One of the many reasons why I am happy to no longer live in Colorado.

I love the comic, but I feel that some organization that wants this legislation to pass will take this way to seriously and get ideas from it.

Everytime I think of things like this though (might as well be mandatory pregnancy for every women thing), I get this really distrubing picture in my head... women being treated like cattle, bred to have babies to either replace women who cant have babies anymore or have the babies grow up to go to the slaughterhouse (ie, war).

*gags*

Ironically I feel like initiatives like this devalue REAL human life--if a fertilized ovum is a person, than a person with a life and knowledge and emotions isn't worth any more than an ovum.

Also, I don't want to have to call the medical examiner to report an "unexpected death at home" every time I get my period.

I was having an argument with someone who literally believes that a single cell is a person "developing" and that it should be considered a person. I couldn't believe it, because this person is well-educated and generally very articulate. I can't begin to think of the legal ramifications if these bills go through and a more conservative court decides to overturn Roe. Would birth control become illegal? Would women's miscarriages be drug through the courts like in no-abortion whatsoever countries? It scares me sometimes, because even the far out possibilities seem a little bit more likely these days.

This comic makes me think of a conversation between a friend of mine and her husband. They were collecting eggs from the hens his mother keeps, and my friend noted that she felt a little guilty eating the baby chickens, that they never got a chance to hatch out. He laughed and asked, Do you have a baby every time you produce an egg? To which she of course said, No. He told her, Neither do chickens. You're not eating a baby chicken, it's more like you're eating the product of the chicken's period. (which of course doesn't *sound* much better than baby chickens, but maybe it's a little more guilt-free).

Anyway. Just an aside because that's what this made me think of. I don't comment on this site much but I check in several times a day. Seeing this stuff lately has been making me very nervous because it seems to be happening more often, and I'm starting to feel like I don't know an organized way to counteract it. I'm not even aware of a feminist group on campus, really.

I go to a conservative Catholic college in Minnesota, and am aware of a lot of people who would probably be happy to see similar legislation here. It is scary all of the misinformation and fear these people are spreading for a cause. I hate that women's bodies are a part of huge governmental debate. It is unnecessary and wrong.

This is the exact kind of cartoon that I had fantasies about when I first heard about the various "Abortion Task Forces." Do you take requests, Mikhaela?

I think Captain SuperOva was on the first hour of Thom Hartmann this afternoon.

hey were collecting eggs from the hens his mother keeps, and my friend noted that she felt a little guilty eating the baby chickens, that they never got a chance to hatch out. He laughed and asked, Do you have a baby every time you produce an egg? To which she of course said, No. He told her, Neither do chickens. You're not eating a baby chicken, it's more like you're eating the product of the chicken's period.

I hope you don't mind if I use that analogy with my students :)

I wish she would have drawn the Eggmobile. :)

i don't know whether to laugh or cry at this comic, b/c that is how i feel about the way things will become if legislation like this happens. it's like they act first, and think about how it will really be later.

waterpixie~ love your analogy. do you mind if i share that on my blog sometime?

It's really anything that just might have a bit of a chance of implanting in a uterus that anti-choicers truly care about. If you notice the rhetoric of those who are against both stem cell research and reproductive rights, the language changes dramatically when the conversation switches from one to the other. When anti-choicers talk about embryonic stem cell research, embryos are called embryos. When anti-choicers talk about fertilized eggs, embryos in the womb, and embryos that are created for in vitro fertilization, all of a sudden embryos are babies and children. Even embryos made for in vitro fertilization that aren't going to be implanted for whatever logical reason are children to these people! What they're basically saying is "A woman can become impregnated by that! Implant it! Implant it! Pregnancy for all women, like it or not!!!" They're completely anti-woman.

Thanks everyone! Cara, I don't usually take requests, but I did get a few emails asking if I'd do something about this topic, and it was just so frightening I couldn't resist. I'm trying to learn Flash and I'll see if I can do a short animation actually showing the Egg Rescue Squad in action with their Eggmobile...

Does this mean me AND my eggs have rights and responsibilties? So super-fertile gals pay higher taxes for all those potential little humans/soldiers? This is so outrageous. I am starting to feel a bit like a farm animal- good for breeding only.

Once, in college, a guy came up to me at a party (I was drunk and probably smoking) and asked me why I wasn't concerned about what I was doing to my eggs. I informed him that my eggs were none of his f***ing business. I still have nightmares- perhaps he was an Egg Rescue Squad trainee.

This is just a step removed from arguing a woman paid to donate some of her eggs = human trafficker. Urgh.

Heh. I'm murdering an ovum even as we speak, just by sitting here on my sofa! Somebody stop me before I kill again. According to my calculations, that should be a little after Christmas.

This is so outrageous. I am starting to feel a bit like a farm animal- good for breeding only.

Oh, don't be ridiculous. Farm animals are good for food and pulling ploughs too. And they don't talk back, unlike we pesky women.

General JC Christian (and 11 on the absolute scale of manliness) and staunch advocate of all things ridiculous conservative and beyond, refers to fetuses and "Fetus Americans."

It cracks me up, because he's satire. Sadly, I think some people think of them that way. Also that Fetus Americans > Women Americans

You what seriously makes me ill about initiatives like this? It completely distracts from the issue of reproductive health & justice. There are dozens of diseases and conditions which effect women's reproductive organs that there is little or no treatment, information or cure for. (Of course this is the result of culture/society/medicine which marginalizes women's needs.)

Where are our pro-egg friends when we need them to look for causes/cures for uterine cancer, tumors or polycystic ovaries? Oh right, they're down at the legislature advocating for this crap.

Even embryos made for in vitro fertilization that aren't going to be implanted for whatever logical reason are children to these people! What they're basically saying is "A woman can become impregnated by that! Implant it! Implant it! Pregnancy for all women, like it or not!!!" They're completely anti-woman.

No, they aren't pro-woman, and no, they don't think like you would like to believe they do.

You know how annoying it is when nutjobs stereotype feminists as ugly man-hating lesbians who secretly want to institute a matriarchy? Why do the same thing? It's just as asinine and completely unproductive.

First of all, ladies, let's distinguish between what pro-lifers care about (zygotes, embryos, foetuses) and what they don't give a flying fishcake about (eggs and sperm). Now, you all like to pretend that you're all up on your science and it's the "anti-choicers" (how 'bout we stop calling you by your preferred name and call you "anti-lifers?" - and any arguments made to the contrary, that the label is inappropriate, just goes to the heart of the issue that you ought to call people as they choose to be called, instead of these ridiculous pissing contests), but last time I checked, they are acknowledging the fundamental difference between a fertilised egg (i.e. tiny, complete human organism) and an ovum (gamete).

(Eye roll.)

Anyway, the general pro-life position on excess embryos is NOT that they should be forcibly implanted. I do not know a single pro-lifer, ardent and passionate as they are, who so advocates. (Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that the pro-life movement is predominately female.) The general ideas are to either create fewer embryos or to get couples to sign contracts that if they do not want to implant the embryos after a certain time period (prior to the expiration of their "shelf life"), the clinic will be able to put them up for adoption (snowflake babies). What we oppose is the current system, whereby human embryos rot for lack of definitive decision-making by the couple. After a while, implant or let someone else take them - don't just let them decay.

As a general matter, it is out of a desire to proclaim the importance of human life that pro-lifers want to protect embryos at the earliest stages. We have no desire to engage in a Peter Singer-type analysis whereby we grant more rights to the intelligestia than to the mentally retarded, and predicate human dignity upon intelligence. There is a very simple line: those who are human are worthy of all the rights, protections, and privileges of membership in the human race.

"(Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that the pro-life movement is predominately female.)"

Oenophile, can you prove that? 'Cause I have heard the opposite: 7 out of 10 pro-lifers are men.

LOL, Microscopic American. I'll have to remember that one.

BREAKING NEWS: Henry Hyde is dead!

Sorry for going off-topic, but I have to pass that along.

those who are human are worthy of all the rights, protections, and privileges of membership in the human race.

Yep. Like not being forced to give one's body and labor against one's will.

they aren't pro-woman

A truer Freudian slip has never been made.

those who are human are worthy of all the rights, protections, and privileges of membership in the human race.

Absolutely! And since embryos ARE NOT human, they are NOT entitled to all the rights, protections, and privileges of membership in the human race, the woman carrying the embryo, however is entitled. Simple enough!

We have no desire to engage in a Peter Singer-type analysis whereby we grant more rights to the intelligestia than to the mentally retarded, and predicate human dignity upon intelligence.

Ohhh, pretty red herring!

(Eye Roll)

how 'bout we stop calling you by your preferred name and call you "anti-lifers?" - and any arguments made to the contrary, that the label is inappropriate, just goes to the heart of the issue that you ought to call people as they choose to be called, instead of these ridiculous pissing contests

Pro-lifers are anti-choice by default, because they don't believe women should have a choice in what happens to their own pregnancies. If you wanted the decision to be left up to the woman, you'd be pro-choice. Pro-choicers aren't anti-life because they leave the decision of whether or not a woman wants a baby up to the woman. Most women with unplanned pregnancies end up giving birth anyway -- how many pro-choicers do you hear moaning and groaning about that? None, because we don't give a shit who has children or abortions, as long as the woman made the choice and not someone like you who has no stake in the matter and no interest in her or her family. Just because pro-life means every woman should be forced to give birth doesn't mean that pro-choice means every woman should be forced to have an abortion.

The statement from mine that you quoted rings true if you take a gander at the National Right to Life website and see how many times they use "baby" or "child" to refer to an embryo in a petri dish (0) and how many times they use "baby" or "child" to refer to an embryo in the womb (32). And some whackadoo named Terrence Jeffery who was on Thom Hartmann's radio show yesterday called embryos from embryonic stem cell research "embryos" and embryos for IVF "children." So don't come after me when I make an accurate statement about the nuts from your camp. If you truly believe that the people in these organizations represent you, you should tell them to change their leadership and their rhetoric or else leave the movement all together.

FEM,

I am not going to "leave their camp," as Hell will freeze over before I condone abortion.

Shall I judge you by the worst of pro-abortionists (i.e. anti-lifers)?

You missed the point with your multi-paragraph rambling. I can say a lot of things, all of which are true, which would refute that and justify calling your side a host of nasty names. For the sake of civility, drop the anti-choice label.

Do not hope that our side is kinder than yours and will not retaliate in kind.

Oenophile, can you prove that? 'Cause I have heard the opposite: 7 out of 10 pro-lifers are men.

Do any search on Zobgy polls. Women are slightly more pro-life than men.

You may have seen a stat which says that 7 of 10 leaders of the pro-life movement are male, but that is 1) highly dependent upon whom you call a "leader" and 2) hopelessly misleading.

Imagine if someone said, "7 out of 10 leaders of the Democrats are male; therefore, the party is male-focused." You would point out that, because we live in a sexist society, the leadership is not a perfect reflection of the membership.

If you can find this article, read it:
(Source: Bradley R. Hertel and Mark C. Russell, "Examining the Absence of a Gender Effect on Abortion Attitudes: Is There Really No Difference?" Sociological Inquiry, Vol. 69, No. 3 [August 1999]: 364-381.)

25,000 people, and it found that, when you remove extreme situations (rape, incest, health, life), men are slightly more supportive of abortion rights than are women.

Thank goodness only the egg is a person and not sperm. There are 20-60 million sperm per ejaculation. Now that's genocide!

If only we granted basic rights to people in Abu Ghraib or Guantanamo.