An egg is not a chicken, and a fetus is not a baby.
No, Democrats are not baby killers.
No, abortion is not murder. That’s why abortion is legal all over the world.
The British Empire told their soldiers that German soldiers were savages who killed babies for fun. British propaganda posters showed German soldiers with a big evil grin as they murdered infants.
It was just a propaganda lie, designed to make British peasants hate German peasants, even though they shared common ancestors and were brothers.
The Windsors, the British royal family, were themselves a German family. They used to be called Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, until they changed their name to Windsor in 1917.
During the first Iraq war, American war propaganda claimed Saddam Hussein killed Kuwaiti babies by ripping them out of incubators. That wasn’t true either. Just another lie to demonize the enemy.
The truth was, Saddam was put in power by America. And under Saddam, the people of Iraq had universal healthcare and women in Iraq had more freedom and equality than anywhere else in the Middle East.
While our dear ally Saudi Arabia stoned women to death for driving a car, women in Saddam’s Iraq were doctors and high ranking members of the government.
Today Republicans are being told that Democrats love to kill babies, because they believe in a woman’s right to choose. It’s just the same old baby-killer lie, designed to make you hate “the other tribe.”
Of course you don’t know this, but abortion is legal pretty much everywhere in the world. Except in a small handful of countries. Mostly religious fanatics in the Middle East. Like the Taliban.
Abortion is only illegal in those few red countries.
Abortion is legal almost everywhere on Earth, not because people all over the world love to kill babies for fun, but because a fetus is not a baby.
Sure, at some point a fetus will develop into a baby, just like an egg will become a chicken at some point. But an egg is not a chicken. They’re two different things.
Think about it: When you put a chicken in the oven, it will be terrified and scream in pain, and try to escape… unless you kill it before you cook it.
But when you make an omelette, the egg won’t be terrified or scream or try to jump out of your frying pan, and you don’t have to kill it first, because the egg is not alive. It doesn’t have a brain. It can’t think or feel. That’s the difference between the chicken and the egg.
The brain is made up of different parts. One part is called the cerebral cortex. That’s the part of the brain that’s in charge of higher thought. The cerebral cortex is what makes us think and dream and feel. Without it, you can’t think and you can’t feel.
Abortion is legal, before that part of the brain develops, because before it develops, a fetus is just a cluster of cells, that has no more brain function than a mole on your back. It’s not a baby. It can’t think and it can’t feel, anymore than a cyst, a mole, or a tumor can think or feel.
A fetus is like an egg. A baby is like a chicken.
An egg is not a chicken, and a fetus is not a baby.
WHEN DOES THE FETUS’ BRAIN BEGIN TO WORK?
“Last of all to mature is the cerebral cortex, which is responsible for most of what we think of as mental life–conscious experience, voluntary actions, thinking, remembering, and feeling. It has only begun to function around the time gestation comes to an end.
Premature babies show very basic electrical activity in the primary sensory regions of the cerebral cortex–those areas that perceive touch, vision, and hearing–as well as in primary motor regions of the cerebral cortex.”
WHEN SHOULD SOCIETY CONFER MORAL STATUS ON AN EMBRYO? WHEN SHOULD WE CALL AN EMBRYO OR A FETUS ONE OF US?
Synapses — the points where two neurons, the basic building blocks of the nervous system, come together to interact — form in large numbers during the seventeenth and following weeks, allowing for communication between individual neurons. Synaptic activity underlies all brain functions. Synaptic growth does not skyrocket until around postconception day 200 (week 28).
By the thirty-second week, the fetal brain is in control of breathing and body temperature.”
The embryonic stage reveals that the fertilized egg is a clump of cells with no brain; the processes that begin to generate a nervous system do not begin until after the fourteenth day. No sustainable or complex nervous system is in place until approximately six months of gestation.”
In modern medicine, the time of death is determined by a lack of brain function. If there is zero brain function, a patient is dead.
A fetus with zero brain function is not alive, any more than a mole is alive. And that’s why abortion is legal all over the world, before the cerebral cortex develops.
“In 2015, almost two thirds (65.4%) of abortions were performed at ≤8 weeks’ gestation, and nearly all (91.1%) were performed at ≤13 weeks’ gestation.
Few abortions were performed between 14 and 20 weeks’ gestation (7.6%) or at ≥21 weeks’ gestation (1.3%).”
Virtually all abortions are performed before the brain develops, when the fetus is still just a cluster of cells that cannot think or feel. It’s like removing a mole.
That’s the medical reality. Of course that’s not what the Republicans tell you. They want to use abortion as a wedge issue, to turn us against each other, so they tell you all kinds of lies, to demonize Democrats, about crying, fully developed babies being aborted after they’re born and ridiculous nonsense like that:
TRUMP SPREADS FALSE NARRATIVE ABOUT LATE TERM ABORTIONS AT MAGA RALLY
“President Trump made a false claim that mothers and doctors have the option to “execute” babies after they are born at a MAGA rally in Wisconsin.”
It’s just another one of his thousands of propaganda lies, designed to manipulate you.
You know who the real killers are?
Republicans.
You think the death penalty is perfectly normal, right?
Well, you’re pretty alone in the world with that thought. The death penalty is considered barbaric by almost all countries on the planet, except for a handful of dictatorships or crazy fundamentalists, like the Taliban.
Republican talking heads on TV always try to scare you about Muslims and their Sharia law. But Sharia law is simply their version of the 10 commandments. If you don’t like the idea of living under Sharia law, trust me, you’re not gonna like living in a fundamentalist Christian country where the laws are based on the Bible.
For starters, polygamy is perfectly ok in the Bible, just like in the Koran. And the Bible says that a girl who is raped can be sold to her rapist for 50 shekels, or about $580:
“If a man happens to meet a virgin who is not pledged to be married and rapes her and they are discovered, he shall pay her father fifty shekels of silver. He must marry the young woman, for he has violated her. He can never divorce her as long as he lives.”
I don’t know about you, but I would absolutely hate to live in a country that is ruled by biblical law. It would be like living under the Taliban.
According to the Bible, if a woman had sex before she gets married, she should be stoned to death:
“If, however, the charge is true and no proof of the young woman’s virginity can be found, she shall be brought to the door of her father’s house and there the men of her town shall stone her to death.”
Yeah, that sounds perfectly reasonable.
Have you ever seen one of those news clips, where a woman gets stoned to death in Saudi Arabia? Savage and barbaric, right?
Well, in other countries they have documentaries like that about the death penalty in America. Other countries look at America as barbaric and savage, for murdering prisoners.
But you think it’s totally normal to execute people. Because that’s how it has been your whole life, and you have been brainwashed to see executing people as normal.
And you think this is freedom.
Almost every other country on the planet calls executing prisoners the exact opposite of freedom.
As a European, John Oliver is so repulsed by the death penalty, he dedicated three separate shows to explaining why the death penalty in America is barbaric:
Anyway, nothing in the Bible says God has a problem with abortions. On the contrary, nobody killed more babies than God in the Bible.
This post first appeared on Malloy.rocks
Compare these two situations:
When my husband went to the hospital emergency room because he had symptoms he could not ignore and felt horrid. The doctor examined him and ran tests. Conclusion: my husband’s appendix had to be removed. My husband was prepped for surgery and his appendix was promptly removed. (He’s fine.)
When a pregnant woman goes to the hospital emergency room with blood running down her legs, she is told to fill a diaper and wait. There is no medical reason for her to wait. The doctors are well qualified and know she needs to safely end her pregnancy, now, but the state law threatens to prosecute them and take away their license to practice if they follow standard medical procedures. So they wait. If her water breaks well before the fetus can survive outside the womb, she is denied appropriate medical care, because laws have been enacted to pacify extremists who say they hold “a sincere belief” and “want to protect the voiceless unborn”. So she is denied medical care because she isn’t close enough to death to receive treatment and keep the doctor out of prison. (I don’t blame the doctor.) If she becomes septic (develops blood poisoning, which can come on quickly and kill you), her doctors might be allowed to safely end her pregnancy by performing an abortion. But there is no guarantee she can receive medical care even then, because extremists say they want to ban ALL abortions — they self-describe as “pro-life” and simultaneously are willing to let pregnant women suffer, risk permanent impairment, and death. The fetus is never going to survive, but their law makes it impossible to treat the woman. She is expendable — like a bus, another one will be along if this one passes.
If the woman becomes septic and she is permitted an abortion, it’s likely her recovery will take longer than if she received care promptly, like my husband did, so her medical expenses will be a ton higher and she will miss work longer. She will be lucky if she doesn’t die.
Let’s be clear, In both cases, no baby was going to survive. My husband was never going to deliver a baby. Full stop. The woman who miscarried had a dead or dying fetus. Not only wasn’t the fetus going to survive, but it had become a potential threat to the health and life of the woman who hosted it. So neither would deliver a viable baby. But my husband’s doctor was allowed to assess the patient and provide appropriate medical care. The woman’s doctor had to defer to the judgment of lawmakers who never met the woman and had passed laws which ignore the advice of medical experts who told lawmakers the laws endangered the life of all pregnant women.
The Republican lawmakers didn’t care then and — having heard the horror stories we all hear — they don’t care now (or they would fix it).
My husband was not told he would have to travel to another state to have his appendix removed.
My husband was not told the doctor on duty had a sincere religious belief which prevented him from treating my husband.
My husband was not told his wife must sign a consent form to allow him to have an appendectomy.
My husband was not read a script asking him to consider keeping his appendix or giving it to others as some states would require for the woman — she must have her “options” read to her before she has an abortion. Even though literally no one will adopt a dead baby, she must be read a script, the law requires it, no exceptions. (Is the situation not desperate enough for this woman? She has just been told the baby she wants cannot survive and now she’s told to consider keeping it or adoption?
My husband was not forced to view an ultrasound to see his diseased appendix.
My husband was not told to go home and come back later because the law denied him treatment until his life was threatened.
My husband wasn’t told he’d need to wait until his appendix burst to receive medical care.
What cruel assholes would pass such laws? The majority of lawmakers who put these laws on the books are old white male Republicans. Find them here:
https://profile.theguardian.com/oauth2/aus3xgj525jYQRowl417/v1/authorize?client_id=0oaseo1znCJ7c8LNx416&scope=openid%20profile%20email%20guardian.identity-api.cookies.create.self.secure%20guardian.members-data-api.read.self%20guardian.identity-api.newsletters.read.self%20guardian.identity-api.newsletters.update.self%20offline_access&response_type=code&redirect_uri=https%3A%2F%2Fprofile.theguardian.com%2Foauth%2Fauthorization-code%2Fcallback&prompt=none&state=851c8da3f0c1241de6d52d4a5515448b
If extremists get their way, doctors won’t be trained to perform an abortion and the ones that already know what to do and use their knowledge to save a pregnant woman’s life will be sent to prison. Some would also send the women to prison.
Who took away women’s reproductive rights and made our lives expendable? We all know it was Republicans and they’re not done. They want to stop access to contraception, eliminate no-fault divorce, ban same-sex marriage, and further erode voting rights. If they have the votes they will do all of that and impose a national ban on abortion.
Donald Trump brags about appointing Supreme Court justices that overturned Roe that brought us to this point. Who made this mess? Donald Trump did this.
Doesn’t matter. The maga sheep will devour whatever sheep food is shoved down their gullets by dear leader.
There’s no bringing them back to reality, which is why I don’t debate them anymore. Including the maga rubes in my family. It’s exhausting to continue to debate my humanity with people who think the earth is flat.