Killings Of New, Expectant Mothers Mount - Washington Post

[WillyT]

<snip>

The dead included Ceeatta Stewart-McKinnie, 23, a college student in Richmond who was beaten to death by her boyfriend. The couple had dated on and off for years, and she had had abortions previously, prosecutors said. This time, he was married — and she refused to end her pregnancy. Turkey hunters found her bludgeoned body in the woods.

In Chicago, Chavanna Prather, 17, was a high school student who played basketball and worked part time at McDonald's. Prather became intimate with her manager at work, then became pregnant and asked for money for an abortion, police said. She was found dead in a river on the city's South Side. He awaits trial.

In Rochester, N.Y., Zaneta Browne, 29, was at odds with her married boyfriend about her pregnancy in 2002 when he shot her with a .22-caliber rifle. The killer and his wife secretly buried her on rural land, hoping no one would find out. Browne left three children behind. She was nearly four months pregnant with twins.

<snip>

Link: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6732499/

Prediction: Overturn Roe v. Wade, and watch these numbers skyrocket!!!

'Pro-Life' My Ass!!!

[Radical Activist]

1. What is the pro-life crowd going to do about this kind of abuse?

Nothing. They are the same group of people who oppose battered women's shelters because they think it encourages the break-up of the family.

[bicentennial_baby]

2. You got it...

They'd like to make A Handmaid's Tale a reality for us...

Btw, Hi RA! :hi:

[Radical Activist]

7. Hey!

I haven't seen you post on DU before.
Nice that we agree on something.

[bicentennial_baby]

15. I bet we agree on a lot of things...

Political and otherwise...:evilgrin:

[WillyT]

4. Oh Hell... It's A Pro-Lifer's Wet-Dream !!!

Now with the passage of the 'Laci and Conner's Law', they get to call the murder of a pregnant woman a double homicide. Unfortunately for the 'pro lifers', they only get to execute the killer once.

:mad:

[CrispyQ]

50. ...and they let deadbeat dads walk away from their responsibility.

Their hypocrisy is absolutely stunning.

[fortyfeetunder]

3. Mostly unnoticed...

Well, from reading about the victims in that article, several of them were minorities. I guess they don't make the headlines like last week's case did.

[passy]

5. Don't these people ever use condoms or any kind of birth control?

Seriously WTF are they? Rabbits.

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

6. Deep thoughts?

[Solly Mack]

10. a veritable " well" ...

:)

[WillyT]

8. Oh Hey Man... Dontcha Know ???

We'll give out Viagra and Cialis to men like candy, and are currently working on an equivalent stimulant for women.

But trying to get condoms, or birth control pills, let alone sex education...

well that's gettin tougher and tougher every day!

Whadda country... whadda sick joke.

:nuke:

Onedit: Exhibit A - Link: http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2004-11-08-druggists-pill_x.htm

[sandnsea]

9. Birth control isn't 100%

None of it. I don't think we quite stress that little fact in sex education classes.

[China_cat]

11. That's true

It's still got a better success rate than 'abstinence'.

[idiosyncratic]

19. Exactly. A friend has a granddaughter because of "abstinence"

The mother was a good Christian girl who was sure she would never need birth control.

Whoops . . .

[lolly]

12. Not true.

Most of the (entirely unscientific) "Abstinence Only" programs approved by increasingly conservative school boards radically exaggerate the failure rate of contraceptives.

At the high school where a friend of mind used to work--a heavily working-class minority school with a high birth rate--the girls' counselor was a fundie wingnut who actually told the girls that BIRTH CONTROL DOES NOT WORK. Not that abstinence is better; not that condoms have a 5-10% failure rate; she flat out told them that it doesn't work, period.

Her reasoning? She uses bc herself. She knows it works. But the official "abstinence" line is that kids have sex b/c they have access to birth control and therefore think they can "get away with it." If we convince them that bc doesn't work, they won't have sex!!!!!

[gaia_gardener]

17. To an extent the knowledge that BC can and does fail

kept a lot of girls in my class celibate. We knew too many other girls that had gotten pregnant (the class ahead of us had about a 50% pregnancy/parenthood rate by graduation) and knew that they had been using bc at least most of the time. The ones that didn't stay celibate became obsessive about bc - condoms and pills and spermicidal jelly. No single method for them. Plus, they would insist the boys pull out (oh the things girls will tell you when you so don't want to know).

We had decent sex ed classes/assemblies. We also had a lot of real life examples to look at.

[sandnsea]

23. Who said anything about abstinence???

Lots of little bunnies hopping to conclusions all around.

Birth control fails. Kids should know pregnancy is always a possibility with sex and take that FACT into consideration. It's wrong to give them the idea that they can have sex with no worries and no consequences if they just use birth control. It's not fair when the unexpected happens. Even a 99% success rate means plenty of unintended pregnancies every year.

[passy]

16. So you are telling me that all those cases resulted from accidents!

Seriously, you are telling me that these women were victims of defective BC. So first their BC methods be it condoms or the pill, (or why not both since well the pill doesn't protect you from STDs) failed and then they had the misfortune to get killed because they got pregnant; now I'm not a statistician but I would the chances of that happening are pretty small.

[noiretextatique]

18. what is your point?

really? this story has more to with the prevalence of violence against women than it does with birth control.

[WillyT]

20. Right On Karen !!! - It's Almost Sounds Like The Poster Is Saying...

"Well damn!!! If they'd just used birth control, nobody woulda hadda kill 'em!"

:wtf:

Or am I just reading the poster incorrectly?

:shrug:

[passy]

27. Well the failure to use adequate BC led to their death...

But of course it's up to the man to make sure the women they sleep with don't get pregnant. from the examples given it doesn't seem to me that those were planned pregnancies. Of course I might be wrong and those men weren't vicious bastards to begin with, who would not have killed them or physically abused them in the long run.

[WillyT]

29. WTF ???

:wtf::wtf::wtf::wtf::wtf::wtf:
:wtf::wtf::wtf::wtf::wtf::wtf:
:wtf::wtf::wtf::wtf::wtf::wtf:
:wtf::wtf::wtf::wtf::wtf::wtf:
:wtf::wtf::wtf::wtf::wtf::wtf:
:wtf::wtf::wtf::wtf::wtf::wtf:

:nuke:

How old are you???

[noiretextatique]

30. clearly, you didn't read the article

it talks about how pregnancy is sometimes the trigger for abuse in relationships. what led to their deaths is self-evident: the men who killed them.

[noiretextatique]

33. no, you got it right....

use birth contol (which isn't 100% effective) or you deserve to die for the inconvenience a baby might cause a man. that's the gist of it :puke:

[WillyT]

34. That's What I Thought !!!

And I agree with your assessment! :puke:

[jellybelly]

42. yes

More like if they had an abortion nobody would've killed them, but I am sure that wasn't the intention.:silly:

[passy]

22. Was it violence or a preemptive strike, the president gets away with it

why can't these men, if they thought that baby was gonna ruin their life.

[noiretextatique]

28. well, murder is against the law

even when the president does it...even if you think a baby might "ruin your life" or if little green men tell you it's ok to kill someone becasue it might invonvenience you. you do understand what MURDER is, don't you? i think the murderers mentioned in the article understand the concept now. and oddly enough, the law applies to pregnant women who might inconvience the men who impregnated them too :eyes:

[passy]

I was just pointing out that in one context life is of value

and in another it isn't. When the president speaks of Values he obviously means that the citizens have to abide by the laws of the bible as in "thou shall not kill" but in other circumstances like killing 100 of thousands of Iraqis and Afghans then the rules don't apply. Then again those MURDERED weren't "women", I guess and their life had less value than American women like you.
His attitude is to kill before somebody, potentially, conceivably in the future, at some point, might kill you.
Then again the whole story has an Oedipal twist. The child of a murderer carries the genetic heritage of their parents and could at one point in their life commit patricide. So killing then now might safe you from harm in the future. That's if psychopathy is a result of one's genetic make-up. Or maybe they would have hated their Dad because he was being such a nasty bastard toward their mother.

[noiretextatique]

36. if it walks like a duck...it's a duck

you are the one who compared the deaths of these women to bush's pre-emptive murder victims, not me. and at no time did i state that american women's lives are more valuable than the lives of iraqis of afghanis. i said: murder is murder...period. you are the one who seems to have a problem with that, in these cases.

[Solly Mack]

35. Oh, someone has an agenda...and it's not birth control or violence

against women.

Golly gee, I wonder what it is... :eyes:

[noiretextatique]

37. whatever it is

it :hurts:

[sandnsea]

25. Oh my

I guess it's politically incorrect to point out birth control doesn't work 100% of the time now too. What the fuck ever.

[noiretextatique]

31. no...this person doesn't believe all of these women used

birht control, ergo...they were to blame for their own deaths. he further claims the men were acting pre-emptively, like bush on iraq, so their lives wouldn't be ruined :eyes:

[passy]

38. I was just making the point that those events were signs of a sick society

Where the youth is taught that having sex is bad and evil, and that abstinence is the only solution. Where the moral majority votes for a war criminal. Where people live in fear of everything and believe that having a gun will protect them from harm. Where some people have living conditions that resemble the third world.
My point to make it concise, is that the country is full of double morals. If I say that they should have used birth control and they wouldn't be in the state they were then I'm saying that they were to blame for their own deaths, and if I said that they were free to have a child with somebody who did not want it and had no say in the matter then it's their right and it should not be denied, If I say that they should maybe have been a bit more judgmental when they started their relationship with these men, then I am against true love, If I say that they should be free to make mistakes and form relationships with potentially abusive men, then I am told that I am being insensitive to women who get physically abused.
In the end women are in control of their destinies as much as their bodies.
I can say that the problem is not even in using birth control or not but maybe about their choice of partner and there's nothing anyone can do about that.

[noiretextatique]

44. so many words, so little comprehension

but i agree with you the problem is a sick culture. it is a culture that doesn't value the lives of women, if those lives may inconvenience a male...clearly this isn't just an isolated phenonmenon, but a mindset. and it is a culture that teaches women they have little value, unless they are attached to some piece of man. both of these things are a work...the things men are taught and the things women are taught. you still seem to be focusing exclusively on the women.

[passy]

45. Please read this post below then

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=104&topic_id=2845302&mesg_id=2845622&page=

[noiretextatique]

47. what's horribly wrong

is that some men think killing a woman will SOLVE their problems, rather than INCREASE them. yeah...something is terribly wrong with that mindset. i don't disagree with you in a broader sense...there is something terribly wrong with the way boys and girls are being socialized to view each other and to be in relationship will each other.
men who think they can screw a woman, then kill her if a pregancy may be inconvienent for them...definitely signs of that misogyny is alive and well. women who are still so dependent on getting their identity from men that they allow themselves to be used and abused...and equally telling sign of a sick dynamic still a play far too often, and in far too many.

[SmokingJacket]

32. "These people"? What do you mean? Women?

Women get pregnant: it's what's kept this sorry species going for thousands of years.

It happens.

What does this have to do with birth control, anyway? It's not just women who are accidentally pregnant who're murdered. Laci Peterson, for example.

[idiosyncratic]

13. Quite a while ago I saw an article saying murder was the leading

cause of death for pregnant women.

What happened to Laci and Conner was a statistically-expected cause of death.

To say it again, pregnant women don't generally die from other causes than murder.

[iconoclastic cat]

14. Can we make underfunding those saved fetuses' education a crime, too?

Fair is fair.

[Name removed]

21. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[WillyT]

24. Unfortunately... NOT Startling...

But one sad indictment of this once great country.

:shrug:

[Southpaw Bookworm]

40. Similarly

Physical abuse of the mother is the leading cause of birth defects, according to some sources.

[Nikia]

26. A pregnant woman shouldn't have to worry about being killed

I don't care under what circumstances whe got pregnant under, a pregnant woman doesn't deserve to be killed because she is pregnant. Why did these men think that the way to excuse themselves from responsibility was to kill the woman who they had made pregnant? Perhaps, this should be covered in sex ed too.

[passy]

39. Could also teach young boys that beeing a father won't ruin their lives.

It's scary to think what went through the head of these men that led them to commit murder. To kill their progeniture as well is so animal like. To reach that point is kind of signal that something has gone horribly wrong somewhere.

[passy]

41. I will admit that my first post was rude and insensitive.

My attempt at irony was instead a crass and rude comment.
And noiretblu please read my last reply to you before replying to all my posts with puking smilies.

[REP]

46. I Think I Understand What You Are Saying

I think you are equating these men and the pResident as cowards who murder for their convenience, and that you mean to praise neither. If you didn't mean that, please insert puking smiley.

I'm sure that some of these pregnancies resulted from women desperate to hold on to a relationship by producing a baby - not that that is something worthy of being murdered over, not by a long shot, or that I think they "brought it on themselves." I just think that some people will do just about anything in desperate situations, and to some people, losing a relationship is a desperate situation. If the 'men' (I use the term advisedly) in question didn't want to be fathers (in some cases, fathers again), they could have taken responsibility for their own fertility. Laying all the responsibility for the pregnancy on the woman is stupid; blaming her at all for being murdered is beneath contempt.

[WillyT]

43. Last Kick !!!

:kick:

[WillyT]

49. OK... This Time I Really Mean It !

Last :kick:

[Mandate My Ass]

48. Number one with a bullet

According to the AMA the most prevalent cause of death among pregnant women in the USA is homicide by the sperm donor.

I'll bet ya dollars to doughnut holes you'll never see a picture of a beaten and decomposing pregnant female corpse floating around those "pro-life" rallies or gawd forbid the proclamation that men need to take responsibility for their actions.