
For your security, this post has been encrypted with ROT-13, twice.
It can be such a disturbing subject. To clear my nerd mind I must go read a page from wiki on Traumatic insemination. Humans have it good.
Don't forget the Assange "rape"
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
From the mentioned study: "The national rape-related pregnancy rate is 5.0% per rape among victims of reproductive age (aged 12 to 45);" If you sample 1000 randomly chosen women of reproductive age, you would expect some proportion of them to be using some form of contraception such as an iud, oral contraceptive, slow release implant or similar which would block contraception. Some of them will probably be pregnant already. None of those women is likely to conceive as a result of being raped, and of the remainder, it is unlikely that on any given day more than 25% would be at a point in their menstrual cycle to be fertile. I don't have all the numbers to hand, but I suspect that if you remove all the "can't get pregnants" from the pool of potential rape victims, you may find that the 5% of who fall pregnant is a much higher % of those who could potentially get pregnant from being raped. How many couples do we hear about who try for 6 or more months before they succesfully conceive? That's less than a 17% chance of contraception, assuming all other possible negative factors are deliberately eliminated. If only 1 in 4 rape victims is in a fertile window in her monthly cycle, then 5% of all rape victims of reproductive age suggests 20% of those who could potentially conceive are ending up pregnant as a result of the rape, and if other negative factors are taken into account, I suspect that the actual rate of conception amongst rape victims who could potentially conceive is even higher.
... is that the Republicans are hosed this November if they continue to double down on all of this.
And this is one of their central tenets on rape, that there is "legitimate rape" and "well, it's not rape-rape, because she had an orgasm" or "she deserved it because she dressed like a slut and forced the weak spined guy to rape her." It is so central to the "pregnancy as punishment for moral failing" in fundie circles that they will not relinquish this point. Because to relinquish it means they could be wrong on other things about pregnancy and abortion too. It's a point of faith held very deeply.
Which is why the GOP platform calls for a constitutional ban on abortion with no exceptions for rape.
But don't you dare call it a war on women. Right? *spit*
So get the popcorn, and find your favorite chair, because this is going to be an epic amount of derp.
--
BMO
Akin was not all with it, it seems, his remarks seemed confused. The fact of the matter is in many cases anti-abortion laws are written to allow for abortion in the case that is a rape, as well where the pregnancy will not be successful due to medical abnormaliities.
I am particularly opposed to abortion since it is indeed the killing of human life, there is no magic moment when the baby materializes from thin air and becomes a conscious being the instant they move through the birth canal. This is just basic biology that its a human being in the womb. As well the idea that it is defenceless gives even more reason to give him legal protection, the fact is a baby already born is just as fragile and defenceless, needing constant care including feeding or they will die, and the slightest mishandling can cause severe injury, babies are very delicate. being dependant does not mean that a person is not a human being with rights, in fact it means they need even more protection since they are less capable to defend themselves.
Then we have the social aspects of abortion. The fact is birth rates in the USA and Europe are far TOO LOW And that this is due to abortion partially. In fact, we have far too few babies and people need to have more babies in the US, not less.
We need to encourage Americans and Europeans to have more children, not provide ways for them to not have them, to boost the too low birth rates.
You chose to ignore the fact that most underage pregnancies result from both parties being underage. This is an easily verifiable fact.
Call me back when you've reached tentacle rape...
This is fucking stupid.
Article mentioned "found that the rape-related pregnancy rate was 5.0 percent and studies from other countries have reported the percentage to be even greater."
This maybe due to the fact that more females in US are on contraception (pills) to begin with. Other nation where sex is considered taboo or hormonal contraception is illegal, may have higher rate of rape-related pregnancy.
There is a famous argument by Judith Jarvis Thomson that suggests that even GRANTING that a fetus is a full-fledged person with the same rights as everyone else, that STILL they do not have the right to infringe on the rights of the mother:
You wake up in the morning and find yourself back to back in bed with an unconscious violinist. A famous unconscious violinist. He has been found to have a fatal kidney ailment, and the Society of Music Lovers has canvassed all the available medical records and found that you alone have the right blood type to help. They have therefore kidnapped you, and last night the violinist's circulatory system was plugged into yours, so that your kidneys can be used to extract poisons from his blood as well as your own. [If he is unplugged from you now, he will die; but] in nine months he will have recovered from his ailment, and can safely be unplugged from you.
Do you have a moral obligation to spend nine months hooked up to this person to keep them alive because you were selected to loan out your kidneys by a third party?
I always understood this issue as trying to determine which of the following two alternatives is true:
1) A zygote/fetus/whatever is a hunk of flesh in a woman's body
2) A zygote/fetus/whatever is a living being/person that deserves rights and protections
If 1 is true then women should be able to get abortions anytime they want for any reason they want, after all it is just a hunk of flesh in their body.
If 2 is true then women should not be able to get abortions no matter the reason because killing is killing. Whether the fetus was a result of a loving relationship, a one night stand, rape, or incest does not change that it is/is not a valuable being deserving rights and protections. (one possible exception is if the mother's life is in danger...then it is valuable life vs. valuable life).
So, why are we discussing % of rape victims that get pregnant with regards to abortion? I'm not dismissing the general impact/importance of discussing rape and it's terrible effects, I just don't see why allowing or not allowing abortion should be part of the discussion.
The statistics does tell us that pregnancy after rape isn't rare, but it doesn't fully answer the question raised at the beginning of the article. Ceteris paribus (that is, controlling for condom use, contraceptive use, day of the cycle, age, race, etc) is a woman less likely to get pregnant through rape. I don't think it *relevant* as far as the abortion debate goes, but I'm genuinely *curious*. One would expect an evolutionary arm race to have equipped women with some mechanism to avoid rape pregnancies and men with some counter measures to said mechanisms. I wonder who has the edge.
\u262D = \u5350
The Republicans don't want you to clarify the issue, nor are they listening to your attempts to do so. Akin said it as a calculated risk in order to let the extremist bigots know that there's a candidate out there who shares their views. The next natural step is to claim that he was quoted out of context or "misspoke" and then return back to courting the moderates, when he really didn't misspeak at all. This tactic, which seems to be used widely in both the US and Canada by right wingers, particularly in marginal constituencies allows them to appeal to a much broader segment than they would if they had only one campaign platform. They're banking on the moderate right wing "not hearing" the more extreme message, which is quite likely if you're familiar with the RWA psychological scale - self deception is right up there with confirmation bias in the family values crowd.
A lot of raped women werent truly raped anyway. A lot of them are under the influence of something, just really damned stupid and dont consider what they are doing, some controlled by lack of self control and high sex drive and so on. So they have sex and then later regret it or feel violated despite the fact they let it happen and thus cry rape because they know just saying rape means you automatically have dozens of people cooing you and trying to comfort you in order to feel like you did nothing wrong and can pyschologically justify what happened and not have regret. Others simply get pregnant and try to get money out of court because they made a dumb mistake. But a lot of "rapes" are a woman getting way too drunk, making drunk choices and then wanting to feel like the babe in the woods later when they sober up so they label it rape. But of course people like that will never admit it or even consider it because they will psychologically defend themselves and see the experince through certain eyes in order to not admit they fucked up.
When a man gets raped no one gives a shit but if its a woman that even gets her ass touched accidently on a crowded bus suddenly everyone sides with her and gives her special attention.
Sure some women do actually get forceibly raped against their will, but that percentage is pretty low. But women, especially the activist feminist type love to blow stuff out of porportion. They are incredibly loud and often incredibly wrong but they always get the attention simply because they wont shut up so they get negative attention and undue attention.
Then you have to realize the vast majority of true rapists cant ejaculate because its not about getting off, its about violation and physical abuse for them due to have a twisted psyche. They rape to expell some psychological demon in them, once its exorcised then they tend to stop. True rapists dont rape for pleasure at all.
Besides, all of these "studies" are purely horse shit. Any study that someone can do Im willing to get I can do the same study and get the exact opposite in results because you can "prove" anything you want with enough effort and ability to skew context.
Haha, I didn't see anyone else mention it, but what about Assange? Isn't he accused of raping women whom he had consensual sex with? Was that a legitimate rape? It will probably eventually lead indirectly to his execution for treason, against a country he isn't even a resident in. Hopefully that will set a president for the rest of the world as well, and US citizens will start being executed by Iran, and north Korea (please, republicans first).
You see, here in the US, we don't take things so literary. No matter what we say about something, we can always use it to mean something else when we want to.
I have heard that sudden stressful events can delay or prevent ovulation. Pregnancy can occur either from sex when a woman has recently ovulated (and still carries a viable egg) or from sex a few days prior to ovulation (sperm can live inside the vagina for several days). It seems logical (though I am not aware of a study about it) that the stress of rape could prevent a woman from ovulating (if she would normally have ovulated within the next few days) and therefore make pregnancy (that otherwise would have occurred a few days after sex) less likely. Pregnancy from rape is certainly possible, but may be statistically less likely than pregnancy from consensual sex.
The Guardian article on this was interesting:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/the-h-word/2012/aug/20/legitimate-rape-medieval-medical-concept
In short, back in the 13th century, European medicine held that the female reproductive system was the same as the male reproductive system, only inverted. Testes became ovaries, penis became vagina, and so on. In order for a man to get a woman pregnant, he has to have an orgasm, so, in order for a woman to get pregnant, she has to have an orgasm. Thus the notion of "legitimate rape" - if a woman got pregnant while being raped, she must have had an orgasm, or in other words she enjoyed it, which in turn meant it wasn't rape.
The notion persisted in some form till the 19th century, and, apparently, still persists in some form to this day.
Did you realize that Rep. Todd Aken is on the Committee for Science, Space and Technology (according to his Wikipedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Todd_akin)
Isn't it amazing that someone this clueless about technology/how the world actually works would be on this committee?
Now do you think that this belongs on Slashdot?
Do you think Aken should resign?
Your "couples wanting to conceive" group will disproportionately sample less-fertile couples, as the most fertile couples will already have kids.
paintball
Why, oh why do we keep irradiating it, cutting it out, treating it with harsh chemicals? Won't someone think of the cancer?
If you saw how many partial birth cancers are thrown out every day, you would be horrified. But because men can get cancer too, it's LEGAL to kill it.
If only men could get pregnant, then abortion would be as easy as changing your oil, or doing laundry.
I propose a constitutional amendment to save cancer from these horrific doctors. We need to start a movement.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
It is a little unclear from the abstract but it looks like of the 4000 women only 34 rape based pregnancies were the basis for this study.
Does anyone have access to the full article to see whether this is correct or not?
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
It is also part of their ego; I know some brown shirts and their whole faith is based upon righteous infallibility -- I mean the faith in the GOP stuff they ditto. These are people who are just as bad on religion but never learned to make the distinction between the two. The GOP purposely has latched onto this confused demographic and purposely conflated matters. Take global warming in Australia, they lost huge progress because marketers succeeded in their (openly professed) strategy to tie anti-global warming conspiracy into the identity of being a conservative. So now you have conservatives who like, want, idealize being conservative feeling compelled to deny reality in order to be themselves!
Maybe you've seen organic versions of the same psychology? Such as Christians who don't think you are christian if you don't believe something they do? (wars have been fought...)
They can't be wrong on anything; the amount of effort they go to avoid it is amazing and imaginative rarely involving logic not because it doesn't exist but because the whole behavior is EMOTIONAL so their reasoning is already shutting down when the topic comes up. Those who can calm down a bit can get some thinking in to recall later-- but try to get somebody who is worked up to reason clearly and see for yourself.
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Just my quick $0.02 because I keep reading the word "feminist" used as a pejorative.
Unless you think women should not be able to vote, get an education, drive, or hold the same jobs men do, you are a feminist.
Feminism is often associated with the left-wing equivalent of right-wing nutjobs. While yes, there are a small %age women out there who fit an unflattering image of what most conservatives visualize when they hear the word feminist, in reality, most civilized mature people are feminists, regardless of political party, religion, or other demographic.
Of course, those of you who think women actually do belong uneducated, imprisoned (nonconsensually), barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen, are truly not feminists.
Carry on.
https://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
They did such a great job with this, but, for one dot they failed to connect. Yes they show that rape can result in pregnancy, and 5% is definitely high for the type of claims being made as casting doubt on the need for abortion.
However, they don't actually address (in the summary I read) the issue of whether their appears to be such a mechanism at work. I say this because they ignored any investigation of non-rape sexual contact.
Lets say the average for non-rape contact was 10%, or nearly double (I know its not that high). Then we could say there is some credibility to the claim, and the problem is a matter of degree. (the numbers are still too high for what the anti-choicers want to justify).
On the other hand, if the non-rape encounters were in the 4-6% range, then hey.... no effect.... if they are more like 1% then...we may have a totally opposite effect going on!
Of course...this gets hard because we then need to take into account the fact that people having sex by choice may (or may not!) be more likely to use birth control of some form.... so that needs to be addressed to really start comparing apples to apples. (I imagine you do that by throwing out all rape cases where any form of birth control was being used, or treat them as a second category for evaluation)
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
Akins rant was a success. Recognition and discussion has reached a national level for this candidate, but do we even know who hes running against? people are rightly polarized and outaged now but this strategy seems to be an old one for the GOP that harkens back to their sterling allies on AM radio. Say something incendiary, let the audience simmer for a while and see what they think, then direct the conversation where you think it needs to go.
The GOP is elected on the coattails of the culture war, nothing less. Once in office they act solely in the interest of the upper class but they need a vehicle to get them there. Points to Akin for avoiding complicated issues like the economy, for which the GOP have no coherent or reasonable answer but to continue shoveling money into the cauffers of the rich.
Good people go to bed earlier.
People of the United States should remember that Paul Ryan(R) (forcible rape) along with Todd Akin(R) (legitimate rape) co-sponsored the "Sanctity of Human Life Act:H.R. 212" which says that life starts at fertilization and guarantees that life full protection under the law which of course has the effect of making women who miscarry guilty of murder.
Undetectable Steganography? Yep, there's an app fo
The opinion of Rep. D-bag Akin does not, repeat, does not reflect the opinion of Missourians in general. Believe me, we're far more appalled by his statements than you can possibly imagine.
On the bright side, Akin's commission of political seppuku has pretty much guaranteed that he will lose to incumbent McCaskill in the election, so there's little chance of him getting elected.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Funny how the English language works too.
Because back then, the word for rape was "ravished". Today we say things like "Darling, you look ravishing", and it's accepted as a compliment.
So 500 years from now, will we say 'Darling, you look rape-able', and the lady will smile and kiss you?
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
Everyone knows, cavemen just knocked their women out with clubs to mate.
Citations needed.
I'm not sure that the "studies" reported here exist at all, but if they do, and are not completely misinterpreted here, they smell like bullshit.
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The only time I've ever seen a modern Republican rely on science was when the science supported his or her ideology. If science conflicts with the right's ideology, then either the Bible or that ideology rules. Likewise, anytime the Bible conflicts with the right's ideology, then ideology takes precedence.
That's just how they are.
Orwell: "In a Time of Universal Deceit, telling the Truth is a Revolutionary Act"
If you use the words "legitimate rape" in any serious context, I'm already branding you an asshole and ignoring anything you subsequently say.
Why don't we just ignore the asshole politicians and don't give their extremist political arguments the benefit of scientific analysis?
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
I knew this story would be on here, knew it'd have more comments than any other story and that a ton of them would say "This isn't news for nerds." Because the supposed non-/. stories always get a crapload of comments. That's probably why they go up; it's well-known that topics like these will garner the most attention, and we prove it time-after-time.
I don't have a problem with it being up myself (it's important, even if it's not tech-y), but if anyone else does, just don't comment and give it attention/hits. I dunno, seems logical to me.
You want to know how to help your kids? LEAVE THEM THE F*&K ALONE. --George Carlin
"... found that the rape-related pregnancy rate was 5.0 percent ..."
Fine. What is the pregnancy rate for non-rape sex?
Maggie Gyllenhaal did an HBO documentary recently that stated the female orgasm assists pregnancy by hustling sperm along with spasms. I'll boldly postulate (I'm male) that a woman being raped seldom orgasms. Given this, wouldn't the pregnancy rate for rape be at least slightly lower than that for normal sex?
Notwithstanding the math (above) that needs to be done, I'll go on record to say I also find Todd Akin's comments ignorant and offensive.
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How about this:
Pull a week of working late and otherwise getting poor sleep.
Crash on the couch, and fall into a dead sleep.
Wake up with the ex riding me like a wild stallion, and (thankfully) manage to push her off before I ended up with the psycho bearing my baby.
No alcohol involved.
Yes, shit happens to guys too. We're also less likely to report it.
I suppose you might want to blame me for not changing the locks, though?
Democrats spent $1.5 mil to help Akin win GOP primary?
http://washingtonexaminer.com/democrats-spent-1.5-mil-to-help-akin-win-gop-primary/article/2505373#.UDPa1qmPVBl
Actually Akin is sort of kind of right. You see, when a woman is raped, the neurons in her brain can fire, causing her legs to take her to the nearest Planned Parenthood clinic. Then those same neurons can trigger her mouth to say "give me an abortion." But that's the only way her body can 'shut that whole thing down' You can read the rest of the blog here.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
The other group says if an individual hasn't been seen yet, it doesn't exist, and thus executing said individual is fine and not murder.
This is something that a lot of pro-choicers have to tell themselves so they feel better about themselves. By any reasonable definition a fetus is a human being, all of the arguments to the contrary to hold water, IMHO. "It's just a collection of cells!", yeah, well, so are you. "It doesn't even have a brain yet!", well, neither does someone in a persistent vegetative state, but it's still considered murder to put a bullet in their head.
Now I happen to be pro-choice, I believe that the issue is one of balancing the rights of the Mother vs. the rights of the unborn child. I don't believe that soceity has a right to tell one person that they MUST do something to keep another person alive. The analogy that I like to make is organ donation -- can I be compelled to give you a kidney, blood, or bone marrow if I'm the only compatible donor and the alternative is your death? Of course not, my right to control my body is paramount. Likewise, I don't believe we have the right to tell a woman that she MUST carry a baby to term.
One can be pro-choice without rationizing their position with moral hair-splitting about the fetus not being a person.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
The conservative movement:
- elected todd aiken to congress 6 times
- think evolution is bunk even when waiting in the emergency room of Darwin's hospital...
- have never heard of the 1st law of thermodynamics but are certain climate change is not happening...
- thought invading iraq was a bright idea...
- still think being in afghanistan is a bright idea...
- think ann coulter was born female...
- think sarah palin is a genius...
- think shawn hannity is a genius...
- think newt gingrich is a genius...
- think rush limbaugh is a genius even though rush thinks the plural of source code is source "codes"...
- think obama is muslim...
- want to duct tape women to a table for nine months and then cut welfare after they give birth to the kids they can't afford...
- and despite attacks on the gulf coast, Haiti, China, and Japan think that their god cares...
At some point we need to declare these morons a threat to national security. Yes I know ann was in fact born female...
So, 5% of all femals that get raped become pregnant. The article considers that a "significant frequency".
I would say this study is another example of the decline of sciense in the USA.
Lets look at this:
The female cycle is on average 28 days long.
As sperms live up to 5 days, and reliable ar least 2 days, a female can conceive 2 to 5 days before ovulation. As the egg is ready to be fertilzed about 4 days while it is traveling to the womb and trying to nist there, the total span of fertile days is 6 to 9 from 28 in total. So the mathematical probability to become pregnant from rape is somewhere between 20% to 24%.
In contrary to the article I would consider the observed 5% surprising low!
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Also, Idiotocracy is now a documentary film.
The way I see it, either way this guy shouldn't be leading anything.
1. He said what he meant, then said that he used the wrong words. This makes him a poor communicator, and thus a poor leader.
2. He said what he meant, then lied about using the wrong words because of the backlash. Then he's a liar, and thus a poor leader.
(A distant third is that he didn't believe what he said in the first place, in which case he's both an idiot and a liar.)
He only resigned when he was convicted for corruption
Actually, he was defeated at the polls, he never resigned. His "trial" was a sham, the prosecution withheld evidence from the defense that may well have resulted in an acquittal or outright dismissal of the indictments against him. The conviction was ultimately thrown out on this basis, and the process that lead to it was corrupt enough to convince Eric Holder (a Democrat) not to pursue a retrial.
Now, I don't happen to have liked the guy very much, nor did I care for his political positions, but if you're going to badmouth him about a "conviction" for corruption it's only fair to tell the whole story.
Incidentally, if Sen. Stevens had been given a fair shake from the get-go, it's probable that he would have been acquitted, after which he almost certainly would have been re-elected. Had that happened the ACA (e.g., Obamacare) would never have passed the US Senate and we'd be looking at an entirely different political landscape. One might even argue a better landscape for President Obama, given the divisiveness of the ACA, and the lost political capital that could have been spent on more pressing matters.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
I am in no way condoning what that idiot thinks or speaks.
It could be that a rape would be beneficial to population growth in a more disperse environment. As one society invades another society, to repopulate or to just populate, the stronger males raping females would make sense that, over time, rape is actually condusive to growing a population.
Again, I am in no way espousing or condoning or giving credence to the act of rape. Rape is rape and we're supposedly civilized.
The August 28, 2011 Science Daily had an article about females being able to reject sperm from undesireable cocks: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/08/110828210552.htm
What about the father's right in the decision? He gets no say at all?
If that's the case..then to make things legally fair...if HE doesn't want to keep the pregnancy, and she does...then he should be free of fiscal responsibility of the child. That would be fair..no?
If everything is her decision...then let her support it if the father doesn't want any part of it...eh?
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
A lot of this is a matter of what you read into the bible and how you deal with the cultural differences. The verses in Deuteronomy are principally about punishments for adultery and premarital sex. As evidenced by verse 27: "because he met her in the open country, and though the betrothed young woman cried for help there was no one to rescue her." and in verse 24 "she did not cry for help though she was in the city" the woman is never considered to be wrong in the case that she was raped.
Here are the verses in question:
It's important to understand that at the time men were expected to look after women, so your daughter would live at home until she was married and if she was attacked it was assumed that there was someone who could come and fight off her attacker. In the case of a wife, it was assumed that the husband or his slaves or servants would be there to keep her from getting raped. So the assumption is that if she's having sex, she is doing it willingly and concealing it from her husband/father.
Applying these verses to modern life would be difficult as many women live independently for much of their lives. But they clearly can say a woman who was raped has not sinned. These laws don't consider the case of a woman who isn't living at home and isn't married, so it would probably be wrong to try to apply it in that case. Also, it is no longer culturally acceptable to betroth you daughter to someone, so that further complicates any contemporary application.
Coat hangers exist.
Your logic exposes the unappreciated danger in the movement to legislate that "life begins at fertilization". This legislation proposes to give legal rights to the fetus that equals that of the already born. Consequently, it runs smack into the biological reality of human reproduction.
For women who are actively engaging in sexual intercourse with their partner (or rapist), on average only 30-70% of fertilized eggs implant on the endometrium and consequently most are incapable of resulting in live birth. However, republican Ryan/Atkin legislation would make all such women serial murderers simply for having a normal menstrual cycle. Lactating women would be at even greater threat of persecution since their bodies produce hormones that make it even more likely the fertilized embryo will fail to implant. This legislation will necessarily require a network of police gathering up sanitary napkins to determine the presence of fertilized egcs to establish if these women have actually committed murder during their menstrural cycle. Otherwise the law would be unenforceable and allow "murderers to go free".
The legislation would also make an ectopic pregnancy in which the fertilized egg implants outside of the uterine wall a virtual death sentence. This is the most common form of complication during pregnancy. An ectopically pregnant woman would be unable to receive the medical procedure (abortion) required to save her life and if she did manage to obtain such medical care, she would be guilty of murder. With 4,131,019 births in the US in 2009 and a rate of about 1% of all pregnancies being etopic, this would mean the incarceration or execution of about 41,000 women per year in the US. It also creates a tenuous legal situation for the men who fertilized the eggs since they could be subject to prosecution for conspiracy to commit murder.
This ignores the irony of potentially requiring the victims of rape to be executed, while simultaneously providing the rapist with the legal defense that it would be a violation of his constitutional right to religion to be prosecuted for rape, since the pregnancy was "gods will".
It is for good reason that church and state must remain separate and that the boundary needs to be made brighter. I would propose taxing churches like we do other businesses to insure that the line is not blurred by legal loopholes, such as taken by Romney to deduct his gifts to his church as a tax exemption.
Sure you get wet and lose a car but it doesn't keep you from getting elected.
*shrug*, I base my viewpoint on the prerogative of one to control what happens with their body, I make no comment on the wisdom or lack thereof of our child support system.
Of course, there are two bulletproof methods of ensuring that one doesn't father unwanted children. Failing that, there is a nearly perfect method of accomplishing the same. I guess it comes down to risk vs. reward; one should to weigh the value of an intravaginal ejaculation against the possibility of an 18 year commitment to rear a child.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Of course, there are two bulletproof [wikipedia.org]methods [wikipedia.org] of ensuring that one doesn't father unwanted children. Failing that, there is a nearly perfect method [wikipedia.org] of accomplishing the same
Would these all come down to... sitting in mom's basement all day reading Wikipedia articles?
I'm from St. Louis which is a hotbed for this conversation right now. Our largest talk radio station had a professor of gynecology from WashU (top 5 med school) and he said effectively this:
Phsycial trauma and stress can make it less likely for a woman to be able to concieve but it takes a longer period of time for this change to occur. It is not some biological response to rape; infact, the wheels of conception are already in motion. "Those cards have already been dealt" by what he said.
When asked about a medical opinion that a woman's body adjusts the pH level to reduce chances of becoming pregnant, he said that's nonsense. Virtually every supporting argument for what this senate hopeful said was dismissed as absent from any medical text he's read.
As someone who was falsely accused, I know for a fact that not all claims of rape are 'legitimate'. The furor over the term 'legitamate rape' is nothing but contrived liberal feminist crap.
So, even using the feminist's numbers, about 32,000 women per year get pregnant from rape (which is highly suspect). This is used to justify the murder of over a million in-utero babies per year.
It doesn't miss the point at all. Plenty of people are parsing the meaning of the phrase "legitimate rape", but Hamblin is trying to answer the question, "When a woman is has non-consensual sex, is she less likely to get pregnant?".
Turns out the answer is "No". But I didn't know the answer to that question one way or the other before reading this article, but I was curious about it. It seemed implausible to me because there isn't really any obvious evolutionary reason for a woman's body to defend against impregnation via consensual vs. non-consensual sex. But it's better to know the answer than to guess the answer.
They don't grade fathers, but if your daughter's a stripper, you fucked up. --Chris Rock
Then we will see real laws that make total sense.
From the perspective of civil law, abortion should be legal for a host of pragmatic and moral reasons. To put it dangerously concisely, there are many situations where choosing to abort is a morally defensible option, and, more pragmatically important, attempting to monitor pregnancies, prevent women from terminating pregnancy, and punish those who who do attempt/succeed is a daunting logistical task due to the biological realities of the gestation process. Moreover, such action is an overreach of power by any social body.
That being said, we must also face the fact that in many cases, perhaps even most cases, abortion is tantamount to murder. Again, this does not mean abortion should be illegal; abortion is simply a case where there are no easy, clean solutions. The fact that abortion should be legal does not minimize the fact that abortions often terminate a healthy life trajectory, and speaking about abortion as an act of privacy or simply a medical procedure is morally disingenuous. To put it bluntly, sometimes life sucks, and sometimes we are given horrible choices between undesirable alternatives. I am certainly not saying that abortion is always wrong, or that it is easy to know when it is or isn’t. I am arguing that in the effort to defend the right to abortion, we tend to minimize and mask the fact that abortion is the termination of a life trajectory that will, with luck and nurturing, lead to a first smile, a first word, a first kiss, and all the wonders we hold dear and hope for in human life. Terminating life is not always wrong (in abortion as well as other situations), but it should never be easy. I know that sounds like some tough love non-sense or an attempt to shame people, but it is real...taking life should never be easy. The fact is that some choices have more gravity than others, and the choice to abort or not is one of the most weighty, unfair, and cruel burdens to place on a human being. I bear no ill will to anyone who is forced to make it, due to their own actions or the actions of others.
The argument for why abortion is tantamount to murder is too large to give in full, even if I were capable, but here are some points to consider.
Once the paternal and maternal gametes genetically combine in/into a zygote, a distinct and novel genetic organism has gained a purchase on life. That distinct organism is on a trajectory that will end in its biological death, and the trajectory itself, however long or short, is the life of that organism. Many things can end this trajectory, but intentionally and actively ending this trajectory, in the case of humans, is often murder (but certainly not always murder). Trying to impose some arbitrary bifurcation point that divides the trajectory of life into a person that can be murdered and a sack of cells that cannot be murdered is disingenuous because life is a process not a specific form (e.g. zygote, embryo, fetus, infant, toddler, teenager, or what have you). With nurture and luck, a zygote will move along all the stages of human development remaining to him or her in a trajectory no less real than that of an infant. Put simply, terminating that trajectory at any point is terminating a distinct life, and you would have a hard time convincing me that such an interpretation is a matter of opinion.
While we are on the subject, I find the argument that goes something like “I can do whatever I want with my own body,” particularly misinformed and alarmingly overused. Arguments that a zygote, or developmental stage thereafter, is part of the mother’s body are factually incorrect. The zygote and onward has a distinct genetic footprint, and the mother’s immune system would identify the child’s genetic code as an external threat and kill it were it not for the placenta. I won’t tarry on this point, but I do hear the “It’s my body” argument all the time. The fact that a fetus is in your body, doesn’t make it part of your body.
This subject is comp
There is something you are missing, which is that the majority of Christians are not like the person in question. Remember that "Christian" is a very generic term, and there are some very large separations in beliefs. The Lutheran Reformation, the Protestant Reformation, etc.. should make it clear that there are some very fundamental differences between "Christians", these were bloody wars. That list does not even include peaceful separations like Baptists. That 2.2 billion number starts to change pretty drastically when you count how many of that 2.2 billion are zealots wanting to force their beliefs on someone else.
The majority of "Christians" don't care what you do, as long as you don't stop them from doing what they believe they should. Most Christians don't care if a person outside of their family or Church is gay, gets an abortion, they simply want to be allowed to believe in their Religion and practice their faith.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
The first comment on that amazon link comes from another author (or so it's claimed) of another sex book, and he goes on about how many facts in the book you referenced are wrong, such as:
Elsewhere, he claims bonobos are monogamous (absurd: the first thing anyone learns about bonobos is precisely that they are NOT monogamous), women are the only females who have orgasm (no serious biologist has argued that for decades), that the Ferrari Testarossa refers to [...] (it actually means "red head" in Italian, referring to the engine head that was red).... All these examples are just from the first chapter!
So it seems that perhaps that correlation you read is also very incorrect.
Are you guys still seriously debating this issue?
What the mother fucking hell is wrong with you people? Stop taking these religious assfaces seriously!!
The other group says if an individual hasn't been seen yet, it doesn't exist, and thus executing said individual is fine and not murder.
I am pro-choice, and that is definitely not what I believe.
Both groups are really kind of strange.
I see, you are painting yourself as a moderate. The truth is /always/ in between when it comes to controversy, right? I mean, the world might be 5 billion years old, or 6000. Obviously that means a moderate "rational" person would think that the world is 2.5 billion years old.
he second group generally doesn't function as stated verbatim, but rather believes that at some arbitrary time the unseen individual is suddenly real (like, second, third trimester, a specific number of days into pregnancy), just a magic but arbitrary switch that has nothing to do with physical development
*Now* we see your true colours. What a joke. Once did an ethics essay on treating the terminally ill, and found that there is no actual solid definable point where someone is dead or alive. Some goes when an zygote turns into a human being. That may be a little difficult to understand for the black-and-white thinker, and hence, we have the truly magical *assertion* that the soul enters the zygote at the time of fertilisation, and therefore, a zygote is a human being, and should be protected by the constitution.
A fetus does not have a functioning neocortex until the third trimester. How a fetus is an individual when it doesn't have a brain requires an encyclopedic ignorance of science. It is highly unlikely that an aborted fetus (in the 1st trimester) experiences anything, since pain is experienced in (and because of) the neocortex.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
I do not know how all of these new stories keep forgetting the most important statistic.
The average chance of getting pregnancy from one unprotected consensual sex act is only around 2.5%.
Rape seems to increase the chance of getting pregnant by around 100%.
Other studies have shown that acute stress can cause ovulation. So the current best theory seems to be the exact opposite of this common misconception, that indeed rape causes women to become more "receptive".
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
Why would a woman want to raise a child who carries the genes of a rapist? That is her choice, and if you try and take that freedom away from her, then she may choose the shady back-alley in Mexico.
I feel disgust for the morally "superior" anti-abortionist.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
There is nothing wrong with using the morning after pill in the event of a rape - after all, every woman who has been raped KNOWS she has been raped, so could take the morning after pill to prevent any possible pregnancy.
So why all the bullshit about "I didn't know I was pregnant until the second trimester, yada yada yada"?
There is no evidence that the figures in that report are actually reliable, in any way whatsoever. We have no way of telling whether woman X actually WAS raped and got pregnant, or "got pregnant by accident" - you know, "I forgot to take the pill (sure, I believe you)", or "The condom broke (ditto)", or "I wanted to TRAP MY BOYFRIEND" (Now I believe you!). We have no RELIABLE evidence to base those 'rapes which lead to pregnancy figures' on, and everybody knows it.
"The national rape-related pregnancy rate is 5.0% per rape among victims of reproductive age (aged 12 to 45); among adult women an estimated 32,101 pregnancies result from rape each year. Among 34 cases of rape-related pregnancy, the majority occurred among adolescents and resulted from assault by a known, often related perpetrator."
Okay, from this website:
http://www.huggies.com.au/conception/getting-pregnant/pregnancy-how-to/chances
"For a healthy, fertile couple where both partners are under the age of 35, the chance of getting pregnant straight away is actually pretty low – it’s estimated at around 25 percent per month, if you have regular unprotected sex around the time of ovulation."
(If anybody has any more scientific studies, I'd be very interested in reading them, this was the best I could find, as I wasn't sure how to word it).
So if a fertile couple who are having sex on a REGULAR basis for a MONTH have only a 25% chance of getting pregnant, how can a woman who is raped have a 5% chance? That's a whole FIFTH of the chance of a regular couple who are having sex almost every day, if not every day, and who both want to have sex. (I find it VERY hard to believe that we would have evolved so that women who are raped are just as likely to become pregnant, compared to women who are having sex with a man they really love, are turned on and fancy a lot, etc.) Either way, the 5% figure sounds ludicrously high to me. And even more ludicrous is the "among adult women an estimated 32,101 pregnancies result from rape each year." part - as we would see about 20,000 white women with BLACK babies (seeing as black men rape white women at a terrifyingly high rate:
37,460 white women raped by BLACK MEN,
21,852 white women raped by other NON-WHITE MEN.
According to the Department of Justice figures on rape, 2005.
Guess how many BLACK women were raped by WHITE women in 2005? ZERO. Look it up yourself.)
I call bullshit. And more bullshit from the pro abortion sociopaths who can't even begin to understand the suffering that an unborn baby goes through when they are KILLED. Whoops - sorry - we're not supposed to mention that part when discussing abortion, are we, just blather on about 'women's rights', 'you hate women', etc.etc. ANYTHING but actually look at what abortion actually IS, which is what anti-abortionists object to.
1% of the federal budget type stuff and ignore the pentagon programs
They also ignore the social security problems, because, in the end, a lot of their voters are old people on entitlement programs.
The GOP has strayed squarely into reactionary politics. Aside from social conservatism, their only platform is that they are against whatever democrats stand for. That is why they consistently vote against their own policies when they come from across the aisle.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
It can always serve as a bad example.
And protest in favor of Pussy Riot, the way this lady logger did
http://femen.livejournal.com/220299.html
If you don't have a uterus, SHUT THE FUCK UP you aren't qualified to have an opinion.
The earth is definitely closer to 5 billion years old. Now, it may be 4.7 billion or 4.1 billion or 6.2 billion. Our measures point it closer to one number or another, though they could be wrong, and they're not very precise. Though the people that believe the earth is 6000 years old are probably right about this Jesus fellow; they may be wrong about him being able to heal people at a touch, but there probably was such a person. There was definitely a Roman empire.
On what day in the third trimester does a fetus develop a functioning neocortex, and at what point does that function evolve from having the ability to signal process into being a person? Also you seem to be basing your ideals of what is a person on when they are able to experience pain; I'm more of the sort that a person is a person when they've developed personality (i.e. when experiences start to form a sense of 'self'), and besides there is a hell of a lot of neural activity throughout the body (in the intestine, in the spine, etc) that makes a lot of decisions and reactions on pain and food and the like. Mind you not the experience of pain or hunger, but the reflexes and reactions and even shifting of hormones in the body is decided in various places rather than just the brain.
Support my political activism on Patreon.
You should try it. Unless you have as few brain cells as a fetus does during the first few months of existence. In that case, your opinions don't really matter then, do they?
apparently the right to lifers only care about forcing others to suffer for their beliefs and have no intention of actually dealing with the consequences of their actions.
Like you say, any time, whether it be conception, second or third trimester, or birth, is arbitrary. However, both conception and birth have the benefit of being entirely obvious, whereas other time points are difficult to measure. So the debate focuses around those two points in time.
Personally, I'd just like to see some damned consistency. If women are going to be free to have an abortion any time until their child is born, then people shouldn't be prosecuted for homicide if they do something to cause a miscarriage.
http://www.lowbird.com/all/view/2012/03/ibelieveinadv-lovestore-gun-ibelieveinadv
If only 1% of rapes result in pregnancy (rather than 5%), does that make it more ok to force the pregnancy on the victim? What about 0.1%? At what point do the rights of the women not matter any more?
The American government really are going to extreme lengths to create this debate to win public support against Assange. :P
In case you are wondering just how far the rabbit hole goes, he belongs to the same idiot class that is bringing the world to the verge of WW III.
http://tdarkcabal.blogspot.com/
On what day in the third trimester does a fetus develop a functioning neocortex, and at what point does that function evolve from having the ability to signal process into being a person?
The point is that there is no such point. Yet, at one point of time, you can say that there is no consciousness, and at another point of time you can say that there is.
The confusion over such things comes about because of the difference between mental models and what is being modeled. What Kant called "Das Ding an sich".
The rest of your comment is not even worth responding to. Read a book on bioethics.
Akin is a cretin and an asshole.
His political career is OVER.
End of story.
Because I had assumed that with a 2 day window of fertility in a 30 day cycle, the rate of pregnancy in rape was about 1/15. It turns out that the studies to which you linked present it as a 1/1000 chance.
As someone who has a daughter, this is somewhat reassuring, because I don't wish a pregnancy from rape on anyone. But I wish for infanticide even less.
If a woman can kill an unborn child because the child reminds her of a bad experience, why can't a man beat his wife after a bad day at the office?
Because both the unborn infant and the man's wife are human beings. Men figured this out a long time ago, but it seems that (American) women are still in the chauvinist stage of cultural development where they feel it's somehow acceptable to kill their innocent child, but let the man who raped them get away with it by not reporting the rape to authorities.
The problem isn't so much that women get pregnant from rape, but that rape occurs in the first place and women treat it not as the heinous crime it is, but as a merely unpleasant experience that can be brushed under the rug and forgotten as long as there's an abortion clinic nearby.
No man would put up with being victimized like that, and no women should either.
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
Religion truly is the root of all evil.
Look at it from the evolutionary point of view..
I theorize that evolution would prefer the rapist's dna.
Therefore, wouldn't it be plausible that a woman's body ( we're all animals after all ) would be more accepting of this type of impregnation?
Sure, but did you ever take part in an activity that permitted the Society of Music Lovers to hook you up to the violinist? Even if both partners take the proper contraceptive precautions, there's always a chance there will be conception. It's a risk one takes. That's not the point of the argument tries to prove, but it's relevant nonetheless.
It is a shame for any legislator to differentiate between 'legitimate' and not 'legitimate' rape. The fact is, rape is rape. The signal that is sent is that there is rape that is good and not bad at all. And that some women just lying about it. That scores some point with a certain electorate but it ignores the fact that women and also other groups are victims of rape. Who elects these representatives in this country.
I have no opinion on the subject, other than that people such as yourself who make a point of injecting politics into topics where they have no business deserve to be modded Off-Topic.
Really Slashdot, there was really no need to try to work 'mathematics' into the title. Just say "Why doesn't everyone have a debate on abortion?"
On topic, I imagine the belief that "you can't get pregnant if you're raped" is even less common than "you can't get pregnant if you're on top".
To be as fair to Akin as possible he seems to be saying;
"The abortion-for-rape argument is a red herring as it's very difficult to become pregnant from rape. Therefore most women claiming rape to obtain an abortion are fraudulent. In cases of actual rape, overall I still believe the life of the baby takes precedence.
Sure, his premise is clearly wrong, but man the people mindlessly reacting over this really piss me off.
I don't see how you can become a US Senator if you are good with math. How else do you explain the fact that they won't pass a budget and still believe that magically we'll start paying down the debt before we consume all the world's capital. Akin might fit in with that crowd of free thinkers.
Furthermore, he's implying that he's been informed by doctors that, "there are ways the female body has of shutting this thing down." First of all, he doesn't understand basic biology.
One possibility is that Akin obtained his info from a 1999 article in an anti-abortion group newsletter, in which a physician (and anti-abortion activist) Dr. Jack Willke claimed that the pregnancy rate from "assault rape" was as few as 1:1000 (this figure is grossly lower than other estimates published by more rigorous studies, ones that used things like actual supporting data).
Another possibility is that Akin is mis-interpreting a well-known piece of research, which claims that orgasm increases the probability of conception (due to contractions helping to propel sperm upward); this arguement only makes sense if Akins is working with the mistaken belief that a rape victim couldn't possibly orgasm from the experience (unless she secretly enjoyed it). However, while the effect on sperm motility may very well exist, it is apparently not that large (otherwise, women with Primary Anorgasmia would have serious problems conceiving, but their conception rates are pretty much normal).
When used correctly, it would appear that trauma-induced miscarriage (95%) is just as reliable than the pull out method (96%) but far more reliable than the rhythm method (87%) at preventing pregnancy.
than one innocent be wrongly punished.
That is the true progressive position.
Therefore, we must in all cases disbelieve the accusation without additional strong and compelling evidence.
5% of rapes result in pregnancy.
It does not state what percentage of pregnancies are due to rape.
If there were 100 rapes per year in the USA and 5 of them resulted in the woman becoming pregnant then the numbers would be true.
I wonder how many rape victims only report the crime after discovering they were impregnated? Its awfully sad that a crime such as rape often goes unreported and inflammatory comments such as those of Senator Akin only serve to increase the social stigma associated with it.
Where can one get help if _that_ happens?
Please advise !!
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
...how many funerals and/or wakes their church has had for first trimester miscarriages. Then see if they don't say "well that's different!" before it dawns on them....
On Men:
You would not believe the sheer number of assh.ts ... and yes, we are talking about guys ... who make up countless BS reasons why they should not have to 1. wear a condom, or 2. get a vasectomy, or 3. pull out, and it is up to the women to "play defense". It is precisely this level of "I got mine, who cares about you" that cause men to behave in the way they do. Akin's and Friess's attitude is not that out of the ordinary; it is what men tend to think given that we are not really held to any higher standard than that ... by our parents ... by our friends ... by society ...
It begins with "boys will be boys" and "that's my boy! Go git 'em" ...
- - - - -
On Women:
If you women are so attracted to these "real men", you get what you get ... and sometimes ... it is a life time of misery raising a child you thought might be just the thing that keeps him with you. I don't know what made you think that THAT CHOICE was in any way logical, but there are plenty of stupid decisions women make leading up to their agreeing to engage in activities that might end up getting themselves pregnant.
It begins with you allowing the assh.t to be successful in getting his rocks off at your expense. If you think that that is the smart decision, you need to extrapolate that line to see what kind of behavior you are encouraging.
- - - - -
And what does this have to do with abortion and Akin?
Everything.
It all begins with attitude and perception of the sexes (of each other). If a guy treats a girl as this conquest to tally up and compare against another guy's conquests, it is not surprising that in the more extreme cases, the guy will simply get what he wants, whether the girl agrees or not.
Akin is a moron, but he is not much more of a moron than many other men.
There are plenty of logic flaws on both sides.
The pro-life side is so riddled with logic flaws, it is like shooting fish in a barrel, so I will let the others point them out.
The pro-choice side, on the other hand, should also be held to a higher standard of logic than they are accustomed to.
Here is one that I have yet to hear from any pro-choice person:
We are getting pretty close ... and when I say "pretty close", I mean pretty close for legal time frames, which tends to be a minimum of decades because laws take that long to evolve and refine ... we are getting pretty close to when we can raise that embryo in a separate test tube. And, yes, this puts a whole different meaning into "test tube baby".
The entire argument from the pro-choice side has been that the woman should not have to be forced to use her body to raise that embryo into a full grown fetus awaiting birth*. Now if any pregnant woman can choose to remove the embryo, but instead of killing the embryo as a side effect of the removal, place it into an artificial womb that will allow it to grow to full term, things get really really messy, legally speaking.
What legal status does this thing now have?
Now you pro-lifer's shouldn't rejoice so quickly because this brings up all sorts of questions that YOUR SIDE has been conveniently ignoring, too. Who is responsible for this thing? Whose money should pay for this child? Whose time should be required to support and raise this child?
I would say that both sides have been lucky that the problem has been fairly simple, comparatively speaking. Once this technology catches up, Roe v Wade does not even BEGIN to address the problems at hand.
(Disclaimer: I'm absolutely 100% pro-choice because I don't see another avenue that is reasonable, and I have several friends whose lives would guaranteed to have been ruined if they had kept their pregnancies. None of them had any business having a child at the time of their pregnancies for a whole host of reasons.)
- - - - - ... sometimes a VERY long process), 2) it can be early or late for all sorts of reasons (including being induced). So there is absolutely nothing magical that makes a fetus worthy of more or less protection just before or just after birth.
*And let's face it, "birth", as a time point, is no longer relevant for legal reasons because 1) a baby does not instantly pop out (it is a long
Didn't we just get some fairly prominent examples in the news recently of girls being abducted and repeatedly raped by their crazy abductors. Aren't there also (in the news) some nut job fathers who kept their daughters locked up in the basement as sex slave and these girls ended up giving birth?
Did Akin forget to read the news? Even Fox News must have covered these cases.
Pregnancy resulting from rape is very common. By the end of the WW2, the soviets suffered so much losses in foot soldiers their regiments were not stuffed by ethnic russians any more, but by guys conscripted from the USSR's central asian republics. Essentially the same posse who invaded Europe with Dzinghis Khan some 700 years before and they were not any different in 1944-45. They raped every female, 9-99 yrs old as they marched towards west, crushing the third reich. Most catholic nun's convents were closed since no virgins remained to serve.
Abortion had never been legal in Hungary before 1945, but that year the local communist party and they local branch of the catholic church jointly filed a new law proposal to allow professional abortions in hospitals, because there were so many pregnancies resulting from rape. The worst thing: most of the soviet army manpower were infected with syphillis and the foetuses carried the disease, so the babies would have been born with mental handicap. Many hundreds of thousands of abortions were performed eventually, in a very short time-frame of just a few months, in still semi-demolished hospitals and so many women became infertile as a result, which caused a hungarian demographic deficit problem to surface in the early 1950s.
Otherwise, the pain and shock of rape probably makes pregnancy more likely. In cats, the penis of the tomcat has tiny hooks on the skin, much like velcro. When the tomcat is done spending and wants to retract, the hooks grab onto the vagina of the kitty and cause tremendous pain, which signal then starts the hormonal changes required for instant ovulation. That is why tomcats never fail to impregnate kitties. In old centuries people used to think tomcat seed must be boiling hot, since the kitty is visible in pain after sex has reached climax.
This is something that a lot of pro-choicers have to tell themselves so they feel better about themselves. By any reasonable definition a fetus is a human being, all of the arguments to the contrary to hold water, IMHO. "It's just a collection of cells!", yeah, well, so are you. "It doesn't even have a brain yet!", well, neither does someone in a persistent vegetative state, but it's still considered murder to put a bullet in their head.
I could never understand how someone can consider a zygote a "baby" and call it murder to take a pill to prevent it from turning into a baby or feel moral outrage about removing the feeding tube of a brain-dead women and then turn around and eat meat. "Oh look at me, I'm so pro-life that I think a ball of goo with some myocardial cells in the middle is a precious life. Now pass me that pork-stuffed chicken wrapped in a steak." Because clearly animals locked into high-density feed lots and pumped full of hormones and antibiotics before being killed in the prime of their lives, or chicks being ground into a chunky paste moments after being hatched for the crime of having a Y chromosome don't have real feelings, like clumps of human cells that haven't even developed a central nervous system. Though, I suppose we can't ask for intellectual honesty from people who characterize abortions after rape as "punishing the child for the rape."
Actually, I wrote my thesis on life experience.
I was sexually abused as a 11 year old, (I am male)
she got pregnant and had a abortion, she was 14 years old and she accused me of rape
she had accused several boys of rape of many years
to the point she was simply declared insane.
I'm not sure why this is still a debate at all. Nothing is alive until it's born and breathing. In Canada you can have an abortion up until something like 20 weeks. After that the health risks are too high for the mother. Simple. Done. If you want to start getting all philisophical over the semantics you might as well call jerking off into a kleenex 1 million first degree murders, or charge a woman with murder every month she ovulates without conception.
If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
Shrug. You're obviously biased. This whole sanctity of life thing is silly. Who believes in that crap? -People- -who- -are- -alive-. Only living beings actually give a shit! Anyone who isn't alive doesn't really care. It's completely self-serving and totally biased.
Support my political activism on Patreon.
By any reasonable definition a fetus is a human being,
How dismissive! The foetus is of course human, but so is my semen or your toenail. What makes something a "being"?
The argument is that a being is independently viable. You may disagree, but you cannot intelligently call it unreasonable.
A sack of cells is an embryo. It has no organs or determinable shape/organs and is not remotely human. It's as human as sperm is. that lasts until 2 months, then it becomes a fetus. I'd be pretty careful if i were you in saying that people who are pro choice are ok with late term abortions. After the first trimester it becomes kind of a shady grey area that frankly no one is fully qualified to determine whether it's ok or not except for the person who's property it is.
My own view is that a fetus is parasitic. If it's able to live on it's own without the host then it's "alive" and should be afforded protection. If not and the host wants it gone then that's up to them.
There is a great song that sums up this whole fracas.
"No matter where you go, there you are." -- Buckaroo Banzai
Who is some what bothered by the way 5% is written?
Actually, violence against women in Norway is a major health concern according to an important study done there.
From the study: Results: "In total, 26.8% of 2,143 ever-partnered women had experienced any violence by their partner during their lifetime, and 5.5% in the year before the study."
These rates are on par with most of the developed world. Given these stats (One in four ever-partnered women battered within their relationship) I don't think the Scandinavians are going to get a pass on rates of rape -- insofar as it is defined to include spousal rape, date rape and other forms of coerced sex. If anyone has stats on Scandinavian rape rates (could not easily find any) it would be instructive to post them. I doubt they are much different from those in the developed world. Certainly not one in ten. Where did that figure come from?
As much as many Scandinavians would like to believe that their feet don't stink, it should come as no surprise that their feet do, indeed, stink. Almost as much as mine do.
"No fear. No envy. No meanness." Liam Clancy
This reminds me of a Demetri Martin joke. I believe it was on the Large Pad sequence.
There's a saying that goes "People who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones." Okay. How about "Nobody should throw stones"? That's crappy behavior. My policy is: "No stone throwing regardless of housing situation."
Seriously, if you don't know anything, just shut up and refuse to comment further. How hard can it be? And how much are these blokes making to say things like this?
The more you know, the more you have to say and the more you should listen.
What about the father's right in the decision? He gets no say at all?
Of course not, we're second hand citizens, and it's even worse than that. Dad want to keep the child and mom doesn't? Fetus aborted. Mom wants the child and dad doesn't? Baby born, father forced to pay for raising it.
I would love to see things as you logically pointed out, but men have become second class citizens in the US.
Free Martian Whores!
that 86% or some comparable fraction of rapes in fact do go unreported.
This is something that a lot of pro-choicers have to tell themselves so they feel better about themselves
One can be pro-choice without rationizing their position with moral hair-splitting about the fetus not being a person.
Oh get off your moral high horse. By any reasonable measure, for the first several months after conception, the clump of cells is *not* a human. It sounds more like you're rationalizing the one reason that you agree with the lib'ruls on this case.
You don't call fertilized chicken eggs chickens. You don't call fertilized salmon eggs salmon. But for some reason, even though for much of their development a human embryo isn't all that distinguishable from an elephant embryo, we've got idiots calling them 'people' -- and you're enabling and perpetuating that redefinition. Not to mention that taken to the logical conclusion, you're implying that the women who choose to have an abortion and the doctors who perform them are murderers.
--Jeremy
Jesus was a liberal
I suppose the language being used may not match the message, but is the message itself intended to be a troll?
Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
But South Africa, even as the most developed country in Africa, is arguably not a full-fledged member of the developed world. It is a highly divided society still (as we have seen in recent weeks with the miners' strike.) And it has a very high crime rate generally. One can take little comfort in having better statistics than they do -- cultural differences aside.
Culture of course is no excuse for violations of human rights, which include violence against women. There was a time when a broad swath of the US accepted slavery as a cultural norm. Just because a society itself believes something is right does not make it right. Violence in the home is as wrong in Jo-berg and Riyadh and Moscow as it is in New York or Oslo. The same, of course, goes for rape. Everyone has to do better.
These principles are enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. No society is permitted to hide behind its culture in order to protect institutionalized savagery and oppression against any group -- women included.
"No fear. No envy. No meanness." Liam Clancy
"I don't believe that soceity has a right to tell one person that they MUST do something to keep another person alive."
Come on...
I don't believe that soceity has a right to tell one person that they MUST do something to keep another person alive. The analogy that I like to make is organ donation -- can I be compelled to give you a kidney, blood, or bone marrow if I'm the only compatible donor and the alternative is your death? Of course not, my right to control my body is paramount. Likewise, I don't believe we have the right to tell a woman that she MUST carry a baby to term.
I thought you were doing really well right up until this. No one is saying a woman must provide organs, blood, etc to the fetus. No human argument and no law that I've seen proposes this. However, this is, of course, how nature sets up the arrangement. I think you need to seek more information about abortion procedures in order to complete your line of thinking. Where you have it right now, an infant latching on to its mother's breast should legally entitle her to sever its spinal cord or puncture its skull and vacuum out the contents (and there are about a half dozen other equally gruesome procedures). Regardless of where one sits in terms of the abortion debate, it's flat impossible to argue with a straight face that such actions are not an attack against the baby/fetus/collection-of-cells-thing/parasite/etc. If it isn't a human being and it isn't something we'd care to assign any legal or moral protection to, then so what. But don't make the ridiculous argument that stabbing something isn't attacking it, regardless of what it is.
I'm one of those rare fence-sitters in this whole debate, but there are only two arguments that really make much sense to me. It's obvious, and everyone agrees, that at some point between conception and birth, we have a new human being with all the rights, privileges, and protections of being human afforded thereto. There are two distinct events which make for obvious transition points: one is conception (the pro-life argument) and one is birth (the ultra-ultra-pro-choice argument). Anything in between is arbitrary and arbitrary distinctions typically make for nonsensical arguments and injustice. In this case, we need to define a few things to really come to a reasonable end of this argument. First, what distinct, scientifically measurable event causes a human being to have been formed? What is it that we have prior to that event? What rights (if any) does that something have under the law? If we answer those questions with strong, logical arguments, we won't make everyone happy, but we'll at least have just law in place.
There's a pretty major difference between persistent vegetative state and doesn't yet have a brain. A person in a PVS has a large, complicated brain that is in fact operating at a fairly highly level, it's just not properly interfacing with the surrounding world. Typically it's operating on a level somewhere between deep sleep(idling, but far from off) and REM-sleep (essentially conscious but disconnected from external I/O peripherals) and varies on a case-by-case basis.
On the other hand a fetus that hasn't yet grown a brain... does not in fact have a brain. At all. Your average spider, earthworm, or even flatworm with it's mere twist of neurons has a far more sophisticated brain operating at a much higher level by virtue of the fact that they do in fact have a brain while, as I may have mentioned, a sufficiently young fetus doesn't. Young enough it doesn't even have differentiated cells of any kind, though I think technically the term "fetus" doesn't yet apply at that point.
Not that I'm trying to say abortion isn't a question rife with moral dilemma (as is removing life support from people in a PVS, actually) - but comparing a young fetus with a person in a PVS is hyperbola, at best. In fact if I remember correctly (can't be bothered to look it up, feel free to correct me with reliable info) young fetuses don't have a great survival rate to begin with - estimates are something like 40-60% of pregnancies end with spontaneous abortion without the woman ever realizing she was pregnant, and really I'd hate to open the door on what implied moral responsibility to *their* survival would mean.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
That seems about right to me, a very large number of women have religious beliefs or social circumstances that make them reluctant to report rape to start with and the taking of a rape kit and the interrogation of a victim that is standard procedure for investigating a rape report from a self-declared victim is really quite... unpleasant by most accounts. Then there's the fact that many people tend to react... ineffectively... when something they find horrible and shocking happens and then engage in denial and/or rationalization about the event.
Men who rape little/young girls keep them: deut 22 28-29 in the original language.
Anyone who disagrees with this needs to be killed. I hate women like you (and men like you)
Check out the word translated as girl in the hebrew. Girl from infancy to adolecence. Pedophillia and rape. :) Good for men. Young girls are good for men. Women and feminist men are bad for men often.
[quote]
#5291 \u05e0\u05b7\u05e2\u05b2\u05e8\u05b8\u05d4 na`arah {nah-ar-aw'}
Feminine of H5288; a girl (from infancy to adolescence):\u2014damsel, maid (-en), young (woman).
1) girl, damsel, female servant
1a) girl, damsel, little girl
1a1) of young woman, marriageable young woman, concubine,
prostitute
1b) maid, female attendant, female servant
[/quote]
[quote]
One of the most common attempts at rejecting this interpretation is to cast doubt on the meaning of the Hebrew word "taphas", which is translated as "lay hold on" in the King James version of this passage. Strong's dictionary defines it as follows.
8610. taphas (taw-fas')
A primitive root; to manipulate, i.e. Seize; chiefly to capture, wield, specifically, to overlay; figuratively, to use unwarrantably
catch, handle, (lay, take) hold (on, over), stop, X surely, surprise, take.
It is claimed by the opposition that this word should not be interpreted with a forceful interpretation of "seize" or "capture", but is instead better interpreted as consistent with consensual relations. To adopt such a position, however, one would have to ignore a large amount of scriptural evidence to the contrary.
Jeremiah 52:8,9
But the army of the Chaldeans pursued after the king, and overtook Zedekiah in the plains of Jericho; and all his army was scattered from him. Then they took [taphas] the king, and carried him up unto the king of Babylon to Riblah in the land of Hamath; where he gave judgment upon him.
Jeremiah 37:13,14
And when he was in the gate of Benjamin, a captain of the ward was there, whose name was Irijah, the son of Shelemiah, the son of Hananiah; and he took[taphas] Jeremiah the prophet, saying, Thou fallest away to the Chaldeans. Then said4 Jeremiah, It is false; I fall not away to the Chaldeans. But he hearkened not to him: so Irijah took[taphas] Jeremiah, and brought him to the princes.
Jeremiah 26:8
Now it came to pass, when Jeremiah had made an end of speaking all that the LORD had commanded him to speak unto all the people, that the priests and the prophets and all the people took[taphas] him, saying, Thou shalt surely die.
Isaiah 36:1
Now it came to pass in the fourteenth year of king Hezekiah, that Sennacherib king of Assyria came up against all the defenced cities of Judah, and took[taphas] them.
2 Chronicles 25:23
And Joash the king of Israel took[taphas] Amaziah king of Judah, the son of Joash, the son of Jehoahaz, at Bethshemesh, and brought him to Jerusalem, and brake down the wall of Jerusalem from the gate of Ephraim to the corner gate, four hundred cubits.
2 Kings 25:6
So they took[taphas] the king, and brought him up to the king of Babylon to Riblah; and they gave judgment upon him.
2 Kings 18:13
Now in the fourteenth year of king Hezekiah did Sennacherib king of Assyria come up against all the fenced cities of Judah, and took[taphas] them.
2 Kings 16:9
And the king of Assyria hearkened unto him: for the king of Assyria went up against Damascus, and took[taphas] it, and carried the people of it captive to Kir, and slew Rezin.
2 Kings 14:13
And Jehoash king of Israel took[taphas] Amaziah king of Judah, the son of Jehoash the son of Ahaziah, at Bethshemesh, and came to Jerusalem, and brake down the wall of Jerusalem from the gate of Ephraim unto the corner gate, four hundred cubits.
2 Kings 14:7
He slew of Edom in the valley of salt ten thousand, and took[taphas] Selah by war, and called the name of it Joktheel unto this day.
2 Kings 10:14
A
If taphas refers to rape in this verse, then it is the only instance in the bible where it is used in that context. Here, in Numbers 5:13, it is clearly used to refer to consensual sex:
All of the passages your source has cited refer to people who have been captured, or cities which have been overthrown (implying the use of force). But there are also the passages I cited where a person plays a harp, or where the men took war upon themselves, or where a women cheated on her husband and ran away with the man she cheated with, which do not imply the use of coercive force. This means taphas applies to things or people who have been taken by any means, not simply forcefully. The verse I cited above should be sufficient to prove that.
As the author noted, cases that definitely describe rape use the word 'anah. So there is no reason to believe that rape is implied in this verse. Indeed, given the verses preceding it, and the Bible's general prescription for the treatment of rapists, it would be bizarre if it were condoning rape in this instance. And there is no reason to believe that it is.
As for why this verse is different from Exodus 22:16, the Bible repeats many things in slightly different terms. This repetition was useful for memorization. There is no reason to believe that each thing written in the Bible has to be new and different.
As for your claim that the world means child, your definition includes "marriageable young woman." As with all words, meaning is often contextual. By taking it to mean "girl" here, you are reading something into the passage that it doesn't mean.
Just curious, but what are your thoughts if a mother puts her 1 year old out in a snow storm for the night because she doesn't want to take care of it any more?
from the NYT
"...At a 2009 hearing, Shimkus said not to worry about a fatally dyspeptic planet: the biblical signs have yet to properly align. “The earth will end only when God declares it to be over,” he said, and then he went on to quote Genesis at some length. It’s worth repeating: This guy is the chairman...."
"...Barton cited the Almighty in questioning energy from wind turbines. Careful, he warned, “wind is God’s way of balancing heat.” Clean energy, he said, “would slow the winds down” and thus could make it hotter. You never know..." and more "...“You can’t regulate God!” Barton barked at the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, in the midst of discussion on measures to curb global warming.
What did he call it "a legitimate rape"?
Is that the same class of rape that JA is being
persecuted/prosecuted for by a Swedish proxy
for someone that believes the leaks on Wiki Leaks
are illegitimate.
And I wonder.... ...
Miles above this someone noted that the pregers rate
from rape was 5%... that statement was not balanced
by the rate from couples trying without a clendar and
without a thermometer. i.e. random
The natural odds seem to be less than 5% with consenting
adults willing and trying to conceive.
That's where everything is totally screwed up!
Someone in a persistent vegetative state cannot be humanely euthanased but you may remove the feeling tubes so they experience a slow a painful death as that slowly starve. This may take weeks. If you help them die you will be charged with murder.
Abortion is a terribly sad thing and most people would admit it is used far too often, but to exclude women from having the choice simply means the procedure would not stop abortions. It simply goes underground where the doctors are probably not decent, the procedures would not be well controlled and what happens if there are complications? Would a woman be afraid of being charged with murder if they had to go to a hospital?
I could go on to say that the world is overpopulated and will only get worse. IMO 1 child per person should be the absolute limit. But I have no right to demand and enforce a 1 child per person policy, no more that I would want to be told that I MUST have a child.
The analogy that I like to make is organ donation -- can I be compelled to give you a kidney, blood, or bone marrow if I'm the only compatible donor and the alternative is your death?
Yes, you can.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aclS1pGHp8o
In Numbers 5:13 it's not a reference to consensual sex, it is talking about her being caught in the act.
http://marriedmansexlife.com/
If I were scale up the tools used in abortion, and use them to terminate your life, would you still consider it a mere "medical procedure"?
I feel that a woman should have complete control over her body. However, it's not the woman's body that gets dismembered in the violent act of abortion. It's someone else's body; namely, that of her son or daughter. And her son or daughter is wholly unable to consent to the procedure.
a black and white, right or wrong society start splitting hairs as to whether a rape was "legitimate" or not. Talk about situational ethics. Rape is rape.
Exactly. Not that rational thought counts for much in this argument.
Men with guns, Judges.. violence is how religions are made, how they grew in the first place.
There must be some way to do this. If they can't find the rapist, then one of the anti-choice people could/should/must be chosen by lot.
surgeon/nurse transplant team's ears. I nominate Todd Akin as the first transplant recipient under this plan.
It explains which is a bunch of lying hypocrites.
I don't believe that soceity has a right to tell one person that they MUST do something to keep another person alive
Thanks, I like this. I have always said the same thing but never thought to apply it to the question of abortion. I will have to rethink the issue for a while.
This posting is provided 'AS IS' without warranty of any kind, implied or otherwise.
Why don't we just arrange for all the aborted fetuses be provided to the right-to-lifers to do with what they will. How is this different than giving a baby up for adoption?
I don't believe that soceity has a right to tell one person that they MUST do something to keep another person alive. The analogy that I like to make is organ donation
You don't need an analogy - parents can be prosecuted for neglect of their children, and rightly so. So there is a law that tells people they MUST do something to keep another person, not only alive, but at an acceptable level of welfare.
I must say thank you to (nearly?) everyone in on this discussion. When abortion gets discussed, it generally falls down into a great deal of screaming, emotional, accusatory, tribal nonsense and hurling or insults and shibboleths. the arguments here have been clearly and calmly articulated, and the reasoning on both sides quite good (though you'll not be surprised to learn that I think one side's reasoning is better). If only all of our politics and other matters could be handled by such civilized and intelligent interlocutors ...
as he's a nice guy - honest
Well, that's really a proposition whose implications can be researched.
How many abortions are there per year? A quick internet search yields 1.2 million. Let's go with that.
How many people are waiting for a child to adopt? That information is harder to come by- there's one site there are dozens waiting for every child that gets adopted; other sites say 1-2 million couples per year.
So it's not unfathomable that most every fetus that's aborted could be adopted.
As for your comment about hard to place children, New York city has maybe 1,000 hard to place children, and 200,000 abortions take place there every year.
How many of those abortions would become hard adoption cases? Hard to be sure.
So, I know you're trying to be clever, but the statistics might actually come out on the pro-lifer's side of things. It would take a serious study (beyond the scope of this comment) to come up with a good answer, but it could be done.
(I'm ambivalent about abortion, and consequently do not take the matter into consideration when voting.)
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
The analogy that I like to make is organ donation -- can I be compelled to give you a kidney, blood, or bone marrow if I'm the only compatible donor and the alternative is your death? Of course not, my right to control my body is paramount. Likewise, I don't believe we have the right to tell a woman that she MUST carry a baby to term.
That is a fantastic analogy. Thank you.
(I'm pro-life, but strongly oppose any anti-abortion law that doesn't make exceptions for the health of the mother. In principle I don't support exceptions for rape and incest, but it irritates me when other pro-lifers refuse to compromise on this.)
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