As SallyStrange has pointed out in the comments here, quite a few MRAs seem to have a bad case of “womb envy” – or, more specifically, “abortion envy.” That is, they envy the ability of women to abort fetuses that they – the guys, as sperm providers — have had a part in creating. And since they don’t get final say in whether or not the woman in the equation gets an abortion, many of these guys claim they should have the right to a “paper abortion” – that is, to wash their hands financially of the baby once it is born.
But for every MRA demanding their own right to an abortion, there’s another MRA who thinks abortion is an unmitigated evil, which in essence means that they think pregnant women should be forced to give birth to babies they don’t want. The guy behind The Life Zone evidently thinks this way. And so does one New Mexican pro-lifer named Greg Fultz, who has launched a bizarre campaign designed to shame the woman who aborted what he thinks of as “his” baby – the highlight of which is a giant billboard depicting him holding what looks like the blackened carcass of a baby under the headline “This Would Have Been a Picture Of My 2-Month Old Baby If The Mother Had Decided To NOT KILL Our Child!”
I’ve been meaning to write about the Fultz thing for some time, but haven’t, because frankly the whole thing makes me depressed. Over the past day or so three separate Man Boobz readers have brought the subject up, so I figure it’s time to deal with the subject. My solution? I’m going to punt, and rather than post about it specifically I’m just going to point you to an excellent, and nicely sarcastic, post on the subject from Jill on Feministe.
Since Jill wrote that post, Fultz has been ordered by a judge to take the billboard down or face jail; he says he won’t. Details here.
NOTE: I originally ended this post with a 1200 word dissertation spelling out my take on abortion. But reading it back over again I realized that many of the points I made in it had already been made, in many cases more deftly, by various commenters in yesterday’s 800-plus comment thread (which actually stayed on the topic for the first several hundred comments, until more or less everything that needed to be said on the subject had been said). The tl;dr summary: her body, her choice. “Paper abortions” only work if the government is willing to step in to make up for the loss of child support, and that isn’t going to happen in the US any time soon. (And I don’t see many MRAs calling for increased support for single moms.)
So instead of abortion, let’s talk about Fultz. What a dick.
Did your life begin at the instant of conception?
NO. Have you NOT seen any of the answers? Or do you just not want to see them because they are not the simplistic, third grade level of thinking that you are working at?
HOW MANY TIMES DO YOU WANT PEOPLE TO ANSWER, SLAVER?
can you see this? I am doing it as hard as I can.
Hell with that. Life begins when you get your first iPod.
You didn’t ask me, but I want to play, too.
Did my life begin at the moment of conception? In some ways, yeah. The cellular process that are unique to human life formation began then, but the sex cells existed far before (particularly the ovum). But who was I as a person? When did that start? I don’t know, really. I couldn’t pin that down with any certainty.
But I also don’t have a problem with killing certain things, human beings included, so to me, it doesn’t really matter when life began, but why the life is there and the quality of life it has.
NWO’s definitely more fun than MRAL, because I don’t feel bad hating him.
I probably should–there probably is a little boy in pain somewhere down in the core of him–but he’s such a pompous, “ha ha I outsmarted you with my amazing inability to see anything I don’t agree with” ass that it’s hard to really care. And there’s no openness to him, no willingness to discuss. He only declaims.
I don’t really think of NWO as a person at all, I guess.
I would also like to express my thanks for spearhafoc’s links. I am sure Slaver is not clicking them anymore, if he ever did, and is a poorer person for not doing so.
Also NWO still hasn’t refuted my claim that he has a blue mermaid tattoo on his left butt cheek. So, apparently he does! Things just aren’t going his way tonight..
I have only one thing to add to this discussion: I love you, spearhafoc. Please never leave.
Wow Kave, you’re too smart for me. You are out there. I’m not sure if you’re serious or trying and failing to be humorous.
Maybe the rest of you were spirited into this world and that’s why you have a lack of understanding of when your life began. Old slavey came into this world thru the conception, fetus, infant, adult thingy.
Cyas. whoa, lots good brainstorming goin on here.
They can’t pass a mirror test, like elephants can.
Will people stop calling this a self-awareness test? It’s a visual perception test. You could just as well have someone stand behind them while they’re looking at a mirror and see if they think that other person is in front of them or behind them. (It’s also related to whether they understand that a beam of light or laser pointer has a source. You know how dogs chase flashlight beams?)
@MRAL,
About the foetus and whose it is. Well, when I was pregnant, I told my boyfriend as soon as the test confirmed it. The final decision was mine, but I wanted to know his thoughts about it. He was sad in a way, but extremely supportive and completely understood why I chose to abort. I don’t know if he would say that an embryo is 100% the woman’s, but he would certainly say it’s 100% the woman’s to choose what to do with it. Because an embryo 100% uses the woman’s body.
Believe me, pregnancy is not fun, and I say that having only been pregnant for a little over a month before I aborted. I felt nauseous all the time, exhausted, I was in terrible pain, especially in my breasts, my belly was already beginning to grow, not to mention my immune system took a serious hit. All the while, I was terrified that someone would find out who I didn’t want to know, I was actually still a virgin (believe me; it’s fucking possible) so I was terrified of the pain that would happen. But most of all, I wanted it gone as soon as possible because I knew if I carried it for too long, I was going to become attached emotionally to it, and once that happened, I’d have to keep it. Now, I know my boyfriend felt sadness at the lost possibility there, but he most certainly did not have to go through the shit I did it. The very thought of being coerced into carrying that thing for another eight months makes me cringe.
So you might not agree that a blatocyst/zygote/embryo/foetus is 100% the woman’s, but pregnancy sure as hell is, and I think that clearly gives the woman more stake, as well as the final say, in the decision. By the way, my friend had a pregnancy scare and informed her boyfriend, and this asshole first accused her of “baby-trapping” him and when she said that, actually, she planned to abort, he then immediately said she couldn’t do that. Well, that was the end of that “relationship”, and my friend turned out not to be pregnant.
A blog mocking mra’s= a mra who gets sexually excited by being mocked.
It really does make sense.
Well, naturally. I had him pegged for a frustrated subbie a long time ago.
And everybody knows life begins at 40.
Personally I believe my separate human life began when I separated from my mother. I.E. birth. Before that I was just an extension of her life – I mean, I subsisted completely on her body and could not survive without it so while there may have been a proto-me that was ALIVE it was certainly not ME.
Still didn’t answer my question about cat abortion. Is cat abortion wrong? Is cat abortion murder? Several million (not billion!) felines are anxiously awaiting your answer.
Our lives began when we gained the ability to think! Why is this so hard to understand‽<a?
So, when Slaver doesn’t get the answers he wants, he merely disclaims that everyone is unable to understand his sophisticated understanding, and if only we could understand it, we would understand!
Old slavey came into this world thru the conception, fetus, infant, adult thingy.
yeah, and you still weren’t a person until you developed some form of consciousness. But there’s still hope!
In case you are’t following, Slaver, that was an insult.
Alex good thing your friend got away. Ugh, to say first that someone is “trapping them” and then immediately say they have no right to abort?
What did he expect to happen? That he would get to get his rocks off, force her to gestate for nine months then force her to support the child for 18 years while he ignored it?
NWOslave agrees that he is a masochist.
No problem, just find better outlets ok?
“So, when Slaver doesn’t get the answers he wants, he merely disclaims that everyone is unable to understand his sophisticated understanding, and if only we could understand it, we would understand!”
Precisely. Weren’t you in that thread where he said “Do women dress up in private?” And then, when quite a few said they did, he said “No, you’re all wrong. Women only do it for male attention”. He has his answer, and nothing we say will change that, because he’s immune to those pesky things like ‘logic’ and ‘science’. Best we can hope for is to educate each other and the lurkers.
Oh, and to get more awesome fashion photos (and maybe more vamp drawings!)
My wife’s uncle is in his 80’s, but I;m sure he’d be up for it.
Would you like a private chat?
Yeah, Spearhafoc, the photos are excellent!
I’m actually pretty sure that NWO doesn’t read replies that contain more than a small paragraph or two of text.
I was actually still a virgin (believe me; it’s fucking possible)
absolutely. Happened to one of my wife’s room mates in college.
Oh, NWO, in the words of the late, great George Carlin, “Not every ejaculation deserves a name.”
Weren’t you in that thread where he said
Oh, wait, I am supposed to PAY ATTENTION to what the Slaver says?
Katz – while I don’t think the mirror test is a self-awareness test, I do think it’s more than just a visual perception test (though visual abilities will certainly influence it – as someone said in another thread, if there was some sort of smell version of the mirror test, humans would fail miserably). Being able to use the information given in the mirror and understanding how it applies to oneself is a pretty impressive feat…but to extrapolate that to self-awareness is just making too many assumptions.
NWOslave is back at his 80 a week hard physical masculine job.
He doesn’t sleep except to humiliate himself.