“Contraception Is Not the Answer” National Conference, September 22-23
— Posted by Eric (July 26, 2006 at 12:38 pm)
For too long the pro-life movement has been reluctant to face the issue of contraception head-on. Most pro-lifers know in their gut there’s something wrong with contraception, and that flooding our society with condoms, pills, patches and injections ultimately leads to more abortion, not less.
Contraception severs the link between sexual intimacy and the creation of new human life, a link which is right at the center of God’s plan for humanity, created “male and female” in his image, an interpersonal communion which in its capacity to give life echoes the inner mystery of God Himself, the Author of Life. Once separated from this essential mytsery, sexual intimacy becomes an end in itself. The conception of new human life becomes a “mistake,” and the answer is abortion.
By fostering a distorted understanding of the meaning of sex, contraception radically alters human behavior, with devastating results: not only abortion but skyrocketing divorce, epidemic illegitimacy, widespread cohabitation, and even social acceptance of homosexuality. It is time for our society to squarely address these realities.
That is precisely what we will do at “Contraception Is Not the Answer,” a national pro-life conference to be held in Chicago September 22-23, 2006. We invite all in the pro-life movement, even those who do not share the analysis of contraception offered here, as well as all those who are open to considering the possibility that we have not yet taken stock of all that contraception has done to influence our marriages, our famlies and our culture.
Speakers at “Contraception Is Not the Answer” include Janet Smith on how contraceptives impact intimate relationships in unexpected ways, Jennifer Roback-Morse on the cultural contradictions of contraceptives for women, Rutgers University sociologist Lionel Tiger on how men are marginalized by the commonplace use of contraceptives, and Damon Clarke Owens on the impact of contraceptives on the American family.
The complete conference program and profiles of all eight speakers, as well as information on registration is available here.
(Cross-posted at Pro-Life Blogs.)
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lauren says:
Are you suggesting contraception be illegal?
Comment posted July 26th, 2006 at 2:11 pm
Eric says:
Lauren, please. If I had written a post about how eating Big Macs isn’t good for you, would you really wonder whether I thought the Big Mac ought to be legally banned?
However, ridiculous though your question is, it nevetheless suggests to me that the time is right for a conference like this one. The idea that there may be a downside to contraception is so threatening to abortion defenders that they feel they have to resort to outlandishly caricaturing our position.
Comment posted July 26th, 2006 at 2:34 pm
lauren says:
It’s not a ridiculous question. I dont understand what you’re proposing in this post.. If you view contraception to be just as sinful or at least near to being as sinful as abortion, why wouldn’t you want to outlaw it? Do you know how I might get a press pass to this conference?
Comment posted July 26th, 2006 at 3:24 pm
Eric says:
Lauren, I’m simply proposing that we reconsider the impact that contraception has had on our culture. I believe that impact is, overall, very negative, and that the evidence bears this out.
Please note that nowhere did I say anything about “sin.” Nor does it follow that considering something a sin means one wants to outlaw it. I think all kinds of things are sinful that I wouldn’t want to outlaw—being obnoxious to one’s waiter, overeating cheesecake, installing triple-track windows in an old house, etc.
Comment posted July 26th, 2006 at 4:49 pm
mary kay says:
John,
“…installing triple-track windows in an old house, etc.”
Amen to that!
MK ‘
Comment posted July 26th, 2006 at 5:23 pm
mary kay says:
Lauren,
“Are you suggesting contraception be illegal? ”
Read the answer to your post on the last site…
MK
Comment posted July 26th, 2006 at 5:24 pm
Lauren says:
Sorry Eric, John said it was sinful, my bad. Can you contact me about how I might be able to get that press pass.. I’d like to write about your conference for campus progress… obviously from my perspective, but i promise to be fair and not do any name-calling
Lauren
Comment posted July 26th, 2006 at 6:07 pm
mary kay says:
Sorry Eric,
for seem reason everyone seems to think your John today…#
Mary kay says:
John, (I mean Eric),
“…installing triple-track windows in an old house, etc.”
Amen to that!
MK ‘
Comment posted July 26th, 2006 at 7:01 pm
Mike says:
Eric,
I applaud having the National Conference on Contraception. I personally think the biggest dent we can put in the Pro-Abortion movement is to really educate people about the harms of contraception & teach our 6th through 12th grade students Chastity Education.
Mike
Comment posted July 26th, 2006 at 9:41 pm
Lucy says:
http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0405-23.htm
Comment posted July 26th, 2006 at 9:57 pm
Lucy says:
Yet, the post does state that the problem is that:
“flooding our society with condoms, pills, patches and injections ultimately leads to more abortion, not less.”
It does indeed sound as though the desire is to eliminate availablity and not simply use. This would require a lack of availablity, rather than a lack of utilization. While a lack of utilization would lead to an elimination of availabilit, the complaint is not that they are being consumed, but that they are being presented.
If the intent is not to make contraception unavailable to the general public then the manner the topic is introduced is rather poor. That this is to effect all of society is made clear, not simply those who choose to follow the doctrines, as it is clearly stated that this is a problem that is believed to be a problem for all of society.
The problem of sex for the sake of pleasure is not a problem for all of society. Just for those who have an opposition to the idea. For those that are opposed I imagine they will not engage in sexual activity for the sake of pleasure. For those who do not currently hold this to be a problem, yet are able to be convinced, this will not be a problem. The problem is strictly those of us who do not view sex for the sake of sex as a problem. I don’t quite know how it can be taken any other way.
If legislative means are not the intent then what means will you take in solving what you believe to be a problem? Certainly people so taken with the legislative system when it comes to denying rights to their fellow citizens to operate by their own moral codes do not introduce problems for entertainment value. What ever will be accomplished with the convention? Afterall, there are already laws in place giving employees greater rights than employers in some instances.
Comment posted July 26th, 2006 at 10:14 pm
Lucy says:
Oh, and Eric,
If you wouldn’t mind tying together yet another thread for me. What relation is it that birth control methods and your opposition to the acceptance of gay people have with one another? I’m at a complete and entire loss on that one.
Comment posted July 26th, 2006 at 10:17 pm
Mike says:
Contraceptives Show Grave Consequences
http://www.catholicherald.com/saunders/03ws/ws030814.htm
…Interestingly, Pope Paul VI prophesied grave consequences from contraception: increased marital infidelity and a lowering of moral standards; increased lack of respect for women, including seeing a woman as a sex object and as an instrument to satisfy sexual pleasures rather than seeing her as a partner in marriage; and the danger of empowering public authorities to regulate the lives of others. Thirty years later, these warnings have become realities: Statistics show the rapid increase of divorce, from a rate of 25 percent in 1965 to 50 percent in 1975 during the first five years of marriage. By the year 2000, 50 percent of American teenagers will have lived a significant part of their lives without a father figure. Moreover, Dr. Robert Michaels of Stanford University found a direct, positive correlation between the growing rate of divorce and the rate of contraception. (Interestingly, couples who use Natural Family Planning have a much lower divorce rate: 0.6 percent according to the Couple to Couple League, and 2-5 percent according to research conducted by California State University.)
———-
As of 2003, 18 out of 21 retrospective studies show that women who take oral contraceptives prior to their first-term birth incur an increased risk in developing breast cancer as noted in the bar graph below.
http://polycarp.org/overviewbreastcanceroralcontraceptives.htm
———
Kenya First Lady: Condom “is causing the spread of AIDS in this country.”
http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2006/may/06052307.html
———-
How Contraception Causes Chemical Abortions (Source: 1999 Physicans Desk Reference - Planned Parenthood)
http://all.org/article.php?id=10217&PHPSESSID=d6c4aac5ba558445f33333c239f77391
———–
The Harm’s of Contraception
http://www.omsoul.com/contraception-problems.php
Mike
Comment posted July 26th, 2006 at 10:31 pm
Mike says:
Lucy said …
“What relation is it that birth control methods and your opposition to the acceptance of gay people have with one another? I’m at a complete and entire loss on that one.”
Using Birth Control & the Homosexual Act are both closed to “procreation”.
Mike
Comment posted July 26th, 2006 at 10:37 pm
Michael-2 says:
The factor that is primarily supporting the renewed interest in NFP is marriage insuranace or the notion that NFP can provide that. And of course fertility monitoring and awareness is a lot easier and more reliable than ever before and will no doubt get easier in the futrue.
Young people have to understand that there are GOOD ROADS and there are BAD ROADS, but once you are on a bad road it is very hard to get off. We are creatures of habit. If you start out primarily on contraception, after 5 or so years your marriage will likely be over or failing but you would just as soon give up your cars and your computers than your contraceptives. Almost like a drug addiction.
If you start out primarily on NFP, fertility awareness, breast feeding, etc for family planning you and your spouse will probably become better at it because grace builds on nature and you will almost certainly stay married.
Comment posted July 27th, 2006 at 1:20 am
Lauren says:
I am so glad I have a brain. Goodnight.
Comment posted July 27th, 2006 at 1:51 am
Mike says:
Michael 2,
Wow your last statement was awesome and right on the money. There currently is a big shift of people moving away from contraception and using NFP. NFP keeps everything natural (the way God intended) and does not have all the baggage/side effects/morality issues contraception brings to the table.
Mike
Comment posted July 27th, 2006 at 4:51 am
Lucy says:
And once again, not having children is bad, right. Those of us who do not have children are evil… is that correct. Or were we just stupid…I don’t recall.
Comment posted July 27th, 2006 at 9:04 am
Lucy says:
So condoms and formula are causing divorce rates?
I’ve heard of women that get pregnant intentionally because they believe that the man would then have to stay and take care of them. I’ve never heard a man advocate such an idea.
Comment posted July 27th, 2006 at 9:06 am
Mike says:
General Question –
How is everyone using italics and bolding on this blog? Please explain how you are doing it.
Thanks,
Mike
Comment posted July 27th, 2006 at 9:56 am
Mike says:
Lucy said …
“And once again, not having children is bad, right”
Lucy,
Do you think its normal to get “gratification” from eating food and then sticking a finger down the throat because the “weight” that comes with it is not wanted?
Mike
Comment posted July 27th, 2006 at 10:04 am
Mike says:
Lucy said …
“So condoms and formula are causing divorce rates?”
Well we know more condoms = more AIDS. There are many examples of the correlation between condom usage and divorce rates. Let me just list one of them for you…
The introduction of condoms has made it easier for married couples to cheat on his/her spouse. Hence more cheating on spouses leads to higher divorce rates. Higher divorce rates = the attack on the family.
You should listen to Dr. Janet Smith on “The Contraception Trap”.
http://forums.catholic.com/showthread.php?t=61139
On this thread go to post#12 and click on “Life on the Rock #401″ to listen.
Mike
Comment posted July 27th, 2006 at 10:26 am
Lauren says:
Lucy,
“Lucy,
Do you think its normal to get “gratification” from eating food and then sticking a finger down the throat because the “weight” that comes with it is not wanted?
Mike ”
HAHAHA WHAT?!??!
Comment posted July 27th, 2006 at 1:43 pm
Michael-2 says:
Lucy says sarcastically “And once again, not having children is bad, right. Those of us who do not have children are evil… is that correct. Or were we just stupid…I don’t recall. ”
I would not make such a blanket general statement that people who do not have children are evil. But I can say that adults who does not love and adore children are pigs.
Comment posted July 27th, 2006 at 2:07 pm
John says:
Michael-2 said: “I would not make such a blanket general statement that people who do not have children are evil. But I can say that adults who does not love and adore children are pigs.”
Michael-2,
“Pigs”?
In the spirit of fraternal correction, I must take issue with you here. I fail to see how dehumanizing name-calling of this sort accords with the Gospel or serves to advance the pro-life cause.
Comment posted July 27th, 2006 at 3:36 pm
John says:
Lucy said: “And once again, not having children is bad, right. Those of us who do not have children are evil… is that correct. Or were we just stupid…I don’t recall.”
Lucy,
That’s a rather imposing straw man you’ve come up with there, considering the esteem in which we hold consecrated celibacy.
Comment posted July 27th, 2006 at 3:50 pm
John says:
Mike said: “How is everyone using italics and bolding on this blog? Please explain how you are doing it.”
Mike,
Sure thing.
To italicize a word, type the following directly before a word (without the spaces in between):
< i >
and type the following after a word (without the spaces in between):
< / i >
E. g., you would type a word you want to italicize thusly:
< i >word< / i >
Just remember to take out the spaces between the “< ", "i", "/", and ">” characters.
To make a word bold, type the following directly before a word (without the spaces in between):
< strong >
and type the following after a word (without the spaces in between):
< / strong>
E. g., you would type a word you want to make bold thusly:
< strong >word< / strong>
Just remember to take out the spaces between the “< ", "strong", "/", and ">“.
Comment posted July 27th, 2006 at 4:01 pm
Pansy Moss says:
#
John says:
Michael-2 said: “I would not make such a blanket general statement that people who do not have children are evil. But I can say that adults who does not love and adore children are pigs.”
Michael-2,
“Pigs”?
In the spirit of fraternal correction, I must take issue with you here. I fail to see how dehumanizing name-calling of this sort accords with the Gospel or serves to advance the pro-life cause.
Harris Protocol
Although Lucy took some issue with this as it was written by a couple of Christian boys.
Comment posted July 27th, 2006 at 6:22 pm
Mike says:
Lauren replyed back to me saying…
Do you think its normal to get “gratification” from eating food and then sticking a finger down the throat because the “weight” that comes with it is not wanted?
Mike ”
HAHAHA WHAT?!??!
———-
Lauren I am glad we can all have a nice laugh when arguing on a volatile topic like abortion. It was funny what I said wasn’t it? Now I am laughing too.
But Lauren I do want you to answer the question even if it sounds hilarious to both of us. You can answer it and Lucy can also. Believe me this question makes a relevant point after I get answers from both you and Lucy. So I will ask you both once again…
Do you think its normal to get “gratification” from eating food and then sticking a finger down the throat because the “weight” that comes with it is not wanted?
All you have to give me is a simple “yes” or “no” answer.
Mike
Comment posted July 27th, 2006 at 6:53 pm
Mike says:
So far over 750 risks/side effects are not enough reasons for the Pro-Aborts why abortion should be made illegal in the U.S. because obviously “Abortion Hurts Women”!
Well here’s another reason to add to the already 750+ reasons ….
This just came out today…
National Academies of Science: Abortion Linked to Premature Birth Problems
http://www.lifenews.com/nat2453.html
Mike
Comment posted July 27th, 2006 at 7:15 pm
Michael-2 says:
John says “In the spirit of fraternal correction, I must take issue with you here. I fail to see how dehumanizing name-calling of this sort accords with the Gospel or serves to advance the pro-life cause.”
OK, point taken John. But it was Martin Luther who said or wrote this directly or at least something quite similar.
Comment posted July 28th, 2006 at 12:30 am
mary kay says:
just trying out that italics thingy
Comment posted July 28th, 2006 at 6:02 am
mary kay says:
very cool indeed
Comment posted July 28th, 2006 at 6:03 am
mary kay says:
can”t do the bold though…
Comment posted July 28th, 2006 at 6:05 am
lauren says:
The fact that you are comparing bulimia, a compulsive disorder, and a woman’s decision to carry or not to carry a pregnancy is really quite revolting. I’m sorry, the point is ridiculous and I see where it is going.
Btw, I’m in the tribune today, check it out
Comment posted July 28th, 2006 at 1:12 pm
John says:
Lauren said: “Btw, I’m in the tribune today, check it out”
Lauren,
I saw the article this morning.
Despite our many differences of opinion, please accept my sincere, prayerful support of your struggle to overcome your addiction.
Comment posted July 28th, 2006 at 3:01 pm
rosie says:
Lauren,
Good job getting the word out and raising awareness!:)
Comment posted July 28th, 2006 at 5:34 pm
Pansy Moss says:
Wow Lauren, how did you do it?
Comment posted July 28th, 2006 at 6:23 pm
Lucy says:
Lauren says:
Lucy,
“Lucy,
Do you think its normal to get “gratification” from eating food and then sticking a finger down the throat because the “weight” that comes with it is not wanted?
Mike ”
HAHAHA WHAT?!??!
Lauren, I assume this is a joke right. Oooohh, this is from Mike. Mike just likes to say stupid things to me. It does something for him.
Comment posted July 28th, 2006 at 6:42 pm
Lucy says:
Lauren,
For instance, this time he would like to call choosing not to have children a sickness. Which I think is supposed to be other than evil or stupid. Thus, those of us who choose to not have children, or are not sick and twisted enough to have children only to watch them starve because we can’t afford to feed them are somehow sick. I don’t know if he means physically or mentally. As I said, he just likes to say stupid things to me. I assume that he his operating under the impression that he can shock me. Or he wants to hurt me. I don’t know which, maybe both.
I do wonder however what a man would know about how it feels to want or not want to carry a child. I certainly don’t understand how it could be a sickness to have other ideas for your own life. I do think that it must be a sickness to want to control the lives of others. I count it as a violation of my person. I don’t know that anyone here quite understands exactly what kind of physical revulsion I feel at the thought that the anti’s would have any say as to when or if I would carry a child. It actually physically hurts to think of it.
They will tell you that something else causes this pain that I feel at the thought. That I am feeling pain because I had an abortion. Because I am defying nature, because all women are good for is making babies. Because I have worked hard to improve myself, and overcome obstacles that have been placed in my way; including overcoming an abusive situation. It’s kind of like you will graduate from college and have a successful life where you will have children only when and if you choose, but will be a good mother if you choose to. Yet, it is hardly the entirety of you.
They are wrong however. I know what causes me pain and what does not. My friend encountered a situation in Chicago at a clinic, while she and her husband were driving by. She jumped out of the car to help the fear stricken woman. There was a priest holding onto the woman outside of a clinic. He had bound her hands with a rosary and would not let her go, he was speaking to her in a language my friend did not recognize, but was the only language the woman spoke. My friend told the priest to let her go, and told him to ask her if she wanted to go with her. The priest refused, and my friend tried to communicate as well as she could. With the help of my friend the woman finally broke free of the priest, who informed my friend that the woman was afraid of the terrible thing that she was about to do. My friend got the woman safely inside, where they also spoke the language of the woman. Through them my friend found out the womans name, and their names were the same. When my friend got back outside, the priest asked her why she did that. My friend scolded him for scaring her. She told him that he was scaring her. He told her that he didn’t scare her, he was a priest, he was helping her. Her fear was from what she was going to do. After that the others started going after her, calling her a murderer, and all kinds of horrible things. That woman would not let go of my friend; she was so happy that she was there. She accidently made off with the rosary he had bound her with, so at least he couldn’t do it again that day. My friends husband finally pulled up to retrieve her, and she told the angry mob that was closing in on her, that she suggested they start circling or she’d call the police on them for obstructing a private entrance. Nobody ever knew what the woman was doing there. It’s a womans health center, that happens to perform abortions. Since they perform abortions they have to have the whole bullet proof set up. She could have been there for a routine exam.
They don’t know what causes my pain either. Though they will insist that they do. Then there are those like Mike who would like to be the cause. I can’t think of any other reason for the things that he says and the nasty way he says them.
Comment posted July 28th, 2006 at 7:00 pm
Lucy says:
John says:
Lucy said: “And once again, not having children is bad, right. Those of us who do not have children are evil… is that correct. Or were we just stupid…I don’t recall.”
Lucy,
That’s a rather imposing straw man you’ve come up with there, considering the esteem in which we hold consecrated celibacy.
I just want to know. Mike has already declared that not wishing to have children is a sickness. Do you think that choosing not to have children makes someone evil or stupid? Is there something wrong with a woman who does not feel that having children should or can be part of her life?
A straw man? An imposing straw man at that, which I find interesting in itself. Are women evil if they choose against having children? How difficult can this be. Certainly as opinionated as people are on here, including yourself, regarding what I may and may not do with my body, I should think that it would be something you already know the answer to.
If I do not choose to have children what am I?
You are as opposed to relativism as I am, though you accuse me of relativism. Certainly you do not hold people who reject the catholic system in the same regard as those who accept it. Certainly, even if you believe that they might one day choose your way without your way they are something else. As I have stated, I don’t care what you believe, and have nothing to gain by attempting to strip you of your beliefs as a purpose in itself. I do however, have much to gain in securing my right to lead a life without the imposistion of having to live as though I have any regard for your beliefs, which I am appalled by actually.
So, am I evil? If not, what am I.
Comment posted July 28th, 2006 at 8:43 pm
Lucy says:
John,
You take issue with him Michael calling people pigs? Frankly a group that wishes to remove the sanctity of a womans rights to determine what happens to her body can hardly degrade itself further by comparing people to farm animals. Did you know by the way, that amongst farm animals, pigs are amongst the most intelligent. They are actually quite clean animals, and have earned an unfortunate reputation for rolling in the mud. They roll in the mudd because they lack sweat glands, and the mudd cools their body.
Of the things that have been said to me on here, pig is the least offensive I assure you. Besides, I wouldn’t fit the bill. That I do not wish to have children does not mean that I don’t see their value. In fact, that I do not confuse a fetus with a child is part of the value that I give and you deny. Part of the reason that I do not wish to have children myself is because my other life ambitions would prevent me from providing a child the care and attention I believe that a child deserves.
Growing up the way I did taught me a lot. I understood all to well what was happening to me. I knew what it was about it that was wrong, and why. I saw how other children were being treated and recognized the good that existed in some of the ways they were being raised. If I were to have children I would want to be the best mother I could be. I would want my child to know that there was nothing more valuable in the world to me than them, and that the only reason that I wouldn’t drop something would be due to the fact that I was doing it for them. My life pursuits won’t leave me the ability to do that, and I would rob myself of the satisfaction and a child of what I believe to be due them. I would also never involve myself with a man who wished to have children, as I would not want to deprive anyone I loved of something that would make them happy.
That you would have children for the sake of having children is a degradation of life according to my deeply held values. There is no more value in having children to have children than there is in keeping up with the joneses. Didn’t you know that it would be better to be honest and poor than a wealthy thief because it was right to have money? Providing the world with children who are starved of food and or love is not a demonstration of value, virtue, or humanity.
He could have damned me to hell and done you no damage.
I’ll indicate the horrible things that Pansy likes to say to me, or do you feel that he paid me a compliment? Is that the issue.
Comment posted July 28th, 2006 at 8:57 pm
Lucy says:
Pansy,
I took issue with it for a number of reasons. I take issue with you for a number of reasons. All of which you apparently like to pretend don’t exist.
Comment posted July 28th, 2006 at 8:59 pm
Lucy says:
Wednesday, March 08, 2006
Abortion Rights and Wrongs
South Dakota last month became the first state among 10 contenders to pass a ban on abortion in a direct challenge to Roe v. Wade, the landmark case from 1973 that blocked states from outlawing abortion. This is, unfortunately, an argument in which there is wrong on both sides. On balance, however, it is the religious agenda of the anti-abortionists that gives rise to the greater concern, seeking as it does to break down the barrier between church and state erected by America’s founding fathers.
The move to prohibit abortion services is effectively an attempt to interfere with the right to bodily integrity, the most basic of property rights held by every man and woman. No religious leader, president, or judge may seek to abrogate that right for any reason. It is inalienable. Nor are there any countervailing rights to be considered: the unborn fetus, a potential human being, has no rights until such time as it is born. Leonard Peikoff puts it this way:
“Just as there are no rights of collections of individuals, so there are no rights of parts of individuals—no rights of arms or of tumors or of any piece of tissue growing within a woman, even if it has the capacity to become in time a human being. A potentiality is not an actuality, and a fertilized ovum, an embryo, or a fetus is not a human being. Rights belong only to man—and men are entities, organisms that are biologically formed and physically separate from one another. That which lives within the body of another can claim no prerogatives against its host. Responsible parenthood involves decades devoted to the child’s proper nurture. To sentence a woman to bear a child against her will is an unspeakable violation of her rights: her right to liberty (to the functions of her body), her right to the pursuit of happiness, and, sometimes, her right to life itself, even as a serf. Such a sentence represents the sacrifice of the actual to the potential, of a real human being to a piece of protoplasm, which has no life in the human sense of the term. It is sheer perversion of language for people who demand this sacrifice to call themselves “right-to-lifers.””[1]
Equally, however, woman’s rights campaigners go too far in their attempts to claim special privileges for women over and above the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness guaranteed by the Constitution. There can be no “right” to an abortion, for the same reason that there can be no legitimate economic rights, such as the “right” to a job. Rights are freedoms to act, not claims to unearned values, or guarantees of an acceptable outcome. Consequently, while a woman has every right to seek an abortion without the need to justify that decision to anyone, it is equally the case that doctors may legitimately decline to provide that service if they so choose. If the entire medical profession of South Dakota were voluntarily to decide to discontinue the provision of abortion services, they would be entirely at liberty to do so. In those circumstances a woman living in the State would have to accept that she has no right to seek to force them to provide the service she seeks, but instead must look for it elsewhere. In a moral society, such as that envisioned by the framers of the Constitution, men deal with other men voluntarily, when it is in their mutual self interest to do so. That is not the situation here, of course. Rather, South Dakota has sought by force to prevent a legitimate kind of transaction between consenting parties which, however difficult the circumstances, infringes no-one’s rights and is therefore entirely Constitutional.
It is to be hoped that the current members of the US Supreme Court choose to re-affirm the ruling of their predecessors given more than thirty years ago and strike down this latest attempt to undermine the legitimate freedoms and inalienable rights held by all Americans, regardless of their gender.
[1] Leonard Peikoff, Objectivism, the Philosophy of Ayn Rand
Comment posted July 28th, 2006 at 8:59 pm
Lucy says:
Leonard Peikoff
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Abortion Rights are Pro-life
By Leonard Peikoff
This week hundreds of anti-abortionists will demonstrate outside Buffalo’s abortion clinics, bookstores and high schools. Where is their moral opposition? Today, no one is defending the right to abortion in fundamental terms, which is why the pro-abortion rights forces are on the defensive.
Abortion rights advocates should not cede the terms “pro-life” and “right to life” to the anti-abortionists. It is a woman’s right to her life that gives her the right to terminate her pregnancy.
Nor should abortion-rights advocates keep hiding behind the phrase “a woman’s right to choose.” Does she have the right to choose murder? That’s what abortion would be, if the fetus were a person.
The status of the embryo in the first trimester is the basic issue that cannot be sidestepped. The embryo is clearly pre-human; only the mystical notions of religious dogma treat this clump of cells as constituting a person.
We must not confuse potentiality with actuality. An embryo is a potential human being. It can, granted the woman’s choice, develop into an infant. But what it actually is during the first trimester is a mass of relatively undifferentiated cells that exist as a part of a woman’s body. If we consider what it is rather than what it might become, we must acknowledge that the embryo under three months is something far more primitive than a frog or a fish. To compare it to an infant is ludicrous.
If we are to accept the equation of the potential with the actual and call the embryo an “unborn child,” we could, with equal logic, call any adult an “undead corpse” and bury him alive or vivisect him for the instruction of medical students.
That tiny growth, that mass of protoplasm, exists as a part of a woman’s body. It is not an independently existing, biologically formed organism, let alone a person. That which lives within the body of another can claim no right against its host. Rights belong only to individuals, not to collectives or to parts of an individual.
(”Independent” does not mean self-supporting — a child who depends on its parents for food, shelter, and clothing, has rights because it is an actual, separate human being.)
“Rights,” in Ayn Rand’s words, “do not pertain to a potential, only to an actual being. A child cannot acquire any rights until it is born.”
It is only on this base that we can support the woman’s political right to do what she chooses in this issue. No other person — not even her husband — has the right to dictate what she may do with her own body. That is a fundamental principle of freedom.
There are many legitimate reasons why a rational woman might have an abortion — accidental pregnancy, rape, birth defects, danger to her health. The issue here is the proper role for government. If a pregnant woman acts wantonly or capriciously, then she should be condemned morally — but not treated as a murderer.
If someone capriciously puts to death his cat or dog, that can well be reprehensible, even immoral, but it is not the province of the state to interfere. The same is true of an abortion, which puts to death a far less-developed growth in a woman’s body.
If anti-abortionists object that an embryo has the genetic equipment of a human being, remember: so does every cell in the human body.
Abortions are private affairs and often involve painfully difficult decisions with life-long consequences. But, tragically, the lives of the parents are completely ignored by the anti-abortionists. Yet that is the essential issue. In any conflict it’s the actual, living persons who count, not the mere potential of the embryo.
Being a parent is a profound responsibility — financial, psychological, moral — across decades. Raising a child demands time, effort, thought and money. It’s a full-time job for the first three years, consuming thousands of hours after that — as caretaker, supervisor, educator and mentor. To a woman who does not want it, this is a death sentence.
The anti-abortionists’ attitude, however, is: “The actual life of the parents be damned! Give up your life, liberty, property and the pursuit of your own happiness.”
Sentencing a woman to sacrifice her life to an embryo is not upholding the “right-to-life.”
The anti-abortionists’ claim to being “pro-life” is a classic Big Lie. You cannot be in favor of life and yet demand the sacrifice of an actual, living individual to a clump of tissue.
Anti-abortionists are not lovers of life — lovers of tissue, maybe. But their stand marks them as haters of real human beings.
Comment posted July 28th, 2006 at 9:00 pm
Lucy says:
“One method of destroying a concept is by diluting its meaning. Observe that by ascribing rights to the unborn, i.e., the nonliving, the anti-abortionists obliterate the rights of the living: the right of young people to set the course of their own lives.”
— Ayn Rand [”A Last Survey — Part I”, The Ayn Rand Letter Vol. IV, No. 2, 1975.]
“A man who takes it upon himself to prescribe how others should dispose of their own lives - and who seeks to condemn them by law, i.e., by force, to the drudgery of an unchosen, lifelong servitude (which, more often than not, is beyond their economic means or capacity) - such a man has no right to pose as a defender of rights. A man with so little concern or respect for the rights of the individual, cannot and will not be a champion of freedom or of capitalism. (For a full discussion of the issue of birth control, see my article “Of Living Death.”)”
— Ayn Rand
“Responsible parenthood involves decades devoted to the child’s proper nurture. To sentence a woman to bear a child against her will is an unspeakable violation of her rights: her right to liberty (to the functions of her body), her right to the pursuit of happiness, and, sometimes, her right to life itself, even as a serf. Such a sentence represents the sacrifice of the actual to the potential, of a real human being to a piece of protoplasm, which has no life in the human sense of the term. It is sheer perversion of language for people who demand this sacrifice to call themselves ‘right-to-lifers.’ ”
— Leonard Peikoff (Objectivism, in the Chapter on Government)
Comment posted July 28th, 2006 at 9:00 pm
Lucy says:
I hesitate in posting this, as it seems one thing to tell you that I had an abortion, but another to expose another. There are sites online where women can post their stories. It provides a link for women, and a reminder that we aren’t alone. For some it is theraputic, and women cope with all kinds of things in different manners. However, this seems to be something that people around here should see.
I’ve seen some very messed up stuff, but this is one of the tops. Not to mention, you’d be amazed at how the anti’s are the ones trying to set a world record for number of partners in a year. There are stories of girls with 60 in a year. A friend of mine has a sister who has hit 40 in six months. I think that it is horribly sad and a definite sign of something deeply wrong. The pro-choicers have stories that consist of their one and only long term relationship and the loss of a job. The differences are glaring. Pro-Choice, which I wasn’t raised as one, I had to learn as I went, are raised to understand and respect their bodies. They are taught to seek love, not a man. They are told to live. They are taught that they make their own value. That they will make mistakes and that they should learn from them. They are taught that no one has any rights to do anything to them that they do not approve of.
I was raised in an anti house, with an anti church. I was taught things that were completely different.
Krystal’s Story
First of all, I would like to share a poem I wrote days after I had my first abortion at the age of fifteen. I call it “Baby John Doe”
The fanatics are screaming “You Slut, you whore!”
Sacrilegious for walking through the clinic’s door
She held a crucifix and knew I was abortion-bound
Doctor killed my child, I didn’t make a sound
Surgical vacuums are so handy
Murder is legal, how dandy
Please don’t beat your religion into me
I made the decision that was right for me
To them, you are just another face
To them, abortion is no disgrace
“Get undressed & lay real still”
“Only take a moment to kill”
Take these meds and you’ll be OKay
But will this hurt ever go away?
I’ll never hold you in my arms
I’ll never protect you from society’s harms
I’m never going to cook you dinner
I murdered you to make my belly thinner
I had always been very pro-life; my sister had once worked in an abortion clinic & her stories of what went on at work horrified me. When I became pregnant for a second child (I had had my 1st child when I was 13 years old & in 8th grade) with a boy I had only know a few months, I knew I had no other option. Bringing a child into the world where the parents have no feelings for each other is wrong; besides the fact that I didn’t feel as though I could handle a second child at that point in my life.
In the pre-operation room of the clinic, I met a woman who already had 5 children and she was going in to have her 4th or 5th abortion. When my mouth dropped open, she asked me what was wrong. I told her she was an embarrassment to women all together. Making a bad choice & trying to correct it is one thing, but using abortion as your birth control method is a complete different story!
When I came out of the operating room & into the recovery room with 2 other girls, I was in hysterics. I was sobbing so hard I was almost puking, and I was also laughing at the same time. I don’t know if it was the sedative that they had administered to me, but the whole situation seemed grotesquely hilarious: Having children is a gift that God gave to women-kind, and here were all of these women allowing a doctor to suck the fetus from their womb!
Well, two years later, I am going to be a senior in high school in September. I have been married to my husband for almost 14 months. I gave birth to my second child just 2 days after my 17th birthday (my son is now 5 months old & my 3 1/2 year old daughter will be going to Head Start in the fall).
At my 6 week checkup after my son’s birth, I got on the new Lunelle birth control shot. For my July dosage, a new nurse gave me the shot. The problem is, when she gave it to me, the medicine leaked back out of my arm. I am now 3 weeks pregnant.
With 2 children, only my husband working, my going to school & college following, my husband and I decided that having another child right is just not financially or emotionally possible. So, we have chosen to have an abortion. Neither of us want to terminate the life that we have created, but we can see no other way. We are going to discuss it further, in hopes of finding a way to keep our child.
I wrote all of this to express/tell a few different things to girls (especially of my age): Pregnancy, telling your parents, school, friends… it is all difficult to handle, especially if you follow through with your pregnancy. I used to be a very popular girl in school. Besides my husband’s sister who is also 17, I have no other friends. Being a teen mom WILL alienate you from your friends. It is THE hardest thing that you have dealt with and will deal with for a very long time. You CAN’T do all of the things that you used to do. But there is something you CAN do: take on your responsibility (if it is feasibly possible) and look at it as a blessing in disguise. For me, I think that being a mother has kept me out of quite a bit of trouble. It has made me have higher expectations of myself & to set good examples for my children. If they see that their mommy is going all out & putting forth a 150% effort to make their lives better, maybe they will grow up and have high expectations of themselves.
If anyone would like to email me to talk about teen pregnancies, abortion, teen marriage, or anything at all, please do!
Krystal
31 July 2002
Comment posted July 28th, 2006 at 9:13 pm
Mike says:
Lauren said…
The fact that you are comparing bulimia, a compulsive disorder, and a woman’s decision to carry or not to carry a pregnancy is really quite revolting. I’m sorry, the point is ridiculous and I see where it is going.
Btw, I’m in the tribune today, check it out
Lauren,
For the record here is my comment..
Do you think its normal to get “gratification” from eating food and then sticking a finger down the throat because the “weight” that comes with it is not wanted?
I was actually comparing contraception to a bulimic. Both are very similar. A bulimic gets “gratification” from eating food and then sticks the finger down the thoat because he/she does not want the “weight” which comes with it.
A person who contracepts wants the “gratification” from sex but is not “open to life” which is contrary to God’s Plan.
Mike
Comment posted July 28th, 2006 at 9:19 pm
Lucy says:
Mike,
You still don’t answer what right you have to actually impose your beliefs upon others. I’m not talking about on here, obviously ideally Lauren and I wouldn’t be here. I’m talking about out there, where Pharmacists decide to seek legal bullies to assist them in controlling other people to meet their whims, thus costing Pharmacies the rights to make decisions according to their own guidelines.
That you believe that people who have sex for reasons other than what you believe to be acceptable to be sick is fine. What right do you have to force them to follow your rules? What right do you have to force parents who wish their children to have sex ed to send their children to abstinance only training?
I keep suggesting a dual program, I am either ignored or told that it is nothing but rhetoric. I am told that I have nothing but rhetoric to prove that I am a human being who should have rights to her body. That I am not a human being actually, and am merely a tool to be used by anyone who comes along. If I do not allow myself to be used as a tool I am now sick. Lauren is now sick.
This is what you call self respect. Call it self respect. Just take it out of the government. The first amendment still applies and we can still be free from religion where the government is involved.
Of course, I trust per usual you will not answer me. You do not respond to me, you simply pose questions, I answer, and then you demonstrate that as far as you are concerned I am not a human being by not responding. I am simply something that you can say nasty things to, lodge accusations at, and then ignore.
You send me hand drawn diagrams sent by the Catholic Church to give their interpretation of a D%E. You ask me what I think. I tell you what I think, you direct the same thing to me again.
Are women actually worth anything but child bearing tools in your opinion? Does it also go against God’s plan if a woman decides to pursue a career? Is a womans value located solely below the neck?
Do you view women as dirty and a temptation? Do you think sex is an obligation and therefore, you grudgingly engage, for the purpsoe of getting a woman pregnant? Since she must be pregnant?
Since you like to ask me ignorant questions I thought I’d ask you a few questions that seem quite valid to me. I have no concerns that you’ll actually answer me. Afterall, I’m just a woman.
Comment posted July 29th, 2006 at 11:15 am
Lucy says:
Mike,
Of course what I really am is a woman who knows that she has rights to her body. That she has rights to her mind. That she does not owe access to her body to anyone. That has had an abortion and knows enough to understand that she has nothing to be sorry for. There is no call for guilt. There is no call for regret.
Galileo Galilei
Astronomer and Physicist
1564 -1642
I do not feel obliged to believe that the same
god who has endowed us with sense, reason and
intellect has intended us to forgo their use.
—Galileo
Comment posted July 29th, 2006 at 11:19 am
lauren says:
Lucy your last comment was one of hte most brilliant I’ve seen written on here.. If I could have put it as eloquently as you, I would have… I’m sick of this site thinking that women are vessels for pregnancy and that we shoudl just EMBRACE that part of ourselves, even if it feels unnatural to.
I agree, I want my children to have sex ed coupled with abstinence as the only 100% effective method. Keep your religion away from me!
Comment posted July 29th, 2006 at 1:05 pm
Mike says:
test word
word
Comment posted July 29th, 2006 at 4:47 pm
Mike says:
Lucy,
I don’t mean to ignore you. You write so much instead of just getting to the bottom line argument. My time is valuable and I don’t want to be on the computer all day. I disagree with so much that you write but I will answer some of your questions now.
You still don’t answer what right you have to actually impose your beliefs upon others.
Shouldn’t you be asking yourself this question?
http://www.priestsforlife.org/resources/abortionimages/archive1.htm
Wasn’t it you who said it was OK for someone to hold a gun to a baby’s head outside the mothers womb and blow it away as long as the umbilical cord was attached because you do not believe life begins until the umbilical cord is cut.
That you believe that people who have sex for reasons other than what you believe to be acceptable
Lucy, God is the author of sex. We must follow what God wants us to do. I get the answers for my beliefs from the bible. Where do yours come from?
What right do you have to force them to follow your rules?
I am not for forcing rules on anyone. Although if another person is being killed I feel it’s my duty to stand up for them. Therefore I endorse laws against abortion but not for non-abortifacient contraception. In this case I rather sway people to my side thru arguments.
What right do you have to force parents who wish their children to have sex ed to send their children to abstinance only training?
I do not support sex ed as you know it. I do not support sex ed in schools. I do support the true teachings of the Theology of The Body/Chastity Education through either the parents or churches.
Of course what I really am is a woman who knows that she has rights to her body. That she has rights to her mind. That she does not owe access to her body to anyone. That has had an abortion and knows enough to understand that she has nothing to be sorry for. There is no call for guilt. There is no call for regret.
Lucy if you have no sorrow, guilt and regret then why are you spending so much of your time on a Pro-Life website? I’m glad you are here so we can help you out.
Lucy, obviously I don’t have time to answer all your questions. Time is limited. Most of your comments are the same old Pro-Abortion arguments we always here with no solid evidence to back it up. By the way I would say you have not answered at least 50% of the questions I ask you or many times you sidestep the question and go off on another tangent.
Mike
Comment posted July 29th, 2006 at 5:18 pm
Lucy says:
No, Mike,
I have answered every one of your ignorant questions.
I am allowed to speak my mind against my oppressors.
I have a busy schedule as well. However, attempting to reason with those who believe they are justified in dehumanizing me and treating me as though I am cattle is something that I manage foolishly squeeze in. I say foolishly because it is becoming perfectly clear that you are determined that you have been born with the right to oppress women, just as old kings told people they were born to be kings. However, this is a serf telling you she knows you are answering only to your self.
I know that was a tangent, and I have no right to speak. You are to busy bullying the girls right.
Why don’t you take some time out of tormenting girls with stories of how they are of value of you only below the neck. We have been fighting for a long time to gain recognition as being a complete person, you really aren’t helping.
You are not helping me. You are still tormenting women. That does not help me. I spend so much time on here because I was willing to extend the possiblity that ignorance and not evil was fueling the anti abortion movement. That perhaps if you were aware of the fact that a woman existed that abortion had helped and not hurt you would acknowledge that you were wrong that abortion always hurt women.
I had hoped that you simply hadn’t thought about life in terms as being a separate consideration from the body. I had hoped that you simply hadn’t considered that if Jefferson had been speaking of life in the sense that you mean it he would have simply kept his mouth shut. I was hoping that you simply hadn’t occurred to you that one person does not owe her life to another, under any circumstances. I was hoping that you simply didn’t know.
It is becoming glaringly clear that you simply don’t care. Women are of no worth to you above the neck. I can only imagine that it is of questionable value above the waist. Oh wait, breat milk.
I’m going to keep bothering the anti’s until they leave us alone. I’m going to put my story out there where every anti group can see it. I’m going to make sure that no one is acting out of ignorance, and the only standing excuse will be the choice of evil, see, I never thought you were anti-choice. I just question what you choose.
I have the same evidence to the right to my life as the Revolutionaries of this country had to the rights to separate themselves from Britain. I have the same rights to my life as the slaves had to free themselves from their masters. I have the same rights to my life as anyone who is willing to stand up to their oppressor. I deny you the right to determine what happens to my body. I deny you the right to determine if anyone will ever use it for anything, when, where, and how. I have the right to never allow anyone to use it for an incubator.
I exist. My life belongs to me. I do not need any further evidence against you.
Feel free to ignore me, I understand you need your precious time to violate women. I understand you need your valuable time to oppress. To tell us that we and cattle have much in common. You will not have me.
This is a woman who has worth from the top of her head down to the tips of her toes, and every where inbetween. You do not have to understand. Just know you can not take it away.
Comment posted July 30th, 2006 at 1:53 pm
Lucy says:
Mike,
The bit about the shooting with the umbilical cord. You said that. You forget to mention whether or not the umbilical cord can be cut. If the fetus can survive without being attached to the umbilical cord at that point. What the risk to the woman is at that point regarding each portion. There are all kinds of possible variables that you refuse to acknowledge. However, if this is a literal scenerio, and the cord can simply be cut, then basic cost/benefit analysis says just cut the cord.
However, if the woman has been forced to carry the child based on ignorant laws that forbid her to choose what is in her body, then she has no further obligations past that point.
Comment posted July 30th, 2006 at 1:59 pm
Lucy says:
Ann’s Story
I was seventeen when I was date-raped. No one called it that back then in 1968, but that’s what it was. The guy I had been dating wanted to have sex. I didn’t. I was so young, so stupid, I thought telling him ‘no’ would be enough.
The night it happened, he had been drinking. He was supposed to be driving me home from a dance. Instead, he drove me to a deserted backroad and told me he was done waiting: he wanted sex. I told him again that I would not have sex with him. He grabbed me by the throat and beat my head against the closed window of the car. He choked me until I blacked out. The pain I felt when he raped me was what brought me back to consciousness. I began to cry and struggle, and he choked me again so he could finish what he was doing. When he finally let me go, he said that he would kill me if I ever told anyone what he had done. He also said I deserved it, and that it was my fault: “You made me do it, you know you did. I wouldn’t have had to get rough if you’d just f—ked like a normal woman.”
The truth is, I wasn’t a woman at all. I was 17; I was a child.
When I found I was pregnant, my mother blamed me. She, too, believed it was all my fault, that I just hadn’t handled the situation properly. She and my father insisted I marry the rapist. It would embarrass and humiliate the whole family if I didn’t.
He married me to stay out of jail. After we were married, he continued to blame me for ‘ruining his life.’ He told me that he had had plans. He had had dreams. Now he was stuck with me, and I was sick all the time and he couldn’t even have any ‘fun’ with me.
He began beating me after one of his friends told him it might lead to a therapeutic abortion. He slapped me, choked me, threw me against walls, tripped me as I was going down stairs. He didn’t injure me badly enough to cause a miscarriage, but he did hurt me badly enough to cause brain damage in the baby.
I stopped breathing twice during labor. There were times during the next dozen years when I wished passionately that they had not brought me back. My child was not normal, could never be normal. The rapist had long since left me and gone on to greener pastures.
I was left alone to raise a child who should never have been born. Until I was 30 years old, my life was a progressive dark tunnel of pain, anger, resentment, regret, sleepless nights, endless trips to endless doctors, none of whom could help. Looking back, I don’t know how I survived. It was worse than being locked up for a crime I didn’t commit: I felt as if I lived in a concentration camp, trapped every day with no way out, no hope, no relief, no rest, no respite, and no prospect for anything better.
Finally, on the point of physical and mental collapse, I forced the welfare department to take custody of the child. I was past caring what anyone thought. I only knew that if I did not escape that horrible burden, I would die. And I had never even had the chance to live.
Almost twenty years later, I do not regret anything I had to do to escape. What I regret is that I ever had to go through it. The child should never have been conceived. He should never have been born. My life should have been worth more than the seed of a rapist.
A simple, legal abortion would have spared me so much anguish, so much torment and suffering. I can never make up those lost years. I can never be young again. And, due to the damage caused by that unwanted pregnancy, I can never have a wanted child.
What was gained by laws that kept me pregnant against my will? Nothing, except that a rapist got away with his crime.
Abortion may not be the answer for every woman, but it must remain legal and available. We must never allow “pro-life” to push women back into the position I was in at the age of 17. Outlawing abortion would be worse than jailing every woman in the country; it would be like selling us all into slavery.
Ann
January 1999
Comment posted July 30th, 2006 at 1:59 pm
Mike says:
I say foolishly because it is becoming perfectly clear that you are determined that you have been born with the right to oppress women
Lucy, medical journals have come up with over 750 risks of abortion. Are you saying you don’t believe medical science or do you just believe in what you want to believe in?
“Abortion Hurts Women” period.
http://www.all.org/article.php?id=10117
That perhaps if you were aware of the fact that a woman existed that abortion had helped and not hurt you would acknowledge that you were wrong that abortion always hurt women.
Tell that to the millions of women who belong to “Silent No More”.
http://www.silentnomoreawareness.org/
The bit about the shooting with the umbilical cord. You said that. You forget to mention whether or not the umbilical cord can be cut. If the fetus can survive without being attached to the umbilical cord at that point.
Lucy, I don’t get it. Didn’t you say life begins when the umbilical cord is cut. I have seen you post that two previous times. Are you changing your mind again? It’s a simple question — When do you believe life begins? I am amazed at how Pro-Aborts are so afraid of this simple question.
Abortion may not be the answer for every woman, but it must remain legal and available. We must never allow “pro-life” to push women back into the position I was in at the age of 17. Outlawing abortion would be worse than jailing every woman in the country; it would be like selling us all into slavery.
Wow Lucy you really had a very tough life. I really am sorry to hear what you have gone through. I do not know any men who would treat a woman like that guy did with you.
Remember less than 1% of the abortions in the world are due to rape or incest. Even in the case of rape, the baby should still be brought to term. God has willed it and half of the traits of the baby are coming from the woman who was raped. There is always the option of Adoption if the woman does not want the baby.
Let’s take this case: If a man were to rob a bank, would it be fair to send his son or daughter to prison for the sins of the father?
The answer here is obviously “No”. So then why would we give a death sentence to discontinue the life of an unborn baby because of the sins of his/her father for raping a woman (mother)? The exception of rape for abortion would be the only law on the books which would penalize the sons & daughters for the crimes of their fathers.
Therefore all abortion needs to be illegal in the U.S.
Comment posted July 30th, 2006 at 7:14 pm
Lucy says:
That I am telling you that abortion has not hurt me means that abortion does not always hurt women. The key word being always. As I’ve stated elsewhere, each time you say that you now knowingly tell a willful lie. You know longer speak from ignorance. Now you are something else. You know that I exist. You know that abortion has helped me and not hurt me. I am not alone either. But you only need to know about me. I am one, therefore, you no longer have 100% to work with.
Educating women is the proper response to adverse possibilities, thus the warnings applied to other medications. It is not proper to remove the option of women to assess the information for herself, and decide for herself. You seem to like the number 750, you have applied it to alleged damages produced by birth control as well. Of course, the problem is that numerous forms of birth control are thought to actually prevent certain types of cancer. The risks are extremely limited. As I have said, there are risks involved in every medical procedure. It is not that I do not believe that there aren’t risks involved in such things. It is that I believe that women are capable of analyzing the information themselves and deciding from there. That women who have used the option themselves would then work to remove options from others disgusts me.
Comment posted July 31st, 2006 at 10:32 am
John says:
Lucy said: “Do you think that choosing not to have children makes someone evil or stupid? Is there something wrong with a woman who does not feel that having children should or can be part of her life?”
Lucy,
The answer to both of your questions is No.
However, let me qualify my answer to your second question.
Just as all men are called to fatherhood (either biological or spiritual), so too are all women called to motherhood (either biological or spiritual).
Thus, while celibate men and women are not called to marriage or to have biological children, they are called to make a gift of themselves to their spiritual children.
Lucy said: “So, am I evil? If not, what am I.”
No one is evil.
If Person A believes that Person B is evil, Person A is unquestionably wrong.
You, Lucy, are an individual person who possesses inherent goodness, just as Lauren, Mike, Michael-2, Pansy, and indeed all individual persons do.
As such, I believe that you are created in the image and likeness of God, and that your life — as with any other individual person’s — is of inestimable value.
Comment posted July 31st, 2006 at 10:34 am
Lucy says:
Mike,
I have answered the question. You insist upon telling me that abortion has hurt me despite the fact that it has not. You insist upon utilizing the idea that some women regret their choices to reason enough to prevent other women from making the choice. Do you by chance realize…I know, I should shut up, let you believe as you wish, and cause me harm, however, I’m afraid it doesn’t work that way. Do you realize, that up until South Dakota fell, I had taken the rights that had been available to me for granted. I had taken that which literally saved my life for granted. I made a point of mentioning to anyone that the availability of this option had made things possible to me that would have never been available to my grandmother. Those of us who don’t regret our options are typically the silent.
That or we talk amongst ourselves, mocking the anti’s, for all of what they don’t understand. Some do volunteer their time with clinics, however, overall, we don’t know that we need to fight to preserve what so many have worked to give us. That there are women who didn’t think their choice all the way through is not enough to deprive me of mine.
Comment posted July 31st, 2006 at 10:38 am
Lucy says:
Mike,
I have said that life begins when the umbilical cord is cut, which isn’t actually accurate. Of course, if you feel the need to shoot a fetus while it is still attached to the cord for some reason, I think that at that point you have proved yourself to be beyond reason, creating nonsense situations comprable to Eric’s assertion that abortion is comparable to what he calls infanticide. If you wish to shoot a fetus while it is still attached to the mother but on the outside of the mother, where it could survive without her, and her life would not be compromised by simply cutting the cord, and the cord could be cut, then I suppose I couldn’t stop you. However, at this point we are simply arguing over would it even be logical. What would be the point. I mean, bringing up stupidity to prove a point is stupid. When the situation arises let me, know, until then, if the cord can be cut, cut the cord, unless it will cause complications to the life of the mother. Then, sure end the life of the fetus, however, I think that involving guns is a little much. I’m sorry, I don’t like guns, and I don’t like the idea. I was robbed at gunpoint a few summers ago, and just the thought of guns still makes me very uncomfortable. Though, I imagine, if you were going to shoot the fetus, you would also be a threat to the woman.
Comment posted July 31st, 2006 at 10:43 am
Lucy says:
Mike,
Life begins when we choose to make it begin. The condition of being alive, which can only be declared to have ceased with the onset of the condition of death, which can only be achieved with certain requirements meant. The cessation of brain activity being part of the definition of death, therefore, insisting upon a brain in existance and functioning, means that the bare minimun requirements of death do not begin to be met until about the fifth week of gestation. Meaning that until the fifth week it would be to defy our understanding of the relationship of death and life to speak of anything that happens to a fetus as a matter of being alive or being dead.
After that, in much the same fashion that in a just society I am not required to feed people simply because they are not able to feed themselves, and if they starve because they cannot feed themselves, I have not killed them, the fetus would no more be entitled to the nutritional supply of another, simply because it cannot feed itself. Now, someone may begin a soup kitchen because it makes them feel better to feed those who for various reasons cannot feed themselves. They may have an ulterior motive, there are all kinds of possiblities, they are not however required to. There are all kinds of reasons why a woman might choose to allow a fetus to remain inside of her body. However, there is no reason for why she must. That it cannot survive without here, does not obligate her to provide it her life.
If you think that there aren’t instances where pregnancy prevents women from working, continuing education, or other various activities that are needed for her to sustain her life, as well as maintain her condition of being alive, and that there is not anyone else to ensure these things for her…afterall, who else could live her life? Well, you are offering, I understand, but I’m afraid it isn’t the same. There is something to making ones own decisions and making mistakes. You’ll find that most of the women who regret their abortions have been pressured by another source. They did not think about it. They were operating under the impression that they were making the easy choice. That they forgot to consider that there might be emotional set backs to their choice, that they might feel sorrow, that they might feel depression, that they might have all kinds of experiences that are comparable to the actual best choice being not having to make the choice at all. If you know these things, you understand that you don’t just choose the abortion, you choose to examine what it is you are doing, what it is you have done, what you believe, why you believe it, why you feel the things you do, and what you should feel about them. You choose life.
Not feeling guilt or regret does not mean that afterwards it was nothing but serene and peace. I mean come, on, if you find a woman who can tell you that run. And be glad she had the abortion. However, I do know that I could not have provided a child any kind of life. I know that they would have suffered immensly. I know that if not I my parents would have seen to that. I know, and knew that I was a mess. I knew I was a mess, I just didn’t know how to not be.
We have a right to one life. Our own. We have no rights to anyone elses. Which you equate to meaning that the woman does not have the right to remove the fetus from her body. I equate to the fetus does not have access to the womans body if the woman says no. That the fetus cannot exist any further if separated from the woman merely justifies enslavement of the strong to the weak. It does not sanctify life, which is an endeavor to do the best that one can at any given time. That the mother can exist without the fetus inside of her should speak for itself, yet I have no doubt that it will not.
Once outside of the womb the fetus is not reliant on the woman for its survival. It still requires outside assistance. The requirements of anyone to provide for another individual are linked directly to contracts. If the woman willingly carried the child then she has a contract, and must make provisions for the child. If you have forced her to carry the child, it would be to add insult to injury to then ask that she raise the child. That responsiblity would then fall upon you. Not me, by the way, don’t knock on my door with your hand out. I supported her having the right to choose. I did not support her putting her hand in my purse, nor you to. You want to force women to carry children they can’t feed, you feed them.
Comment posted July 31st, 2006 at 11:07 am
Lucy says:
Mike
You really don’t have time to read do you. That story was one that was posted elsewhere on the internet. The ‘Ann’s Story’ might have tipped you off, and the signed by Ann at the bottom. It is a demonstration of what kind of concerns exist.
My childhood wasn’t a cakewalk either, but that is not my story.
Comment posted July 31st, 2006 at 11:09 am
Lucy says:
Mike,
You are willing to credit your god, who you have still offered no evidence of, with causing rape, and wonder why I will pay no attention to your calling upon a god you havent’ proven to exist, as support?
You are willing to force a woman to carry the product of a rape? Allowing the offspring, half woman, half monster, to grow inside of her for 40 weeks, eating her food, sleeping in her bed, wearing her clothes, for 40 weeks? Causing her to experience illness, and potential death for the production of a rape? That she should endanger her very being? Miss work, or school, and potentially set her entire life back for a year so that you can force her to carry forth the seed of a rapist? How many times will she be raped before it is enough for you? And then to credit your god for it? What are you worshipping anyway? We jail them and he inspires them?
You will potentially make it so that a womans first experience in child birth, in pregnancy is a result of someone physically acting upon the belief that she is worth nothing from the neck up?
This is why abortion can be legal. You support your beliefs with an invisible god who approves and causes rape. You cannot prove your god, and for good reason, should he show himself there would be a lot of questions that demanded answers don’t you think.
Comment posted July 31st, 2006 at 11:18 am
Lucy says:
Mike,
I’m sorry, aren’t you a member of the religion in which god sent his son to die on the cross, because every person on earth had inherited the sins of adam and eve? Aren’t you still begging for forgiveness of the sins of adam and eve?
Comment posted July 31st, 2006 at 11:20 am
Lucy says:
John,
Actually my life isn’t of inestimable value. It is worth what I put into it. I decide what it is worth, because I decide how to utilize it. If I spend all of my time at the bars getting drunk all the time it won’t be worth very much at all. Or if I spend my life drugged, it won’t be worth much. I will have robbed myself of the pleasure that I could have obtained had I chosen to invest otherwise. For instance, while the pursuit of an education will lead me to a career that will pay me a better salary, allowing for better material possessions and opportunities. My efforts will more than likely extend my bodily life, enriching my spiritual life, if I behave wisely. However, I am now seeking a degree. I have always sought education. The pursuit of knowledge, of understanding is its own reward. When I understand one thing, it provides me a better ability to understand other things.
We may do any variety of things with our time. With our leisure time alone, we may write a book, read a book, watch television, attend a show, take a walk. We may do each of these things for a list of reasons applied to them individually. Our choices will either degrade a life or improve it. The man who enjoys a drink at the end of the day as a treat is hardly the equal of a man who makes an attempt hide the day under alcohal. One man is attempting to enjoy what he has earned, the other makes an attempt to escape what he has earned.
Both men have made decisions that define their lives. Both can be weighed and measured. I can also determine which one looks more pleasant to me, and choose to aspire to it.
Comment posted July 31st, 2006 at 11:32 am
Young Christian Woman says:
Mike said:
Interestingly, couples who use Natural Family Planning have a much lower divorce rate: 0.6 percent according to the Couple to Couple League, and 2-5 percent according to research conducted by California State University.
I am curious–does anyone have divorce data for couples who do not think it is their place to plan their families?
Comment posted August 1st, 2006 at 6:49 am
Young Christian Woman says:
Lucy quoted someone named Leonard Peikoff. Shouldn’t Peikoff butt out because he’s a man and cannot understand? I certainly don’t think he can understand.
As for calling living humans “undead corpses,” there are anti-lifers who want to do that too–that way they can harvest the organs of “undesirables” like persons in comas or persons with severe mental disabilities. Once you start redefining life, where will it end?
Lucy clearly thinks that there is something mystical that makes a life really a life. I believe it is the ability to think for oneself and be what she calls “conscious.” However, Lucy doesn’t think that most of us can and do think for ourselves, because we follow the teachings of another (Jesus). So, in a way, we are not really “alive.” Perhaps one day she will have the legal right to drag those who follow religious teachings “blindly” to a “clinic” where they can be “aborted” so that they are not “parasites on society.”
Here’s one for Lucy: What if we defined life as being “spiritually alive” as opposed to “spiritually dead”? What if those considered spiritually dead had no right to life, because they aren’t really “living”?
Lucy, who cannot be bothered to speak for herself, quoted:
If someone capriciously puts to death his cat or dog, that can well be reprehensible, even immoral, but it is not the province of the state to interfere.
Well then, you must have quite a lot of problems with the animal rights movement, and people who don’t anyone to eat meat, right? Oh wait; you are one of those people. Are you really so uninformed that you don’t know it is illegal to kill your cat or dog? If an abortionist did to a cat what they can legally do to a fetus the day before its birthday, they would get jail time and they’d be considered an awful person. It’s illegal to leave a dog in a hot car, but not a child. Suppose Andrea Yates had killed her pets, not her kids–would she have gotten off so easily then? You can’t seem to wrap your head around the idea that people will adopt children and don’t want them killed. Do you think it would be easy to find a loving home for a cow which is completely supported by a farmer and will be killed for meat unless it is adopted? Certainly you could not save all the cows. But each year, the number of couples who apply to adopt babies is roughly equal to the number of women who kill their babies. We live in a society where a dog has more right to life than an unborn child. Or does it bother you that the dog can still be taken to a licensed center where they can kill it? At least they make an attempt to find someone who will adopt the dog first. If they did that with humans, there would be no abortion.
Comment posted August 1st, 2006 at 6:49 am
Young Christian Woman says:
Your assertions in #64 are ridiculous, Lucy.
You expect us to concede when you present fine distinctions like not being pro-abortion, but pro-legal-abortion, and nebulous ideas about what life is. But at the same time, you cannot grasp the difference between God causing a baby and God causing the rape that resulted in the baby.
God does not cause evil, although he allows it. God does cause the creation of life. Neither you nor I can do that. If we could, you would have chosen not to create life, and I’d have at least two kids. But guess what? We can’t control our bodies that way.
Oh, and you mentioned God sanctioning rape in the Bible in an earlier post. You have no idea what you are talking about. There is no such thing in my Bible.
Comment posted August 1st, 2006 at 7:15 am
Lauren says:
“Lucy if you have no sorrow, guilt and regret then why are you spending so much of your time on a Pro-Life website? I’m glad you are here so we can help you out.”
WOW this place is REAL Helpful let met tell you… If you’ve had an abortion you’re a murderer and not only that the sex you had you’re a sinner for that too… And while we’re at it, in the future you better not use birth control to prevent it from happening again… SUPER HELPFUL!
Comment posted August 1st, 2006 at 8:06 am
lauren says:
YCW, for someone so Christian-y you know so very little about the Bible.
Dont you recall Lot offering his daughters in that classic piece in the Bible? I’m sorry but if someone offered me, I’d consider it rape.
Comment posted August 1st, 2006 at 11:49 am
Mike says:
YCW said…
God does not cause evil, although he allows it. God does cause the creation of life. Neither you nor I can do that.
YCW,
You know whats also interesting about this statement — A human woman can reproduce. However Satan cannot reproduce.
The Son of God Jesus came through our Mother Mary who was human and a woman. Satan hates Jesus because he died for us on the cross to give us the power to forgive our sins and give us eternal life.
Knowing that Satan cannot reproduce and Christ came through the human woman to save our souls — I can only deduce Satan has been attacking the unborn baby in the womb for over 30 years for a reason. The King of Lies has been fooling the Pro-Aborts for many years now. The Pro-Aborts do not realize God gave the human woman a power the fallen angels don’t have — the power to reproduce.
Satan’s reign over the unborn baby will soon be over!
Comment posted August 1st, 2006 at 10:06 pm
Mike says:
Lauren said…
If you’ve had an abortion you’re a murderer … And while we’re at it, in the future you better not use birth control to prevent it from happening again
Lauren,
50% of the women who had abortions were on birth control. It’s been 30-40 years now and the Pro-Aborts should have figured out birth control does not reduce abortions. There have been over 47,000,000 abortions in the U.S. since 1973. It’s time to wake up, smell the coffee & get with the program — birth control is not the answer.
Mike
Comment posted August 1st, 2006 at 10:15 pm
Young Christian Woman says:
Lauren:
I did not deny there was rape in the bible. I denied that God sanctioned it. First, no rape actually occurred here; second, Lot’s offer was not sanctioned by God. There are many places where the Bible records historical facts without commenting on the morality directly, but other passages make it clear that the actions taken were immoral. I have never heard it argued that Lot’s act in offering his daughters was at all moral.
Some actual rapes in the bible include the rape of Jacob’s daughter Dinah by the Shechemites, the rape of Tamar by her half-brother, and the rape of the Levite’s concubine by the Benjamites of Gibeah. None are sanctioned by God.
Comment posted August 2nd, 2006 at 12:19 pm
lauren says:
YCW, again please read your Bible. I’m not here to teach you.
“50% of the women who had abortions were on birth control.”
What happens when the other 50% don’t use birth control?
Comment posted August 2nd, 2006 at 5:43 pm
Mike says:
Lauren said…
“50% of the women who had abortions were on birth control.”
What happens when the other 50% don’t use birth control?
Lauren I have not seen studies on what the other 50% were using if anything.
My guess is a large portion of the other 50% not using birth control are counting on just aborting the young child in the case of pregnancy.
The point I was making in post #73 is we have been using your methods for over the last 30-40 years. Contraception/Birth Control education has led to promiscuity, a tremendous growth in std’s, the break up of the family and over 47,000,000 abortions. Face the facts, your plan has failed miserably. And believe it or not this was all predicted by the Pope back in the late 60’s.
During the past 30-40 years the breakdown of the time spent on sex education has been 95% on contraception/birth control & 5% on chastity education/abstinence.
Since the past has been such a huge disaster my plan is to teach 100% of the time Chastity Education in the schools during sex education class. This is what needs to be done in order to change the current trend.
http://www.pureloveclub.com/seminars/index.php?id=3
Mike
Comment posted August 2nd, 2006 at 9:01 pm
Lauren, lauren, lauren says:
Can I ask another question. Do you believe that the pregnancys occurring while on birth control was when the birth control was being used properly (not missing pills)? That’s how many women I know have ended up pregnant is by missing many pills in their pack.. which undoubtedly error on their part, but let me ask you another thing if birth control were easier and cheaper, like say with Nuvaring, would you support it?
Comment posted August 3rd, 2006 at 1:26 am
Pansy Moss says:
Can I ask another question. Do you believe that the pregnancys occurring while on birth control was when the birth control was being used properly (not missing pills)? That’s how many women I know have ended up pregnant is by missing many pills in their pack.. which undoubtedly error on their part, but let me ask you another thing if birth control were easier and cheaper, like say with Nuvaring, would you support it?
No. Why would we support it? What does that mean “support”?
1. Sex is for procreation.
2. Hormonal birth control options are abortifacients.
3. Hormonal birth control options are carcinogens.
Again, I am not sure what you mean by support. I will not put such garbage in my body. I would not advise anyone I know or love to do so. I will not vote for any programs that allows them to distribute such drugs in public schools.
Comment posted August 3rd, 2006 at 5:10 am
John says:
Lucy said: “Actually my life isn’t of inestimable value. It is worth what I put into it.”
Lucy,
I couldn’t disagree with you more.
Every human life is of inestimable value, objectively speaking.
Nonetheless, I appreciate your candor and your clarity here, because you have shed some light on a crucial difference between the pro-life and pro-phoice worldviews.
Comment posted August 4th, 2006 at 1:18 pm
Lucy says:
John,
That isn’t objective at all. You believe that each and every life comes into the world tarnished, and yet wish to bring them in no matter what anyway. You have no interest in what kind of life they will lead, merely if they do or do not have a pulse. You wish to deprive others of their systems of values, their understandings of truth and force your values upon them, no matter how depraved your values may be understood to be. Actually, your variation of life doesn’t even require a pulse. I’ve yet to establish what your definition of life is.
I believe that every life that comes in has a clean slate. I don’t believe that people are born tarnished at all. That people choose what they will or will not become. I believe that life only has value if you choose to make your life valuable. I don’t believe there is a person on the planet who cannot choose to make their lives valuable. But in order to make ones life valuable one must be free to think, and free to think differently than others if they see fit, like Galileo. I don’t believe people are born evil.
Comment posted August 5th, 2006 at 8:08 pm
Lucy says:
Lauren,
It isn’t that I expect that they will view me as something other than a murderer. I know that I am not. They don’t have an actual understanding of what life is; what gives it value.
I was asking questions about things as a kid Lauren, as a young kid. Kids who ask to many questions are a bother to people who just wanted this thing with a pulse. Most kids are inquisitive, but it is a matter of how thier interest in learning is treated that makes the difference. I read on one of your posts that one of your parents, I can’t remember which one, was a teacher of some variety, is that correct? I can only imagine that led them to encourage a young an inquisitive mind, allowing an individual a chance to develop. I certainly hope that was the case anyway.
I was just to stubborn, or too dumb to know what was good for me, as it was generally addressed. I wanted to know all kinds of things. Why did I look like I did? Did it matter? If so , why. If not, why. I wanted to know everything and anything that I could find out. I wanted to know how they knew that Christianity was the right religion. What made it the right one. I had so many questions. I did not learn to stop asking questions. I learned to stop asking them outloud. I don’t know how old I was when I stopped asking them altogether.
I was a hollow and empty shell. Anyone who would have referenced me as alive would have been a fool. I was animalistic in thought and behavior. My only thoughts were how not to get hit. I think that I may have been something horrible in my efforts to avoid the screaming and the flying black leather belt, with metal on the edges. I think that I would have given my last breathe to feel that someone, anyone loved me, cared about me. But, if my mother had dared to attempt to have an abortion, they would have saved me from it, declaring that it was more important that I be put through the torment that awaited me. I was not alive Lauren. All that was there was my body. I wanted that dead.
I never knew what would or would not trigger it. I had nothing. I would try to do homework to no avail, with nothing but screaming and yelling in the background, and threats of further beatings in the near future if I hadn’t produced something.
“I cannot live under pressures from patrons, let alone paint.”-
Michelangelo
That is one of my favorite quotes from Michelangelo. He is one of my heros. He stood up to his oppressors, the church, with valiant courage.
I often wonder what life would have been like if I had half as much courage as a child. Of course, I realize that there was nothing that I could do. I was a child. It wasn’t my fault. Everytime she threatened to run us into a tree and kill us, it wasn’t my fault. All of the horrible things, they weren’t my fault. Do you know what that takes though? To realize that it wasn’t my fault? I hope you don’t, I hope that you have no idea.
I know this is long.
One day, in high school, I met a group of individuals and they were discussing religious ideas. While in high school I had entered any activity I could. The more time I could spend at school without contest at home, was less time that I had to spend at home. So, I was in as much as I could. Consequently I didn’t get much studying done, my grades suffered, but the hitting stopped. The yelling persisted, but the hitting had finally stopped. It didn’t stop the fact that I continued to feel completely isolated from the rest of the world. I don’t know that I will ever entirely shake that feeling. I think that I’m always kind of waiting for the other shoe to drop. I think that I can count the number of people I trust completely without using an entire hand. It doesn’t prevent me from wanting to trust someone. It doesn’t stop me from wanting love, and wanting to be able to trust someone.
One of the few persons in the world that I have ever been able to trust completely is my best friend since I was eight. She came out as a lesbian when she was about 19, so you can imagine why I get so upset when people want to say there is something wrong with her. She’s brilliant, gifted, and one of the kindest people I know. That they want to say there is something wrong with her is horrible to me. There is nothing wrong with her.
Anyway, when I met that specific group of people we started discussing different religions. Something inside of me started to come back. I started asking questions again. Timidly at first, but I started asking questions. I got a job in one of the local malls. I was one of the best customers the book store ever had. The manager knew me on sight and started recommending different books on topics that I had never heard of. I had hid in books for most of my childhood, but now they were something different. I was inhaling them. Yet still I wanted someone to love me.
There was still this part of me that did what people wanted you to do. It was the only way to even hope they might not hit you. Or to stop them from screaming. When I did have boyfriends, it could hardly be called a relationship. I didn’t have boyfriends very frequently, or long. I was very shy, I didn’t know how to talk to boys. They weren’t generally interested in me. I didn’t think any of them would want me anyway. I tried very hard to be what they wanted.
I was probably very lucky in high school. I was more than likely an easy target for the guy just looking to get laid. However, I only went out with two guys in high school. The first one and I were fourteen and we barely kissed. That didn’t last long. The second one, was about the same. He was nice. I didn’t know how to deal with nice though. I thought that I was being made fun of or something if someone called me pretty, because nobody had ever said that to me before. I had been told I was ugly. I still don’t like it when people tell me I’m pretty. I just kind of don’t feel comfortable, it kind of reminds me that all of my life they told me I was ugly. The only thing that I ever heard postitive when I was young, was usually a venting of frustration of teachers that I was smart. They couldn’t understand how I would test at a high school reading level in the third grade, and yet never seem to have read what they assigned.
I never did learn grammar skills by the way. I mean, I know enough to get by. I couldn’t focus on learning them. It’s my ideas that get me through in school. Due to the extensive amount of research I am willing to do, and my abilities in tying ideas together, or pulling them apart to analyze, they tend to leave me alone.
Anyway, again. I kept breaking through the obstacles that they had set for me. I’m like you and your gambling. I’m a long way from done. Yet, I’ve made great progress. I’m proud of what I’ve done. I’m proud of you for taking on your problem by the way. As a former smoker, I know what it takes to beat an addiction; or to even try. Keep going, one day you’ll feel like your done 100%.
I am alive now. I’m alive and I’m kicking to stay that way. If I believed what I was told instead of learning things on my own, I would be everything they told me I was. I would be something horrible. I’m not.
I do believe that sex should be something that is linked to love. I don’t believe that means marriage. I think that, as you are aware, marriage has a rather short history with any relationship to love. I think that even today there can be loveless marriages. I don’t think it needs to be in the name of having children. Certainly, I think that there should be love before children, but that is also a modern consideration. I think that we each have to learn what love is though. We might, I have, and might again, think that I’ve found true love when I haven’t. I’m learning to narrow down, and understand what I am looking for, but it takes time. I’m human, I can strive for perfection, but I’m relatively young, if Michelangelo never hit perfection, then what are the odds that I will?
I know that this was a long thing Lauren. I know what and who I am. I know what I have been through, what it has taken for me to get from there to here. I am alive because I choose to be. I choose to make my life count. I choose to accept the fact that I will make mistakes, and the best I can do is to try not to make the same mistake twice.
Any one out there who has suffered from abuse should know that they should be their next worst enemy. They should know that they can take back their lives. Their lives, their minds, their bodies. Mine were stolen from me once, and it will not be in silence that I allow anyone to take them again.
My parents would tell me that they were looking out for my best interst as well. I can think for myself though. You can think for yourself. If we choose not, then let us suffer.
Lucy
Comment posted August 5th, 2006 at 9:16 pm
mary kay says:
Ahhhh,
My sweet little lucy…
I want to take that little girl home with me so bad it keeps me awake at night…I’m crying yet again.
If I could kiss away all your “boo boos” and heal that broken heart of yours I would fly around the world to do it…
The capacity for human beings to inflict pain on one another astounds me.
But even more astounding is the ability of the human spirit to heal and seek to soar once again…
We are far too hard on you Lucy. I still think that your thinking is wrong in many ways, but when I stop to think of how far out of hell you have had to pull yourself…well, I am left speechless. You are amazing.
Awhile ago I mentioned that I wanted to ask you a question but was afraid it would hurt you…I will ask it now, and I promise you that it is meant in a kind way, and in no way is meant to demean you…
Have you ever been loved, truly loved, so much so that the other person put you first always, could be counted on every time to think of you first? and conversely have you ever loved anyone so much that you would give your life for them? I ask, because so much of what you say tells me that while you may have experienced deep friendship, you have never actually experienced unconditional, all out, full blown, complete and total…Love. Is this true? I am not judging you. It just seems like so many people have let you down, or decieved you and you yourself have said that you have a hard time trusting people. Without trust, without being willing or able to take that leap of faith in another person, you cannot really experience true love.
If you find that you can’t or don’t want to answer, I will understand. This is way personal, and perhaps reaches too deep. After all, you don’t really know me.
But know this Lucy. You are in my heart at all times. I carry you with me and I think of you at the oddest times. My whole family knows of you and you are never far from my thoughts. I only wish I could do more. Truly you have planted yourself in me and now I am at a loss as to what to do with you…Silly, huh?
Have you ever heard the song “Wounded Heart” by Bonnie Raitt?
Dumb question. Of course you have.
“If you listen you can hear, the angels wings…
Up above your head so near, they are hovering…
Waiting to reach out with love, when it falls apart.
When it cannot rise above, a wounded heart…”
MK
Comment posted August 6th, 2006 at 9:55 pm
Lucy says:
Mary Kay,
No, I do not know that song. I don’t listen to country, ever.
Why do you want to take me home? Do you not know that I wouldn’t have been any more willing to let some one else do my thinking with you? Don’t you know that I would have simply guarded myself a little more with anyone who told me who I should be instead of letting me grow, and experience things for myself? As I said, I was never pretty, but I was smart. It wasn’t that I knew everything, nobody does. It was that I had an insatiable curiousity. They hit me because of it. Because they wanted me to do the basic things. Clean my room, memorize my studies, but I wanted to learn. I wanted to explore. They hit me because I wouldn’t just stop and do what they wanted. I wasn’t a dress up doll, and I wanted to understand things more than I wanted a clean room.
That I wasn’t that child is why they hated me. That was what made me such a disappointment. I was horrible because I had desires, needs, wants, aspirations. Of course, those aren’t things that make me horrible at all, but those are the things that make me who I am.
I have to learn that all the time though. You know, it is easy enough to memorize some facts and figures, it takes work to figure out what they mean, and whether they have any value. Of course, once you start doing it it does get easier. You have to shake a little at first, you have nothing to trust but your own mind. You can measure it against what you already understand. If what you already understand turns out to be a secondary and not a primary it might lead you to change your position, which can be scary. Yet, always worthwhile. There is nothing that has proven to me that women can be forced, against their will, to carry a fetus inside of them, regardless of how it got there, and not make a mockery of the lives of those who fought for liberation. Not just the liberation of women, but of all the people who have ever been oppressed.
Comment posted August 7th, 2006 at 10:17 pm
Lucy says:
Mary Kay,
Why do you want to know about whether or not I have loved or have been loved? It is my experience that people who ask such questions are looking for reasons to declare me something other than what I say I am. For instance, a mention of depression, might be interpreted by someone who desperately needs me to feel regret or guilt in order to keep their understanding of things, might interpret depression that is caused by a limited amount of sunlight as an indication of regret or guilt. It’s nonsense of course.
Yet, I have learned that such questions are generally trying to find out how I’m lying. Well, I’ll make it simple. I do not regret having an abortion. I do not feel any guilt. It is not because I am unable to feel regret or guilt. It is not because I am unable to feel loved, or have never been loved. It is not an indication that I am unable to love.
If you are trying to find some way to understand a world where I can exist, regret and guilt free after an abortion, and yet your understanding of everything still stands sound, I can’t help you. I can’t paint myself as the whore you need me to be, because I’m not. I have slept with very few men, and have very strict guidelines, that get stricter every time. It isn’t all that I think about, in fact, unless I am with someone who meets the guidlines, which yes, inlcudes that I care about them, and they care about me, I don’t think about it. I’m not the idiot that you wish us to be. I don’t grant to much credit to I.Q. tests, but the last time I was forced to take one it came out a 130, which according to that test, put me just into gifted. I find pleasure in fine literature, scientific studies, art. You probably need us to be on drugs or alcohal, but I’m not. I don’t touch either. I simply don’t understand. You need me to be in a great deal of pain it seems. Yet, I don’t think I have as much pain as you seem to assign to me.
It angers me to see women reduced to valuable only below the neck. I am an entire person, and I am of the opinion that every woman has the capacity to be an entire person. I believe that a woman who chooses motherhood for reasons, is an entire woman. I believe that a woman who is inflicted with values that degrade her to capable of nothing more, or arguing that this is her highest position, instead of letting her decide what she thinks would make her the best woman, degrades her, it turns her into cattle.
I’m sorry Mary Kay, but each and every time I am attacked on here it becomes harder and harder to believe that it is worth answering questions honestly. How many times have I been told that I am not what I say I am, because it doesn’t exist. It does of course, and I’m it. Well, one of many. I am the truth. Yet, no one seems interested in listening.
I’m tired of opening doors for attacks. If you don’t, someone else will. Pansy, Michael, Mike, Joe, or Rosie will make snotty comments about me. I didn’t actually come on here to be hurt over and over again. I knew that there would be nasty people, it never occurred to me that there were more nasty than not. Shameless too. Do you know I asked you so many times why you were being nasty to me, and until I said that I was the one that was abused, you were content to continue being nasty to me.
I have to know. Why did the fact that they abused me make you stop being nasty?
Comment posted August 7th, 2006 at 10:39 pm
Lauren, lauren, lauren says:
Mike can you please provide me with one unbiased American study from a legitimate research group that details the cancer and depression links. And relates their causality please. No more lifesite garbage.
Comment posted August 7th, 2006 at 10:40 pm
mary kay says:
Lucy,
I understand that, I really do. But I beg you to look into your heart and ask yourself if you are blinded by your intense need to stand alone and be free, and if by fighting so vehemently for your right to do so, you aren’t actually imprisoning yourself. We are all people here together. All we have is each other. We are a mess yes, and we screw up yes, but love, real love is all there is. And real love is more important than freedom because real love is what truly sets you free. The very thing you want so badly eludes you because you can’t contain it in laws. You can only attain it by letting go and trusting.
To see it from our point of view, first you must understand that on a very real level, we LOVE these babies. We recognize their little tiny innocent souls. They are not just cells to us. They are God’s miracles. They are our brothers and sisters.
That is why I would have wanted to take you home. So you could have felt this love, and you could have felt safe. So you could have explored freely and with my blessing. My boys are total screw ups. They’re off doing God knows what, and it kills me. But I let them go because I know that that is the only way they will learn. They are old enough now to take what I have given them and find their own way. This is what I would have given to you.
Your parents trying to force you to be something that you were not was a prison. Instead of lovingly nurturing you, guiding you and molding you, they beat you and turned you into exactly the opposite of what they wanted.
Making rules and forcing you to follow them didn’t work. Because love cannot be found in law. And if you have love, you don’t need law. Had I been your mother, you would never have had to fight so hard for the simple right to be who you are. That’s love.
When I see a child in pain, I become enraged. Innocence is so fleeting.
Sometimes when my kevin was younger his brothers were so hard on him. When I asked Danny why they treated him like that, Danny said “so that when the world dumps on him, he’ll be strong and able to handle it.”
I said, “Danny, the world is going to dump on Kevin just like it dumps on everyone, but home and family should be the one place that he doesn’t have to worry about that…it should be the one place that he can escape from that.”
OF course, he didn’t listen, but my point is I would have taken you home so that you too could have a place where you knew your were loved and safe and special and protected from the ugliness that you would inevitably have to face.
The offer still stands. You’re probably too big to fit on my lap now, but you can come to my house anytime you want. You’re never too old for some mothering. No one is. Let me know.
I make a mean soda bread. That and a cup of tea can heal a lot of wounds.
MK
Comment posted August 7th, 2006 at 10:44 pm
Lauren, lauren, lauren says:
Lucy this is heart-wrenching. If you knew how similar our backgrounds are. I suffered exactly the same domestic abuse in my household. I actually am suffering from PTSD, depression, and panic attacks. I think spending a lot of time on this site has sort of accentuated my problem. lol… I know you rpobably feel me on this. I feel such pain when I read such ignorant and stupid things.. I know what its like to feel th pain of the abuse all over again when these people want to control our bodies. It’s a violation and I feel violated all over again everytime i hear it on this site. I feel raped. They honestly make me feel raped. People might think we’re damaged goods. But i think because of our experience, because of our suffering, we have empathy for others. We understand the human expierence.. We understand grays. They have an easy life Lucy, remember that. It is very easy to come to the conclusions that they have. It is very difficult to understand complexity. I’ll be emailing you soon. xoxo Stay strong.
Comment posted August 7th, 2006 at 10:48 pm
mary kay says:
Lucy,
The reason I apologized is that when we are on here it is easy to forget that we are not just machines spouting off theories and arguments. When you told me you were abused you brought home how human you were and I felt horrible that I hadn’t taken that into account.
As to why I asked if you had loved before it had nothing to do with being depressed or guilty about your abortion. That never entered my mind. It came more from something that you had said about people not owing each other anything. Like Kathy and her mother (she died by the way). Or letting the guy with the kidney live after he breaks into your apartment.
And it occured to me that perhaps you had never felt real love and therefore couldn’t understand why we would say and do the things that we do because they are motivated by love.
Does that make any sense?
It’s the off court/on court thing again.
I believe you when you say you have no guilt. I just have a hard time understanding why. I don’t think your feeling guilty but denying it. I believe you truly don’t have any guilt. But that concept is so foreign to me and then I realized that it is because you don’t view that baby as a person, so you didn’t love it, so of course you wouldn’t feel guilt. Which led me to, is there anyone you love? You see?
MK
Comment posted August 7th, 2006 at 10:53 pm
mary kay says:
Lucy,
The reason I assumed you would know Bonnie Raitt is she is such a strong woman, and advocate of women.
Here’s the rest of the words to that song:
Wounded heart I cannot save you from yourself.
Though I wanted to be brave,
It never helped
For your anger’s like a flood, raging through your veins,
and no amount of love’s enough
to end the pain.
Tenderness and time can heal,
A right gone wrong.
But the anger that you feel,
goes on and on.
And it’s not enough to know, that I love you still
So I’ll take my heart and go,
for I’ve had my fill…
If you listen you can hear,
the angels wings.
Up above your head so near,
they are hovering.
Waiting to reach out for love, when it falls apart.
When it cannot rise above,
a wounded heart.
When it cannot rise above,
a wounded heart.
don’t go all defensive on me now…I was actually thinking of your parents in the first two verses, and how you finally had to walk away because your love wasn’t enough…
mk
Comment posted August 7th, 2006 at 11:04 pm
mary kay says:
Lucy,
I know you said that you feel so beat up here by us Lucy, but you have to remember that “we” are not one person. Just like you are not Lauren and Lauren is not you even though you believe the same things. I am not Quinn, or Michael 2 or anyone but me and I am not trying to trap you (though I can see why you would feel that way) I am honestly trying to understand. And I feel like we talk about more than just the abortion issue. I realize that that is the bottom line here, but you are more complex than your views on this one issue. As long as you keep coming back, I will continue to try to know you better. Isn’t that what this is all about?
MK
Comment posted August 7th, 2006 at 11:21 pm
mary kay says:
Lauren,
© 2005 WorldNetDaily.com
A British researcher tomorrow will present data from the UK that shows a connection between abortion and breast cancer in British women.
According to the Coalition on Abortion/Breast Cancer, British researcher Patrick Carroll, director of the Pensions and Population Research Institute in London, will present his findings at the Joint Statistical Meetings at the Minneapolis Convention Center – the largest gathering of statisticians in North America.
Carroll’s research adds to a body of evidence showing women who have had one or more abortions – especially one prior to birthing their first child – are more susceptible to breast cancer.
The Coalition on Abortion/Breast Cancer reports Carroll’s research cites three British breast cancer trends.
The first trend is that upper-class women are the most likely to develop breast cancer and die of the disease. For other cancers, lower social classes experience higher incidence and mortality rates. Abortion before a first birth and delayed first birth among upper class women provide the best explanations for this trend, Carroll says.
The second trend involves regional breast cancer rates of the British Isles. Breast cancer rates are greatest in the southeast (116 per 100,000) where abortion rates are higher than in other regions, whereas breast cancer is lowest in Ireland (97 per 100,000) where abortion is prohibited.
Carroll’s research finds a third trend in the increase in breast cancer between 1971 and 2002. During those years, incidents of the disease rose 70 percent in the UK.
Says the Coalition on Abortion/Breast Cancer:
“Carroll’s research is significant because he used national data reporting breast cancers and abortions. Therefore, it’s free of any possibility of a hypothetical problem called ‘recall bias.’ Opponents of the abortion-cancer link have never provided credible evidence of recall bias. Nevertheless, they argue that research depending on interviews with women to report their abortion histories is flawed because more cancer patients than healthy women accurately report their abortions.”
Evidence pointing to an abortion-breast cancer link, commonly known as the ABC link, is present in 29 of 38 published studies conducted worldwide since 1957. Seventeen of the 29 are statistically significant, which means there’s a 95 percent certainty that the association is not by chance.
In 1996 Dr. Joel Brind, a professor of biology and endocrinology at Baruch College of the City University of New York and perhaps the most well-known ABC link researcher, conducted a meta-analysis and review of all the studies done in the previous decade and found a 30 percent increased risk of breast cancer for women choosing an abortion after a first full-term pregnancy and a 50 percent risk increase for women choosing an abortion before a first full-term pregnancy.
The basic biology underlying the ABC link boils down to the fact that breast cancer is linked to reproductive hormones, particularly estrogen. At conception, a woman’s estrogen levels increase hundreds of times above normal – 2,000 percent by the end of the first trimester. That hormone surge leads to the growth of “undifferentiated” cells in the breast as the body prepares to produce milk for the coming baby.
Undifferentiated cells are vulnerable to the effects of carcinogens, which can give rise to cancerous tumors later in life. In the final weeks of a full-term pregnancy, those cells are “terminally differentiated” through a still largely unknown process and are ready to produce milk. Differentiated cells are not as vulnerable to carcinogens.
However, should a pregnancy be terminated prior to cell differentiation, the woman is left with abnormally high numbers of undifferentiated cells, therefore increasing her risk of developing breast cancer.
Click Here
Spontaneous abortions, or miscarriages, are not generally associated with increased risk, since they generally occur due to insufficient estrogen hormones to begin with.
Those who denounce an ABC link, such as Planned Parenthood, attack the validity of Brind’s and other researchers’ studies.
“Undaunted by the absence of compelling evidence associating induced abortion with a woman’s risk of developing breast cancer, anti-choice extremists insist on making the connection anyway,” says Planned Parenthood on its website.
MK
Comment posted August 7th, 2006 at 11:41 pm
rosie says:
Lauren,
” They have an easy life Lucy, remember that”
Unless you haven’t read anybody’s story I don’t know how you have come to that conclusion.
Comment posted August 8th, 2006 at 11:18 am
Pansy Moss says:
Lauren,
” They have an easy life Lucy, remember that”
Unless you haven’t read anybody’s story I don’t know how you have come to that conclusion.
I was thinking that too.
Some people come out of being abused thinking they have a right to be abusive.
Some people come out of abuse realizing no one should be abused and realizing every life is precious and honorable.
Comment posted August 8th, 2006 at 12:30 pm
lauren says:
Bonnie Raitt my liberal sister!
World Net Daily?! that was your unbiased research group!?!?!?!? lmao
Comment posted August 8th, 2006 at 3:18 pm
mary kay says:
Yes Lauren,
Your liberal sister. But you see, I can differentiate between on the court and off the court. On the court I’ll take Bonnie on any day, but off the court - well, I love her music. I can respect a person even while disagreeing with them. You should try it sometime. It’s not that hard. Really. You can probably get a “Arguing without hitting below the belt for dummies” book somewhere. Or you could write it. No scratch that. Your unfamiliar with the subject matter.
By the way (lmao) I thought your behind was looking smaller…
MK
Comment posted August 8th, 2006 at 9:33 pm
rev j of the w.p. says:
children aren’t starving because there’s too many children,
it’s because somebody’s not sharing
Comment posted August 8th, 2006 at 10:47 pm
Lucy says:
Rev j of the w.p. says,
Good Socialist. Ah, yes, those who figured out how to make things happen aren’t simply giving away the profits of their productive efforts to those who didn’t figure anything out. That must be the problem.
Why hold people accountable for having children they can’t take care of? I mean, they have every right to demand that people who don’t know them, probably don’t want to know them, take care of children that just happened to show up. That they had no way of preventing at all right. It’s the fault of the people who do live within their means right.
If I manage to save a few dollars and there is someone starving to death then I have no right to the few dollars that I saved right.
It will become my right to have what I’ve earned just after I give away what I’ve earned? Is that how this works? I don’t think so.
This is simple. If you can’t afford to feed children then don’t have children. It is not the responsibility of every one else to take care of someone elses children.
Once again; for those subscribing to the mindblowing idea that it takes a village to raise a child; I suggest taking a poll before you have a child to find out if the village thinks the time is right. If I didn’t agree to feed your kid before hand, it is not going to happen later.
Comment posted August 9th, 2006 at 10:16 am
Lucy says:
Pansy,
What are you talking about? Oh, you think that because Lauren and I believe that women are competent and complete human beings we are abusive. It would be kinder to belittle women and tell them how horrible they are. It would be better to treat them as though if they want to be worth anything they better get married and start having children. Women with careers are useless.
Are you telling Lauren that you believe she and I are abusive?
Whatever is the point of that post otherwise?
Comment posted August 9th, 2006 at 10:21 am
Pansy Moss says:
Whatever is the point of that post otherwise?
2 points:
#1. You obviously didn’t like people making assumptions and speculations about your life and what kind of moral footing those experiences put you on. The same holds true for us. You have no way of knowing how easy or difficult or whatever our lives are or have been very simply because we feel life starts at conception. Nor should you expect such statements that basically state we are clueless on the issue because we had “easy lives” to go over very well.
#2. An easy life does not automatically mean someone is pro-life, nor does a difficult life mean someone is pro-choice. The opposite is the same. A hard life does not mean someone is pro-choice nor does an easy life mean someone is pro-choice. Also, it does not mean that someone who has had a hard life gets a pass because immoral behaviour comes easy to them, nor does it mean people who have lead some pretty episodic-free lives mean behaving in a moral manner is not always difficult as well. Still, all are equally responsible for their behaviour.
Comment posted August 9th, 2006 at 3:35 pm
Lucy says:
Pansy,
Just so we are clear. I am quite Pro-Choice regarding a womans right to choose what happens to her body and when. I am quite Pro-Choice regarding a womans right and ability to think for herself. This means determining what it means to her that she is pregnant. What the fetus is to her. What conditions her life is in.
There have been some incredible statements made on here regarding how easy it is to just remain pregnant and then keep the child. Or how easy it is to just give the child away, or at least how those options are the only ones that any woman should be permitted to consider. Would you like to tell me how that enables every woman to be an individual? Do you honestly wish to tell me that you know what my circumstances were? Do you honestly know how I felt? Do you honestly think you know who I am?
Do you understand that I consider having had an abortion to have been a moral decision. That it was moral not to bring a child into the world that I could not care for, did not want, and was far to messed up to handle? Do you know that I consider it immoral to bring children into the world if you cannot provide for them? Do you understand that I do not think that I did the right thing. I KNOW THAT I DID THE RIGHT THING! I don’t wonder about whether I did the right thing, I know that I did, and thus I have no regrets, because there was no better option. I did not end a life; I prevented it from beginning.
Do you think that immoral behavior comes easy to me? Or do you think that what you believe to be immoral behavior comes easy to me? Do you think that I am confused? That I should understand that it is moral to bring children in the world and let them starve? That it is moral to make other people pay for children that aren’t theirs because you say it is moral to steal from their productive efforts?
It is immoral for you to tell me what I must think. It is immoral for you to legislate against my right to think for myself in a manner that is different than you. The thing is, we have no need to try to legislate against you. We believe that choosing to have a child is a legitimate choice. We would never try to enforce mandatory abortions for women that get pregnant under certain circumstances or anything. It isn’t due to a lack of morals, but due to an abundance of. It is due to a respect for human life. A trust that all human beings are essentially good, and competent. That women can take care of themselves, and will make the choice that is best for them. That they will have their reasons, and will accept the consequences that come with their actions. Including potential regret, sorrow, guilt.
Please don’t be so passive about calling us immoral in the future. It isn’t so. I don’t want to be a dictator. I just don’t want anyone else to be one either.
Comment posted August 9th, 2006 at 11:49 pm
Lucy says:
Mary Kay,
When I say that people don’t owe each other anything, I say that meaning that it increases the value of what we give one another. Under circumstances where it is treated as so it puts each transaction we engage in with one another as a interaction that was found mutually desirable by all involved. It means that you can know that your husband is with you because there is nowhere else in the world that he would rather be, because he has no obligation to be where his isn’t happy, and therefore, you can know with absolute confidence that you are the person he wants.
It means that we have no obligation to buy where we don’t find value, therefore, if a business does well, they can believe that they must be the best. All competition is welcome, if they can’t do better, then they aren’t the best. The consumer can take comfort in knowing that the merchant wants to be the best, and therefore has invested their effort into it all, because they know that no consumer is obligated.
Children can know that their parents wanted nothing more in the world than to have them. They can feel confident that they are with people who do not want a life without them, and will therefore do everything and anything to help them grow and learn. Such environments for children create ease of learning and growth, it creates confidence. I’ve known the children that came out of thse homes, it makes a difference. These children are generally more successful, happier, and are more responsible and respectable adults.
To engage in this requires a knowledge of self, not selflessness. You must know what you want and why you want it. You must think about the future, and whether or not the long term effects are likely to cause the desired results. For instance; as much as I might want to have chocolate cake every day I know that it isn’t good for me to have every day. For one thing I know that it will force me to buy a new and larger wardrobe. Making eating chocolate cake an expensive habit.
It is not worth it to risk a long and happy marriage over a member of the opposite sex who pays a bit of attention and is found attractive. At least this is generally the thought of those who examine such matters objectively. Despite whatever temptation, the pain of the loved one at home outweighs any potential pleasure, and the pain is less desireable than the pleasure is desireable. I don’t understand what love can be found in an arrangement that is maintained only due to a promise that was made once upon a time.
Comment posted August 10th, 2006 at 12:20 am
Young Christian Woman says:
Lucy said:
This is simple. If you can’t afford to feed children then don’t have children. It is not the responsibility of every one else to take care of someone elses children.
But she also said:
I am quite Pro-Choice regarding a womans right to choose what happens to her body and when. I am quite Pro-Choice regarding a womans right and ability to think for herself….
The thing is, we have no need to try to legislate against you. We believe that choosing to have a child is a legitimate choice. We would never try to enforce mandatory abortions for women that get pregnant under certain circumstances or anything.
First Lucy says that under certain circumstances, a person should not have children. They should abort, or at least contracept. Then she claims that people should have the freedom to choose, and she doesn’t want to tell people when they should get pregnant or have an abortion.
Also, if you have no need to legislate against us, why are you all for regulations on our free speech? Why aren’t you advocating better information for women undergoing abortions?
Lucy thinks it would be best if
Children can know that their parents wanted nothing more in the world than to have them. They can feel confident that they are with people who do not want a life without them, and will therefore do everything and anything to help them grow and learn. Such environments for children create ease of learning and growth, it creates confidence. I’ve known the children that came out of thse homes, it makes a difference. These children are generally more successful, happier, and are more responsible and respectable adults.
Studies show that abused children are more likely to be planned and to be wanted during pregnancy.
I think that children are not a product. I think it is silly and sad when people try to conceive a certain gender or time the birth for a certain season. I think that children have a right to be planned–but not by us. I think children have a right to be loved just as they are, for who they are, from the moment the parents know they exist. The fact that my children died at two weeks does not make them less worthy of love than any other children. The fact that I never held them in my arms and saw their faces does not mean that I do not love them. The fact that they have no birth certificate does not mean that they are not real. And the fact that they were not as developed as Lucy or Mary Kay or I does not mean that they are any less valuable.
Comment posted August 10th, 2006 at 8:16 am
Lucy says:
Very Well,
YCW,
You advocate for the legal execution of abortion doctors. I even have a sneaking suspicion that you said it sarcastically, however, you sound so hostile when you say everything that I feel no need to respond to anything you say. Generally, I don’t even read what you write. I have skimmed over a few. I understand that for some reason you are trying to bait me to respond.
It is beyond me why you wish to speak with me. I think that you have made it perfectly clear that you believe yourself to be superior to me. When I attempted to create a situation for peaceful conversation you responded to that in a snotty fashion. I have enough sources of exhaustion; I have no need to add to the list a woman who is upset because she is a woman she is disgusted with won’t attend to her insults.
Yet, I will answer this. Women have this funny idea that they get to get pregnant, believe that abortion is murder, therefore have the child and then tell the rest of the world they have to feed it. Guess what, it doesn’t work that way.
Now, you may surely have as many children as you would like. You don’t need my permission for that, well, in some countries you might. That you may decide to have children does not mean that you get to force others to feed your children. When I say if you can’t afford to feed your children then don’t have children, I mean that if you feel feeding your children is important. Assuming that there will be some kind of system set up to feed the children is not terribly moral. I understand of course, that how the children eat is not actually a concern of the anti’s.
Yes, have all the children you want.
If you can’t feed the children, do not believe that some one else must.
If it is unimportant to you if the children starve to death; you’ll be dealt with when the time comes.
I hope that is sufficient explanation for you. I have no doubt that you are busy looking for a way to twist it into something you can assault. Have fun.
Comment posted August 12th, 2006 at 2:54 am