More GOP abortion funtime: Save the life of the mother? Science calls Bullshit

[Valmy]

Clarify, por favor?

Unless those bodies are making a certain number of children society will perish.  And typically society also had a strong interest beyond just that, also wanting the children to be born a certain way and be raised a certain way.  So I think I think the result is pretty strict social controls have always been exerted on women's bodies.  Naturaly this sort of thing is very counter to modern values, but the impulse is always there.

[merithyn]

Clarify, por favor?

Unless those bodies are making a certain number of children society will perish.  And typically society also had a strong interest beyond just that, also wanting the children to be born a certain way and be raised a certain way.  So I think I think the result is pretty strict social controls have always been exerted on women's bodies.  Naturaly this sort of thing is very counter to modern values, but the impulse is always there.

Glad I asked you to clarify. That's not at all what I was thinking when I read your comment. I thought it was more of the "making sure that Daddy is actually Daddy". In other words, men choosing to control women had more to do with making sure that they were raising their own children and not those of another man.

Were it all what you were thinking, there would be more controls on men's bodies, too. As it is, those seem to be few and far between.

[garbon]

Yeah I thought the same, Meri.

[Eddie Teach]

Well according to P, they actually consider the woman's body irrelevant. Controlling it is just incidental.

Case in point.

[Syt]

Meanwhile in the Tea Party . . . (courtesy of my sisters and brothers in law in the U.S. who are big tea party fans):

Golden oldie.........."I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky" William Jefferson Clinton

And this is the best Obama could find to be his keynote speaker at the DNC convention?

LIKE and SHARE if Bill Clinton has a personal "war on women"

[Valmy]

Glad I asked you to clarify. That's not at all what I was thinking when I read your comment. I thought it was more of the "making sure that Daddy is actually Daddy". In other words, men choosing to control women had more to do with making sure that they were raising their own children and not those of another man.

Were it all what you were thinking, there would be more controls on men's bodies, too. As it is, those seem to be few and far between.

And I guess the question I would ask is why men would be under societal pressure to ensure that that was the case.  That is pointing to what I was saying.  Unless you think men were just born naturally with the inclination.

[merithyn]

And I guess the question I would ask is why men would be under societal pressure to ensure that that was the case.  That is pointing to what I was saying.  Unless you think men were just born naturally with the inclination.

The innate desire - especially in earliest human tribes - was the continuation of a person's genes. In the animal kingdom, males will kill babies that don't look or smell right (not theirs), and it wouldn't surprise me if humans were similar. When you throw in the idea that women were often raped during wars in order to show virility, I can imagine those women and their offspring from such a situation being ejected from the tribe for bringing in "enemy blood". I'm trying to remember how the Scottish tribes handled that (I read a couple of books on them some time ago), and all that I can remember was most of the time, the women who survived the rapes were actually taken and not left behind. The blood of the mother was irrelevant; it was the blood of the father that mattered.

[derspiess]

Meanwhile in the Tea Party . . . (courtesy of my sisters and brothers in law in the U.S. who are big tea party fans):

Golden oldie.........."I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky" William Jefferson Clinton

And this is the best Obama could find to be his keynote speaker at the DNC convention?

LIKE and SHARE if Bill Clinton has a personal "war on women"

Well I think even women's groups grudgingly admitted that Clinton was a dirtbag when it came to how he acted towards women in his private life.  But of course they also pointed out that his "public morality" more than made up for that because he favored abortion rights and stuff.

[merithyn]

Meanwhile in the Tea Party . . . (courtesy of my sisters and brothers in law in the U.S. who are big tea party fans):

Golden oldie.........."I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky" William Jefferson Clinton

And this is the best Obama could find to be his keynote speaker at the DNC convention?

LIKE and SHARE if Bill Clinton has a personal "war on women"

Well I think even women's groups grudgingly admitted that Clinton was a dirtbag when it came to how he acted towards women in his private life.  But of course they also pointed out that his "public morality" more than made up for that because he favored abortion rights and stuff.

I think it honestly has more to do with his wife than with him. Women's groups decried Hillary staying with Bill, but now, 15 years later, the fact that Bill married (and managed to stay married to) such a strong, capable woman means that he must not be quite as much of a dirtbag as first thought.

[garbon]

Well according to P, they actually consider the woman's body irrelevant. Controlling it is just incidental.

Case in point.

You said that first bit and the 2nd bit is certainly true if they don't want a woman to have a say in whether or not she stays pregnant

[Valmy]

The innate desire - especially in earliest human tribes - was the continuation of a person's genes. In the animal kingdom, males will kill babies that don't look or smell right (not theirs), and it wouldn't surprise me if humans were similar. When you throw in the idea that women were often raped during wars in order to show virility, I can imagine those women and their offspring from such a situation being ejected from the tribe for bringing in "enemy blood". I'm trying to remember how the Scottish tribes handled that (I read a couple of books on them some time ago), and all that I can remember was most of the time, the women who survived the rapes were actually taken and not left behind. The blood of the mother was irrelevant; it was the blood of the father that mattered.

Well you are just talking about the Scots and Celtic traditions here, which seem to be extremely patrilineal.  Heck there is sort of a controversy today about the British government recognizing as head of a clan a guy who holds the title but holds it from his mother and thus not legitimately according to Scottish traditions.  But plenty of tribal societies considered the blood of the mother to be very important, take the Israelites.  And it maybe possible that Jewish law is explicit that any child of a Jewish mother is a Jew just to cover the situation of the Assyrians rolling in and raping a bunch of women.  Certainly the Greeks considered the Polis of the mother to be very important  but I am not certain how they handled that case. 

When it comes to the whole genes thing you cannot also ignore the role of animal husbandry here, the breeding of animals was taken very seriously and strictly controlled to get the best results and so naturally the inclination to extend that to humans.  Hence again, society considering it a vital interest in controlling women's bodies.  Naturally you do not want your enemies raping the women and polluting your breed of humans.

But more to my point it was not like if it was known that a man's wife was cheating on him and some of his kids were not his, that man could not just ignore it even if that was his inclination.  The societal pressure on him would have been extreme.  Heck it would be pretty extreme today.