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Politics : Sharks in the Septic Tank -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lane3 who wrote (78732)	11/6/2003 8:33:13 PM
From: The Philosopher	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 82486

It is led by female faculty and staff inside the school, not specifically the selection committee but teachers who may be teaching these students and grading them against male students, which certainly has an appearance of bias. It's also student groups who are officially recognized and supported by the university. But even if it's just an alumni group, why is it a good idea for it to be based on gender? I can see if there are programs that benefit ALL prospective students that would be a good thing. But programs that are gender specific? If the same thing were being done to support male students by faculty and student groups, you know as well as I do that there would be a massive outcry. White male overweight heterosexual Catholics are probably the most victimized group in society. it's okay to attack them on any number of fronts, and they have no societal supporters suggesting that there is anything at all wrong in discriminating against them on any of their characteristics.

To: Lane3 who wrote (78732)	11/6/2003 8:48:41 PM
From: The Philosopher	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 82486

I mention that in anticipation of the potential for complaints that the site isn't "fair and balanced." Clearly that statement wasn't intended to be fair and balanced; it was advocacy, not journalism. It used a number of rather transparent sophistic techniques. For example, it pretended to give a sop to the opponents in admitting that the procedure is "difficult and disturbing," but went on to say that it was difficult and disturbing "for some to comprehend," not that it was difficult or disturbing as a procedure, thereby clearly implying that the opponents are simple lacking in understanding, not that they have any legitimate arguments whatsoever to make. The statistical arguments she makes are shaky at best. For example, "Blood loss to the woman having a D&X procedure is four times less than blood loss with a normal vaginal delivery and 16 times less than with a Cesarean section ..." So? Blood loss from a bloody nose is probably something like four times the blood loss from a cut finger and sixteen times the blood loss from a mosquito bite. Does that mean that a bloody nose is a life threatening circumstance? Such ratios are meaningless without some indication of the actual losses involved and whether, for example, they are greater than the normal blood loss of a menstrual period. I could go on, but why? The author was not trying to present a fair and balanced picture; she was advocating for a position. Fair enough, she's perfectly entitled to do that, but let's not even begin to pretend that the piece was fair and balanced. And I note that she never did give a single instance where the D&X procedure would be necessary, where no other procedure could accomplish the same result with the same degree of safety. If the doctors are inadequately trained to perform other procedures, is that an argument for allowing the D&X, or is it an argument for demanding that doctors who want to perform abortions are properly trained in all the possible procedures so they can pick the best one, not just the one they think they can do.

To: Lane3 who wrote (78732)	11/6/2003 8:55:13 PM
From: The Philosopher	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 82486

It seems that all the opponents of the procedure restrict their comments to lurid descriptions of the process and don't provide much in the way of information, just rhetoric I was thinking about that. What exactly do you want in the way of information? The argument is that D&X is kllling children, and that killing children is bad. Those are beliefs, not anything you can prove by facts or information. For example, suppose that I proposed a law that every person who was in a permanent coma should be used, while still living, for medical training and that prospective doctors should cut them open and practice surgical techniques on them until they died. I would aruge that this would provide valuable training which couldn't be obtained as well in any other way and might well save many lives down the road from better trained doctors, and that the comatose people wouldn't feel it, so it was no burden on them. What sort of information would you offer to oppose that proposal? You would offer belief, I'm sure, but what information would you offer?