Pro-Aborts Commit Violence Too

[TricksterWolf]

You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to gladiatrix again.

If there was a thread archive in the E&M forum this should be in it!

I don't know...it seems like it's completely irrelevant to the ethics of abortion whether or not you can call a baby a parasite. It's certainly not a parasite we always try to prevent, and it becomes a person if you let it pop out. Irrelevant muck.

Trickster

 

[gladiatrix]

I think holymary believes "parasite" is a negative term. It is not, it simply describes a symbiotic relationship.

Very true, but there are degrees of symbiosis. Just for clarification:

From Introduction to Parasitology

1. Parasitology is a type of SYMBIOSIS (="living together") (Any plant, animal, or protist that is intimately associated with another organism of a different species; each member is termed a SYMBIONT). There are various type of symbiosis:

• PHORESIS ("traveling together" or "to carry") (A smaller organism, termed the PHORONT, is carried mechanically by a HOST) [For instance, bacteria, fungus, cysts, or eggs on insect legs or even passively within an arthropod gut]
• COMMENSALISM (when one symbiont, the COMMENSAL, benefits and the other animal is neither helped nor harmed) [True commensalism difficult to find, and may not even actually exist. Close inspections usually reveal either a mutualistic or parasitic association. Perhaps Entamoeba gingivalis in mouth to some degree; some pilotfish and remoras associated with sharks]
• MUTUALISM (each member, a MUTUALIST, depends upon the other; oblilgatory or facultative) [many examples in nature. For instance, flagellates produce cellulase in gut of termites; ciliates in ruminants; algae and fungus forming a lichen; crocodiles and Egyptian teeth cleaning plovers]
• PREDATION (where one member, the PREDATOR, benefits and a smaller organism, the PREY, is harmed; usually eaten) [This association is not usually considered a type of symbiosis, but it technically falls under the definition]. Examples include coyotes and rabbits, cats and mice.
• PARASITISM (where one member, the PARASITE, lives in or on another organism, the HOST, at the expense of that organism)

Parasitism is a very successful lifestyle in nature. Since we are often the victims of the harmful variety, I can see why there's such a knee-jerk reaction in revulsion when the word is used. The fact remains that an endopregnancy is seen BIOLOGICALLY as a form of parasitism. I don't know why people get so mad when they must look the biological facts square in the face and resort to shouting "but a baby's not a parasite!" to avoid the biological state of the pregnancy that resulted in that baby. The pregnancy starts from the get-go with suppressing the woman's immune response (high levels of hormones like progesterone). Later other factors are secreted that further turn down her immune response:

From The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism

Trophoblast cells located in the placenta and subject to maternal immune surveillance serve as physical barriers between mother and fetus and have been shown to express several immune-modulating molecules, such as HLA-G, Fas ligand, and indoleamine 2,3-dioxygenase, as well as secrete a variety of humeral factors, such as leukemia inhibitory factor and progesterone (4). HLA-G is one of the members of the major histocompatibility complex (MHC) class I family and is known to inhibit natural killer function (5, 6) and dendritic cell maturation (7). Fas ligand interacts with Fas antigen and induces apoptotic cell death of fetal antigen-reactive maternal lymphocytes (8). Indoleamine 2,3-dioxygenase, which catalyzes tryptophan in lymphocytes, has proven to be critical in the maintenance of allogeneic pregnancy in the mouse (9). Leukemia inhibitory factor secretion from the maternal placenta and Th2 lymphocytes is required for blastocyst implantation and also considered to have an immunological role(s) in fetomaternal tolerance (4).

Other than these local modulators, progesterone and estrogen produced by the placenta affect cytokine profiles across the whole maternal immune system (4).
The net effect of these immune modulations affects maternal T helper (Th) cell differentiation. Th0 precursor cells have the potential to differentiate into Th1 or Th2 cells depending on the cytokine signals provided during antigen presentation. IL-12 and interferon- promote Th1 differentiation, while IL-4 promotes Th2. Th1 cells produce IL-2 and interferon-, whereas Th2 cells synthesize IL-4, IL-5, IL-6, IL-9, IL-10, and IL-13 (4). Th1 cell induction generates cellular inflammation, in contrast to the allergic and humeral immune response induced by Th2 cells. The placenta-driven immune modulation mentioned above promotes suppression of Th1 immunity and a relative enhancement of Th2 immunity during pregnancy. A failure to suppress the activity of Th1 cells has been correlated with miscarriage (4), and the altered immune condition during pregnancy must be favorable to survival of the fetus.

One thing a successful parasite usually does is employ a number of devices like the ones described above to evade the host's immune system. Also note that if the mother's immune system ever becomes "aware" of the fetus, it will be rejected by the immune system (Th1 cell activity correlated with miscarriage).

The problem for the woman here is that she is more susceptible to opportunistic infections (she has a T-cell profile that is similar to that of a person with HIV). If she should have the misfortune to have cancer, it will be able to spread more aggressively (promoted by the hormones, now not anywhere near as likely to arouse an immune response). The pregnancy can literally turn on her as in the case of a molar pregnancy. To find out more on this nightmare of a pregnancy,http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1511/is_n7_v17/ai_18384026/pg_3one can read this article about it from Discover(Vital Signs/Fetal errors - molar pregnancy).

The point here is that there is NOT a mutually beneficial relationship between the pregnancy and the woman from a biological point of view, hence the classification of a pregnancy as a form of parasitism.

What is very interesting is that one of the molecules involved in fetal immunosuppression of the woman's immune system is being studied to see if it can be used to suppress organ rejection.

From Molecule expressed early in pregnancy may help patients tolerate transplants

A molecule expressed in the earliest stages of pregnancy that vanishes when the baby is born seems to keep some cells responsible for directing the immune system in an immature and accepting stage, Medical College of Georgia researchers says.

Their finding that the molecule HLA-G helps make dendritic cells – which work like air-traffic controllers for the immune system – tolerant helps explain how a fetus, with genes from both parents, can avoid rejection by the mother's immune system.

And it has them optimistic that the natural mechanism could be replicated to help preserve a transplanted heart or kidney.

'These immature dendritic cells can induce suppressor cells that will suppress the immune response,' said Dr. Anatolij Horuzsko, reproductive immunologist.

Now how's that for a twist of fate....

 

[gladiatrix]

You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to gladiatrix again.
If there was a thread archive in the E&M forum this should be in it!

I don't know...it seems like it's completely irrelevant to the ethics of abortion whether or not you can call a baby a parasite. It's certainly not a parasite we always try to prevent, and it becomes a person if you let it pop out. Irrelevant muck.

I would agree that the subject is really NOT relevant to the ethics of abortion per se. BUT....

First, HolyMary made a claim and I have every right to refute what I consider to be an erroneous claim on her part.

Second, I do think it's relevant in this regard, however. Levi501 had the antichoicer tactic of trying to dodge the unpleasant side of pregnancy pegged IMO when he said this:

From Levi501's Post #39

To view the fetus in any type of hostile nature might sit uncomfortably with the pro-life stance. Put simply, to consider the fetus a biological detriment to an unwilling mother is to consider she might have a right in discarding it.

I concur. At all cost one must simply ignore the ugly biological truth, not to mention any cost to woman emotionally or financially. A pregnancy, no matter how it was conceived or what risks it may pose to the woman must always be presented in what I call the Every-Baby-a-Gerber-Baby, Lovely-Day-in-the-Park paradigm. In contrast any woman who dares to depart from the completely unrealistist image is painted in a completely negative fashion, i.e., she's nothing but a selfish, heartless, mercenary 'ho, who is simply "refusing to accept the consequences of her actions".

Let's assume that this characterization of the woman is a truthful one. What I want to know here is just why antichoicers think that such a person would ever be a fit parent? It seems to me that they are simply willing to risk the future life of this child on the assumption that putting the woman through an unwanted pregancy will somehow be some kind of magic wand that will "transform" her into a loving mother. So much for the claim of being "pro-life".

In short, this kind white/black image, i.e., pregnancy is all good, no problems, no worries("white") vs unwilling woman as evil and selfish who is simply "refusing to suffer the consequences of her actions" ("black") is a false dichotomy, absolutely an essential one in the antichoicer campaign to appeal to people's emotions rather than their reason. So yes, it is relevant in this regard.

 

[gladiatrix]

With regard to the OP:

Pro-Abortions Commit Vilence too:

880 homicides and other killings
86 attempted murders
23 arsons and bombings
787 assaults
1,798 sex crimes
(including 169 rapes)
59 kidnappings
420 cases of vandalism
270 drug-related crimes
1,577 medical crimes

Extreme pro-lifers are not the only ones guilty of violence against the opposition.
A free CD here:
http://www.abortionviolence.com/av_order_form.php

Free CD? Well, color me suspicious of that right out of the gate. Why? I don't see ANY disclaimer on this site that my email address or any other information won't be collected along with other email addresses/info and sold. One thing I'm not about to do is put my email address on that site. A common way for this lot to earn money is to collect such information and then sell these mailing lists. I don't see ANY disclaimer that that won't happen so, I will most definitely assume that this is nothing but a lure to beef up a mailing list that this lot will most definitely sell for money.

Why be so cagey and so close to the vest with the information? If this information is really "free" why not just post it? Another possibility is that what they are selling would probably get them sued for libel is they actually put it in print rather than engaging in a "whisper" campaign via the "free CD".

Now why should I believe what this site is selling?...
Dr. Clowes is part of an outfit called the Human Life International (HLI). It repeats the usual antichoicer lies (Examples)

1. The film Silent Scream which is bunk as shown in Post #170

2. There's the usual misrepresentations of what Margaret Sanger "said". Here's the usual antichoicer say "she said" mix debunked in these posts:

---A. Post #4/Part 1-What Antichoicer's say "she said"...is it true? (NO)

---B. Post #5/Part 2-Attempts by antichoicers to smear Sanger as a person

3. Tells women if they abortions they will get breast cancer (among other things)==>Post #33-Why That's a Lie (among so many others used to scare/intimidate women) and HERE in Post #271 (hey, guys, abortions cause cervical cancer..NOT!)

4. This group is dead set AGAINST any effective methods that would prevent unwanted pregnancies such as easily available contraceptives and contraceptive information. If you really want to see some extreme stuff, read the rants on contraception, by its president, Rev. Euteneuer. Here's a LINK to more of his commentaries (even has a HERETIC WATCH list...what a guy!).

What HLI doesn’t get around to telling you is leadership can most definitely be described as on the political "fringes". An example of such a person is their key man in Europe, Siegfried Ernt, M.D. He has said some rather extreme things, as exemplified by this comment about the anti-apartheid movement in the 1980s:

“Why is there this attitude of degenerated masochism which makes us destroy systematically our own breed and race and which makes us passively watch how our own mental, moral, and biological inheritance is getting wasted and ruined?”

"(Ernst is also a close friend of the German Neo-Nazi leader Manfred Roeder, founder of several radical right groups. One would have to consider Roeder, who has stated that violence is the best cure for Germany’s ills, to be a kind of terrorist. He served over 9 years of prison time for charges related to the bombing of refugee hostels in 1980.)"

Talk about one whooping case of BIAS...don't find anything from this site or its proponents to be very credible on that account.

I would really like to see this so-call "evidence", but why is it that I think that the alleged violence by pro-choicers has nothing to do with actually promoting prochoice. IOW, some anti-choicers lie, maim and kill to promote their cause, now that's a FACT. Their campaigns are organized, well-financed and premediated and here's a post with just a sample of their despicable tactics (Post #34). There is no counterpart to these that I know of from the prochoice side. So what I would like to know is this "information" provided by Clowes evidence for such a thing or is it really just another tu quoque fallacy (see, they do it, too!) . I would say that this version of the fallacy, i.e., the Moral Equivalency Game, is quite dangerous for those who supposedly are so protective of "life". Some questions:

• Is there any documented case of where a prochoicer has actually attempted to murder or has in fact murdered a person because he/she was anti-choice?
• Were drugs used to trap an unwilling pregnant woman into having an abortion against her will (like one uses roofies to set up a woman for rape)? I doubt that or it would have been all over the news ("if it bleeds it leads" when it comes to picking a headliner).
• Were any antichoicers targeted as rape victims just to "teach them a lesson" on why they shouldn't be antichoice?

I have no doubt that there will be a number of prochoicers who are in fact criminals who engage in violence as part of their criminal "careers", but this violence has most probably nothing to do with promoting their prochoice views. For instance, what do you want to bet that the "homicides" were committed as part of a crime that had nothing to do with the prochoice issue. As an example, a robber kills someone during the course of a robbery. When asked if he/she is prochoice the person says "yes". Therefore, this person goes on Dr. Clowes list as a "violent pro-abort". Now that would be nothing but poisoning-the-well/guilt by association fallacy on his part in the form of "a prochoice person was a murderer, therefore being prochoice promotes murder".

Are there prochoicers who have crossed the line and assaulted antichoicers at rallies, clinics, etc.? Yes and there is NO EXCUSE for it. However, there's no organized campaign that I know of that's the equivalent of the day-to-day harrassment, often accompanied by physical and verbal violence dished out by antichoicers. I'll give you a little example of my own. One day I took a friend to a Planned Parenthood Clinic for a gynecological exam (that particular clinic provided them at very low cost or free, depending on one's finances). The place is usually surrounded by antichoicers, many of whom are rude and quite abusive. When this lot saw us, half a dozen charged in waving pamphlets in our faces, calling us wh0res and baby-butchers (just for openers) on the ASSUMPTION that we must be there for an abortion (baby-killers for sure!) or for contraceptives (we just want to "sin" without facing the "consequences"). When we ignored them, one of these Southern "gentlemen" (by his accent), who apparently had dragged his six children to the clinic on a school day, tried to pelt us with his baby's nasty diapers (a favorite trick of his, we later learned from the clinic personnel).

One of them managed to trace us back to us back the house we rented because a few days later, we got some nasty phone calls from one of them in the vein of "would your major professor really like having a baby-killer as a graduate student" (now how's that for invading your privacy! how would he know that I was a graduate student, where I lived, my phone number?). He made some other threats that I can't post here, but you get the idea. My father who was visiting, picked up the phone in another room when this "missionary for the preborn" called. When my dad informed this self-described "soldier for Christ", not so politely, that if he dared to do such a thing again or showed an "eyelash on the premises" that "he and Smith-and-Wesson would be waiting for him", the filthy coward never called back. In a way it was really too bad because we had informed the police of the menacing phone calls They put a tracer on the line, but he didn't call back. The fact that this person is on the loose is a scary thought.

Now what I want to know is does Dr. Clowes have any equivalent from prochoicers (not that it would justify theirs) of such an example of this kind of organized campaign against antichoicers? Haven't heard of anything like this and my experience is NOT uncommon nor is it the most frightening version of an all too common occurrence.

The point here is that I am extremely skeptical that the "violence" here has much to do with the promotion of prochoice, given the deceitful tactics antichoicers have used in the past to promote their cause. It looks like a massive case of projection IMO. What I don't doubt is that there are cases of assaults (both physical and verbal) against antichoicers by prochoicers who can't control their tempers (NOT an excuse). These appear to be the exceptions rather than the rule, though and nowhere have I gotten ANY kind of documented evidence of the kind of terror campaigns mounted by prochoicers that are even remotely comparable to the kind mounted by antichoicers against prochoicers (my friend and I got just at taste, apparently).

 

[TricksterWolf]

With regard to the OP:

Wow! How do you find time to type all of these messages?? There's so much text! I can't read all of that.

Flame Warriors parallel:

http://www.politicsforum.org/images/flame_warriors/flame_56.php

Trickster

 

[flicka]

Another fabulous and highly educational post, as usual, by gladiatrix!

 

[gladiatrix]

Another fabulous and highly educational post, as usual, by gladiatrix!

Why thank you, flicka! Let me also thank Silent Bob and CSmrw for their kind words as well. You all are too kind! I appreciate it!

gladiatrix

 

[CSmrw]

You do what we can't. Or maybe won't. Laziness and arrogance are almost siamese twins.