The Mommy Standard

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

When I was a little girl and an history nut (now I’m an old woman and an history nut) I found out about the (supposed) at least Spartan standard for whether an infant lived or died. The baby was brought from the birthing chamber and put at the feet of his father. If the father took him up, he was a baby, a son of the household (or a daughter, but this being Sparta, sons mattered more.)

The books I read treated this with some approval. The father inspected the baby for defects, and would of course know if the baby was illegitimate, and thus only the fittest survived. The eugenics thing was still strong in Europe. Probably still is. And in Portugal it made perfect sense for the father to be the one deciding because he was, after all, the one expected to pay for the kid’s raising.

I thought it was unspeakably barbaric. And I’d like to ascribe this to my being so enlightened and smart, even at eight or nine, but really, it was probably because my family provided the ribbing about how any sane father would have rejected infant-me, born extremely premature and very hard to keep alive. And how this was why I was still a weakling and caught every disease possible and some impossible. The idea that culling would apply to oneself, like hanging in the morning, sharpens the mind something wonderful.

Anyway, I was very grateful to live in a civilized time when keeping me alive, at least in the measure of the possible, was expected by both society and law. After all, I was a lot, both personality and health, and it was for the best that drowning me in the bathtub or abandoning me in the woods wasn’t acceptable.

Some — dear Lord — 20 years ago, Libertarians who were friends of mine became very alarmed that our standard for who was human and a life worth keeping had changed. Now, it had effectively become “You’re human if mommy says you are.”

No? Look at when a pregnant woman gets killed. Whether the child gets counted as another homicide depends on whether the child was wanted or not. A lot of states have not only abortion till birth but, like Colorado — COLORADO! — you’re allowed to kill the baby for some time after birth with no consequences.

You’re human if mommy wants you.

If mommy doesn’t want you, you stop being human even as labor pains start. She can say “My body, my choice, I want the fetus terminated.” If mommy wants you, on the other hand, she’ll send your sonograms at two months around with “Look at my baby. He has my nose.”

And that decision can change in a minute. Sometimes on a dime.

This is not tenable. It is particularly not tenable for a secular humanist society. (Religious societies have their own answers to abide by. That’s different.)

It’s not tenable because “humanist” rests on “humans” and if what a human is depends on the whim of the woman (and usually a woman who is stressed, hormonally off-ballance and possibly exhausted and ill) the foundations of the society crumble.

My generation — forgive us — were lied to, with a lie we couldn’t personally disprove. We believed that until some time (12 weeks, I think) the growing baby was “a tube with no feelings and no brain” and no human characteristics. This is also untenable in the time of more and more developed sonograms. My older son looked like a peanut in the sonogram at 10 weeks, but now you can see features, little fingers.

So you fall back on ever more specialized definitions of why it’s okay to kill this person whom society says is not a person if mommy says he isn’t. The excuses are amazing. The relationship broke up and mom can’t afford him/her. The mother is mentally wounded somehow, and the birth will hurt her mental health. The baby has this or that defect. And of course, the baby will need complete support to stay alive after birth. (Like all of us did.) And of course, until x or why stage of development they can’t think as we define thinking. Etc. etc. etc.

But all of these definitions are thin when you consider “till birth and sometimes after.” Or for the “too expensive” “too much work” “too weak” “not compos mentis” …. we’ll all hit these at various points in our lives, and sometimes we recover from that, and sometimes we don’t. That standard will allow us to kill most of the disabled, most of the ill, and 100% of the aged. Looks towards Canada. And don’t think it’s not been noticed. Hell, when I was in the hospital, at 33, with pneumonia, I was told I should allow them to do the procedure that was almost guaranteed to kill me because I was a “drain on my family” and would probably always be, and did I want my husband to lose his job because he insisted on staying with me at the hospital? I mean, the old and the sick in general don’t even have mommy to stick up for them. In fact, according to various cases, at that point it’s “you’re human if your spouse/children say you are.”

It sucks. A society built for humans should have the broadest possible definition of human. Not “you’re disposable scrap unless someone else vouches for you.” and “You’re not even human unless your mother says you are.”

Look, I had a friend who had been very abused in childhood and who said that being wanted was a great standard. Otherwise the child would end up abused. She was a little taken back when I told her she was wanted. Her parents needed a child to abuse. Also “wanted” changes. Don’t believe me? Go to craigslist or facebook marketplace and see all the expensive-breed dogs being given away at 2 or 3 years of age, because they’re no longer wanted. Or, more heartbreakingly, all the old dogs and cats being given away because they’re no longer pretty, fluffy, compliant and CHEAP. As the vets bills mount “wanted” changes.

As for “But unwanted children won’t be happy”: poppycock. Beyond the fact that happiness is a terrible way to judge someone’s life and achievements (I am not permanently ecstatically happy. Are you?) by that standard both Dan and I — he was wanted by his mother, but as a GIRL, and I was never wanted by my mother. My father wanted more children, not my mother — are unhappy, suffering souls. And you know, despite illnesses and various issues, I don’t think we are. I really don’t think so. In fact, in the general order of things, and despite a lot of tight squeezes, we’ve been damn lucky and happy. And I don’t think we’re alone, as unwanted children.

In fact, there is absolutely NO justification for the Mommy Standard of Humanity. And the excuses grow thinner as we learn more about biology and human development.

It is a corrosive, crazy way of deciding what is human and what isn’t, what is to be protected and what is to be killed.

Birthrate drop? Ah! That would be lucky. People wonder about the deranged tick tock mommies and “we’re all Lindsey” nonsense. But why should they wonder? You gave mothers the right to decide who is human and who isn’t. Why should that stop once they’re out of the womb? Or in the crazy states out of the womb for a month or so? After all children can become inconvenient, expensive or simply trying and brainless-acting at any point between birth and eighteen. (And after. Hence my lamentations about “I’d smack you upside the head, but I’d need a step stool” which still happen, sometimes, and the boys are well, early middle age at this point. But I can’t say I’m responsible for them.) Why should they not have the right to do away with any inconvenient child they’re responsible for? After all, their sleep patterns are interrupted! They have to look after these small humans! Do you hear them crying? And just keeping them alive as toddlers is a full time job. Shouldn’t the mom have the right to personal fulfillment?

Roman fathers used to have the right to have their kids executed for anything including talking back. (How many of us would survive that?) Then we became more civilized…

In the ancient world, children got exposed in batch lots. Yes, for defects and maybe infidelity, but really for parents’ convenience. There was a Father’s standard. You’re human if he says you are. (Though if you think the women couldn’t give birth in secret and send the kid to be exposed, you’re an optimist or a fool.)

Christians were considered odd because they raised all they bore. If you think that had no impact on the advance and ultimate taking over by Christianity, you’re also a fool.

So, now, in a post-Christian world, we’ve reverted. And yep, birthrates are in the crapper.

But more importantly, the increasingly more obvious Mommy Standard of Humanity makes each and every one of us very aware “I’m only here, because I was allowed to live.” And “Society can change that permission at any time.”

Right to life? Don’t make me laugh.

But Sarah, you can’t be saying that every human is human from conception! Any number of pregnancies end, unnoticed, in spontaneous abortions.

Yeah, I’m aware of that. None better, since early miscarriage is the form my infertility took. So? Many lives end to, at various points before whatever arbitrary age. Does that give us the right to go around killing people, because so many people die of natural causes by their age? The standard is flawed.

I don’t know — and can’t think of any — standard for determining “What’s human” unless we go “is of human DNA, is alive, and if no one kills him/her has a good chance of growing into an independent autonomous human. Maybe not worth spit, (hell he might even grow into a communist) but definitely human.

If society is going to rest on the measure of the human and humanity, then human and humanity needs to be hard rock, something never questioned. The right to life of humans, all humans, must never, ever come into doubt.

Because that’s the price of the right to life for all of us.

The mommy standard sucks. Even the best, sanest of women have moments of idiocy and insanity. Trust me on this. I’m a woman and I try to be sane, but there are times… If her idiocy or insanity can cost the lives of other humans and this is legally and societally approved of? No one is safe.

“But you’d police every pregnancy.” Take a chill pill. I was born in a society where abortion was strictly forbidden by law. And yet it still happened. In fact, many women used it as their main method of contraception. In fact, it’s probably the only way to keep it safe and rare, because everyone involved knew they’d be in trouble if caught.

But they’d be in trouble if caught. Society as a whole held that human life was precious and not at the whim of either of its creators, father or mother. Society as a whole, though it wasn’t codified, held that humans had a right to life.

Liberty and the pursuit of happiness are pretty hard on the Mommy Standard.

It’s making everyone more than a bit insane and insecure.

I suggest that we’re not Spartans (thank heavens. They were closer to Cuba than to us) and most of us are not insane. It’s time to face up to the Mommy Standard and rethink the whole thing.

Before civilization is completely gone.

188 thoughts on “The Mommy Standard”

  3. The Romans hated Christians because they not only raised their own sickly infants, they would also go out and rescue *other people’s* abandoned infants from the garbage dumps. And they raised them as their own, instead of enslaving them or selling them to brothels. Inconceivable!

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  5. There’s been a case in the Netherlands in the news recently, where they euthanized a two-year-old. I will say upfront that I don’t know enough about the case to make a full judgment, but I am disturbed by some of the reports, particularly the idea that, “The doctor made the right assessment, because ‘All facets of “being human” – regarding motor skills, behavior, and personality – were severely impaired.” In other words, he wasn’t human enough.

    At this point, I worry that we’re not going to hell in a handbasket anymore; we’re at least halfway through the first circle.

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    1. Zsuzsa I fear we are well into the ninth circle of Dante’s view of the Inferno. This is reserved for traitors, and divided into four sections, The first is named Caina after Cain who killed his brother Abel. This is reserved for traitors against their family and infanticide is treachery by parents, those who have been given a task to guard their children. The physicians would be breaking the Hippocratic oath (first do no harm) although I understand many if not most medical schools no longer have students swear to this “outmoded” “western” view of medical behavior. Which of the other three (treachery against their country, treachery against a guest or treachery against their lord (including the Author Himself)) categories the doctors action falls under is unclear though the act itself is fundamental treachery against the trust of the parents and the infant. There is a reason Dante has traitors at the lowest level level of Hell is his cosmology.

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      1. Where they remain frozen eternally in ice, the depth depending on the nature of their treachery.

        Dorothy Sayer’s translation includes an excellent commentary and notes.

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        1. It has been a long time since I touched ANY of Dante’s Inferno, since reading pieces of it in High School and then going off and reading Niven/Pournelle’s Inferno. I found a set of Cliff-like notes that reminded me of the 4 divisions of the 9th level though I did remember the ice and that it was divided by the particular form of treachery, Treachery against your sworn lord (particularly the Author) being considered the most vile in the hierarchy and is named Judecca after Judas Iscariot; although he gets the pleasure of being eternally munched by Cerberus, with Brutus and Cassius at the center of hell (one traitor per head/mouth).

          I’ll have to look into the Dorothy Sayers translation, that seems interesting to say the least.

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      3. My med school class of 1974 voted to NOT go through the motions of taking the Hippocratic oath. The future urologists in our class would not promise not to “use the knife, not even, verily, on sufferers from stone“, among other objections. Future medical school teachers didn’t want not “to teach them this art, if they want to learn it, without fee or indenture” And so forth.

        Someone has probably composed an up to date equivalent for the ancient oath.

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    2. That’s already the law of the land here in California. And the Dems are doing their best to make it as difficult as possible for a future pro-life constituency to do away with.

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      1. And recently a similar law was signed into law here in Massachusetts this summer. What is it that makes these Democrat politicians feel that essentially worshiping Baal and Moloch is a good idea? No, don’t answer that; that was a rhetorical question, and I fear I know what’s driving these idiots. I should prefer NOT to know but the Author has unfortunately graced me with enough intelligence and wisdom not to be able to cry “LA LA LA I don’t hear you” and to go running off in the other direction in a convincing manner.

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    3. And if you try to tell people that there are states where you can legally “abort” your child after birth, they’ll think you’re a crazy conspiracy theorist.

      The worst of it is that there’s little reason for a woman to need an abortion to begin with. Even discounting hormonal birth control (which is known to mess with the user’s head), there are plenty of ways to avoid a pregnancy. But many women choose not to use them.

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      1. Hormonal birth control messes with a lot more than just their heads. Assuming that many of you ladies used the pill at one time or another, how hard was it to get pregnant after coming off the pill? Took my wife 3 years to clear her system and get it working to God’s specs.

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        1. I saw a video, I think on ChubbyEmu’s channel, about a woman who ‘experienced side effects’ from birth control pills. Blood clots formed, one of them cut off circulation to a third of her colon, and by the time she realized the pain wasn’t just cramps it was way too late.

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        2. Sigh. I was on it for weird reasons. Got pregnant the month I stopped taking it. Second son. (Weird reasons: the doctor thought I was having excessive pain and was “balancing” me, supposedly. We now know it doesn’t work that way.) Also the pill makes me suicidal.

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          1. Comes under “different results for everyone.”

            Know of someone who got pregnant while on hormonal birth control. That the husband had the unfortunate timing to call and cry on my hubby’s shoulder about the timing (they were newlyweds) the exact day I’d been brought home from the hospital after my first miscarriage after we’d been trying for a couple of years. Sympathy was a bit lacking on our part.

            I could not take hormonal birth control. I got major migraines. Lasted on them 3 months.

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            1. On my second round, after the final miscarriage, I was put on it really because my thyroid was screwed up and they thought it was the female hormones (don’t get me started.)
              ….. the doctor carefully explained that because of my hormones interacting iwth that weird formulation of the pill, (it was a weird one) it made me MORE fertile.
              Alas it didn’t work, though at 48 … What WOULD I do with a 16 year old now?

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              1. What would you do with a 16 yo? The same as you did with first two. After 20 years of off and on fertility treatments, IVF, frozen embryos, and contracting with a gestational carrier , we had our first when I was 50. The GC was ready to go again and #2 came along 18 months later. They are both grown now, smart and strong and healthy. Yes, there are things I would have done differently if I had been younger, but I wouldn’t trade them for anything.

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  8. (Though if you think the women couldn’t give birth in secret and send the kid to be exposed, you’re an optimist or a fool.)

    On of the ways you can recognize Roman brothels is by the infant skeletons from the exposed babies – not that anyone will admit that anymore. The Madame Standard is as old as the Daddy or Mommy Standard, and it hasn’t gone anywhere: “The kid is inconvenient, I can’t get any sestertii out of you if you have a kid! Give me that, and get back to work!”

    No. No, no, no, a thousand times NO. We left that behind for a darn good reason, and it should STAY behind. No more Madame, Mommy, Daddy, or Warbucks standards. The only standard should be, “Is he/she human? Then he/she stays, and if no one here wants him/her, we’ll find someone who DOES.”

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  9. The only new part is that society has decided that “Mommy” can make the decision if someone is human or not.

    There has always been the societal belief that some people AREN’T people. They don’t have rights, thus are legitimate targets for actions which wouldn’t be allowed against fellow human beings. One tribe against another, one city against another . . .one person against another (Cain and Abel) . . .it’s easy to do evil things to creatures who aren’t people. One of the greatest examples was the Holocaust against Jews, Gypsies and other unpopular groups.

    Another example was when FDR shipped 85,000 American-born citizens and their aging parents to CONCENTRATION CAMPS, creating the world’s first prison for CHILDREN — solely on the basis of ancestry. FDR is still the idol of “Progressives” in this country, because they simply overlook this one minor little failure to fully observe their campaign against racism.

    When so-called “no-fault” divorce and abortion-at-whim became legal — then acceptable, then common, then PRAISED — this gave “Progressives” the ability to normalize the individuals affected as just statistics.

    Thus, it is no surprise that they have accepted sex attacks against children (Roman Polanski) and now the MURDER of children.

    The only thing that will disturb them is when the snake turns to bite them, now that they have destroyed 150 years of progress in women’s rights by marching to PROVE that woman are subject to what was once called “hysteria,” as chemical imbalances in their bodies can make them commit the most irrational and evil acts.

    And when one man on the jury defied all of the women and the other two (mere) guys to say that wrong is wrong, he has been vilified, doxxed, and his family threatened by those who want to believe that THEY are not the evil ones. They need to believe this, and will continue to crucify him in modern society.

    In the movie “Spartacus,” when the leader of the rebelling slaves was told to come forward and identify himself for crucifixion, with the promise that all of the others would be spared, he stepped forward and said “I am Spartacus.”

    Then, another man stepped out. “I am Spartacus!” Then another. And another. “I am Spartacus!”

    I now step forward.

    I am the holdout juror.

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    1. Any law that enables somebody to strangle three helpless children and then evade the consequences by claiming to be ‘not in their right mind’ is an evil law. Because people in their right minds don’t DO such things!

      The State can’t see inside people’s heads and determine why they committed heinous crimes. It can only guess, and guess badly. Therefore, actions are the only valid measure of guilt or innocence. Did the accused commit the crime? If so, guilty. After that, any other factors can be considered when setting the sentence.

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          1. It appears to the Reader that the sheer number of ‘stupid’ things done by the prosecution were in fact an attempt to ‘tank’ the trial. And because of them and the judge it will be impossible to impanel a ‘fair’ jury for a second trial. The Reader is pretty sure that Massachusetts won’t attempt to retry her.

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          1. I know of two cases in $TINY_TOWN where that applied. One was a sexual assault of a minor case,the other a murder. Both perps are long time residents of whatever state mental hospital exists.

            (I’m sure in the assault case, a “not guilty” verdict would have resulted in the 3 S solution. Not sure about the murder, though the victim was a well liked town drunk.–They exist, rare, but it happens.)

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        3. English common law has Not Guilty because insane. I think the Scots version Insane but guilty is a better solution. U.S. State law is all over the place some in the Common law camp to a greater (Massachusetts) or lesser extent, Some in the Scots camp and Likely Louisiana (which traces to Napoleonic code rather than English common law) has a third incompatible way. The Massachusetts law is not legislative in nature, my understanding is that there is little to no explicit legislature in respect to this. Rather this is derived from a couple cases (one at the turn of 20th century and a later mid 20th century case) and then codified into standard practice and preferred judicial directions by several different judicial and bar committees over time. I’d say the Massachusetts legislature should look into revising this and writing legislation, but they or more likely to remove all gun restrictions and permit open carry and stand your ground or to declare a week of celebration for Donald Trump than to actual fix an obvious problem.

          And the Plymouth DA office is known to be a Charlie Foxtrot of epic proportions. It has massive Nepotism and Political inbreeding that if genetic would rival the Spanish Habsburgs, combined with just downright incompetence, means even high-profile cases look like Inspector Clouseau is handling them on a massive bender.

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        4. We study English Common Law as the foundation of American Common Law. Overlooked completely is the Scottish Common Law, which, among other things, avoided much of the imitative qualities of English Common Law.

          Among other features, Scottish Common Law allowed the Jury to hand down verdicts not found farther south on the island. One was “Not Proven”, which took away most of the ambiguity accompanying a “Not Guilty” verdict today.

          Another, which we seem to need more desperately than ever before in modern western society and which your proposal covers nicely, “Not Guilty but Insane.”

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      2. “Did the accused commit the crime? If so, guilty.” Not as easy as that. I knew a priest who met a combat veteran of the Sand Box, who was convinced he was going to go to hell because of situations involving use of human hostages by the enemy attacking his unit. I would call the veteran’s internal conviction an admission of guilt. Priest got into the details with the man, told him what he did under those circumstances was to be blamed on the enemy, and not on him. Priest wrote an article about this which he submitted to the US military archdiocese for publication. They didn’t do that, and didn’t tell him why. I asked him for a copy of his article, but he passed away before that happened.

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        1. That’s because they don’t like to admit just how widespread the war crime called Perfidy is among our Muslim enemies, or that the approved response under the Geneva Conventions is to respond full force and then hang the survivors on the spot.

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      1. Since he’s been doxxed, he came out swinging. Seems the other jurors came in wanting “not guilty,” from day one and tried to bully him into compliance.

        The more comes out about this the worse it gets.

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        1. Heard a hint that other jurors were bullied into the “Not Guilty by Insanity.” Just the one juror refused to be bullied.

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  10. There are extreme cases, though. Consider babies born anencephalic — without a brain. Nothing inside the skull but fluid, and maybe enough of a cerebellum to enable independent breathing. Definitely human, but not in any meaningful sense a person, and never will be. Should a society expend resources keeping an empty body technically alive for decades?

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      1. Poor Mitch does not look good. I suspect this whole business with him has simply been to prevent Andy Bashear from appointing a ravingly loony leftist as his replacement.

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    2. At this point, I would tend to answer “Yes”, because the cost of pushing the principle to that extreme is far, FAR less than the cost of taking the first step down the slippery slope that we are now many, many steps down (and sliding further down at speed). The cost of keeping every human being alive, even those who cannot breathe for themselves, would not be nothing. But the cost of killing people for the crime of being inconvenient, as we see happening far too often, is incalculably high.

      I’ll note that my views on this have shifted over time, as I become more and more aware that there are no limits to the evils that people will justify to themselves. Which means that the slippery slope doesn’t just slide down to a low point and stop. No; that slippery slope slides all the way down to hell. And I do mean hell, quite, quite literally. Best not to take even the first step onto it.

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        1. Yep. I didn’t explain my mental picture in my comment. But my mental picture of the slope that slides to a low point and stops is a playground slide. Starts slow, accelerates, then slows down near the end. My mental picture of the slippery slope that you start down when you start justifying the murder of innocent human beings is a parabola.

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      3. the whole point of the slippery slope is that the first step is the last. you are quite right to not step on the first of the slope.

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    3. Very weirdly, some of the children are NOT anacephalic, jsut have fluid in the head and the brain is compressed. They can recover with a shunt.
      Also, no. in that case obviously it is enough not to intervene. (I had an aunt born that way or close enough, who managed to survive 3 months somehow, but still went naturally.)

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    4. I have an acquaintance who had a child like this. She carried her to term. This baby had a name. They planned the funeral before the birth.

      When the child was born, she was made comfortable and given medical support. She lived about 2 hours outside the womb, being held by her parents, till she died.

      That is sanctity of life.

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      1. There have been a few cases where the parents knew the baby would not survive long once born. Encouraged to abort. Refused. They planned to donate the perfectly viable organs of newborn upon death. They were sued. Do not know the outcome.

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          1. IDK

            Did not follow the cases beyond verifying the headlines were “accurate” (you know “bait & switch”).

            Agree on standing. Only the parents have that right. Not like the child was to be killed for their organs on birth. Natural death as any tragic child’s death, and then organ harvest.

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  11. When I was young and first heard of infant sacrifice I naively thought that the parents must have had to be held down by soldiers or something. That there would have been agoniziing screams, horrible scenes of grief, etc.

    Little did I know that I would live to see human sacrifice become not only a reality, but the norm. No agonizing screams involved. No soldiers needed.

    I had no idea that parents would willingly PAY to have their infants scraped out of mommy’s womb, turn the breathing ones over to the doctors to “take care of” or viciously strangle them at some later date. And all because, like the tossing of virgins into a volcano in days of yore to achieve a good harvest, killing kids is now the society approved way of avoiding inconvenience, saving money, having a better life, ensuring that “others” don’t have to foot the bill, or for all I know, achieving a larger harvest.

    The 21st century is NOT in any way, shape, or form more civilized than those before it.

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    1. Some parents sell their children into slavery, and not always under duress. Read John Ringo’s ‘Kildar’ series, and ‘Not That Kind Of Good Guy’ if you think it only happens in those benighted 3rd-world countries.

      I watched one of those LDM-generated Yoo-Toob videos about a group of high school students taken in by a shady ‘travel agency’ with too-good-to-be-true prices. Fortunately, the story ended with them only losing their money.

      I would say unto them: “You are luckier than you deserve to be that the scammers only took your money and ghosted you. If you were unlucky, they would fly you to Europe, you would get on the tour bus and never be seen again. The pretty girls would be auctioned off to rich perverts, the fat ugly girls would be sold to cheap whorehouses, and most of the boys would wind up in mass graves.”

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      2. Kids (including teenagers) disappearing is apparently a constant problem in China even today. And that’s even with all of the security cameras everywhere, which suggests that at least some of the local authorities are in on it in the regions where it’s most common.

        There’s also the several hundred thousand (iirc) unaccompanied minors that the Biden administration “lost track of”.

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  12. One glaring point about the Clancy case is that by one branch of LeftLogic ™, she should be dead and buried for about three years already. Perfect candidate for “gentle encouragement” to accept the help of the State to do the suicide right on the second try.

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  13. “The price of a thing is what that thing will bring” kinda applies empirically, though not exactly as that rule of thumb was intended: What we are doing now brings a civilizational price, which appears at this point to be demographic collapse.

    The rate of collapse looks to vary with other factors, but the places in the modern world that are not on a downward population trajectory are rare. If the future belongs to the ones who show up, that’s going to be a short list.

    This all leaves me wondering if the “passport bros” thing is a “one from column A, one from column B” societal adaptation attempt to the non-sustainable aspects of the societies on both sides of the equation. Like the various returns to traditional definitions trends, it all might not be enough in the end to matter, but to me these look like somewhat urgent societal variation to try and generate a work around to a looming problem.

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  14. It’s taken me a long time to get to this point. At one time I agreed that humanity of a fetus was based on want. That changed to being dependent on the ability to think, to be conscious (at least when not sleeping or in a coma – the anencephalic kid that Imaginos1892 mentions comes to mind.) The problem is there are a lot of reports of consciousness while the body is non-functional (OOBEs, near death experiences.) Consciousness, the soul if you will, may have very little to do with the body itself. So at what point does this fetus have a soul? Traditional Judaism once said the soul entered with the first breath of the child, obviously after birth. But Scripture also says God knew you when you were in the womb, period; not at 3 montths, or 6 months, or 24 weeks or whatever. The implication being at conception. And that’s where I happen to be now this journey, and it hasn’t been easy or comfortable.

    You’re a human being from the moment of conception. Not much of one, being a single cell at that point, but you are a human being in the only way that counts, your genetic code and your origins (Mom and Dad egg and sperm donors.) Note that the definition may need to be expanded if and when we get to the point of being able to construct a cell and all of its parts from a pile of molecules and somehow make it come to life. But the point is, humanness isn’t dependent on “want”.

    We all have the God given rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. But every one of us has to fight for them from the moment of conception. That’s life in this universe. We get to enlist allies to help us do that as we grow. But the first one that counts is Mom, followed by Dad and immediate family members. If we get lucky, we get good ones, who had good parents to learn from when they were growing up. Sometimes we crap out, with clueless parents only interested in themselves, food, drugs, and pleasure, who can’t even take care of themselves, much less a wee one in utero or crawling around the floor.

    I suppose that we could create a society that decides whether you live of die by trial by ordeal. Just make sure there are no exceptions; EVERYONE has to go through it, Leftists included. If you’re going to have The Hunger Games, elitist city folk don’t get to sit safe and watch. Failure means you died, nobody else killed you, unless of course one of the ordeals is combat. Would it work? Maybe. But I don’t think anyone would like it.

    Liked by 4 people

    1. Nobody who has ever lived outside of the city could believe the Hunger Games scenario.

      The city people are EATERS (using Jerry Pournelle’s definition).

      Any city over 4 square miles is an artificial construct, a house of cards that stands only so long as people not in cities choose to support it. This will be brought home (no pun intended) when California has the Big Shake, or the Cascadia Event. There are literally not enough emergency response resources on the planet to resolve either disaster at even the 75%-worst-possible level, much less a full Wipe Out, and it will reach out across the world.

      Least affected will be the rural areas. Those are where the food is, where the water is, where power is generated, where fuel is found and stored, where the only question when someone sees a gun is “how do you like that one?”

      Liked by 3 people

      1. Ignoring logistics for a city is part and parcel of much of fiction these days.

        Unusually, I once read a Dragonlance short story in which the lack of logistics around the town was the giveaway that the town was bait for the patrol that stumbled across it. The town looked normal when you were inside of it. But there was nothing in the surrounding areas to feed it or justify it. By and large, those details get ignored in most recent fiction nowadays. The food in the city spontaneously appears on the supermarket shelves.

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        1. Not surprising, given those who write those newer works also have no idea where that neat and tidy plastic-wrapped meat in the supermarket comes from.

          Not that it’s new with them, mind you. That couch-surfing, womanizing, racist German a-hole Karl Marx also believed that farmland should be taken over and converted to industrial use, and that was prior to the agricultural revolution that made food production explode.

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  15. I have a book written before Roe v. Wade where the author uses the thalidomide scandal to argue forcefully for legalizing abortion. He describes the heartbreaking sight of “seal babies” playing happily not knowing they were have to live in world of normal people. If only, he laments the mothers had been permitted to abort their children.

    These children must be in their 60s and 70s by now. I would love to track some down and ask them if they had rather been aborted. I suspect that few, if any, would have preferred never to have been born. Most of them probably lived satisfying lives.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. Back in the late 1970s, I dated a girl who was a Thalidomide baby, though not hit as hard as many of the others. She married a guy that I knew, and last I heard (a couple of years ago) they were happy, but didn’t have much time to talk because some of their grandkids were over and wanted to go out to the pool.

      So, that was about a dozen people and counting who not only existed, but were enjoying life — despite the best efforts of that author and Sanger’s eugenicists.

      But there is an argument that makes both sides of the abortion issue dodge:

      If Roe v. Wade had been decided the other way, Al Gore would have been POTUS on 9/11, the Hildebeast would have won in 2016, and Kamala would be in the Oval Office NOW.

      If Roe v. Wade had been decided 15 years earlier, 17-yer-old Stanley Ann Dunham could have found an abortion mill, and we would never have been cursed with her baby — and if THAT had happened, the frootloops in Iran wouldn’t have been given planeloads of cash to fund their nuke program, and we wouldn’t have to be bombing them today.

      Liked by 1 person

        1. That’s one theory, but it’s not taking into account the similarity of effects, across geological, economic and racial boundaries. The children also didn’t suffer from some more-common birth defects.

          If that theory were true, we would expect to see a MASSIVE increase in more common birth defects during the same period, not the merely incremental increase that was observed.

          If the Thalidomide effects were natural, but not masked (by miscarriage), we can see them as a high-tide marker, beyond the more common types — thus, as miscarriage prevention has improved over seven decades, we would expect to see a certain (and growing) number of children born with conditions similar to those that the Thalidomide kids showed. This has not been seen.

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        2. The mechanism is actually pretty well understood. It inhibits vitamin A uptake, and that’s what caused the birth defects. Current versions (which are still in use, but very specifically not for anyone who has any chance of being pregnant) come with a mega-dose of vitamin A.

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      2. If Roe v. Wade had been decided the other way, Al Gore would have been POTUS on 9/11, the Hildebeast would have won in 2016, and Kamala would be in the Oval Office NOW.

        Could you unpack the logic here? I’m not saying you’re necessarily wrong, but I can’t follow your line of reasoning. Actually on second thought I do think you’re probably wrong, but it’s definitely not clear-cut, so I’d really like you to explain the chain of events you see here. Why do you think that a hypothetical Roe v. Wade decision that allowed states to ban abortion would have led to the Democrats winning all the major Presidential elections since 2000?

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        2. I think the idea is that a good-sized chunk of the conservative grass roots movement was been built around overturning Roe v Wade. A good sized chunk of conservative activism and get out the vote activities was based around groups that wanted to ban abortion. The idea is that absent that, the Dems would have had a much easier time taking power.

          Personally I think that things are more complicated than that. But one can definitely point to things like defeating the ERA and noting how that suddenly stopped being an issue for conservatives at around the same time, and come to the conclusion that something similar might have happened if Roe v Wade had been ruled in the opposite direction.

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          1. That’s what I figured the argument was once I gave it some thought, which is why I went back and added “on second thought I do think you’re probably wrong” after I thought it over. Because a lack of talking about a solved problem (like defeating the ERA) could also just mean “we solved the problem, now let’s move on to the next problem rather than endlessly re-hash a problem that’s already solved”.

            Are there people who turned out to vote because of abortion? Absolutely; I was one of them. Does that mean I wouldn’t have turned out to vote if Roe v Wade had been decided the other way? Nope. The first Presidential election I was old enough to vote for was in 2000. And there was no way I was voting for Clinton’s vice-president. No. Way. I didn’t know much about Bush at the time, but I was dead certain he would be a better POTUS than Al Gore.

            So how many of those people who turned out to vote because of Roe v Wade would have sat home, not having another reason to turn out? Impossible to know counter-factuals for sure, but my suspicion is that it’s actually quite low. There were plenty of other issues the Democrats were on the wrong side of, which would have fired up the conservative voting base in the absence of the Roe v Wade decision. My suspicion is that the actual get-out-the-vote numbers would not have changed enough to swing elections. With a possible exception for 2000, since it was so very tight in Florida: just a couple thousand Republican voters sitting on their hands might have been enough to have it tip the other way.

            Or it might not have: who knows how many Democratic voters were enthused by “defend abortion” messaging? How many Democrats would have stayed home in 2000 if Roe v Wade had gone the other way? Again, impossible to say for sure.

            Overall, I guess my point is don’t be too confident in predicting historical swings based on a 1973 event. There are lots, lots, of things that influence history, and one event going the other way might have ripples you didn’t even think about as they bounce off the rocks and shoals of history’s tides. (Mixing nautical metaphors furiously here).

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            1. Something that just occurred to me and is probably also worth noting is that the Republican party never instantly excommunicated someone because he or she wasn’t pro-life. The pro-life contingent was an important part of the Republican coalition (and still is), but it was never an instant disqualifier for candidates. Giuliani, for instance, wasn’t pro-life but that wasn’t what ended his presidential run. His presidential run failed due to other things entirely.

              That stands in contrast to the Democrats, where they’ve spent decades actively forcing out the pro-life Democratic politicians. It’s literally a litmus test for them, and I don’t know if there’s a single pro-life Democrat left at the Federal level. Articles written decades ago were comparing the difference in treatment of candidates in both parties who went against the party platform on the topic. And the Democrats were *much* less tolerant of “diversity” on this matter.

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              1. I think you’re quite correct in this. Though I would say that I think the Democrats are not tolerant of any “diversity” from their official party line on any subject. They turn on their own in a heartbeat if they stray from the approved line

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          2. My comment went into moderation, perhaps for being too long, so here’s a summary until it can be fished out: were there no other issues that would have caused conservatives to turn out in large numbers? Were the Democrats not doing anything else that conservatives would have opposed? I suspect the drop in conservative turnout would have been much smaller than Kaze thinks.

            I’ll stop there just in case this comment also gets moderated for being too long. Hopefully my long comment gets fished out so you can see the examples I gave.

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          3. It’s cherry picking what commenter thinks would be the (very few) changes.

            The Roe decision came down in January 1973, so I can pull a similar cherry pick out of thin air and say the reaction to the decision going the other way would have distracted Congress from the Watergate investigation and Nixon impeachment process, his secretary could have erased all the tapes, and as a result Nixon would have remained in office, which would have let him aid South Vietnam with air strikes when the North Vietnamese tried to roll south in 1975, saving the South Vietnamese and preserving that war in a stalemate much like that in Korea.

            But that executive action may have constrained further interventions, so there would have been no Vietnamese invasion to overthrow the Pol Pot regime and save the survivors of the Killing Fields, so the Communism toll for the 20th century would have been even greater. Or more optimistically maybe the South Vietnamese would have been able to do it, and bring along a few American journalists to publicize it more and sooner than it got in our timeline. And of course there would have been to Vietnamese Boat people crisis, and no wave of refugees into the U.S.

            But Nixon in office would definitely have meant no Jimmeh, which would have meant no overthrow of the Shah’s government in Iran – when he became ill his sone would have succeeded as Shah, so there would have been no 50 year long war on the US that the Democrats could try and pretend, or bribe, away…

            And no Jimmeh would mean no Billy Jeff, and no Billy Jeff would have meant no Barry.

            See, I can cherry pick with leaps of hand waving just as well as Kaze.

            Liked by 3 people

            1. Oh, I forgot the best one – The Soviets would never have invaded Afghanistan if U.S. allied and very well armed Iran was right next door, so no Afghanistan war with the Soviets means no training and radicalization ground for OBL, and no OBL to found AQ means no 9/11.

              And it also means no Iran-Iraq war – the Shah’s army would have wiped Saddam’s up in a week if he started anything, and the US would have been flying in C-5s full of arms resupply to make sure they didn’t run out of Phoenix missiles for their Tomcats.

              Now does the USSR still fall apart without their defeat and retreat from Afghanistan? The built-in economic stress would have been the same, and if Reagan still was elected and could turn the screws via military competition, they still could not last very long, so I think yes’m though the date might have changed.

              A vastly different world.

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              1. There’s a theory that I like that the reason why the Soviets went into Afghanistan is because they did *not* get involved when their Vietnamese client was invaded by China. Vietnam was able to beat back the Chinese without too much trouble, but it made the Soviets look like people who wouldn’t live up to their commitments. And so when their Afghani client ran into trouble…

                Of course, the reason why China invaded Vietnam was to try to support China’s client, Cambodia (not only did it fail miserably, but the Khmer Rouge collapsed even before the Chinese invaded). The reason why Vietnam invaded Cambodia was because the Khmer Rouge kept launching provocations. But the provocations were in the South. So if the Republic of Vietnam is the country that gets attacked by Cambodia instead, then what happens? The ARVN should have much better troops. But I don’t know whether they had enough troops on the border with Cambodia, or would have needed to pull some divisions off of the border with the North.

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                1. In addition to the U.S. withholding promised air strike support identical to the strikes that stopped cold the exact same NVA Soviet-style armored thrust in 1972, plus stopping all arms resupply shipments, one of the underlying reasons the ARVN collapsed in 1975 was that the U.S. largely withheld mobile heavy forces under the “Vietnamization” program, like APCs and tanks, and only supplied light air power. When the NVA armored columns moved south out of the treaty territory within South Vietnamese borders, the few NVA heavy units fought to the death trying to stop them, but there were not enough of them, thanks to conscious decisions on the part of the U.S.

                  Part of this was the idea that we were just handing over the capability to fight an insurgency, sidestepping that the U.S. used massive air power and a fair amount of heavy armor in our COIN efforts, plus, the insurgency was effectively defeated in the 1968 Tet offensive, after which U.S. forces were engaging NVA almost exclusively.

                  But beneath that justification was the real reason – basically some idiot in the Pentagon paired with another idiot from teh Foggy Bottom Boys were afraid that if the ARVN had heavy armor and a substantive Air Force of their own, they would not be able to resist invading North Vietnam.

                  If the same idiots existed in the proposed alternate timeline and the ARVN forces were mostly immobile and dependant on USAF air power when the Khmer Rouge started playing, the ARVN may not have had the mobility to invade like the NVA did in OTL.

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                  1. I think you meant to say the “ARVN heavy units” *cough*.

                    Unless there was an East German heavy unit fighting in support of the South that I was unaware of? :P

                    In any case, unfortunately the Republic of Vietnam was doomed. And the worst part of it is that the peace was sabotaged so badly by the US itself that we’ll never know for certain whether the South could have held out on its own with just supply shipments from the US. The Democratic refusal to spend a cent in their defense is absolutely disgusting, especially since it contravened the agreements that we’d signed. In the end, we’re forced to point to the fact that the communist advance was stalled and only made it into Laos (were it remains to this day) and Cambodia (where it doesn’t), but was largely kept out of Thailand, as possibly our biggest strategic “win” of the war. That meant that Malaysia, and more importantly Singapore, also didn’t acquire communist governments.

                    Ironically, people claim that the Vietnam War proved that the domino theory was false. And yet what happened to both of Vietnam’s neighbors?

                    Liked by 1 person

                    1. Well some of the Germans fighting at Dien Bien Phu for the Legion Etrangere were probably from the east, though I doubt they brought any panzers. I am sure they wished they had…

                      Yes, you are correct on my typo. ARVN heavy units. ARVN had some U.S. M48s as their heaviest tank and used them until they were dead or out of ammunition against way more NVA T-54s (Chinese Type 59s).

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                    2. And to your Domino Theory point, Vietnam may be nominally communist still, though of the “please build another shoe factory here to employ the locals, foreign capitalist oppressor” variety, but it’s definitely not in the club with China. Vietnam’s fraternal socialist brotherhood thing with The Middle Kingdom during the wars with first France and then the U.S. was a strange bedfellows arrangement if ever there was one.

                      Vietnam is very aware that they are still looked at in some Beijing circles as a wayward Middle Kingdom province that has temporarily evaded the Throne of Heaven’s rule…since 1428. And there are Vietnamese that still hold grudges from the earlier period of Chinese rule that ended in 939AD.

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            2. My favorite bit of historical hypotheticals comes from the game Chrononauts, where each player is a time traveler from a different version of the future, and is trying to change key points in history to make the timeline line up with their own “past” so that their home future will exist and they can go home. (The premise works when there’s only one time traveler but collapses when there’s more than one, so don’t think too hard about it). One of the time travelers you can play as is a sentient cockroach who evolved after the humans wiped themselves out with a nuclear exchange in 1962. (Again, you just have to go with the premise, and not think too hard about how many people would survive even a massive nuclear exchange between the USA and USSR, and how “nuclear winter” has been proven false, as far as it is possible to prove false something that has never happened).

              The key event that that player is trying to change, in order to make his preferred version of history come out, is the Pearl Harbor attack. The logic goes like this: Japan attacks America, America gets involved in the war, ends up nuking Japan. The world sees how much devastation nuclear weapons can cause, and so even when the USA and USSR are sitting on nuclear arsenals pointed at each other, everyone hesitates to actually use them. No Pearl Harbor leads to no nukes dropped on Japan, so in 1962 nobody has seen nukes actually used on a city. And so Khrushchev actually orders a launch instead of just threatening one, and the world doesn’t survive the nuclear war that ensues.

              My second favorite historical hypothetical involves time travelers assassinating Hitler early in WW2 (or shortly before), resulting in someone actually competent being in charge. Meaning the German army encircling Dunkirk is not ordered to wait, a massive amount of the British army ends up captured, and Germany wins the war in Europe before the US really has time to get involved. Then another time traveler gets sent back to protect Hitler. (Talk about the world’s worst job).

              Liked by 1 person

              1. Check out this Wikipedia article about Soviet vice-admiral Arkhipov’s Oct 1962 refusal to use a nuclear weapon during the Cuban missile crisis — an act he was fully authorized to do by Soviet authorities. It wasn’t Krushchev who was responsible for not turning the Crisis nuclear, it was Arkhipov. That refusal to launch was completely unknown to the world until 1992, and by then no one really cared much.

                Vasily Arkhipov – Wikipedia

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              2. I’ve read at least one, and I think several, short stories about the naive new Time Police Academy grad who gets sent as a rookie to join the unlucky officers on the most crap detail in the Time Police: Stopping every inventor who puts together a Time Machine and immediately jumps back to try and kill Hitler.

                There’s basically an entire “stop another guy trying to kill Hitler” division because there’s so much work. And inevitably some succeed, so they have the more senior officers who go back further and fix everything. Over and over again.

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                1. Everyone wants to kill Hitler. Nobody wants to slip the headmaster a few marks to let young Adolf into art school.

                  Even without instruction, Adolf was a better artist than most of the school’s alumni; good enough to pay for his food and lodging from selling his artwork. I’d love to have his famous painting of Castle Neuschwanstein…

                  …or simply remove the National Socialist pamphlets from the hospital where he was recovering from being temporarily blinded by war gas in WWI. He was bored and apparently there wasn’t much in the way of reading material.

                  But no, murder always seems to be the first choice, preferably when he was an innocent child. [shrug] That’s compassion for you, I guess.

                  Liked by 3 people

                  1. Heh. Pull all the National Socialists pamphlets, and stock all the recovery hospitals up with translations of Thomas Payne and The Federalist Papers, and maybe something based on Adam Smith “The Wealth of Nations”.

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                  3. I’ve heard people in alternative histories recommending that AH emigrate to America where he could be a painter or an architectural rendering artist, or even one of the publisher/editors in Science fiction in the twenties-thirties.

                    I do think he would have done well to become an artist for various architects, drawing elevations and renderings for them, so by 1935 he could have been a famous architect himself.

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                    1. There’s at least one science fiction story in which he does emigrate to the US. However, the story apparently (I haven’t read it myself) focuses on a (middling, iirc) science fiction novel that he writes that incorporates many of the same elements that animated his historical political beliefs. A shame, as I think it would be more interesting to speculate on how time in the US might have shaped his views (particularly depending on whether he arrived before or after World War I).

                      In the real world, his widowed mother, who he was very close to, died when he was about 18. His only surviving immediate family member was his remaining sister. He appears to have had a great deal of affection for both his mother and his sister, and funds appear to have been tight for the siblings after his mother’s death. I suspect that any plan to bring him to the US would also need to take his sister into account, as I doubt that he would have left her behind without some means of assuring her livelihood.

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                    3. I prefer a scenario in which AH decides to emigrate, then falls off the gangway and is smeared into goo between the lighter and the pier. His evil was inherent, not imposed.

                      But there would have been another scumbag to replace him. It began as a movement, not a cult of personality.

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                    4. I’ve read an artist giving some background to his artistic world making Hitler a minor artist of the Brandywine school.

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                2. Oh, and if you read about the parties who were competing with the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, it’s pretty obvious that the Nazis weren’t the worst of the lot. Maybe not the best choice for Germany and the world, but *definitely* not the worst.

                  But none of the “better” options had any real chance of getting into power, and the NSDAP had *massive* financial backing from Germany’s “movers and shakers”.

                  Liked by 2 people

                  1. Read a short story where the “Time Police” main frustration was keeping Hitler’s not only alive, but his timeline intact. Because it was the best of the worst timelines.

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                    1. I’m always amused by people who claim that the battles between the Communists and the NSDAP prove that the latter were “right wing.”

                      The fact of the matter is that there were a number of “Progressive” factions fighting each other for dominance, to be the leader of the Left in Germany. The National Socialists came out on top. They may not have been the worst, but there was no “best.”

                      People who think that Communists are a single bloc need to be reminded that the PRC was the primary supporter of North Viet Nam in 1975, but less than four years later they were are war against each other (and the ChiComs LOST the only war they’ve ever fought, which encourages those of us who support a free and independent Taiwan).

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                    2. Or that the PLA entered Vietnam to save Pol Pot from Vietnam’s invasion of Cambodia. And the reason why Vietnam went into Cambodia is because the Khmer Rouge had been launching numerous provocation attacks against their “fellow” communists along the shared southern border (which is yet another blot against Pol Pot; how *STUPID* and *ARROGANT* do you have to be to provoke the most battle-hardened, veteran army in the *region*, which just finished a long reunification war?).

                      Or the in-fighting amongst the “Republicans” during the Spanish Civil War.

                      Also, the PLA has fought in two wars against foreign countries (not counting WW2, which they largely sat out). There was the invasion of Vietnam, and the Korean War. At least in the Korean War, they were able to pull off a stalemate. Their invasion of Vietnam was an absolute disaster for them.

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                3. In my one time travel story of the kind, Dave Drake is given the detail of trying to stop rookies from going out of the way to protect Shakespeare. Shakespeare has been killed so many times he’s a robot.

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              3.  the Pearl Harbor attack. 

                One scenario I came up with some years ago: the Alaska Purchase didn’t happen. (and it shouldn’t have; in this timeline, it only passed by a series of unlikely flukes)

                So, for most things, not much difference to the timeline until after WWII. And then you have nuclear-armed Soviet bombers sitting on bases in Novy Archangelsk and Baranov, with all of North America inside their flight range.

                It would have been a *very* different Cold War. And McCarthy might not have been written off as a crank…

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        3. Simple. The vast majority of abortions in the US were and are to “Progressives” rather than conservatives.

          There were a LOT of abortions over the years. A lot of children not born to be raised in “liberal” homes. Millions of “Progressive” voters between 18 and 44 who simply didn’t exist when a million votes would have made the difference.

          Meanwhile, a lot of unborn children became BORN children, in families that voted for Rs instead of Ds, who DID grow up to cast ballots. Millions of them, when a million votes DID make the difference.

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          1. But Roe v Wade wouldn’t have banned abortion across the country, it just would have let a Texas law stand (and other states would have followed suit). There would still have been states where abortion was legal, and people would have gone there to get abortions. Just as there were states where gambling was legal, and so people flocked to Nevada to gamble away their money in Las Vegas. (I am NOT saying that gambling is as bad as abortion. Though I am also NOT saying that I think gambling is a good idea. It’s a bad idea for most people, and for some people it’s a terrible idea).

            And so the net effect would still have happened: the conservative states would still not have had those children born into Democrat households, because by and large, those Democrats would have moved somewhere else anyway. Possibly less so, because some of those Democrats would have not moved (job, couldn’t afford it, whatever reason), and some of those who didn’t move would not choose to get an illegal abortion. So that means some more children born to Democrat-leaning households. But not millions; I think you’re greatly overestimating the effect.

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            1. Dunno how old you are; I was there to watch it happen. It was like a dam breaking. It went from a quiet “I know someone who can help you” to “Sanger’s Slice-and-Dice A-Go-Go” in a matter of months. They did everything but put up Bullwinkle lights.

              And where did the eugenicists put their clinics? They were heavily loaded toward Democratic-leaning areas, enough so that it was a joke — there were no abortion mills in any voting precinct that had gone for Nixon or Ford. I also noticed that they were heavily loaded toward black neighborhoods, with only one in a heavily Latino (and Democrat) area.

              Polls have consistently showed that Republican women OPPOSE legalized abortion by about 70%, while Democrat women FAVOR legalized abortion by about 85%. Dems have been campaigning on this issue for 50 years, it’s always been a winner for them. In such an environment, who could believe that this wouldn’t mean that the vast majority of the millions of abortions were for Democrats?

              Children of “Progressives” tend to vote Democrat, straight-ticket. If only a small fraction of those children who never were had been allowed to live, they would have been millions more Dems voting since the 1990s.

              A cynic would suggest that the Dems are promoting illegal voting to replace those lost voters . . .

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          3. Don’t bet on that. We’ve hit the point a lot of the children of liberals grow up conservatives, but the other used to be normal.
            And Obama’s mother would never have aborted him.

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            1. Obama’s mother apparently TRIED to abort him, according to some of the people she was hanging out with. But she had only recently arrived in Hawai’i, her mother was an “Establishment” banking exec, and nobody trusted her enough to refer her to an abortionist (abortion was a felony in Hawai’i at the time). In her later years, she was a pro-abortion activist, until that became a hindrance to his political career.

              She was the “poster child” for legalized abortion: underage (17), unmarried and with no prospect of a long-term relationship with the father, and carrying a mixed-race child, who would force a “lifestyle change” that she “wasn’t ready for.”

              Where do you think he got that “cursed with a baby” line?

              As soon as she could, she farmed him out to her mother, in favor of her other children. For the rest of her life, she treated him like a nephew rather than as a son.

              I contrast that with Ariane, the prettiest, smartest and classiest girl in school, who got pregnant a few months after Roe v. Wade. She was practically inundated by flyers for abortion mills — some even gave bus routes and schedules, for girls who wanted to skip a day of school so their parents wouldn’t find out. Her friends campaigned hard, because this would change her life so much.

              The last time I saw her, she was pushing a stroller, a proud and happy young, single mother.

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                1. I’m going on the Official Truth. In this case, it seems to be partly correct.

                  There seems to be enough evidence that he was Stanley Ann Dunham’s child, based on events later in his life. There seems to be enough evidence that he was Barack Obama’s son, based on the couple of visits that he made to Punahou School while Barry was a student (where classmates called him “Okole” for various reasons).

                  There is NOT sufficient evidence that he was born in Hawai’i, so I am open to suggestion on this. The Births post in the paper is not true evidence — it was (and may still be) common for children born outside of the islands to be reported, for the social aspects involved with family members who are there. One friend of mine was born on the 9th Island — NEVADA — back in the 1980s and her birth was reported in the Star-Bulletin. There have been birth certificates issued in Hawai’i for people born outside of the islands (or even the country, such as that for Sun Yat Sen), especially back in Territorial days.

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                  1. No, there is …. um…. there are discrepancies that show at the very least he could not be his father. So….. Any comments from that nest of red diaper babies are suspect.

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                2. As far as what his mother tried to do, I’m backing that on comments made by some of Stanley Ann’s contemporaries (reported during his Senate run), and by observation of her actions later in life.

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    2. I went to school with one of them. College, where only the top half of one percent of students made it. He was in French/Latin and linguistics, so we had limited classes together. But he had top grades for his section. And ALWAYS a group of girls around him, lighting his cigarette, pushing his wheel chair.
      I suspect he’s married and has children. Pfui.

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    3. Reminds me of the vile “Wrongful Life” case that was decided a few decades back.

      It’s also worth noting that there are a number of people who suffered terrible accidents that left them severely restricted (and thus they are fully aware of what was taken from them) who still don’t wish to be euthanized. Rather, they see their survival as a blessing, and something to take full advantage of even if life is now much more difficult than it used to be.

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      1. I rather suspect that the only people who want to die (as opposed to getting pushed into agreeing to be euthanized) are people who, for one reason or another (accident, disease, whatever) are in constant pain that will never go away for the rest of their lives. And even then, it’s not so much “I want to die” as “I want the pain to stop, and this is the only way”. (And even then, some people are brave enough to carry through regardless, and I salute them.)

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  16. (hell he might even grow into a communist) but definitely human.

    Now wait a minute! Have you forgotten the words of Rafal Gan-Ganowicz?

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    1. Yikes! I had the opposite experience. When I was an adult, Mom told me that I was born prematurely, by a few years. (The diaphragm slipped.) She had no regrets that I could ever see. (She would have liked a daughter, instead I was the third and last son.)

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        1. I think EVERY mom blames the dad at some point. After all, he WAS there . . . ;)

          Bill Cosby mentioned that his wife was in labor and yelled “YOU did this to me!!!”

          Myself, I’m the first of three live births of a mother who also had three late-term miscarriages. I don’t know what the order was, whether they were ahead of me or after me, but I’m pretty sure that at least one came sometime around the last live birth, because my mother’s father more or less threatened my dad into getting a vasectomy.

          I almost died from pneumonia at the age of two, and my mother’s sister told her that she should have let me die. So I kinda know how you feel.

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          1. There’s even a Calvin and Hobbes strip in which (after another stressful day of Calvin) Calvin’s Mother blames Calvin’s Dad for contributing the Y chromosome. :P

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      1. Heh.

        This is why I say, spite is not a way to live your life. But if you need it long enough to survive, use it.

        I am so, so grateful there were books with heroes in the house. If my parents had known how much those improve the will to live, I’m sure they would have been dumped.

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  18. Arg, nice long comment and it went into moderation. It was a useful one, too. Could someone rescue it? moderation-hash=2ff70bce08d4a2aad3c40dbf02491bdd in case that helps fish it out.

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  19. When I studied anthropology, I learned that an absolute taboo in easier to enforce than a partial taboo. Given how legalized euthanasia has galloped from the terminally ill to depressed teenagers to toddlers in Europe; I think there should be an absolute taboo on euthanasia for humans.

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    1. “When I studied anthropology, I learned that an absolute taboo in easier to enforce than a partial taboo.”

      …that explains a lot of politics and culture.

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    2. “in Europe” — Not just Europe. Recent news was that Medical Assistance in Dying is now the 5th largest cause of death in Canada. I bought a US passport so I could visit relatives in Canada, but have decided not to visit that benighted realm due to MAID — I’m 79 and 1/2 years old.

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      1. PART of the reason to leave my beloved Colorado is that they have an euthanasia law so egregious the AMA thinks it’s too extreme. And my health throws regular unexplainable wobblers. We still don’t know why I “died” for a couple of minutes in the shower ten years ago.

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        1. Maybe you really did die, and this is just an alternate reality created to deal with it. Some days I get up and think I’m in someone else’s alternate reality. That runs in our native American family, where most everyone believes there is no difference between what we call life, what we call death, and what we call eternity: all are here together at this same instant.

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          1. Neither here nor there: when I was 9 I got carried away coasting down hill on my bicycle, ran a stop sign that I knew perfectly well was there, got hit by a truck and got knocked off my bike onto the roadside grass. All I had was a abrasion on my wrist, a dent on my rear bike fender, and the appalling realization I could do some that stupid, knowing it was stupid at the time, and doing it anyway. I never told mom.

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            1. My mom, once…. 20? years ago came downstairs late at night during one of my visits and found my brother and I in the kitchen talking about all the times we should LOGICALLY have been killed. She said “I don’t need to know this” and walked out. :D

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  20. Pingback: Instapundit » Blog Archive » WHO DIED AND MADE WOMEN G-D?  The Mommy Standard.

  22. In wiser times, selective, applied hypocrisy was one of the lubricants that made life bearable for most folks. It was the pressure valve.

    As Sarah relates, abortion was categorically illegal in the Portugal of her youth, but it was nevertheless a common contraceptive strategy. The high cost, legally and monetarily, reduced the demand.

    In these benighted times, what used to be tacit must now be explicit and public.

    I am quite certain that sexually confused youngsters in most rural American settings were treated protectively and gently. (Think about how Andy Taylor would deal with the local tomboy.) Little Tommy is “different,” everybody knows it and everybody tolerates and watches out for her. Probably live out his/her life with a houseful of cats.

    Today, he must celebrate every increasingly rarified niche difference in the pursuit of “perfect” cosmic justice. Of course, this perfection comes at the expense of normies, who are now to be considered as the aberrants. (Harrison Bergeron only scratched the surface of the mischevious possibilities.

    I think that Perfectionism is the 8th mortal sin. (Maybe a subbranch of Pride … ) Instead of trying our best within the limits of our humanity we seem to be demanding our own comfort and pleasure as a matter of right.

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      1. If you like your delusions, you can keep your delusions. But I don’t have to pander to them. A dude in a dress is still a dude, and will be addressed as such.

        I am polite to the several gender-cosplayers I’ve known. I do not address that particular issue at all, and they are smart enough to do the same. But they are NOT activists.

        Personally, I would be interested in seeing a “Trans League” for various sports. There is a wide range of physical differences among the cosplayers, so you can imagine that one who had chemical experiments done starting at 14 might have vastly different capabilities than one who got sliced and diced at 22. Put together a couple of teams with such differences, pit them against each other, and WHO KNOWS what would happen? It would be a lot harder to predict than current sports leagues, where differences are incremental at best.

        For a league theme song, they could use Leslie Fish’s “Better Than Who?”

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          1. It was not aimed at him (her? Dunno, don’t care), I was referring to the “they” who are demanding that we pander to them. The cosplayers are the most visible of the lot.

            Sorry to have not made myself clear.

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          2. I was trying to make a more general statement , definitely not apologizing for infanticide or anything like that. The Clancy case and the reaction to it is topsy turvy.

            I see the “feminist” demand for a carve out for postpartum crazed mommies to be the growth tip of a new set of demands requiring accomodation.

            We try to legislate everything, but the devil, inhabiting the details, finds a way to turn attempts at solutions into even worse problems.

            I long for common sense benign neglect, not every more finely honed laws.

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    2. “Little Tommy is “different,” everybody knows it and everybody tolerates and watches out for her. Probably live out his/her life with a houseful of cats.” A tomboy doesn’t always turn out that. Our class’s self-described tomboy grew up and became senior class homecoming queen and a fully-fledged woman by any reasonable standard. Still beloved by most if not all her classmates as she is about to turn 80.

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      1. As I was saying. For me it resolved around fourteen. I.e. Mrs. Hormones came calling.
        What remains: I tend to have an obsession with politics (the protect my home instinct), I do my own honey dos by and large, and I tend to forget to dress fancy unless it’s a special occasion. (Okay, I’m engineer-minded.)
        All of these are useful since I married the proverbial absent minded mathematician who lives largely in his own head. (The exception to honey dos is anything tech. He does that.)

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      2. Depending on what context you would meet me, I would have been considered a tomboy or girly girl. Went from muddy boots to long formal dress depending on context. I was not even living on a farm. Of coarse I was forced into dress or skirt for school (before pant accepted, until HS). I was not particularly athletic in gym either. Did not have to be to be hunting, fishing, or camping. Do I wear a house dress or skirt now? Not unless it is a funeral, wedding, or other event where it is expected. My legs get cold. Does not make me a tomboy.

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    1. True, but the two biggest racists of WW2 (consider: Hitler shook Jesse Owens’ hand) were so very, very enthusiastic about them.

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  24. Society as a whole held that human life was precious and not at the whim of either of its creators, father or mother.

    One of the reason Christianity is different is because – though we say the two humans involved in the “creative” act are responsible for their actions, and therefore responsible for the child – the father and mother are not the Creator of that child. God is its Creator, and, therefore, you have no right to take its life without it doing something to forfeit that life. If you take someone’s life, you have to answer to the creator for it.

    Genesis 9:5-7:

    “And for your lifeblood I will require a reckoning: from every beast I will require it and from man. From his fellow man I will require a reckoning for the life of man.

    “Whoever sheds the blood of man,
        by man shall his blood be shed,
    for God made man in his own image.

    And you, be fruitful and multiply, increase greatly on the earth and multiply in it.”

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  25. Also, I once had someone make the one cogent argument against a pure right-to-life argument that isn’t simply “but I don’t wanna”: If you birth a severely disabled child (mind or body), who are you burdening after you. In the normal fashion of things, children live past their parents’ demise. If your child will be so disabled that they will require care their whole lives, and they live past your time, will you end up burdening someone else with their care who did not want the responsibility?

    I have good answers to that. But it is, I think, one of the two questions pro-lifers need to be able to answer well when they advocate in real situations, not just hypotheticals. (The other is “Do you care about anything except that baby being born? What about the mother, father, siblings, etc.?”)

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    1. Examples I know of.

      Cousin born spina bifida. Doctors told aunt and uncle to say goodbye. They had to force the doctors to clean her up. She survived, and thrived, until age 13 (another shunt failure, died in the OR). Older sister did not understand until later why there was suddenly “more money available.” Same aunt and uncle went on to adopt a medically challenging child (who is married, but his children are suffering from some genetic maladies).

      Uncle started having seizures age 3. He eventually ended up in a nursing home facility, where he died a few months after grandma.

      Another cousin. Do not know why, is in assisted living, on the state/federal dime. The public entities have no claim on her parent’s estate on her behalf. What put her there happened well into adulthood.

      Friend’s youngest has down’s syndrome. They have provided for his care past when they can. Friends are not mid-70s. Youngest custody was just legally transferred to an older sibling. What financial arrangements beyond that I do not know.

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      1. Down’s Syndrome has become a greater burden on the parents than it once was. It used to be that life expectancy was 20-30 years as various physical failings would shorten their lives. This was sad but it meant most parents could care for their children for most of their life. But those born in the 70’s late 60’s and forwards got MUCH better treatment as they were young (we got better at fixing their issues) and so now are well into their 50’sand even early 60’s. But Down’s syndrome seems to happen more often with OLDER parents (not always, I know one couple whose first child with mom 19 and husband not much older was a down’s girl; second children were a pair of twins perfectly normal) in their 30’s and even ’40s. That means they are in their ’80s with a child that may still need care. Down’s people are highly variable. Many operate at young teen to pre teen abilities, but others may operate at barely kindergarten levels. They NEED care and their parents themselves may need care. I am thankful that I was not faced with this. I am by belief and temperament, a minarchist Libertarian. But here I see a place where some aid, even societal/governmental, would be appropriate. Some may say that these Down’s folk are a burden on society, but given their disposition and attitude of most of the ones I’ve met in my 65+ years I’ll take any of them over 95%+ of the liberal types I’ve dealt with in my life. Most are a joy and a blessing to interact with which I often cannot say for the liberal scolds.

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        1. These were college friends. Stayed in contact, mostly Christmas letters, until last few years. I knew about the downs syndrome son, slightly younger than our son. Which would have put the parents in their early 40s/late 30s. The son has survived cancer. Functional enough to hold down a job. With change of residence, at a grocery store. I have recontacted via FB. Not that either post much more than I do (which is rare).

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      1. Concur. And I said I had answers to it. But it was one of the few legitimate considerations I had ever heard brought up. If you’re a nihilist/utilitarian/objectivist, the answer is obvious (abort); if you’re a Christian (or others) the answer is also obvious (plan ahead, in love).

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  26. Okay, I’m going to take the very hard-nosed utilitarian position here. We’ve decided that some lives don’t matter as much as others. We’ve decided that killing some people isn’t really killing because they aren’t people. Fine. Not very different from most of human history.

    But then . . . why on Earth do we spare dangerous mad people, and take care of them and try to fix them? Seems to me if a third-trimester baby can be done away with for the crime of being inconvenient, then Mrs. Clancy should be properly euthanized. She is broken in mind and body and can contribute nothing to society. If we truly believe that lives matter only as far as they are valuable to others, then she really should be at the head of the line for removal.

    And yet her supporters insist the opposite . . .

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    1. “She is broken in mind and body and can contribute nothing to society. ” At the moment she is broken. None, not even an expert, can predict her changing in the future. The only way I would believe anyone’s predictions is after they document they can reliable predict tomorrow’s winning lottery numbers.

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  27. I am a retired Quality Engineer and so I am a data hoarder.I don’t keep all of Sarah’s articles, but I kept this one.Very very useful.I am also a follower of the way of Christ and the first thing we were told to do when created was to be fruitful, and multiply … Difficult to do when, as a populace, we have decided to kill large portions before they are born.

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    1. “the first thing we were told to do when created was to be fruitful, and multiply” that commandment is the one most popularly obeyed by humanity at large, with some exceptions as we have been discussing here.

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  28. Somewhere along the way, the medical industry started treating pregnancy like a disease instead of a natural condition.

    Of course, there is obviously some profit motive as well. It’s easy to find charts as to how much checkup and delivery costs have increased over the last 75 years.

    Having your baby at home isn’t a crime *yet*. And a lot of states really don’t live midwifery at all.

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      1. Massively so. The head pastor at my church and his wife just adopted the most beautiful baby girl. Let us just say there is no question on sight of her being adopted. I cannot think of the hoops they must have had to jump through to pull that off, and this is the main pastor of a thriving congregation in a wealthy area!

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          1. Difficult and expensive.

            Sister* and BIL adopted their eldest after being told there was no way she could have children and failing IVF (also expensive). They got off cheap. $15k private placement through Open Adoption™️.

            A few years later, co-worker and his wife adopted, through the State of Washington two children from foster care. $30k – each.

            Do not know what it cost for friends to adopt their youngest, a foster son. I suspect not as much even though decades after the two examples. Boy and his half-sister were removed from the mother who lost her rights. Friends went to adopt both, but the girls bio-father was found (did not know she existed) and wanted custody. Boy’s bio-father signed away rights. Intention was to keep the two kids in touch as they grew up. Do not know if that happened or not. We do ask about the boy (now in HS), but like we do regarding the the two much older kids and their lives.

            Timing? First was late ’80s. Second was early/mid-’90s. Third was ’10s.

            We attended a few seminars, get together events, for local Open Adoption™️organization. Even got paperwork and had it all filled out. But never turned it in. I got pregnant. Was hoping for another miracle, which did not happen.

            (*) Same sister & BIL who later had 5 pregnancies, three live births (other two ectopic). Medically her tubes were blocked due to severe endometriosis. Um, adhered to her ovaries, which the tests, then could not report.

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  30. Pretty much every human society has seen pregnancy as being a situation of unique danger as well as opportunity, possibly involving the entire family being equally endangered physically, mentally, religiously, and even magically.

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  32. HS friend of mine has been known to complain when his wife is knowing the unknowable again – what he calls “witchy stuff” – then shrugs with a “whatcha gonna do?” look on his face.

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