...and still the war against women continues
POSTED BY: Niki2
UPDATED: Friday, August 5, 2011 05:21
VIEWED: 6652
PAGE 8 of 11
This is the part where you went astray "the effect is similar to being struck with an electrical current". No, it's not.
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Kiki
I mean in terms of the way in which synaptic connections are broken. Obviously a sound wave is not an electric current. The effect on the brain is similar. It's also similar to a small tumor in that regard. Synapses are the communicating part of the cell, often at the end of long protrusions like axons and dendrites, which is what enables cells to communicate even though they are not co-located. It's actually the protrusions themselves which tear under the stress of sympathetic vibration, which can be caused by a sound wave, or electrical current. A higher electrical current will actually constrict the fibrils holding the brain structure in place, pulling the synapses apart and ripping the dendrites et al. A tumor can do something similar: pushing the cells apart, causing the dendrites and axons to stretch and break apart, breaking the synaptic connection.
All of these methods will have similar effects on the brain structure and cognitive function. It's a bad idea to do it intentionally, which was meant really as health advice, not a political statement.
Politically, in asia, ultrasound is used to select out girls so people can have more boys, which I suspect is an evolutionary glitch: In a tribal society, successful boys would have more offspring than girls. For an entire society, the practice seems evolutionarily moronic, but I can see how it would evolve on a very small clan level, and find its way, by nature or nurture, into cultures. At any rate, it's important to recognize that people behave this way, and so not to encourage it.
That's what a ship is, you know - it's not just a keel and a hull and a deck and sails, that's what a ship needs.
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The thing with technology in general is that it can often be put to bad use as well as good, generally however once the genie is out of the bottle, you can't stuff them back in.
While I find the idea of aborting a foetus on the basis of gender personally abhorrent, I don't see that blaming ultrasounds for this practice useful. And if the alternative is abandoning or killing female born babies, as probably was past practice, I'd say termination of a foetus was preferable. I'd support things that changed the mindset, rather than the technology which enables it, which is also, as I have stated earlier, useful technology, especially for women in the 'high risk pregnancy' category.
I've also had ultrasound for other medical conditions, administered by a physio and used differently, to promote healing. Quite a useful tool.
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Magon, ultrasound has lots of useful applications, including neonatal care and identifying problem pregnancies. The problem with the comparison of selective abortion and female infanticide is that while you might be right on an anecdotal personal level, it fails on a statistical level. The gender imbalance society will and does oppress women, fairly radically, as in the reintroduction of female de facto slavery in China. Female infanticide was a problem, yes, but did not create this level of statistical imbalance. I see both as serious problems, but different ones.
Lots of technology is available but held at bay. A couple things that could be done to remove the damaage is use short bursts of ultrasound, or test different frequencies, maybe try not to hit the baby's brain, but certainly not keep the machine running for an hour at a time. Another one is a professional code of conduct that would not reveal the gender of the child.
That's what a ship is, you know - it's not just a keel and a hull and a deck and sails, that's what a ship needs.
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Quote:
Originally posted by dreamtrove:
Magon,
Not off hand, I'm not aware that it's a problem, I thought we were on abortion, internationally. No question the figures are much lower for any problems in most developed nations than in third world countries.
Oh, I thought we were talking about abortion in the US and I was just, as usually, confusing things by talking about Australia.
I think different experiences inform different opinions on this emotive issue. You come at it from what I consider a very unusual perspective, the eugenics angle, something I've not really encountered from many anti abortionists.
My family background is Catholic. You have to realise that in the past the Church controlled all elements of peoples lives, what they did, said, how they behaved, how they brought their families up. In many countries and cultures it still does. The mentality of the Church was that married couples had a duty to have children and lots of them. Preventing conception in any way was forbidden, although in later years they gave a nod to ineffective practises such as withdrawal and the rhythm method.
Q what do you call people who practise the rhythm method?
A Parents
That was a Catholic joke.
People were basically kept in the dark about a lot of things, not just Catholics. Sex, contraception, abortion *gasp horror* were pretty much forbidden subjects, or the information given about them was limited. It caused great unhappiness for a whole truck load of reasons, and basically people were kept ignorant and unable to make informed choices about how they could live their lives.
A few people here have asked about the mother vs the foetus in terms of importance, but you see for many years in the Western world, women were given lower priority than their unborn babies, or the potential life that they could produce. It didn't matter how poor, sick, or miserable you were, you just produced baby after baby, through either duty or ignorance. It wasn't unusual in history for a woman to die in childbirth and her child survive, through choices made by her husband!! Women were really just seen as brainless breeding machines. Some of those kind of ways of thinking still exist in the countries that practise female infanticide.
The eugenics movement was born out of that kind of world. It saw the misery that the poor were in and thought it had solutions. Unfortunately, it missed a vital one, the one of offering choice to people and instead taking it away from them once again.
It's that important concept of choice that leads me to my stance on abortion, even if I find the reasons that people sometimes have them unethical or immoral, I still believe in choice. And yes, I value the choices of the born over the existence of the unborn, and while I often feel qualms about that, that is, I believe the most humane way of living.
I hope this explains why I feel the way I do, and why I choose to keep discussing this issue even when it divides people. It feels to me that removal of choice is moving us backwards to a time when choice was not available.
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Quote:
Originally posted by dreamtrove:
Lots of technology is available but held at bay. A couple things that could be done to remove the damaage is use short bursts of ultrasound, or test different frequencies, maybe try not to hit the baby's brain, but certainly not keep the machine running for an hour at a time. Another one is a professional code of conduct that would not reveal the gender of the child.
Eh, I've never seen it used like that. Never an hour at a time, more like 5 to 10 minutes and never static. Vaginal ultasounds can last even less time, mainly because they are damned uncomfortable, and mainly because they usually are only used to detect heartbeat in very early embryos/foetuses.
If you claim that ultrasound led to mental retardation then everybody I know should have mentally retarded children. The truth is that a lot of us have very smart children ;) I guess all medical procedures carry a risk, but ultrasounds have less than amniocentesis and other more intrusive prenatal testing.
And again, I'd reiterate, don't blame the technology, blame the ideology. If you restrict medical testing because it might contribute to abortion rate, YOU are once again making the choice on behalf of others based upon what YOU see as right.
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One of the groups I really enjoyed , 10,000 Maniacs, had a song - What's the matter here
One line, in particular, has a significant message...
I'm tired of the excuses everybody uses, he's your kid, do as you see fit,
but get this through that I don't approve of what you did to you own flesh and blood.
The song, for those who don't know, is about child abuse.
Is not abortion a form of child abuse ?
" I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend. "
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Hee, hee, hee; Hero, I love it! How about what if your scenario has added to it that the real estate agent comes around to tell you she's pregnant and gonna dun you for child support for the rest of your life unless she can get an abortion? Would you go watch the ultrasound and listen to the fetus and gory details told you by the doctor so that she could have the abortion (while she puts her earphones on and listens to her iPod?).
Hippie Operative Nikovich Nikita Nicovna Talibani,
Contracted Agent of Veritas Oilspillus, code name “Nike”,
signing off 
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Happy, IF counseling wasn't a ploy by which to try and horrify/guiltify the woman not to have an abortion, no problem. It is. There's nothing wrong with a 24-hour waiting period and counseling, but that's not the INTENT. That's the issue. And it's not sexist if it's necessary, but it's not; it's a deliberate effort to try and enforce things that will make abortion less possible.
How about the one where a doctor can't be sued if a woman's child ends up having horrible conditions that will break the woman/parents to care for and the doctor chose not to tell them? How about where a woman's life might be jeopardized by pregnancy and the doctor refuses to tell her, and he can't be held accountable? Both exist now, you know. Until someone tells me they're willing to adopt the child in the first example, they have nothing to say to me.
It's not about the health of the child, period. It absolutely isn't.
Hippie Operative Nikovich Nikita Nicovna Talibani,
Contracted Agent of Veritas Oilspillus, code name “Nike”,
signing off
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Hey Mike, here's one: What if every male who wants a vascetomy were forced by law to see a gory movie about abortions, hear all the details, see an ultrasound complete with sounds of a fetal heartbeat, wait 24 hours, drive 500 miles and then come BACK 500 miles before they could get it? I think that's just as fair as doing it to a woman... Of course, aside from the inconvenience, there's a lot of men who wouldn't care about the rest...
Hippie Operative Nikovich Nikita Nicovna Talibani,
Contracted Agent of Veritas Oilspillus, code name “Nike”,
signing off
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