You know, it's proven that when poverty goes down, unwanted pregnancy goes down, and when unwanted pregnancy goes down, abortion rates do too.

SAVE THE BAYBEHS!

Well, at least they are coming right out and saying it now. Theoretical life is more important than real life.

Jill has a point about the general emboldenment. I find it jaw-dropping.

Next up on the anti-choice docket for public debate: "Without unwanted children and desperate poverty, how will we fill our huge, expensive prisons?"

I had to read the headline three times before it made linguistic sense, and even then it didn't make real sense.

It's wonderful to see progressive religious people in America re-discovering (or maybe it's the MSM rediscovering them??) the language to articulate humanitarian values that the best of religious practice encourages us toward. It's incredibly disturbing to see people who call themselves Christian so vocally opposed to this.

I couldn't stomach Jill's mindless rantings.

First of all, I hate when people say that you can only be pro-life if you want to advance a socialist agenda. So we can't be capitalists and pro-life? Unless we want the government, and not private charity, to support those in need, we're hypocrites? Um, maybe the government sucks at doing those things and we just don't find it to be the best solution.

Second, we don't care about children? We "would" be doing her laundry list of activities? Get a clue, Jilly! There are more pregnancy crisis centers in America (providing FREE pregnancy tests, prenatal care, adoption aid, and legal help) than there are PPs. How do you think those are funded, Jill? Maybe a bunch of crazy pro-lifers who don't care about women or babies give their very own money (not other people's money, i.e. taxation) to those causes.

Third, liberals rejoice in saying that conservatives "don't really care about x, y, or z, because, if they did, they would care MORE about a, b, and c." Well, someone said that we should care more about a, b, and c, and suddenly, that's bad.

Jill's post doesn't even make sense. Her stated premise is that it's all about forced birth, but she NEVER made a single logical argument or provided a shred of evidence that pro-lifers enjoy seeing women pregnant. But that's her premise. The lack of logic is nauseating.

Finally, But if you were under the impression that “pro-life� activists were actually about lowering the abortion rate, you would be sadly mistaken.

Well, we do a helluva lot more than the "pro-choice" camp, who doesn't give a damn about lowering the abortion rate. If they did, they would support pregnancy crisis centers, adoption, waiting periods, parental notification laws, CAPAs, chastity, and a host of other measures designed to reduce the abortion rate. But the eternal solution is to just use birth control, because we're animals who can't stop f-ing each other.

Rant over. Slam away... not sure I care.

Oenophile . . .

That really is a rant, and I'm not sure it reflects your actual opinions very well. Jill's post was specifically about a pro-life activist group's press release, in which they slammed religious groups for tackling poverty from a pro-choice perspective. While individuals who identify as pro-life may hold a wide spectrum of views on how to live out that belief in daily life (as do pro-choicers, please remember), the way that many high-profile pro-life organizations talk about women, pregnancy, and sexuality make it clear that their motives are--at bare minimum--mixed. I know YOU believe in the responsible use of birth control, for example, but many in the pro-life movement don't. How is that not a conflict with the value of reducing unplanned pregnancies for women and their partners?

. . . we do a helluva lot more than the "pro-choice" camp, who doesn't give a damn about lowering the abortion rate.

I know you get angry about the majority feminist stand on abortion rights, but I just don't understand why you attack us as not giving a damn about lowering the abortion rate. While we may have different methods than you (or the pro-life activists more broadly), and we take issue with many of your methods . . . how is advocating for birth control access and comprehensive sex education not trying to lower the abortion rate? How is advocating for better women's health services, and reproductive justice (which includes helping women give birth and raise their families when and how they way) not better enabling women to choose to carry a pregnancy to term?

It is precisely this denial of common ground (reducing unplanned & unwanted pregnancies in the first instance) that stymies practical public policy in the areas where it might do good for BOTH pro-choicers and pro-lifers.

The rant was not advocating a socialist agenda. These are private groups not the government - they are talking about pro-life groups giving to the poor as well as advocating their other ideas. The point is, Oenophile, that it is morally indefensible to call yourself "pro-life" while actively stating that you could care less about the actual living conditions of a poor child or whether that child lives or dies of malnourishment after it is born. Life does not end upon birth.

Wow, oenephile, are you ok? I've seen you spitting venom before, but this is hardcore. Struck a nerve?

Might I remind you oenophile that PCC would not be around were it not for the fact that members of the women's liberations movement had started PP. PCCs are a response to PPs, and PCCs would not be funded if pro-lifers were not scared that PP could provide abortions indefinitely. If PP goes away, then I assure you that few pro-lifers will continue to fund PCC. Also to the best of my knowledge PCC doesn't offer any services to un-pregnant mothers or to their children, but please correct me if I am wrong. I can't think of any pro-life organizations that offers anything to children after they have left the womb. The pro-life movement was never designed to aid living children.

The pro-life movement was never designed to aid living children.
I think that George Carlin said it best in Back in Town:
"They're all in favor of the unborn. They will do anything for the unborn. But once you're born, you're on your own. Pro-life conservatives are obsessed with the fetus from conception to nine months. After that, they don't want to know about you. They don't want to hear from you. No nothing. No neonatal care, no day care, no head start, no school lunch, no food stamps, no welfare, no nothing. If you're preborn, you're fine; if you're preschool, you're fucked.
Conservatives don't give a shit about you until you reach "military age". Then they think you are just fine. Just what they've been looking for. Conservatives want live babies so they can raise them to be dead soldiers. Pro-life... pro-life... These people aren't pro-life, they're killing doctors! What kind of pro-life is that? What, they'll do anything they can to save a fetus but if it grows up to be a doctor they just might have to kill it?They're not pro-life. You know what they are? They're anti-woman. Simple as it gets, anti-woman. They don't like them. They don't like women.They believe a woman's primary role is to function as a brood mare for the state.
Pro-life... You don't see many of these white anti-abortion women volunteering to have any black fetuses transplanted into their uteruses, do you? No, you don't see them adopting a whole lot of crack babies, do you? No, that might be something Christ would do. And, you won't see alot of these pro-life people dousing themselves in kerosene and lighting themselves on fire. You know, moraly committed religious people in South Vietnam knew how to stage a goddamn demonstration, didn't they?! They knew how to put on a fucking protest. Light yourself on FIRE!! C'mon, you moral crusaders, let's see a little smoke. To match that fire in your belly."

Well, we do a helluva lot more than the "pro-choice" camp, who doesn't give a damn about lowering the abortion rate. If they did, they would support pregnancy crisis centers, adoption, waiting periods, parental notification laws, CAPAs, chastity, and a host of other measures designed to reduce the abortion rate. But the eternal solution is to just use birth control, because we're animals who can't stop f-ing each other.

I think what we have here is a difference of opinion as to what measures should be taken to reduce abortion. In my view, the best way to reduce abortion is to try and give people the means and education so that they can prevent pregnancy in the first place, not stop them from having abortions once they do become pregnant. Certainly chastity pledges and the like do have their uses--I just don't think that they should be the ONLY means of educating young people about sex. Planned Parenthood encourages an "abstinence plus" curriculum; that is, one that teaches coping skills to avoid sex if they wish as well as how to stay safe should one become sexually active. Basically what I'm trying to say here is that it's clear that we (you--pro-life, me--pro-baby-murder... sorry, bad joke) have the same goals.

As far as supporting CPCs... I don't know about that one, oenephile. I've heard some awful accounts about how these centers treat the women seeking help and I'm def not going to get behind any organization that will tell a young girl that God won't forgive her if she gets an abortion. Not to mention the blatantly untrue "information" (read: propaganda) they distribute about how abortion causes sterility, breast cancer, and PTSD. Certainly there must be some centers that provide all the good things that you describe. However, I'd prefer not to use my tax dollars funding places that are largely concerned with telling women that they are hell-bound if they don't do what they're told--I'd prefer to pump my money into a Title X clinic that provides low-cost gynecological care and birth control in a non-confrontational environment.

Also--and this is me digressing a little--Planned Parenthood does provide adoption counseling.

Anyhoo... That's my rant I guess. Sorry for the over-long post, folks.

I've only heard bad things about crisis pregnancy centers.
Some set up shop next to Planned Parenthoods and try to lure people there under the premise that they're PP. Others employ delay tactics like cancelling appointments until a woman is past the date where she can legally get an abortion. Seriously, really fucking classy.

Oenophile, did you even read Jill's entire posting?

Well, we do a helluva lot more than the "pro-choice" camp, who doesn't give a damn about lowering the abortion rate. If they did, they would support pregnancy crisis centers, adoption, waiting periods, parental notification laws, CAPAs, chastity, and a host of other measures designed to reduce the abortion rate. But the eternal solution is to just use birth control, because we're animals who can't stop f-ing eachother.

This is the most back-asswards bit of drivel you've come up with yet.
Half of the solutions in this list address the issue *after* the woman is already pregnant. Pro-choicers want to *prevent* the pregnancy from happening in the first place.
Crisis pregnancy centers don't help prevent unwanted pregnancy; they shame and guilt women into having babies. Sure - the end result might be fewer abortions, but the women still aren't in good situations.
Not even sure what you mean by "adoption." Pro-choicers don't support adoption? Adoption is an alternative to parenthood. Abortion is an alternative to pregnancy. While adoption is the right choice for some women, pro-choicers don't advocate forcing women to incubate fetuses they don't want to incubate, whether or not they're keeping the end result.
Parental notificiation laws don't lower the abortion rate. Oh, you mean they scare teenage girls away from clinics because they're afraid of what their parents might do to them if they abort? K, you might have a point. STILL NOT GOOD FOR THE PREGNANT GIRLS. And haven't you considered the possibility that if parents are given control of their daughters' reproductive lives, they could also force them to abort?
I don't know what CAPAs are, and "chastity" isn't a "measure." It's a lifestyle choice some people make. Even some pro-choicers. How, after hanging around Feministing for so long, are you still under the impression that "promiscuous" women are the only ones having abortions? Married women have unwanted pregnancies too; are you advocating "chastity" as an abortion-prevention measure for them?
Note: Even if promiscuous women WERE the only ones getting abortions, who cares? They should be able to.

"Certainly chastity pledges and the like do have their uses--I just don't think that they should be the ONLY means of educating young people about sex."

Indeed. One of the women I know had an abortion after she got married and had 5 kids. How was premarital abstinence supposed to prevent her 6th pregnancy?

"Married women have unwanted pregnancies too; are you advocating 'chastity' as an abortion-prevention measure for them?"

I've seen that attitude on other forums too. Once some teen virgin poster pretty much ordered everyone to stop having sex when they don't want any more babies and the middle-aged married posters just laughed at her.

Oh god, supporting waiting periods and parental notification laws will decrease abortion? Well if you're for forcing women into birth against their will and more late-term abortions happening, then that's your cup of tea!

Seriously, pro-choicers don't want to lower the abortion rate? What are you smoking today, oenophile? I've heard nasty and incoherent from you, but this takes the cake. Pro-choice people are the ones handing out contraception to prevent pregnancies because yes, people *do* have sex - most people, at some time in their life! Whether it's after their wedding day or not.

The idea of complete abstinence (for extended periods of time no less, bordering on the whole of life) as an alternative to abortion, well, that would work, but it's not practical. Basically, it's like saying "you know how many people die in car crashes every year? Let's just give up cars!" and then calling everyone who says "how about just driving slower, not drinking and using seat belts?" pro-death.

Basically, cars and sex are both facts of life. See, straight people exist, and, despite my disappointment with this fact, they are a majority. Now, of course, straight people generally do desire to have children, but, for the most part, this desire has a cap to it, involving time, money, patience, health and all those other things involved in the decision to have a child. So, most straight people only want 1-6 kids (and that's a generous spectrum, realistically, most tend to the lower end). But, they're human, and have a potential for pregnancy approx. 30 years of their lives. In 30 years, far more than that number of desired children can be concieved. It's unlikely that they'll have the kids, then go on to be celibate for the next 25 years.

The logical thought then, regardless of one's position on the morality/legality of abortion, is to encourage and promote contraception as the logical alternative to unwanted pregnancy. Oh, and head. Lots of head. ;)

As far as preventive measures for abortion, one phrase has always really bothered me: "abstinence is the only form of safe sex".

Are they saying that abstinence is a form of sex? Because then the jails would be full of people for practicing abstinence in public, with a child, etc.

But really, there is nothing you can catch from yourself that you don't already have. I think a better abstinence motto would be: "Sex can wait! Masturbate!"

Bad jokes are done now.

Oenophile, did you post that comment, or one like it, over at Feministe? It seems only fair and intellectually honest . . .

“Certainly chastity pledges and the like do have their uses--I just don't think that they should be the ONLY means of educating young people about sex.�
Actually, research has shown (as was recently in the news) that chastity pledges are of *no* use.

Oenophile’s methods of lowering the number of abortions is setting up crisis pregnancy centers, waiting periods ( read: you stupid slut, go home and think about what you have done, then make the *right* decision! Now that’s a good girl), and parental notification, all of which involve harassing women who are already pregnant and want an abortion. Note comprehensive sex education, promoting access to education and access to contraception, not to mention fighting poverty, are not on her list. Yeah because fighting poverty is a socialist agenda. They sure do *helluva lot* more than us do to reduce unwanted pregnancies ( I have personally spent many hours volunteering at PP, dispensing birth control pills). And we all know where most of these groups stand on issues of comprehensive sex ed and contraception.

The anti-choicers want to take away reproductive choice so women are always chained to their bodies, and kept down. It is trying to institute womens own bodies as a destroyer to life, and the opportunities this kind of control brings. It's downright perverted. I can't believe anti-choicers have even got this far, considering they are trying to make women chronically pregnant, and house-bound.

Werechick, I like your car analogy.

Wow, this is a different kind of Newspeak: "Fighting poverty doesn't mean attending to the physical needs of the poor -- it means ensuring that there are more mouths to feed."

Thankfully, judging from the comments, there are Christians who think this is bullshit. The first poster (Hugo) wrote: "Bottom line, if wealthy Christian men want to combat poverty, real poverty, we have to surrender so much of our privilege. If we choose to combat abortion, we give up nothing of value to us — no question where the easier path lies."

oenophile,

Many men who abide by misogyny, (particularly when it can be supported by 'religious' beliefs) enjoy seeing a perverted view of women when they are pregnant because they see it as a vulnerability. Many men keep women perepetually pregnant just so she is inhibited from doing anything in society. They enjoy seeing her be subordinate to the future child. You want to lower abortion because you want to dismantle it as a choice women have, (along with all these crisis pregnancy centers) due to religious beliefs, not any autonomous reasons.

Mimo, some conservative Christians also condemn masturbation, because it involves "coveting" women who don't belong to you (one writer said if you could masturbate and never think about any woman but your wife, it was OK).
Some disagree: James Dobson, for instance, has said there's not usually any harm in it.

Mimo, some conservative Christians also condemn masturbation, because it involves "coveting" women who don't belong to you (one writer said if you could masturbate and never think about any woman but your wife, it was OK).
Some disagree: James Dobson, for instance, has said there's not usually any harm in it.
This ties in with the efforts in some states to ban sex toys

Actually, Hypatia, Oenophile has mentioned on previous threads that she is an atheist.

Something she's never answered, though, is how exactly limiting choice benefits women as a whole. Someone on a previous thread had posited a theoretical situation in which a woman's birth control fails, or she makes a bad judgement call and ends up pregnant, when her lifestyle cannot feasibly support a pregnancy, let alone raising a child; the poster asked Oenophile, very politely and reasonably, to make a case that a pro-life stand would benefit such a woman. She never got a reply.

Well, we do a helluva lot more than the "pro-choice" camp, who doesn't give a damn about lowering the abortion rate. If they did, they would support pregnancy crisis centers, adoption, waiting periods, parental notification laws, CAPAs, chastity, and a host of other measures designed to reduce the abortion rate. But the eternal solution is to just use birth control, because we're animals who can't stop f-ing each other.

See, that's the difference between you and me.

I think that the best way to reduce the abortion rate is by reducing the number of unwanted pregnancies through education and better access to birth control.

You think that the best way to reduce abortion rates is by punishing women who have sex by forcing them to give birth.

Your langauge makes it very clear how you feel about women who choose to have sex.

This ties in with the efforts in some states to ban sex toys

Now this one really confuses me. Yes, I've heard of cases like this before, but I still can't wrap my brain around it.

Ok, you don't want me to have premarital sex, take birth control, or have any control over my uterus--because of "family values" right? Wouldn't it be easier for people NOT to have sex with one another (a normal, healthy expression of being human, by the way) if there were other, ahem, alternatives?

Sigh. I've pretty much resigned myself to being totally puzzled by these people. Does anybody know which part of the Bible actually condemns masturbation? I'm thinking back to my old Bible study classes in childhood and remember something about a verse about "spilling one's seed on the ground."

Well, if that's the only verse that prohibits masturbation, then I don't see why women shouldn't masturbate--we don't spill any seed while doing it!

Yeah, EG, I think it's the sin of Onan, which is about spilling one's seed where it can't be fertile...so sweet, let's get frigging! :o)
Also it raises the question, can men who have had vasectomies (sp?) masturbate without sinning?
Because there's no loss of seed there either...

Yeah, EG, I think it's the sin of Onan, which is about spilling one's seed where it can't be fertile...so sweet, let's get frigging! :o)
Also it raises the question, can men who have had vasectomies (sp?) masturbate without sinning?
Because there's no loss of seed there either...

Yeah, EG, I think it's the sin of Onan, which is about spilling one's seed where it can't be fertile...so sweet, let's get frigging! :o)
Also it raises the question, can men who have had vasectomies (sp?) masturbate without sinning?
Because there's no loss of seed there either...

Damn multiple clicks...sorry.

Actually, the sin of Onan was coitus interruptus, not masturbation.

Leviticus has a passage about washing yourself clean if the "seed of copulation" gets on you, but that's about it.