I figured that it would be helpful to call out ten of the most common pro-choice arguments that you might notice online. I'll preface it by saying that I am not a philosopher (or at least not yet), but I am a person with common sense, and you can see through these "arguments" if you have two brain-cells left.

Also, I understand that there are good PC arguments out there (although they are of course not successful, for a strong argument doesn't necessarily have to succeed). I am only arguing some of the most insane and ridiculous ones you'd spot.

If you want to go through some really good claims made by pro-choice/pro-abortion advocates, I'd recommend David Boonin's 'A Defense of Abortion'. It'd help you instead of you having to regurgitate whatever you are spoon-fed by the leftist cult. Go check out that book even if you're pro-life, because it's a great one.

Let's get started, shall we?

A human embryo/fetus is not human:

Yes, it's both human and alive. Biologists agree with this (including pro-choice biologists), and even pro-choice philosophers acknowledge this. This is basic empirical reality. And you only have to open an embryology textbook to know how wrong you are. Also, these people can never explain what species the fetus belongs to if not "Homo Sapiens".

2. It's just a "clump of cells".

All of us are made up of cells. Some are "clumpier" than others. And plus, it's not merely a clump of cells: the embryo is a human organism in its earlier stages of development, and very soon is also differentiated as it grows. That's like saying that it's okay to destroy a car because it's just "a bunch of metal thrown together".

3. It's not a person/sentient, yadda yadda:

Irrelevant and it's the same logic that slave-owners used to own people. Human rights is species-based, and the embryo/fetus is human. That's all that matters. These people love to make up ridiculous, arbitrary criteria to justify their bigotry.

4. You cannot force people to donate their organs...

Not the same thing at all. You cannot be forced to save people, but that doesn't mean you can actively kill them. This is the difference between killing someone and letting them die. There is a significant moral difference between deliberately pushing someone off a cliff and not saving someone who's hanging off a branch at a cliff. Abortion is the former.

5. Women would die...

All states have life-threat exceptions built into it, so this is just deflection. And yes, there are doctors who refuse to perform entirely legal abortions, but that is their fault. It IS legal. They're just cowards, and you can't blame the law for this because they already make this exception.

6. You cannot force your views onto others:

If you support democracy (and, you know, voting) you're forcing your views onto others. That's how law works.

7. The child would grow up in poverty, yadda yadda yadda...:

We don't kill born children because of these reasons, so it's a ridiculous claim. You don't solve poverty by killing the poor.

8. They are just pro-birth:

Statistics show that Republicans donate more to charity than Democrats. Also, just because they don't agree with your method of helping people doesn't mean that they don't care about born people. You see, it's like saying "A fire-fighter rescued someone from a fire, but they don't want to pay out of their pockets to look after them throughout their lives. They don't actually care!"

9. Showing pics of fetuses belonging to other species as a gotcha:

Yes, mammals of different species look the same in their earlier stages, but that doesn't mean there isn't a difference between them. This is, once again, bigoted slaver logic (to want to kill people based on their looks).

10. Men cannot have a say because:

As men are directly affected by this, they absolutely have a say. They are fathers too, and remember that they're the ones who have to pay child support.

There you go. I am not expecting you to be pro-life yet if you are not, but I hope that I have cleared your head up somewhat.

Many Americans will risk death rather than go bankrupt calling an ambulance.

Let that sink in. Take all the time you need.

#Healthcare #HealthCareIsAHumanRight #SinglePayerNow #USPol #USPolitics #PeopleOverProfit #GetProfitOutOfHealthcare

Today, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved Opill (norgestrel) tablet for nonprescription use to prevent pregnancy— the first daily oral contraceptive approved for use in the U.S. without a prescription (or age restrictions). Approval of this progestin-only oral contraceptive pill provides an option for consumers to purchase oral contraceptive medicine without a prescription at drug stores, convenience stores and grocery stores, as well as online, starting in early 2024. (Official FDA Press Release)

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Wisconsin governor vetoes state’s gender-affirming health care ban | The Hill

Hi hello! General update on me and why I've been like vacant until recently

TW: medical/surgery/infection mentioned

It's been a long series of freakin' "why me"

So for the past month as of this following Monday, I've dealt with a stubborn infection on my right big toe. One itty bitty spot along the cuticle, all puffy and angry. Very tender. I have no idea what caused it, as I discovered it shortly after taking a shower.

After a week, I managed to get the inflammation down, but boy it was clearly infected. I tried my best to disinfect it with what little I had, but I may have unintentionally chemically burned my skin

My skin is quite sensitive to chemicals, but I thought that rubbing alcohol wouldn't bother it much. Either way, the infection was in a precarious spot and proved difficult to just get the goods into with the nail in the way.

A very not so great condition nail by the way. Probably what ultimately led to its infection.

This past Monday, I had to get the toenail surgically removed. Luckily for me, it was pretty much ready to go and just needed a little help. That thing was preventing my infection from fully healing. I'm glad it's gone, since it was damaged like 6 years ago and didn't grow back right. This was inevitable. I've been liberated

One funny thing is that the doctor was kinda excited to pluck it off omg. I was the second one that day she had to do this for, and she seemed STOKED. My case wasn't the worse she had seen either. That was a relief LOL

Doctors and their quirks, gotta love 'em

She was very sweet and genuine with me, so good times! 10/10 would love her care again. I was in great hands!

But the pain didn't stop there

Oh no

Then. The gauze got stuck. For 3. Whole. Days. It was an antibiotic gauze, but it didn't need to be there that long. I just got it off last night with incredible, indescribable amounts of pain and suffering with hot water, soap, and the will of GOD

However. The nightmare doesn't end there

Here's the thing. I live in the USA.

I'm unemployed.

And don't have insurance.

Now I have the doom of my impending, brand new ✨ medical debt✨. I don't even know how much it's doing to be. I fear it'll be absurd. I had numbing shots, a douse of saline water, and a little elbow grease. That was my treatment. Hoping and praying that Medicaid accepts my recent application so I don't have to pay anything. Thank god antibiotics and ibuprofen are cheap, and my pharmacy gives discounts to those without insurance. There is kindness in the eaves of this dumpster fire of a country

It cost $221 USD just to be seen. Right up and front.

So if all things go to against my favor, I'll have to open emergency commissions and/or donations because dear god it costs an arm and a leg to just exist here. I'll be sure to provide a follow up post on when I hear back from folks. Right now I'm in a place of anticipation and occasional physical suffering

I'll live. The pain is temporary, and better than having it long term

So August kinda sucked for lil' ol' me, and I'm still dealing with pain because of, well, fresh surgical wound on my still quite angry toe. Now it's angrier, but it'll heal thankfully. Hopefully. It doesn't look too happy, but I've got antibiotics up the nine and now I have full access to the whole thing with the gauze out of the way. And I can add my own healing ointment that was helping the skin heal prior to my toenail getting harvested

Though this has definitely put a cold hard stop to my page production and I'm running low on stock, so I'm gonna try my best these following weeks to hustle while nursing this wound

Welp that's all about my personal life situation

Love you guys! Stay healthy! 💜 AND DRINK WATER!

has anyone gone to another country for college? lmk

I switched health insurance and now I gotta resubmit everything and my deductible is starting over ugh

What a sad and infuriating story this is. This woman was let down on every single level.

I was watching the news about how LA banned homeless encampments near schools, as well as how Nevada was demolishing tiny homes made for the homeless based on a technicality about square footage allowed..and like. People demonize the homeless and try to make other people see them as immoral and criminal. While the US needs to handle its homeless problem like every other developed nation, with housing and the opportunity to get employed again once back on their feet, demonizing them under the pretense of "think of the poor children" is not going to help anyone. "But why do they deserve to get free help? We are all struggling and it's their own fault they're homeless." So many homeless were veterans and people that had one bad month or one bad disaster that any one of us could have gone through. And to say they aren't deserving of help when we DO have the capacity to do so....well, we are constantly lied to that it would cost too much and that the everyday taxpayer would suffer. It costs us more in taxes when the city builds hostile architecture, and when these people get very sick from being outside and are taken to emergency rooms. We fund and throw money into programs that don't do anything to help people *out* of homelessness, just temporarily slap a bandaid on it. And while that isn't nothing, it is not what the end goal should be. It is a lie that people end up homeless only due to laziness. It's a lie that the majority of homeless people are homeless from laziness. In America, it is so damn expensive to live, that 70% of Americans are one disaster away from living on the streets. Some of these people had to choose between their house and live-saving medical treatment. The way we treat them is disgusting, like untouchables and we pretend they aren't there except when it comes to putting them out of sight. I've known people who were working 9 to 5 jobs while living out of homeless shelters still. The wages weren't enough to get them any sort of rent. The median rent right now is $2,000 here. $15 minimum wage isn't going to cut it. We are being conned and lied to about not getting more pay than that. This is a capitalist hellscape, hostile to working-class (everyone who is not the 1%) human life. It shouldn't and does not have to be like this. Higher taxes for free healthcare would cost less than a monthly premium we would no longer have to pay, but we don't talk about that. We keep getting gaslit by politicians whose motives are not in our best interest. They are bought out [read: bribed] to keep the status quo and make the rich richer while ignoring our crumbling infrastructure, a predatory housing crisis, flagging wages, environmental crisis for the future of humanity, and healthcare. We fail at everything except profits, which get directly funneled to this vague "rich" class and hoarded. And more people will become homeless while the rest have a worse and worse quality of life. This is not sustainable. There are several things that could be done to fix these issues in a decade at most; I could narrow it down to 5 broad ones:

Raising the minimum wage -honestly one of the most effective ways to give the working class more spending money. Wages have not grown with the rest of the economy in decades. We work harder for less.

Capping Rent universally -can be adjusted for the cost of living in each city, but cannot exceed 30% of the minimum paycheck. ideally for at least 3 years. We also should not allow companies to buy up homes for sale in mass so they can rent them out eternally.

Universal Healthcare -take out the insurance company middle man. it is cheaper for everyone even for those that don't have health insurance (because we pay with higher taxes for high-risk people such as the homeless when they are taken in for dire situations.)

Education Reform -The American school system is deeply flawed. The curriculum has not been updated since the 60s. We fall far behind much of the world. This would include language classes and equitable funding for all departments. Ideally, this would include daycare too.

Environmental Action -Probably the hardest one to tackle and with a time crunch. This goes hand in hand with infrastructure reform; the energy grid wastes a ton of power because of how old and crumbling it is. Water infrastructure is also in danger with the recent droughts part of the country is seeing and the floods in the other. Reducing carbon emissions, using the other better and available energy options...I could make a whole post about this alone because it is what I majored in, but requires a lot more than just switching the lights we use and saving energy. This is bigger than just a consumer-level problem, and the biggest polluters are a handful of companies that ruin the environment, reap the benefits and keep them, then put the environmental costs on all of us. They need to be strictly regulated and required to change wasteful and environmentally harmful practices; and not just with carbon offsets.

our issues are way more complicated and numerous, and I do have more ideas on smaller issues too. But I think handling these would significantly impact the others to raise the quality of life here. We have to divert from the path we are charging down, because not all Americans are the bigoted and ignorant people shown all over the news. A majority of us want the best for each other and to live our lives rather than just survive until we die. Many don't know what to do to begin to change things and can't afford to even leave while a handful of men in powerful offices toy with people's lives all over the world just because they can and have the guns to force the rest of us into thinking we are powerless against them. They keep us divided and uninformed and we often get to choose between a bad and horrible choice for who ends up in charge.

If anyone reads this and wonders what they can do, the biggest impact an individual can do is vote. Vote in people that will make these things happen and who aren't being paid on the side to work for corporate and stock and pharmaceutical and defense industry interests. Vote in your primaries so that when the big decision finally comes, we aren't left with the worst options. Don't let them scare you and don't let them destroy the shreds of democracy we have left.

This. All of this. Every word.

#RoeVsWade

I remember when I was growing up a middle class kid in south India, moving to the United States was the sign that you've made it.

The Great South Indian Dream was to get to the starting line of the Great American Dream.

An Indian once said, "Where we dream to be someday is where you start life."

But things are changing.

A friend of mine from school who busted his ass his whole life to get a chance to work for an American tech firm in Raleigh, NC asked his boss to either let him move to Canada, the EU or back to India because he does not feel safe in North Carolina in particular and the United States in general.

Another friend of mine wants to move from SF back to India because he feels, "ये शहर नहीं, पागलखाना हैं।"

My closest friend moved from New York City to Nashik, Maharashtra and calls it the best decision of his life.

What's happening to the USA? Is it just that I have a small sample of outliers as friends? Like, at this point, I wouldn't want to live there. Visit, definitely but not live.

A Travis County judge has ordered the state to stop child-abuse investigations into two families w ho are helping their transgender kids access gender-affirming care.

State District Judge Amy Clark Meachum wrote the investigations are "gross invasions of privacy" that intrude on parental rights and decision-making. The order bars the agency from expanding the definition of child abuse in order to investigate the families.

Meachum's order, delivered Friday evening, determined that the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services violated state law by improperly implementing a new rule on gender-affirming care at the insistence of Gov. Greg Abbott in February.

The judge said she was still weighing whether to provide additional relief to Texas members of PFLAG, an LGBTQ advocacy group that sued to block child-abuse investigations into families who are members of the group. She's also still weighing whether to provide more relief to a third family that sued but had already been cleared of abuse allegations.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton quickly appealed, as he did with a similar injunction issued by Meachum in March.

In a joint statement, lawyers for the families praised the judge for recognizing "that being subjected to an unlawful and unwarranted investigation causes irreparable harm for these families who are doing nothing more than caring for and affirming their children and seeking the best course of care for them in consultation with their medical providers."

In her order, Meachum said the families — identified in court documents under the pseudonyms Roe and Voe — would be placed in harm's way if the investigations were allowed to continue, including depriving or disrupting medically necessary care for their transgender teens.

The child abuse policy also infringes on the parents' right to make medical decisions for their children in consultation with health care providers and inflicts trauma on the adolescents, Meachum wrote.

Meachum's injunction blocked the child-welfare agency from taking any action against the families other than to close its investigations — if that can be done without further contact with the parents or children.

The ordeal began in February when Paxton issued a nonbinding legal opinion that said gender-affirming care could be grounds for child-abuse under state laws. National medical experts said Paxton relied on false claims, exaggerations and errors to reach that conclusion, but Abbott followed with a Feb. 22 letter directing the Department of Family and Protective Services to investigate such care as abuse, and the state's child-welfare agency agreed to do so.

ABBOTT FACES LEGAL ROADBLOCKS

In the months since Abbott ordered the state's child welfare agency to begin investigating parents of transgender children for "child abuse," experts have repeatedly argued the directive carries no legal weight and legal challenges have followed.

The first lawsuit was filed by a mother, identified only as Jane Doe, who worked for the Department of Family and Protective Services and came under investigation after asking a supervisor what Abbott's directive meant for her transgender teen. Meachum responded in March by issuing a statewide injunction barring all abuse investigations based solely on providing gender-affirming care.

Paxton's bid to overturn the injunction is still before the Austin-based 3rd Court of Appeals, but in the meantime, the Texas Supreme Court substantially limited the scope of the judge's order, striking down the statewide injunction in May while allowing it to apply only to the Doe family.

Experts say the Texas Supreme Court's ruling May ruling struck down the statewide injunction because the court still needs to be provided with more evidence to grant full protection to all families with transgender children in the state, not just families DFPS has already begun investigating.

"Though that protection is not at this time permanent it is because it's too early to grant final relief," Stephen Sheppard, former dean of St. Mary's School of Law in San Antonio told USA TODAY in May. "There's not been a trial yet. But this is an indication of what all three levels of Texas courts believe (will be) the outcome after the trial."

When Child Protective Services resumed child abuse investigations after the state Supreme Court's ruling, three more families filed suit, this time joined by PFLAG, a leading LGBTQ advocacy organization. Last month, a different Travis County judge responded by issuing a temporary restraining order blocking investigations into the three families and any member of PFLAG.

On Wednesday, during a daylong hearing in Austin on whether to convert the restraining order into a longer-lasting injunction, lawyers for Paxton argued state law gives the child-welfare agency the authority to protect minors from abuse, including the potentially improper use of puberty blockers and hormone therapy.

A lawyer for Texas also made false claims about the purpose of gender-affirming care and tried to broadly associate the medical care with political ideologies.

Lawyers for the families of transgender adolescents said the safety of the procedures is well established in science, and children are treated only in consultation with mental health professionals, family doctors and specialists.

Two mothers who are under CPS investigation testified about how the fear of being removed from their home worsened anxieties for their transgender teens, both of whom had to continue high school from virtually this spring.

Gender-affirmation typically begins with a social transition, with youths possibly adopting new names, pronouns and clothing that better expresses their gender identity.

Medical treatment for a diagnosis of gender dysphoria, the distress caused when a person's body does not match their gender identity, can include puberty blockers to delay body and voice changes so that a teen doesn't have to develop physical characteristics of a different gender after they have already transitioned socially. The effects of puberty blockers are reversible, doctors say.

Hormone therapy, which begins after the onset of puberty, can introduce lasting body changes, while surgery typically does not occur before age 18, doctors say.

Texas families with transgender children who are worried about being investigated by DFPS can gain protection through PFLAG membership, according to the organization. Because courts have only ruled on cases involving PFLAG members, families who are not a part of the group do not have full legal protection against state investigation at this time.

Bills that would ban gender-affirming care for transgender youth have been introduced in the Texas legislature but have failed to become law.

"Never forget that all it takes is a political, economic or religious crisis for women's rights to be called into question. These rights are never safe. You will have to remain vigilant your whole life"

- Simone de Beauvoir.

We recently had proof of this with the cancellation of the constitutional right to abortion in the United States. I honestly didn't think it would be possible, in 2022, for a country like the United States to take such a step back in human rights.

I was told that I was French, and that this news did not concern me. It's true. But I'm still shocked, angry and sad. This Supreme Court decision is an insult to my American sisters. Several states have already banned abortion. thousands of women are affected. They have been taken away from the right to decide what to do with their own bodies and their own lives. and if nothing is done, women will die, lives will be ruined, women will suffer, children will grow up in difficult conditions. the world is completely crazy.

Especially since if I understood correctly, the right to homosexual relations, to marriage between people of the same sex and to contraception are also threatened?

The handmaid's tale was a good book, of course, but we would have liked it to remain fiction.

I sincerely hope, even though I don't know how things might change, that they will. I see many American women, and even men, who continue to fight for this fundamental right, and they are right! Our mothers and grandmothers and more, and their allies, fought hard and ended up winning - so you can win too. even if the situation seems hopeless.

or, since the guns apparently have more rights than you, use them. after all, it's part of American history, right? maybe it's time to bring it up to date I think

otherwise in France we use the guillotine a lot, a little less American but very effective, I recommend it