Today, Saturday March 04, 2006, in the Rapid City Journal Forum or opinion page are several opinion pieces. Two which make reasoned cases for rejecting the theocratic humbug and Rapists Rights legislation recently passed by the SD legislature and.....
The third argument presented today was by Dr. Allen D. Unruh, Sioux Falls chiropractor and the husband of the smarmy Leslee Unruh of the remarkably profitable for her "non-profit" organizations she runs. Pick up a copy of the paper if you can still get your hands on them or check the Journal's home page while the opinions are still there.
Check the continuation of this post here for Unruh's collection of nearly every faulty and deceptive argument in opposition to women's rights, women as sluts, and in favor of rapist's rights all in one place. Mixed in with his quoted material are some of my comments.
Your comments are welcome on the whole shooting match..but no Cheney rules here.
**Stay tuned as you wait for Mayor Mikey to eat the whole thing or vomit it out as law for all the unfortunate females in his domain..and read the continuation below---Doug Wiken
From RapidCityJournal.com
Saturday, March 4, 2006
Forum, 3-4: Abortion has harmed America
By Dr. Allen D. Unruh, a Sioux Falls chiropractor and member of the South Dakota Task Force to Study Abortion.
SIOUX FALLS - Has abortion been good for America? The South Dakota Legislature commissioned a task force to investigate. A 17-member task force reviewed all the scientific evidence, the research and new technology that has been developed since 1973.Unruh is answering a question nobody asked. Just as the abstinence only group his wife uses to make a chunk of money tends to confuse abstinence itself with abstinence policy, Unruh is here generating more of that kind of apples to oranges strawman argument. The question that needs to be answered is "Which is worse? United States with women's rights to control their own bodies or the United States with thousands of unsafe, dangerous illegal abortions and misery for unwanted, uncared for children.
Over 3,500 pages of research has been collected. In addition, thousands of affidavits and testimony by women who considered themselves victims of abortion were looked at. Over 54 national experts gave testimony in addition to state expert testimony and public testimony. After over 47 million abortions, it is proper for the Legislature to re-evaluate this life and death issue.More BS. The SD Legislature is not the US Senate or House. The statistics for the nation are irrelevant to the situation in SD. The "research" was not actually research, but rather a collection of all the wingnut right propaganda assembled all over the country with almost none of it relevant to South Dakota.
The purpose of the task force was to prepare a report based on new evidence. It is the first report of its kind. Every person from South Dakota should download this report from www.ivotemyvalues.com.The evidence compiled is too compelling for any thinking person to ignore. Four-D ultrasound technology didn't exist in 1973. It depicts the development of the unborn almost through the process of development. It's literally a window to the womb.
DNA technology and molecular biology has made unbelievable advances in the field of science. One molecule can now decipher a person's individual makeup and prove scientifically and genetically the humanity of the unborn. It is a scientific fact, and not merely a matter of opinion when human life begins.
In addition, the U.S. Supreme Court in 1973 assumed there would be informed consent prior to an abortion. The task force discovered that women were not allowed to be informed on the humanity of their unborn child. They were not given the facts on the physical, mental and emotional consequences of abortion. The information given dramatically downplayed any possible consequences and in fact, threatened that carrying the child to term was much more dangerous physically and emotionally.
Can you think of any surgery, or any drug where you do not have the constitutional right to know what's happening and the risks? When asked if a young woman wants to know if it's a baby, testimony revealed they are only told it is tissue and cells, or a blob of tissue..
More genuine BS that has little if anything to do with South Dakota. And all of the above leads in a direction away from the idea that the females of our species have rights to control their own bodies despite the protestations of the feudal and tribal religions and societies intent on maintaining the dark ages into the future. Where does Unruh get the idea that any medical professionals of any kind have been prevented from saying anything about anything...except when the rightwing demands they provide the rightwing propaganda and non-facts regarding abortion dangers?
The Supreme Court assumed there would be a doctor/patient relationship. The task force discovered there was little to no doctor/patient relationship prior to an abortion. In addition, people with no formal training in mental health were the counselors for young women who often were making the most important decision of their life. Most of the time that decision is based on fear, panic and, 60-80 percent of the time, coercion. Making a life-and-death decision against your conscience can have major devastating effects for many years and/or a lifetime..An assertion on the part of the good bone manipulator. He doesn't know what the Supreme Court assumed any more than you or I know. The incredible barrage of religious and theocratic propaganda
from the righwing feudalists has done more to cause pain and suffering mental and physical than has
any abortion or the amount of information available or not available from a medical professional prior or after an abortion. His idea of 60 to 80 percent of the cases involving coercion may have a germ of truth, but not the germ that Unruh would present. The coercion is the real world of crappy economy and crappy opportunities for young girls forced to bear children they don't want. Of course these same
propagandists will try to claim that the desire of women to not be damned to a life of misery is some kind of terrible selfishness on their part. More BS and mindreading by the bone-manipulator.The government in Hitler's Germany said Jewish people were not human beings. The U.S. Supreme Court in the Dred Scott decision of 1857 said black people were not human beings. They were property.In Roe vs. Wade, in 1973, the Supreme Court said the unborn are not human beings. One decision is based on religion, the other on color of skin, and the other based on age. Otherwise, all these grotesque decisions are the same..
That is more BS. no they are not all the same and there is nothing grotesque in the centuries old distinctin between totally dependent gamophytes, embryos, and fetuses from actual children separated from an umbilical cord. and independent in a useful logical sense. For the bone-manipulator to compare the significance of a few cells in a uterus or even just the union of an egg and a sperm to children and adults discriminated on the basis of totally irrelevant external characteristics is an insult to them and to our intelligence. Unruh is himself inventing a new kind of being never intended to have constitutional rights guaranteed. It is the wingnut loons of the right who are inventing beings where there are no beings and making nonsense conversions or apples into oranges.
We all know what happened in the Holocaust and the Civil War. But abortion has destroyed more human lives than all the wars combined. Hitler called his the liberation army. In Dred Scott, owning a slave was seen as a freedom issue. If someone wanted to own a slave it was their right to do what they wanted with their property.The same argument is used in abortion. The unborn may be human, but it really doesn't have value, it's just property. Today, abortion on demand, through all nine months, is legal for virtually any reason..
That is more BS. It may or may not have value, but it is not "property" in the sense that Unruh is presenting his propaganda. The comparison of value is not some intrinsic value, but the comparison between the rights of a woman old enough to bear a child and the rights of a few cells which would blow away in the wind in a matter of seconds....and possibly be replaced in 28 days with another set of such cells. And in any case, "the unborn" is an oxymoron that is meaningless in any rational discussion. What perversion Hitler did in the name of God to minorities is another apples and oranges case just as is the attempt to relate slavery to women's rights. The real conversion of human into property is implicit in the idea that a woman can be forced to carry an unwanted pregnacy to term. Women as property is an ancient tribal idea not a modern one in any sense, but that is what the wingnut right wants to do with women..convert them to mere chattel.
Women want to have the right to have unlimited sex with men they don't like or don't want to have babies with. Freedom is redefined as license to do whatever one wants with their body. If we take that premise to its conclusion, we would have to legalize prostitution, suicide and illegal drug use..I hope all the women reading the statement by Unruh immediately preceding are aware of the implicit
contempt for all women in that statement. Unruh has defined half the population as wanton sluts and that and the remaining half as suicidal drug users.. No
mention of Rapists Rights implicit in the legislation his wife helped pushed through the SD legislature
however.The opposition seems to feel that if everyone in the world had enough latex, unlimited sex and free access to abortions, somehow we would all live in utopia. Poll after poll reveals Americans reject abortions for birth control..I wonder what kind of salacious trash the bone manipulator reads to find that kind of BS. I don't ever remember seeing or hearing anyone advocating that abortion be used as a primary means of birth control. Abortion is a last resort for women in bad situations in the real world which may or may not have been made by them. Nobody I have ever read has indicated that the availability of abortions is the key to utopia or anything else except being a way offer better alternatives in a cruel real world. Abortions are not desired to be used as birth control by anybody. However, it is the same wingnut loons that oppose availability of birth control information and products being made to the general population or even their availability to the victims of rape or incest. And those same wingnuts who attempt to portray intrinsic natural sexuality as a femaile evil warranting the pain and punishment of mandatory childbirth.
It's time our country re-assess if killing over a million human beings a year in the name of privacy has been good for America..No, that is not even the question, it is all smoke and mirrors in the guise of a sensible assertion. These are NOT human beings. They are not "unborn children". They are a stage of life that is distinct from babyhood, childhood, or adulthood. And, in any case, the data that relates to South Dakota which is what is concerned may be that 800 abortions are done per year in South Dakota.
Even one abortion is too many in South Dakota, but the legislation pushed through by the theocrats and wingnut loons in furtherance of the Republican northern strategy will do nothing to reduce abortions. It will convert them into and out-of-state inconvenience or a dangerous illegal process that wreaks havoc on the real population of real people...much as war against Iraq has done to thousands of innocent Iraqis. Where is the good doctor's concern for those lives?
There are no winners or losers in the real world as it is related to abortions or the lack of them. This is not a case of the best of all possible worlds. It is a choice of not so bad versus not so good. It is an area that does not mix the black and white of theory or theocracy very well with the disturbingly gray real world. Those who pretend it is clearly black and white are just plain lying or demented. They are making the case for the GOP northern strategy which is just as despicable as is the GOP southern strategy of Richard Nixon...even if both appear to be successful rosey scenario strategies of distortion and propaganda.
****Check the Rapid City Journal for all sides of the story. Everybody buy a few issues a week and pay enugh extra sales tax to makeup the $500,000 the legislative wingnut loons cut from the SD Public Broadcasting Budget.*****
Why is it that women are innocent, hapless victims who are cruelly exploited by the availability of abortion while simultaneously being selfish, slatternly sluts who deserve the punishment of forced pregnancy? Why is that these contemptable, selfish, slatternly sluts are qualified to rear the "products of conception" they would likely abort, given the opportunity. I'm so confused.
Posted by: Anni Hunter | Mar 04, 2006 at 10:42 PM
"These are NOT human beings."
My understanding was that even Roe held that yes, the fetus was a human being but only a POTENTIAL person under the 14th Amendment and therefore not under the protections of the 14th or other amendments.
I mean clearly the fetus is composed of living homo sapien cells. Even Roe held that.
The argument is ultimately is that clump or blob of homo sapien cells a person? If no, as Roe held, then the person in the equation (i.e. the mother) can abort the homo sapien non-person.
Am I misunderstanding Roe here?
Posted by: John Stuart | Mar 05, 2006 at 12:27 PM