simian

Seconded. In fact, I do refer to them as anti-choice. I will begin calling them pro-life when they are portesting the death penalty, working toward a healthy envirnoment, and providing basic medical care for all those too poor to afford it on their own. While there may be a few true "pro-life" people out there, I have yet to meet any in person.

As for the "age of accountability": as I understand it, it came about because condemning children to hell because they were not old enough to go through the rituals to be "saved" is too ghoulish for MOST Christian denominations. Though I am aware of funerals where the minister clearly stated the dearly departed child is now in hell because they had not been baptised (in a church that doesn't have infant baptism).

Simian

AJ the greek

Pro-life unbeliever here.

I know for one thing that most pro-lifers are approving of what they think their god is going to do to all of us. That's the ultimate contradiction on their part. They are NOT 100% pro-lifers until they give up on what the bible says about eternal punishment. Simple as that.

Here's my ultimate blasphemy/heresy: "I AM MORE PRO-LIFE THAN GOD!!" I would say that even God is probably only about 1% pro-life, when eternity is figured in.

I can not ever agree with what the bible says about God killing/punishing most people for eternity. Therefore I am pro-life, and anti-god.


What a f-ing bastard


A great secular resource for anti-abortion people is
<a href="http://l4l.org" target="_blank">Libertarians for Life</a>

Sorry, I know this was an anti-christian rant, but there's always another side.

[ December 06, 2002: Message edited by: AJ the greek ]horrible formatting, rearranged again.

[ December 06, 2002: Message edited by: AJ the greek ]</p>

babelfish

Well, it's not logical, but for a different reason, IMO. The anti-choice movement are hell-bent on removing the possibility of choosing to terminate a pregnancy right out of the hands of all of us murderous, capricious women.

By focusing on intimidating abortion providers, they can accomplish this goal.

By making it seem like women are kidnapped and taken against their will to clinics, or tricked into having abortions, they can focus on the "hired killers." After all people wouldn't be as sympathetic to their cause if they went around targeting the true perpetrators of the "crime" of abortion - women. Nobody from the anti-choice side advocates shooting the actual "murderers": women who have had abortions.

(Although I have talked to some who feel these women do belong in jail.)

Toto

AJ: I have to say that I think you are a dupe of the anti-abortion forces.

The non-religious case against abortion twists science and everything we know about human reproduction to claim that a zygote is a separate human being from the moment of fertilization.

The best refutation of that idea is here:

<a href="http://zygote.swarthmore.edu/intro5.html" target="_blank">http://zygote.swarthmore.edu/intro5.html</a>

and

<a href="http://www.religioustolerance.org/abo_when.htm" target="_blank">http://www.religioustolerance.org/abo_when.htm</a>

Why do I say dupe? Isn't there always another side?

There is no historical basis for considering a fertilized egg a human being, or an embryo before it is recognizably human. Abortion, even when it was illegal, was never equated with murder. The whole idea is a historically recent invention of a Roman Catholic Pope for his own purposes.

The current use of abortion in American politics is as an organizing tool for the religious right. It's a proven money raiser and emotional hook for the traditional family crowd.

But no on in their right mind who remembers what it was like before Roe v. Wade wants to go back to that time, when desparate women had unsafe back alley abortions and showed up in emergency rooms to repair the damage. Besides, the issue is political poison to the Republicans, who would lose middle class Republican women's votes on the issue.

So the strategy of the Religious Right is to try to make abortion "unthinkable" - by claiming that abortion kills a human being. But it doesn't, and women who find themselves accidentally or unwillingly pregnant are going to find a way to avoid becoming mothers. As long as there is no duty for a woman to have a child, there can be no duty to continue a pregnancy.

xstvn

You must be talking about the Rev. Michael Bray who said:


From <a href="http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?itemid=14133" target="_blank">article here</a>

Rev. Bray is part of the loony Army of God

<a href="http://armyofgod.com" target="_blank">http://armyofgod.com</a>

Check out the Army of God Manual, including "99 covert ways to stop abortion" such as sniper rifles, bulldozers, explosives etc.
<a href="http://armyofgod.com/AOGhistory.html" target="_blank">http://armyofgod.com/AOGhistory.html</a>

Sandslice

Bray's a nutjob, that's for sure. From his homepage at armyofgod:

Armyofgod calls this guy a hero.

Also from armyofgod:
-Using birth control is the same as abortion.
-"A true American hero slipped away into the darkness having the honor
to be chosen as an instrument in the hand of the LORD our God." -of James Kopp
-A number of aborted-baby pics, we've all seen 'em, all with names taken from the bible. (Poisonin' the well.)
-From part 1 of the "manual:"
- - I think that's enough. In short, if you wanna be a pro-life activist, you gotta be a terrorist, so "says" the Army of God.

Brahma's atheist

Isn't god(generic) the most prolific abortionist? How many miscarriages occur every day?

Shake

Thirded (or re-seconded) however you'd say that. Maybe just a simple "me too" would work!

Thanks to xstvn for the appropriate links!

And henceforth, I shall also refer to "pro-lifers" as anti-choice!

AJ the greek

Sorry to keep this going, really, but to be polite I read the links from Toto, I didn't waste my time with the army of god ones however.

If this had been one of the usual 10-page threads on abortion, I would have never even read it, so I don't intend on keeping one going here. At the end of this post I will agree to disagree and move on. I almost never engage in this debate since it is a 50-50 issue that no one will change their mind on what little I have to say.

The Swarthmore link was really just laying out 7 alternate views that they seemingly are saying are reasonable for scientists to take. No commentary given except that scientists are not united in this area. Not a shock there. Not really a "best refutation" but a nice layout of the choices we all face on this issue.

On Religious Tolerance.org: I do acknowledge that history, and philosophy, and even the bible, do not really come down strongly on this matter. We don't have to rely on history and great thinkers who had no access to ultrasound imagery and modern knowledge. I come at it from one of the latter prongs of the L4L.org statement. Parents do not have a right to evict their children, at any age. It is a punishable offense at a certain age, most parts of the world.

I came to be strongly pro-life after seeing an exhibit at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago. They have on display a row of glass jars containing fetus(es)(?) of sequential age from fertilization to full development. It was shocking to me that very early on are quite "human" physical characteristics apparent. I would venture to say that even before the mother knows of the pregnancy, the fetus(or whatever you are willing to call it) looks very much like a baby.

I don't draw an artificial line of personhood, because I think such a concept should not be defined by today's know-how, but one more universal. Babies are being saved at earlier and earlier weeks of gestation, and I think its around 23-24 week currently. When an artificial womb is perfected, things will change dramatically again. Therefore the age of personhood apart from the mother will keep dropping with advances in science. I am not going to pin myself down to some arbitrary rule, that will be overrode every few years.

Can I agree with Christians on one thing and not be their "dupe"? I think infidels do not have to oppose every single thing said by a theist, when we meet in the political arena. Things do not have to be THAT polarized in life, even if they are basically nuts in many ways.

To Simian's post, I am anti abortion, anti death penalty, and pro universal health care. I am pro environment, but am not an environmental pessimist, like many are. I like to think I am consistent, but we all are the judge of ourselves, aren't we?

I now step off my soap box I never should ave mounted.

long winded fool

I second AJ the greek's post. Logically, if there is even a remote possibility that abortion is the murder of an innocent human being, then the burden of proof lies on the pro-choicers to prove that a human in its earliest developmental stage is not actually human. The fact that no one has been able to do this and that abortion is legal is equivalent to making it legal to bulldoze a school without first making sure there are no children still inside. This is a crime of extreme negligence. If the developer should not have the free choice to do destroy a building without first checking to see that there's no one inside, then the mother should not have the free choice of terminating her pregnancy unless she can prove that she won't give birth to a human life, should she carry it full term.

A question one should ask in contemplating this pro-life activist's murder of the abortion doctor might be: Is killing the driver of a bulldozer who is destroying a building with a child inside wrong? If the driver won't listen to reason, maybe it would be better to simply disable the bulldozer, i.e. destroy the abortion clinic, instead of commit murder. What would you do in that situation, assuming you were armed and couldn't save the child AND allow the building to be destroyed? Would it be wrong?

Putting ourselves in the shoes of other people who hold different beliefs is necessary before we pass judgment. If the murder of a person attempting to take the life of an innocent human is legal, and if a fetus is an innocent human, then the murder of a doctor who is attempting to perform a consensual abortion should be legal. A woman/girl cannot consent to have an innocent human murdered, even if it is her own son or daughter, and even if (especially if) she is only 13 years old. Now prove that a fetus is not an innocent human.

This seems a succinct and impenetrable argument to me. All arguments appealing to cases such as rape, coat hanger abortions and extreme poverty completely dodge the question and serve to cloud the waters so much that this ridiculously clear logic becomes lost in emotional rhetoric. The murder of innocent human lives must either be legalized or outlawed. If you can't prove that a human still in development is not yet a human, then you must assume that it is, and its destruction should be considered murder. So why is abortion the only form of murder that's legal outside of wartime? (the murder of the innocent being legal, for all intents and purposes, in war) Because laws aren't subject to reason, they are subject to the desires of we the people. We like freedom and if our definition of freedom warps so much that we have to legalize murder in order to keep it, then we will ignore any reasoning that forbids this and will embrace our "freedom" to take the life of another in order to keep our inalienable "human" rights of "...liberty and the pursuit of happiness."

How in the world can the logic of pro-choicers not drive you nuts?? <img src="graemlins/banghead.gif" border="0" alt="[Bang Head]" />