Comments on: The young women fighting to make abortion illegal

The young women fighting to make abortion illegal

numaner — Fri, 17 Jul 2015 13:38:21 -0800

Gone are the days of pro-life rallies led by middle-aged men. These social-media savvy women are the newest–and youngest–faces of the anti-abortion movement. They're using controversial tactics to get their point across, and it might actually be working. In a new collaboration with the BBC, Nightline on Fusion explores the new leaders of the pro-life movement.

via related video on Fusion from a recent FPP

By: sopwath

sopwath — Fri, 17 Jul 2015 13:43:16 -0800

Are they actually pro-life or just anti-abortion? What's their stance on capital punishment?

By: pxe2000

pxe2000 — Fri, 17 Jul 2015 13:49:29 -0800

There is a "consistent life" movement that is anti-death penalty and pro-animal rights as well as anti-choice. (At work, Google search is blocked; I see a lot of fliers for it here at my office.) This video appears to be focused mostly on the gotcha tactics of Lila Rose, who has taken illegal video footage and edited it to appear that Planned Parenthood and other organizations are engaging in illegal activity to allow underage women to get abortions.

By: symbioid

symbioid — Fri, 17 Jul 2015 13:53:26 -0800

I grew up in the "Right to Life" movement. My mom attended meetings and such. Tons of material, I remember even setting up shop at the county fair with her. I mean, it's not like that's all our life was. I don't know if we had a local abortion clinic if my mom would have been one of those people out with signs, but I wouldn't doubt it. That said, this is not surprising. While Randall Terry and the right-wing patriarchal gasbags bloviate and get all the attention, there's always been a mix of genders involved in the movement, from the ground level on up. Perhaps it's the "new leaders" i.e. young women who are pro-life, not just old fuddy-duddies?

By: sopwath

sopwath — Fri, 17 Jul 2015 13:59:23 -0800

Finally got the video to load. It appears that rather than being open and honest about their personal religious beliefs, they use lies and tricks to try to undermine PP's and pro-choice advocates personal beliefs. It's pathetic the lengths they go to in order to take away others rights.

By: graymouser

graymouser — Fri, 17 Jul 2015 14:00:41 -0800

I drive past a billboard every day with a picture of an infant and the statement that a heartbeat starts at 18 days. (Almost certainly without merit as a medical statement.) The pressure against abortion continues at an alarming rate. I always wonder with young women in this movement: how many have had abortions themselves? AFAIK the statistics have never borne out that anti-choice activists are consistent in their beliefs when they find themselves pregnant, leading to the cliché that "the only moral abortion is my abortion."

By: lilburne

lilburne — Fri, 17 Jul 2015 14:06:37 -0800

In order to ensure that one is not persecuted for ones beliefs one has to impose them on others.

By: oneswellfoop

oneswellfoop — Fri, 17 Jul 2015 14:11:10 -0800

It's pathetic the lengths they go to in order to take away others rights. It's unsurprising. There are millions of American women who Love the Patriarchy, want to remain barefoot and pregnant and only go out of the house for 'activism' that they consider excusable because it is unpaid. My mother was one in the 1960s (big Republican Womens Group member) which, in spite of efforts to indoctrinate me, always seemed odd, and which, after decades of insight, now is just sad. In order to ensure that one is not persecuted for ones beliefs one has to impose them on others. ...which is one reason I've been saying "Freedom of Religion" is an Oxymoron. The First Amendment is (in more ways than one) as problematic as the Second.

By: emjaybee

emjaybee — Fri, 17 Jul 2015 14:17:05 -0800

Like any cult, that of extreme pro-patriarchy (which a lot of antichoicers belong to) both recruits naïve kids from outside and indoctrinates the children of its members. Young women are good targets, especially if they've been raised in a sheltered world and don't really have any concept of what it means to run your own life or what it might be like to find yourself pregnant in a bad situation. All the Duggar girls, for example, do this kind of stuff. In their case, even if they thought differently, the price for saying so would be very high. Being anti-choice is now, more than ever before, a litmus test for a lot of Christian fundamentalists. I link it frequently, but blogs like Love Joy Feminism and No Longer Quivering both feature frequent pieces by women who used to be just like this, and left or were forced to leave that culture. It's been 20+ years since I was involved in that stuff, but I can tell you that back then, the old dudes were still in charge but they loved to put us young girls out front. We were The Future, we were more attractive, we were excellent rebuttals to the claims of sexism. We were also very naïve, not well-informed, and after a few years, either cynical or completely disillusioned. My bet would be that the old dudes are actually still running things. The patriarchy types are way too big in the antichoice movement for them to actually ever let women run things, no matter how zealous they were. But they're happy to use them as props.

By: jrochest

jrochest — Fri, 17 Jul 2015 14:19:41 -0800

The anti-abortion poster that infuriated me was an honest photo of a 5 week fetus beside an honest photo of a newborn. The caption, under both pictures, was "The only difference is time". Time means 8 months in a woman's uterus, but the woman's uterus is obviously not what they want you to think about.

By: Countess Elena

Countess Elena — Fri, 17 Jul 2015 14:22:43 -0800

This is what's sad -- some young women who would otherwise be feminists just really, really do think people are killing babies. Personally I am pro-choice to an almost Singerian degree; I wish we could flush ourselves. I wish we could have safe abortions as easily as we buy Tylenol, or pick it up in a box of pre-wrapped samples outside a clinic -- and in a better world, we could. But since I grew up in the Bible belt, I know plenty of women who really do believe there is an innocent child being destroyed when an abortion happens. If you thought children were being killed, really being killed, every day, inside a building right outside your town, what would you do? Wouldn't you think that any half-truth, any lie, any tender cajoling, anything was justified? I don't believe that and never have. I just don't know how you talk to anyone with a belief like that. You can repeat, it's not true, it's not true, until you make yourself sick, but when everything you do is a Satanic lie it's not much help. Really, the only answer is societal, to look past them and talk to young people who have not made up their minds, before it is too late. There are millions of American women who Love the Patriarchy, want to remain barefoot and pregnant . . . I think a lot about why women do this. In my experience, such women tend, as children, to have been treated kindly by men, or at least taught to believe that they were being treated kindly, and they saw powerlessness performed in the lives of women around them. They also tend to be, or have been, physically attractive, so that male acquaintances or passersby were rarely cruel to them for sport in early life. And they lack insight; sometimes they gain it later in life, sometimes they never need to. Lacking insight is not the same as lacking intelligence, which is why misogynist women can become great forces in their own lives and those of others.

By: crazylegs

crazylegs — Fri, 17 Jul 2015 14:31:47 -0800

Mrs. Crazylegs got pregnant around age 15, compliments of an ignorant horny young man in a GTO and a Black Sabbath T-shirt who didn't give a shit about her. If she had gone through with the pregnancy and kept the baby, her life would almost certainly have continued on the trajectory it was on at the time, i.e. bad relationships, substance abuse, directionlessness and depression. She had an abortion, and soon after that left the city she was living in, went to a small liberal arts college thousands of miles away, discovered nature, rock climbing, and men who weren't ignorant dicks. She basically learned what it meant to be an independent person. Today she is childless, married to me, and working as an RN. She doesn't regret her abortion to such a degree that she basically spits profanities whenever someone even suggests that she should.

By: cirhosis

cirhosis — Fri, 17 Jul 2015 14:33:17 -0800

It's quotes like this that astonish me... It's fanaticism like this that makes discussion impossible. "We're not out there to reduce abortion. We're out there to end abortion. We want this to be over" In my experience the majority of Pro-Choice folks are in agreement that first everything must be done to keep the number of unwanted pregnancies as low as possible. This would in turn reduce the number of abortions, and reduce the overall amount of suffering. But at the same time here are all the Pro-Life folks, that want to ban all abortions, but they also seem to want to ban lots of Birth control. And even if they don't directly have anything to say about birth control they are definitely in league with Politicians that have done everything they can to make Birth control illegal, severely limit women's access to health care and ban all forms of Sex Ed and only teach abstention. Add in the fact that they regularly demonize women who have had abortions... That seems like a ready made recipe to raise the amount of suffering. I just can't understand people that are on that side of the argument. I understand that they think they are saving lives... but don't they have any respect for the lives of people after they are born?

By: emjaybee

emjaybee — Fri, 17 Jul 2015 14:35:22 -0800

If you thought children were being killed, really being killed, every day, inside a building right outside your town, what would you do? Wouldn't you think that any half-truth, any lie, any tender cajoling, anything was justified? I'm really a fan of the fertility clinic thought experiment that blows this up. You know, the one that says, you're in a fertility clinic that's on fire and you can either pick up and carry out a two year old child stranded there, or a container holding thousands of frozen embryos. Which one do you pick? It tends to pull people up short in their whole quest to equate embryo with a born child. By their logic, you'd save lots more lives if you took the container. But emotionally, it forces you to realize that you don't actually think of that container as being full of people, deep down, in the same way that child is a person. You don't think those embryos will suffer in the same way as that child. Nobody really does. Humans are really good at anthropomorphizing things and ascribing feelings to them, especially if doing so costs us personally no inconvenience. And makes us feel heroic (saving babies!). And lets us hate on a group we don't like (women having agency/sex we disapprove of).

By: Faint of Butt

Faint of Butt — Fri, 17 Jul 2015 14:35:24 -0800

If you thought children were being killed, really being killed, every day, inside a building right outside your town, what would you do? Eh, life is pretty good here in Omelas.

By: delfin

delfin — Fri, 17 Jul 2015 14:46:56 -0800

I understand that they think they are saving lives... but don't they have any respect for the lives of people after they are born? Sure, as long as those people accept all of the consequences of their actions. And dirty, filthy, ungodly sex MUST have consequences nine months later. If you don't want those consequences, don't have sex! _{and don't get raped}

By: imnotasquirrel

imnotasquirrel — Fri, 17 Jul 2015 14:48:03 -0800

emjaybee, I'm definitely stealing that thought experiment for next time.

By: NiteMayr

NiteMayr — Fri, 17 Jul 2015 15:00:46 -0800

Sheh, those middle-agers are still there in force most of the time, I bet I could roll up over to the local hospital and there they'll be.

By: chrchr

chrchr — Fri, 17 Jul 2015 15:16:05 -0800

Slate's Reihan Salam speaking on the podcast The Gist: If you look at abortion, that's an issue where pro life sentiment remains pretty robust, and one theory as to why that's the case is that there's very high parent/child correlation in views on abortion, and there's also a correlation with family size. So, basically a bigger chunk of the millennial generation comes from big families that tended to be pro life. So, you've actually got a lot of people who are pro life and same sex marriage.

By: Justinian

Justinian — Fri, 17 Jul 2015 15:29:51 -0800

Are they actually pro-life or just anti-abortion? What's their stance on capital punishment? Never been a fan of these arguments since they can be so easily turned around. "Are they actually pro-choice or just pro-abortion? What's their stance on gun control, drug legalization, capital punishment, etc"? The issue is their position not what they call themselves. Let them call themselves whatever they want.

By: JoeXIII007

JoeXIII007 — Fri, 17 Jul 2015 15:31:55 -0800

I think this comment should be made into a 30 second ad ending with a big banner spelling FREEDOM and with a URL to a pro choice organization.

By: harrietthespy

harrietthespy — Fri, 17 Jul 2015 15:41:13 -0800

"In order to ensure that one is not persecuted for ones beliefs one has to impose them on others." (lilburne above) Conservative Christian here. We don't all feel that way.

By: the man of twists and turns

the man of twists and turns — Fri, 17 Jul 2015 15:43:33 -0800

Decision Rightness and Emotional Responses to Abortion in the United States: A Longitudinal Study. Rocca CH, Kimport K, Roberts SCM, Gould H, Neuhaus J, Foster DG (2015) Decision Rightness and Emotional Responses to Abortion in the United States: A Longitudinal Study. PLoS ONE 10(7): e0128832. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0128832

By: rtha

rtha — Fri, 17 Jul 2015 15:55:30 -0800

> Decision Rightness and Emotional Responses to Abortion in the United States: A Longitudinal Study Higher perceived community abortion stigma and lower social support were associated with more negative emotions This is my completely unsurprised face.

By: verb

verb — Fri, 17 Jul 2015 16:06:41 -0800

Like emjaybee, I spent a lot of time in the pro-life world when I was younger. There are a couple of really, really strong clusters of mutually supporting ideas at play:

The right-to-life cluster: Human life is uniquely precious and begins at conception, ending a human life (without due process or in cases of immediate self defense) is an act of murder, and the rights of mothers over their own bodies does not extend to the second human being that temporarily relies on them. This tends to be the primary belief complex for highly motivated protestors.
The sexual-purity cluster: Everyone should follow the Bible's rules for sexual purity, abortion is just an attempt to escape one consequence of sexual impurity, and encouraging one form of impurity (aka 'safe sex') does nothing to solve the real problem. This tends to be the primary belief complex in play when folks fight safe sex and contraceptive access.
The God's Will cluster: God made sex for the purpose of procreation, engaging in sex while attempting to avoid procreation is an attempt to thwart his will, and abortion is the horrifying consequence of this 'anti-life' mindset. This tends to blur with the sexual purity cluster, but it's distinct and is where most of the "contraception is just as bad as abortion" stuff comes from.

All three of these clusters support each other, like the legs of a stool, but they aren't really dependent on each other. What's worth noting is that all of them are based on fundamental, totalizing assumptions: Human life begins at conception and deserves 100% protection under the law at that moment, just as a toddler would; every person should follow the Bible's rules for sexual purity; sex is for procreation and attempts to enjoy it while avoiding that demonstrate a disregard for the value of life. It doesn't shock me that a generation of millennials who grew up absorbing even one or two of those complexes have turned into activists; if you believe strongly enough in one, two, or all three of those things, it's hard not to see the issue as something profound and totalizing, the Holocaust of our era, etc etc. In the years since I left the prolife movement, I haven't really found any way to engage with those underlying beliefs productively. The battle lines are drawn, and most of the potential opportunities for common ground are dismissed as compromise on points #1 or #2. The best that I've ever been able to manage is getting folks in those movements to admit, without waffling, that they are not interested in "preventing teen pregnancy" or "keeping women safe", and that those are simply useful tactical positions they stake out in public policy discussions.

By: fuse theorem

fuse theorem — Fri, 17 Jul 2015 16:52:23 -0800

Sure, as long as those people accept all of the consequences of their actions. And dirty, filthy, ungodly sex MUST have consequences nine months later. If you don't want those consequences, don't have sex! Problem is, the consequences mainly occur for the woman/girl (and subsequently, the child). Meanwhile, how do these pro-lifers think the women/girls get pregnant? Immaculate conception? Where are the consequences for the men/boys also engaging in the dirty, filthy, ungodly sex?

By: sexyrobot

sexyrobot — Fri, 17 Jul 2015 16:55:01 -0800

...which is one reason I've been saying "Freedom of Religion" is an Oxymoron. The First Amendment is (in more ways than one) as problematic as the Second. Hm. Maybe it's time for a 'zeroth amendment' that states that freedom from religion trumps freedom of religion.

By: Ryvar

Ryvar — Fri, 17 Jul 2015 16:55:56 -0800

Another recovered member of extreme evangelical fundamentalist (Earth is 6000 years old because THE BIBLE variety) childhood, here. The only thing I want to tack on to verb's comment is that there is a definitely a marked difference in the Catholic and Protestant sides of the pro-life movement, In my experience, vis-a-vis their stance on contraceptives. I was raised among people who protested Planned Parenthood and campaigned against abortion, close family friends were arrested multiple times for physically blocking access to abortion centers, in one case by literally welding themselves neck to neck to other protestors via iron collars. While they didn't care for the use of contraceptives for the purpose of (what they saw as) thwarting God's will for sexual purity, they had no qualms whatsoever about using condoms or birth control within the context of an established marriage. Basically, they were considered a frequent tool for escaping the consequences of sin (sex outside marriage), but the act of contraception was not considered a priori sinful unless the particular method destroyed an existing, potentially viable embryo (ie Morning After pill was considered murder). This particular, distinct interpretation was not just shared across the thousands of people in our shared-complex church/private school, encompassing nearly every person I spoke to on any day for my first eighteen years, but also all the other kids at regional religious private schools who shared the bus with us (we had collective separate bussing from the public school system). The only exceptions to this view were the two Catholic families in our neighborhood, who flatly believed contraception to be evil under any circumstances because THE POPE, END OF DISCUSSION. Point is: opposition to anything post-conception is pretty universal, but pre-conception contraceptive use is considered acceptable in vast swaths of the movement. If you're using it outside marriage the real problem isn't the contraceptive - it's just a cheat - the problem is that you're having sex outside marriage, period. All of this took place in upstate New York, in and around Albany, FWIW.

By: jrochest

jrochest — Fri, 17 Jul 2015 17:02:47 -0800

Verb, and Ryver what made you leave the pro-life (anti-abortion is what I prefer, but I'll use the term you prefer) movement? I've always wondered what made people cross that line. I got 'saved' at a Young Life camp when I was 13 or so, and was a deeply committed evangelical Christian for the next 10 years or so; even so, as active and passionate as I was, I was never anti-abortion or anything but pro-feminist. The arguments against both conception and abortion convinced some of my friends. I watched two of them get pregnant, in one case giving the child up for adoption (only to marry the boy in the teeth of family opposition 2 years later, meaning her three sons have an older brother they've never met) and in the other case rushing into marriage much too early (the last time I saw that couple they were living in a bachelor apartment with a baby, and he had dropped out of medical school to support his wife and child). The argument that sex was evil, that birth control was cheating god and that pregnancy was punishment for sexual sin seemed a pointless infliction of suffering. And it wasn't a requirement in any of the churches I attended over that time.

By: dbmcd

dbmcd — Fri, 17 Jul 2015 17:03:42 -0800

I frequently find myself wondering why the "pro life" folks seem to value the 'life' of a fetus so much more than that of an already-born child; especially poor or unwanted. Those children are frequently the targets of demonization for their poverty (and laziness, etc), are further victimized in schools (see: expulsions of 5-yr olds that ruin their future education) AND the life of the mother who must now either a) have an unwanted child, or b) have an ILLEGAL abortion. whew. run-on sentence. Both my mother and sister had illegal abortions - both escaped alive and without permanent physical damage. In the case of my mother, it was pretty much worst case: dirty basement room, accessed from an alley, drunken doctor, no attendant. I shudder at the thought. But what no one remembers is that the rate of abortion is fairly steady, whether legal or illegal. So if it's illegal we've now also endangered another life - that of the mother, and any family she may already have. I could go on, but it just feels fruitless and I get hopeless and cry with rage.

By: DarlingBri

DarlingBri — Fri, 17 Jul 2015 17:07:48 -0800

some young women who would otherwise be feminists just really, really do think people are killing babies. The two are not diametrically opposed. I am a pro-choice feminist and if you want to frame abortion as killing babies, I am still pro-choice. The other option is forced pregnancy, forced birth and the reproductive enslavement of women, so I'm still going to be pro-choice.

By: John Cohen

John Cohen — Fri, 17 Jul 2015 17:18:07 -0800

Gone are the days of pro-life rallies led by middle-aged men. I thought women were always prominent in the pro-life movement. And I don't see what's surprising about this. After all, there isn't a significant gender gap on the question of whether abortion should be legal. I'm a man who's pro-choice, and I admit that my position is influenced by my male bias. Anyone who thinks that abortion rights aren't important to men, or that women aren't capable of genuinely opposing abortion rights, probably hasn't thought much about the issue. When pro-choicers create the misleading impression that the pro-life movement is, or ever was, just a bunch of men, they actually empower female pro-lifers by making it easy for them to say: "Hey, look, everything you thought you knew about the pro-life movement is wrong!!!"

By: nom de poop

nom de poop — Fri, 17 Jul 2015 17:21:02 -0800

> There are millions of American women who Love the Patriarchy, want to remain barefoot and pregnant . . . I think a lot about why women do this. Me too, having grown up in the midwest, especially family and friends.. Without naming names, - Some found they kinda wanted the stuff they were going to get from patriarch, and it wasn't going to turn out bad for them for various reasons internal and external to themselves. Life's not that hard. - Some were confused and terrorized and just wished/wanted/believed themselves to be in the previous group. - Some women saw it as the only game in town, just called it "society", and would never say they hated society when they were sober. They still wanted a conventional successful predictable life that intelligible to the rest of society. In college they said a firm belief of theirs was, "Things should be changed from within," before they tugged down their snorkel masks and fell back into normalcy. - Or they had a bad time of it and now want to make sure everyone else suffers because to them it was like an agreed upon price, a sacrifice, and they want to feel like everyone has to pay prices for things now. Gendered misery for all.

By: Ryvar

Ryvar — Fri, 17 Jul 2015 17:34:36 -0800

Verb, and Ryver what made you leave the pro-life (anti-abortion is what I prefer, but I'll use the term you prefer) movement? I've always wondered what made people cross that line. Complete mental breakdown at age 19 when my severe type 1 bipolar disorder reached its psychotic apex. Had to reconstruct my entire personality and belief system starting from square one. In typical not-quite-Asperger's-but-definitely-something fashion, I began by collective massive piles of evidence for and against the "Creation Science" I'd been raised on. It was a Biblical literalist community (doesn't mean we couldn't wear mixed cloth types or whatever - that was for-Jews-only Old Covenant stuff, did not apply to Gentiles or Jews who accepted the New Covenant), so if any part was wrong it was all wrong... Came to the conclusion the evidence was vastly stronger against, became an atheist that day. Lost all my friends and was a pariah (at best) to my family for years afterward. Dropped out of college and classic picket fences upbringing, quit a retail job after six months, packed two bags, flew to Seattle and moved in with a girl I'd met twice before, right in the heart of the gay district. I've grown up a lot since then and shed some pretty vile misogynistic cultural residue, but I've never encountered anything that made me seriously doubt my assessment of the facts - I was unbelievably meticulous and thorough about it and it still feels pretty complete even as new facts continue to steadily roll in. Really I just wanted the truth and once I'd found it everything else kind of followed logically from there, y'know?

By: verb

verb — Fri, 17 Jul 2015 17:34:43 -0800

Verb, and Ryver what made you leave the pro-life (anti-abortion is what I prefer, but I'll use the term you prefer) movement?

Even when I still considered myself a Christian, I grew increasingly troubled by the rhetoric that was common in the activist subset of the anti-abortion movement. I spent a while self-identifying as a "pro-lifer" but wanted to figure out how common ground could be found on issues like reducing teen pregnancy, and helping single mothers who wanted to keep their children but had no support network. Eventually, it was the "life begins at conception" plank that collapsed for me; it's (IMO) the one that is most arbitrary and least rooted in actual biblical prooftexting. But at the same time, I was questioning a lot of other elements of fundamentalism. So my withdraw from that movement is tangled up in a lot of other changes of heart.

By: zennie

zennie — Fri, 17 Jul 2015 17:35:42 -0800

I saw a horde of the "march for life" people on my way home from work in DC. They were mostly middle-schoolers and not dressed warmly enough for the weather. I felt bad for them for numerous reasons.

By: jrochest

jrochest — Fri, 17 Jul 2015 17:42:05 -0800

Thanks, Ryvar & Verb -- I assumed it would be a complete backing out of fundamentalism, or something like it. Congratulations to both of you -- exiting that kind of world is very hard. I lost friends, but as my folks were both non-Christians it had no real impact on my relationship with my family, which was a real benefit. Now, if we could just bottle that up in a tonic or something. Or maybe start reverse-evangelizing pro-life rallies.

By: Mary Ellen Carter

Mary Ellen Carter — Fri, 17 Jul 2015 17:45:32 -0800

My grasp of American history is admittedly sketchy, but I'm pretty sure one of the reasons you folks seceded from the Empire was your distaste for a state religion. Which makes it all the more mystifying to outsiders like me when we see you all establishing a de facto state religion through laws limiting the behaviour of people who don't follow the mega-church fundamentalist Evangelical thing you got going on. You squabble over the details, while completely ignoring that you're repudiating your own original beliefs, the very reason why you rebelled and fought and died in 1776. Do the foundation stones of your country matter so little to you?

By: We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese

We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese — Fri, 17 Jul 2015 17:50:34 -0800

My grasp of American history is admittedly sketchy, but I'm pretty sure one of the reasons you folks seceded from the Empire was your distaste for a state religion. Nah. They just wanted the opportunity to make THEIR religion the state religion. (Setting aside that the Puritan colonists didn't secede from anything when they established themselves in North America)

By: Ryvar

Ryvar — Fri, 17 Jul 2015 17:56:25 -0800

Mary: that's an excellent point. Germane to the topic of the thread, in the case of abortion many of the pro-life movement believe the current situation is nothing less than ongoing state-approved mass murder with millions slaughtered every year. Regardless of where they fall on whether Christ's kingdom is meant to be in this world or the next (most I've known would declare "the next" pretty firmly), their consciences can't abide that state of affairs. On gay marriage, the Biblical account of Sodom and Gomorrah is considered a clear indicator of God's position, and many believe that similar destruction awaits the US in the wake of the latest Supreme Court decision. The most frustrating thing about this occurring so late in the process of our repeating the final decline of the Roman Empire is that they will appear to be right in the eyes of the next few centuries of believers to follow.

By: emjaybee

emjaybee — Fri, 17 Jul 2015 18:10:14 -0800

I frequently find myself wondering why the "pro life" folks seem to value the 'life' of a fetus so much more than that of an already-born child; especially poor or unwanted. It is much much easier to "save" a fetus than to help a poor child. For a fetus, it just means restricting or discouraging access to abortion until the baby is born. Helping a poor child is 18 years of serious investment. And it also means seeing the child's mother/family as people (because you can't help the child without helping the mother). That's also hard, complicated, uncomfortable and full of gray areas. Which is why most prolifers avoid it. Or, they might adopt a baby, but the mother is not a person they consider their responsibility. Now it's not hard to spot the immorality of forcing a woman to carry a fetus to term and then refusing to help her (or taking away her existing help) once the fetus is born. But the self-righteous glow you can feel by preventing a woman from having an abortion can drown that out. You just tell yourself you're a baby-saver and keep voting for people that oppose abortion and also oppose food, shelter, education and medicine for the children that get born. You can also just say well, she should have kept her legs closed, not my fault she's in this mess. I stopped her from making it worse by murdering a baby.

By: Aya Hirano on the Astral Plane

Aya Hirano on the Astral Plane — Fri, 17 Jul 2015 18:19:43 -0800

Do the foundation stones of your country matter so little to you? I generally don't put a lot of stock in hewing to the foundation stones in a growing, changing society, and think the problem in this case lays partially in those stones. As in the Second amendment, the original authors didn't, couldn't foresee what kind of changes would follow in the centuries to come, and so attempted a generalist language that still reflects the times they lived in. I don't think they could have imagined the billion dollar evangelical machinery to come, the convolutions of means of financial political influence, its reach into mass media, and so forth. Fortunately, they are "amendments" after all, meant to be changeable. Good luck getting that majority, thanks again, to our founding fathers. Any hope of turning the tide is in fighting back on the same ground, with a better arsenal.

By: atoxyl

atoxyl — Fri, 17 Jul 2015 19:08:55 -0800

So growing up I actually knew pretty well the guy behind the Planned Parenthood "undercover" thing that's been in the news. He's a very bright guy from a liberal Catholic family from a pretty leftish college town who took a turn in his teens toward hard-right Catholicism - Latin Mass and everything. I really don't know why but it seemed back then that it felt like a bit of a rebellion against the culture of... the rest of us? It was a young woman (who was behind the "13-yo-impregnated by an adult" PP ambush video from a few years back) who really got him into the "movement." Anyway I definitely find it nearly impossible to reach any kind of shared understanding with the anti-abortion people but I can sort of understand why someone who buys their premises can get really really into activism. Because if you buy their premises it's an incredibly high-stakes fight - genocide! - that is in a lot of ways an "easy" one to fight. All you've got to do is shut down a few doctors - an effort that seems to be pretty successful in a lot of places - and win or lose you don't have much skin in the game. It's all symbols and principals on the "pro-life" side.

By: Drinky Die

Drinky Die — Fri, 17 Jul 2015 19:20:24 -0800

Problem is, the consequences mainly occur for the woman/girl (and subsequently, the child). Meanwhile, how do these pro-lifers think the women/girls get pregnant? Immaculate conception? Where are the consequences for the men/boys also engaging in the dirty, filthy, ungodly sex? Child support payments.

By: klangklangston

klangklangston — Fri, 17 Jul 2015 19:45:17 -0800

"My grasp of American history is admittedly sketchy, but I'm pretty sure one of the reasons you folks seceded from the Empire was your distaste for a state religion." As someone else already alluded, the Puritans (about 100 years prior to the Colonial Rebellion or whatever it's called elsewhere) thought they were coming to America specifically to set up a utopic Christian state — a "city on the hill." From there, something that's important to recognize is that the United States of America really was intended to be a federation of independent states with broad latitude to govern as they saw fit within them. Which means that the constitutional first amendment was to keep the entire country from imposing any given religion on any one of the states, but that individual states were free to have official churches of their own — Pennsylvania could be Quaker; Maryland, Catholic; Virginia, Anglican, etc. While sometimes overstated, the U.S. Civil War really did cement the triumph of the idea of an American "state" over American "states." For a good exploration of early American religious culture, Sarah Vowell's The Wordy Shipmates is pretty fun and pretty quick.

By: verb

verb — Fri, 17 Jul 2015 20:11:28 -0800

Verb, and Ryver what made you leave the pro-life (anti-abortion is what I prefer, but I'll use the term you prefer) movement?

Also, to be clear, I don't use that term because I feel it is linguistically accurate or something—rather, I use it specifically when talking about self-identifying members of the "Pro Life Movement." To contrast, there are people who consistently vote against abortion rights, and when asked are anti-abortion, but aren't part of the movement per se. Branding and framing aside, "Pro-Life" Is the self-identified label those people use just as much as "Pro-Choice" is the label that I now choose for myself. In some ways I don't like conceding the rhetorical ground either, but I find that if I'm going to spend my "make a point and stick to it" chips somewhere, I'd rather stand my ground on the underlying philosophical differences rather than demanding perfectly neutral labels. I totally understand that others feel differently and stick to "Anti-Abortion."

By: yeolcoatl

yeolcoatl — Fri, 17 Jul 2015 20:21:12 -0800

graymouser I always wonder with young women in this movement: how many have had abortions themselves? AFAIK the statistics have never borne out that anti-choice activists are consistent in their beliefs when they find themselves pregnant, leading to the cliché that "the only moral abortion is my abortion." More specifically: "The only moral abortion is my abortion": When the Anti-Choice Choose by Joyce Arthur (previously)

By: breadbox

breadbox — Fri, 17 Jul 2015 21:48:13 -0800

If men got pregnant, then abortion clinics would rightously sport neon facilities between every La Quinta and Denny's. Until the sperm donor faces the same life changing consequences as the child bearer, I place my trust in, and support for, the child bearer, in all child bearing decisions. As far as women telling other women what is right...In the word's of a wise friend, I tell you this, "Don't tell me how to fuck my chicken."

By: Brian B.

Brian B. — Fri, 17 Jul 2015 22:01:41 -0800

I would not assume that the new face of anti-abortion represents anything but their old funding sources, especially considering their recent undercover tactics that may have fooled the IRS. According to polls, as reported by a conservative magazine: Bottom line: Men and women hold very similar views on abortion and under which circumstances it should be available. Women are slightly more likely to hold an absolutist view -- either that abortion should be "legal in all circumstances" or "illegal in all circumstances." But the real dividing lines are elsewhere. Education, age, religiosity, political affiliation, marital status and even regional differences play a larger role in determining someone's views on abortion. As a 2010 Gallup survey found, "Educational achievement is much more important than gender in determining support for broadly legal abortion.... This has been the case since the 1970s."

By: h00py

h00py — Fri, 17 Jul 2015 22:38:49 -0800

This topic makes me so very, very sad. The issue will always be legal abortions vs. illegal abortions. For as long as humanity remains fecund, abortion will always be an issue. It doesn't matter how many people march down a street or yell outside of Planned Parenthood buildings. Abortion will always be around. Making it illegal just means that desperate women are going to die in greater numbers again. I mean, doesn't anyone read the history? This isn't new ground.

By: immlass

immlass — Fri, 17 Jul 2015 23:04:57 -0800

When I was in college I read a great book called Abortion and the Politics of Motherhood that covers a lot of history of the abortion rights movement and the opposition to abortion rights in the 60s/70s. One of the things the book brought home to me was how women's support for/opposition to reproductive choice was related to their life choices (which correlate with religion but aren't exactly the same). Women who had arranged their lives so that careers were important were anxious to time their reproductive activities (both by birth control and, if needed, legal abortion). But women whose lives were arranged so that reproduction took center stage and who didn't have other resources like formal education or careers wanted childbearing centered as an important and unavoidable responsibility, and they were often very anti-choice. Abortion was often a bellwether for a variety of beliefs about how life should be conducted. So it doesn't surprise me that there are women who are still extremely anti-choice and even leading the movement, though I imagine that how women who center childbearing allocate their life resources (if that makes sense) has changed in the last 40 years.

By: midmarch snowman

midmarch snowman — Fri, 17 Jul 2015 23:54:17 -0800

Oh great. Lila Rose. Juuuuuust what I needed before bed, not like I wanted to sleep tonight anyways. I'd much rather be sad and angry... Every time I ask myself what I would do if I saw statutory rape or sex trafficking, I ask myself, as someone poorly equipped to help, what's the best thing to do to help if I had the chance? Did you know many women involved in sex trafficking the united states won't trust any person not part of a formed-family due to long history of abuse? Did you know many teenaged girls removed by force from prostitution rings will run away from halfway houses and back to pimps because they distrust the child welfare system so much? I wonder if a white girl who claims to be 15 but looks 25 and has a conspicuously large vocabulary would make me act differently. I'm trying to not make assumptions, but subtle learned bias is hard to squash. And no matter how hard something is to believe, the prime directive with adolescent care is to conduct an interview in a non-judgemental manner. The biggest mistake I saw watching the videos was waiting to the end of the visit to call authorities. But truth is, I'm a taller athletic dude, but I'm not a cop, no one I work with is a cop, and someone who freely admits to sexually trafficking minors is probably not the type of person to worry about carrying an illegal fire arm. I may have behaved like many of the Planned Parenthood officials that Lila Rose videotaped. I always gently slide "I have to tell someone if there's abuse" just so that it's not a betrayal when I do tell someone. The best chance of helping that girl is getting as much information as possible, get as much trust as possible, and get as many people to your clinic as possible. I wonder if I would wait till the end of the visit to call the police / FBI or make some excuse to leave the room to make a call. Having been around one shooting in a health care setting, I'm not able to honestly say I would never make the same mistake. Saying you oppose child sex slavery is possibly the least controversial ever in the history of ever. But a lot of social workers, police and public heath workers actually DO SOMETHING about sex trafficking. They work hard jobs with terrible pay and zero fame and talk to poor, scared vulnerable at risk women everyday. And they report sexual abuse. Just like the workers at Planned Parenthood did. Lila Rose, you're not helping anyone.

By: midmarch snowman

midmarch snowman — Sat, 18 Jul 2015 00:08:42 -0800

BTW, not that my opinion matters to anyone but me, but I'm probably what many people would call pro-life. Now, I have to admit this is, at best, a blind aspect of faith on my part. From a public health policy point, Roe vs. Wade is a great decision that on whole has prevented a whole lot more harm than it's caused in terms of safe abortion and more sane reproductive health options for people who don't share my personal belief. Ms. Rose may indeed drive away many people on the fence over abortion who care about women's health. The gross thing about Lila Rose, however, is her tactics are very effective in replacing fence sitters with people who maybe previously didn't care one way or another about abortion but once on a side of an issue are not interested at all in any nuance or self reflection with regards to that issue or the views of others. Hence, the anti-abortion movement, although not able to change the opinion of the nation at large, will motivate enough blind zealotry in small elections to make sure local health laws make no sense. Yeah, great win guys.

By: taz

taz — Sat, 18 Jul 2015 03:27:37 -0800

[One comment deleted. Bringing up "modest proposal"-type thought experiments apparently about imagined forced abortions or sterilizations is not a good way to go here.]

By: L.P. Hatecraft

L.P. Hatecraft — Sat, 18 Jul 2015 04:15:32 -0800

Are they actually pro-life or just anti-abortion? What's their stance on capital punishment? It's not really a given that anti-abortionists are in favour of capital punishment. The Catholic church is opposed to both, and many anti-abortion Protestants are also opposed to the death penalty. Besides, it's not even obvious that being anti-abortion is inconsistent with being opposed to the death penalty. I'm opposed to the death-penalty, but killing someone who is (according to the justice system) guilty of a heinous crime is obviously different to killing an entity that is (according to anti-abortionists) an innocent life. If you want to accuse someone of hypocrisy then you need to show that they are hypocritical even by their own standards.

By: pxe2000

pxe2000 — Sat, 18 Jul 2015 07:30:25 -0800

One of the things that really rubbed me the wrong way about this video was seeing that the footage of pro-choice activists they chose involved men disrupting women's speeches and predominantly female marches. I know the reporters want to challenge the logic that most women are pro-choice, but that seemed like a really interesting decision...as though the reporters wanted to imply that reproductive rights activists primarily have men's best interests at heart.

By: jfuller

jfuller — Sat, 18 Jul 2015 07:49:20 -0800

> some young women who would otherwise be feminists just really, really do think people are killing babies. > (snip) > I just don't know how you talk to anyone with a belief like that. You can repeat, it's not > true, it's not true, until you make yourself sick, but when everything you do is a Satanic > lie it's not much help. The latter isn't even necessary for someone else's arbitrary belief about what is or is not a human being to be incompatible with your arbitrary belief about the same, and impervious to argument and evidence. Because arbitrary beliefs are like that. Compare the widely held, arbitrary, and socially constructed beliefs of earlier eras that blacks, Jews, and women (among other groups) were not fully human and so did not possess full human rights. Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? Fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? Shylock might as well not even have spoken. Because what he says is argumant and evidence. And for arbitrary, socially constructed beliefs like "Which living things that appear human in one way or another must actually be treated as human beings and which ones need not be?" is a question for which argument and evidence are utterly beside the point. Imagine a pair of physical anthropologists contending over a new specimen. If the point of contention is whether its genus and species were Homo habilis or something else then argument and evidence are pertinent. If the question is whether the creature was a human being with human rights, that's a metaphysical question scientists can't answer. Now imagine two people contending over a live 5-week fetus. Person A: "it can't think or feel pain, its brain and spinal cord aren't developed yet. Its heart is not pumping yet. It still has gill slits, for Ghod's sake." Person B: "Details like that have no relevance to its humanity. All that matters is that it's alive and developing normally and its parents were humans, not pigs or dogs or cats. My attitude toward this creature is that it too is human, like its parents." Person B's attitude is neatly summarized in Wittgenstein's aphorism, "My attitude towards him is an attitude towards a soul. I am not of the opinion that he has a soul" Anthony Rudd's gloss on this: "To talk of opinion, belief, or knowledge in this case would be misleading; It suggests that I am framing a hypothesis on the basis of evidence. But my response to the other person, as being ensouled, is something far more immediate, unreflective, and spontaneous. It is due to the brute fact of this human "attitude" that we have the concepts of soul or mind in the first place; the attitude itself, then, cannot be grounded in any process of arguing about souls or minds." Or gill slits. I frankly think that, for those who expect their own humanity to be taken for granted without a lot of sceptical questioning, it is a really bad and dangerous idea, because of the precedent it sets, to sceptically question the humanity of other creatures who might by any remote chance also be human.

By: verb

verb — Sat, 18 Jul 2015 08:15:22 -0800

know the reporters want to challenge the logic that most women are pro-choice, but that seemed like a really interesting decision...as though the reporters wanted to imply that reproductive rights activists primarily have men's best interests at heart.

Well, another common refrain is that the only people who really benefit from abortion are the men who get off scott-free after getting a girl pregnant. It's commonly argued that abortion is fundamentally a way of exploiting women when they are vulnerable. That line of thinking isn't terribly compatible with other common arguments, like "women who get abortions are selfish and worship their own convenience," but like many ideological arguments, the various arguments don't need to work with each other, they just need to work at the moment they're offered.

By: St. Peepsburg

St. Peepsburg — Sat, 18 Jul 2015 08:29:14 -0800

I feel like I occupy this nebulous space where I both believe that an unborn life is a life and I also passionately believe that women need the freedom to choose and I would never deny a woman that right. But like the poster above, denying that it's human seems like sticking your head in the sand and denying scientific fact. And I've accompanied friends to planned parenthood. I know that taken to the logical conclusion these are mutually exclusive values but I still believe them both. I don't know what that makes me - sentimental?

By: Brian B.

Brian B. — Sat, 18 Jul 2015 08:54:34 -0800

But like the poster above, denying that it's human seems like sticking your head in the sand and denying scientific fact. I would stick with the objective facts that indicate that the fetus is a genetic offspring, very much like the parents. If they don't want the kid to be born, whether from wisdom or ignorance; overcoming all those factors that bond parents to children, then what is going on with bystanders who imagine some pure gift being taken from the world? If we look back over the last three thousand years we can plainly see some kind of feudal serfdom ruling over most of humanity, where villages were owned. One of the key powers for the owners was breeding and controlling the human livestock. It took little to no modification to transfer this labor control mentality onto anyone who fancies themselves a success, and it might even be a fantasy of success in the frail mind. It is fair to imagine that those people care a little, until it is realized they are more interested in moral examples to be made, and never lift a finger to pay for anything they are forcing onto others.

By: thetortoise

thetortoise — Sat, 18 Jul 2015 09:01:34 -0800

I know that taken to the logical conclusion these are mutually exclusive values but I still believe them both. I don't believe the two points are naturally in conflict, only that you necessarily must make one a priority. I'm not comfortable with language that elides the idea that a fetus is a living being, but I do not believe the life of a fetus is equivalent to the life of a person. Even if technology makes viability outside the uterus possible at a much earlier stage of pregnancy, and we discover that embryos are more capable of feeling than we ever knew, I'm still going to be adamantly pro-choice, because I believe that a person's bodily integrity and right to self-determination is more important than prenatal life. This is why we don't have, like, forcible kidney donation. There is a long history of treating women's bodies as the property of men, and this history makes me oppose any discussion of reproductive rights that doesn't begin from the premise that a person has absolute sovereignty over their own body. (I also wish we'd all-- i.e., the public sphere, not MeFi-- talk more about the rights of real children than the rights of embryos in a lab, but that's another subject, if one also deeply rooted in the concept of patriarchy.)

By: verb

verb — Sat, 18 Jul 2015 09:03:38 -0800

But like the poster above, denying that it's human seems like sticking your head in the sand and denying scientific fact. And I've accompanied friends to planned parenthood.

This is something I spent quite a bit of time grappling with. I mentioned upthread that the "full and complete human-ness begins at the moment of conception" plank of the anti-abortion platform was the one that first broke for me. At the time, when I was still trying to piece together a coherent worldview for myself based on Scripture, I found Matthew 10:29 very compelling: "Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? and one of them shall not fall on the ground without your Father. But the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear ye not therefore, ye are of more value than many sparrows." The principle I felt came through that verse very clearly was that a living thing can have great value, and be worth caring for and protecting, yet not be a person. And, as ac corollary, if I were to choose between saving a sparrow and saving a child, I wouldn't hesitate to save the child, because that sparrow is not the same to me. In the same way, a fertilized egg is not the same as a woman. A twelve week old embryo is not the same as a toddler. The fact that it shares the same DNA, and will ultimately develop into a full human person, is no different than saying that a toddler will eventually develop into a legal adult. The fact that they will does not mean that they are. Undeniably, the question of when the transition happens (the first trimester? the moment of birth? some arbitrary, measurable developmental milestone?) is somewhat arbitrary. But the arbitrariness does not mean that the transition is irrelevant. The pro-live movement I was a part of refused to grapple with that question, and stood firm on a "human-from-the-moment-of-fertilization" principle that I grew to believe was indefensible, dangerous, and inhumane. When the controversy around "late-term abortions" reached a fever pitch, I was disgusted—not by the idea of late term abortions, but by the disingenuous grandstanding I saw my compatriots engaging in. They spoke to the public as if third trimester abortions were a uniquely profound evil, but at the same time they fought to ensure that women couldn't get abortions early in their pregnancies, either. By putting up endless roadblocks to early abortions, they made "horrific" late term abortions far more likely. That was okay, though, because every one of those fights was just a tactical skirmish in the larger war to end all forms of abortion (as well as many procedures and drugs that doctors consider contraception rather than abortion). I don't have any answers, but today I donate to Planned Parenthood and support "pro-choice" causes, because I believe that on balance they are doing more to relieve suffering and improve the state of women and children than the anti-abortion movement.

By: Mental Wimp

Mental Wimp — Sat, 18 Jul 2015 15:30:10 -0800

But at the same time here are all the Pro-Life folks, that want to ban all abortions, but they also seem to want to ban lots of Birth control. Pro tip: They're not really pro-life, they're slut haters, trying to stop all those slutty sluts having their slutty sex using their slutty birth control to ruin God's green paradise. And even though that's the only motivation consistent with all their behaviors, they will never, ever admit it.

By: emjaybee

emjaybee — Sat, 18 Jul 2015 19:50:20 -0800

"Humanity" is a loaded term, isn't it? Is a woman who has had a baby, and thus retains some of the fetus's DNA in her body (as we now know they do) two people, or one? It is very fine and noble to talk about the slippery slope from denying a fertilized egg the status of having humanity to denying humanity to a group of born human beings. But it ignores the fact that we already do this. We do not hold funerals for early miscarriages (and very few for late ones). We don't treat canisters of frozen embryos the same as two-year-olds. When it comes down to it, we really have no problem drawing that distinction. And of course there's that other slippery slope, the one we slide down when we grant humanity to a fertilized egg at the moment of conception and simultaneously demand a woman donate her body, alter it irrevocably, risk her health, and suffer whatever other consequences might result (lost jobs, mental breakdowns, trauma, etc.) or else risk accusations of murder. What is the result, taken to its logical end? Constant surveillance, perhaps even forced testing, of women who might be fertile and might be (even unknowingly) pregnant. Manslaughter convictions for miscarriages (this has already happened). Permanent second-class citizen status for women, perhaps one they can only escape by choosing to undergo sterilization. Which slope scares you more? Which is more likely to happen? That's what it comes down to.

By: verb

verb — Sat, 18 Jul 2015 20:29:55 -0800

And of course there's that other slippery slope, the one we slide down when we grant humanity to a fertilized egg at the moment of conception and simultaneously demand a woman donate her body, alter it irrevocably, risk her health, and suffer whatever other consequences might result (lost jobs, mental breakdowns, trauma, etc.) or else risk accusations of murder. What is the result, taken to its logical end?

Aaaaaand that's when I stopped calling myself pro-life. Seriously.

By: five fresh fish

five fresh fish — Sat, 18 Jul 2015 23:31:39 -0800

Please call them by the accurate term: Forced Birthers.

By: atoxyl

atoxyl — Sun, 19 Jul 2015 00:18:56 -0800

It was a young woman (who was behind the "13-yo-impregnated by an adult" PP ambush video from a few years back) who really got him into the "movement." This was Lila Rose, by the way, but I hadn't watched the thing and I don't feel like giving them publicity right now.

By: jfuller

jfuller — Sun, 19 Jul 2015 06:01:28 -0800

> It is very fine and noble to talk about the slippery slope from denying a fertilized egg the status > of having humanity to denying humanity to a group of born human beings. But it ignores the > fact that we already do this. Point, and I acknowledge the truth of it. > "Humanity" is a loaded term, isn't it? Loaded indeed. And slippery, for all that it's thrown around with such free abandon to support whatever pet issue a given speaker happens to support. Another such loaded and slippery term is "we". There seems to be a "we" for any attitude imaginable. If I had to pick one for myself on this vexed issue it would be the one that supports "free, legal, and rare." (PS, no, I don't have a bit of a problem with birth control. I hope for better, cheaper, more accessible, and more effective methods. And faster, please.)

By: five fresh fish

five fresh fish — Sun, 19 Jul 2015 21:11:57 -0800

IMO the solution is to shift society where one needs to make a active decision to procreate, where pregnancy is not the default state. Effectively, sterilization prior to puberty. As an adult, you may choose to reverse it.

By: taz

taz — Mon, 20 Jul 2015 01:30:05 -0800

[One comment deleted. Analogies are always tempting to analyze/refute, but focusing on the "frozen embryos vs young child: which would you save" with a giant list of "this person/child vs this other person/child: which would you save" examples is a pretty big derail (not least because it's going to lead to even further derailing based on the specifics of the examples). If you want to directly discuss the actual idea behind the original analogy if you think it's wrong or incomplete, that's fine.]

By: Mental Wimp

Mental Wimp — Mon, 20 Jul 2015 09:29:28 -0800

...demand a woman donate her body, alter it irrevocably, risk her health, and suffer whatever other consequences might result... A little appreciated fact is that pregnancy is a potentially fatal condition, with mortality risks more than 10 times as high as for elective abortion. Although the absolute risk increase is small (about 8-9 deaths per 100,000 pregnancies), women who choose to carry a pregnancy to term are risking their lives.

By: LobsterMitten

LobsterMitten — Tue, 21 Jul 2015 07:22:30 -0800

[Couple of comments deleted. Don't be gross about poor women, and let's just leave aside the whole "sterilize everybody" thing. Thanks.]

By: klangklangston

klangklangston — Tue, 21 Jul 2015 20:09:51 -0800

"But like the poster above, denying that it's human seems like sticking your head in the sand and denying scientific fact." This is a bit of category error though — the usage when we say "human" (as alluded prior by emjaybee) is different between "human being" and "human cell." Fetuses are pretty undeniably human — nobody thinks that they're errant squids or seedpods — but they're not human beings, i.e. persons with autonomy and rights. Attempting to conflate the two is ultimately an argument from emotion (what would have once fallen under the umbrella of ad hominem — appeals to the person, rather than reason) because the literal meaning is used to imply the emotional context of the figurative synecdoche. The equivalent rhetorically is the facetious description of fetuses as parasites.

By: the man of twists and turns

the man of twists and turns — Fri, 24 Jul 2015 15:43:43 -0800

AJE: A trip to a summer camp pushing to end abortion

If you've ever seen young people displaying graphic signs of aborted fetuses in public, there's a good chance they're connected with Survivors of the Abortion Holocaust. For 18 years, the anti-abortion Christian activism ministry in Southern California has welcomed kids as young as 13 to its annual ProLife Training Camp. The camp, they say, prepares them "to stand against the worst evil of our day: abortion."

By: Golden Eternity

Golden Eternity — Tue, 04 Aug 2015 23:49:54 -0800

@BlunderingIdiom:

Birth control? BAN IT! Abortion? BAN IT! Gay marriage? BAN IT! Guns? Look, banning things never works. People will find ways to get them.