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Judge to Chuck Turner: You're being replaced
By adamg on Mon, 02/07/2011 - 10:32am
The Globe reports a federal judge has rejected ex-Councilor Turner's effort to block the Feb. 15 and March 15 elections to replace him.
Meanwhile, one of the candidates for the seat, the Stassenesque Roy Owens, has a platform that calls for fighting abortions and spending $500 billion (yes, billion) "to build facilities to deal with our emergency loss of life, while at the same time create jobs and saving lives," according to his answers on a survey by One in 3.
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Comments
Roy Owens
uh, is this guy for real? Abortion is a "solution", not a "problem". Fight the real problem Roy - men not treating women with respect (rape, running away from their responsibilities, etc.). What's that? Oh, it's too much trouble to change men?? Let's just persecute women and not let them have control over their own bodies? Sure. Let's just call ourselves Saudia Arabia instead of America. No problem... I'm so sick of these men. When will this type of backward thinking finally go away?
Easiest way to reduce
Easiest way to reduce illegitimacy is to hold fathers responsible. Make it a condition to receive benefits for a child that the father must be named on the birth certificate or the child's DNA submitted in order to find the father through DNA databases. Send daddy the bill, garnish his wages, or any of collected government benefits, if the mother collects benefits for the child. I'm sure a lot of criminal baby daddies would stop fathering illegitimate children if they started having to provide financial support.
This would also lift a significant burden off the taxpayer by not having to subsidize some jerks unwillingness to support his children.
"Illegitamacy"
What is this, 1950?
While we are not in 1950, I'd like to point out that a substantial fraction of women who have abortions are 1)married and 2)already mothers. Birth control can fail, and people really do consider how many mouths they have to feed when they make their family reproductive decisions.
No, it's not 1950...
We have a far greater % of illegitimate births today than we had in 1950, despite the widespread availability of myriad and multiple forms of contraception. With rights come responsibilities; nothing wrong with sex, but there is something wrong with not accepting the outcomes of that, even if "unexpected."
Abortion as a method of birth control, to terminate a healthy life conceived via consensual, lawful intercourse, is immoral. There's a reason why we have laws that punish those who kill an expectant mother or kill that mother's baby (drunk drivers, murderers, etc...) It is because as a society we value innocent life.
We just don't as much as we once did, apparently.
How many of those ...
Are women who can fully support their children? How many are born to "single" women who are actually "married" to another women - except that they aren't allowed to be?
The main reason that single mothers give birth and keep their kids now: they can. They can do so, and complete their education. They can, and still hold a job to support the kid. They can, and still rear the kid without a heaping helping of moralistic bullcrap beating them down. They can, because women can get good paying jobs now. How is that not "valuing life"? How is not feeling forced to have an abortion not "valuing life"?
On the flip side, laws that add penalties for beating a woman so severely that she miscarries are recent. How is that not "valuing life". In "the good old moral days" that never were, it used to be a divine right of husbands to beat their wives with such severity, pregnant or not, and get away with it.
If only life were as wonderfully "morally" simplistic as the anti-choice crowd just loves to pretend that it is. If only.
And how many aren't?
Cite the "Murphy Brown" example all you want... the fact remains that our public housing complexes and lower-income neighborhoods are full of single women who can only support their children due to the largesse of the state, ie, the taxpayers. That is not responsibility, anymore than aborting an healthy, lawfully conceived but unwanted child is responsibility. It is better than the alternative- aborting that child- but it is still not responsible.
Laws protecting mother and child, incl. unborn child, are good. A shame some won't extend those to protecting the unborn child from other harm, such as being snuffed out beciase that child would be "inconveninet" to someone's "lifestyle."
"Anti-choice"... nice euphemism. I guess that makes abortion advocates pro-death.
Only if you don't think things through
"I guess that makes abortion advocates pro-death."
Well, since so many of them are liberals, and thus against capital punishment and most wars, you'd have to really stretch to call it that.
"Anti-choice" makes a lot more semantic sense to me. Since most so-called "pro-life" folks not only support the above, but don't seem to put a lot of their efforts into helping support the health and well-being of the kids that are already born. No, it's much more fun and less effort to go yell at women in front of Planned Parenthood.
Pro-infanticide?
Does that make you feel better? Since that is the "choice" that many so-called (to use your words) "pro-choice" folks wish to allow. And they don't seem to care much about the choice of that innocent life to be born.
No, it's much more fun and less effort to attempt to belittle people, religious and secular, who believe that innocent life is precious. And to belittle those who believe that with rights come responsibilities, to oneself, to the life that one creates.
Pro-infanticide does make a lot more semantic sense. Thanks for helping clarify.
Yep
Most anti-choice people are pro infanticide, since they solidly support all the policies that make the US the Dead Baby Capital of the Developed World. High antenatal and infant death rates don't just happen - they happen because of neglect of actual, breathing babies.
For the record, a fetus isn't a baby until it can live on its own. Until then, the person who owns the organs being commandeered has something to say about it.
Keep trolling
It beats considering the real imapct of that "choice."
It would make a lot more
It would make a lot more sense if you believed that all life were precious, instead of the canard of the "innocent" fetuses that you use to sway the ignorant, emotional masses to your side of the table.
Meanwhile, you advocate the deaths, both real and financial, of every other citizen of this country, without batting an eye, as long as it makes rich people richer.
And you don't even realize you are doing it. You are being played for a fool, and manipulated by your heartstrings using a throwaway topic they don't even care about.
Will you ever wake up?
Yep
"Pro-choice" and "anti-choice" are the best semantic choices, I think. People who state that they're "anti-abortion" are actually in favor of no one else having a safe and legal abortion either. And as you said, most "pro-life" people aren't very supportive of programs for the people who are already here.
"Pro-abortion" folks don't actually exist, to my knowledge, except hypothetically in the minds of right-wing nutjobs. I'm not aware of any notable number of people going around encouraging everyone to have abortions. If people are doing this, they're also fascist nutjobs and don't fit into any remotely mainstream sort of view.
I'm "pro-abortion"
Safe and convenient abortions are one of the great triumphs of modern medicine. I don't want or need one but thank God they're available for those who do.
By saying that, aren't you
By saying that, aren't you giving "Right wing nutjobs" validity? You're not helping your cause by saying that.
BTW, I think using "pro-choice" and "anti-choice" is not the best semantic options, "anti-choice" have a connotation of anti-freedom, giving favor to people who support abortions.
Those who are "pro-life" who don't really give support to program that support those who are already here, I can understand why they see the problem. They don't like how it incentivivises single motherhood and the drain on resources. It's a bit of a dilemma. We want to help single mothers for the good of the child, but at the same time, it gives incentives to single motherhood. Which is bad. Incentives matter and it is bad for a kid to grow up without a father with the known issues of that. Along with being a drain on resources.
I have a lot more thoughts I can write, but I'll leave it here. There's too much to write and think about.
Don't feed the obvious troll.
Don't feed the obvious troll.
the late great bill hicks
I, ah...this abortion issue in the States is dividing the country right in half. You know, and even amongst my friends - we're all highly intelligent - they're totally divided on the issue of abortion. Totally divided. Some of my friends think these pro-life people are just annoying idiots. Other of my friends think these pro-life people are evil fucks. How are we gonna have a consensus? I'm torn. I try and take the broad view and think of them as evil, annoying fucks.
Bill Hicks
Well well well...
Anon confirmed for /b/ro.
"Illegitimacy" was the wrong
"Illegitimacy" was the wrong term. I meant fathers whom do not acknowledge paternity or support their children. Unless a child is adopted, because of the legal protections for the birth parents, a child should have a right to know whom BOTH their parents are.
Question
How I feel about any of this aside, I'm curious how, in this situation, you would treat someone who acted as a known sperm donor. Would you require that people have legal agreements about such things? If so, do you plan to pay for them? And once your plan is in place so that all families with sperm donors are outed since there will no longer be families where there "just isn't" a father, do you plan to make sure that everyone has access to lawyers and doctors and school teachers and other community resources that are open and supporting of lesbian mothers and single-by-choice mothers?
Sperm donors should be
Sperm donors should be granted an exemption. Though I also think it should be the law that women impregnated by donors shouldn't be able to collect welfare benefits for those children in the first place. If they could afford the procedure, which is rather expensive, then they can afford to raise their child without public assistance.
Not who I was talking about
I was taking about the folks who don't use sperm banks. This is generally free.
People using sperm banks (for known donor or anonymous donor) have legal agreements. People who don't use sperm banks don't usually pay for legal paperwork.
Also, you're likely thinking of in-vitro and IUI. Purchasing a vial of sperm and inseminating at home is cheaper than having cable for a year.
Hey, you can post an ad on
Hey, you can post an ad on CraigsList and get three free samples fresh from the tap before midnight.
Politicians should be
Politicians should be required to pass a basic test of economics, civics, and the standard civil service exam before being allowed on a ballot.
Therein lies the rub
Define "civics."
Civics in this case meaning
Civics in this case meaning being able to to display and understanding how the legislative process works. A politician should have a clear understanding of what powers and responsibilities the position they are running for entails.
I say, let's bring back 'literacy tests'
Citizens "should be required to pass a basic test of" economics, civics," and literacy "before being allowed [to vote] on a ballot."
Especially in the South.
Prolonged Hoot
Owens is always a hoot and didn't disappoint at the Roxbury candidate forum. He answered every question with abortion angles. Redistricting? Well, now, black Bostonians are underrepresented because they disproportionately get abortions. So, fewer abortions will mean more black babies becoming adults and providing political clout.
He even obviously annoyed other candidates by proclaiming repeatedly that he was the only one up there with Christian values and morality. If looks could have killed...
Roy Owens
I actually have some Owens propaganda that I picked up so as to scan and post. Might copy edit it as well. Basically a bunch of illiterate ranting* about how the state is being ruined by people who want to teach children that LGB people are acceptable. So he's in favor of harassing LGB(and probably T, though he didn't say specifically) adults and children. It actually made me wonder whether SPLC or a similar organization would classify this as hate speech -- when similar things have been distributed in communities without being tied to a political campaign, they've been listed on there as hate occurrences.
Oh, and he keeps talking about how he's against violence, except that he also says he only accepts "man vs. woman marriage." Sounds violent to me.
*No, I don't judge whether he can spell or punctuate or form coherent sentences, but I do judge that he's too stupid to run it by someone who can before he runs off thousands of copies and litters the neighborhood with them.
Chuck Turner
His spokespeople are still sending out a newsletter over our neighborhood listserv, which in the footer lists him (at a personal e-mail address) along with other current officials (at their city/state) addresses, as area contact people.
Roy Owens on top priorities
"Death due to aids, murder and drugs and incarceration. We are approximately 80% of all aids victim, 70 of all murders rates, and 85% of prisons population due to drugs."
Hm. According to the CDC stats for the USA from 2008, Black/African-Americans made up about half of new AIDS diagnoses. If everyone who reported their race as Latino/a also identified as Black, that would bring the total to around 70%. While still vastly disproportionate, it's not 80%.
But maybe he's talking worldwide. Fair 'nuff.
I'm not going to ferret out statistics for his other claims above. I do think it's fair to suppose that by "we", he means "Black males". And the incarceration rate of Black males is certainly a problem that needs to be addressed by going to its root causes.
HOWEVER...Mr. Owens seems to have missed the idea that a politician needs to be willing to represent his entire district, not just the demographic of which he is a part, and that includes the college students in the Fenway, the gay guys in the South End and the white lesbians on Fort Hill. Well, and everybody else, of course. :)
Read the judge's ruling on Turner's motion