Anonymous
12/02/2021 09:36
Subject: Re:New Alexandra Petri column about abortion rights
Anonymous wrote:An unborn child (fetus) is a human. Change my mind.
I don't need to change your mind.
Women are humans, too. And their bodies go through a lot of trauma in being pregnant and giving birth. And that is just the "normal" births. You're elevating the fetus over the mother, over the mother's wishes, over the mother's personal medical decisions.
Who's covering the medical costs for pregnancy and birth? What about post-partum medical and mental issues (PPD)? Did you consider that? Do the women still get maternity leave? What are you doing about the maternal death rate in this country?
So, fine. A fetus is a human to you. What are women to you? Don't bother . . . we already know. They are nothing to you.
Anonymous
12/02/2021 09:28
Subject: Re:New Alexandra Petri column about abortion rights
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Hit home for me too, OP. When I had my last kid, I had my tubes removed for this very reason. I have plenty of fertile years left, and I just couldn’t chance an oopsie pregnancy given the state of things.
As someone whose family members are going to need living organ donations, though, I really do look forward to the legal possibilities of a post-Roe world. If the state can force a woman to donate her heart, uterus and kidneys for 9 months to save a life, it can also force some pro-lifer to donate an O-Neg kidney or at least their blood to save lives. And if children and fetuses are now public goods, that’s all the ground we need to start rescuing children from their religious wacknut parents. If the Constitution doesn’t expressly provide a right to decide your own family, it certainly doesn’t provide a right to homeschool.
How is forcing you to not kill a life (with kidneys and heart and brain) the same as forcing you to remove one of your kidneys? I’m pro choice (up to a certain point) but this makes no sense.
It’s giving up part of your body, perhaps against your will, for the benefit of another.
What part are you giving up in the fetus in womb scenario?
And this is why people are saying this is being done to women by men.
What part are you giving up? On this board alone in the last few months we have had women have strokes during delivery, women with permanent nerve damage, women who almost died and if you read the newspapers (particularly in Mississippi) women who died. That’s for *wanted* children. You believe women should be sentenced to death or lifelong incapacity over children they do not want to (or medically should not) carry?
+1. I don’t understand why these anti-abortion people think the fetus just grows on its own or in God’s magic juice in the magical womb, and all it needs to survive from conception is God’s grace and mom leaving it alone. A womb is an organ that creates a placenta by which the mothers body filters, sustains, and grows the fetus at incredible expense to itself. In the old days, the old ladies would say Gain a Baby, Loose a Tooth. That’s how dramatic the impact of a pregnancy could be. If you survived, you might suffer bone loss or disease so bad you could literally lose a completely different part of your body. The impacts on the reproductive parts are more obvious - fistulas, incontinence, extreme tearing. Add in diastasis recti for the really unlucky ladies. Head on over to the postpartum board for a bit and tell me that a mom doesn’t give up any part of her to sustain a fetus. Ironically, she will have more autonomy over what happens to her corpse after she died from that pregnancy than she will during it post-Roe.
And over here, the same goons protesting abortion clinics can’t be bothered to roll up their sleeves to donate some blood or marrow to save newborns with cancer. That same newborn that was so important the law would force its mom to bear it at the expense of her own life, just to see it die because some selfish asshole couldn’t be bothered to sit in the Red Cross chair for 20 minutes and give the medical equivalent of a ponytail donation. Or the religious butters that insist on burying their corpses while their organs could have saved 20 people.
If there is no Constitutional right to be free of an unwanted pregnancy, there is no Constitutional right to not be deprived of spare body parts while dead or alive. The Constitution allows prison slavery for Christ sakes. Your religious beliefs will not spare you from an equally applicable law made in the name of a compelling state interest.
They don’t think that. They know it is a huge burden. They know it kills women. They know our maternal mortality rate is terrifying and that Black women in particular die at alarming rates.
They also know having children is one of the surest ways to doom a woman’s financial future. Poor people don’t donate to political campaigns.
These things to them are features, not bugs.
Anonymous
12/02/2021 09:03
Subject: Re:New Alexandra Petri column about abortion rights
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Hit home for me too, OP. When I had my last kid, I had my tubes removed for this very reason. I have plenty of fertile years left, and I just couldn’t chance an oopsie pregnancy given the state of things.
As someone whose family members are going to need living organ donations, though, I really do look forward to the legal possibilities of a post-Roe world. If the state can force a woman to donate her heart, uterus and kidneys for 9 months to save a life, it can also force some pro-lifer to donate an O-Neg kidney or at least their blood to save lives. And if children and fetuses are now public goods, that’s all the ground we need to start rescuing children from their religious wacknut parents. If the Constitution doesn’t expressly provide a right to decide your own family, it certainly doesn’t provide a right to homeschool.
How is forcing you to not kill a life (with kidneys and heart and brain) the same as forcing you to remove one of your kidneys? I’m pro choice (up to a certain point) but this makes no sense.
It’s giving up part of your body, perhaps against your will, for the benefit of another.
What part are you giving up in the fetus in womb scenario?
And this is why people are saying this is being done to women by men.
What part are you giving up? On this board alone in the last few months we have had women have strokes during delivery, women with permanent nerve damage, women who almost died and if you read the newspapers (particularly in Mississippi) women who died. That’s for *wanted* children. You believe women should be sentenced to death or lifelong incapacity over children they do not want to (or medically should not) carry?
+1. I don’t understand why these anti-abortion people think the fetus just grows on its own or in God’s magic juice in the magical womb, and all it needs to survive from conception is God’s grace and mom leaving it alone. A womb is an organ that creates a placenta by which the mothers body filters, sustains, and grows the fetus at incredible expense to itself. In the old days, the old ladies would say Gain a Baby, Loose a Tooth. That’s how dramatic the impact of a pregnancy could be. If you survived, you might suffer bone loss or disease so bad you could literally lose a completely different part of your body. The impacts on the reproductive parts are more obvious - fistulas, incontinence, extreme tearing. Add in diastasis recti for the really unlucky ladies. Head on over to the postpartum board for a bit and tell me that a mom doesn’t give up any part of her to sustain a fetus. Ironically, she will have more autonomy over what happens to her corpse after she died from that pregnancy than she will during it post-Roe.
And over here, the same goons protesting abortion clinics can’t be bothered to roll up their sleeves to donate some blood or marrow to save newborns with cancer. That same newborn that was so important the law would force its mom to bear it at the expense of her own life, just to see it die because some selfish asshole couldn’t be bothered to sit in the Red Cross chair for 20 minutes and give the medical equivalent of a ponytail donation. Or the religious butters that insist on burying their corpses while their organs could have saved 20 people.
If there is no Constitutional right to be free of an unwanted pregnancy, there is no Constitutional right to not be deprived of spare body parts while dead or alive. The Constitution allows prison slavery for Christ sakes. Your religious beliefs will not spare you from an equally applicable law made in the name of a compelling state interest.
Anonymous
12/02/2021 08:52
Subject: Re:New Alexandra Petri column about abortion rights
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Hit home for me too, OP. When I had my last kid, I had my tubes removed for this very reason. I have plenty of fertile years left, and I just couldn’t chance an oopsie pregnancy given the state of things.
As someone whose family members are going to need living organ donations, though, I really do look forward to the legal possibilities of a post-Roe world. If the state can force a woman to donate her heart, uterus and kidneys for 9 months to save a life, it can also force some pro-lifer to donate an O-Neg kidney or at least their blood to save lives. And if children and fetuses are now public goods, that’s all the ground we need to start rescuing children from their religious wacknut parents. If the Constitution doesn’t expressly provide a right to decide your own family, it certainly doesn’t provide a right to homeschool.
How is forcing you to not kill a life (with kidneys and heart and brain) the same as forcing you to remove one of your kidneys? I’m pro choice (up to a certain point) but this makes no sense.
Makes sense to me in theory neither without the aid of some sort of medical intervention or time and some luck is a self sustaining life. It should be a crime it to save the life of a kidney patient. We need a national registry of those with harvestable clean organs and if some needs in’s and you have two or can spare a piece (liver) you should be forced to give one up. You might be out of commission for a few weeks or months but a life is a life. The liberty of your individual body not a important as you think it is. Self determination well we all have the right to determine each other’s determinations.
Death if individual liberty… step one.
Of course that should be it should be a crime to not save the life of a kidney patient. End stage renal failure involves a great deal of ongoing pain and suffering. If one follows the notion that an embryo feels pain, seconds of pain, and push an agenda because if that belief right or wrong then how can you turn your back on a live human, with loved ones and a past and possible future who is suffering excruciating pain for years, months, days and hours.
I want forced registries to benefit for all sorts of medical procedures. Donor egg registries, plasma, blood, stem cells, kidneys, sperm, arms, fingers, skin, bone marrow. I want it all. Down with individual liberty we must think of the greater good. They is the America I want to live in.
Above all else is the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. I mean if we are trashing liberty let’s make it worth it.
Anonymous
12/02/2021 08:42
Subject: Re:New Alexandra Petri column about abortion rights
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Hit home for me too, OP. When I had my last kid, I had my tubes removed for this very reason. I have plenty of fertile years left, and I just couldn’t chance an oopsie pregnancy given the state of things.
As someone whose family members are going to need living organ donations, though, I really do look forward to the legal possibilities of a post-Roe world. If the state can force a woman to donate her heart, uterus and kidneys for 9 months to save a life, it can also force some pro-lifer to donate an O-Neg kidney or at least their blood to save lives. And if children and fetuses are now public goods, that’s all the ground we need to start rescuing children from their religious wacknut parents. If the Constitution doesn’t expressly provide a right to decide your own family, it certainly doesn’t provide a right to homeschool.
How is forcing you to not kill a life (with kidneys and heart and brain) the same as forcing you to remove one of your kidneys? I’m pro choice (up to a certain point) but this makes no sense.
Makes sense to me in theory neither without the aid of some sort of medical intervention or time and some luck is a self sustaining life. It should be a crime it to save the life of a kidney patient. We need a national registry of those with harvestable clean organs and if some needs in’s and you have two or can spare a piece (liver) you should be forced to give one up. You might be out of commission for a few weeks or months but a life is a life. The liberty of your individual body not a important as you think it is. Self determination well we all have the right to determine each other’s determinations.
Death if individual liberty… step one.
Anonymous
12/02/2021 08:40
Subject: New Alexandra Petri column about abortion rights
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Deplorable that a bunch of white men, in the form of the Federalist Society, backed by billionaires, are on the cusp of stripping women in this country of their basic rights to control their own bodies.
Organized, well-funded misogyny.
A lot of white women are very involved in the federalist society and the anti abortion movement. The question is where is the democrat organization like the federalist society? Why didn’t the dems reform the court when they had the chance? I think it is people like you who take the simplistic argument that it is just white men doing this that makes it easy for everyone to throw up their hands and walk away. Look behind the white men and you will find the white women who support and vote for them.
The Dem equivalent to the Federalist Society is the American Constitution Society, of which former Sen. Russ Feingold is the Director. We can discuss whether it’s as effective as the Federalist Society or not and why, but it does exist.
Why didn’t Dems reform the court when they had the chance? Because they believed that they could control the court through normal methods - by winning elections and nominating/approving justices. The Dems never imagined that McConnell would obstruct a legitimately nominated SC justice for a year and even during that process thought that they would win electorally and be able to fix that obstructionism through the normal processes.
Dems are fundamentally weaker than Republicans because they believe in the existing system and processes for change whereas the Republucans don’t and are this willing to blow government up in order to obtain, maintain and exercise power.
Anonymous
12/02/2021 08:22
Subject: Re:New Alexandra Petri column about abortion rights
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Hit home for me too, OP. When I had my last kid, I had my tubes removed for this very reason. I have plenty of fertile years left, and I just couldn’t chance an oopsie pregnancy given the state of things.
As someone whose family members are going to need living organ donations, though, I really do look forward to the legal possibilities of a post-Roe world. If the state can force a woman to donate her heart, uterus and kidneys for 9 months to save a life, it can also force some pro-lifer to donate an O-Neg kidney or at least their blood to save lives. And if children and fetuses are now public goods, that’s all the ground we need to start rescuing children from their religious wacknut parents. If the Constitution doesn’t expressly provide a right to decide your own family, it certainly doesn’t provide a right to homeschool.
How is forcing you to not kill a life (with kidneys and heart and brain) the same as forcing you to remove one of your kidneys? I’m pro choice (up to a certain point) but this makes no sense.
It’s giving up part of your body, perhaps against your will, for the benefit of another.
What part are you giving up in the fetus in womb scenario?
And this is why people are saying this is being done to women by men.
What part are you giving up? On this board alone in the last few months we have had women have strokes during delivery, women with permanent nerve damage, women who almost died and if you read the newspapers (particularly in Mississippi) women who died. That’s for *wanted* children. You believe women should be sentenced to death or lifelong incapacity over children they do not want to (or medically should not) carry?
Anonymous
12/02/2021 08:12
Subject: Re:New Alexandra Petri column about abortion rights
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Hit home for me too, OP. When I had my last kid, I had my tubes removed for this very reason. I have plenty of fertile years left, and I just couldn’t chance an oopsie pregnancy given the state of things.
As someone whose family members are going to need living organ donations, though, I really do look forward to the legal possibilities of a post-Roe world. If the state can force a woman to donate her heart, uterus and kidneys for 9 months to save a life, it can also force some pro-lifer to donate an O-Neg kidney or at least their blood to save lives. And if children and fetuses are now public goods, that’s all the ground we need to start rescuing children from their religious wacknut parents. If the Constitution doesn’t expressly provide a right to decide your own family, it certainly doesn’t provide a right to homeschool.
How is forcing you to not kill a life (with kidneys and heart and brain) the same as forcing you to remove one of your kidneys? I’m pro choice (up to a certain point) but this makes no sense.
It’s giving up part of your body, perhaps against your will, for the benefit of another.
What part are you giving up in the fetus in womb scenario?
You’ve clearly never been pregnant.
Also, look up the maternal mortality rate in Mississippi.
They don’t care about maternal mortality. Or neonatal mortality. Or quality of life. It’s time to stop pretending that these forced birth freaks care about life at all. They’re the morons refusing to get vaccinated, they’re the same vile people who suggested that old people dying from covid was NBD and, later, that school kids should go ahead and die so that life could “return to normal.” They’re the same people who think the police should be able to kill Black people for any reason without any recourse and they’re the same people who think that Black people should exist in a second-class existence. They’re the same dolts who think we should make global warming worse, for the Rapture. They’re the same terrible people responsible for America’s backwards politics and for our lack of progress. They don’t care about life. They hate women and they want to punish us.
Anonymous
12/01/2021 22:38
Subject: Re:New Alexandra Petri column about abortion rights
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Hit home for me too, OP. When I had my last kid, I had my tubes removed for this very reason. I have plenty of fertile years left, and I just couldn’t chance an oopsie pregnancy given the state of things.
As someone whose family members are going to need living organ donations, though, I really do look forward to the legal possibilities of a post-Roe world. If the state can force a woman to donate her heart, uterus and kidneys for 9 months to save a life, it can also force some pro-lifer to donate an O-Neg kidney or at least their blood to save lives. And if children and fetuses are now public goods, that’s all the ground we need to start rescuing children from their religious wacknut parents. If the Constitution doesn’t expressly provide a right to decide your own family, it certainly doesn’t provide a right to homeschool.
How is forcing you to not kill a life (with kidneys and heart and brain) the same as forcing you to remove one of your kidneys? I’m pro choice (up to a certain point) but this makes no sense.
It’s giving up part of your body, perhaps against your will, for the benefit of another.
What part are you giving up in the fetus in womb scenario?
You’ve clearly never been pregnant.
Also, look up the maternal mortality rate in Mississippi.
Anonymous
12/01/2021 21:15
Subject: Re:New Alexandra Petri column about abortion rights
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Hit home for me too, OP. When I had my last kid, I had my tubes removed for this very reason. I have plenty of fertile years left, and I just couldn’t chance an oopsie pregnancy given the state of things.
As someone whose family members are going to need living organ donations, though, I really do look forward to the legal possibilities of a post-Roe world. If the state can force a woman to donate her heart, uterus and kidneys for 9 months to save a life, it can also force some pro-lifer to donate an O-Neg kidney or at least their blood to save lives. And if children and fetuses are now public goods, that’s all the ground we need to start rescuing children from their religious wacknut parents. If the Constitution doesn’t expressly provide a right to decide your own family, it certainly doesn’t provide a right to homeschool.
How is forcing you to not kill a life (with kidneys and heart and brain) the same as forcing you to remove one of your kidneys? I’m pro choice (up to a certain point) but this makes no sense.
It’s giving up part of your body, perhaps against your will, for the benefit of another.
What part are you giving up in the fetus in womb scenario?
You've clearly never gestated a baby. My body was forever wrecked because of my pregnancies. Took them on willingly, but came away with the firm belief that no person should be forced to do that against their will.
There are also real life consequences. I had severe pre-eclampsia with my second pregnancy. I was put on blood pressure medication at 16 weeks. It barely did any good. I was overseas at that time and my doctor didn't seem to think it was a problem. Once I returned to the states pretty much all he!! broke loose. I ended up hospitalized at the end of 29 weeks and remained in the ante-natal ward until and emergency c-section at about the second I hit 32 weeks.
As we talk about restricting abortion access I wonder what would have happened if I started to crater health-wise at 18 weeks or 23 weeks when the baby was unlikely to survive. I mean, I don't like to think about not having my daughter, but when you see your ante-natal nurse in the grocery store a couple of months after the delivery and she grabs your hand and says, "Baby girl, you were so sick. It is such a blessing to see you," you kind of think about that $H!t. Should my older child have been left motherless? Should I not at least get a say in how my body is to be used?
Prior to about 1850 one in three women died in childbirth or from complications of childbirth. There are and will be consequences.
Anonymous
12/01/2021 20:56
Subject: Re:New Alexandra Petri column about abortion rights
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Hit home for me too, OP. When I had my last kid, I had my tubes removed for this very reason. I have plenty of fertile years left, and I just couldn’t chance an oopsie pregnancy given the state of things.
As someone whose family members are going to need living organ donations, though, I really do look forward to the legal possibilities of a post-Roe world. If the state can force a woman to donate her heart, uterus and kidneys for 9 months to save a life, it can also force some pro-lifer to donate an O-Neg kidney or at least their blood to save lives. And if children and fetuses are now public goods, that’s all the ground we need to start rescuing children from their religious wacknut parents. If the Constitution doesn’t expressly provide a right to decide your own family, it certainly doesn’t provide a right to homeschool.
How is forcing you to not kill a life (with kidneys and heart and brain) the same as forcing you to remove one of your kidneys? I’m pro choice (up to a certain point) but this makes no sense.
It’s giving up part of your body, perhaps against your will, for the benefit of another.
What part are you giving up in the fetus in womb scenario?
You've clearly never gestated a baby. My body was forever wrecked because of my pregnancies. Took them on willingly, but came away with the firm belief that no person should be forced to do that against their will.
Anonymous
12/01/2021 20:47
Subject: Re:New Alexandra Petri column about abortion rights
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Hit home for me too, OP. When I had my last kid, I had my tubes removed for this very reason. I have plenty of fertile years left, and I just couldn’t chance an oopsie pregnancy given the state of things.
As someone whose family members are going to need living organ donations, though, I really do look forward to the legal possibilities of a post-Roe world. If the state can force a woman to donate her heart, uterus and kidneys for 9 months to save a life, it can also force some pro-lifer to donate an O-Neg kidney or at least their blood to save lives. And if children and fetuses are now public goods, that’s all the ground we need to start rescuing children from their religious wacknut parents. If the Constitution doesn’t expressly provide a right to decide your own family, it certainly doesn’t provide a right to homeschool.
How is forcing you to not kill a life (with kidneys and heart and brain) the same as forcing you to remove one of your kidneys? I’m pro choice (up to a certain point) but this makes no sense.
It’s giving up part of your body, perhaps against your will, for the benefit of another.
What part are you giving up in the fetus in womb scenario?
I guess you’re one of the women hoping that another woman - a rape victim, perhaps? - will just give you her unwanted child, since you’ve clearly never been pregnant or given birth. Good god.
Anonymous
12/01/2021 20:30
Subject: Re:New Alexandra Petri column about abortion rights
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:An unborn child (fetus) is a human. Change my mind.
No one is debating whether homo sapien fetuses are human. The debate is whether the rights of unborn humans who cannot viably live outside the womb trump the rights of the living females in whose wombs the fetuses reside.
If it’s just a matter of wombs, then soon abortion won’t be necessary. Soon we will be able to “transplant” a fetus into another woman who would like a child or incubate it until it can be adopted.
I sure hope this post was a total joke, but in case it wasn’t…
I don’t know what your idea of “soon” is. I don’t think this will be happening soon. Good luck finding a super low risk way to harvest embryos/fetuses from women’s bodies. Many women would not consent to such a procedure. It’s interesting that you didn’t mention science possibly giving us a way for men to gestate fetuses. Shouldn’t that happen before fetuses are gestated in sterile artificial wombs?
It’s horrifying that you think abortion would be obsolete if we could just coerce women with unwanted pregnancies to surrender their fetuses for adoption.
Anonymous
12/01/2021 19:38
Subject: Re:New Alexandra Petri column about abortion rights
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Hit home for me too, OP. When I had my last kid, I had my tubes removed for this very reason. I have plenty of fertile years left, and I just couldn’t chance an oopsie pregnancy given the state of things.
As someone whose family members are going to need living organ donations, though, I really do look forward to the legal possibilities of a post-Roe world. If the state can force a woman to donate her heart, uterus and kidneys for 9 months to save a life, it can also force some pro-lifer to donate an O-Neg kidney or at least their blood to save lives. And if children and fetuses are now public goods, that’s all the ground we need to start rescuing children from their religious wacknut parents. If the Constitution doesn’t expressly provide a right to decide your own family, it certainly doesn’t provide a right to homeschool.
How is forcing you to not kill a life (with kidneys and heart and brain) the same as forcing you to remove one of your kidneys? I’m pro choice (up to a certain point) but this makes no sense.
It’s giving up part of your body, perhaps against your will, for the benefit of another.
What part are you giving up in the fetus in womb scenario?
Anonymous
12/01/2021 17:30
Subject: New Alexandra Petri column about abortion rights
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Deplorable that a bunch of white men, in the form of the Federalist Society, backed by billionaires, are on the cusp of stripping women in this country of their basic rights to control their own bodies.
Organized, well-funded misogyny.
A lot of white women are very involved in the federalist society and the anti abortion movement. The question is where is the democrat organization like the federalist society? Why didn’t the dems reform the court when they had the chance? I think it is people like you who take the simplistic argument that it is just white men doing this that makes it easy for everyone to throw up their hands and walk away. Look behind the white men and you will find the white women who support and vote for them.
Evidently you’re 12 and have never heard the phrase “internalized misogyny.”
And at what point have the Democrats had the numbers to “reform the courts”? When did that happen? McConnell wouldn’t even seat Obama’s judicial picks FFS.
Just can it. Oh we can not even try. It all about “internalized misogyny”. We can’t do this, we can’t do that. Why the f should anyone vote for you if you are not going to try? If the situation was reversed McConnell and the federalist would have reform the courts. I am tried if the incompetency of the dems and people like you talking about misogyny while embracing doing nothing because it is hard.
Did you have a time when there has beena chance for Democrats to “reform” the courts? No? Didn’t think so.
Why the f should anyone vote for the Democrats (I’ve never run for office; I’m way too reactive)? You look at the GOP’s end run around the Constitution and you think, gee, I should just not vote for their only real opposition.
ORRRRRR you could get loud and active in the Democratic Party yourself. How often do you contact your reps? How often do you let the media know you hate their right wing bias? Or do you just sit and whine about things that never were?