Wednesday, April 09, 2008

Ladies and gentlemen, our first contestant.


And in response to my recent CC "If someone died and left you in charge" abortion challenge, who steps up to the plate and proceeds to whiff mightily but Suzie All-Caps:

I would then pass a law criminal law criminalizing feticide, i.e. intracardiac injections of potassium chloride and any other poisonous agent, in singletons.

OK, then, "criminalizing" ... which means what in terms of prison sentences for women who have abortions, Suze? Ah, here we go:

The penalty for injecting a syringe full of potassium chloride in the heart of a singleton would be five years in prison. I believe provincial bodies should remove the licenses of professionals who perform this procedure, but that's in their jurisdiction

Whoa, whoa, whoa, Suzie ... let's go back and read my actual words in that challenge (emphasis added):

For instance, if you genuinely want to criminalize abortion, let's hear what you'd propose in terms of prison sentences, both for abortion providers and for women who circumvent the law to get what would then be an illegal abortion.

Note carefully, Suze, that I specifically asked for your proposed punishment for the women as well, something you conveniently glossed over. So how about you try that again, hmmmmmm? Are you also suggesting five years in the slam for the women as well? Come on now, let's not be coy -- if you think those women should also go to prison, then say so and stop being evasive.

Might as well let your misogyny loose there, Suzie. It always has such entertainment value.

SO MUCH INTERNAL INCONSISTENCY, SO LITTLE TIME TO WHACK IT ALL
. Reading Suzie All-Caps' proposal for shiny new Canadian abortion laws, one gets the distinct impression of someone who really hasn't throught any of this through very well. Recall, if you will, one of my direct questions:

If someone unintentionally gets pregnant and is forced to carry to term but refuses to have anything to do with the child after it's born, how would you handle that?

In response, Suzie starts off unambiguously:

That child is the parent's responsibility.

All right, then, so that parent is stuck with that child, wanted or not. You gave birth to it, you deal with it. End of discussion, is that it, Suze? Well, no, not really, as Suzie continues in the very next sentence:

If the parent is not ready to take care of that child, there are thousands of couples across Canada who would eagerly adopt up that baby.

Whoa, hang on there, Suzie -- you just finished saying that that newborn was the parent's responsibility, now you're offering them the opportunity to dump that kid on the state? So which is it? As I said, methinks Suzie hasn't really thought this through. And it shows.

MORE, SO MUCH MORE. The more you read Suzie's proposal, the more you realize that it's just a morass of self-contradiction and sloppy thinking. There's this:

The person who bears that child has a moral responsibility towards him.

But we're not talking "morality" here, Suzie, we're talking legality; as in, what you would enshrine in the Criminal Code of Canada, and while I'm sure you'd love to codify the concept of personal guilt, you can't, so yammering on about morality here is absolutely a non-starter. Either a parent is legally responsible for that newborn, or he/she isn't. You can't have it both ways, so make up your mind.

15 comments:

Red Tory said...

What's a "singleton"?

Somena Woman said...

Adoption is not "dump[ing] that kid on the state"

In most open adoptions birthmothers choose the parents of their baby. The state is only involved in so far as the legal procedures involved to transfer parent responsibilities from one person or couple to the adopive parents. There is a small window of time when the state legally stands as guardian for the child (in most states and provinces) during that brief window of time, even when the child is in the custody of the new parents. It's more of a legal instrument than anything else.

I will note one thing for the record that seems really weird about Suzy AllCaps however. She has hundreds of articles about dead fetuses, abortion etc- but last I checked only 4 articles about adoption.

If I were a pro-life activist I would think it more sane to concentrate on adoption... but then that involves born children, and so I suppose it doesn't hold the same fascinating allure as dead fetuses.

Lindsay Stewart said...

so suzie would force women to bear unwanted children and then tell them they have a moral obligation. if there's really thousands of couples hungry to "adopt up" some babies, well that's a market. and this is the dawn of canada's golden conservative era. fuck the moral obligation, i want bidding wars! little bobby is a thoroughbred, both parents come from the finest upper middle class suburban breeding stock, what am i bid?

Anonymous said...

Red a singleton (not to be confused with simpleton), is a single person or thing of the kind under consideration....

I say rip those freeloaders out of the womb and let them pay taxes. If they are a "being" as SUZANNE states, lets see how long they live without that blood sucking symbiotic relationship....

Anonymous said...

so suzie would force women to bear unwanted children and then tell them they have a moral obligation.,
I say drop them off at dr roy's place.
He's semi-single (how's your TO squeeze doing old man? - or is it Ottawa this weekend?), he has money, so I'm sure he can take care of them....
Unless of course he only marches in these anti-choice rallies to pick up women...

Red Tory said...

CWTF — Thanks. What a bizarre term. I've never heard a baby or fetus referred to that way before.

CC said...

somena woman:

I'm aware that, under normal circumstances, adoption is not simply "dumping a kid on the state." But we're talking strict legalities here, remember?

If Suzie All-Caps wants to force a woman to carry a fetus to term against that woman's will, then, legally, does that woman, immediately after delivery, have the legal right to say, "All right, he's all yours, I'm outta here, call me a cab."

Because if she doesn't, then Suzie is proposing, not merely a moral obligation, but a legal one, and that would once again have to be written into the Criminal Code of Canada in some way.

As I've already suggested, I really don't Suzie has considered all the ramifications here.

LuLu said...

As I've already suggested, I really don't Suzie has considered all the ramifications here.

Of course she hasn't - none of the hardcore fetus-fetishists have. They say outlaw abortion but they have no clear plan for what to do with unplanned pregnancies from there. It just reinforces what we've been saying - they don't care about real children just fetuses.

Námo Mandos said...

Nonono, if you outlaw abortion every wumman will have a hubby and they'll all live in a little picket-fenced house except for the occasional brainless teen who will only be too happy to give her kid away à la Juno.

It's abortion, you see, that causes date-rape.

Ti-Guy said...

She really should start by arguing for what she really wants...no sex outside marriage and all sex within marriage undertaken for strictly procreative purposes. Then work from that.

If she did, she might eventually end up with enough material to write a challenge to The Handmaid's Tale.

Seriously, it's frightening to see the mentality that argues this to the extent SUZANNE does. It's authoritarian, punitive, condemnatory and misanthropic.

Niles said...

Red: In regard to the 'preborn' of Suza's reality, a singleton is the medical reference to one fetus in the womb (I'm alone...alone in the wombbbbb) as opposed to twins, etc.

Which makes me wonder how she feels about the elimination of extra fetii to get the number down to those a woman might successfully bear to term in one go. As long as there's one left to be a womb raider, is it sufficient punishment?

Red Tory said...

I was kind of wondering the same thing myself. Does this mean that elimination of "surplus" fetuses is, like, okay? Or does she deem that to be a case of medical necessity? Who knows... As others have rightly pointed out, it's quite evident that she hasn't thought this thing out at all in a comprehensive fashion.

Pale said...

ALL CAPS is saying:

BABIES!! Get yer fresh hot white BABIES!


The day old section is getting a tad full however...

One of the biggest myths about adoption in Canada is that there are no Canadian children available for adoption. There are more than 76,000 children in the care of child welfare organizations across Canada. More than 22,000 of these children have parents whose parental rights have been terminated by the courts. What this usually means is that these children have no permanent family and will live in foster care or small institutional placements until they are legally of age.


Canada's waiting kids...

Ahe makes me sick.

E in MD said...

singletons.

In programming a singleton is a class which only allows one copy of itself within an individual app domain. I'm not sure I understand the context she's using it in. Unless she's talking about evaluating individual supposed 'baby murders' and deciding whether or not they merit legal action.

Chimera said...

"She really should start by arguing for what she really wants...no sex outside marriage and all sex within marriage undertaken for strictly procreative purposes. Then work from that."

Will you quit feeding her ideas? Isn't she enough of a pain in the ass, already? Yeesh...