October Baby

[ladypuglover]

You all have said everything better than I could of but I do have one question. Could I have that baby pig instead of a baby? I mean babies are cute and all and I had more than enough myself but that piggy is just so cute! And if we don't get along then I know what to do with the body.

[BelieveinScience]

You all have said everything better than I could of but I do have one question. Could I have that baby pig instead of a baby? I mean babies are cute and all and I had more than enough myself but that piggy is just so cute! And if we don't get along then I know what to do with the body.

Piglets are the most awesomest creatures ever. I used to work on a swine farm and I always loved when we had little piglets at the facilities. If you hold a piglet like you would a baby they instantly fall asleep. Its so cute! They get big really fast though and are very mischievous and smart.

[emmiedahl]

Perhaps I'll play devil's advocate here.

Woman donating her uterus gets it back after 9 months. I don't get my kidney back.

I got my body back? Those scars from 100+ stitches after kiddo #1 tore through my vagina are not really there? My stretch marks and saggy boobs are not there? My hair is not thinner, my teeth and bones weaker? Some women have trouble with peeing themselves after giving birth--it's really common, I know otherwise healthy women who wear panty liners all the time cuz it totally happens. Childbirth takes a huge toll on your body. Honestly, I would be better off if I had merely donated a kidney. Also, things like blood and bone marrow DO regenerate.

I also think the expectation that I'm supposed to love my little parasite weighs in it too. I might save your life with my kidney but I may never love you. Really I think it's about the family core for anti-choices. If mothers don't love their babies then the family breaks down. And if the family breaks down all of society goes to hell. I might be reaching with the love thing, but it's a theory.

Pro-lifers want the woman to give the baby up for adoption in most cases, so this does not really apply.

[jayes1217]

Kittens will always be my favorite type of baby animals but piglets are adorable. :-D

[emmiedahl]

A lot of my thoughts and opinions are not going to logically make sense to people. I can only try to explain the best I can and then drop it. The whole gospel (Jesus being born of a virgin, living a perfect life, taking on the sins of mankind in death, rising again) doesn't make SENSE to people and I can explain the best I know how, but I am not going to be able to make it make sense. So, if I cannot make my most important belief make sense logically how is anything else going to work?

It's okay to have illogical beliefs. Just own that they are illogical and don't try to make them law and don't start judging people who are not following your particular sky daddy. My religion regulates when I may or may not have an abortion. I just don't extend those beliefs beyond my own uterus. Laws need to make sense for everyone, not just for the subset of the population who hold certain illogical beliefs.

[Minerva]

Piglets are the most awesomest creatures ever. I used to work on a swine farm and I always loved when we had little piglets at the facilities. If you hold a piglet like you would a baby they instantly fall asleep. Its so cute! They get big really fast though and are very mischievous and smart.

I've always said I would totally carry a pregnancy to term if the end result was going to be a puppy. Same goes for a piglet.

[Koala]

You all have said everything better than I could of but I do have one question. Could I have that baby pig instead of a baby? I mean babies are cute and all and I had more than enough myself but that piggy is just so cute! And if we don't get along then I know what to do with the body.

I am loving that piglet! I would take her in a heartbeat

[Athena]

I got my body back? Those scars from 100+ stitches after kiddo #1 tore through my vagina are not really there? My stretch marks and saggy boobs are not there? My hair is not thinner, my teeth and bones weaker? Some women have trouble with peeing themselves after giving birth--it's really common, I know otherwise healthy women who wear panty liners all the time cuz it totally happens. Childbirth takes a huge toll on your body. Honestly, I would be better off if I had merely donated a kidney. Also, things like blood and bone marrow DO regenerate.

I guess you'd rather have dialysis, life-long medication and a probable shortened life as a result of the loss of one of your majour organs. I wouldn't deny that pregnancy and childbirth almost always cause irreversible damage to a woman's body. I just think it's not as bad as donating an organ. And I never claimed that blood and bone marrow don't regenerate.

Pro-lifers want the woman to give the baby up for adoption in most cases, so this does not really apply.

Granted, but it's my theory that a biological mother would care more for an unwanted baby than a forced donor for a donee.

[gardenvarietycitizen]

FundieFan - that makes sense... and i didn't mean my "i know darn well..." to mean that others who disagree are stupid.

so, when would you feel it's a baby/alive? when it has a heartbeat? fingers? like, i don't mean that in a snarky way - it's something i think about a LOT because i don't actually believe that most of the women in america are for killing babies, but it's very hard for me to understand how others don't view it as a life, so i ask - when is it a baby to you? are you ok with "partial birth abortions" or 3rd trimester?

In all actuality, based on people's real observed behavior?

It's a baby when it's born, obviously. Before that, when it's viable outside the mother in the case of early birth is another line (but it can be fuzzy - how much intervention do you attempt to say it's "viable")?

Before THAT?

It's a baby when the mother carrying it wants it and mentally considers it her wanted child. That's why wanted premature babies born at the very edges of viability have every possible lifesaving technology performed on them even while others potentially abort at later gestational ages.

That's why some people have elaborate funerals for miscarriages that happen long before the limit for legal abortion has been reached. That's why some murder cases where a woman was pregnant count the fetus as a victim, and others don't.

It's all down to the mother (and possibly the father, if he's involved at all) wanting it. When she thinks of it as a baby and imagines it having a full life, wanted, then it's a baby. If not? It isn't.

Once born of course the mother's opinion is irrelevant because she can just abandon the kid to others if she doesn't want the kid, so the entire game has changed.

The tragic thing about the teenagers birthing babies in the toilet and abandoning them is that they (the teenagers) lived in a situation where they were absolutely terrified of anyone finding out they were pregnant (or that they had sex). THAT is a problem. If they could only admit their pregnancies, the babies would have lived (even if given away to be raised by others).

If my mom had had an abortion, I wouldn't exist to know or care about it.

THANK YOU! Been hoping to see this.

It's completely illogical to imagine some way you would be horrified or even mildly upset to have been aborted, since you wouldn't exist to care.

Similarly if your parents had had sex on a different day, you wouldn't be here either. Your parents would have some other kid, made from some other sperm and egg combination. And because you ARE here, plenty of other potential children of your parents were not born - are they angry? Should we grieve for all those potential kids? It just violates the most basic of probability thinking.

ETA: I should probably change "wanted" to be merely "thinking of it as a baby." Plenty of people have unwanted kids and still want them enough to consider them children and birth them - but the point is, when it's in early stages and the mother is NOT thinking of it as a baby, based on all behavior, it's not. The pregnant woman thinking of it as a baby is what makes all the difference, IMHO.

Meanwhile I'm looking for that chart of "is it really about saving life, or is it about punishment for sex?" but I can't find it right now...

[gardenvarietycitizen]

About the movie itself - I read the review on Salon this morning, which contained the basic plot.

First thing off, it bugs me that it's one more movie pulling on that illogical "I'm so happy I wasn't aborted!" thing. If you were aborted, you would not be here to possibly care.

But worse off, yeah, I know about the Gianna case (and every time I see her arguments, again I think how illogical the argument is, but hey) but she was an attempted saline abortion at 30 weeks.

Well, hey, that's not NEARLY extreme enough, so no, we've gotta up that ante by making it 24 weeks!!!! Which is completely stupid, because 24 weeks is on the edge of viability as it is. People have wanted babies at 24 weeks and decide not to do crazy interventions for them and let them die. It's not as if this perfect cherub is born at 24 weeks and then left in a back room, that would 100% just be fine! if only someone would pick her up. :roll: It's just not that obvious.

The whole thing is just so VERY soapy.

[ilovetchotchkes]

re: the comparison to animals: My good friend and I were at the aquarium yesterday, we were looking at the beluga whales. I remarked to her. "DUDE THEY ARE GIANT FETUSES". She cracked up.

I'm sorry, I am pro choice. I have 1 kid out, one kid cooking and considering this, I am 100% sure that parenthood/childbirth should be 110% on a volunteer basis.

I get really pissed when pro life friends say "I'm SO GLAD your mom chose life" or "pro choicers are murders".

[emmiedahl]

I guess you'd rather have dialysis, life-long medication and a probable shortened life as a result of the loss of one of your majour organs. I wouldn't deny that pregnancy and childbirth almost always cause irreversible damage to a woman's body. I just think it's not as bad as donating an organ. And I never claimed that blood and bone marrow don't regenerate.

Giving up a kidney does not usually result in these things. To quote the Mayo Clinic, "Your long-term survival rate, quality of life, general health status and risk of kidney failure are about the same as that for people in the general population who aren't kidney donors." It is as safe as giving birth certainly.

http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/kidney ... on/AN01988

Granted, but it's my theory that a biological mother would care more for an unwanted baby than a forced donor for a donee.

So you should only be forced to give up bodily privacy and autonomy for things that someone else determines you *should* care for?

[formergothardite]

The chances of dying after donating a kidney is 0.03%. And as Emmie said, it doesn't raise your risk of kidney failure or death in the long term at all.

The thing about organ donations is that it doesn't matter if the donee loves, likes or cares for the person they are donating to, they don't even have to meet. But with a baby, if a woman is forced to have baby she doesn't want, and then guilted into keeping it and still resents the child, she is capable of abusing the child.

[Minerva]

re: the comparison to animals: My good friend and I were at the aquarium yesterday, we were looking at the beluga whales. I remarked to her. "DUDE THEY ARE GIANT FETUSES". She cracked up.

I'm sorry, I am pro choice. I have 1 kid out, one kid cooking and considering this, I am 100% sure that parenthood/childbirth should be 110% on a volunteer basis.

I get really pissed when pro life friends say "I'm SO GLAD your mom chose life" or "pro choicers are murders".

That's when I start talking about their parents having sex.

[LadyBlue]

For anyone who thinks birth is some simple, non-fatal event needs to read this. Birth is not always A Baby Story.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/sp ... redstories

This site too. http://www.rememberthemothers.org/

And google Tatia Oden French.

ETA link for Tatia http://tatia.org/

[gardenvarietycitizen]

Donating a kidney might not raise your risk of kidney failure, but it IS removing one "spare part" you have if something bad might happen to only one of your kidneys.

That said, I'd probably donate.

Recently I saw a documentary about kidney donation for pay in Iran (both donors and recipients are all Iranian citizens). It was pretty interesting yet sort of disturbing, all of the negotiation that has to go on, the two halves of the equation are talking directly and negotiating a price and yes, there are issues of coercion.

But it reminded me of some things I'd read about losing eyes, they recommend people be extra careful with their remaining eye (using goggles and the like way more often than "normal" people) just because there too, they've only got the one left, at that point.

I will say if it ever becomes possible to gestate fetuses in a vat it would likely change the entire abortion debate, but on the other hand if we could gestate fetuses in a vat I can imagine that quickly becoming the standard way for people who can afford it, anyway.

[Athena]

Giving up a kidney does not usually result in these things. To quote the Mayo Clinic, "Your long-term survival rate, quality of life, general health status and risk of kidney failure are about the same as that for people in the general population who aren't kidney donors." It is as safe as giving birth certainly.

http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/kidney ... on/AN01988

Only it's not natural. Having a baby is; our bodies were specifically designed for it. Organ donation has been regularly performed for less than a century. My point is that childbirth is likely less damaging to the body than kidney donation on average. Though I haven't found any data which directly compares the two. I would bet that most women would rather birth an unwanted child than donate a kidney.

So you should only be forced to give up bodily privacy and autonomy for things that someone else determines you *should* care for?

I would guess that anti-choicers would say yes. That is just my theory on their reasoning, mind you.

[Athena]

The chances of dying after donating a kidney is 0.03%. And as Emmie said, it doesn't raise your risk of kidney failure or death in the long term at all.

Not entirely true. To quote The Kidney Foundation of Canada:

•Longer-term physical risks. These are minor risks which should not cause any long-term health problems, and may include:

â—¦Slight increased risk of high blood pressure

â—¦Slight increased incidence of kidney failure

â—¦Possibility of injuring the remaining kidney - the kidney that remains grows larger to do the work formerly done by two kidneys; it becomes heavier, thus making it more vulnerable to injury. After donation, contact sports should be avoided.

â—¦Slight risk of developing a disease of the remaining kidney

http://www.kidney.ca/page.aspx?pid=379

The thing about organ donations is that it doesn't matter if the donee loves, likes or cares for the person they are donating to, they don't even have to meet. But with a baby, if a woman is forced to have baby she doesn't want, and then guilted into keeping it and still resents the child, she is capable of abusing the child.

Don't anti-choicers encourage "adoption not abortion"? The argument isn't that the woman is being forced to keep the baby, just birth it.

[emmiedahl]

Not entirely true. To quote the Canadian Kidney Foundation:

http://www.kidney.ca/page.aspx?pid=379

Don't anti-choicers encourage "adoption not abortion"? The argument isn't that the woman is being forced to keep the baby, just birth it.

According to both your link and mine, these are very slight risks. Certainly no more than the risks of pregnancy and childbirth. With less than one-tenth of a percent risk of death, kidney donation is not a risky procedure.

[Shirley MacLaine]

I've been called "pro-death" loads of times. "Anti-life" I rarely see, but it's not unheard of.

I've seen/been called anti-life a number of times - pro-death I don't see as often but I have heard. I mean, it's just so ridiculous for a pro-life person to say 'WE DON'T CALL YOU SHITTY THINGS' when there are tons of facebook groups called shit like PRO-CHOICE IS ANTI-LIFE. BE PRO-LIFE.

[gardenvarietycitizen]

Don't anti-choicers encourage "adoption not abortion"? The argument isn't that the woman is being forced to keep the baby, just birth it.

Plenty of them do, yeah.

But what that completely ignores is that many, many, MANY people have abortions not only for health reasons or because they don't want to raise a child. They do it before they "show" because they don't want anyone to ever know that they got pregnant or even had sex.

Once it's public knowledge that a woman is pregnant, sure there's people who will abort for health reasons or just not wanting their bio-children in the world at all or whatever, but plenty of people would say at that point, well, sure, I'll just give the baby up.

But before that point, there's all kinds of reasons why a discrete abortion will solve the problem but birthing and adopting the kid out won't. It's not all about not wanting to raise the kid.

As it is, saying "well, you can have the kid and give it up" still says "...and of course be forced to bear your community's punishments and shaming for having sex when you shouldn't, even if you'll get out of raising the kid."

In fact so much of the propaganda wants to focus on people supposedly having late term abortions out of some sort of convenience, which I have to admit I find silly - if you're going to have to birth the thing anyway, and you're already 100% known to be pregnant and therefore slutty, there's really no good reason to abort rather than have the kid (unless you both don't want to raise it yourself but also can't bear the thought of someone else raising your kid, I guess. Which might happen. I've not been there and can't speak to it). But most of those late term abortions I read about are for serious defects or health problems.

More common "convenience" abortions happen before the pregnancy is showing (because that's the whole POINT) and so it's very much not a "oh, cute little baby."

[thoughtful]

THANK YOU! Been hoping to see this.

Me, too. I do think someone alluded to it earlier in the thread.

This, to me, is a major flaw in the sentiment behind the film, and much of Didi's feelings about her birth being so meant-to-be.

If my Mom had married the man to whom she'd first been engaged, if she hadn't had the miscarriage before getting pregnant before me, and decided to stop there, if she'd gotten pregnant the month before or after . . .

If, if, if -- and George Bailey has no children, and Mary is about to close up the library. :D

I adore my life, and am thrilled to be here. But, if I wasn't, there would be no "me" to know that. Doesn't bother me at all.

Meanwhile I'm looking for that chart of "is it really about saving life, or is it about punishment for sex?" but I can't find it right now...

This one?

[Athena]

According to both your link and mine, these are very slight risks. Certainly no more than the risks of pregnancy and childbirth. With less than one-tenth of a percent risk of death, kidney donation is not a risky procedure.

I guess we'll have to agree to disagree. If we compare a routine pregnancy and delivery with absolutely no issues to a perfect kidney retrieval surgery I would imagine that the risks of complications would be higher with a surgery. I'm just sayin'...

[emmiedahl]

I guess we'll have to agree to disagree. If we compare a routine pregnancy and delivery with absolutely no issues to a perfect kidney retrieval surgery I would imagine that the risks of complications would be higher with a surgery. I'm just sayin'...

Then we will have to agree to disagree.

In a perfect kidney retrieval, there is a short recovery and no long-term effects. In a perfect pregnancy, there is 9 months of illness and compromised ability to work, followed by intense pain and a 1/4 chance of having to cut through the abdominal muscles, followed by a 6 week recovery and some lifelong effects.

[Boogalou]

Oh good a battle between kidney donation and childbirth! Such fun. I was curious to see which was worse so I did some googling. Depending on who you ask and what subgroups you look at between 1.7 and 5.1 people per 100 000 die from donating a kidney. Interestingly, women actually have the lowest mortality rate. That is from 2010. On the other hand the maternal mortality rate was 13.3 per 100 000 in 2010. This was all for the United States. So, purely on the basis of what you are more likely to die from it appears childbirth is more dangerous. That doesn't factor anything else in but death.

Maternal death (I find Amnesty to be pretty credible): http://www.amnestyusa.org/our-work/camp ... -in-the-us

Kidney donor death (no idea how legit this is): http://www.livescience.com/6191-donatin ... -life.html