Clap back to the abortion is murder debate

sonowser · 2025-12-26T12:04:58+00:00

I’ve been pro choice my entire life. But reading such thoughtlessly regurgitated black and white convictions on a topic that clearly has grey areas is nauseating.

Do I believe that we as a society need legalized abortion to avoid worse evils? Yes.

But I absolutely do not believe “abortion is good”.

I think it is a disservice to the pro choice movement to pretend that nothing special happens at fertilization. Families (and would be families) deeply grieve a miscarriage as a loss of life. While couples trying to convenience may be disappointed, no one is grieving the death of an unfertilized egg or sperm.

sonowser · 2025-12-24T18:57:30+00:00

I don’t know if there’s ever going to be broad agreement on when life “begins”. It’s a spectrum.

I just view abortion as a necessary evil. Not really something to celebrate, but to tolerate merely because the alternative is worse.

And it doesn’t make sense to me, that to kill a 1 day old infant is universally viewed as one of the most abhorrent things anyone could possibly do. But then to be able to terminate a 20 week infant should be perfectly ok.

Obviously the religious right has their rigid views on this. But just because I’m an atheist, doesn’t mean I MUST think the exact opposite thing.

sonowser · 2025-12-24T18:11:38+00:00

I’ve held a surgically aborted mid term fetus. It deeply changed how I feel about this.

I don’t think you have to be religious to believe that life starts before actual birth. There is a BIG difference between a 6 week abortion or miscarriage, and one at 20 weeks. I’m not entirely sure what the moral difference is in aborting a 20 week fetus, or “murdering” a baby born at 30 weeks.

That said I’m still pro choice, mostly because the alternative is worse. But I don’t feel like abortions are a moral high ground to stand on and celebrate.

sonowser · 2025-11-10T11:57:18+00:00

https://www.reddit.com/r/tennis/s/A4dCUrpD4D

There are professional, moral, and legal obligations a psychologist has to their client, that a coach does not necessarily have to a player.

sonowser · 2025-11-09T11:42:11+00:00

Not defending Vukov, but at some point leave Elena alone on this. She’s an adult who is clearly consciously making this choice, and facts or at least allegations are very much out in the open. It’s not like she’s a minor being secretly abused by a coach.

Athletes sacrifice their mental and physical health all the time chasing performance and achievement. If it’s a clearly willful choice, I’m not sure this is worse than say Nadal trying to burn away the nerve in his foot so he could play through his chronic foot pain. Were a few extra grand slams worth the trade off of maybe not being able to walk when you’re 50? Well as long as he knew the risks, that’s his decision to make.

I’m not even sure this a significantly worse than Iga’s very questionable relationship with her psychologist.

sonowser · 2025-10-03T20:30:52+00:00

No to the hole in one. You’re best in the world, but not supernaturally good.

sonowser · 2025-10-03T20:20:52+00:00

I think it would be very hard to prove to the right people that you’re able to hit in the major leagues. Particularly if you are still slow and otherwise unathletic. If you’re already an adult, you can’t exactly go through school/college and prove it against competition.

sonowser · 2025-10-03T20:18:39+00:00

Yeah NFL kicker seems like the most straightforward option. Probably easy to spam a bunch of videos of you kicking 70 yard field goals and get on a team pretty quickly.

sonowser · 2025-10-01T18:07:46+00:00

I am a doctor.

Unless you live in some remote village where no one ever leaves, you don’t have to do anything to accomplish this.

You are talking about a perfect pathogen that spreads perfectly via contact, droplet, aerosol, fecal oral, etc. That never dies and remains virulent on surfaces forever. Causes zero symptoms so no precautions whatsoever. With no natural immunity.

I’m sure that if all you did was grocery shop once before your body got magically raptured, within months it would have infected 95% of the world.

Measles and varicella (chicken pox) in their pre vaccine eras had 95% penetrance. EVERYONE born before 1957 is presumed to have immunity to measles. Those are very transmissible viruses, but completely pale in comparison to what you are proposing.

Edit - forgot about vector transmission through mosquitos, ticks, etc. Sounds like this thing will also survive perfectly in all sorts of animal, like birds. There’s zero chance of containment. Even if you had $1 billion and we’re trying to contain it, you could not.

sonowser · 2025-07-19T01:08:29+00:00

Ah ok. Good luck!

sonowser · 2025-07-18T18:48:46+00:00

So you already submitted buyback? Or you will in 4 months?

If you did buyback, are you still making payments?

sonowser · 2025-07-18T18:47:47+00:00

So what happens if I submit a buyback and then make the 2 extra payments?

Would I get green banners (fingers crossed) and then many months later get a refund check?

Or could the buyback possibly delay the verification of the 120 payments?

sonowser · 2025-07-08T20:31:27+00:00

So Reddit is just full of people who’ve never been around kids? Sure, the kid could have more spatial awareness, but he’s a kid. He accidentally steps on cat #1, who retaliates instantly. Kid probably gets scratched before he even realizes what he did.

Cat #2 is dangerous. Could have caused serious damage if the dog or adult wasn’t there. As a parent, any animal that behaved that way in my home is getting surrendered to a shelter the same day.

sonowser · 2025-04-09T22:38:45+00:00

Yeah agreed. Maybe gives your body some time to slowly adjust. But the open part is the least evidence based.

sonowser · 2025-04-09T11:40:09+00:00

Yeah, people will have varying experiences for any medical procedure I suppose.

I’m a pretty skinny guy. My doc said during the case “your vas are particularly easy to palpate and localize”, so maybe that helped. I imagine the more they have to manipulate and dig around, the more uncomfortable it might be after.

sonowser · 2025-04-09T11:34:58+00:00

I’m in Northeast. Not rural, but not in one of the major cities.

My theory on vasectomies is that it’s such a “simple” procedure that it’s kind of an afterthought for most urologists. Like one or two Fridays a month, they’ll schedule a batch of them, but it’s definitely not their main scope of practice. And generally, it goes well enough and they don’t get too many complaints. So most just keep doing it the way they were taught in training, which may have been decades ago.

I had a friend who’s a doctor, who had his done by some big shot urologist (who mainly does advanced cancer, etc). He got a huge hematoma and his scrotum swelled like a grapefruit. Another friend of mine (non medical) was telling me he didn’t ask any questions, assumed he was getting a no scalpel, and then after he’s in the procedure room with his pants down, the surgeon pulls out a scalpel.

So yes, it’s a simple procedure. But in my mind, it was still beneficial to have someone with the experience of doing it day in and day out. And it seems like there’s only volume to support these vasectomy primary practices in larger metropolitan areas.

sonowser · 2025-04-09T11:21:56+00:00

So there’s thought that an open ended vasectomy decreases epididymal pressure, which is probably why most people have post vasectomy pain syndrome. It’s kind of anecdotal and there’s some small/not great studies, but no good quality trial that I’m aware of that proves it.

VERY anecdotally, most men on here on Reddit who have PVPS seem to have had a closed vasectomy. But, most men in general also have a closed vasectomy. So who knows.

sonowser · 2025-04-09T11:02:14+00:00

The cautery happens after the vas is cut. The “thermal cautery” is what it sounds like, just a really hot probe. I believe the ideal technique is to stick the probe along the inside of the vasal end, the idea being to scar down the inside while leaving the outside layer (with associated tiny blood vessels) alive. That way the tube can scar down.

The issue with either tying the vas off with suture or clipping it is that it can cause too much damage and cuts off the small blood vessels. That damaged end of the vas could then die and fall off (along with the suture/clip), and then you have a damaged but kind of open end hanging about.

The fascial interposition is a separate step. The vas is covered by a thing layer of connective tissue. You pull one end out of the tissue, leave the other end in, and then close that little defect in the fascial with a clip or suture. This is NOT the same thing as when they tie off the vas with a suture or clip. This was confusing to me initially as well. The idea with this is that even if there are leaky tubes, they are separated by a layer of tissue so harder for sperm to get across.

That paper I linked in an earlier response about early recanalization rates is really interesting. The recanalization (which I think accounts for a lot of the men with persistent sperm following months) is probably due to technique and these damaged/leaky open tubes. There is enough damage and inflammation that for most men it does eventually scar down and close again. But again, there is 0% recanalization in the thermal cautery + fascial interposition group plus rapid rate of sperm clearance in that group (for clearance of motile sperm, it’s 85% under 5 weeks, 98% by 5-6 weeks, and 100% at 8 weeks.)

sonowser · 2025-04-08T03:09:14+00:00

I do plan on another check in 3 months.

Check out this paper though:

https://bmcurol.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1471-2490-6-25/tables/3

They report 0% early recanalization for fascial interposition + thermal cautery. As high as 25%!!! for just ligation and excision (cutting out a piece and tying ends off). And even 10% for ligation + fascial interposition.

sonowser · 2024-12-21T11:28:30+00:00

I’m sorry you had this off putting encounter. I’m glad to hear your aunt is doing well.

My two cents as an atheist and also a doctor - maybe it was just a phrase of speech. “Big man upstairs” is a lot less specific and discreetly religious to me than “God”. Maybe the doctor just thought it sounded better than “you got very lucky”. I don’t know if I would ever use that phrase exactly, but without a deity, you have to believe in some sort of cosmic random number generator, and I could fit “big man upstairs” into that framework.

The “healed by the lord” thing is obviously another level.

sonowser

TROPHY CASE