Merged: Republicans/A Baby is the "Largest Organ..."

[Lillybee]

Will their stupidity ever end?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/1 ... 12812.html

[ILoveJellybeans]

So what are they? Human beings or organs, cause someone could go and get their appendix removed with no problems at all.

A fetus is not an organ. It has its own unique DNA and is seperate from the body, it just happens to be growing in there. It grows its own organs, so it cant really be an organ. Its no more an organ than a tapeworm or a tumor is. Its not like in 9 months time your liver will gain independance from your body and crawl out, as organs dont do that.

[mg78]

So what are they?

Parasites?

I heard one of my pregnant friend referring to her baby as a joke...

[Syd+Marky]

This is disturbing to say the least.Where do politicians get off making this crap up anyway?How can something made up of many organs be "an organ"?Does this actually make sense to ANYBODY?

[argypargy]

Pretty sure that if an organ is causing me an issue I can have it removed.

Gah...these people just need to crawl back under their rocks.

[MyNameIsJonas]

Alabama state Rep. Mary Sue McClurkin ® is pushing legislation that would impose restrictions on abortion clinics -- a move that she argues is necessary because the procedure is a major surgery that removes the largest "organ" in a woman's body.

“When a physician removes a child from a woman, that is the largest organ in a body,†McClurkin told the Montgomery Advertiser on Thursday. “That’s a big thing. That’s a big surgery. You don’t have any other organs in your body that are bigger than that.â€

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/18/mary-sue-mcclurkin-baby-largest-organ_n_2712812.html?1361227913&ncid=edlinkusaolp00000009

[spectralScavenger]

I initially thought she meant to say "organism", but looking at the article.. yeah, she meant "organ".

[Buzzard]

DA FUQ????

[MyNameIsJonas]

Oh dear, sorry! Just noticed that the same exact post was bumped under mine!

[Bloo]

Uhhhh...no. Most abortions take place way early on, when the fetus is smaller than most organs.

Even so, at no point could the fetus be LARGER THAN THE UTERUS THAT SURROUNDS IT. Logic fail.

[Vex]

BIOLOGY FAIL

Skin is the largest organ.

[crassy]

Pretty sure that if an organ is causing me an issue I can have it removed.

Gah...these people just need to crawl back under their rocks.

Right? It is really not a good analogy at all.

[Katiebug]

How do people like this make it to ostensibly-independent adulthood? And then get elected?

Besides, how are we defining "largest" organ - is it the greatest volume, surface area, mass, what? It's been a long time since high school biology but I'm pretty sure the largest organ in the body is definition-dependent. Regardless, it's not a fetus/baby or the placenta.

[Bazile]

Wow, and yet again I am left hoping my husband comes home with orders tomorrow so we can get our kids out of Alabama before they reach school age. Homeschooling is looking better and better, lol.

In all honesty, I think by the strictest definition possible a fetus is a parasite. If I'm remembering my high school biology right, a parasite subsists off another organism at the expense of the host. Though my brother swears that a baby is the worst STD possible since you end up responsible for it for at least 18 years, and really the rest of their lives. Though when he met my daughter, he did pronounce her the "cutest STD" he'd ever seen.

[August]

Uhhhh...no. Most abortions take place way early on, when the fetus is smaller than most organs.

Even so, at no point could the fetus be LARGER THAN THE UTERUS THAT SURROUNDS IT. Logic fail.

Volume wise it easily is. Painful to push out your twat, but still not an organ.

( google says under a cm thick all around in third trimester).

[Anxious Girl]

Wow. This woman must have a lot of self-hate for herself. She's such a special snowflake, guiz! She can't be anti-choice like those libruls say because she's a pro-life woman! :roll: /sarcasm

[turquoise]

Seems like saying a baby is an organ would actually work against some Republicans' wish to make all abortion illegal. I can't hurt another person, but I can do whatever I want to my own organs, including removing them. (With a few exceptions if I want to stay alive, of course.)

[dairyfreelife]

I really don't understand why pregnancy is such a political issue. Women get pregnant all the time. Thousands of women gave birth today. Most women who found out they were pregnant today will keep their pregnancy as long as it lasts with the awareness that they will hopefully give birth to a healthy baby in a few months to half a year or more depending on how far along they were when they found out. Some women will decide they don't want to be pregnant and will terminate it and almost all those who choose to terminate will do so before there is any chance of viability or any real formation of the fetus that in any way resembles a fetus. The few who will terminate later will more than likely terminate because of a serious issues incompatible with life for the fetus or life-threatening issues to the mother. It's not like women wake up at 30 weeks or even 36 weeks and decide they just don't feel like being pregnant anymore so they are going to abort.

Why are they trying to define fetuses for everyone? Women and parents to be call their fetuses all sorts of things from parasite to beanie to baby, but as it belongs to them, they have the right to call it whatever they want. It could be like a transplant organ I suppose, but it's not an organ in and of itself and it does not have to be in the body. It's not sustaining my life or health for the most part. I hear some conditions can be eased while a woman is pregnant, but it's not a cure all. Endometriosis can be helped greatly by getting pregnant and having a child, but the catch-22 is that it has a great chance of causing infertility. However, it won't cure it.

A woman can live a healthy life without ever becoming pregnant and can live a healthy life after being pregnant a time or two or more as well, but she doesn't ever need to be pregnant for great all around health. The same cannot be said about any real organs. If they are removed from the body, it can be a problem. Any actual organ in the woman's body can cause issues if removed. It can help a person after removal with health issues, but usually the body isn't the same as a person with a similar healthy organ, like the gallbladder, intestine removal or removing a lung or kidney. A woman cannot live without her heart or liver. She can live without her reproductive organs, but removal of them can cause issues as well.

But even if a fetus was an organ, all organs can be operated on and/or removed if problematic. Since there is more risk to keep a sick fetus than to have it removed, this is saying fetuses can be removed at any stage if problematic to the mother. I don't think that's what she's going for, but that's how I see it. They can't claim it's like the heart and can't be removed because the heart it required for the mother to live. The baby is not. So I can't quite figure out what they point is to this idea. :think:

Oh, and as mentioned above, impossible for it to be the largest organ because the uterus would have to be larger to sustain it and the skin is the largest organ. :roll:

[treehugger]

:shock: Are people honestly this stupid? And, someone elected someone this stupid to public office?

Stop the planet, please - I need to get off. Surely there is more intelligent life on Mars?

[YPestis]

Yet another fundie fail in women's health...kind of setting a bad precedence when it's a female but, you know, fundies aren't known for their knowledge of science. FWIW, largest organ is skin and a fetus technically qualifies as a parasite. Really, it's taking the largest parasite out of a woman's body!

[Minerva]

*Sigh*

1. A fetus not an organ.

2. A fetus is smaller than most human organs when most abortions are performed. The latest you can get a clinic abortion in Alabama is 23.6 weeks. The fetus is still smaller than your lungs, your small intestine, your large intestine, and many of your muscles at that point.

3. The only organ that gets removed during an abortion is a placenta. It is probably one of the simplest organs to remove since it's designed to come out. It will never be your largest organ, either.

4. Abortion not a major surgery. It involves no incisions whatsoever. It is simply the removal of a fetus from a uterus. It's hypocritical to want to regulate abortion like that and not childbirth, which is also the removal of a fetus from a uterus.

5. Medical is abortion not a surgery at all.

6. You do not need to have admitting privileges or meet ambulatory clinic building codes to remove an organ from a patient. If you did, dentists everywhere would be fucked.

Most importantly, though, you can't believe that a fetus is an organ and at the same time believe that it's a person.

Edited to add missing word.

[ADoyle90815]

Seems like saying a baby is an organ would actually work against some Republicans' wish to make all abortion illegal. I can't hurt another person, but I can do whatever I want to my own organs, including removing them. (With a few exceptions if I want to stay alive, of course.)

This. Another thing is that if an organ is causing trouble, in many cases it can be removed, the appendix being a good example of this. Most of the time, it gets ignored, but when it causes problems, it's removed. The fetus could be considered a parasite, and I've had friends call their growing fetus a parasite as a joke, even though the pregnancy was planned.

[Anise]

I'm not sure what size has to do with it. I'm sure other concerns like proximity to other organs and placement of blood vessels and such complicate a surgery more than size. That and a fetus is not an organ. This is what happens when science is devalued. :?

[treehugger]

4. Abortion not a major surgery. It involves no incisions whatsoever. It is simply the removal of a fetus from a uterus. It's hypocritical to want to regulate abortion like that and not childbirth, which is also the removal of a fetus from a uterus.

[Dinorah]

and last time I checked, removing an organ doesn't cause anyone any particular moral qualms. No one ever got accused of "murdering" their tonsils.