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Utah: Now you can go to jail for having a miscarriage!
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A decent human would do what's right and face the legal penalty.... wow, that sounds like Old South segregationist talk when I type it out like that but, damn!, I wouldn't serve a woman who's preggers hard liquors and I wouldn't let her participate in a roller derby.
... an all preggers roller derby does sound hot, though.
Yep!
That's what "can be by law" means.
http://troublethinking.wordpress.com (Updated Wed) http://twitter.com/#!/Durandal4532
...what?
ok, first para is basically incorrect and shows you know nothing about those issues beyond comments read in passing here (Hint: not sufficient basis for a critique) and second para is.... what? What? where did that even come from?
Ooooh, nice. The Cat Hates Men. Nuanced!
You uhhhh... you aren't making any sense. I never made any of the claims in this little string of fucking crazy you call a sentence. FYI, I was referencing historical protests against similarly intrusive laws. I don't recall if anything was actually mailed to the state rep in VA who tried to make miscarriage a more severe felony than grand theft auto - probably not since it's illegal to mail biohazards like that anyway - but there was a lot of talk about it and it rather wigged the poor fellow out.
Can you be less insane please
its disruptive and doesn't contribute anything to the thread
you're also kind of embarrassing yourself here
you just want attention and this is the last time I'm giving it to you, since it appears that once you get it, you can't even handle it.
I don't know how the fuck you got that out of "we're not like Utah", but I applaud your ability to overextrapolate. You could take this shit to the Moon!
I was stating that our legislatures have some basic standards about how we write laws, and even though there's a streak of idiot social conservatism among the current government, we have a strong enough democracy that it won't ride roughshod over the people's wishes.
Unlike Utah, where you're at the mercy of one dude who doesn't even seem to have been elected off his own bat, if I'm reading earlier comments correctly.
So, like, neener.
Anything else is you projecting your personal issues on to me, as evidenced by your ludicrous claim that I hate men because I stick up for women's rights, along with your inference that defending my own interests is somehow pathological. Poor show, fellow.
Its not funny, especially in the context of emememmemememems habit of posting inflammatory nonsense for attention.
Its kind of amazing how rabid you're all being in here, given that I'd made all of two posts, neither directly addressing the law in question since it had all been said, before getting sick of his bullshit behaviour and calling him out. Get some perspective.
edit: having seen Will's post and defended myself from Teh Crazie adequately, I'll leave it at that.
I guess the law doesn't make a distinction between the two in any way. Not that that matters at all.
I don't know if thats entirely accurate. I'm pretty sure washington state at least has laws that protect pregnant women from losing their jobs due to their pregnancies even though we are an at will state for employment.
Or is that even a thing. I might have just made that up, I dunno.
That one is hard to say because its probably about liability/an honest desire not to injure the unborn.
It would be the same as putting a sign in the window that read "No Chinese". The "private business so we can do what we want" thing only goes so far.
:^:
Flipping around on google, other people have suggested it's a city's bylaws that determine who gets service and who gets the door. I don't know if this is city by city or state by state and Title 2 of the Civil Rights Act isn't too clear on what a bar is. Other posters say an upscale restaurant can turn men away for not wearing a necktie as long as a sign is clearly posted so I'm pretty sure a bartender with a sign posted can refuse to serve a pregnant woman and not be sued.
I think, in the case of bars and women who are preggers going to them, it'd soften the blow depending on how the bartenders handle it. If it's expressed as "I don't think this is a good idea for you" after a couple of drinks, I think that's fairly reasonable.
If a pregnant woman is there to get smashed, there's a line being crossed on her part. I hate to say it, but not everyone knows how to be responsible for themselves and they need others there to be responsible for them. But with pregnant women, the issue isn't about them, it's about the unborn child. Heavy drinking damaging the unborn child isn't a fucking myth, it's a thing we know.
I mean come on, we've seen the signs at theme parks outside rides. There's health reasons for people to be turned away from leisurely activity.
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http://www.hulu.com/watch/40212/the-simpsons-sip-of-alcohol
And the two situations aren't remotely similar.
You can always put on a tie (or take off a tie). Being tie-less is not an immutable or fundamental characteristic of who you are as a person. Race, gender, sexuality and being pregnant, among others, are.
Pretty sure only a man would do that.
Then on to the next obvious question: Would a judge side with the pregnant woman in a discrimination case like that? The bartender tells his/her side of the story and even Her Honor Libby McLiberalson would dismiss the suit.
That's like saying it's okay to deny a woman access to Plan B because you don't want the widdle baby to die. It's not the bartender's problem that the woman chooses to drink while pregnant.
maybe if you have to wear it for almost ten months, and it fucks with your hormones, and bone structure, and endangers your life
must be a very pretty tie though
Is this irony? Because denying a woman access to medicine is nowhere similar to denying a woman access to mojitos.
Maddie: "I am not!"
Riley: "You're a marsupial!"
Maddie: "I am a placental mammal!"
What I'm trying to get across is that it's her body, her choice. The bartender can try to talk her out of it, but it's not his place to deny service just because she's pregnant.
And this is completely different from abortion in that carrying a child to term currently is a choice, and will be as long as the crazies don't get their way. If drinking is that important to you, you don't have to stay pregnant. To create a tortured metaphor, it's kinda like how you're allowed to drink, and you're allowed to drive, but you're not supposed to do both at the same time because it puts others in danger.
Although if the science says X thing is bad during certain periods but not others, obviously that should be taken into account.
And then there's the really silly stuff, like the persistent belief that pregnant women shouldn't exercise in case their uterus falls out or something. People really do think that, and from time to time you'll hear about someone freaking out at a woman for breaking a sweat.
In the end, I don't believe pregnant women should be subject to any more restrictions than anyone else. If smoking and drinking are that harmful for a person, ban them for everyone, don't suddenly act all concerned over the health of others just because there's a fetus in the picture. Smoking and drinking hurt real live people all the time, take care of them first.
If you don't like destruction derby hypotheticals, think of some other thrilling-yet-dangerous thing like snorting cocaine or whatever. The question is still how much do you involve yourself?
Many municipalities ban smoking in pretty much any enclosed space where it's likely to harm another person...in some areas I believe this even includes personal spaces (such as cars or homes) when children are present. We also ban performing most activities while drunk that might harm others, the most obvious being driving.
In other words, society (at least coastal American society) in general goes out of its way to ensure that the only people physically harmed by smoking and drinking are the people making the conscious choice to smoke or drink.
I also cannot believe you want to compare drinking while pregnant to domestic violence that occurs during a pregnancy. First, the latter involves a violent crime...so yeah, we do make that illegal. And preventing this harm (rather than attempting to punish after the fact)? Do you really want to suggest that a restriction on drinking while pregnant is as unreasonable as a restriction from being near any family members while pregnant? Because yeah, that makes sense.
Drinking while pregnant can cause permanent harm to another human being. So yeah, sorry, but it makes sense to regulate it. Don't like the restriction? Feel free to head on down and get yourself an abortion...then booze it up all you'd like. Problem. Solved.
Bottom line: the two things most likely to kill or injure a pregnant woman, by a massive margin, are a) cars and b) her partner, so unless you handle those first you're really just rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic. Except that you're actually on dry land and perfectly safe, since there is no crisis of harebrained women endangering their pregnancies routinely.
Oh come on Cat, at least let the fetus grow into a young adult to decide to drink / smoke, rather than have it imposed on them. I'm not trying to be sarcastic or anything with that, I'm dead serious. If a woman gets pregnant, knowing what it entails, she should be prepared to give up some reasonable things for 9 months. If she can't restrain herself for 9 months of some things, I don't think 18 years of mothering a child is something she's gonna be hip on.
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Super, then the problem's solved! Why do we need more rules?
(I kind of love it when I'm the one advocating the conservative viewpoint, by the way. The irony, its delicious!)
She doesn't have to keep the baby. If she drinks like crazy and the baby is born a preemie with one arm, she can decide to give it up for adoption and let the state take care of it. Good luck, kid!
Right, so because we cannot eliminate the greatest risk due to it being infeasible, we shouldn't eliminate those risks that can be addressed without bringing society to a standstill? Because cars are more dangerous than drinking alcohol, and because we cannot possibly afford the kind of economic impact that banning pregnant women from cars would bring (and I agree), we shouldn't bother to address what is basically an entirely frivolous activity like getting drunk in the same circumstance?
A is more dangerous, and we cannot feasibly ban A because it has other greater benefits, thus we should not bother to worry ourselves about B?
I'll have to remember that one for the next gun control thread.
God damn it.
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You have to prove that its significantly harmful before you can make this argument, though. Crack cocaine, sure! Except its already illegal to take it. Smoking, maybe, but is it the nicotine or all the other crap in a cigarette? What if you're trying to quit and using patches or some other medication? Drinking? No proof that its harmful past the very early stages of a pregnancy at any but quite high levels, and pregnant women already have a very low drinking rate - certainly much lower than their partners, statistically speaking.
So what you're calling for is effectively a Uterine Alcohol Schedule based on information most women won't have.
GT: batshido Hit me up on ME3.
Again, why do we need more laws? Why laws? Laws are what we're arguing about, not what constitutes proper behaviour. What's to gain overall from getting the state involved, and what are the practicalities of doing so? This is what we're talking about.
I am determined for this not to turn into another kneejerk "ban everything" discussion, as happens so very often in here.
If the fetus dies, who cares? I'm bothered more by dogs being put to sleep than babies dying, as dogs are smarter. And I'm hardly one to be in favor of 'nanny state' (can I use that term without turning in my "Liberal" card?) crap.
But in this case, things seem clear-cut; aborting a fetus harms no-one. Causing that fetus that you intend to carry to term developmental damage that will effect it throughout its life? That's kind of fucked up.
Note that I'm not specifying anything in particular, because I have no clue what is and isn't likely to cause damage (and I'd clarify that it should be based on the probability of causing trouble). And really the solution is more education on the subject, not laws. So maybe I'm arguing pointlessly here.
Tell me more. I'm crossing my fingers for a belly made of bronze, like my dwarf characters in WoW.
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Well, I was assuming that what was to gain was a marginally lower rate of birth defects (something that costs society quite a bit to deal with over the years), and that all we were losing was the occasional impact to liberty of preventing people from drinking when it would harm another (future) human being.
I'm also assuming easy access to abortion, so one can choose to remove that (future) human being.
But looking at OZ's post, I'll admit that I'm really not all that sharp on the actual risks posed by drinking during pregnancy. If the argument is that it's actually not dangerous, so be it. But I was primarily rejecting the "X is more dangerous" argument.
However, at this point I'll admit that I'm neither well versed enough nor do I care enough to continue arguing about it. I'll also say that I can appreciate your concern for individual liberty...I might generally apply it a little more universally, but whatever. Regardless, I may well just be talking out of my ass and I apologize for that.
It's not some womb exposure turned superpower thing. Just statistical analysis that shows drinking outside a specific window isn't a big deal for a pregnancy.
GT: batshido Hit me up on ME3.