SubscribeThe HC usually stops the body from releasing an egg from the ovary. HC also changes the cervical mucus to make it difficult for the sperm to find an egg. HC can also prevent pregnancy by making the lining of the womb inhospitable for implantation.As for me, if this crap continues, I'll be forced to give up my very fun, very rewarding job to dedicate my life to trying to get back women's rights. And I really, really don't want to do that. Plus if they take away my pill (from my cold dead hands, of course), I'll have really bad cramps on top of everything else. This sucks.
That sounds about right. A number of protesters failed to comprehend that clinics offered any services besides abortions. If you were a woman walking into a clinic, you were there to get an abortion.Having been somewhat involved in the pro-life movement for some time, I'd just like to point everyone -- and I mean EVERYONE -- to read and re-read all the comments Powerful Religious Baby has been posting.
I guess society thinks it's a lot easier to suck the products of conception down a cold steel sink. I weep for us all.I spent a couple decades nodding thoughtfully to that kind of reasoning, Konolia, and repeating the statements to anyone who brought the issue up. I hate saying it this way, but frankly pro-lifers who pretend that saving babies is their primary concern are liars. They are lying to others, and they are lying to themselves. The pro-life movement is filled with individuals who consider abortion something terrible that should be stopped, yes. But it comes in a distant second to the evils of consensual sex between unmarried partners, an evil so profound that attempts to increase the use of contraceptives -- and thus reduce abortion -- must be opposed, too.
I don't see how you can escape this conclusion if you accept the existence of heaven and hell.By saying that only God has the right to decide who lives or dies. Thus anyone who kills someone else "to save them from sin" is sinning by doing something only God is allowed to do. This is also where religious prohibitions against suicide and euthanasia come in.
Even if I weren't now opposed to sex before marriage, even if I was looking at this all in a pragmatic sense, I don't see condoms-or any birth control method, really- as the answer to fewer abortions.That's absurd, and is precisely the sort of self-deception that caused me to leave the pro-life movement. The last time I spent a day sifting through the statistics, ~30% of abortions were performed on individuals in relationships who did not use contraceptives and make no plans to use contraceptives in the future. To pretend that abortion numbers wouldn't drop dramatically if that group were convinced to use contraceptives is absurd.
But for the record, I am not anti-birth control-as long as we are talking preventing sperm and egg meeting up.Pro-lifers -- you included -- do not emphasize contraception because they believe it is a sin. Those who say they don't believe it is a sin rely on disingenuous sophistry, like the "fertilization versus implantation" line that would turn every menstruating woman into a mass murderer. It's no different than the "macro-evolution versus micro-evolution" silliness that Intelligent Design advocates indulge in.
40-60 percent (or higher, depending on your statistical sources) of naturally fertilized eggs will naturally fail to implant anyway, with no outside interference. Are we supposed to go into heavy mourning every month over the possibility that a widdle baby zygote might have been flushed with the tampons?Refer back to the "only God has the right to decide" angle. The problem is not so much that a baby died, it's that a person, rather than God, decided it should die. The implications for the question of God's omnipotence is left as an exercise for the reader.
Are all three of us--you, verb, and I--from the Midwest? The movement took really tenacious hold there during the 80s.Yep. I was a 14-year-old conservative political activist from Wheaton IL, the evangelical capital of the universe (at least, until Colorado Springs took the prize).
To the rest of you-if a zygote isn't a person, then what is it?Historically, the church considered an unborn child "human" when it first kicked. In other cultures, the line was when a child took its first breath. Today, many in the church consider it "human" the moment an egg becomes fertilized. Others insist that the line is "implantation in the uterine wall." This line is arbitrary. The fact that you draw it earlier than anyone else does not make yours more legitimate. Hell, it doesn't even make it more biblical.
All of us were that single-celled product of conception at one time. ALL of us. No exceptions.All of use were sperm once. This does not mean that masturbation should be considered murder -- though it's worth noting that the church has, at times, made that very argument. Throwing up one's hands and lamenting that no one has answered the troubling "when does humanity begin" question is disingenuous and deceptive. What you're really asking is, "Why hasn't anyone answered this question the way I do?"
But, whatever...I can't tell any of you what to do.Actually, you can. You can work with other like minded individuals to change laws in our country to make the things you dislike illegal. Thus, this conversation.
Most of us out here know the difference between barrier methods and abortifacient methods.Most of us also recognize the fact that referring to non-barrier methods as "abortifacients" is like calling injected vaccines "bio-weapons." Barrier methods, hormonal birth controls, and abortifacients all operate very differently. If you believe that hormonal birth control is an abortifacient, then you believe that every woman with a menstrual cycle is a mass murderer. It's that simple.
willingness-to-deceive that defines the movementwhich absolutely sums up how "right-to-life" lost me, and in fact my discomfort with the entire conservative/republican movement. They are willing to twist facts, isolate statements, overblow trivialities, tamper with voting machines, and rig polls in order to win converts. I absolutely believe that they do this with deception as a motivating factor. I do not believe it is because they want to save babies, not for one single minute. I do not understand why intelligent Christians and conservatives (I use the phrase without irony) do not see this. How can they, in the face of the disastrous outcome of consevative policies, not see the evil intent behind it all?
I absolutely believe that they do this with deception as a motivating factor. I do not believe it is because they want to save babies, not for one single minute. I do not understand why intelligent Christians and conservatives (I use the phrase without irony) do not see this.For all of my railing, I do feel there are individuals who "get into pro-life politics" for idealistic reasons, at least within the context of their beliefs. I worked on the campaigns of several local politicians who were still at the local/grass roots level, and they were running as conservative republicans on a pro-life platform. They wanted to end something they felt was a profound tragedy, and this motivated them. That said, I too am pretty shocked that rank and file pro-lifers haven't realized that their single-issue-voter pledge made them easy targets for a party that wanted to lock in easy votes.
Fourth, not every sperm or egg is sacred, but human reproduction should be treated with respect. Since every single one of us -to include Barack Obama-started out as a single celled fertilized egg, not as an interchangeable glop of cells but as a glop of cells that is the starting point to an individual human being with unique human potential and unique humans giftings, who are we to say which fertilized egg deserves to implant and which does not?I remember the 80s, when this question was, "Who are we to say what child has the right to be born?" Lo and behold, the slippery slope has pulled us to this question. I could just as easily note that every one of us started as sperm. Who are we to say which sperm deserves to fertilize an egg? Who is to say which sperm deserves to be part of the ejaculate? Barrier methods and vasectomies violate the same principle of 'non-interference' that you advocate.
What if Obama's mother had decided she did not want to carry a child? Or for that matter, Bono's mom? Or Mathowie's? Or.....yours?What if they had abstained? What if your father had received a vasectomy? What if Germany had won WWII?
I'll leave that where it fell. You're not even coherent. Enjoy living your convient, self-assuring lie.Dark, it needs to be said that within the network of arbitrary distinctions that exists in pro-life philosophy, she is being perfectly consistent. Barrier methods are not interference. Sterilization is not interference. Those are effectively mechanical processes that prevent sperm from getting from point A to point B. Hormonal birth control does invisible things, and modifies the way a woman's body works at some invisible level. That's disrespectful to nature, and is tantamount to abortion regardless of the actual medical distinctions between hormone regulators and abortifacients.
I love the idea that Obama and Bono are viewed somehow as liberal sacred cows.That whole ends-justifies-the-means thing is a curious angle, too. I mean, that line of reasoning cuts both ways. What if Stalin's mother had decided she wasn't ready to have a child? What if Jeffery Dahmer's mother had been on the pill? Does the fact that many innocent people would have lived make abortion and/or contraception OK? Does it make it OK only in those circumstances? Is the problem with abortion that we don't know which babies will be evil? Clearly, the answer is no. But it's certainly a curious appeal to reflex.
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posted by jimmythefish at 12:26 AM on August 10, 2008 [3 favorites has favorites]