Want even more proof that the fetus-whisperers don’t really give a crap about “murdered babies” and that their anti-choice beliefs are about controlling women and nothing else whatsoever?
There is a community of actual baby-murderers who kill babies on a regular basis. This is not a community you would have ever heard about from the anti-choice fanatics. Getting justice for actual victims and preventing the deaths of real babies (as opposed to the removal of tiny clusters of cells) is of no interest to them whatsoever.
Just ask yourself why is it that, amongst all the hysteria produced by the anti-choice fetus-worshippers, this tragic issue is never addressed. Also ask yourself why it is that you never heard of this community or given it a second thought.
Now that you have pondered the issue, here is the baby-murdering community I’m talking about.
Clarissa's Blog 
Are people who object to child-murder (real born children, not foetuses) hypocrites because they never say a word about people who drive motor vehicles?
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I am yet to find a single person who would make any distinction about the manner of child-killing. Those who care about kids strangled by a criminal feel exactly same about kids hit by a drunk driver. The fetus-whisperers, however, are perfectly fine with children being beaten, abused, raped, and killed. It’s tiny clusters of cells that make them rabid.
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What about prochoicers who are silent about forced abortions
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Driving a car, however responsibly, puts everyone in that car at an increased risk of death or serious injury, yet nobody condemns people merely for driving children about in cars.
I don’t believe that for a second. I’m pro-choice, but if I may play foetus-whisperers’ advocate for the time being, then I would expect most anti-abortionists would argue as follows:
We strongly believe abortion should be illegal and unavailable. We also strongly believe that incompetent obstetricians should lose their license to practise.
We pay a lot of attention to the former issue, because abortion is legal and available in some circumstances, and because there is a vocal and powerful lobby seeking to extend those circumstances. We pay scant attention to the latter issue because incompetent obstetricians already do lose their license to practise and because the lobby opposed to this is small and ineffectual.
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“Driving a car, however responsibly, puts everyone in that car at an increased risk of death or serious injury, yet nobody condemns people merely for driving children about in cars.”
– I condemn everybody for driving cars, so let’s not lay this at my door.
“We pay scant attention to the latter issue because incompetent obstetricians already do lose their license to practise and because the lobby opposed to this is small and ineffectual.”
– The only reason you mistakenly believe all this is precisely because nobody tries to raise awareness about the issue. As for how ineffectual these people are, two minutes ago I was talking to my mother and she told me that an acquaintance of ours, a formerly normal Ukrainian woman, has been so brainwashed by the unhinged doulas in LA that she is now planning a homebirth.
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Me:
Instead of “obstetricians” I should have have said “midwives”. My statement was based upon the link you provided, which refered to 91 “persecuted” practitioners, all but one of them midwives.
One can hardly blame people unaware of the issue for failing to raise awareness. You, however are a person who is aware of it. If you don’t try to raise awareness, then your criticism is should be self-directed. If you do, then your use of the word “nobody” exactly matches my use of it, to which you took such great exception above.
The lobby opposed to the delicensing of incompetent midwives consists, so far as I’m currently aware, of a single facebook page. The pro-choice (for homebirths) lobby is more significant. I wasn’t aware that this latter community was the one you were referring to.
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“The fetus-whisperers, however, are perfectly fine with children being beaten, abused, raped, and killed.
I don’t believe that for a second.”
– Do I really need to go search for links demonstrating that the religious right in this country promotes child-beating? Do I need to look for links demonstrating that, with very few exceptions, women who kill their small children are Evangelicals? Do I need to find links demonstrating that the US is the only developed country that refused to sign the declaration of the rights of children?
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Sincere question… when you say beating children do you mean spanking? Spanking is not accurately described as beating …. so I am curious if you are using exaggeration or are there true cases of beating?
Would love links, but at least a clarification would be great!
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So I guess it will be OK if your boss or colleague decides to spank you? That will be completely different from beating you, I assume?
I’ve been meaning to write a post about “spanking” and the relate debacle in Canada , so thank you for reminding.
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I have to say that I’m pleasantly surprised you didn’t leave a comment defending the fetus-whisperers. There is progress! 🙂
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This is a non sequitur Whether or not this would be OK has no bearing upon Matt’s point, which is that (according to him) beating and spanking are not the same thing.
To answer your question, no it would not be OK. My (hypothetical) boss and colleagues have other sanctions available to them in the event that I misbehave, including firing me, having me forcibly removed and permanently excluded from the premises, and if necessary, calling the police and having me arrested.
Do you think it OK that parents should be allowed to fire their misbehaving children and evict them permanently from the family home? Would it be OK for tthem to call the police and have the children arrested?
Matt, what do you think is the difference between beating and spanking?
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“This is a non sequitur Whether or not this would be OK has no bearing upon Matt’s point, which is that (according to him) beating and spanking are not the same thing.”
– If they are not the same thing, then it must surely be OK for people to spank Matt as opposed to beating him.
“To answer your question, no it would not be OK. My (hypothetical) boss and colleagues have other sanctions available to them in the event that I misbehave, including firing me, having me forcibly removed and permanently excluded from the premises, and if necessary, calling the police and having me arrested.”
– And if a person can’t fire you, then it’s OK to beat you? Or spank you? It’s perfectly OK for a colleague, a neighbor, a bus driver, passerby to spank you? I’m noticing how you completely excluded a colleague’s spanking from your response. I wonder why that is.
“Do you think it OK that parents should be allowed to fire their misbehaving children and evict them permanently from the family home? ”
– I think that parents who are incapable of bringing up children without brutalizing them should absolutely ask the social services to remove the children from their custody.
“Would it be OK for tthem to call the police and have the children arrested?”
– If somebody commits a crime, they should absolutely be arrested. Nobody is allowed to take justice into their own hands and mete out their own punishment.
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I’ll grant you that they promote spanking as a means of disciplining children. I’m not convinced that there is a difference, other than in the emotive load to the words, between beating and spanking, but I’ll await Matt’s reply to my question above.
I’d be interested in such a link. But even if true, this claim does not imply that Evangelicals are fine with child murder.
People might object to that charter for many reasons. Even you, I would expect, would object to the explicit sexism in article 6: “a child of tender years shall not, save in exceptional circumstances, be separated from his mother.”, with no comparible prohibition against separating the child from her father.
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Well, I think there are two different points. First, is spanking the same as beating? And I would argue that beating has a connotation of causing severe (or at least semi-serious) damage. Spanking is simply applying a hand/object against someone’s bottom. A way over the top spanking could rise to the level of be ating if it caused blisters/bleeding/laceration. My major argument (and I turned out to be correct) was that you were using something that most people at least support or are relatively neutral about (spanking) and sensationalizing it into beating.. which engenders much more negative consequences? Is that not what you were doing? Some of it is simply a matter of cultural convention I would contend.
I googled the definition of beating and two general themes arose: 1) beating indicates the repeated striking of someone (which would support your argument) 2) essentially repeated striking with the intent to cause injury or harm (which supports my contention).
So, to wrap up the beating/spanking argument I would say that the VAST majority of spnaking are not done to injure/harm which in my mind is what is entailed by beating. Reasonable minds can disagree but at least in the culture I grew up (which was middle-upper class white suburbia) spanking would not be associated with beating.
To your second point about would I like it if my boss or colleague spanked me… well assuming I am not going to be totally juvenile and sexual then no I would not like it if they spanked me. However, as Daran pointed out there are a lot of things employers can do to me that my family couldn’t when i was a child and vice versa.
Overall, I was never spanked (or just 1 or 2 times perhaps) as a child, but I did have soap used in my mouth a handful of times. Was that pleasant? No? Would I let me colleagues do it to me now? no? But would you call my mother a child abuser for doing it? Now, overall spanking, soap, etc. aren’t the best ways to discipline people, but when you are under 6-8 you can’t exactly reason with a child the way you can with someone whose brain has developed.
Curious as to your thoughts. I am thinking I may actually change your mind on this one!
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You’re mixing up two different arguments. Matt is arguing that spanking and beating a different, so a different analysis applies. In respect of spanking only we are arguing that it is maybe acceptable to do to children in order to discipline them, but not to adults.
I don’t see how you get to “It must surely be OK for people to spank Matt” unless you are appealing to an unstated premise: acceptible behaviour toward children is acceptible behaviour toward adults. I don’t agree with that, and I doubt you do as a generality.
A work colleague can appeal to his boss. If the boss can’t or won’t enforce acceptable behaviour the colleague can resign (and then perhaps sue for constructive dismissal). Colleagues, neighbours, bus drivers, and passers-by can all call the police if necessary. Bus drivers can also exclude misbehaviouring passengers from their vehicles.
I notice you don’t propose any means by which parents can enforce discipline on their children. I wonder why that is.
Seriously? When I was caught nicking sweets from the local store when I was aged about seven, I should have been arrested? That would have brutalised me far more than a spanking.
Nobody is advocating spanking as justice, rather as a means of discipline. It’s not to make the child pay for its infraction, but to get it to alter its future behaviour.
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“You’re mixing up two different arguments. Matt is arguing that spanking and beating a different, so a different analysis applies. In respect of spanking only we are arguing that it is maybe acceptable to do to children in order to discipline them, but not to adults.”
– If you ask yourself why it is acceptable to beat small human beings who can’t hit you back or invoke the law against you and not adults who can retaliate, I;m sure you will find the difference between the two.
“A work colleague can appeal to his boss. If the boss can’t or won’t enforce acceptable behaviour the colleague can resign (and then perhaps sue for constructive dismissal). Colleagues, neighbours, bus drivers, and passers-by can all call the police if necessary. Bus drivers can also exclude misbehaviouring passengers from their vehicles.”
– That’s exactly what I’m saying. A child, however, doesn’t have any of these means at her disposal. This is why some people find it easy to brutalize a child. There are no consequences, so why not>
“I notice you don’t propose any means by which parents can enforce discipline on their children. I wonder why that is.”
– There is this thing called talking. I tried it and it produces phenomenal results. The kid I brought up without brutalizing her now has a kid of her own. And she is using the same method of talking and discussion with her. The results are amazing. The 3-year-old has the manners of the British royalty.
“When I was caught nicking sweets from the local store when I was aged about seven, I should have been arrested? That would have brutalised me far more than a spanking.”
– If you want me to write a post about what to do when children steal, I will be happy to do so.
“Nobody is advocating spanking as justice, rather as a means of discipline. It’s not to make the child pay for its infraction, but to get it to alter its future behaviour.”
– If one’s only method of pedagogy is beating, one is a complete and utter failure as a pedagogue, disciplinarian, and a human being. If a person can’t establish a dialogue with one’s own child, of all people, one is worth nothing. I refer to such poor excuses for people as insects.
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““When I was caught nicking sweets from the local store when I was aged about seven, I should have been arrested? That would have brutalised me far more than a spanking.””
– Daran, are you saying you were beaten as a child?
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I was spanked on a handful of occasions, never severely, and not on that particular one.
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I’m very tired these days and it’s hard for me to remember who said what. Aren’t you the person who recently said that you were bullied at school but not at home?
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I posted this link, which described my bullying at school. My home life was inadequate in various ways, but it would be hard to call it bullying. Rather it was a clueless failure to deal with the problems of an Asperger’s child. How could they not have been clueless? The condition wasn’t even named until I was fifteen.
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When I say that bullying at home results in bullying at school, my definition of bullying includes beating. And az for asperger’s, in many cases it is exacerbated by mistreatment of a child at home. That was my case, for instance.
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As I said, I don’t think the rare spanking I got had any bearing on the bullying I suffered. What did was the ineffectual and counterproductive “advice” I got about it.
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Of course, you are entitled to interpret your own life in any way you choose. Just like I’m entitled to observe that I am yet to encounter a single story that fails to confirm my explanation of the reasons behind bullying.
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If you’re determined to interpret everyone else’s experience in accordance with your own theory, irrespective of their own interpretation of it, then I guess your hypothesis is indeed unfalsifiable.
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“If you’re determined to interpret everyone else’s experience in accordance with your own theory, irrespective of their own interpretation of it, then I guess your hypothesis is indeed unfalsifiable.”
– Well, it would be quite weird if I abstained from analysis and accepted everybody else’s opinions in lieu of forming my own. But my hypothesis can easily be proven false. With facts. Instead, it is constantly confirmed. With facts, not interpretations.
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I don’t quite agree with you on the issue of home birth BUT I have to say, you do always provide interesting and useful new perspectives on many issues.
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It would be a sad and disturbing day for me when I find a reader who agrees with me on everything. That would mean I have become boring and predictable. 🙂
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Clarissa I agree 🙂
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