'Pro-Lifers' Plan National Protest of Contraception
by Cristina Page, Moderator, OnCommonGround
May 5, 2008 - 5:32am (Print)
Tired of the same-old lame protests outside of abortion clinics? Looking to impose your religious beliefs in other people's lives in a new and exciting way? The pro-life movement would like to expand your horizons.
On June 7th, the anniversary of the Supreme Court decision that gave married people the right to use contraception, the American Life League, along with Pro-Life Wisconsin and Pharmacists for Life International Associate groups want you to join them in protesting in front of facilities that distribute birth control products. The national day against contraception, Protest the Pill Day '08: The Pill Kills Babies, was started to convince the American people of a simple and imaginative idea: attempting to prevent abortion is abortion too. These arguments have been confounded by diabolical scientists and experts who insistently point out there's no evidence to support that the birth control pill works the way these groups claim. As we all know, however, if ideology waited for science to prove scientific points, our ancestors would have never have spent all those years wandering the then-flat earth.
The campaign website is chock full of important information and you don't want to miss the informative "Talking Points" section. Here's a sampling:
Q: The Supreme Court has ruled that it's my right to privacy - who do you think you are to say otherwise?
A: On June 7, 1965, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down the Griswold v. Connecticut decision. The Supreme Court justices first presumed that previous Court decisions dealing with a citizen's right to liberty and security that prohibited invasion of one's home and acquisition of evidence that might later be used to convict him of a crime also addressed privacy within marriage. In fact, the justices argued, "The concept of liberty is not so restricted... it embraces the right of marital privacy though that right is not mentioned explicitly [emphasis added] in the Constitution" and is based on "specific guarantees in the Bill of Rights [which] have penumbras, formed by emanations from those guarantees that help give them life and substance."
This confusing language, which has no relationship whatsoever to what the Founding Fathers intended, gave married women permission to use the birth control pill. The Supreme Court literally created the "right to privacy" out of thin air.
We now know, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that not only did the Supreme Court literally make up the right that you claim gives you permission to use birth control, but the most popular form of birth control, the pill, can kill innocent preborn children. If there is a chance that human beings are going to be murdered, I am going to do everything in my power to help prevent that from happening. If you knew there was a chance that someone might poison your neighbor, don't you think you would try to notify your neighbor and do as much as you could to help save a life?
And before you despair that your right to privacy is being lost, take comfort in the knowledge that once we all finally live in a country where ideology is valued over evidence and our government is run by and for those who subscribe, or succumb, to the exciting agenda of these groups...privacy will no longer be needed. Your point of view and way of life will, conveniently, be decided for you. So what are you waiting for?! Sign up now!
I hope people who walk by and see those protesters just laugh in their faces. Maybe this will allow some who don't normally pay attention to the typical "pro-life" type to see them for what they are really trying to do (controlling female sexuality).
Seems the author only has poor wit and bad humor to address this important issue. Now if only the facts and science backed up his religion of contraception, maybe he'd be on to something. Figures, just like a man!
If any one of the protesters will sign a legally-binding statement that they will personally adopt any and all children I give birth to from this day on, then I will gladly give up my pill. Otherwise, they can just shut up!
Ideology over evidence? What's the evidence, Cristina? You're talking about a lack of proof from those claiming the birth control pill destroys an embryo. Heck. Where's the proof that it DOESN'T prevent implantation? Heck. Even the packaging says it can work that way. And whoever died NOT taking the pill? It makes more sense to say, "I don't know if it destroys an embryo so I'm not taking it" than to say, "I don't know if it destroys an embryo so I'll take it anyway." At least there's consistency on the pro-life side.
Dear Cranky,
Here's the evidence you seek just two clicks away in our Fact v. Fiction section found in the navigation bar at the top of the front page. As for "consistency" on the anti-contraception side of the issue, I applaud your personal decision to follow your beliefs consistently, no matter what the evidence suggests. I'm just curious why you think the 99% of Americans who have chosen to use contraception at some point in their lives should also have to follow your beliefs? Are you also anti-pluralism? Anti-freedom?
Be the change you seek,
Scott Swenson, Editor
Whether implanted or not implanted the embryo still remains an embryo and that is what the pro-life side defends. So why does the pro-choice side always get hung up on ACOG's definition of pregnancy? The pro-life side says abortion is the destruction of human life in the womb; and all the pro-choice side can say is that it isn't a human life at all unless it's attached.
Denial is a powerful thing.
The pill works by preventing ovulation. It works like a condom! Condoms work by preventing sperm from meeting eggs, and the pill just works the opposite, by preventing eggs from coming out to meet sperm. Just. Like. A. Condom.
Of course, you're against condoms, too. How are they murder? Please explain, because while you had to make up lies to explain the pill, the lies to explain condoms will be even more fun.
Fun fact: The Ten Commandments don't say anything about birth control, but they do forbid lying.
I notice the Cranky Catholic seems to have forgotten to address the question you asked, Amanda. Imagine that.
TOTALLY and completely love how they had nothing to say to you. This is all such bogus ideology. Science says they are wrong, the pill does not cause abortion, it prevents implantation in the first place, but of course.. they have selective beliefs.
As far as I'm concerned, the ACOG definition of pregnancy has very little to do with the issue.
Really, to me the issue isn't *babies* or embryos or implantation, the issue is who gets to decide what happens inside and to my body. Either I do (the pro-choice position) or someone else does (the "pro-life" position). Personally, I vote for me and I will defend my own bodily autonomy and that of every other woman.
Plus, what Amanda said.
Another thing that really burns me up is the pharmacists with this belief. How DARE them take this job! If it's against their beliefs, then they have no business having this job. And what about all the kids that need adopting? Who cares about them? Let's just have more! Funny how, once they're out of the sacred womb, they're forgotten by all those sanctimonious, controlling people.
Another thing to think about, if you think sloughing off a fertilized egg is like the worst thing in the world: Half of fertilized eggs are rejected by the body anyway.
Which means that a woman who doesn't use the pill is killing a lot more "babies" than a woman who does use the pill.
Think about it. I am on the pill. I fertilize 0 eggs a year, because I don't ovulate. A woman who uses no contraception is probably seeing 1-2 fertilized eggs die, and a miscarriage or two for every baby she brings to term.
Who's got the higher amount of blood on her hands? Not I, with a death toll at 0 because I don't even provide the raw materials to fertilize an egg that could die.
If "pro-lifers" really think fertilized eggs and embryos are the equivalent of babies, then they should be against women going off the pill at all, because of the amount of carnage it takes to get to a healthy newborn.
Amanda, you haven't lost your touch. I say we counter-protest the protesters for promoting an increase in the senseless slaughter of fertilized eggs! Clearly the only way to ensure that no fertilized egg is lost is to prevent ovulation. Well, that and abstinance. And menopause.
But seriously, I do wish more people knew the fact you bring up - that roughly half of all fertilized eggs are sloughed off regardless, without you even knowing it. Rather changes the framing of early termination when you realize that it happens quite regularly if you are fertile, sexually active and not using contraception.
Does the pro-life side also oppose IVF? After all, an embryo is an embryo...
There is no way to determine if an embryo exists pre-implantation if it came to be by ordinary methods.
A woman can not have a duty to refrain from actions that would prevent implantation if she were unaware that there was something that needs to implant.
You pose the question, "whoever died from not taking the pill?"
An answer to that question would be mothers all over the world who die during childbirth. Maternal mortality is a huge issue of international health, and family planning and birth spacing are two key means of addressing it (along with a host of other things, such as skilled birth attendants).
All over the world - in the U.S. or in India or in Niger or in Poland - mothers, children, and families are healthier when family sizes remain relatively small, and when parents are able to plan the size of their families. Family planning and access to contraception are critical for improving the health of women and children worldwide.
Also, have you taken a look at this lately? http://www.census.gov/main/www/popclock.html
Since you seem to be so anti-contraception, what are your plans for ensuring the health, safety, education, and general well-being of the 196,325,000 to 324,325,000 babies that would have been born were there no contraception available to women between 1973-2003? (Numbers are from www.thepillkills.com.) What programs do you have in mind to make sure that our natural and manmade environments can support this type of population growth to provide clean water, adequate sanitation, adequate housing, etc. for all people?
The talking points are pretty shocking. I mean, really - their claims that the birth control is dangerous to your health and the claims they list! I've never seen just outright ignorance in my life. The vast majority of the ills they say are caused by the pill are actually helped by the pill.
Considering how many American women are on the pill, the anti-reproductive rights crowd has got an uphill battle on their hands.
If every woman on a pill is like a crazy serial killer, why do they care about our health? I've been on the pill for 9 years total, and since they seem to think that not ovulating=murder, I've not ovulated 108 times, thereby murdering 108 babies by not ovulating. I've also murdered dozens of babies by simply not having sex that month and sloughing off an unfertilized egg, and let's not talk about all the babies I killed before I hit puberty, just by walking around not being pregnant because I was incapable of it. And menopause looms in the future! Decades of baby-murdering through not having eggs to fertilize.
Women are born murderers in this worldview. We can't even help it. So why the fakey concern about our health? ;)
Cristina,
Thanks so much for informing us about this event. I can't wait to participate! Finally- a group who is not afraid to stand up for truth. Praise God for American Life League!
Cristina,
Thanks so much for informing us about this event. I can't wait to
participate! Finally- a group who is not afraid to stand up for truth.
Praise God for American Life League!
Ha ha, that's so hilarious. Please, tell me another one. I'm laughing so hard because you managed to trump us crazy feminazis by taking our event and using it against us.
Oh, no, we're promoting protests we disagree with. Whatever will we do?
These nut jobs want nothing more to enslave women to their reporductive organs. Having children is a CHOICE in a marriage.
Birth control can help regulate a woman's cycle. There is no proof as to when it causes "embryos" get eliminated.
I used to use B/C - stopped because I am thankfully no longer ovalating. I also had a thermal ablation. Now the next thing you know this group will want to prevent women from having that.
Women's monthly is meant to be painful - women should just "read the bible" and deal with it - yeah deal with those hormonal changes. Trying dealin with having IBS at the same time and almost passing out on the toilet.
I'll stand up to these folks in a heart beat - I'll dare them to give the numbers that are slothed off - and demand on a woman is to know she has done so.
These self-righteous sanctamoneous fools don't care about women all they care about is the unborn or those who have yet to come into existance.
These people are nuts, they just want to control women and enslave them to their fertility, and bring back the 40's where women had no choices but to be enslaved to men and their sexuality. I say throw eggs in their faces if they protest near a facility that provides birth control, because they are so ridiculous. Why doesn't crancky catholic protest the Catholic priests molesting innocent born children? It is my body and I will use birth control if I want or need to, and I will abort if I cannot support a child if I need to. (but, since I have always used birth control, I have never needed to abort) We must fight these anti-women cretins at every turn. If they were true to their "religion" and didn't use birth control themselves, they would have so many children they wouldn't have the time or energy to try to ruin choice and birth control for us. It will never work, as over 90% of the women in this country use some kind of artificial birth control. These people are real time and energy wasters, why don't they help the children in Dafur or children who are in poverty in this country? I suspect because most are too ugly to get laid or that they are so controlled and brainwashed by their religion that they want to take it out on the women who have and enjoy sex. What a pathetic bunch these people are.
Seriously, anti-choicers, keep it up. Show up at the protests, run around calling condoms murder. We're sick to death of having to convince people that you really, truly don't care about babies so much as getting women under the boot. So please, do our work for us.
Perhaps the anti-choicers are merely victims of the abstinence-only education policy that leaves so many ignorant of how contraception works. After all, condoms do kill -- if you pull them over your head.
In "Denial is indeed a powerful thing" above, Amanda Marcotte makes a point that I think is not stressed nearly enough. When the anti-choice people, most of whom call themselves Christians, tell their favorite lies, they violate the Ninth Commandment, in which god disapproves of bearing false witness against one's neighbor. If calling your neighbor a murderer, when she is not, is not bearing false witness, I don't know what is. We should be asking the anti-choicers loudly and repeatedly why this doesn't bother them.
Would you care to respond to this, Cranky Catholic?
Calling someone a murderer is not bearing false witness. That's just name calling.
If you make the false claim that you personally witnessed your neighbor beat her children when in fact she did no such thing... that is bearing false witness.
And anyone who calls a contracepting woman a murderer is just as much of an idiot as someone who equates an ovum with an embryo.
O.K., Cranky Catholic, I admit your response surprised me. BTW, many people do equate any contraception with abortion, and therefore with murder. I am glad to hear that you are not one of them.
Backing up a bit, I don't actually care whether you, or anyone else, thinks contraception is a bad idea. That's your business. The problem I have with that line of thinking is that, in my experience, most people who follow it, certainly including many prominent officials of the Roman Catholic Church, also believe it is their right to have the government send women and their health-care providers to jail for disagreeing with it, more specifically, for acting on that disagreement by demanding and utilizing unimpeded access to contraception and abortion. You did not actually say that you advocate this, so if I am ascribing to you opinions that you do not actually hold, I beg your pardon.
That said, I would feel much more comfortable with the so-called "pro-life" movement if anyone who identified himself as pro-life ever explicitly conceded that, under our legal system, women in general, and pregnant women in particular, are citizens who have rights that the rest of us are bound to respect. In my personal experience, no one who calls himself pro-life has ever conceded this point, nor even acknowledged that it might be an issue. The implicit pro-life position, without exception, has been that a pregnant woman has no legal rights at all, except those that accrue to her as the carrier of her fetus.
Another point that I have never seen conceded is that the Fourteenth Amendment of our Constitution explicitly defines citizens whose rights it protects as those "born or naturalized in the United States". It manifestly does not say "conceived or naturalized". As far as I am concerned, anyone unwilling to discuss contraception and abortion within that context is simply denying facts.
Specifically, it is not O.K. with me for anyone to seek legal restrictions on abortion or contraception because the teachings of his church specify that life begins at conception. This is, or should be, no more acceptable in our society than telling women they can't vote because someone's holy book says that women should be subservient to men. Under our Constitution, women are people with rights, period, and these cannot be abridged on the grounds that some women disagree with someone's religious convictions. If people think the Constitution is wrong in making these guarantees, there are procedures in place for changing it. In the meantime, no one has the right to deny women access to contraception, whether he believes life begins at fertilization, implantation, quickening (the historical criterion), birth, or any other arbitrary event.
On that same subject, I think arguing about when life actually begins is arguing over how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. At what definable moment is time does a computer, or a battleship, or an automobile, or any other complex object, become that object rather than the parts of which it is composed? Claiming you know when life begins is like claiming you know how high is up. We may adopt an arbitrary definition for some purpose or other, but it is still arbitrary.
That was an amazing post! I really enjoyed reading it and I'm really glad we're on the same side.
How you managed to incorporate all of your points in such a succinct manner was simply fabulous... and it was done with all due respect, to boot. Bravo.
The American Life League, Pro-Life Wisconsin, and Pharmacists For Life International,et al have lost their minds. This stunt won't accomplish much, except lose them a few more friends.
LOL they are SO nuts.
We pro-lifers do not say that barrier methods (e.g., male and female condoms) cause abortions; we say that abortifacient contraceptives have a method to destroy embryos, often by preventing implantation. We don't care if implantation prevention is "a tertiary function" of the pill; it is a deliberate way to stop the development of a baby.
Life begins at fertilization, science knows this; we never stop developing from that point onward until our death. Embryos simply need nourishment and a fitting environment to develop (just like you and I). To argue that someone becomes a human at some point after fertilization is arbitrary and against science.
Any arguments concerning religion, a purported desire to control women, miscarriages, et cetera do not change science.
Life begins at fertilization,
Really? says who? and just what do you mean by "life"? I'm not being facetious, btw, it's just that you're making some very extreme statements based on terms which we do not all agree about (if the link was supposed to take me somehwere that provided an answer - it didn't. Are you sure you linked to the place you meant?)
And if life does, indeed, begin at fertilization, then as Amanda mentioned above - Mother Nature (or God, take your pick), is a much greater murderer than any pill-poppin' feminazi could ever hope to be, seeing as about 50% of fertilized eggs naturally fail to implant
I ask you how does a woman know she MAY have eliminated a fertilized egg?
What IF the B/C prevents ovalation? There are a number that do.
Prove to me when such things happen - did science invent a "conception detector"?
Isn't it better to eliminate a zygote then to have a woman go get an abortion later on?
You need pro-fetus folks need to get a life and keep your noses out of women's life's.
Life does not begin at conception. Life began millions of years ago. It has been continuing since then in a never ending cycle. Eggs and Sperm are alive. Science tells us that but you ignore that. PREGNANCY begins at implantation. Before then it's just another bunch of cells floating around doing mitosis. Learn some Biology already.
There is a huge moral difference between taking an action that might prevent the implantation of an embryo whose existence is not known and cutting up a fetus in utero.
Even if a duty to allow implantation exists, this duty would begin at the moment of fertilization, and as such would be irrelevant to anything that happened before fertilization.
This is from the talking points (emphasis added):
The birth control pill and similar birth control products work in a woman’s body in one of three ways: It can prevent ovulation and it can obstruct sperm from reaching the egg (prevent fertilization) by thickening the cervical mucus. However, if both of these methods fail and a new human person is created, the pill and other contraceptives can stop a tiny child’s implantation in his/her mother’s womb . . .
I understand the stance that if there's any chance at all that an egg can get through and get fertilized and then get flushed out, then one must oppose the pill (I disagree, but I understand it). However, I'm curious, given that my understanding has always been that the basic function of the pill is to prevent ovulation: how large a possibility is it that a sperm and an egg may meet when a woman is on a standard (e.g. not progesterone only) birth control pill? Again, I appreciate that the moral stance is black and white on that fact, but I'm curious about the science behind it, particularly given that pro-life folks are trying to argue that they have science on their side.
Also, doesn't the body not begin to think it's pregnant until after the fertilized egg has implanted? So, wouldn't that mean that even if an egg gets fertilized and then flushed out, actual pregnancy is still being prevented?
Even if it's true that a tertiary function of the pill may keep an egg from implanting, the very low odds of such an event pale in comparison to the vast number of pregnancies that are naturally aborted. So using the pill undenably makes natural abortion far, far less likely, as 15-20% fertilized eggs never implant--so not fertilizing an egg avoids the approximately one in five "abortions" that anti-pill advocates claim to wish to prevent.
estimated to spontaneously abort before 12 weeks, to the number of fertilized eggs estimated not to implant and the final percentage is very high.
It's been asked before,but it bears repeating. As prolifers believe fertilized eggs are "persons": should all used sanitary pads and tampons be inspected for the presence of fertilized eggs? Should death certificates be issued and funerals be held for all those "murdered" eggs? Then shall all miscarriages be investigated as manslaughter?
Backing up a bit to what was said earlier. We know a huamn life begins at fertilization,that is a given,even though pro lifers present it as some sort of earthshaking fact. But the PREGNANCY doesn't start till implantation, the medical experts at the American College of Ob/Gyns says so. The blastocyst can't develope into a zygote, the zygote into an embryo, the embryo into a fetus until implantation occurs. Do the pro lifers hear me now?
I see Amanda beat me to the same basic argument. What she said!
that some national anti-contraceptive groups have repackaged Natural Family Planning (NFP) as "organic sex". *chuckle*
I would like to see an intelligent response from the "life begins at conception" crowd to the issue of ectopic pregnancies. Isn't your position that the woman must die
when she finds herself subject to an ectopic pregnancy?
Isn't true that some hospitals are refusing to treat women, even though they will die and there is no competing life interest? And don't tell me that it doesn't happen very often. It happened to my sister in law, and she had three small children under the age of 5 at the time. Would you have her die to satisfy your political agenda?
I'm still waiting for the national day for pro-lifers adopting children who need loving homes... why aren't you people caring for the children who are already here and don't have families? Maybe if there were less children being abused by their families and/or in foster care, I would be more open to your message.
Well, finally they're coming out and showing their true colors. It's not about saving fetuses, it's about controlling female reproduction and, by extension, women's lives.
As disgusted and saddened as I am that there are people out there who care more about an ovum than a woman--and this post has literally made my stomach and heart ache and my eyes tear up--I'm glad that they're showing themselves for the radical misogynist control-freaks they are. Maybe now more people will understand what's really going on.
The basis of their argument is religious. Never mind the actual science of how various methods of contraception work. Never mind all that. These skirmishes over women's bodies have religion at their core and I, for one - and as a Christian - am tired of it.
I say, and am comfortable asserting that my *faith* agrees with me, that 'life' happens after implantation when my body can recognize that it is, indeed, pregnant. My faith supports the use of contraception.
These anti-sex fundamentalists' religious beliefs say otherwise.
So. Who's to say which religious belief is better? Who's to say which religious belief should be legislated and applied to everyone, regardless of (or absent of) their own religious belief? They claim the Supreme Court 'made up' privacy. Well, the Constitution also 'made up' the separation of church and state and that's pretty important, because that's how we do things around here. You know. In America.
I have no issues with people being privately ignorant. You want to think that zygotes are baby homunculi? Fine. Fill *your* quiver, baby.
But when folks start preaching to me and saying *my* religious beliefs should conform to theirs, have mercy, then it makes this Church Gal just plain pissed off.
My recommendation to all those bible-thumping, sex-hating misogynists out there: Read the Constitution and keep your hands off my ovaries AND my bible.
I wrote ALL a letter, a copy of which you can read at my website.
Here's what I wrote:
I am astonished and educated by what I see on this website. I had never considered the pill this way before.
My whole marriage I had believed that the pill was creating unity, bringing my husband and I closer together, freeing us from fear of another child we cannot afford. You have shown me a new way of thinking, about how the pill is destrying our sexual relationship.
Thank you, ALL. You have showed me that true unity can only be experienced outside the realm of contraception. From this day forward, I commit myself to sex the way you say it should be or no sex at all. My husband is going to miss having intercourse, but that's the way it should be.
To which they replied:
Thanks for your feedback regarding our educational efforts to expose the facts about the pill.
I might point out to you that the most telling statement in your email is this one:
My whole marriage I had believed that the pill was creating unity, bringing my husband and I closer together, freeing us from fear of another child we cannot afford.
First and foremost, while you may have thought that your fears were being allayed by using the pill, chances are a child or perhaps many children died because of the actions of the pill. This is a very hard truth to have to live with, I know and I speak from personal experience as I once was ignorant about these matters as well and now mourn the fact that my husband and I could have had many more children, each of whom we will not now know because of what we did, even though we never knew how these things worked. The sadness is still there.
At any rate, you might try bring unity and joy to your marriage by learning natural methods for spacing children. After all, children are gifts from God, and we have learned, as have many others, that the more we trust God and welcome His gift of a child, the happier a marriage will be. Try it.
Thanks again for your email.
Judie Brown
I tell you, I can't make this stuff up.
First and foremost, while you may have thought that your fears were being allayed by using the pill, chances are a child or perhaps many children died because of the actions of the pill. This is a very hard truth to have to live with, I know and I speak from personal experience as I once was ignorant about these matters as well and now mourn the fact that my husband and I could have had many more children, each of whom we will not now know because of what we did, even though we never knew how these things worked. The sadness is still there.
In other words, you are worrying that you might have killed a child, even though you can not say for certain if they were ever alive.
The relationship between mother and child starts with pregnancy, and pregnancy starts at implantation. Implantation, while not the beginning of life, begins the relationship between mother and child. Before implantation, the mother would have no idea that the child exists if conception happened by ordinary methods. If the mother knows not the existence of then child, then the mother has no duty to provide a womb.
As I stated in another e-mail....get your own life, you have 10 children and worry about supporting them without help.
Look around, see the homeless, the abused the unwanted children that have been born. Why don't you worry about taking care of them and let people make there own decisions about their own life and what would be best for them.
I'm glad I live in Quebec. None of that BS here. Every woman here has the right to choose what's right for her. No one has the right to invade our private lives and discuss our choices. A sane province!
Kids are OK if you want them. Using Natural Family Planning is ONLY good IF YOU WANT KIDS.
I am happily married but my husband and I live a "childfree" life by OUR CHOICE.
Being married does NOT mean a couple wants to "procreate". Having kids is NOT essential in a marriage, if you beleive that then you are selling yourselves short, as well as your marriage.
Till someone can give me scienctific proof as to when eliminations happen or how a women will know if one happens then I cannot understand the big stink.
Like someone said above these nut cases only want to "enslave" women to their "reproductive" organ. (or words to that effect)
To those who use B/C and/or choose to be childfree kudos to you.
"If there is a chance that human beings are going to be murdered, I am going to do everything in my power to help prevent that from happening"
Does everything in their power preclude the American Life League from chaining themselves to the White House fence demanding the Iraq war be stopped? Or does the definition of "human life" extend only to "heterosexual-Christian-American-pre-born"?
I can't believe in this day and age that so many women are believing the bs. I hope for God's sake that their men stick around, especially those of the Catholic faith, when they pump out 50 babies in the name of the Lord. I can't believe that some women are still enslaved to some medieval European dribble put out by the same priests and other uptight males who still fear women's sexuality and prowess in the marketplace.
And now they have stirred up the African American community to join their demented cause by "exposing" Planned Parenthood as some racist, genocidal organization. As an African American woman I will say so what if AA's agenda is "racist"? I guess it is better for some demented AA's who have joined the pro-life movement to force a woman to give birth to a child and bring it into a society in which the odds are still highly stacked against it's success. I guess they feel that is better to honor God and the "sanctity of life" and bring a child into a world where it will face disparities in housing, education and healthcare. I guess in their twisted brains it's best to "honor God" and bring a child into the world where it will become one of the hordes of downtrodden homeless AA adults walking around like zombies all over America's major cities.
Their agenda is laughable but oh so tragic to women who follow it blindly believing it's the "will of God" to honor life at all costs!
How many men have masturbated and killed millions of babies. Onon was killed by God for spilling his seed on the ground. How many of these jerks is God going to kill?
There isn't time to answer all of these points so I will answer just a few. To the African American women who supports Planned Parenthood, I would direct her to the writings of Margaret Sanger, the founder of that organization. What Sanger had to say about minorities and the poor will make it clear why people call PP a racist organization. Also, the protest is against the pill, not condoms. No one said condoms cause spontaneous abortions so condoms should not be part of this discussion. I want to address the author's claim that there's no medical evidence that the pill causes fertilized eggs to not implant. First, the physician's desk reference says the pill ends pregnancy in this way (it also says it contributes to strokes and other health problems). Also, there is a publised paper in which Dr. Joseph Stanford of Utah (and another Dr. whose name escapes me) in which they review research and conclude that the evidence is strong that the pill does cause spontaneous abortions. As for those who say life begins at implantation, the fertilized egg is growing before implantation and already contains all the keys to human life, including the genetic makeup of the person. As for all of you who claim men just want to enslave women by taking away their pills, read what Nobel Prize winning economist said about pill in his paper on the increase in unwed mothers. He said it caused the feminization of poverty.
When the egg is fertilized by ordinary methods, the mother is unaware that the fertilized egg even exists, and will remain unaware until implantation which starts pregnancy.
If she is unaware of the egg's existence, she has no duty to allow implantation. You've no duty to help those whom you don't know exist.
There isn't time to answer all of these points so I will answer just a few. To the African American women who supports Planned Parenthood, I would direct her to the writings of Margaret Sanger, the founder of that organization. What Sanger had to say about minorities and the poor will make it clear why people call PP a racist organization.
A lot of accusations of racism-mostly false-were leveled at Sanger even while she was alive. A percentage of the so-called racist quotes were claimed be be Sanger's were said by other people and falsely attributed to her, or just made up. She's been dead for years,but some pro lifers hate her so much they can't stop demonizing her. I direct you to this website which partially sets the record straight:http://www.ppct.org/facts/research/sanger.shtml
Also, the protest is against the pill, not condoms. No one said condoms cause spontaneous abortions so condoms should not be part of this discussion.
Anti-contraceptive groups mostly attack hormonal birth control,but some exaggerate the failure rates of condoms. I have a feeling condoms are next in the cross-hairs if the the Pill is ever recriminalized.
I want to address the author's claim that there's no medical evidence that the pill causes fertilized eggs to not implant. First, the physician's desk reference says the pill ends pregnancy in this way (it also says it contributes to strokes and other health problems). Also, there is a publised paper in which Dr. Joseph Stanford of Utah (and another Dr. whose name escapes me) in which they review research and conclude that the evidence is strong that the pill does cause spontaneous abortions.
Do you a source for this?
As for those who say life begins at implantation, the fertilized egg is growing before implantation and already contains all the keys to human life, including the genetic makeup of the person.
The egg can only develop to a certain point if it doesn't implant. Then it is washed out with the next menstrual flow.So much for those keys to human life.
As for all of you who claim men just want to enslave women by taking away their pills, read what Nobel Prize winning economist said about pill in his paper on the increase in unwed mothers. He said it caused the feminization of poverty.
What economist? What paper? Source?
Birth control prevents pregnancy, which of course prevents abortion. If you think birth control is an unclean substance like pork or shellfish, then you will have to choose between preventing abortions and upholding rules about ritual uncleanliness.
Coffee is thought to be an abortifacient.
Are the pro-lifers coming after coffee next?
As for Margaret Sanger being racist, I have noticed
how Ron Paul's long-history of racist rantings don't
bother in the least his strident pro-life base. This
is the same crowd that loudly condemns and misconstrues
remarks alledgely made by Margaret Sanger.
Isn't it interesting that the pro-life poster doesn't have time to answer legitimate questions about their positions
on these issues? Is it truly they don't have time, or is it more likely 1) they can't intelligently answer them
2) it involves refuting science. And I've yet to see any
statements made about ectopic pregnancies.
How about "Protest Penis Drugs Day '08"?
Viagra, Levitra, Cialis, and injectable ED drugs for guys seem to be just fine for these "Concerned Pharmacists and Rabid Fundies.
*pops birth control and gives these hypocrites the finger*
Anti-choice people are really crossing a line. I am pro choice and very pround of the fact, i also am on the pill and have been for 6 years. u think the pill is killing babys, well i think im being responsible by not having them. My mother has worked at a planned parenthood for a long time, and i am very proud of that fact. I think she does great things, and helps lots of women. You want to help people? then go help all of the children in this world that dont have anyone, or who have been abused by parents that never really wanted them but did anyways because it was the right thing to do. PLEASE get a life and leave us ALONE!
Basically, the pro-lifers want to ban the pill because it works. So surely the next logical step is to ban all contraception. Including abstinence. (So not being to get laid may make you a criminal. As if my life isn't hard enough.)
Yeah, this is about the liccle babies, not controlling women's bodies at all. Sure.
in the newspaper or seen anything on TV about the protests. So, how big of a flop were they?
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So basically... pro-lifers don't seem to care about the actual well-being of the child after being born, so long as it is alive?
Well, what if a woman is very poor or homeless, or way too immature to raise a child? If the woman cannot afford to raise a child properly (basic needs-food, shelter, clothing, education, etc.), what is the point? The child will suffer and in my opinion be worse off.
If a woman needs to wait until she is older, more mature, or financially in a more secure circumstance, or if she just plain does not want to have children, I think that is her choice to make.
The pill does not kill babies!!! This is so irritating to read. The pill merely prevents the sperm from implanted. At that point, there is no "child", unless you consider every living sperm and unfertilized egg a child. Then I think you have some bigger fish to fry, considering how many men masturbate and how many infinite numbers of sperm are being lost. Not to mention menstration. OMG! I kill a baby every month! Boy oh boy, I never knew I had it in me to be such a killer.
But at the end of the day, people, cells are cells. It's a sperm cell, not a baby. It's an egg cell, not a baby. Lets not get delusional here. I'm not about to argue when it becomes a life. But I feel that at that point, you may call someone who is scratching themself a murderer because they scraped off some of their arm cells and they died. And dentists too... oh how they make you bleed! Think of those blood cells dying!
Also, I'm not sure if anyone as addressed this yet or not, but what about rape? What is an innocent woman to do if she is raped? I would particularly like a pro-life woman to answer this question as I do not think a man could truely understand how awful it would be to be a rape-victim and carry, then birth, then raise the child of the rapist for the rest of her life. And try explaining to that kid who is father is. This is all assuming of course, that she is not a sleezy, sinning prostitute or anything. A perfectly good bible-humping christian girl.