Jen Sorensen for March 29, 2011

Soon, you may have to leave to get an abortion. Welcome back, 1959!

So in the land of the free you don’t want anybody to be aware of all of their options? Abortion is not like clipping a hangnail. It should take a bit of thought. Even deleting a file on your computer will get you a message asking if you’re sure.

P2 - looks like he’s whizzin on the tire

I’m with sottwell on this one. I do think it’s sad that this is such a political issue, and I hate the way that the issue of abortion is tied up with all that other garbage conservatives tend to stand for. Outlawing abortion would definitely not solve the problem - but people should at least be informed as to what their decision entails.

Even though I am a Christian, I usually enjoy this comic very much, and the way it points out the absurdities of conservative thinking… but I think this one is unfair.

Information is a terrible thing. If a green liberal says it will save the world at the expense of only the “rich” (someone who earns more than you) or the “dirty corporation” (the company that makes medical supplies for the world), you know you can believe that man who’s mansion leaves a larger carbon footprint than an insulin manufacture. Wood, coal, nuclear, wind, oil, solar. Oh dear, we’re going to kill Mother Earth. Perhaps we should have a world-wide Jonestown to save the 3 toed frogs. Like Mother Earth didn’t change the ecology with each ice age. Like you really have a plan to feed 8 billion without pesticides and tractors. Like any group that says, “tear it down” and has no concrete plan to replace it (Libyan rebels). Find us an alternative before you destroy what took Man millennium to build.

I have yet to meet anyone whose anti-abortion position wasn’t based on their religion, meaning that it is non-rational on the face of it. Even if there are such people, their belief still rests on an acceptance that something growing inside another human has the same moral status as a real, independent human.

A wanted pregnancy is a wonderful event, but an unwanted one is a tragedy for all concerned. Nobody has a right to interfere with the woman’s decision about HER life.

I for one want to leave this country.

That is some well aimed sarcasm!

Try this one on for size. When I went to get a passport application at the Post Office, the lady there asked me where I was going to go. I told her politely that it was of no concern to her and that I really wasn’t sure yet. She frowned and informed me that unless I told her where I intended to go, she didn’t have to give me the paperwork….. I told her “Lemuria.” She said, “Oh, I hear it’s nice there this time of year,” and promptly handed me the application and gave me a big smile. Gee, I love Americans sometimes.

Nice strip, Jen - it hits close to home

Pschearer, I am always happy to agree with you. I weary of the regressives trying to remove a woman’s individual rights.

Abortion is a medical procedure. It should be as permitted–and supported by medical insurance–as any other procedure.

In addition, I have never met a woman who didn’t think very strongly before having an abortion. No one takes it lightly.

Covered by insurance… Nonsense. It’s very easy to avoid getting pregnant. If you can’t be bothered then you better be willing to deal with the consequences. For the record I’m pro-choice.

No form of contraception is foolproof, and many pregnancies happen from rape & molestation.

I’ve been through this once and I am deeply grateful I am too old now to have to worry about being pregnant again. You young ones decided history was boring, it wasn’t worth learning from the past, now you can experience it all over again.

I’m very against abortion because I think it’s as barbaric and outdated foot-binding. Seriously, there are so many preventatives (even “day after pills” that can prevent pregnancy up to three days after the event) that abortion is more a symptom of carelessness, selfishness, and an unwillingness to take responsibility for one’s actions. So I agree that insurance companies shouldn’t support it unless the pregnancy is a life-threatening situation. I firmly believe that abortion should be erased from our culture because it’s simply unnecessary.

Some think driving 100MPH is fun. If they kill someone as a result of their fun, society has something to say. Some people think casual sex is fun. If they kill someone as a result of their fun, should society say something? Either could have taken responsibility for their actions. Neither did. Do you condone the loss of a human being for fun? No religion involved, Thou shalt not kill.

Capulet, I would love to make abortion unnecessary, but I would advise against sitting in judgment over the women who might need abortions for a myriad of reasons.

Of all situations, this one is complex, which is the reason that we must ensure that abortion remains legal and available so that women & girls can make their own decisions over their own bodies and not have children simply because a D. & C. is prohibitively expensive or prohibitively distant.

Brian - Still not working. Condoms are significantly cheaper than medical procedures. If you don’t have money for those, there is nothig cheaper than a little self-control. The only thing rape and molestation victims have to do is walk into the local ER and ask for help - they don’t even have to give their names or file a police report if they’re frightened. So, no, there are really no excuses.

So, Capulet, you would support free morning-after pills and any abortion services required by victims of rape or molestation?

In addition, condoms break, slip off, & fail. Thus, abortions are occasionally needed even when a condom is employed. Why can’t medical insurance pay for those abortions, just as it would pay for other medical procedures?

Morning-after pills yes; they are simple and effective. In some states, it’s policy for emergency rooms to administer them to rape victims. I don’t see a problem with that. But abortion, no. A victim needs to take a certain amount of care of herself and that includes going to the emergency room, filing a police report, and taking preventative measures.

Sexual activity is always a risk, no matter what kind of contraceptive used. Therefore the participants have to take responsibility for the outcome, even if they did their best to minimize it. The insurance companies shouldn’t be made responsible for someone else’s risky behavior. They don’t cover liposuction for people who perpetually over eat and they don’t pay for hopspitilization for self-inflicted injury, so why should they pay for that form of risk?

So, Capulet, when you’re hurt in a car accident, should your insurance not pay because driving or riding in a car “is always a risk”?

Bad analogy Mr Crook. The purpose of driving in a car is not to create accidents whereas the biological purpose of sex is procreation. I believe there was a similar discussion a little while back about “killing Afghan women” versus “teachers having sex with students” and the logic is a non-sequitur. Driving or riding in a car is only a risk in the same manner as walking out the front door of your house, or since “most accidents occur within 25 miles of home” even staying home, whereas the designed purpose (whether divinely designed or evolution-driven) of sex is to create the very thing which is disposed of in an abortion. I side with ms. capulet in her arguments with the exception of incest perpetrated against those too young to understand the consequences, in which case abortion is most certainly a necessary option.

Thank you, Nola, you said it brilliantly.

No, Nola, the purpose of sex is pleasure. Nature piggy-backed procreation atop an already pleasurable activity. Sex is a drive for pleasure, w/ procreation as appended, just as eating is a drive for pleasure, w/ nutrition appended.

In addition, driving is a pleasure (have you heard of “joy-riding”? have you heard of “let’s go for a drive”, w/out having anywhere to go?).

If we had the statistics for driving accidents & fatalities in advance of the institution of automobiles & highways, driving would never pass any society’s permission. Driving is an enormously dangerous activity that most of us do needlessly, because we choose to do so.

My question remains: Why should an insurance company cover an injury while driving when driving is an enormously risky behavior?

Hey BRIAN. I agree, perhaps insurance shouldn’t cover those traveling above the limit. Hey. perhaps insurance shouldn’t pay for the product of unprotected sex. Taken a step further,the tax payer definitely should not pay for this careless indifference. Do mothers and fathers no longer have “the talk”? Would you buy a car if you had not parking spot. If no spot were available, would you smash said car into a block? Would you make the tax payer haul away your unwanted block? I’m sorry to expand your car/baby metaphor. Obviously you believe that pleasure is the pinnacle of life so a car is worth much more than a life. Sleep well BRIAN

So Mr. Crook, you’re saying the only reason animals of all sorts have is sex is for pleasure. If that’s the way you believe, I have some property in south Louisiana which is a great deal to sell you. Get real, sexual intercourse is designed for procreation plain and simple. That humans have nerve endings in their sexual organs which provide pleasure is secondary, and perhaps just a designed feature to ensure that humans continue to engage in sexual relations for procreation’s sake. Says something for intelligent deisgn, whether by “divine measures” or again by simple evolutionary development.

Why are liberal, abortion advocates so afraid of a little counseling? Is it because the vast majority of women once confronted with the truth of abortion will choose life? I’ll bet it is. And that would fly in the face of everything they believe. I have often been confronted with the paradox of these pro-abortion elitists that are against putting someone to death for murder but are all for ending the life of an innocent pre-born child. And all the justification in the world won’t change the fact that, that is exactly what they are doing. Ending human life. And yet they find it interesting that someone can be anti-abortion and yet pro death penalty. Maybe its because the innocent pre-born child has done nothing wrong except inconvenience its mother and the murdering butcher has earned his sentence. There is going to come a day, and no ammount of denial will change that fact, that everyone that has helped to take these innocent lives, will have to stand before a just, holy, and almighty God and answer for all they have done.

If I fell asleep at the wheel and hit a pregnant lady pushing a baby carriage, should I go to jail for killing all three (note I said three)? Or should I be let off because I was only trying to get home for my own pleasure.

BRIAN, Pleasure like freedom, can only be condoned when it doesn’t intrude on the pleasure (freedom) of others.

This reads like a kind of paranoid fantasy of a leftist ; like her only exposure to Conservative ideas comes from watching Rachel Maddow. It’s not effective social commentary because it doesn’t engage with the argument being made by proponents of the bill.

If you accept the notion of “intelligent design”, Nola, then I am not surprised that you were stuck with some swampland.

Let me note that your assertions of three days ago are baseless and without substance or proof. The claim that sex is firstly pleasurable and secondarily for procreation is at least as substantive as your claim for the reverse.

Therefore, let us drop that issue and return to the question I posed to Capulet, which he/she fled from answering. Perhaps you will answer it: Why should an insurance company cover an injury while driving when driving is an enormously risky behavior?