Of course a woman should be forced
In a 2021 interview with Spectrum News, [J.D.] Vance was asked if he believes a woman should be forced to carry a baby to term after she has been a victim of rape or incest.
The Ohio Republican suggested the framing of the question was flawed.
“It’s not whether a woman should be forced to bring a child to term, it’s whether a child should be allowed to live, even though the circumstances of that child’s birth are somehow inconvenient or a problem to the society,” Vance said. “The question really, to me, is about the baby.”
But of course it is whether a woman should be forced to bring a pregnancy to term, because that’s the very thing being talked about. It can’t be “about the baby” and nothing else, because without the woman, there is no baby and never was any baby. This isn’t some baby lying on a park bench waiting to be adopted, this is a process inside the body of a woman, a process that ends with squeezing a baby’s head through a hole in her body that is too small for the job. It’s the woman’s body, not anyone else’s.
Vance’s contempt for women is evident in that casual “the circumstances of that child’s birth are somehow inconvenient” – somehow, as if he wouldn’t find it inconvenient to have an ever larger heavier body growing in his abdomen that he then had to push out through his dick.
The zygote, foetus or whatever and at whatever stage of development will have less awaeness of its own existence than is deisplayed by any insect, snail or other free-living animal, all of which display the classic fight-or-flight behaviour when they perceive themselves to be threatened, or under attack. So, I hope that Vance, for his own mental consistency is at least a vegan, and preferably a True Vegan.
Vegans merely refuse to eat animal products, including eggs and milk. True Vegans are against all killing of animals. So when dining at a restaurant they avail themselves of their customary right to inspect the kitchen. If they find any sign of control of insects, rodents, or any other sentient beings, they exit the place without delay.
Furthermore, I have long maintained that the Catholic Church, to be consistent, should require its female parishioners to bring their used tampons etc to their parish priest for blessing, last rites, extreme unction etc, just in case they contain a zygote, blastocyst or whatever with its own immortal soul.
Goes right along with a Florida Republican giving a speech recently in. which they five times referred to pregnant women as ‘Host Bodies.’ Shudder.
@Omar:
I know for a fact they have gross burial jars for miscarriages (dunno if there’s a minimum fleshy gristle size for them).
Make no bones about it, setting up Vance is probably the worst thing Trump has done yet. Trump probably technically isn’t a fascist but Vance reminds me of Mao (minus the fighting skills; he wasn’t a real Marine).
BKiSA: Also minus the poetry, it would appear. Does Vance have a record of having written any? ‘A Ditty to The Donald,’ perhaps?
Might be some in his book but not that I’m aware of… It is interesting that he wants a $20+ minimum wage but I can’t see the rest of the Republicans getting there from $7.25 (which most of them think is too high in any case). Might have to if most consumer goods cost half again as much as they used to.
These guys have a grasp of economics better suited to Reddit communists.
Omar @1 — A pro-abortion stance is mostly about reducing suffering and exploitation, of both the mother and potentially the child. Veganism also seeks to reduce suffering and exploitation of sentient beings, including humans. I think you have it rather backwards. Also, there are no “true vegans” as you describe them, and the kitchen scenario is amusing but pretty far fetched. Vance seems to reflect typical religious attitudes.
To clarify. By religious, I mean Judeo-Christian and offshoots. The humans are supreme, created in god’s image, with ever lasting souls, while animals are merely automata rubbish.
@ #6:
With respect, you have taken it a tad too seriously. My wife is a vegetarian, who has friends who are vegans. The rest of my post above @ #1 is a bit of a dig at them.
One of my wife’s best friends (call her Lady Vegan) has a cat, which is also a somewhat indignant and rebellious vegan-against-its will. One day not so long ago it caught a mouse, carried that little traumatised rodent into Lady Vegan’s house from somewhere outside, and proudly put it on display in the middle of her kitchen floor.
Lady Vegan took it back outside, while forbidding the cat to follow, and let it go in the bush, where it was no doubt shortly after consumed by some wild predator or other. (Nothing ever gets to die of old-age in the wild. Not even the majestic African lion.)
And just to cap it all, Lady Vegan’s tertiary studies and degree were in ecology.
Poor cat! I did think you were somewhat joking @1. Cats are carnivores and should have meat in their diet. Some folks do take the vegan thing too far.
Also his views are really unpopular even with Republicans; rape and incest exceptions are what people expect. It sure would be easy to take shots at him if we had a competent campaigner.
The “host bodies” item –
https://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics-government/state-politics/article226978389.html
Actually, there are some ‘True Vegans’ as described. Jain priests often even sweep the ground in front of them so they won’t accidentally walk on any insects, and some of them will only eat fruit that has fallen off the tree already (therefore eating the most reproductive part of the tree, that which is ready to rot and release its seeds). I doubt they actually go so far as to inspect the kitchens of the houses that are willing to fill their begging bowl, though.
As an ecologist, it gives me great pains to say her type were not uncommon in Ecology. I knew one woman in the program who would not give her child milk, only soy milk, and insisted her animals (a dog and a cat) ate vegan. Many of them were also anti-vax, promoted homeopathic medicine, and had other peculiar ideas. In short, they didn’t understand the science.
The older students, though, mostly seemed to be focused on the scientific aspects of Ecology. I guess we’d lived through enough to understand reality a bit better.
Interesting how men who talk like this never try to change the laws that make it legal for men (and women) to refuse to donate blood or organs you can live without (kidney, part of liver) to an already born child. OK if father doesn’t want to donate blood even though his six year old will die without it, but horrible that it’s legal for a woman to abort a five-week-old embryo the size of a sesame seed. And of course he talks about it being “somehow inconvenient or a problem to the society”, not, you know, the actual pregnant woman.