Obviously, someone who has desperately tried to get pregnant and now has a seemingly healthy fetus will let absolute strangers determine the outcome of the pregnancy. The only people falling for it are other "pro-lifers" who cannot grasp that it's a straw man argument. Though they are desperately trying to bait pro-choice liberals, all they have succeeded in doing is making the "pro-life" camp look ridiculous. Any person with Google can tell where the Arnolds' views are on this issue and only the most insanely ignorant people would fall for such a straw man argument against being pro-choice.
I would say that the only thing missing is the reality TV series - but I suspect that will be starting soon now that a new Pete Arnold fan page has appeared on Facebook. (Gotta love the t-shirt. He could teach Sarah Palin a thing or two about getting publicity.)
I am shocked and sickened by what people will do for their 15-minutes of fame. That this couple is willing to use Alisha's fetus as a prop in a publicity stunt speaks volumes about their mental state as well as how little they actually care about the well being of their future child, assuming that she really is pregnant.
The following is my exact comment on their site. It is complete with obvious typos which I should have corrected before submitting. Obviously I typed this quickly on my laptop and it's not my most eloquent piece. Still, I hope they think about what they're doing:
Why are you doing this? It is so clearly a pro-life prank that it boggles my mind that you find it clever. The only logical assumption is that you are trying to bait pro-choicers whom you seem to think want everyone to abort. I could explain to you why that opinion has no basis in reality but you seem to be lacking in critical thinking. 1. Assuming that this is truly a pro-life prank, my sincerest thought is that you seek counseling immediately to determine why you are so desperately seeking the limelight as to use a potential child as a publicity stunt. 2. Assuming that you have no real concerns either way about your pregnancy, my sincerest thought is that you seek counseling immediately to determine why you would allow complete strangers and Internet trolls rather than your own family and doctors to decide the outcome of your pregnancy. 3. If you are planning on having a child who will eventually learn that your cared so little as to allow the Internet to vote on his/her existence, my sincerest thought is that you seek counseling immediately. It is also my greatest hope that you put the child up for adoption. No living being should be used as a publicity stunt. Who would want to be born into a family that cares so little about his/her well being. 4. If you are so passive-aggressive that you need to either blame liberals for aborting, for miscarrying, or for carrying to term a baby whom you clearly don't care about, my sincerest hope is that you seek immediately counseling. I'm adamantly pro-choice. In spite of your best efforts, you have proven that liberals such as I care more about the health and well being of your fetus and the child it may become than you do. Actually, it's liberals such as me who want to make certain that you have the right to health care in order to ensure a healthy baby. Someone who wants to have a child and is carrying a healthy fetus would not behave in such away. No matter what your reasoning, this is a shameful and sickening stunt.There should be another option in their poll: Put the child up for adoption and get immediate psychiatric help. I'm adding my own poll, toward the bottom of the page.
(The following is an article-response to a comment which was posted anonymously earlier today. You can see the comment in the comment section at the end of this post, past the poll.)
First, allow me to explain how much I appreciate the courage to post anonymously. It shows you have the conviction to stand by your opinion - kind of like secretly sticking your bumper sticker on another person's car.
Now, I want you to imagine the government tells you that you must donate your blood, bone marrow, or part of your body or your own health in order to save another person. Would you do it? Would you blindly accept it or would you say that only you have the right to determine whom or what can affect your well-being and your health?
Why do you make the exception for pregnancy? In order to do so, you must assume that a potential life has more value than an actual living person.
We don't need to imagine the consequences as we are already seeing them - in places such as Poland, the Philippines and most of Latin America, where pregnant women cannot even get life-saving treatments if that treatment might harm the zygote/embryo/fetus. Naturally, the women die and the unborn become never-born. We've seen, in Chile, where women who have miscarried were denied hospitalization unless they admitted to an abortion, at which point they received a mandatory prison sentence. We have even seen, in this country, a woman who was arrested in Iowa after she fell down some stairs while pregnant. Though she called 911 in order to save her fetus (which was not injured) she was still arrested because a nurse felt that she might have had reasons for wanting an abortion. We have also seen a nun get excommunicated in Arizona for daring to save the life of a woman in a first-trimester pregnancy, whom the doctors felt had an almost 100% chance of dying if she did not have the abortion.
I have the most radical thing to tell you, which you doubtless do not understand: Women matter.
Let that sink in for a moment and contemplate what that means.
No woman, NO WOMAN, ever chooses an abortion without some agonizing decisions, which may not exist in your little world. No woman wants surgery performed on her uterus just for fun.
I have personally seen a friend who had to march past the picket lines in order to end a disastrous pregnancy which was, literally, killing her. Her insurance refused to cover it for medical necessity because she hadn't yet had a heart attack. I knew a woman who had an abortion at age 13 after being raped, repeatedly, by her own father and having gotten an STD. She coped by becoming addicted to drugs which surely would have negatively impacted that pregnancy. One in six women are victims of completed rape in this country. They do actually have the right to determine what happens to their own body and who can use that body. If I cannot order you to give bone marrow to save a life, you certainly cannot order a woman to use all of her own body's resources for 9 months in order to make a potential life, especially when this world is full of throw-away kids who are rotting on the streets, orphanages, foster homes and in families which do not want or may even abuse them.
Getting back to the article. What is sickening about this couple is their willingness to turn what should be a personal decision into a publicity stunt. Assuming the fetus becomes a child, how do you think he or she would feel knowing that: A) It's existence was determined by an Internet vote made entirely by strangers; B) Even though it's mother said she had been trying to get pregnant and had a seemingly healthy fetus, she still decided to weigh the option of an abortion in order to seek publicity; C) Even before it was born, it had been degraded into being a prop for two publicity whores.
Realistically, all of those options are pretty sick. She has made other "pro-lifers" seem utterly ridiculous. You cannot claim a moral high ground if you choose to allow a child to become a side-show freak at the mercy of two people who haven't shown the slightest regard for its well-being.
On one final note regarding your query: Science has never determined at what point, if ever, a zygote,embryo or fetus feels pain. Nothing has determined that these are even remotely self-aware. Compare that to an actual woman. Which do you value more and why?
Assuming you are religious, a bigger question would be why God chose to abort at least three of this woman's previous pregnancies, twice in the last year alone. If you believe in "God's Will", the only assumption could be that He really didn't want this couple to become parents.
I hope she chooses adoption with a loving family.
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Update on 11/24/10: In spite of Pete Arnold's repeated insistence that his site was not a hoax, yesterday he told CNN that it was, in fact, never intended to actually let voters determine whether or not to terminate the pregnancy. In a blatant showing of how badly he needs a dictionary, Pete Arnold said:
"My intent is not to deceive people, but at the same point, I do want people to talk about this. This seemed like a pretty good way to further the discussion, because people don't ever seem to want to talk about it for real if there's no name on it, no Baby Wiggles."
OK, so he doesn't think a hoax is deceptive? Gotcha. He also seems to think that giving the fetus the name "Baby Wiggles" is a way to make it "real." I wonder if any of the prior miscarriages had names? All he has done is prove how little he understands the pro-choice position. As he was still insisting last week that his site was valid and with no agenda, he has also successfully proven that he is a pathological liar who treats both fiction and truth with little respect. To date, he is also insisting that his wife is pro-choice.
According to CNN:
Arnold said that the site has brought the couple about $225 through Google ads but that he's spent $500 on it. On Friday, Arnold had said that the site had made about $40 and that he'd spent $215.Money well spent on a non-deceptive hoax? Depends on how well he is embraced by the wing nuts.
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2 comments:
So it's OK to kill the fetus, in any manner they choose (dismemberment, poisoning, drowning, shot in the heart), but not OK to "use" it to show its humanity?
In other words, they are villains when they "exploit" the fetus for a publicity stunt, but heroes if they kill it slowly and painfully because they have decided they are not ready to raise a child?
I have written my response and posted it in an article, above.
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