The British government will today publicly defy the United States by giving money for safe abortion services in developing countries to organisations that have been cut off from American funding.
The “global gag” rule, as it has become known, was imposed by President George Bush in 2001. It requires any organisation applying for US funds to sign an undertaking not to counsel women on abortion – other than advising against it – or provide abortion services.
The UK will today become the founder donor of a fund set up specifically to attempt to replace the lost dollars and increase safe abortion services.
Right on.
I find my faith (sic) in my mother-country somewhat restored reading this, after last weeks revelations (sic) on a recent evolution/intelligent design survey:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4648598.stm
“DEFYING?” — typical Guardian journalistic hyperbole. The U.S. has one policy regarding how it chooses to give away money, and the U.K. has another policy. How is that “defiance”?
Did I miss the part where the U.S. ordered the UK not to fund abortions? Becuase then this would be “defiance”. But, uh, no, that’s not the case.
I suppose not many on this blog would appreciate the fact that many Americans happen to abhor abortion, and would not appreciate being literally coerced to fund it (which is precisely the case when tax dollars are so spent.)
There are a thousand ways to spend aid money and save lives, why not pick a cause that a lot of people do not hate and let the Euros fund it since they have more sympathy for it. Gosh that’s actually democratic, let’s show our contempt.
Yeah…a government funding “doctors” to eliminate human life under the veil of “choice.”
Ask the women who’ve had abortions, and what it does to them. I have…if you do, you’d change your mind about being “pro choice.”
Thank God there’s America.
“Right on.” Heh. I won’t see you in hell.
Kevin,
“I suppose” you might not “appreciate the fact that many Americans happen to abhor” war, “and would not appreciate being literally coerced to fund it”.
If you need more examples – I also don’t appreciate the teaching of religion in science classes, but our president would welcome it, and would certainly fund it from tax money. There are many things funded by our taxes, and nobody likes all of them.
edbauer;
What you forgot to do was to ask an unwanted child what it was like to grow up in poverty, unloved, abused, neglected, moving from foster home to foster home, with no parents or parental figure to speak of. I’ve done this, and if you had, you would change your mind about being “pro life”.
As for the hell comment, all I can say is that if you run your life being afraid of a fictional place, for which there is absolutely no credible evidence, your life must be very sad indeed.
Thank god there’s the UK.
I bet the same people who agree with Bush’s withdrawal of fund to those in needs if they happen to provide access to abortion are the same that see no problems with what happens in Guantanamo bay.
it is a sad day when a government supports the murder of innocent children. albeit, it is even more grevious when its citizens congratulate themselves as humanitarians. Let us pray that we can peacefully turn from the murderous atrocities we committ against unborn babies everyday, before a stronger, wiser nation justly invades our land.
…men convinced of the superiority of their cause.
Yes, that has historically been a component of much suffering.
…before a stronger, wiser nation justly invades our land.
Is that really what you expect me to be afraid of?
I’m not sure Kevin was reading the same post I was. This is about the US trying to force other nations into a specific action by withholding loans if they don’t. “It requires any organisation applying for US funds to sign an undertaking not to counsel women on abortion – other than advising against it – or provide abortion services.”
The US tried something like this against Canada, telling us not to deal with Cuba. We didn’t listen then, either.
Josh;
“it is a sad day when a government supports the murder of innocent children”
Or, it’s a great day when a government realizes that it is capable of helping those mothers who have been raped, or are at physical risk of harming themselves or their baby due to pregnancy complications.
“it is even more grevious when its citizens congratulate themselves as humanitarians.”
True for both sides of the argument. Can’t blame this one just on the pro choice supporters.
“what is even more disturbing is the justification of such actions by some (ian) through a line of logic which taken to its true conclusion leads us to Nazi death camps & Hitler’s final solution.”
That’s one of the steepest slippery slope arguments I’ve heard in a while. In other news, I got a paper cut today. Using your line of logic, my finger will get infected and they’ll have to cut off my arm.
“If you choose to devalue human life by subjectively determining the expected quality of that life, you might as well line up kids in the projects of Harlem for mass executions, because they might not be as likely to receive a quality college education.”
You’re equating born children with an undeveloped embryo. Not the same thing. Sorry.
“Thank God for history, which reminds us that whole nations can be deceived into committing atrocities in the name of the greater good. History also teaches us that evil only succeeds when good men do nothing. And war, though terrible, freed Americans from the tyrrany of the UK, saved the lives of millions of Jews, and has been a successful recourse throughout time in stopping the onslaught of the innocent by men convinced of the superiority of their cause.”
I didn’t know this was turning into an argument against the Iraq invasion. I mean, I know Bush deceived the American public in his justifications for invasion, but I thought we were talking about abortion?
And tyranny of the UK? Please explain?
Hey edbauer,
Birth em them then let em ride the lighting when they rob a rich person, or sell drugs, or whack a homey.
I bet you like capital punnishment. “Its the Jesus thing to do”, right?
i love how ian’s “baby” in paragraph 2 quickly becomes an “undeveloped embryo” later in the post. his value of human life continues to be based on subjective viewpoints.
what is an “undeveloped embryo” anyway? at what point does it become developed? when doyou “deem” it a human life? when it looks like a human? when it has a heart? when it leaves the womb?… wait no, i bet it’s still undeveloped until it’s no longer dependent on the mother… so like maybe when it’s 16. of course maybe your still a little “undeveloped” as a human, and maybe you should still be up for abortion.
the point is… the value of life is not subjective. a baby is baby. leaving the mother’s womb doesn’t change that. an idiot is an idiot. typing clever liberal talking points on your computer doesn’t change that either.
and ian, by the way, the tyranny of the Uk happens to have led to a little event Americans refer to as the Revolutionary War.
Bravo Josh! In 100 years we’ll look back on abortion like we look back on slavery today.
Josh;
“i love how ian’s “baby” in paragraph 2 quickly becomes an “undeveloped embryo” later in the post. his value of human life continues to be based on subjective viewpoints.”
You’re right. Poor choice of wording on my part. I should have said embryo from the beginning. My apologies.
“what is an “undeveloped embryo” anyway? at what point does it become developed? when doyou “deem” it a human life? when it looks like a human? when it has a heart? when it leaves the womb?… wait no, i bet it’s still undeveloped until it’s no longer dependent on the mother… so like maybe when it’s 16. of course maybe your still a little “undeveloped” as a human, and maybe you should still be up for abortion.”
Well, thanks for keeping this debate civilized. All you’ve done is undermine your argument with personal attacks. Well done. I have no grudge against you, but apparently anyone who disagrees with you is an idiot.
“the point is… the value of life is not subjective. a baby is baby. leaving the mother’s womb doesn’t change that. an idiot is an idiot. typing clever liberal talking points on your computer doesn’t change that either.”
Your argument is based on the assumption that everyone’s definition of life is the same. I do not define an embryo as life. Nor did I define Terry Schiavo’s condition as life. She was a vegetable, pure and simple. Her autopsy confirmed that condition.
“and ian, by the way, the tyranny of the Uk happens to have led to a little event Americans refer to as the Revolutionary War.”
OK, point made, albeit smugly. I was assuming you were talking about World War II. My bad.
ian,
i do apologize for the personal attack. i hope you’ll understand if it may be difficult in keeping my emotions in check when discussing a topic which, from my belief, involves the continued murder of innocent humans in civilized societies across the planet.
although i know you disagree with this belief, i imagine you could step into my shoes for a moment and understand the importance of this issue… if we only agreed on the “definition of life.”
the problem i have with your argument, leaving euthanasia aside for simplicity’s sake, is although we obviously have differing opinions, the “definition of life” is not a matter of perspective. it is a quantifiable absolute. you obviously respect medicine’s ability to define life (“Her autopsy confirmed that condition.”) however, there is no medical evidence whatsoever to support some “change” in the life of an unborn child, after it leaves the womb, that suddenly makes it human. In fact, the evidence is contradictory to that assumption.
i can only surmise, from American law, that the “defintion of life” for the “embryo” is entirely dependent on the will of the mother, hence laws that allow a drunk driver who kills a pregnant woman to be charged with double homicide. the baby is only a baby b/c the mother wanted it to be one? there is nothing more unscientific than this means of defining life.
so my question to you ian… what is your “scientific” means of defining human life? how does it allow for a justification of abortion as anything else than a convenient euphimism for murder?
This is about the US trying to force other nations into a specific action by withholding loans if they don’t.
ASCII King, first of all my point is that UK is not defying us, because we have not attempted to tell them what to do one way or the other. My point is that the Guardian is being dishonest and breathless in their typical anti-Americanism.
Second, the US is under no obligation to give away charitable aid to any particular country or cause. As with any person or country, we’re picking and choosing how we want to give away scarce dollars. If you offered a bum $5 on condition he spend it on lunch, and not booze, no one is accusing you of “forcing” him to take some particular course of action.
Of COURSE we’re going to apply conditions to aid, every country that gives aid does — or else the money would of course make its way to every repugnant dictator and terrorist on Earth (Which would make Steve Wozniak happy by the way). You don’t hand over $100 million dollars and say “go knock yourself out, whatever”. So in that sense, no doubt Canada also tries to “force” countries into specific courses of action whenever they give away any aid — ecept that Canada is a tiny little country that no one much cares about, so you don’t get the headlines.
The real issue is, as I see it, is that life IS a matter of perspective. The Terry Shiavo case (to complicate the matter, but I believe it supports my case) is proof of that difference in perspective. You define life as starting at conception. I do not, nor do many others (not that popular opinion is correct). I would say life begins when the embryo is able to exist on its own without the mother. Up until that point, it is completely dependent on the mother. While in the womb, the embryo does not have a life of its own. It can’t. It simply won’t survive outside it.
This is not to say I necessarily support abortions right up until the water breaks. I believe there should be limits at which point a pregnancy should be aborted. Every abortion should be made carefully on a case by case basis. Ultimately, it is the mother’s decision to make, not the government, nor anyone else.
Sorry if I tend to lump most anti-abortion rhetoric into the foolish fundamentalist column; but, if kings hadn’t beaten priests to it — the latter would have had all the credit for inventing hypocrisy. That includes their followers.
Most of the anti-abortion tripe here spins on (1) hating the politics of a newspaper — regardless of their reputation for journalism; (2) inventing “concepts” of life that haven’t a bloody thing to do with medicine; and (3) completely ignoring history — since the United States has a decades-long history of being ahead of the UK (and much of the world) in dealing with the various anti-woman bigotries. That includes support for the whole range of issues from family planning, contraception to safe, legal abortion. Not that our governments volunteered the leadership; but, once they were dragged into sensible politics, domestic policy helped shape foreign policy.
Since the shortest term of any of these is 30-plus years (abortion), turning your back on other nations which have shared the load and responsibility for these efforts constitutes a radical denial. And some anti-abortion campaigner gets his shorts in an uproar over “defies”.
I think the Guardian was too polite.
Having finally watched the FRONTLINE episode “The Last Abortion Clinic”, I support this effort to provide an alternative view and funding regarding this issue. I think abortion is wrong, but I believe its in everyone’s interest for the woman to have the choice in the 1st trimester. But for economic reasons, many women in the US don’t have that choice. (And perhaps that’s fine, but….anyway, watch the show.) The same obviously applies to women in poverty stricken countries.
Kevin, while we haven’t forced anyone to not provide this funding, US diplomacy on this issue has weighed heavily against abortion funding. So if you want to get US funding in your aid program, don’t include abortion support or the US will veto it or not participate, and that’s a huge consideration given the money flows and international clout we carry.
On the other hand, this has been our policy for 20 years. It’s about time someone stepped into the vacuum left by America’s foreign policy in this area. If Clinton couldn’t reverse it, then Europe should have taken the hint and done this 10 years ago.
The same goes for private sources of funds. I wonder what Bill and Melinda’s position is on this?
Josh,
Are your words baked up by actions that help these unwanted or unsupportable births? Are you contributing money, in a significant proportion to your income (20% or so), to the care and feeding of unwanted or unsupportable births? Are you volunteering your time to mentor the needy products of these unwanted or unsupportable births? Are your actions equally distributed across all peoples, including those born with diminished capabilities? Are your actions and words springing from compassion for those that were born less fortunate than you, or do you simply take pleasure in damning others?
“You’re equating born children with an undeveloped embryo. Not the same thing. Sorry. ”
Just like that burger in McDonalds isn’t the side of a cows ass.. Congratulations! Your ability to disassociate something “because it doesn’t look like something else” is one of the biggest problems facing society today. It’s the exact same force at work when a pilot presses the button in his “video game” cockpit, blowing both innocent and guilty into tiny pieces. But that’s ok.. It looks like a video game.. you don’t see their heads being splattered.
The harm caused by the fact that many humans think this way crosses many boundaries, abortion being only one them.
Just remember, that little clump of cells might not look like much, but it’s still more complex than any computer in the world. But it’s ok to kill it, it can’t think or feel, so that makes it fine.
What amazes me is who the hell are YOU or ANY other human to say where we draw the line on deliberately killing another human? Especially one with no voice. I’m not religious. I don’t even claim to believe in any God. I’m merely someone who recognizes that, just because something doesn’t look like something else, doesn’t mean that isn’t still a live and living thing. And when you deliberately stop that thing from living what do we call that? That’s right – Killing. But what have we killed? Oh, it’s not a baby! It’s a foetus .. it’s an embryo. These aren’t just other words for little baby and tiny baby! No! Because then we’d be admitting it’s the same as killing a baby, and OF COURSE it’s not!
You know what? The moment you start to justify any form of murder you’ve just kissed goodbye to a large part of your humanity. But hey, I don’t expect to change peoples minds when they’re so made up about all this crap. Just go back to your usual disassociating till some like minded person blows us all to hell. After all, most abortions in America are providing a service, since they keep the streets free of even more poor black people and their like.
I live in the UK. I’m against state sanctioned executions. Would that make me a liberal in America? Oh wait, I think abortion is even worse. Does that make me a conservative? Or maybe I’m just someone who thinks both sides are totally messed up and people attempting to justifying abortion, or any other form of killing, is just one aspect of that.
Tell ya what.. I’ve got a better idea.. Why waste time posting here? Get a job scooping the brains out of dead babies and injecting them into people! We’ll call it a medical revolution and you’ll be a hero. They’re dead anyway, and other people benefit, so that makes it ok!
This sure is one helluva messed up world 🙁
PK, perhaps you should just follow your logic to its inevitable conclusion, a la Camus, and commit suicide? Then, you’re only killing one living being. No cows. No fish. No more questions to discuss. Much less resolve. No requirement to let someone else hold an opinion differing from yours.
Consider it.
To the anti-abortion people: if you’re against abortion, don’t have one. But don’t force a woman to carry any zygote to term.
PK, where did ian say that an embryo and a child are different b/c they look different? “Because it doesn’t look like something else?” no where did he say that. The two things are different. An embryo can be defined as ” An organism in its early stages of development, especially before it has reached a distinctively recognizable form.” That doesn’t equate being a child.
The fact that the US with holds money from countries that provide abortions is bad policy. While abortion makes a very poor contraception choice, sometimes it is the only one left. Ignorance of proper birth control makes pregnancy a near certainty for too many people.
Life does not start at conception. I believe that it should legally start when the baby can live outside the womb with minimal help. By minimal, I mean supplying food and warmth. I don’t mean intensive care with tubes running into the baby inside an incubator. The Supreme Court seems to agree with that opinion.
“i can only surmise, from American law, that the “defintion of life” for the “embryo” is entirely dependent on the will of the mother, hence laws that allow a drunk driver who kills a pregnant woman to be charged with double homicide. the baby is only a baby b/c the mother wanted it to be one? there is nothing more unscientific than this means of defining life.”
Ok, so if the mother doesn’t want it to be one then she should be allowed to get rid of the unwanted “parasite”. No? It would be a lot easier too if the goverment would approve the RU486 pill that would help prevent later term abortions also but since our gov’t has turned into a Catholic theocrocy, we are controlled by the child molestation approving organization in Rome and their selfish hypocritical opinions.
Where does this bleedingly compassionate (religious) Conservative argument go when you take it to the inevitable where the population exceeds their resource supplies? Is the idea of having the (born) children to lie around starving with bloated bellies and flies on their faces crying until they die better than abortion by pill or doctor or prevention by using a condom which the church is selfishly and hypocritically against. In addition, if you haven’t sponsored a starving child and are unquestionably pro-life then your a short-sighted hypocrit who contributes to human suffering by virtue of religious and/or emotional viewpoints. How many prolifers get involved with helping to raise the children that they “caused” by berating an unfit mother for a few hours until she breaks? Less than 1 percent I’m sure as they don’t really care what happens to the child after they’re born, they just want to make sure that everybody get’s a chance to be born.
The ultimate justice would be that anyone who tried to force their pro-life opinion on another would have to provide monetary support for the child until adulthood like a supplemental parent charged with legal child support or the self-righteous individual should be legally forced to adopt a homeless child to ease the burden that they are creating with their short-term bleeding heart babble.
“An embryo can be defined as An organism in its early stages of development, especially before it has reached a distinctively recognizable form. That doesn’t equate being a child.”
Says who? Where does a child come from then? At what magical moment does something suddenly spring from being an “organism” in your mind to being something more? Just all of a sudden someone waves a magic wand and says “Voila! You are now a human?” If you can know the precise moment that happens then perhaps there is a God, and obviously his name is Toby 🙂 You were once one of those “organisms” remember. Science still can’t even claim to understand 1% of the process, so I’m glad you know so much 🙂
To Pat – If life doesn’t start at conception then why does the embryo divide. If something grows it’s alive. So the question is not when life begins (conception) since it’s alive, but rather WHAT is alive. Some people take the view that, just because a certain stage of development hasn’t been reached, it cannot constitute a human. Strange way of thinking to me. It just amazes me how many of you decide you have a clear definition of something like this. You’re all busy playing God..
In the UK btw, there are mile wide loopholes in the law that effectively mean there are NO limits to when an abortion can be performed. Perhaps, judging by the views of some, you should come here and make it a career choice. I’m sure you’ll feel great waking up in the morning on your way to work, off to rip some 9 month old out. Lets hope the drugs killed it first so you don’t have to go through the unpleasantness of killing it when it comes out.
Anyway, I’m done on this unpleasant topic.
Carry on disassociating.. Remember it’s all about choice and rights and organisms that definitely aren’t human – until you all decide it is!
Here in the US, we need all those unwanted babys to grow up so we can send them to war to die!
> if you’re against abortion, don’t have one.
If you’re against murder don’t commit one. If you’re against rape, don’t commit one. If you’re against cocaine, don’t use it. If you’re against slavery, don’t have one.
“What you forgot to do was to ask an unwanted child what it was like to grow up in poverty, unloved, abused, neglected, moving from foster home to foster home, with no parents or parental figure to speak of. I’ve done this, and if you had, you would change your mind about being “pro life”.”
Cool, lets just kill all the poor people and unloved people. It’ll take care of the world over population and we won’t have to hear them complain we’re not giving them enough money. Heck. lets make it easy on use and kill everyone we don’t like too.
Being wanted or unwanted by your parents doesn’t mean you’ll have a great life. But you should be able to have the change at life to find out.