[lbo-talk] "My Partner Had an Abortion"

Yoshie Furuhashi furuhashi.1 at osu.edu
Sun Aug 1 15:44:06 PDT 2004



>[lbo-talk] "My Partner Had an Abortion"
>martin mschiller at pobox.com, Sat Jul 31 14:39:23 PDT 2004
<snip>
>On Jul 31, 2004, at 1:50 PM, Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
>
>> Gary? sladeg at verizon.net, Fri Jul 30 22:08:54 PDT 2004:
>>> wants to feel that ejaculation, exalt in that orgasm
>>
>> Male ejaculation has little to do with female orgasm, but men who are
> > ignorant about abortion are also ignorant about what gratifies women.
>
>Perhaps there was a different point being made.
>
><http://www.umkc.edu/sites/hsw/femejac/>
>"Sex Education 101 Home Page
>FEMALE EJACULATION--JUST WHAT IS IT?

Female ejaculation has nothing to do with pregnancy and abortion, i.e., the subject of the thread.

Perhaps, Gary? and you are holding onto the pre-modern view of female pleasure and pregnancy: "Samuel Farr, in the first legal-medicine text to be written in English (1785), argued that 'without an excitation of lust, or enjoyment in the venereal act, no conception can probably take place'" (Thomas Laqueur, <em>Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks and Freud</em>, Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, p. 161).


>[lbo-talk] "I Had an Abortion"
>joanna bujes jbujes at covad.net, Sat Jul 31 13:05:25 PDT 2004
<snip>
>NO. A foetus is not a polyp. It IS a moral decision allbeit one that
>a woman must make.
>
>Your [Carrol's] position and Yoshie's on this issue is simply repulsive to me.

The majority of Americans used to think of miscegenation, birth control, homosexuality, and a host of other things as "simply repulsive," but their opinions have changed dramatically over time, and so will they on the matter of abortion.


>[lbo-talk] Re: abortion
>Joel Wendland joelrw at hotmail.com, Sat Jul 31 08:04:47 PDT 2004
<snip>
> >"I think there should be a bloody good reason for abortion."
>
>What happened to the slogan: Abortion on demand and without apology.
>In my view, this difference is big enough alone to not let Bush stay
>in office.

A Stem Cell's Worth of Difference

The most eloquent speaker at the Democratic Party convention turns out to be Ron Reagan, who urged all to "cast a vote for embryonic stem cell research." It is not that Reagan possessed more charisma than others, nor were his voice more mellifluous and his delivery, more skillful than other speakers'. What lent his speech its power is the fact that it alone was based on truth and nothing but truth, unlike all other speeches at the convention:

The embryonic stem-cell debate was centre-stage last night at the US Democratic National Convention, in Boston, Massachusetts. It seems that presidential candidate John Kerry and his supporters are eager to focus on the issue.

Ron Reagan, son of former US president Ronald Reagan, spoke about the importance of stem-cell research, calling it, "what may be the greatest medical breakthrough in our, or any, lifetime". He decried partisanship on the issue, and ended his speech with an exhortation for Americans to choose between "reason and ignorance, between true compassion and mere ideology" and to "cast a vote for embryonic stem-cell research". . . .

Interest in the issue has been spurred by the elder Reagan's death from Alzheimer's disease. His widow, Nancy Reagan, openly supports expansion of the scope of stem-cell research in the United States. The current president, George W. Bush, confined research to a limited number of pre-existing cell lines in 2001. According to Ron Reagan, Kerry has told him that his first act as president would be to overturn Bush's stem-cell restrictions. . . .

Kerry has been positioning himself as a pro-science candidate throughout his campaign, visiting NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Monday and speaking out on embryonic stem cells. "We need a president who believes in science, and who is prepared to invest America's efforts to cure Parkinson's and AIDS and diabetes and Alzheimer's and do stem-cell research," he said.

Many Republican politicians also support embryonic stem-cell research, including dozens of senators and congressmen who signed letters to the president last month urging him to change his policies. But Bush has not budged, because he sees the practice as morally troublesome.

The Kerry campaign may see the issue as a way to appeal to moderate voters, according to Matthew Nisbet of Ohio State University, who tracks public opinion on stem-cell research. "This is one of the clear areas where the Democrats can say that their platform is substantially different from the Republicans," he says. "They can draw a distinction, making the Republicans look narrow-minded and dogmatic." (emphasis added, Emma Marris, "US Democrats Embrace Stem-cell Issues," news at nature.com, July 28, 2004)

So, let's be fair to the Democrats: there is a stem cell's worth of difference between John Kerry and George W. Bush.

However, if only by focusing on the stem-cell debate can the Democrats clearly distinguish Kerry from Bush, in the midst of wars at home and abroad, the difference between the two parties is indeed microscopic.

<http://montages.blogspot.com/2004/07/stem-cells-worth-of-difference.html> -- Yoshie

* Critical Montages: <http://montages.blogspot.com/> * Greens for Nader: <http://greensfornader.net/> * Bring Them Home Now! <http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/> * Calendars of Events in Columbus: <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/calendar.html>, <http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php>, & <http://www.cpanews.org/> * Student International Forum: <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/> * Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osudivest.org/> * Al-Awda-Ohio: <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio> * Solidarity: <http://www.solidarity-us.org/>



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