Slashdot Mirror
New Apps Let Women Obtain Birth Control Without Visiting a Doctor
HughPickens.com writes: With nearly 40 percent of all pregnancies in the United States unintended, birth control is a critical public health issue. For short-term methods, visiting the doctor for a prescription can be time-consuming and sometimes costly and for some, like teenagers, it can be intimidating or embarrassing. Now Pam Belluck reports at the NYT that a growing assortment of new apps and websites now make it possible to get prescription contraceptives without going to the doctor as public health experts hope the new apps will encourage more women to start, or restart, using contraception and help reduce the country's stubbornly high rate of unintended pregnancies, as well as the rate of abortions. At least six digital ventures, by private companies and nonprofits, including Planned Parenthood, now provide prescriptions written by clinicians after women answer questions about their health online or by video. All prescribe birth control pills, and some prescribe patches, rings and morning-after pills and some ship contraceptives directly to women's doors. "At first I didn't believe it," said Susan Hashem, who wanted to restart birth control pills without missing work for a doctor's appointment. Hashem used an app called Lemonaid and paid $15 for a doctor to review her medical information and send a pill prescription to a local pharmacy. "I thought it was just a setup to get money," Hashem said. But after she answered the health questions one evening, "a doctor actually contacted me after office hours," and the next morning, she picked up three months' worth of pills.
It's possible that Netcraft will confirm that I've made love to Natalie Portman? I'm a master curator of grits, though they aren't petrified, they're buttered and cheese is available on the side.
We need to stop the abortion. it's just horrible and inhuman.
OMG, really? An APP for that? In case you haven't seen all the dick pill advertisements lately (and if you haven't, you need to sign up for Yahoo mail).... you can pretty much order ANY medication online. No fucking app required.
Why do I have to pay to answer a checklist to get medication
Women are disgusting.
the last time I threw out my back I had to go see a doc for flexeril. The drive was incredibly painful and the entire thing only served to put $200 bucks in the guys pocket. It was literally less than useless. Add to that the cost keeps a lot of low income people away from meds they already know they need. Mix this with an online pharmacy and people the the deep South surrounded by Bible thumpers trying to keep them away from the evils of Birth Control can finally live the way they want.
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Abortion is inhuman... get it... in human... hahahahahaha
We need to stop the abortion. it's just horrible and inhuman.
Here in Arizona we don't use Bibles to stop abortions. We prefer prenatal carry.
because if you wrote an app allowing you to have a nigger killed on demand, the left would be really upset. Yet when an app is written to kill nigger babies it is cool. Because it is not really killing niggers, it is 'aborting' niggers, and we all know liberal white crackers luv abortions.
Long live the Left. The most tolerant, most loving, least hateful peoples on the planet, unless you happen to be a uncle tom, a cracker, a capitalist, white trash, a southerner, german, a kike, successful, , a male, a non lesbian female, a housewife, a C02 emitter, etc.
How long has it been since men needed a doctor's note to buy condoms?
America has very good doctors, but you have to pay for quality. American doctors should have more minions working on non life threatening stuff. Cuba is able to bang out doctors from college with 4 years of medical school bookwork, and 2 years working in hospitals. Cuban doctors are trained to use human senses instead of expensive machines and tests.
into doing something we don't want to do.
because they look like one. Works pretty well.
I'm strongly in favor of overall greater access to birth control. But I have to say that when it comes to starting any kind of hormonal birth control, I'm uneasy about the idea of doing so without the supervision of a doctor or other medical professional.
In my case I had to go through three different types of pills before I found a pill that worked well for me. The first two left me, well, hormonal and while it wasn't terrible, it also wasn't a pleasant experience. Especially compared to how much better things were once I finally found a pill that worked. There are a number of different pills on the market for a reason; not everyone responds to a given formulation the same way. And this is where the doctor was a great help, as she was able to tell me what was and wasn't normal, use my experiences to suggest other options. I suppose from a technical perspective any pill will do - they all seem to pause fertility - but the side effects can be a real pain.
This is why I'm uneasy about anyone starting a new birth control regimen without supervision. Certainly once you're established and happy, you should be able to get new packs as you please (including ordering extra for trips and such). And this is definitely something that needs to be fixed as it's harder than it should be. But starting without a physician seems like a poor idea to me. I feel like it's doing a disservice to others who will be lead to think the processes is easier than it actually is.
Nature empowers women to select mates with a different immune system, passing on the benefits of two immune systems to their progeny. This battles the efforts of pathogens to evolve to overwhelm the human immune system. Females who take oral contraceptives make different choices in mates, preferring those with a similar immune system, and only pass on the benefits of a single immune system to their progeny. By bypassing nature's evolved strategy, the species is placed at risk of being wiped out by pathogens. To prevent this happening, nature makes a small percentage of the progeny with a single immune system effectively sterile, e.g. homosexual, to stop dispersion of this mistake. It's not on the warning label, for commercial reasons.
Until Texas makes a law making this illegal.
First, let's clear up a possible point of confusion: abortions are birth control.
Rabid brainwashed semantics warriors please step away.
Now for the question: Why is birth control supposed to be necessary?
I think this point was overlooked and hasn't been properly investigated amid the hordes of rabid hyper-sexualized women not wanting to be inconvenienced by the goal of their instincts.
Wow. That sounds like a real problem. How did this crop up???? In all of human history, why is this just starting to happen NOW of all times?????!!!
Oh wait. It's likely enough that the vast majority of all pregnancies throughout human history were 'unintended'.
So why now is this spin being put on this fundamental aspect of human life? Why is this suddenly a PROBLEM?
Are the babies going to starve? Are they going to be deprived of education? No and no, of course.
So what is the problem?
The simple truth is that women are being manipulated into being workers first and mothers second. Society is meant to rear the children instead of families. The calculation is that it's better for the economy to raise children communally in daycares and schools than to have the children attended to by their families. Great for the economy, but what about the cost to the individuals, their families, and communities?
"birth control" = eugenics
The Free World is in demographic decline, in some cases it looks terminal (look at Ukraine's birthrate for example, or Germany's). That is a vastly more important debate for Slashdotters to have than how easy it is for teens to get the Pill. Sadly, we don't do that debate and most people in the Free World don't understand that the lack of children in those countries is leading inexorably to the end of the social welfare state (without pyramid demographics required to prop-up the vote-bribe Ponzi scheme).
With nearly 40 percent of all pregnancies in the United States unintended, birth control is a critical public health issue.
Wow, that statement really makes you want to click and read the text. It's emotional and powerful.
While an unintended pregnancy is a serious issue, note that the US fertility rate is now 1.88 births per woman. The replacement rate for population is about 2.1 (births per woman, depends on the geographical area: percentage of births that live to adulthood).
If we can eliminate the 40% of all births that are unintended, the US population would drop off a cliff. This is already a problem for many areas such as Japan and Germany.
The term critical means "pertaining to or of the nature of a crisis", with "crisis" being " time when a difficult or important decision must be made" (with reference to: emergency, catastrophe, calamity, and doomsday).
This is an improvement and one I heartily support.
Nevertheless, calling the situation a "crisis" is a bit melodramatic... don't you think?
This is public datamining of medical records.
If you think the permissions on Play Store are absurd, consider the permissions you give over this app.
Forewarned.
apples 30% cut is to high and an app base medical planes under the ADA can't spend that much on admin.
Mix this with an online pharmacy and people the the deep South surrounded by Bible thumpers trying to keep them away from the evils of Birth Control can finally live the way they want.
Big difference between how they want and how they should.
Quick question: How should they live, and what's your authority for making that judgement?
Here try this. Works for most. Should be okay for you. If not, let me know and we can try something else. Riiight. Ever stop to listen to all those goddamn pill commercials? ... may cause DEATH! Oooookay. Let me go get some cause everybody else is! Everybody wants some! I want some too!
So is waging war and letting people live on the street, but you don't see many right wingers demand ending that.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Meanwhile, on planet Earth, Obama (hardly a "right winger") is going to go down in history as the first president to have been effectively at war for 8 solid years.
You might not have noticed, since dead American soldiers became invisible and nameless on January 20th, 2009, despite having been front page/prime time news the day before.
P.S. Crack a history book some time and look carefully at who has actually been starting wars around here.
See that "Preview" button?
N/t
When will there be an app that allows people with clinical depression and no health insurance get anti depressants without a doctor prescription?
The bibles don't fit up there properly anyway, you're probably on to something!
So, you support making contraception widely available.
and I think that would be a normal thing, or are you all up in every dude's gloryhole?
You should study more in bio class.. A fertilized egg != human
I identify as a woman and would like to be on birth control.
Don't buy this chewing gum - it tastes like rubber.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
So is waging war and letting people live on the street, but you don't see many right wingers demand ending that.
The funny thing is that the Bible says we should live in peace, forgive our enemies, and help the poor. It says nothing about abortion. The story of Essau and Jacob implies that life begins at birth, not conception.
Wow such Technology much wow wow
Well some of the largest groups of people living on the streets are in "left-wing bastions" of living. And is so bad in some areas that they install measures to stop the homeless from sleeping in their doorways or in their pristine parks. Then again many right wingers are happy to let other organizations help them, said organizations are usually privately funded or religious...mainly religious. Many of those left wingers are also happy to try and tax those religious organizations and non-profits for said work too.
Om, nomnomnom...
"...the Bible says we should live in peace, forgive our enemies, and help the poor.'
Actually, it reads that we should slaughter those who don't accept our god, collecting the foreskins of the males, accept a fair price for selling our daughters into slavery, and put duty to god before duty to family and friends.
People just need to stop having sex irresponsibly. If you don't want to have a child, don't go have sex. It really is that simple and yet so many people can't figure that out. Abortion really is inhuman and completely unnecessary.
There is exactly one reference to abortion in the bible. It's in Numbers 5, and it details the process for performing an abortion if you believe your wife has been unfaithful.
No, you should have studied better in bio class, or had a teacher that can do actual science.
Feel free to demonstrate the objective scientific point of transition from "not human" to "human". It doesn't, and can't, exist within the context of biology.
Therefore, if you don't accept that life begins at conception, there is no scientific point at which you can claim such a transition has happened for you -at all-, and logical consistency requires that you agree society should likewise be free to kill you at will. You have no scientific argument that any demonstrable transition happened which redefined you from the class of entity you say we are free to kill.
You can, of course, make such an argument outside of science, i.e. through religious metaphysical concepts, but I trust you won't go there. So just be grateful nobody is following what you say to its logically-required conclusion.
You have all the evidence genocide right in front of you. Yet why do you not realize it for what it is?
No, you should have studied better in bio class, or had a teacher that can do actual science.
Feel free to demonstrate the objective scientific point of transition from "not human" to "human". It doesn't, and can't, exist within the context of biology.
Therefore, if you don't accept that life begins at conception, there is no scientific point at which you can claim such a transition has happened for you -at all-, and logical consistency requires that you agree society should likewise be free to kill you at will. You have no scientific argument that any demonstrable transition happened which redefined you from the class of entity you say we are free to kill.
You can, of course, make such an argument outside of science, i.e. through religious metaphysical concepts, but I trust you won't go there. So just be grateful nobody is following what you say to its logically-required conclusion.
Biblical discussion is not news for nerds , nor stuff that matters.. It is a bunch of right wingers trying in vein to convince everyone that "Smart, Nerdy Computer Experts" believe the bible and buy into Republican conservative political ideology, when nothing could be further from the truth. The biggest problem with /. these days are all the right wing nut job trolls who try to force out the actual readership of this site, the nerds for which /. was originally created.
Require in-person consultation for any substance capable of that function and a painfully penalized denial of shipment.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Neat. Slashdot has a Jewish tribal time-traveler posting.
You know, sometimes one of the two people doesn't have a choice in the matter.
Sure we can, we make up classifications all the time in science. For instance, one possibility could be when the fetus can live on its own outside the womb. Specific, testable, scientific. Dang that was easy.
Yeah, the U.S. was at complete peace during the previous administration then as soon as Obama came into office it was 8 years of solid war. The Republicans tried to stop it every step of the way but boy Obama is just a warmonger.
Meanwhile back on planet Earth, the US has been tangled up in the middle east (this time) since well before Obama was elected - I suppose you conveniently forgot which party was in power then, no?
You need an app for that?
So, you don't do science either.
You make something up and test that you made something up. Congratulations. Show me the "one possibility" that has scientific backing as -the- possibility.
Possibility for what? Your premise is already completely arbitrary. Human and not-human are classifications that you imposed. Depending on which scientific perspective you are coming from it can vary from the moment of conception to the moment of birth, with lots of moments in between.
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/W...
Your own logic can even be turned against you because there isn't a single moment of fertilization. It can take up to four days for a sperm and egg to form a zygote. You can never give a single point and say "look at that, now it is life." So yeah, you crying "but science" doesn't make your backwards opinion automatically irrefutable.
I don't see any "Biblical discussion " in GP. Just a valid rational argument about scientific indeterminacy of when "non human" becomes "human", and logical conclusions that can be drawn from that if logic is continued further.
Obviously since you are intellectually bankrupt, or just stupidly ignorant, you create a straw-man arguments about "Biblical discussions" and "right wingers".
Such an intellectually deficient person cannot be part of intended original 'nerd' readership here. Though idiots like you were always here.
No, it is your position that is completely arbitrary, as you have directly said. "A possibility" you "make up" is the very definition of "arbitrary".
-There is no scientific conception-. There are not "alternative scientific perspectives", there are none whatsoever. Proving this is the very fact there are multiple equally-arbitrary alternatives, and you can name not a single scientific differentiator of their plausibility. The fact you call non-science "scientific" doesn't make it so. The fact you have nothing else to refer to than science to make such determinations, which are not biologically or physically determinable and not in the domain of science, doesn't make you right, it makes your overall viewpoint incoherent.
There can be debate on this starting from the acknowledgment of the reality of things and truths outside of science, there cannot be within the restrictive context of science itself. There is no way to make such a determination within science, and your notion of "making something up" as "a possibility" within a unlimited set of equally non-supportable "possibilities" simply proves that.
We have life on the part of the mother. We have life on the part of the child. It is the claim that there is a scientifically-undefinable period of "non-life" in between that is purely arbitrary with respect to both it's physically-definable attributes and duration of that "non-life state". It is one continuum of life, and pretending otherwise based on self-confessedly complete non-science offers you no "out" here. Look elsewhere for your rationalizations. You can make an argument on a philosophical level, for science it is a closed question--your position is wholly unsupportable by it.
This is the most incoherent thing I have ever read. Are you still trying to make some kind of point? Because it sounds like you agree with me now.
what the fuck is going on in this discussion
the most moronic comments are being modded up and everything of substance is being ignored
stinks of organized censorship
you just have terrible reading comprehension.
he's trying to communicate to you that your dogmatic position is illogical
Actually it says both, but if you're not an Ancient Hebrew, the slaughter, foreskins, and slavery don't apply to you. See Acts 15 for details.
sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
Please lie better. It's the most incoherent thing you've ever read, but coherent enough to conclude I am agreeing with you.
Well, I've lost interest at this point. Understand what science is, and is not, and what it can and cannot address, or don't. Avoiding babbling meaninglessly with your notion that something can be both scientific and arbitrary is something you'll need to work out for your own life.
We need to stop the abortion. it's just horrible and inhuman.
But a pregnant woman poisoning their unborn child for nine straight months while she smokes or does drugs is humane? That is acceptable but not having a child isn't?
What about obese women who are pregnant? There are many physical and mental defects which can occur because of obesity yet we are now supposed to celebrate it despite the lifelong pain and discomfort it may foist on a child.
Tell me, isn't the poisoning of a child a crime? If so, why aren't people like you, who most likely claim a ball of cells is a person, going after pregnant women who are poisoning their child? Why aren't you pressing your local DA to prosecute them for child abuse or attempted murder?
If you're so concerned about the welfare of the unborn then maybe we should have a government program which watches over pregnant women to make sure they aren't endangering their child. The women will have to report to a government agent every other week and give out a detailed description of what they've been eating, any exercising they've been doing, take tests to insure they haven't been using drugs, and a whole gamut of other tests to make sure their child isn't being harmed. Would that work for you? Would that be better than a woman making her own choice not to have a child?
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
stinks of organized censorship
Modding down is censorship now? Man you're on a roll today.
I'm European, from my point of view your democrats ARE right wingers. The GOP is just off the chart.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Only if you stick with the 'on its own.' The age of viability has been steadily creeping down due to improved medical technology. Given enough time it'll eventually hit zero, when we are able to grow placental mammals in jars.
Europeans are off the chart left. Socialism will never work.
Feel free to demonstrate the objective scientific point of transition from "not human" to "human". It doesn't, and can't, exist within the context of biology.
Therefore, if you don't accept that life begins at conception, there is no scientific point at which you can claim such a transition has happened for you -at all-, and logical consistency requires that you agree society should likewise be free to kill you at will.
Conception is a process. Biologically, there is no "moment of conception" as the Catholics like to pretend. Sometimes the egg implants first, sometimes the sperm fertilizes it first, and so on. There is no set order for all the various steps that take place during conception. (Some orderings have better success rates than others, but none have a 0% chance... Oh, and about 50% of all conceptions are spontaneously aborted without any human interference. Who should we blame those on?) It's impossible to say life begins at conception because it's impossible to say when conception begins.
In other words, you are completely correct. There is no exact transition point. Which means there is nothing to do other than make one up, as best as we can.
Can you pinpoint the exact moment that a child becomes an adult? If not, I guess all two year olds should have the right to vote, drive, drink alcohol, and serve in the military.
Ideology: A tool used primarily to avoid the bother of thinking.
Let me help you with this: what do you think whining about moderation constitutes? Well, yes, it's Off-Topic!
Here, have a -1 from me.
Actually, the Bible does talk about abortion:
Numbers 5:27
“If she has made herself impure and been unfaithful to her husband, this will be the result: When she is made to drink the water that brings a curse and causes bitter suffering, it will enter her, her abdomen will swell and her womb will miscarry, and she will become a curse."
So it's ok to get an abortion if it's not her husband's child. Words of the Bible (not mine, I couldn't come up with such sick insanity).
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Women have been getting birth control without the help of a doctor for millennia. It's called not having sex.
I know it doesn't have that sciency ring to it, and most medical professionals don't understand how it works, but if you can control your urges when you don't want to have a baby, and also, understand that there is literally a 72 hour period every month when a woman can actually get pregnant, you learn that you don't have to put chemicals in your body to NOT get pregnant.
There is exactly one reference to abortion in the bible. It's in Numbers 5, and it details the process for performing an abortion if you believe your wife has been unfaithful.
Only if you twist the text to fit a pro-abortion viewpoint.
What Numbers 5 actually says is that a man should take a wife suspected of adultery to a priest, who will perform a ritual called the "ordeal of the bitter water". If she is innocent, she'll be fine, but if she's guilty it will cause her belly to swell, her thigh to rot and she will become a curse among her people. Some interpret this to mean that she'll die. Some believe that because "thigh" is occasionally used as a euphemism for reproductive organs, it's the womb that will rot, making it something like an abortion, though making her permanently infertile which is how she'd be a "curse among her people".
So, if it's about abortion at all, it's a process for sterilization or execution.
But it's also not a "process", because it's not the priest's direct actions which cause the result. It's her innocence or guilt that determines the outcome. In other words, God decides, not the husband or the priest, so it's a religious rite not a medical procedure.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
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You sure about that? I spent twelve-plus years in the Bible Belt and there's definitely a correlation between how "Christian" they I insist on acting (I *don't* mean "turning the other cheek") and how able they appear to accommodate a book in said fashion...
I suppose you conveniently forgot which party was in power then, no?
Since they're effectively the same fucking party, that should be quite understandable.
"...the Bible says we should live in peace, forgive our enemies, and help the poor.'
Actually, it reads that we should slaughter those who don't accept our god, collecting the foreskins of the males, accept a fair price for selling our daughters into slavery, and put duty to god before duty to family and friends.
It's all which part do you choose to believe (if any)? Is it the love-your-enemies bit by a later Heretic, or the older eye-for-an-eye, tooth-for-a-tooth part? The literal-dictated word-of-God take on the Bible is clearly crap: hundreds of factual inconsistencies are found in the Bible. What's bothersome is that religious organizations using the name of the later Heretic chose to believe and promote the earlier eye-for-eye crap that He so rejected.
"ordeal of the bitter water".
There are a number of herbs that have been used to induce miscarriage since ancient times (slippery elm and black cohosh come to mind); perhaps that's what it's a reference to.
Exodus 21:22-23 makes it abundantly clear that killing a fetus is not at all the same as killing a person. If the fetus is accidentally killed, the person responsible has to pay a fine. But if the woman dies, the person responsible faces the death penalty.
Clearly, the lives of the fetus and the woman are viewed as very different.
(Not that I actually believe any of the crap in the Bible, but it's at least worth knowing what's in there.)
"ordeal of the bitter water".
There are a number of herbs that have been used to induce miscarriage since ancient times (slippery elm and black cohosh come to mind); perhaps that's what it's a reference to.
Nope. Go read it. No herbs involved. At most it's a little bit of ink from when the written curses are washed off in holy water.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
The money grubbing health cartel gets to keep their mitts in the loop this way; in plenty of countries one can walk into a store and buy birth control pills with nothing needed but money (and about a tenth of what is required here). The benefits of allowing that for the majority far outweigh any risks to a very few (cue med student who will wail the standard B.S. against why that shouldn't be allowed, but those concerns don't apply to 99%+).
because it stops the muscle spasms. When I injured my back the trouble was the spasms kept it from healing. I have very, very limited side effects when I'm on it (bit hard to pee, being a muscle relaxant and all). Without it it takes weeks for me to heal enough to sit in chair. With it I'm up and running in a few days. After that I'm off the stuff. At least for me it's a wonder drug.
I agree a doctor needs to make sure nothing's going wrong, especially with the elderly. But a $15 call on a smart phone and a free consultation with a pharmacist can do that. I don't need a $200 (out of pocket because my plan doesn't kick in until $1200) visit.
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Oh, and when we do that we need to stop all sex without contraception! The thing you are obviously not aware of is that most fertilized eggs die, hence the very act of fertilizing eggs is "horrible and inhuman" according to nil-whits such as you.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Religious fanatics are not interested even in what their own holy books say. They are not interested in right or wrong. They are into suppressing anything that disagreed with their own perverted world view and in exercising power. If you want to find the worst of the worst in the human race, you need look no further.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Why does this need to be an app? The idea is simply that you meet with a doctor over videoconference. Why do we need an app to organize this? Any doctor can immediately start accepting appointments over email or google calendar "find appointment slot". Any doctor can call you back over Skype or Hangouts.
What is the app doing to justify all the private information it receives, and all the control over the market it exerts? This feels like more social networking lemming behavior.
"thigh" is translated from a word that, elsewhere in the text, clearly refers to reproductive organs. It's an abortion.
The ordeal involves taking a brew prepared by the priests. I suspect we have only half the ritual - the other half was passed from priest to priest, saying which herbs to put in the brew.
Dude, science is nothing if not arbitrary.
Do you understand the scientific method? Do you know what a hypothesis is?
Science is not special. It is merely the latest in a series of educated guesses which haven't yet been disproven. I'm sorry if that doesn't fit in with your desire for ultimate certainty, but don't blame me--I didn't do it.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
So, how long do the democrats have to hold total power until they actually start being responsible for bad stuff they do, and can't just blame republicans? 20 years? 100? 1000?
Pointing out cases you'd rather conveniently ignore is not "moronic", and someone claiming thusly stinks of being a dimwit.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
I remember. It was Clinton's party, the Democrat Party, that was in power when Al Qaeda slaughtered American troops at the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia. The same party was in power when 17 sailors on the USS Cole were killed by Al Qaeda in Yemen. The lack of response to these incidents emboldened Al Qaeda to attack the Worls Trade Center on 9/11/01. Have you forgotten?
Vote for another Clinton, and expect more of the same - but what, at this point, does it matter?
I love the irony of an AC posting about the original Slashdot audience! I think the original Slashdot was more focused on science and technology, and did not care at all about personal philosophical beliefs. That's the part of Slashdot that I miss the most.
Oh, and about 50% of all conceptions are spontaneously aborted without any human interference.
People die on their own 100% of the time. Murder should be legal!!!!!!!111
Same "logic".
Meanwhile, on planet Earth, Obama (hardly a "right winger") is going to go down in history as the first president to have been effectively at war for 8 solid years.
This is only almost true because US presidents have not had a good track record of staying in power for 8 solid years during times of extended warfare. But it isn't true anyway, since Woodrow Wilson was in power for 8 years during the US occupation of Nicaragua, which lasted 19 years spanning his entire presidency. Theodore Roosevelt was in power for 8 years during the Moro Rebellion, which lasted 14 years spanning his entire presidency.
And if you count the American Indian Wars, every President with an eight year term before Woodrow Wilson was at war for eight solid years.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
So, how long do the democrats have to hold total power until they actually start being responsible for bad stuff they do, and can't just blame republicans? 20 years? 100? 1000?
The Democrats would be responsible for starting any war they actually start. Its not that hard to figure out. Wars which are cleaning up the mess of previous administrations can certainly last decades, as it did during the Vietnam War. I'd agree that after about 50 years you could no longer blame the original administration which started the war, but that is an arbitrary figure.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
Never been to Denmark? Looks like it's working fine to me.
If you want badly enough to see it that way, you certainly can. But that's not how scholars see it, either today or in the past.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
"Europeans are off the chart left. Socialism will never work."
Your fire and car insurance seem to do just fine with such a socialist ideas, so does the US postal system, military defense, highways, fire department, bridges, garbage collection, public libraries (Those are large houses of stone where people go to read stuff)
and a few dozen other ones.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/...
"Sure we can, we make up classifications all the time in science. For instance, one possibility could be when the fetus can live on its own outside the womb. "
On its own? These times that usually means between the age of 35 and 40.
"Doctors in Cuba’s public health system are pressured to induce abortions for potentially problematic pregnancies in order to artificially lower the infant mortality rate. Stusser estimated that if the deaths of living fetuses older than 21 weeks had been reported, Cuba’s infant mortality rate would be at least 50 percent higher."
And the conditions in Cuban hospitals are horrible.
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
Exodus 21:22-23 makes it abundantly clear that killing a fetus is not at all the same as killing a person.
What the fuck is wrong with you assholes? Why the fuck do you have to intentionally mis-cite/state what is said in a passage, and what the fuck are you thinking when it's so fucking easy to read the fucking materials you're supposedly explaining?
22“When men strive together and hit a pregnant woman, so that her children come out, but there is no harm, the one who hit her shall surely be fined, as the woman’s husband shall impose on him, and he shall pay as the judges determine. 23But if there is harm,d then you shall pay life for life, 24eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, 25burn for burn, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.
Idiot. Stupid fucking lying asshole. Read it: fetus dies, person responsible is executed.
There is exactly one reference to abortion in the bible. It's in Numbers 5, and it details the process for performing an abortion if you believe your wife has been unfaithful.
No, it doesn't detail an abortion. It details sprinkling special dust ("take some of the dust that is on the floor of the tabernacle") into some "bitter water" and a curse by a priest that if she has been unfaithful God will cause her womb to swell, but if she has not been then nothing will happen.
Sane readers who aren't all that religious call that "a superstitious ritual to appease asshat husbands who are jealous without cause" (because " if the **spirit** of jealousy comes over him and he is jealous of his wife").
Sorry but the Bible isn't just a book abused by religious people, it's irrationally read to mean anything and everything except what the damn thing actually says by what old-school religious people used to term "theologic liberals" (like judges re-reading laws to be clever, then getting butthurt that anyone suggests reading terms to mean the opposite of what they do isn't, in fact, "interpretation" at all).
There's also the bit where it decrees that someone who causes an unborn baby to be miscarried without injuring the mother shall pay a fine set by the father.
Obama is very much a right winger compared with most politicians on the planet. The problem in the US is that you can choose between right wing (Democrats) and right wing extremists (Republicans), so it is less obvious. Sanders would be a little saner choice but the Democrats seem to be radicalizing too with Clinton.
Your argument is superficial and dishonest.
There are many forms of life that have nothing to do with conception (ask any amoeba).
Life has existed in a continuum for something like 2 billion years.
The fusion of a sperm (a living thing) and an egg (a living thing) is not the start of new life, it is the start of a new individual. It appears you don't have much respect for individuals since you think it's acceptable for you to tell a woman what to do with herself.
Here's a car analogy: At what point does a collection of parts on an assembly line become an automobile? Can't name an exact point? That's because it's a process, just as egg + sperm -> embryo -> fetus -> newborn is a process
Because many decisions are based on the law in this matter, the law that identifies when a new person (human being) comes into existence should be reasonable, in accordance with reality, based upon sound definitions, and allow determination of facts based on easy observations. The fundamental definition of a person (human being) is an independent rational animal, with each of those 3 words clarified for use in legal and utilitarian contexts (for instance, rational refers not to the ability to spout syllogisms, but to having a rational faculty consistent with age and experience.) Until birth, a fetus is not independent, thus not a person, and thus has no rights; however the potential of the fetus and the responsibility of the woman makes the restriction (not prohibition) of late-term abortion a reasonable thing.
As noted above, the attempt to pinpoint the start of life is based on a false assumption. Identifying a start to personhood is not a scientific endeavor (and it's dishonest to claim otherwise), it is a legal and political one.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
Your moniker is in accord with your argument.
Science is the fundamental method people use to determine how things work, so that they can plan their actions with reasonable expectations of success. That is not arbitrary.
I particularly object to your use of the word "merely". The use of educated guesses is the main part of human experience, and does not deserve to be denigrated with the word "merely."
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
None of those things you listed are socialist ideas. Anything else you want to claim credit for? Horses? Gravity? Arithmetic?
See that "Preview" button?
Like the unborn, who might not want to die? Why should they get a death sentence for mom's convenience?
Really? Please quote the original Hebrew with your translation. I am sure it's original, as what you claim is written is not, in fact, written.
Which bit would that be?
I've been around /. a long time. Like most suffering from nostalgia, you remember a past that never was. Slashdot has always had discussions that veered away from pure science and technology. Without strict moderation, it's practically guaranteed to happen, as people like to digress.
Just because you don't know when something happened does not mean it didn't happen. There is still a moment of conception, if conception is defined as an egg becoming fertilized such that it will start to grow into a fetus. It doesn't matter what the process is. There is still a moment before the egg can grow into a fetus, and moment after which it will grow into a fetus. That moment is conception, even if you can't tell post facto when it occurred.
Note: I am taking no position on whether life begins at that moment, only that such a moment does in fact exist.
As to your ridiculous analogy regarding adulthood: no one is claiming that our laws regarding the transition from childhood to adulthood is based on a scientific evaluation of biological maturity.
"If she has made herself impure and been unfaithful to her husband, this will be the result: When she is made to drink the water that brings a curse and causes bitter suffering, it will enter her, her abdomen will swell and her womb will miscarry, and she will become a curse." - Numbers 5:27.
How can this be interpreted as anything other than an abortion? Even if not via drugs, at the very least it's an attempted abortion via supernatural curse.
So in other words you've nothing more than "Don't care for your tone"--IOW you've nothing, period.
Thanks for playing.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
Odd. It's been working for 70 years now and counting. And people even come here voluntarily from all over the world, but obviously because they're dumb enough to think that it could work.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
There is still a moment before the egg can grow into a fetus, and moment after which it will grow into a fetus.
Well, let's pretend you're correct. The moment you are describing is different every time. So there's no useful to use it as a demarcation. And if you aren't using it as a demarcation, what are you using it for?
That moment is conception, even if you can't tell post facto when it occurred
The word I use for things which people give names to, but you can't verify the existence of, is fantasy.
Ideology: A tool used primarily to avoid the bother of thinking.
Not birth control, self-control is the critical public health issue. Come on, we know what causes pregnancies, men and women choose to engage in that activity, and it's a surprise when 'life finds a way'? That's like saying toll house cookies are the unintended outcome for buying a tube of dough, spooning it on to a greased tray, and baking it in an oven...
It is - high school nurses hand them out, everyone on 'Obamacare' gets free contraception, public healthcare clinics (like planned parenthood) give condoms away for free, major chain drugstores sell one month birth control prescriptions for less than $10.
I think you confuse 'ok' with 'become a curse'. That 'become a curse' doesn't sound OK to me...
What matters is that it's a-ok to kill the baby (and potentially the mother) if you think it's not yours. At least according to that book.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Thank that old-time socialist Benjamin Franklin for creating the first public library. (Not everything on the daily kos is true/accurate - hard to believe, I know)
Shouldn't we be at least a little concerned about the enivronmental/societal/broader effects of using hormonal birth control at large scale anyway?
Estrogens are already showing up in the water supply in surprising quantities (e.g. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2854760/) and the more accessible we make hormonal birth control, the worse the problem is going to get.
I'd rather see a condom-focused box-of-the-month club than broader estrogen access.
Rejoin the culture of death because life, especially the new life of a child is such a burden and a curse. Take that first class carcinogen, and sterilize yourself and most likely if you ever do reproduce the following generation by your ingestion of this carcinogen has such a greater chance of being sterile. Don't be open to life because it will truly not be an option in the not so distant future. Look around you and see all the people who can't conceive and the millions who are waiting to adopt and there are no children for adoption. The human race has already slowed down to barely replacement rate according to the UN statistics and many countries are dying out because they are below replacement rates. Even in Russia, they are paying women NOT to have abortions. We are so good at destroying ourselves!
giving hormone pills without any expert supervising it. Because the human body is so easy to understand, nothing can go wrong. It's not like some people needed to change the type of pill, because they get severe problems, everything will be okay. Nothing, an app cannot fix.
Is it so fucking complicated to go to a doctor?!
Science isn't arbitrary. As you say, it's the latest in a series of educated guesses which haven't yet been disproven, and there are sufficient rules to keep the arbitrariness to a minimum.
However, science is applicable only to certain things, namely things that can be disproven by experiment and/or observation. I know of no experiment that would tell me that human rights don't begin at some particular point between conception (itself slightly arbitrary) and birth, and therefore (unless I'm seriously wrong) this is not a matter for science.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
There is exactly one reference to abortion in the bible. It's in Numbers 5, and it details the process for performing an abortion if you believe your wife has been unfaithful.
There's another (indirect) reference in Exodus 21:22 which prescribes a monetary penalty for inducing a miscarriage in a woman bystander. Which is hardly surprising because children were considered property at the time.
You will not drink with us, but you would taste our steel? - Walter Matthau, The Pirates