The "I Can't Believe There's No Abortion Thread" Abortion Thread

[cF[Authentic]]

Re: The "I Can't Believe There's No Abortion Thread" Abortion Thread

Sure. But my position will drastically reduce the number of abortions. Yours will kill mothers and end up increasing the number of abortions in the World. Facts are facts.

Excuse me if I missed this, but how does banning abortion increase the number of abortions? Please provide a link to the facts and the studies that have been done to prove your point.

[ScoobyDoo]

Re: The "I Can't Believe There's No Abortion Thread" Abortion Thread

Excuse me if I missed this, but how does banning abortion increase the number of abortions? Please provide a link to the facts and the studies that have been done to prove your point.

The wealth of information that comes out of the study provides some striking lessons, the researchers said. In Uganda, where abortion is illegal and sex education programs focus only on abstinence, the estimated abortion rate was 54 per 1,000 women in 2003, more than twice the rate in the United States, 21 per 1,000 in that year. The lowest rate, 12 per 1,000, was in Western Europe, with legal abortion and widely available contraception.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/12/world/12abortion.html

Abortion is illegal in most of Africa, though. It is the second-leading cause of death among women admitted to hospitals in Ethiopia, its Health Ministry has said. It is the cause of 13 percent of maternal deaths at hospitals in Nigeria, recent studies have found.

[Kepler]

Re: The "I Can't Believe There's No Abortion Thread" Abortion Thread

All because some dudes 2,000 years ago may or may not have experienced divine providence. Yet, somehow, after being transcribed and translated hundreds and maybe thousands of times, the Bible is still considered perfect and unquestionable. The word and intent of God's language has somehow been "telephoned" for 2,000 years and we don't expect a purple monkey dishwasher?

This is why I've had a falling out with mainstream Christianity. It's not that I don't have faith in a god or blessed ball of veal, beef, and pork. It's that I don't trust 2,000 years of man. I don't trust the last week of man.

To be fair, there has been a lot of serious work done trying to reconstruct the "original" text of the Bible. The art/sciences of textual criticism and philology got their start from Biblical exigesis. There have been plenty of believers who were concerned with exactly the "telephone" problem you point out and who have done an honest job or trying to track down the original version of God's Word. I mean, if you believe that this is The Manual you want to make sure you've got the correct revision.

This isn't really possible for a number of reasons. There is no extant "original" text. The folkloric traditions which were eventually written down themselves go back into the mists of human history. Instances in which multiple authors seem to agree on events are typically just the residue of them copying off each other. And, well, the little problem that there's no such thing as gods, demons, and the supernatural.

IINM the best we have for the New Testament is source material from the 2nd century -- the problem there is it's already too late and the telelphone game has already infected the text. Decades of the nasty, petty, highly personal formative political battles of proto-Christianity are lost to us, because the winners destroyed everything that contradicted their version.

For the Old Testament the problem is the opposite -- you can go back before the "events" described and they turn up again and again in other cultures' literature that has nothing to do with Biblical sources. It's really embarrassing that by the time the Jews got around to writing down "their" history, every "event" they reported had already been "happened" over and over again in hundreds if not thousands of prior sources. It's as if the story that Washington could not tell a lie was ripped off from a story about Oliver Cromwell from a story about King Arthur.

Sumerian (just to pick one) stories prefigure much of the OT and the "historical" events reported by the Jewish scholars have an infinitude of precursors in the rhetorical devices of early man. Basically, whatever is going to be deemed important is (1) foretold in prophesy, (2) accompanied by miraculous signs, (3) involves a virgin birth, (4) involves a cataclysmic sacrifice, (5) is legitimized by a resurrection. These are the 5 basic plot points in all of our human stories for as far back as we have records. Everybody who has come along since has just hijacked them, like Pharaohs sandblasting the faces of the statues of predecessors and chiseling in their own.

They're mankind's first memes.

[SJHovey]

Re: The "I Can't Believe There's No Abortion Thread" Abortion Thread

To be fair, there has been a lot of serious work done trying to reconstruct the "original" text of the Bible. The art/sciences of textual criticism and philology got their start from Biblical exigesis. There have been plenty of believers who were concerned with exactly the "telephone" problem you point out and who have done an honest job or trying to track down the original version of God's Word. I mean, if you believe that this is The Manual you want to make sure you've got the correct revision.

This isn't really possible for a number of reasons. There is no extant "original" text. The folkloric traditions which were eventually written down themselves go back into the mists of human history. Instances in which multiple authors seem to agree on events are typically just the residue of them copying off each other. And, well, the little problem that there's no such thing as gods, demons, and the supernatural.

IINM the best we have for the New Testament is source material from the 2nd century -- the problem there is it's already too late and the telelphone game has already infected the text. Decades of the nasty, petty, highly personal formative political battles of proto-Christianity are lost to us, because the winners destroyed everything that contradicted their version.

For the Old Testament the problem is the opposite -- you can go back before the "events" described and they turn up again and again in other cultures' literature that has nothing to do with Biblical sources. It's really embarrassing that by the time the Jews got around to writing down "their" history, every "event" they reported had already been "happened" over and over again in hundreds if not thousands of prior sources. It's as if the story that Washington could not tell a lie was ripped off from a story about Oliver Cromwell from a story about King Arthur.

Sumerian (just to pick one) stories prefigure much of the OT and the "historical" events reported by the Jewish scholars have an infinitude of precursors in the rhetorical devices of early man. Basically, whatever is going to be deemed important is (1) foretold in prophesy, (2) accompanied by miraculous signs, (3) involves a virgin birth, (4) involves a cataclysmic sacrifice, (5) is legitimized by a resurrection. These are the 5 basic plot points in all of our human stories for as far back as we have records. Everybody who has come along since has just hijacked them, like Pharaohs sandblasting the faces of the statues of predecessors and chiseling in their own.

They're mankind's first memes.

Maybe the good book
Came from the devine
Or maybe it was written
Just to keep us in line
The mistakes of the sages
Make the rules for the fools
So father forgive me
For bendin the rules.....

The Badlees

[FreshFish]

Re: The "I Can't Believe There's No Abortion Thread" Abortion Thread

The pro life faction demands a mother do something with her own body against her will because of the clump of cells growing within her.

so remove "it" without killing "it" then....wouldn't that satisfy both sides?

[St. Clown]

Re: The "I Can't Believe There's No Abortion Thread" Abortion Thread

so remove "it" without killing "it" then....wouldn't that satisfy both sides?

That's not a medical reality at this point - especially first trimester.

[FadeToBlack&Gold]

Re: The "I Can't Believe There's No Abortion Thread" Abortion Thread

Simply agreeing to end abstinence-only sex ed would be a major step towards ending (but not resolving) this debate.

Good luck getting the religious right to agree though. They'll just go on with, "Boys will be boys, and those naturally slutty girls (EVE'S FAULT!) should learn to hold an aspirin between their knees, or else."

[Kepler]

Re: The "I Can't Believe There's No Abortion Thread" Abortion Thread

Simply agreeing to end abstinence-only sex ed would be a major step towards ending (but not resolving) this debate.

Good luck getting the religious right to agree though. They'll just go on with, "Boys will be boys, and those naturally slutty girls (EVE'S FAULT!) should learn to hold an aspirin between their knees, or else."

It is ironic that the same fundies who preach that also have the worst problems when it comes to teen pregnancy. Why is it that the Crazy Christian daughters are the worst (best?) sluts, and the Crazy Christian preachers are always humping anything with a pulse?

It's almost as if their worldview is a Utopian atavism with no practical consideration given to facts and a completely delusional dependence on bad advice from con men preaching a misunderstanding of long obsolete iron age superstition.

[unofan]

so remove "it" without killing "it" then....wouldn't that satisfy both sides?

Sure thing. Where can you do that, again?

[Kepler]

Re: The "I Can't Believe There's No Abortion Thread" Abortion Thread

Sure thing. Where can you do that, again?

I think the GOP would be happy with a compromise: if the fetus is female, abort it; if the fetus is male, cut the woman open alive and rescue it.

[Jimjamesak]

I think the GOP would be happy with a compromise: if the fetus is female, abort it; if the fetus is male, cut the woman open alive and rescue it.

Doesn't work. Republicans need women for babies that turn into dead soldiers.

[dxmnkd316]

Re: The "I Can't Believe There's No Abortion Thread" Abortion Thread

I saw a great thing this last weekend- can't remember exact quote but I was in total agreement: I'll respect the pro life movement when they start pushing and recommending birth control. Until they do that, it's all about slut shaming. If preventing abortions was the goal, then they'd believe in cheap birth control vs women control

Was that my quote above?

I agree. He doesn't seem to understand that no one wants to terminate a pregnancy. No one wants to be put into that position.

But yet he'll also says you don't get to have birth control either. So you can't prevent a pregnancy, you can't terminate it, and now you have to carry to full term. Which is just a roundabout way of slutshaming to conservatives.

All because some dudes 2,000 years ago may or may not have experienced divine providence. Yet, somehow, after being transcribed and translated hundreds and maybe thousands of times, the Bible is still considered perfect and unquestionable. The word and intent of God's language has somehow been "telephoned" for 2,000 years and we don't expect a purple monkey dishwasher?

This is why I've had a falling out with mainstream Christianity. It's not that I don't have faith in a god or blessed ball of veal, beef, and pork. It's that I don't trust 2,000 years of man. I don't trust the last week of man.

But I digress.

[Deutsche Gopher Fan]

I think the GOP would be happy with a compromise: if the fetus is female, abort it; if the fetus is male, cut the woman open alive and rescue it.

That actually might work for them

[ScoobyDoo]

Re: The "I Can't Believe There's No Abortion Thread" Abortion Thread

I think the GOP would be happy with a compromise: if the fetus is female, abort it; if the fetus is male, cut the woman open alive and rescue it.

Who would they harass/rape/etc after the women are gone? Won't work.

[dxmnkd316]

Re: The "I Can't Believe There's No Abortion Thread" Abortion Thread

I was just going to post the same thing.