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News & ArtsMonday, October 17, 2011
2012 / Politics / Religion Bishop Romney Tried to Force a Woman to Go Forward With a Risky Pregnancy
Posted by Dan Savage on Mon, Oct 17, 2011 at 6:30 AM
From the NYT's long piece yesterday about Mitt Romney's tenure as a Mormon "lay leader":
Mormons oppose abortion, except in extreme cases like rape, incest or where the life of the woman is in danger—and require that church elders be consulted. In 1990, Exponent II, a Mormon feminist magazine that Ms. Dushku, the Suffolk University professor, helped found, published an article by a married mother of four who recounted her own experience after doctors advised her to terminate her pregnancy when she was being treated for a potentially dangerous blood clot. Her bishop got wind of the situation, she wrote, and showed up unannounced at the hospital, warning her sternly not to go forward. The article did not identify Mr. Romney as the bishop, but Ms. Dushku later did.
Now the woman has come forward, identifying herself in Mr. Scott’s book as Carrel Hilton Sheldon. (Through Ms. Dushku, she declined to be interviewed.) “Mitt has many, many winning qualities,” she is quoted as saying, “but at the time he was blind to me as a human being.”
Lay leader? Sounds more like a Mormon enforcer—and callous piece of shit.
2
There is no such thing as Mormon clergy: every male is a priest, with the "Aaronic priesthood" being given to boys as young as 12. It is all a part of the church's male priviledge.
3
this bit was right after in the article:
"But if Mr. Romney was blind in that instance, his time as an ecclesiastical leader may have also opened his eyes. Having been raised in wealth and privilege, he was now exposed to hardship and human suffering, especially among Boston’s immigrant populations. “I had no idea people lived this way,” Mr. Barlow recalls him saying."
that's funny, because he seems to want to keep some people living "like that" these days.
"But if Mr. Romney was blind in that instance, his time as an ecclesiastical leader may have also opened his eyes. Having been raised in wealth and privilege, he was now exposed to hardship and human suffering, especially among Boston’s immigrant populations. “I had no idea people lived this way,” Mr. Barlow recalls him saying."
that's funny, because he seems to want to keep some people living "like that" these days.
4
Aside from any other stupid church elder bullshit, they seem to lack the desire to ensure children are born healthy. Treatment for blood clots, besides saving the mother's life, can have very serious consequences for a fetus. The little unhatchlings ain't designed to withstand blood thinners and clot-buster drugs. Heck, they're growing so fast that disruption can cause disastrous birth defects. The doctors' advice to terminate, I'm almost certain, was prudent both for the mother's sake, and to prevent chemically mangling the fetus.
If you save a mother's life and her reproductive capacity, she can always have another happy, healthy kid. If you burden her with a severely damaged kid, it can be an oppressive burden on the entire family, forever. Ditto, letting her die from something preventable.
Happy, healthy families should be the priority, and dogmatic "right-to-life"-ers should all die in a fire.
If you save a mother's life and her reproductive capacity, she can always have another happy, healthy kid. If you burden her with a severely damaged kid, it can be an oppressive burden on the entire family, forever. Ditto, letting her die from something preventable.
Happy, healthy families should be the priority, and dogmatic "right-to-life"-ers should all die in a fire.
5
Dan do you have any comment on Swedish going Catholic and further ghettoizing abortion services? I'd quit them but don't have much choice ...,
6
/b?
Mormons males think they have the right to interfere and pass judgment on all females.
If you think Romney's bad, Wimmer - he of the punish women for miscarriages fame - is running for Congress now.
Mormons males think they have the right to interfere and pass judgment on all females.
If you think Romney's bad, Wimmer - he of the punish women for miscarriages fame - is running for Congress now.
7
"sounds like blah blah blah..."
"Of course, I don't actually KNOW anything but the random gossip shit that is floating around the internet but I'm happy to vomit it back up and pass it down the line...."
"Of course, I don't actually KNOW anything but the random gossip shit that is floating around the internet but I'm happy to vomit it back up and pass it down the line...."
8
if you're opposed to abortion, why an exception for rape & incest? how they were made is not the fetus' fault - why the inconsistency, especially from mormons? they could be condoning the abortion of a MALE baby, after all.
9
#4 is right on: there are anti-coagulant (anti-clotting) drugs you can safely give to a pregnant woman and her fetus, but they are not the strongest out there, and might not be equal to getting rid of a serious and life-threatening clot. If there was time, I'm sure the docs tried the fetus friendly drugs before determining that the pregnancy had to be terminated.
I will never understand why dead fetus + dead mother + 4 motherless children is a better outcome than 1 dead fetus. Also, while I do think that the father of a fetus should have substantial input about what happens to that fetus, I don't think that any man has the right to tell a woman what to do where her own health is concerned. Men never have to take on these risks, so they have very little right to claim any moral authority in dealing with them.
I will never understand why dead fetus + dead mother + 4 motherless children is a better outcome than 1 dead fetus. Also, while I do think that the father of a fetus should have substantial input about what happens to that fetus, I don't think that any man has the right to tell a woman what to do where her own health is concerned. Men never have to take on these risks, so they have very little right to claim any moral authority in dealing with them.
10
Here's a crude joke:
Add "and uterus" to the punchline, and you have pretty have the Bible's view of women.
"What's the definition of a woman?
Life support for a vagina!"
Add "and uterus" to the punchline, and you have pretty have the Bible's view of women.
11
@8: I agree, as a fully pro-choice woman, I never understood this. Are they essentially saying that rape-babies are less loveable/ important?
I'm not asking a rhetorical question here - I'd really like to hear the reasoning from an anti-choicer who is OK with abortion in case of rape. What gives?
I'm not asking a rhetorical question here - I'd really like to hear the reasoning from an anti-choicer who is OK with abortion in case of rape. What gives?
13
My guess is that it's the Romney campaign that's putting this story out there. It's exactly the sort of boost he needs to put him over the top for the republican nomination. It's one thing to support policies that kill women in the abstract, but to have looked a specific woman right in the eye and given her the news, that's hardcore Republican leadership cred, right there.
15
Danny,
did you pay the kid's mom not to abort him?
any principles other than greed involved in that transaction?
calloused piece of shit.......
did you pay the kid's mom not to abort him?
any principles other than greed involved in that transaction?
calloused piece of shit.......
17
@8, I've always seen a bit of hypocrisy there too. I understand that allowing exceptions for rape, incest, and medical reasons is the less extreme anti-choice position. But at the same time, if you're against abortion because the fetus has a soul and that baby is God's will, then that doesn't just get negated because of other circumstances. My guess is that it really has more to do with punishing the mother for having pre-marital or non-procreative sex.
18
@8 et al. Don't worry, there are plenty of people who are against abortion in all cases, they just elect officials who will allow certain exceptions- then strip funding for planned parenthood and all sorts of fuckery that make abortion practically unattainable.
19
@8 & @11, I've asked myself the same question on occasion, but I disagree with #17's opinion above. Of course, there are people who want to keep everybody else's sex lives in check, but there are also sincere anti-choicers who do care in their hearts about the future baby and its soul. How do they justify then abortion in case of rape? I see two possibilities:
(a) Some of them are actually consistent and don't believe abortion is a good idea even in case of rape, but they know that pro-choicers have support and lobbies, so they have to compromise; accepting rape in some extreme cases is a lesser evil ('if we don't do that then we don't get to save any babies'). They may later on try to sabotage this in ways like the ones #18 above suggests.
(b) Others may think that abortion in case of rape is a lesser evil because there is something evil with the baby itself after all. Maybe it is a reminder of a horrible crime, not only to the mother (and here all the empathy they may feel with the raped mother plays a role) but to the whole world. Or maybe they feel, somewhat superstitiously, that a baby conceived in evil must have some spark of evil in itself (think of the Antichrist as the Son of the Devil). This is certainly not a very Christian attitude, but it is a conservative one -- blaming or punishing children for the crimes of their parents is an old tradition from before biblical times, which may help them cope if they feel bad or guillty about it when reflecting on Christ's words.
(a) Some of them are actually consistent and don't believe abortion is a good idea even in case of rape, but they know that pro-choicers have support and lobbies, so they have to compromise; accepting rape in some extreme cases is a lesser evil ('if we don't do that then we don't get to save any babies'). They may later on try to sabotage this in ways like the ones #18 above suggests.
(b) Others may think that abortion in case of rape is a lesser evil because there is something evil with the baby itself after all. Maybe it is a reminder of a horrible crime, not only to the mother (and here all the empathy they may feel with the raped mother plays a role) but to the whole world. Or maybe they feel, somewhat superstitiously, that a baby conceived in evil must have some spark of evil in itself (think of the Antichrist as the Son of the Devil). This is certainly not a very Christian attitude, but it is a conservative one -- blaming or punishing children for the crimes of their parents is an old tradition from before biblical times, which may help them cope if they feel bad or guillty about it when reflecting on Christ's words.
20
@17 It's similar to the hypocrisy of being "Pro-Life", but also favoring capital punishment. A person on death row is more likely to have a soul than a fetus, but, again, it's more about punishment than moral consistency.
21
@8 / @11
Well, we can just guess at the reasons for the exceptions, so here are mine:
1: If it's a case of rape and the woman is married, then it may be male privilege rearing its head for the husband not to be raising that child. Also, the child may be a permanent reminder of the fact that his wife was raped and violated, hence intruding on his feelings of entitlement that he owns her (and any legitimate offspring, of course).
2: If it's from incest, then there may be the fear of genetic mutation, so it's better to stop it at the source.
Yeah, I write SF stories, so my imagination is weird.
Well, we can just guess at the reasons for the exceptions, so here are mine:
1: If it's a case of rape and the woman is married, then it may be male privilege rearing its head for the husband not to be raising that child. Also, the child may be a permanent reminder of the fact that his wife was raped and violated, hence intruding on his feelings of entitlement that he owns her (and any legitimate offspring, of course).
2: If it's from incest, then there may be the fear of genetic mutation, so it's better to stop it at the source.
Yeah, I write SF stories, so my imagination is weird.
22
@15,
In an open adoption the pregnant woman chooses the adopting parent(s), in this specific case in the last trimester and close to delivery. It was her choice, she made the decision to carry to term and proceed with an open adoption. This is being pro choice.
In an open adoption the pregnant woman chooses the adopting parent(s), in this specific case in the last trimester and close to delivery. It was her choice, she made the decision to carry to term and proceed with an open adoption. This is being pro choice.
23
@21: what was weird? your 1. is pretty typical predatory mammal behavior - kill the male offspring of rivals to assure your genes triumph.
24
@8, 11, and others:
In my misspent youth I was a pro-lifer who made an exception for rape (and hazardous pregnancy), and this is what I wrote at one point about your question.
(This is FYI - I'm not going to come back and defend my argument below, because I'm now completely pro-choice).
By the 2000 version of rhymeswithlibrarian:
"I think that the question of abortion is truly a dilemma. The foundation of the pro-choice argument is that a fetus is part of a woman's body, and therefore her own to control. The foundation of the anti-abortion argument is that a fetus is a person in his/her own right, and therefore has a right to life.
The dilemma comes with the paradox that is pregnancy: the fetus is BOTH part of the woman's body, and a body of its own. Therefore a woman has the legitimate right to decide what to do with her womb and its contents, AND a fetus has the legitimate right to be live and to be legally protected from violence.
So how do we deal with this dilemma, where two equally legitimate rights are in conflict? I think the best way is to examine how the two parties got into this dilemma in the first place. A fetus' role in an unwanted pregnancy is always involuntary; he or she did not choose to be conceived. On the other hand, a woman GENERALLY (I will address exceptions below) enters this dilemma voluntarily, by choosing to have sex knowing that it might result in pregnancy and what pregnancy would involve.
So it seems to me that although an unwanted pregnancy presents a conflict between equally legitimate rights, since the woman entered this conflict voluntarily and the fetus involuntarily, the fetus' rights should have priority in most cases. So I am pro-life in ordinary situations.
When I said that a woman enters an unwanted pregnancy "voluntarily", I mean that she chooses to have sex, knowing that it might result in pregnancy and what pregnancy is likely to involve. Of course there are a number of scenarios where this would not apply. If she were pregnant as a result of rape or incest, then the "choosing to have sex" part wouldn't apply. If she were a very young girl or had a mental disability or illness, then the "knowing it might result in pregnancy" part wouldn't apply. And if continuing the pregnancy had extraordinary health risks, then the "knowing what pregnancy is likely to involve" part wouldn't apply. So in these exceptional situations, I think that the woman's right to control her own body should take precedence. "
More...
In my misspent youth I was a pro-lifer who made an exception for rape (and hazardous pregnancy), and this is what I wrote at one point about your question.
(This is FYI - I'm not going to come back and defend my argument below, because I'm now completely pro-choice).
By the 2000 version of rhymeswithlibrarian:
"I think that the question of abortion is truly a dilemma. The foundation of the pro-choice argument is that a fetus is part of a woman's body, and therefore her own to control. The foundation of the anti-abortion argument is that a fetus is a person in his/her own right, and therefore has a right to life.
The dilemma comes with the paradox that is pregnancy: the fetus is BOTH part of the woman's body, and a body of its own. Therefore a woman has the legitimate right to decide what to do with her womb and its contents, AND a fetus has the legitimate right to be live and to be legally protected from violence.
So how do we deal with this dilemma, where two equally legitimate rights are in conflict? I think the best way is to examine how the two parties got into this dilemma in the first place. A fetus' role in an unwanted pregnancy is always involuntary; he or she did not choose to be conceived. On the other hand, a woman GENERALLY (I will address exceptions below) enters this dilemma voluntarily, by choosing to have sex knowing that it might result in pregnancy and what pregnancy would involve.
So it seems to me that although an unwanted pregnancy presents a conflict between equally legitimate rights, since the woman entered this conflict voluntarily and the fetus involuntarily, the fetus' rights should have priority in most cases. So I am pro-life in ordinary situations.
When I said that a woman enters an unwanted pregnancy "voluntarily", I mean that she chooses to have sex, knowing that it might result in pregnancy and what pregnancy is likely to involve. Of course there are a number of scenarios where this would not apply. If she were pregnant as a result of rape or incest, then the "choosing to have sex" part wouldn't apply. If she were a very young girl or had a mental disability or illness, then the "knowing it might result in pregnancy" part wouldn't apply. And if continuing the pregnancy had extraordinary health risks, then the "knowing what pregnancy is likely to involve" part wouldn't apply. So in these exceptional situations, I think that the woman's right to control her own body should take precedence. "
27
@24 (rhymeswithlibrarian), I'll add my name to the others: what changed your mind? I'm a special fan of people and their life stories; yours looks interesting.
What flaw would you now claim exists in your pro-life-except-in-case-of-rape argument? (I can think of a pro-life counter-argument: if you assumed that the raped woman had not entered the conflict willingly -- i.e., she had not chosen to have sex -- this still wouldn't make it legitimate for the fetus to have to suffer on account of that. The argument would be: by being killed, the fetus would lose much more -- an entire lifetime, to say nothing of its immortal soul -- than the woman would by simply being forced to take her pregnancy to term.)
What flaw would you now claim exists in your pro-life-except-in-case-of-rape argument? (I can think of a pro-life counter-argument: if you assumed that the raped woman had not entered the conflict willingly -- i.e., she had not chosen to have sex -- this still wouldn't make it legitimate for the fetus to have to suffer on account of that. The argument would be: by being killed, the fetus would lose much more -- an entire lifetime, to say nothing of its immortal soul -- than the woman would by simply being forced to take her pregnancy to term.)
28
@19 actually the idea that a baby created by rape or incest (like adultery) is a product of sin and therefor accursed IS a Christian attitude. Ever read any Dickens or Hardy? The "sins of the fathers" and all that. the Christianity that has been practiced up until about 100 years ago forbade even condoning sin in your community. Allow an adulterer or witch to reside in your community and the whole thing's tainted and everyone will be punished accordingly. Christianity has always been inexplicably unChristlike. They haven't compromised to include rape babies as abortionable, they've compromised on babies created by adultery not being destined for hell because of their slutty parents.
29
Regarding "Lay leader", and following up on comment 2: LDS does not have a salaried, professional clergy. Mormon Elders and Bishops are unpaid, 'lay' positions, and all Mormon men in good standing are "Priesthood-holders". The young men on missions might receive a subsidy from the church, but even their living expenses are primarily considered their own responsibility, or more typically their family's.
The point being that "Lay leader" in a Mormon context is quite different from, say, a Catholic "Lay leader".
The point being that "Lay leader" in a Mormon context is quite different from, say, a Catholic "Lay leader".
30
Have you seen this Danny?
Cheerleader To Remain Off Squad Statement released by AHS Principal Lucy Munoz at 3 p.m. Monday: [OCTOBER 17]
The Alice I.S.D. has recently reviewed the recent removal of a student from the Alice High School Cheerleading Squad. After reviewing the Alice I.S.D. Student Code of Conduct and the Cheer Program Handbook, the removal will stay in effect. The student’s parents are in agreement with the district’s decision.
The student code of conduct and cheer handbook are designed to improve conduct and encourage students to adhere to their responsibilities as members of the school community. THE STUDENT AND PARENTS ARE CLEARLY AWARE THAT THE STUDENT WAS NOT REMOVED FROM THE SQUAD FOR KISSING ANOTHER STUDENT AT SCHOOL......
Have you been punked again, Danny?
Is the "kissing cheerleader scandal" the Bigotry That NEVER Happened?
Is ANYTHING you ever post not 100% Bullshit LIES?
Cheerleader To Remain Off Squad Statement released by AHS Principal Lucy Munoz at 3 p.m. Monday: [OCTOBER 17]
The Alice I.S.D. has recently reviewed the recent removal of a student from the Alice High School Cheerleading Squad. After reviewing the Alice I.S.D. Student Code of Conduct and the Cheer Program Handbook, the removal will stay in effect. The student’s parents are in agreement with the district’s decision.
The student code of conduct and cheer handbook are designed to improve conduct and encourage students to adhere to their responsibilities as members of the school community. THE STUDENT AND PARENTS ARE CLEARLY AWARE THAT THE STUDENT WAS NOT REMOVED FROM THE SQUAD FOR KISSING ANOTHER STUDENT AT SCHOOL......
Have you been punked again, Danny?
Is the "kissing cheerleader scandal" the Bigotry That NEVER Happened?
Is ANYTHING you ever post not 100% Bullshit LIES?
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