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    BrightEyesAnna Merlan
    10/15/15 9:19am

    It worked so well for Nicolae Ceausescu. Hundreds of thousands of children being raised in orphanages because mothers couldn’t afford to feed them. 18 years later the crime rate in Romania skyrocketed and he was brutally overthrown/killed. This will be his undoing, which I’m fine with. Too bad millions of women and children have to suffer in the meantime.

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      ElumerereBrightEyes
      10/15/15 9:23am

      The public knowledge on Ceaucescu is surely lacking, otherwise those anti-choicers would have a lot less of a leg to stand on, me thinks.

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      BSTrainerBrightEyes
      10/15/15 9:28am

      I know someone who was born in Romania in the Ceausescu era. It was pretty clear to her that her parents did not want any children and only had one to avoid getting in trouble with the government. She’s sort of a messed up person - high achieving, but nearly incapable of establishing and maintaining healthy relationships with others. If I’m honest, she’s very manipulative and seems a touch sociopathic. Turns out being an unwanted child = not the best thing for a person’s emotional development.

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    anacanapanaAnna Merlan
    10/15/15 9:11am

    A few years back, I wound up in a discussion somewhere online where a guy was claiming that taxation was oppression. His argument was less taxation = more liberty.

    That’s when I pointed out that, according to his theory, since North Korean citizens pay no taxes, so they should have the most personal freedom.

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      BrightEyesanacanapana
      10/15/15 9:28am

      People like this absolutely kill me. No, less taxation doesn’t equal more liberty. It equals less education, less fixed roads/bridges, less safety, less clean water and less emergency personnel. In what way are you more free if your water is toxic, your house catches fire and nobody is available to put it out, you have a heart attack and no EMT shows up, a bridge collapses with you on it, nobody is arresting criminals and you or your children don’t get an education? People who believe this are absolutely absurd.

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      fortheloveofbeetsBrightEyes
      10/15/15 9:33am

      Yeah, it’s a failure of imagination—they can imagine what a world looks like where THEY don’t pay taxes but everyone else does, but they can’t think through the consequences of what would happen if nobody paid taxes.

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    LovecrimesAnna Merlan
    10/15/15 9:08am

    Upon hearing the news, Mike Huckabee exclaimed: “Maybe North Korea’s not so bad after all!”

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      Ginger Is A ConstructLovecrimes
      10/15/15 9:13am

      Ugh, Huckabee and Kim Jong-un would get on like a house on fire. “Wait, you also love guns but hate abortions and quality public education?!? Let’s go shoot guns!”

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      occamsrezrLovecrimes
      10/15/15 9:16am

      All. The. Stars.

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    Sita pt.3 *sigh*Anna Merlan
    10/15/15 9:32am

    Oh god. We all know this is going to end up in so many abandoned children, so many illegal and dangerous abortions, so many dead women, so much trauma especially on the women who are being forced to carry out these pregnancies to term.

    Oh, and so many female infanticides!

    When the fuck will men learn that criminalizing abortions will never work?

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      MuscatoSita pt.3 *sigh*
      10/15/15 9:43am

      Oh god. We all know this is going to end up in so many abandoned children...

      Especially since this is already an endemic problem in the DPRK - many tourist report seeing groups of essentially feral children haunting the edges of marketplaces, train stations, and similar places across the country. There’s even a word for them, kotjebi, which means “sparrows.”

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      Sita pt.3 *sigh*Muscato
      10/15/15 9:48am

      “sparrows” oh god, my heart just broke. ohhhhhmy god.

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    MamaMiaItsaMeaAnna Merlan
    10/15/15 9:08am

    Maybe you fix the whole starvation thing and babies will just show up on their own! Babies are cool like that, N.K.

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      FazeRacerMamaMiaItsaMea
      10/15/15 9:11am

      But then what will their glorious leader eat? He needs 80% of a country’s food supply to maintain his glorious form.

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      FarticusMamaMiaItsaMea
      10/15/15 10:18am

      That was my first thought upon reading the headline. You want more babies, you have to feed the people making them.

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    reoneAnna Merlan
    10/15/15 9:15am

    Perhaps its the grim picture of NK that has been painted, but I’m honestly surprised that women have been able to get them since the 50s.

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      ThisGuyreone
      10/15/15 9:20am

      That was my first thought on reading the title, I had no idea that abortions were legal there.

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      Wallflowerreone
      10/15/15 9:27am

      Is organized religion also banned in NK? Most of the opposition to abortion here comes from Christians, and I'm guessing North Korea doesn't have a ton of those who have policy influence.

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    duckjumperAnna Merlan
    10/15/15 9:14am

    painkiller for a broken leg in terms of the scale of problem to solution.

    With a starving population, are they not just going to end up with an astronomically high rates of infant mortality and possibly infanticide?

    fk sake, NK.

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      MsMymlanduckjumper
      10/15/15 9:19am

      And many dead women.

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      fondue processMsMymlan
      10/15/15 9:28am

      And if they survive, lifelong health issues from severe malnutrition in utero and in childhood!

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    courtAnna Merlan
    10/15/15 9:27am

    Whenever you’re watching a bunch of psychopathic liars engaging in a debate to see who will be the republican or democratic nominee for President, or you’re angry because your steak is a little overcooked, or your cell phone battery isn’t holding a long charge, just remember, you could be, but except for a cosmic miracle, a virtusl slave living and starving in the modern labor camp that is North Korea, surviving off dirt, grass, and rice.

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      jemandthehologramsAnna Merlan
      10/15/15 9:22am

      Dear GOP, when your suggested policies are starting to look like North Korea’s, you may want to reconsider your approach.

      Thanks

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        MsMymlanAnna Merlan
        10/15/15 9:13am

        Can’t we just send all our anti-abortion nutjobs to North Korea? We can kill two birds with one stone, we are rid of them and North Korea solves its population problem.

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          BSTrainerMsMymlan
          10/15/15 9:32am

          They’re already trying to establish themselves there. I read the (very interesting) book Without You there is no us by Suki Kim, about a journalist who taught English at the only private university in NK - Pyongynang University of Science and Technology. The university is funded and run by evangelical Christians, who apparently run the university so that they have their foot in the door when the dictatorship finally falls so that they’re already on the ground and ready to proselytize (which they can’t do yet without risking being thrown in a prison camp). No doubt they’re sure their presence there is what caused this glorious ruling to create more people to starve to death.

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          Ellis BellMsMymlan
          10/15/15 9:44am

          Honestly, they’ve probably got their tainted money in there somewhere. They’re true to do it everywhere else in the world.

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