I don’t know what to say. This is a Christian’s idea of an argument against abortion — not just exaggerating abortion into murder, but also by trivializing rape.
Atheists always use rape as an argument for justifying killing because they want to justify abortion. But is rape really that bad? It’s a horrible experience but you get over it with time. If you use it to justify murder you’re never going to get over it. Imagine you have a painful divorce. Would you murder your children after because they remind you of your ex husband? Of course not. I think any woman would easily tell you that a painful divorce is worse than rape but it’s not an excuse to kill your baby, so why is rape?
Christian women can also take a lot more than atheist women. Maybe this is part of the reason that atheists get so hung up about this. Christian women can turn to Christ or worship God in their hearts and endure great suffering. I’m not belittling it but think about it, no amount of suffering from rape is as great as the suffering our Lord suffered on the cross for our sins. You are the one who has to ask more true Christian women about this. You’re out of touch and trying to make a big deal out of something just for shock value.
This is the kind of person you don’t argue with…just walk away.
5) Please, no more with the emotional arguments. Commenters have accused me of this, but my examples are as nothing beside the people who have been dredging the swamps of womanhood to diminish my arguments. Really, folks: argument by emotion should be the preserve of the religious.
You dishonest walking bag of fecal matter. First, you make the argument that a baby is chopped up when in truth, most abortions occur before the fetus is that developed. You you go off about chopping up babies. Who is fucking playing with the facts and using an emotional argument.
You are also being dismissive of the physical and emotional pain of rape victims, calling it dredging the swamps of womanhood. You claim you are doing this because human life should not be taken yet you are pissing on the contents of human life.
So sorry that real women are busy talking about their real pain and real people are trying to learn what can be done to comfort them. So sorry that they do not take seriously your dishonest emotional argument.
You are a moral monster.
@SS
I’m just going to quote Kemist because it’s how I feel. You can’t actually take the argument away from rape, because the two are related. Either a woman has the right to protect her own body or she doesn’t.
Being a noob in these parts I can’t imagine that my vote will carry much weight but I gotta agree that SS needs a ban-hammering in the worst way.
Having read everything subsequent to my last post I feel the need to repeat this:
Thank you for sharing your stories. I believe that one of the great strengths of humanity is our social nature. A nature that allows us to lessen pain by sharing it to the benefit of both teller and listener.
I have been uplifted and inspired by the strength and courage I see in those here who have suffered so much. For every troll, for every asswipe like the one in the original post there are hundreds, maybe thousands of folks like yourselves. Folks who show us the best of humanity in the worst of situations. May you all find peace and joy in measures beyond counting.
This actually makes me sad for him. If he honestly thinks this way…its just terrifying that he is comparing rape to a divorce. Rape is violent and you can never get what they took bad and divorce you can get remarried. And furthermore….why would you kill someone who is already alive after a divorece….comparing a 7 year ld to a fetus is not a good one…
SlantedScientist:
Dude. I didn’t even do something this bad when I was trying to piss people off. At least I had the decency to say something truly hateful to make it clear I was being over-the-top on purpose.
Oh, and when were you going to get back to me on the three points I had? One would think you would spend the time formulating a coherent reply rather than butting in on a completely different conversation to spout the very same things over and over again. You aren’t improving my opinion of you by your behavior.
I honestly think all of you are looking at what this man says very narrow minded and blind almost.
i do think his wording is most wrong and trying to make rape sound not so bad is just horrible to say..
but i do think rape should never be the excuse to abort someone inside you…
im not a pro life fanatic… but i do believe unless you need to abort because of life threatening situations or your living in a 3rd world country in poverty, you should be selfless enough to take 9 months out of your life to let someone else have there’s.
there is no selfless reason to stop life, your given the power and responsibility make it… and people throw it away like it means nothing or because there just not ready, or its just not “there” plan.
stop having sex if you cant handle 9 months of labor… “all play and no work makes sally an mere toy”.
also, to all the women who are raped… im sorry there’s a gloomy sick side to this world… but there is… its not fair and for some to have a child by rape inside of you, well this is where you can decide if its still about you, or is it now about the life inside you?
its so much easier to say “there’s no way I can bare this thing inside of me” “no one can understand what im going through”.
It takes a lot more courage to say “Well this is what happened, so im going to make the best of things and give someone else a chance to see existence no matter how bleak it may be”. “I am not going to let my emotions make me irrational and make selfish choices”.
i expect negative responds to this, which is fine, it only shows me what i already know and have seen from narrow minded blind people who don’t want to see anything through the eyes of anyone’s but there own.
show me some rational response, not a bunch of haters ganging up on the internet.
Just when you think you’ve hit bottom, someone comes along with a bigger shovel.
Fuck me.
“Everyone who disagrees with me is wrong, so disagreeing with me only proves how wrong you are.”
You wouldn’t recognise it if you saw it.
stop having sex if you cant handle 9 months of labor… “all play and no work makes sally an mere toy”.
Because rape is just sex, just a difference in letters. And any woman who enjoys sex is a mere slut. We will not even talk about birth control.
Sorry, dude, but you are the narrow minded blind fool. But you are so brave to stand up to out closed minded hatred.
Yeah! Right!
Sidharta, the rational response is that it is a woman’s body. She, and only she gets to decide what happens to it.
Your outlook is the “you’re here to be an incubator, live with it” one. I do believe that medical science helped cure that problems back in the 1960’s when the contraceptive pill was developed.
If you’re female (doubtful), you have a rather poor opinion of your place in this world. If you are male (like me), your opinion has been duly noted and will be ignored.
Oh, by the way, we won’t be ganging up on the Internet, most of us appear to quite like it.
Sidhartha
It would appear you have thought the matter through on a level on par with your 3rd grade spelling.
For a start it’s NOT “someone else”, it’s a fucking bunch of cells, and “it” doesn’t have a right to infest my body without my consent. End of fucking argument. And by YOUR line of reasoning I could say you are being the selfish one. How dare you condemn a person to be born to a possible whole life of fucked up misery knowing it was the product of a violent act. And don’t even bother with the next inevitable step in your ridiculous theory which will no doubt be the ” adopt it out if you don’t want it” crap.
..christ, I don’t even know why I’m responding to you, you are beneath my contempt. I had more balls at the age of 15 than you will ever muster in your entire sorry existence.
Fuck off and die.
#506
Yes I am…
See?
After all, its all about making babies for God isn’t it?
Or could it be possible that a woman isn’t a baby incubating machine, and has rights and needs beyond the mechanics of her body, especially where events have been forced upon her.
Read through the thread – try to understand, women are people, not baby carrying machines. If we (society) don’t give them the help, support and choice they need for healthy emotional and social existence, what sort of screwed up world are these ‘precious’ new lives going to be thrown into!
Seems to me its another case of the religious being more concerned with what happens before birth and after death than real, honest caring, (which is actually far more difficult).
hey misogynist fuck @506, you get to talk about the “selfishness” of women only if you’ve donated all your spare organs to those in need (i.e. your spare eye, your spare kidney, your spare lung, etc.); if you haven’t, you don’t get to tell women to donate their entire bodies, and risk death and disfigurement, for a mere clump of cells.
SlantedScience,
That’s just absurd hyperbole, and you know it. How the fuck is anyone here behaving like “Muslim religious police”? Pray tell, have you been subjected to violence or coercion because of anything you’ve posted on Pharyngula? I rather suspect not. Rather, all that has happened is that you posted your opinion on a webpage, and other people disagreed with it. No one has “jumped on you with a baton”. Stop playing the martyr.
Having your opinions criticised on a web forum is not equivalent to physical violence. Not even close. I find it hard to believe that you’re enough of a fool to actually make this kind of silly comparison. And it’s more than a little offensive to the victims of the brutality of actual repressive regimes.
The issue is not really “when the foetus becomes a baby”, because that’s a largely unanswerable and meaningless question. Rather, the issue is one of the woman’s bodily autonomy. Bodily autonomy is something that the law ordinarily protects; just as we do not wish the state to force people to donate surplus organs without their consent, even to save someone else’s life, we should not, by the same token, wish the state to force a woman to bear a child without her consent. This applies a fortiori if she is a victim of rape, and has had her bodily autonomy violated and been forced to bear a child against her will: in such circumstances, forcing her to give birth essentially amounts to enslavement.
Since there is no magic bright line as to “when the foetus becomes a baby”, most jurisdictions’ laws draw a pragmatic line at or around the point of viability (i.e. when the foetus can survive independently outside the womb). People can disagree about whether this is right or not. But fundamentally, the whole “when does it become a baby?” thing is a red herring, because it’s an unanswerable question. The real relevant question is one of the proper extent of bodily autonomy, and a woman’s right to control her own body.
SlantedScience,
That’s a really stupid, offensive and insensitive remark. Have you actually read this thread? Several people here have talked about their actual experiences of rape, sexual violence and abuse, and recounted from personal experience how horribly traumatic it is. They’ve showed real strength and courage in being able to talk about it here; and those of us who are regulars here hope to be able to try and provide a supportive, understanding and caring environment, so far as we can do so.
But then we get clueless morons like you, accusing actual rape victims of making “emotional arguments”, and insulting them personally.
Damn. And I thought I lacked empathy. Right now, the impression I’m getting is that you’re either completely callous and cruel, or just a clueless idiot.
@Aquaria(#483):
I don’t know your situation so I do not know if the suggestion that follows is remotely possible.
Learn parts of Muay Thai/kick boxing, jujutsu (if possible instead of judo), aikijutsu (if possible instead of aikido).
None require a big body or being strong and they complement each other. Muay Thai is good for close in fighting for when you are grappled from the front. Judo/jujutsu can help you get people of your back, literally. And aikido/aikijutsu is good for wrecking arms of would be grapplers.
If you can go for the jutsu variants instead of the do variants. For example with aikido the basic you learn is grab an outstretched arm and used that arm as a lever to step around the attacker while he is stumbling behind you due to added momentum. With aikijutsu you use his and your momemtum to push the elbow beyond the locking position while at the same time stepping in to ensure a stumble which should allow you to twist the arm in such a way that there is a very good chance at a dislocated shoulder. Even if you don’t stretch, tear or dislocate anything the pain inflicted should result in your attacker being incapacitated enough that a swift knee (if standing)/boot (if on the ground) in the groin should take him out of the picture long enough for you to get away.
@Slanted Science:
You don’t understand that this is a highly emotional subject, you can’t ignore that because it interferes with your argument that the worst that happened is abuse of someone elses property (their body) and that the effects of that are temporary. And yes that is basically your ‘argument’ against abortion after a rape.
I didn’t dredge the swamps of womanhood since I used my own experience as a man. And I am, to put it bluntly, lucky that I am a man. I won’t ever have to worry about being dragged into a bush by someone with a sociopathic sense of entitlement to my body and then (possibly) murdered to prevent capture of the psycho.
@Anyone still following this thread:
The people who can speak out about this are on a road of recovery (even if the experience will keep having an impact the rest of our lives). We’ve breached a fairly important barrier that we can think about it without wanting to curl up in a fetal position trying to shutout the rest of the world and tell others about what happened.
But there are an unknown amount of people out there who can’t get to that point or are not there yet. Who recoil from even a friendly pat on the shoulder, just can’t go out in the dark and/or the general location where the assault happened. Who don’t have a social life (or a miserable one). Who can’t even comprehend anymore that they are in a rotten situation because they are so used to it.
It is almost impossible to reach out to these people because due to the way they (try to) live it is unoticable that they got raped.
Please go out and create awareness that rape is not something that can be tolerated or should be a suffering to be accepted /done in silence.
So I originally read the hideous quote from the top of the page and wanted to stop reading. However, I sent the link to my boyfriend and had a really interesting discussion about religion and abortion and murder. So i like that this thread lead to that discussion.
However, I do not like what this man is saying. what sort of christian man would say this to begin with? does it not say in the “good book” that people are supposed to love and treat everyone equally, at least to my interpretation. I am not a “christian” but i was raised as one.
This sort of thing really begs the question: why? why are there such idiots in the world who have no idea what the heck they are talking about?
This is something i bet some of my uneducated relatives would say without thinking. i would hope not, but i know that the lack of a good education system leads to people continuing to think illogically and stubbornly stick to ideas that don’t have any basis in modern society.
he is operating under the influence of alcohol-induced-divine hallucinations or something because this ignorant speech is what causes most people to think all religious people are crazy nutjobs like him.
it’s an insult to the intelligent and logic that i know this country has.
anyways, i also wanted to agree with everyone above about how rape is so obviously more horrible than a “bad divorce”. my friend was raped by her father. She ended up with 3 kids before even starting high school because in my town, abortion was frowned upon and she lived next to the church. her mother finally divorced her father, after being beaten. there is no way to imagine the suffering those two women went through.
so i hope the stupid so-called “christian” gets a swift kick in the face for being an idiot and a hypocrite.
I made an account to this website I may never see again just to say.
WHAT THE HECK!
Me, myself, being a rape victim was just utterly shocked by this woman’s comments. “you get over it” It has been 13years and I still have nightmares. I myself, am a Christian woman, and I myself would NEVER have an abortion, but I do believe there are many circumstances where an abortion is OK.
I don’t know. I’m just shocked. I hate how some people claim to be Christians then go bash on others. Its not a Christian thing to do. I don’t know. I’m just in utter shock. :/
Very disappointed in how some people can be.
Reading the above (initial) comment sickened me. What made it worse was reading the subsequent comments that had quoted passages that were not included above. The one about how a husband can not rape his wife? My mother in law endured years of mental, physical and sexual abuse at the hands of her (now ex) husband. It’s possible, it happens, and I would love to sit this bastard down in front of her for half an hour just so he can hear first hand stories (and lasting effects) of all the things husbands can do to wives- since according to him it’s perfectly ok.
I must say, all in all I am very thankful for StumbleUpon bringing me to this site. Having been surrounded by religious zealots my whole life (yet never once believing and always questioning what they were saying) I am happy to see that there others out there with like minded opinions as myself. :)
I’m not sure what kind of psychology it takes to troll a thread like this. That is just appalling.
You’re correct. Your examples are nothing.
You, like many before you who come here with disgusting, idiotic, stupid, unsupportable, etc.. arguments immediately fall to the claim of “Oh you guys are close minded and attack anyone who doesn’t agree with you”.
Well there are opinions that are so vile and disgusting or so stupid that they deserve to be attacked.
You have found some of these arguments / opnions and “the regulars” are calling you out on it.
It is possible to hold opinions that are so stupid, disgusting, insensitive and moronic that a large group of people will agree they are all of the above.
You’ve managed to hold some of those opinions.
Congratulations.
So take your “poor oh woe is me I’m being persecuted by people who don’t agree with me be cause they are telling me they don’t”, and shove it sideways up your ass.
tolerance ≠ respect
“Ignoring all of the Christian BS, this person has a point. Rape is bad (in fact worse than he’s making it out to be) but murder is still worse”
It took me a while to realize he was talking about abortion. Again…YOU WARE BELITTLING RAPE by saying it’s not as bad as abortion.
morality test. There’s a woman being violently raped in the room…in the next room there’s a freezer full of embryos that has just lost power, the embryos will defreeze and die unless you act. You can either help the 1 woman or save the 300 embryos. What do you do?
“Again, my friends: I am off to bed. May you sleep well and gain some tolerance as you do so.
Because, for sure, your lack of that resource is becoming tiresome.”
No, There are some things for which there is no justification for tolerance, respect or negotiations. There are some things to which there is no compromise, not even in face of Armageddon. You’ve crossed that line.
“I honestly think all of you are looking at what this man says very narrow minded and blind almost.
i do think his wording is most wrong and trying to make rape sound not so bad is just horrible to say..
but i do think rape should never be the excuse to abort someone inside you…
im not a pro life fanatic… but i do believe unless you need to abort because of life threatening situations or your living in a 3rd world country in poverty, you should be selfless enough to take 9 months out of your life to let someone else have there’s.”
Here is another one…and I am trying to summon the patience of a GOD not to curse out this failed abortion.
Imagine that you are shot in the chest. Without medical treatment there is a good chance that you will bleed out if we don’t remove the bullet…however you’re a rare blood type and we have 5 patients in the hospital on the waiting list for organs. You will tell me that we should not intervene to stop the consequences of violent crime so we can use you as an organ bank?
For all this “humanism doesn’t let humans be people since they see us all just as meat machines” you really fucking argue that women are just biological machinery. Tell you what, think how the person aborted feels about it. They don’t. No mind is developed, there is no possibility to form an opinion or awareness. They’re not harmed because as non-existent potential persons they have nothing yet to loose.
So, if a child of less than 10 years of age was raped, and became pregnant, you would refuse to let her have an abortion? Or, would you refuse to let a pregnant woman have an abortion if remaining pregnant would mean dying of heart failure?
The answer for psychotic misogynists like SS is yes, yes on both accounts.
He’s made it perfectly clear that he hates women, doesn’t give a damn what happens to them and that anything they say is just a useless emotional argument (you know, cuz his sociopathic lack of empathy is totally the right lens through which to view this issue), so yeah – he doesn’t care if women die. And a female child is still female so who cares what happens to her either.
He’d likely only cares about male fetuses being aborted.
I’ve ignored the pro-lifers (‘cept if it’s a woman) here so far but have to ask this. If you had an alien life form which started developing inside you, would its right to life outweigh the right of the host to remove it?
Sidharta:
A lot of us would love to see the only abortions be ones where it’s a choice between foetus and mother. However, we would like this to be because the only pregnancies are wanted ones, not because women are forced to carry their babies. Unfortunately, birth control is not the easiest thing to obtain and most types either have many negative side effects (the Pill) or become very expensive if you have sex more than once a day and aren’t terribly reliable or pleasant (condoms). Until we come up with a good means of cheap, easy, (relatively) side-effect free and readily available birth control and educate everyone it its use, we’re not helping women avoid having to go through a medical procedure with potential risks and side-effects.
Abortion is one of those cases where you can very easily have a “slippery slope”. It’s easy to say “Yeah, only medically necessary abortions should be performed”, but that’s more open than you think. Medically necessary for whom? Aborting the foetus at risk of losing both foetus and mother seems logical to pretty much everyone (RCC aside), but what about aborting a foetus with a known medical condition that will cause it to suffer for a short time (days? months? years?) after birth before dying? How about a foetus with a condition that will lead to it being little more than a vegetable for its entire life? Now we get more grey, because the next step is foetuses with degenerative genetic illnesses or illnesses that cause severe mental retardation. Do you allow them to be aborted, knowing they will never live a full life and the parents aren’t able to handle them? Some of these cases likely include foetuses damaged by mothers who drink, smoke or do drugs. Is there a difference if the foetus is damaged by the mother rather than by chance and genetics?
I can go one from there, but I think you get the point. There are so many scenarios for why a woman could want an abortion and the law can’t decide each one individually. A rape victim forced to carry the product of that rape could seriously damage the foetus because of her stress, not to mention the fact that she might well turn to drinking or doing drugs as a method of coping. Again, do we allow her to abort or force her to carry and have a child with FAS? If we allow abortion in cases of rape, how do we determine what “counts” as rape and whether it’s “real” or not? Do we demand convictions of the accused rapist before allowing abortion? Do we just cage all pregnant rape victims up to ensure they don’t damage their foetuses? Do we make a distinction between someone who was using all available methods of birth control and had a freak pregnancy and someone who didn’t try or do we just force both to carry? Do we draw the line for people of various ages, allowing rape victims under a certain age to abort? The questions can go on even further.
Really, abortion is an all or nothing game. Either you allow all abortions or you allow none. If you allow all, there will indeed be people treating it carelessly, but they will at least not be treating a child that way. If you ban it, you have almost as many performed, just in secret and at risk to the mother and you will have mothers dying because they can’t abort the foetus that is killing them and babies dying because the woman that was forced to carry them can’t care for them on top of that. I choose to accept that some people will treat abortion like it means nothing and focus on preventing abortions long before they’re even a consideration: by donating time and money to family planning clinics who distribute birth control, by campaigning for government funding of birth control and by doing my best to push the idea of research into better birth control methods. I’m pro-choice in that I want women to have the choice, but I still want to help them so they never have to make the choice. If you really want to be “anti-abortion”, that’s the only way I’ve seen that you can do it without also being anti-woman.
I orignally read this, posted and fled since it was too painful. And for you assholes out there, no I’m not whining. I mean I became physically ill, had nightmares and a panic attack. I’m still shaking and am honestly scared to sleep. I’m depressed, have tried to commit suicide several times before and used to cut myself. It’s not something you get over in the sense that you can go back to the way you were before, it’s something you get through and live with, if you can make it. My best friend growing up couldn’t deal with it anymore after having several miscarriages and ended her life. I came back here, because the show of support here helps. It hurts and this thread still makes me cry but I honestly have never experienced such a wonderful show of support from so many people. Thank you.
My father started raping me at a young age and continued for a long time. He didn’t use a condom and BC was a no no because “that’s only for sluts” (his words not mine) so do you honestly expect me to have kept the ball of cells that resulted from incest?
WTF is wrong with you? When you’re raped everything is taken away, your security, your privacy, you feel violated in the worst way and keeping a child resulting from it is just too much too handle. Besides, who would take care of it? I had kept a baby from one of the times I was raped, it would be just another welfare kid, that people like you so clearly couldn’t give a shit less about. You clearly know nothing about rape and it’s effects, nor do you know anything about pregnancy and child rearing. It’s not a life inside you, it’s a ball of cells. It’s not a someone, it’s a something using your womb as an incubator. It doesn’t look like a cute little baby pro-lifers plaster their billboards with.
(I’m not saying all pregnancies that result from rape should be aborted, that’s the woman individual choice, but I honestly couldn’t handle it)
We’re lucky to have you here then.
Seriously.
I reached a point of desperation, but I’m a strange person. I’m a natural big risk taker, inherently competitive, and prone to spontaneous actions. I will try ANYTHING TO WIN.
It took a lot of abuse, all the way through childhood and into adulthood, to wear my psychotic optimism down.
So….
I called a man I didn’t know (I had met him one time at a party) from the phone book and got him to make a date with me instead of killing myself the night I had planned for my suicide. I had myself all ready, took a picture of myself on one of those disposable cameras, sat down on my bed and thought “Wait… let’s call a total stranger instead. What’s the worst that could happen? I die? lol”
That action had consequences of its own I guess, although not from him. He turned out to be the person who helped me get away from my abusive bf.
Even I look back at that one and think… really? I mean, how did I not scare him? I must have managed to hide my emotions quite well. Well that and being very vague about how I acquired his number.
Wow!
This is just the sickest thing ever…
So caring, is it?!
“teased from the womb”
Who IS this cretin?
Teased from the womb? Try autonomically ripping the camel through the eye of the needle.
I call Poe. There’s no way any human being on earth would use that phrase seriously. No fucking way. This has to be some kind of sickos idea of a funny.
Who the hell would say that with a straight face?
I always knew Christians and anti-choicers were, probably 95% bigots, assholes, or worse, but now I’m just sick at the thought that I have to share the universe with them. Given how delightful their avatars are.
StupidShithead wrote:
You don’t really think we’re stupid enough to believe you’re an alias of the ACTUAL blog owner, do you? Then why do you think we’re just going to ignore PZ’s thread as created in order to veer off into wacko-world with you?
I normally enjoy the playfulness of regular posters feasting on trolls, but if this one is posting the same nonsense on multiple threads here, I think I’ll join the banhammer crowd on this one. The threads are long enough as it is these days.
No point in banning him. He’s insignificant.
I find his attempt to assert control here funny. No one listens to him. We talk about what we want to and he can’t do anything but whine.
And feel victimized because no one cares to listen to his inane babble.
In general, I usually consider it a waste of time to argue points with people such as this, but I just cannot get over the whole “divorce is more traumatic than rape” thing. I mean, seriously? How can that be said with a straight face? I think this guy could benefit from a conversation with my husband’s first wife. They had quite a messy divorce and in the beginning of it all she was more than quite upset, as it wasn’t her idea. She is also a rape victim. She was raped as a teenager, about 10 years ago. Twice. And now he’s been caught and she’s having to relive the whole thing in court. So maybe this guy should ask her if she agrees that rape isn’t as bad as divorce.
It’s not possible to enlighten Denialists until they acknowledge that the phenomenon of denial is controlling their lives.
Denialism: How Irrational Thinking Hinders Scientific Progress, Harms the Planet, and Threatens Our Lives
QFT
Oh c’mon y’all. The point may have been in-artfully stated but it was strong on the merits from a philosophical perspective.
Rape, which is very very very bad and leaves tremendous scarring, happens to an innocent victim. That victim may not feel appreciably better, and in fact would, in all likelihood, feel much worse becoming a perpetrator of murder on another innocent victim, in this case their own child.
As to the definition of murder it is the taking of human life, so, at least philosophically, all of your hate speech and chest pounding is much ado about nothing.
Just a little over a hundred years ago it was legal for one man to own another in the U.S., but it was never right. Legalizing abortion does not make it right either. Theists know that there are higher laws and this poster was simply trying to explain that.
He/she did a pretty good job, but, in the process, left an unfortunate opening for verbal jabs. In my opinion the posts which took such jabs are creepier than the original post.
Jeff–
I take it you spend your spare time outside military recruiting stations, telling the recruiters and passersby that however bad things feel already, they would feel worse if they go overseas and murder innocent foreigners.
I get so fscking sick of men who invoke slavery as a reason why it’s acceptable for them to enslave women, and use our bodies without any concern for our needs or choices.
If you don’t want an abortion, don’t have one. If you can’t face the idea of your get being aborted, go directly to the urologist and get a vasectomy.
jeffpayne:
You’d be wrong, dipshit. If you’re so convinced this is so, why don’t you relate the story or your rape and consequent pregnancy? What’s that, haven’t been raped? Haven’t been pregnant?
Theists don’t know jack shit. They have an imaginary psycho sky dad that provides them justification for holding inhumane views and acting inhumanely towards others. There is no higher law.
Killing the thing inside of me that I don’t want inside of me is self defense.
I’m the victim.
No, I wouldn’t feel bad about it. I would hate it.
HATE it.
Hate it enough to rip it out if some one else doesn’t.
Don’t presume you know what other people will think.
@jeffpayne
No it isn’t, typical fundie rape apologist. Are you ‘murdering’ someone acting out of self defense. Are you ‘murdering’ someone when you kill an enemy in war. Certainly not, and more importantly not by U.S. legal definition either. Stop pretending that we all live in your fundie wet dream and and that when someone has an abortion they are murdering their bayyyybeeees.
Typical fundie false equivalence of slavery to abortion. This is an slap in the face to african-americans and their descendants. If you were a slave for a fucking day, one fucking day you would happily VOLUNTEER to do those abortions that you think are murder.
Obviously you have no experience dealing with rape victims. As if the rape wasn’t a complete mind fuck lets just mess with this persons well being a little more and make them sit through 9 months of fucking torture, and hope they don’t commit suicide.
it was strong on the merits from a philosophical perspective.
Jeff then proceeds to fail to explain why, using even poorer philosophical arguments.
Sorry delusional fool. A) Abortion is not murder. Trying to claim it is shows a weak mind who doesn’t understand basic definitions. B) It isn’t your body, ergo you have no choice or opinion in the matter. Unless you are willing to put up a bond for the cost of raising a child to 18. At the moment that is a quarter of a million dollars. That would be taking responsibility for making the decision for another human being, namely the woman. Until then, STFU.
Different women have different responses to pregnancies produced by rape. Some continue the pregnancies; some don’t. Some allow their infants to be adopted; some parent their infants themselves. How arrogant to figure that there’s only one true way to respond to such a horrible situation. And why do the people who talk disproportionately about abortion seem to be those who will never need them? I’d give more weight to stories from women who’d dealt with pregnancies resulting from rape, even if I wouldn’t give them the right to make decisions for other women.
Theists? The same idjits who cannot present conclusive physical evidence for their imaginary deity? Hence their babble is a book of mythology and fiction by parsimony? Those theists know about higher laws? Without a real deity and true holy book? I must have missed the memo. They are delusional fools, and nothing they say is of consequence.
Forced birthers never seem to want to answer this one, but maybe jeff here will take a, er, stab at it:
You equate abortion with murder, with the killing of an innocent child. A terrible crime, to be sure. What should the legal penalty be, for the doctor, and for the woman who has the procedure?
Which only helps to show that phylosophy has very little use in the real world.
Awww, look, everyone. jeffpain is here to tell us silly wimminfolk what’s best for us. If not for guys like him, we might be left to make our own decisions, and then who would protect us from ourselves?
On the discussion boards I frequent this type of lunatic rantings are not uncommon. I’m so glad I left this disgusting religion.
Hey, I’m pro-life. Except for like, two times.
“I’m not belittling it but think about it, no amount of suffering from rape is as great as the suffering our Lord suffered on the cross for our sins.”
I like how he conveniently forgets that Jesus volunteered to “die for us” whereas rape victims by definition don’t. And not to make assumptions or anything but it seems like knowing that your death is going to save souls or whatever would make it easier to deal with.
Yeah, I’ve known two rape victims who carried their child to term. One killed herself less than a month after the birth of her child due to a combination of post-partum and PTSD from her attack. The other held onto her child long enough to get a DNA match on him to the man who raped her so that the police could convict him. She was 15 at the time she had her son and her rapist was 22 so they at least managed to get him on stat rape: the jury wouldn’t convict on full-out rape because there was “no evidence that she didn’t entice him”. He almost got off on stat rape by claiming she had said she was 18.
So yeah… I don’t buy the theory that most (or even a large number of) rape victims would have been better off not getting an abortion.
I have yet to meet a rape victim over 18 who was forced to get an abortion. There are plenty (in countries where abortion is illegal or where you have to PROVE rape to get one) that have been forced to bear the child. No one is going to tell a screaming rape victim that she wants her baby that she can’t have it unless it’s going to kill her. At worst, you might hear someone ask “are you sure you’ll be able to care for it?” For women who want abortions… well, the walk of “shame” through the protesters screaming invectives, calling the women “sluts” and even spitting on them is hard enough for any woman, never mind a rape victim. I know the normal response is “well, she shouldn’t have an abortion if she’s not willing to face up to the reality of what she’s doing”, but that is not what those protesters are making her do. Really, they’re just telling her she’s wrong to expect to be able to control what goes on in and what happens to her body. Just like the rapist did, only with words instead of physically. It still does more damage than any of the people yelling such cruel things could understand, even if they took the time to try (which they never do).
One of the things I have always been grateful for is the fact that I was on birth control when I was raped. If I hadn’t been and I had got pregnant, I would likely not have had an abortion and would have ruined my life to have a child I didn’t ask for or want. Now, that would have been my choice, but it should be every woman’s choice. Having a child that you didn’t plan for can ruin careers, educations and lives even when it’s not forcefully conceived. It’s up to each woman to determine if ridding themselves of a bundle of cells that might become a baby is better or worse than potentially throwing their lives away. For most, it isn’t and I could never blame them for that. It will upset some that they have to make that decision, but neither you nor I nor anyone else can determine if that upset is worse than the upset of what they will have to go through, even if they give the child up for adoption.
Sad. Very, very sad. Nauseatingly sad.
The babble and koran are full of rape and other grizzly, heinous crimes against women. I wonder what the statistics are on xtian rapists? Hummmmm… I mean besides the clergy.
@jeffpayne(#538):
I’m amazed that you can still function with the amount of cognitive dissonance you must experience.
How else can you say I want to enslave all women in one sentence and then say that slavery was (and still is) wrong in the next.
You can deny all day long but trying to deny women the right to control their body is an attempt at enslaving them.
Oh and since you seem to be a bible thumper I’ll think I’ll grab a bit out of there showing that god does not see an unborn baby as a person.
Exodus 21:22-25. Causing a miscarriage is punishable by a fine. Harming the mother invokes eye for an eye.
Seeing that an abortion is nothing but an intentional miscarriage and that in those 4 verses causing a death is punishable by death the only logical conclusion would be that an abortion is not a murder otherwise the penalty for causing a miscarriage would be death and not a fine.
I would also suggest against invoking some nebulous higher laws that people should adhere too. You don’t want planes crashing into skyscrapers every time one takes of.
D.N. wrote:
“Are you ‘murdering’ someone acting out of self defense. Are you ‘murdering’ someone when you kill an enemy in war.” (sic)
The problem with your assertion is that further clarification would add the word “innocent” to the definition of murder, thus making murder the taking of innocent human life. The problem with this definition, although universally accepted for hundreds of years in western civilization, is that it further strengthens my case, while dramatically weakening yours.
As for equivalency of slavery to abortion, you may pick any number of old customs and laws that sanctioned behavior that we now consider inappropriate. I never made them equivalent, except to point out that whether or not something is legal or not is not the acid test of whether it is moral or appropriate. For you to claim I made more of it, create that straw man and then beat it up, proves nothing but your own inability to construct a lucid argument.
On another note:
Ichthyic, Can you point out the flaw in my case? I’m sure it wasn’t presented perfectly, but your assertion doesn’t weaken it, whereas there may be a legitimate argument or two that would. In fact, being imperfect myself, I’m sure there are a number of weaknesses. The way to defeat it, however, is with some argumentative counter-punching, not a mere assertion. At least that’s how it’s usually supposed to be done.
You ARE making more of it because you clearly state that there are higher laws that people should adhere to.
But like I said earlier be careful with what you are demanding you don’t want ever airplane in the world ending in a skyscraper.
@jeffpayne
You still haven’t proven that a fetus is ‘innocent’ (undefinable here) or that it can be considered ‘life’ in a legal or moral sense. And its a good thing that it isn’t too. If you think that a fetus is a person under the law, than any woman who miscarries by tripping and falling over etc. is guilty of manslaughter. And that any pregnant woman who does not eat adequate meals is guilty of reckless endangerment. After all, they are endangering “innocent life” in your fucked up worldview.
Correct. Something that is legal may not by be morally appropriate to YOU. There are many things that are morally questionable to some people but are still LEGAL. For example we could argue that fat people should not have to be treated at the hospital. We may not LIKE it when fat people are getting medical treatment after all its their fault they are fat, but fat people deserve the same medical treatment as everyone else.
A question for you jeffpayne because you seem to think the world is black and white and that every embryo is a fucking baybeeee. You can save 50000 petri dishes of embryos (50000 embryos) OR (mutually exclusive – no waffling or tricks or mitigating circumstances allowed) one 5 year old normal child. They are both about to be incinerated but you only have time to choose one. Which one do you choose. If you choose the petri dishes you are a fucking nut. plain and simple
JeffPayne, where does your imaginary deity, who causes orders of magnitude more abortions than caused by humans, get his death sentence? My statement is just as inane as anything you are saying, except for that deity causing and carrying out more abortions…
An embryo is not a child.
An embryo is not a child.
An embryo is not a child.
How many times does this need to be said?
JeffPayne, tell me, seriously. Would you rather save a petri dish full of five embryos from a burning building, or a single 5 year-old child?
Five rather than one. Wouldn’t you pick the five? Five over one? If they’re all equivalent, wouldn’t you?
Which do you pick, and why?
Sorry DN – I was working off a cached page and didn’t see you just asked the same question.
It isn’t innocent. It’s malignant.
It doesn’t matter if it intended to be there or not. I didn’t intend for it to be there.
And now it will hurt me, and take from me, and cause me pain.
It should die.
Also I do not see a fetus as a child. A child is already in the world.
If I saw a fetus as a child there would be no point in bothering with an abortion.
If the thing just poofed into existence I’d just find a legal way to disown it financially and move on.
Oh yeah, and before you tell me I’m crazy let’s just accept that I am.
Crazy.
So now why should my crazy ass be forced to give birth to a rapists baby that I hate and want to kill?
Sounds like a GREAT idea.
I don’t speak for anyone else, but as for myself. It’s not a good idea. It took me years to get my anger issues under control. Years I wouldn’t have had with a small child.
Does that sound like a good situation?
Ol’Greg:
If they poofed into existence, I’d be doing time in prison.
Lol. I’m sorry, that’s darkly humorous to me.
But yeah, I probably would be in an institution some where myself.
In my fortunate case I’ve never been pregnant. I’m lucky.
See that’s the thing these people don’t get. I’m *lucky* despite use of contraception not to be pregnant. And no, in my case, I have never been promiscuous. After the terrible first relationship, I spent 8 years with the next person. The body count here is very very very low.
No matter the cost I have stayed on hormonal birth control out of fear that I might end up pregnant *some how* although it is hard and expensive to do so. There are consequences, but I’m willing to face them.
I do this because I don’t know for sure what my plans will be in the future. Otherwise I’d have my tubes seared.
At the same time, despite being on birth control things can and do go wrong.
Now, today, if I got pregnant (hugely unlikely) I have the luxury to consider having a child.
LUXURY.
Let that sink in.
I have money, work, social support, a place where I live. Things I did not have before.
I am stable enough that I could likely handle it. I have a low risk of hurting my child.
Now.
Today.
And today would never have been here for me, not this today anyway, if I had been sentenced to childbirth and maternal enslavement.
I don’t know about the rest of you but the fact that this guy chose to make the post using Comic Sans really just adds insult to injury. As for the comment, having gone through a messy divorce and being able to imagine someone forcibly and usually violently raping me……come on get real. I would be appalled but this type of stupidity from “religious” people seems to be becoming mainstream. Thankfully I think that evolution is working on thinning the numbers. Perhaps in a few hundred more years we will have bred out people like this.
Ol’Greg:
It can be humorous, simply because I’ve never been subjected to a forced pregnancy/birth. If I had been, I’m afraid it would be all too true. There are good reasons I have never had children, prime among them that I have never wanted them. A lot of forced birthers simply don’t grok that – they assume “baaaybee magic” would come into play and it would all be sunshine and unicorn farts.
I got pregnant once. On two types of birth control. I had an abortion as soon as I had confirmation. Afterwards, I got an IUD and had myself fixed as soon as possible. Getting an abortion was nothing but a relief to me; it’s not like I went around with the attitude of “who cares, I can always abort” though.
^That right there. Today wouldn’t have happened for me either, under those circumstances.
Worry not, Garthurian – PZ sets off insane/abhorrent/ridiculous comments in Comic Sans himself, so that they’re easy to spot.
@ slantedscience
I’d strongly recommended the use of contraceptives to avoid getting into the situation where you have to make the decision weather to have an abortion or not to. Since both of us are male, this is a topic that only affects us logically and morally in the limited number of cases when our genetic material is involved. What ever other pregnancies are in question you and me have to be silent about the particular case. It is a matter of question between the partners, who have to decide if this pregnancy is desired or not, where the female has the last word, for given, obvious, logical reasons.
In any cases, the respective woman is the sole person to make the final decision, I hope with consent or at least support of the responsible male.
Having said that, the consequence for a free legal system would be to endorse the question of abortion to the affected women only. Other terms needed to be clarified would be the financial question, which is more tricky, because it involves more than one person, but asides that there is no further legislation necessary.
So, here you have your “abortion only” response.
Do something with it or ignore me.
Y.
btw: I am glad my wife does not read this blog. Every woman in my family was raped at some point in her life. It is a horrible experience way too many decent girls and women had to experience in their life. My feelings are with you, ladies.
Yubal:
Thank you, Yubal. The “decent” in your comment should be stricken – that’s a value judgment, and it’s not needed. It’s insulting. A woman who has had an active sex life can be raped, and it is a horrible, traumatic event. A prostitute can be raped, and it’s a horrible, traumatic event. Xians think such women don’t deserve the “decent” label. Someone deciding a woman doesn’t deserve the “decent” label makes it much worse and it’s a form of slut shaming.
I don’t think prostitutes can not be decent persons, but you are quite right, I used a moral narrowing which was uncalled for.
my regrets,
Y.
Thank you, Yubal. I think a lot of times, these distinctions simply aren’t thought through, rather than being an attempt to discriminate.
Nerd,
I haven’t claimed to believe in a diety, imaginary or otherwise, but the argument is fairly simple. The Author/Creator/Sustainer is free to write, rewrite and change the narrative. The characters in said narrative are not.
That’s the gist of the whole thing from many Theists perspective.
Any other name for an imaginary deity is still an imaginary deity. Parsimony. Still no evidence for any kind of deity presented. What a loser. Evidence, that which separates the delusional from the rational. JP, you are an delusional fool. Which makes your opinions delusional and irrational. Welcome to science.
JeffPayne, you’re a clueless idiot. It is not up to you to decide whether a rape victim should or should not have an abortion. She has, by definition, been impregnated without her consent: and in such circumstances, to force her to carry the foetus to term and give birth against her will would be nothing short of enslavement. Whether you think she should give birth or not is neither here nor there; it’s a matter of her bodily autonomy.
“The problem with your assertion is that further clarification would add the word “innocent” to the definition of murder, thus making murder the taking of innocent human life. ”
I’m taking a jump and presuming your a christian. Therefore you believe in original sin. Therefore there is no such thing as ‘innocent human life’. Funny how you argue that all are sinners when it comes to scarring people into belief and then turn around and argue that children are blameless.
The bible itself encourages the murder of your enemies children. What else could you call the child of your rapist? A Rape victims abortion is 100% justified by old testament text with no New Testament contradicting it.
Ing,
You make a good point, which is why I stipulated in the first instance that I do not (and did not) include the word “innocent” in the definition. It is included, however, in a legal sense, and to those that include it, it means that the person who has murdered has not posed an imminent threat to the life of the murderer.
The argument, from a pro-choice perspective, is that, if even the lifestyle of the mother is threatened that the abortion is therefore justifiable homicide.
You are making unwarranted assumptions about me because I defended the overall logic of the original post. I would like to see discussions of this nature occur without impugning the character of people involved on either side of this troubling issue.
I hope I am conducting myself in that way.
I personally have never disagreed, here or elsewhere, with a woman’s right to choose, I just want this most serious decision to be chosen very carefully, because (obviously) it cannot be undone, and there is a great deal of research to suggest that it (the choice to abort) is a decision that many women never emotionally recover from.
jeffpayne | May 21, 2010 7:52 AM:
In other words, you believe power to be the only required justification.
Fucking lie. Abortion not equal to homicide. Only liars and godbots make that claim. Another gap in your logic, just like your imaginary deity.
Start with you taking loaded statements like abortion equals homicide off the table. Which is very impugning on the character of women. And belies what you want from the other side. Show some leadership by actually discussing as you would like us to discuss with you…
Nerd of Redhead wrote:
“Any other name for an imaginary deity is still an imaginary deity. Parsimony. Still no evidence for any kind of deity presented. What a loser. Evidence, that which separates the delusional from the rational. JP, you are an delusional fool. Which makes your opinions delusional and irrational. Welcome to science.”
Once again, I am not making the argument that God exists, although as a Christian and a man of science I am not uncomfortable making it.
I was simply stipulating to one (of many, I suppose) Theistic answers to your query as to why God (imaginary or otherwise) is not guilty of murders in the case of numerous spontaneous abortions and miscarriages.
I don’t control threads on Mr. Myer’s blog, but I do try to be courteous and professional enough to confine myself to the topic at hand. I do agree that there can be many legitimate permutations thereof and I’m not accusing you of “rabbit chasing,” it’s just that I’ve discussed the existence of deity often enough to know that I don’t have time, or the inclination to enter that fray on this thread.
On another note: I’m content to let the reader’s decide for themselves which of us seems to be responding the most rationally and which, if either, is delusional.
I think we all learn more when we avoid the temptation to feel that there must be a clear cut winner on subjects that have been debated by the finest minds for literally centuries.
I, personally, find the whole “lets discuss this without emotion” assertion to be one of the more offensively misogynistic aspects of pro-forced childbirth supporters.
It’s an emotional issue. We’re talking about the very lives of real women – about their health, safety and rights. It’s not just an academic exercise.
People who want to argue it sans emotion are simply trying to justify an unjustifiable position with a veneer of logic.
And, they are liars anyway, since their entire argument rests on appeals to emotion using imaginary babies.
llewelly,
Power is only one of many attributes attributed to God by the majority of Theists, and my statement should not be construed to imply that God’s power is the only reason, or even the primary reason, that justifies His behavior.
I fear we are chasing our tails. As no one has so far seen fit to wrestle with my original point in any rational way, I will assume it stands, or at the very least does not resonate in any interesting way with this audience.
I’ll reiterate it briefly on the way out:
If this post is Mr. Myers’ example of the “creepiest Christian comment yet,” as his headline states, then He has not been paying much attention.
jeffpayne, the way you insist that traumatized women conduct themselves according to your principles is an inspiration for us all. And the way that you ignore the testimonials of those women who have gone through this experience touches me deeply. I am sure I am not alone in having this deep seated feeling.
Or maybe you don’t have the capacity to understand why it is.
I’m going to go with that explanation considering your comments.