United Liberty
In Praise of Kindergarten Style Payback
Thu, 02/02/2012 - 1:09pm | posted by Nate Nelson
Virginia State Senator Jill Vogel (R-Fauquier County) introduces a bill to require women to undergo an ultrasound before having an abortion. In protest, State Sen. Janet Howell (D-Fairfax) introduces an amendment requiring a cardiac stress test and rectal exam before men can be prescribed erectile dysfunction medication. Vogel’s bill passes by voice vote while Howell’s amendment narrowly fails. Glenn Reynolds, A.K.A. Instapundit, declares himself “okay with abortion” but reserves all of his outrage for the failed amendment, insisting that what we’re seeing here is “a false equivalence” and “kindergarten style payback.” Something is very wrong with this picture.
In a way, Reynolds is right. We are seeing a false equivalence. While there is absolutely no medical reason to require women to have ultrasounds before undergoing abortion procedures, there are good medical reasons to require men to undergo rectal exams and cardiac stress tests before being prescribed erectile dysfunction drugs. Included among the side effects of Viagra, for example, are rectal bleeding, colitis, chest pain, and irregular heartbeat. I don’t know if Howell had any of these side effects in mind when she proposed her amendment or if she was instead purely interested in kindergarten style payback, but either way her amendment actually makes more sense from a medical perspective than does Vogel’s.
Rectal exams and cardiac stress tests can, of course, be unpleasant. In a very different way, so can being forced because of someone else’s moral objections to view an ultrasound image of a fetus that you would rather not see. And none of it can compare with the pain of child birth, which is no doubt all the more intense when the pregnancy is unwanted. Anti-choice folks like Vogel and her Virginia State Senate colleagues who voted for her bill would force that kind of pain on every woman who for whatever reason finds herself with an unwanted pregnancy. If that made Howell angry and put her in the mood for a little kindergarten style payback, I don’t think anyone can blame her.
Many libertarians would argue that in reproductive matters as well as in other circumstances such as erectile dysfunction, decisions about medical treatment should be between a doctor and his or her patient. I think that may have been precisely the point that Howell was making. There’s something to be said for kindergarten style payback when it can make that kind of point so effectively.
Looking at an ultrasound causes no physical pain or discomfort, unless it’s psychosomatic.
Rectal exams, on the other hand… well.
You don’t know much about PTSD, do you?
I don’t think it’s necessarily true that ultrasounds cause no physical pain or discomfort. As the below comment notes, it can in fact cause physical pain or discomfort if it’s a trigger for one’s post-traumatic stress disorder.
That said, this is missing the point. The point I was making is that there is absolutely no medical reason for a woman seeking an abortion to undergo an ultrasound, while there may in fact be valid medical reasons for a man seeking erectile dysfunction medication to undergo a rectal exam or cardiac stress test. Now, mind you, I don’t think government should mandate either the ultrasounds or the rectal exams and cardiac stress tests. I think all of the above should be between doctors and their patients.
Totally agree.
Really, as libertarians, we should have the doctor do a viability test on the fetus, and then ask him or her what she thinks.
Cheers,
prat
By that logic, the same can be said about a newborn baby - if they can’t really answer the doctor’s question are they any less alive?
Only if they’re WANTED. Doncha know - it’s only a baby if it’s WANTED. Otherwise it’s a product of conception. People aren’t people unless they’re WANTED.
“People aren’t people unless they’re WANTED.” Really? Is that you just being facetious, or is that an honest reflection of your philosophy? Because, if so, then you apparently believe that anyone who is “unwanted” is unworthy of life (ie, NOT a person). If you are unloved (I know, a fantastic hypothetical for such an “intellectual”), then that would mean, by your “logic,” that you have no right to live
It’s highly likely the previous post was sarcasm. The whole use of Sarah Palin’s colooquial “Doncha” is a key tell.
Bingo.
Cheers,
prat
Include mandatory STD education as well. With the rise in the use of Viagra, there’s been a marked increase in the cases of STD among seniors.
Don’t know many senior women who get abortions, but what ever equivalence you want to draw, go get your magic markers and have at it.
The real question, which most libertarians, including Reynolds and excluding the magnificent Mr. Paul, just skate by, is whether or not the fetus is a person, deserving their God-given right to life and liberty.
Passing through a vaginal canal makes you a person?
Sixty years of feminist ooga booga doesn’t make it true.
Cheers,
prat
Bingo. But for them, it’s never been about the passing through a vagina, it’s more about what they can and can’t see. Once a baby is out, you can see it, so it’s a person. If you can’t see the baby, it’s not a person yet. And that’s what really bothers them about requiring an ultrasound.
The false equivalence lies in the fact that an adult Viagra user should be allowed to risk whatever harm he wishes to his own body, provided that the risks have been explained to him. It’s when you want to harm someone else that it becomes an issue, and to me it’s pretty obvious that an unborn baby is a “someone else”.
That someone calling herself a libertarian doesn’t immediately see the distinction between harm to oneself and harm to others shows me she hasn’t given the matter a lot of thought.
It’s only a baby if it’s WANTED. Otherwise, it’s merely a product of conception. It only becomes human if it’s WANTED.
So… up to what age does your criterion apply? Will you be terribly put out if we prosecute you for the killing of your unwanted 5-year-old? We don’t want to deprive you of your rights, after all.
Yeah, I don’t get it. Libertarians are typically pretty smart, but for some reason on the topic of abortion, many of them just go bananas. My working assumption is that its a mix of the message that the feminists have beaten into us from a young age (I was moderately pro-choice until my twenties, without really thinking about it) coupled with the natural wishes of the more hedonistically inclined to have an out if and when The Accident occurs.
It’s patently obvious that what is in the womb in the second half of pregnancy is a human being. But ooga booga, the American Woman gets what the American Woman wants, and what the American Woman wants is the right to unrestricted warfare on her unborn child, for any reason, at any point, on your and my dime if necessary.
Liberty!
_shrug_
Cheers,
prat
I’m like you—I evolved in my 20s. I was raised in a home with a mother and sisters (my father lived in a different town), and I was bombarded with the spiel about women’s rights and how bad men were trying to take away those rights. So I was pro-abortion too. Then, after college, I finally started to think for myself. I realized just how awful abortion was, and how casual so many people were about it.
I think the problem is that there are a lot of people who just plain never thought about it that much. That’s your average “pro-choice” person—indoctrinated and not capable of free thought. And a lot of libertarians are just sort of reflexively in favor of protecting any freedom that was ever granted, rightly or wrongly.
Anonymous writes: “The false equivalence lies in the fact that an adult Viagra user should be allowed to risk whatever harm he wishes to his own body, provided that the risks have been explained to him. It’s when you want to harm someone else that it becomes an issue, and to me it’s pretty obvious that an unborn baby is a “someone else”.
That someone calling herself a libertarian doesn’t immediately see the distinction between harm to oneself and harm to others shows me she hasn’t given the matter a lot of thought.”
That’s the problem. To YOU it’s pretty obvious that a fetus is a “someone else.” To me it isn’t. Post-viability? Yes, probably. Pre-viability? I don’t think so.
Prat writes: “The real question, which most libertarians, including Reynolds and excluding the magnificent Mr. Paul, just skate by, is whether or not the fetus is a person, deserving their God-given right to life and liberty.”
I agree, that is the real question. The problem is that most anti-choice libertarians insist that a fetus is a person from the moment of fertilization because of their religious beliefs. That’s all well and good for them, but the rest of us may not share their religious beliefs. I don’t believe that a pre-viability fetus is a person. Why am I wrong?
If you are going to do something you need to own it. If that means that you have to be faced with an ultrasound showing you the baby, yes BABY that you want to abort, so be it. If it is a choice, why are so many people upset about requiring women to face their choices. They are not being denied their choice, only being asked to face it and own the choice. There are multiple methods of ensuring that you never have to look at that ultrasound, use birthcontrol in any or in multiple methods, plan B, voluntary sterilization etc. No one in todays society can truly say that they don’t know how to prevent pregnancy. If you do end up pregnant and it is your choice to abort the pregnancy, please tell me what is so wrong with requiring the woman to look at and conciously choose to terminate. If we are to make choices, shouldn’t we make informed ones?
Mene mene tekel upharsin.
I won’t go over the rights issues, they’re well covered above. One thing that hasn’t been addressed are the health and financial issues.
A cursory ultrasound is a fairly simple procedure, quickly done and with virtually no risk. It is cheap enough that some offices offer it as a freebie, a loss leader. The average bill for a stress test ranges between 3 and 5 thousand dollars. They are not cheap to do and one of the potential side effects is a heart attack which would require further, fairly expensive treatment.
All 19 Democrat Senators voted to impose that extra cost and health risk on Virginia men. If you had asked them a year ago whether they would ever vote to mandate medically unnecessary stress tests for spite, every one of them would have said no and thought you a nut for even asking the question. Yet here they are, doing it and being proud of their vote, no doubt.
Welcome to politicized health care where we spend more to get less.
If you are going to kill a life, the least you can do is see what you are about to kill. Sorry if it makes you uncomfortable or depressed or whatever.
Isn’t that what a rifle scope is for?
Women don’t go through that when they are in a good time of life. Those women are desperate, often impoverished, and have learned that they can’t rely on safety nets. They are often working multiple part time jobs for nothing and trying desperately to finish school. They are already “uncomfortable and depressed” just trying to find a way up in life. Maybe they have physical or mental health issues and have to take teratogenic medication. Maybe they are starving and have had limited access to health care for so long that they are unlikely to be able to carry out a healthy pregnancy. Whatever the deal is, the last thing they need is someone telling them that a decision they’ve already thought about long and hard is probably the wrong decision, and that they need to find a way to terminate the pregnancy on their own, or simply find a pro-choice ob-gyn who can easily get around the system. Many women are already stuck with the former of those two because of cost. Not only that, but do you really want them hesitating and waiting until the baby can feel pain? So many of these women have had it so rough in life that they don’t even see the value of their own life, so why would they care about their child’s? Most women who feel like that look at the price tag of legitimately terminating a pregnancy and half wonder if they could take out two birds with one stone for free.
The fact of the matter is that women who get abortions using a private, reputable gyn doctor usually do get a sonogram before the procedure. Among other issues, it’s good to know for certain that the pregnancy is IN the uterus. About 2% of pregnancies every year are ectopic, and these account for approximately 9% of pregnancy related deaths.
This statement struck me as very wrong when applied to abortion: “decisions about medical treatment should be between a doctor and his or her patient”
Libertarians are concerned with the rights of all affected by an action, which in the case of abortion includes the baby-no-longer-to-be, which as an ultrasound usually makes very clear can be much more than an unwanted clump of cells.
“While there is absolutely no medical reason to require women to have ultrasounds before undergoing abortion procedures…”
Aren’t you leaving out one affected party? The child!
Missing from recent abortion discussions is mention of this time-line:
(a) Steve Jobs born 1955
(b) Barack Obama born 1961
(c) Roe v Wade 1971-1973
What if Roe v Wade had occurred twenty-years earlier? Would either Steve Jobs or Barack Obama have been carried till actual birth?
So which side of the issue are you arguing?
LOL, win some lose some.
No - to paraphrase H. Beam Piper, abortion-on-demand for one’s momentary convenience sounds like a good idea as long as you say it quickly and don’t think.
Did you say “momentary convenience”? I’m going to go ahead and guess that you’ve never been in that situation. Neither have I, just as a disclaimer, but even the rare times that I thought I might be I would have rather died than carried out a pregnancy. There’s a lot more that goes into decisions like that than momentary convenience.
Rectal exams are not required in determining the prescription of erectile dysfunction medications. They would serve no purpose. Ultrasounds are routinely used in determining the viability of a fetus.
Senator Vogel’s intent was to humiliate men as retribution against the VA legislature. She’s believes that the actions of the legislators justifies punishing men as a class.
Apparently Nate endorses her methods. So should we also abuse Catholics if a Catholic legislator endorses some offensive legislation? Or perhaps devise some way of degrading registered Democrats for the excesses of a Democratic Congress? Maybe we could rape their daughters as a symbolic vindication for their rape of the Treasury?
Uh, did I read that last sentence right?
“Included among the side effects of Viagra, for example, are rectal bleeding, colitis, chest pain, and irregular heartbeat.”
Thankfully the only consistent side effect of an abortion is the tickling sensation the woman feels as a butchered human being is scraped and vacuumed out of her uterus.
Hardly even worth mentioning…
I’m a conservative who’s inclined more libertarian in recent years (after moving to the lunatic state of Illinois), and this has been encouraged in part by seeing how many libertarians are pro-life.
Now if only Glenn Reynolds were. :-)
Glenn is gilb about abortion, which indicates to me that he just hasn’t thought about it. In general, he doesn’t strike me as particularly brilliant outside of his legal domain. This is a guy who believes in the singularity, after all. (Sorry, kids, technological progress is slowing down, and has been for fifty years. Don’t confuse cool consumer electronics with progress.)
Any libertarian who can get his head around the fact that passing through a vaginal canal does not magically embue a being with intrinsic self-worth immediately comes to the correct conclusion on abortion. It just isn’t that hard.
Cheers,
prat
Whatever his opinion about abortion, it’s hard to imagine how someone in a democracy could fail to see that if half the voting public believes people are committing murder of innocents with impunity that there is a legitimate cause for legislative action. That’s what makes it different from the stupid viagra thing, and that’s why the counter-amendment is juvenile and stupid. Nate — half your fellow citizens think there’s a massacre going on, give them their due respect, even if you disagree with them.
Anonymous writes: “Nate — half your fellow citizens think there’s a massacre going on, give them their due respect, even if you disagree with them.”
That’s a pretty irrelevant reason to deprive a woman of her liberty. If half of my fellow citizens thought everybody should be Christian, should the government force Christianity upon the entire population? Of course not. We need a better way to evaluate fetal personhood than half the nation’s opinion.
Kindergarten Style Payback? Sure, let’s go for it:
For domestic violence cases, the men lose their right to own guns, the women their right to drive a car. Cars kill more people than guns every year.
For false rape claims, the accused but innocent person gets to witness the false accuser get a rectal exam and pap smear.
Wee! This is fun!!
Perv
“I don’t know if Howell had any of these side effects in mind when she proposed her amendment or if she was instead purely interested in kindergarten style payback, but either way her amendment actually makes more sense from a medical perspective than does Vogel’s.”
And if the ‘medical’ perspective were even close to being the more important consideration here, you’d have a point.
Since it obviously isn’t, your argument seems dishonest, deceitful.
The “pro-choice” side will lose their contest to keep on-demand, for convenience abortions legal, because they can make no reply to the obvious fact that abortions for convenience are murder in the third and likely the second trimester. Anti-abortion partisans will lose their argument to make the morning (or up to month after) pill illegal, because so few people can be persuaded a single or few thousand cells are or have yet been a person.
When both these extremes are disappointed, we’ll have reasonable policy and laws.
The entirety of your post is tendentious and does not support is ostensibly your point.
“support is” /= “support what is” sheesh
Agreed, but the sticking point will always be that there are no “extremes” visible during the 40 weeks of pregnancy. It is one long band of grey, with no clear lines. If it is unethical and criminal to abort at 10 weeks, how can 9.9 weeks be much different?
Given the enormity of the crime (killing the only true innocents) erring on the side of safety seems the prudent path of defenders of liberty.
Cheers,
prat
The “clear line” simply has to be defined differently: instead of time, as in 9.9 weeks vs 10 weeks, a simply yea or nay on brain activity.
That’s been my position for years. The one distiguishing characteristic that makes humans different is our brain, so the onset of brain activity is the point that divides “clump of cells” from “potential human”.
And how is brain activity a clear line? Is not brain development in the womb also a continuous, gradual process? And does a mentally retarded fetus have less rights than a normal fetus of the same age?
Wow, who knew there are so many pro-life libertarians.
And although I read Instapundit daily, I agree he is glib. About a lot of things. And to my eye he seems more smug each year, too.
(I’ve also noticed in the last 6 months that many of the things Instapundit links to I’ve already seen elsewhere. Glib, smug, and late.)
I like Glenn too, and I agree with him on just about everything he posts. The one exception is abortion. It is indeed heartening to see that there are more pro-life libertarians than I expected.
With all due respect to Mr. Nelson, Ms. Howell’s amendment can at best be described as childish but at worst deeply disturbing.
The idea behind sonograms before abortions is to provide the fullest range of information to the woman before she aborts her pre-born child (substitute “fetus” for “pre-born child” if you wish but we tend to forget that for a woman contemplating an abortion, that (typically) if there’s no human intervention that there will be a human being born.) Viagra involves enabling a sexual act that through modern contraceptives has been largely severed from any reproductive consequences.
The childish part of Rep. Howell’s proposal is that equates a pregnancy, pre-natal human life, with enabling a sexual act. That would make perfect sense from a Catholic perspective since dogma states that the sexual act must remain open to the possibility of life. I don’t think that’s what Howell’s after here and knowing a bit about her I don’t think she’s the type of politician who attends the Red Mass.
So what is she after? Non-interference of the government in a private medical decision? Well then why the proposal to have medical tests before Viagra (hardly a Swiftian Modest Proposal)? I didn’t dig hard enough into her political past to see if she has proposed regulation regarding consumer information to see if she’s being hypocritical in terms of prohibiting mandatory consumer information but Democrats around here in the Capital area force businesses to provide all sorts of information to consumers from calorie information in restaurants to use of chemicals in public spaces.
This is where the disturbing part of her proposal lies as she seems to link aborting a pregnancy back to the sexual act, not in terms of its ability to create human life as with Catholic dogma, but in terms of dealing with the consequences of the sexual act.
Once upon a time I heard the pro-choice argument that abortions should be legal and rare; that while abortions are terrible choices to make that those choices are best left with the mother (note the father has little to no input on the decision.) However people like Howell would rather leave prospective mothers with less information as a consumer than they would in buying a hamburger - I understand sonograms impose a financial burden on the abortion process and do involve a government intrusion but those who have worked pro-life booths showing sonogram pictures of the human fetus at various stages of development can attest to the surprise of passerbys at the human features of those fetuses. There seems to be a shocking lack of information int he larger public and I’m sure that ignorance is reflected in the pool of women contemplating abortions.
So there’s alot of trip-wires all around - from government interference to extra costs and all but No. Virginia Democrats have hardly been reticent about doing these things in other areas so hold the libertarian applause. Without more information, I’m afraid Howell and her ilk have crossed that very tragic line from being pro-choice to pro-abortion
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