Unbelievable
Via Pharyngula, comes the story of a woman who has been in a vegetative state for 17 years. Now the religious right don't want her life support system to be turned off (as her family wishes) because 'she is still fit for having babies'.
Wow, you can see what they value in a woman: a passive womb which will pop out babies without complaint. And what the hell are these wingnuts suggesting? That they rape the comatose woman? Because an unconscious person sure can't give consent to 'have babies'.
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That's disgusting and illogical because being pregnant while brian dead is terrible for anybodies health. How the hell would the birth work?
Wow. Just wow. You know, if it makes you feel better, most American Roman Catholics aren't that impressed with Pope Benedict.
That is insane. I liked that so many commenters brought up the obvious problem with how is anyone going to impregnate her? Rape? And what would the point be of keeping a baby alive in a body only kept going by life support? And then who is supposed to take care of it?
That is seriously absurd. I wish it weren't real. And people say there's no need for feminism.
And what would the point be of keeping a baby alive in a body only kept going by life support? And then who is supposed to take care of it?
For racist, nativist crackpots like Berlusconi, I assume the point is to encourage white Italians' reproductive rates and preserve the dominance of their ethnicity in the face of immigration.
Whilst I won't deny that Berlusconi is an embarassment for us, I would say that the situation was clearly engendered by religious morality and associated patriarchal mores; not some sort of covert eugenics strategy.
I think the major issue here is the morally repulsive abuse of power.
Holy crap...one "Mrs. Tilton" ACTUALLY wrote this as a comment:
"Of course the woman is unable to give consent. But my God, are you all that dense -- how can supposedly "educated" and "intelligent" people fail to understand such a very simple point?
The woman is married, obviously. (If she weren't, how would she be capable of having babies?) Since she is married, the original owner of the rights to her reproductive system -- her father -- has transferred them to her husband, the new owner. So the fact that she cannot consent to bearing a child (or do anything else at all) is irrelevant. Who cares what she thinks, even if she could think?
Once they are married, it is the husband's decision when and how often he uses the wife to bear his children. If he were to assert his sacred rghts as husband by clambering atop her now, carefully pushing the feeding tubes and catheters to one side, that would in no way violate the infallible and divine laws of our holy mother curuch (and any mere secular laws that purport thereby to be violated are not in accordance with God's will and are thus null and void).
Yes, it's true, her brain was destroyed, her mind erased, her personhood extinguished nearly twenty years ago. But why are people raising those essentialy irrelevant points? As long as her body is physically capable of fulfilling the purpose of her existence, letting her die would be an horrific offence against the rights of God and of her husband.
(Her husband, of course, might have some quaint notions of "loving" her, and of "doing what she would have wanted", and letting her "die with dignity". An unfortunate man, if that is true. In that case he has obviously allowed his mind to be seduced by wicked modern concepts, so his choice in the matter is no longer important and the priests alone must discern the Lord's will.)"
My jaw is on the floor.
I do believe that is satire.
Its sad though, that its so hard to tell because people DO actually believe things quite close to that.
I'm not so sure...I hope it is.
Yeah, that's satire. Pharyngula's readers are a pretty smart, progressive crowd. :)
That is clearly satire. Someone who really believed those things would use different phrasing.
Definitely satire. Brilliant reductio ad absurdum satire.
This reminds me of an episode of Law & Order: SVU, where a woman who had been in a coma for over a year became pregnant. First they thought it was rape but she was artifically inseminated so they could perform an abortion and use it for stem cell research.
Anyway, if I wasn't already convinced these people think of women as just baby machines I would be now.
Wow, way to dump on stem cell research - 'Seeeee! They're all evil, we're on a slippery slope, if we let them experiment with stem cells they'll impregnate comatose women!!'
I didn't present any of my personal opinions on stem cell research. I simply said what happened on the show. That episode left me pretty torn. It featured an old billionaire with Parkinson's who was the sperm donor and was going to recieve the stem cells. He said at the trial "It's too late for me but this can help millions. I'm willing to be the guinea pig."
As I said I was torn. They violated a woman's body but in the attempt to help millions of people.
If stem cell research were legal (or more easily funded or whatever the deal is-- its hard to keep track of) no one would resort to measures like that.
Actually I remember that episode, and the billionare had a strange line. He was asked why he didn't just pay a surrogate mother, rather than having them impregnate a woman in a coma, and he said something like "I could never ask a woman to knowingly carry a baby and then abort it" -- which I think makes very little sense and makes him sound like his morals are extremely inconsistent. Its ok to violate a comatose woman and then abort the fetus, but its not ok to pay a willing woman to get a legal abortion? Either way the abortion happens. (He wanted stem cells related to him, which is why he had to be the sperm donor, although I don't get that either-- I thought stem cells were supposed to work without issues of rejection).
You are correct- that is a Science Fail.
The SVU plots are getting so twisty these days that I'm sure they don't care too much. They just like being all "ooh, she's been raped, no she hasn't, maybe it was her fiance, maybe it was her dad, or the doctor, or her mom somehow, oh wait actually now this episode is about stem cells!!"
I like SVU but the newer the episode the faster the plots seem to change gears. Its like the Simpsons now where the opening scene has nothing to do with the rest of the episode.
Ugh. More reasons why I don't watch SVU anymore..
"If stem cell research were legal (or more easily funded or whatever the deal is-- its hard to keep track of) no one would resort to measures like that."
I believe that was the point the episode was trying to make. I think the doctor who told the police what was going on said something like that.
Why do girls have to be portrayed as airheads who fawn over cutesy puppies, kittens and now, mini burgers from Burger King. As I have researched, apparently this isn't the first sexist incindent with Burger King commercials. See "I am Man" commerical on You Tube. I just don't get it. Things really need to change in this world, and to me, this is not helping and is not innocent entertainment. Russ Klein who is the VP of Marketing at Burger King really needs to take into consideration that we no longer live in the dark ages. You would think that for the million plus bedroom furniture he got paid this past year, he would have a clue about not being sexist.