@moonbus saidI have to admire the fact that despite the evidence of history and current affairs your still of the mind that we are not just a clever and dexterous brute of the lowest order.
Wrong (as usual). The strongest urge there is is hunger. Even hunger, one can rise above. Anyone who has fasted knows that he can master his stomach, instead of being mastered by his stomach. Anyone who has fasted knows that he can choose when, what, and how much to eat, instead of stuffing his face every time his belly growls. Anyone who has decided to end his life can just ...[text shortened]... of us are, anyway.
"Don't hang back with the brutes!" Tennesse Williams, Streetcar Named Desire
@kellyjay saidAgain the presumption that a foetus is a ‘someone’ as if you’ve already won that argument, if your legal argument is based in any measure on the existence of god or gods then it is no legal argument at all.
Slap a definition on someone to make them less than they are so you can feel good
about killing them has been done quite a bit through the ages; some lies simply
work with many no matter how smart they think they are.
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/political-commentary/think-christianity-is-anti-abortion-think-again-1374697/
Think Christianity Is Anti-Abortion? Think Again
Extremists have sought to use religion as a tool to dominate women’s bodies, but Christians have a long history of being in favor of abortion rights
By Alex Morris June 27, 2022 11:16AM ET
Among God’s faithful, a unified and triumphant cry rises up from the land. As the godly take their place in the pews, Bibles in hand, hearts in throats, there is bountiful rejoicing. Roe is defeated. Goodness has prevailed. The people of God have won for Him a great victory.
That narrative largely aligns with what Americans have been led to believe. It also happens to be false, the product of an effort by conservative white evangelicals to convince us all that an anti-abortion stance is synonymous with godliness, that Christians are united in their opposition to this sinful scourge on the nation.
The reality is that for as long as it has been a wedge issue in America, there has been a compelling Christian argument for abortion care, and Christian leaders who have worked to both advocate for it and help secure it for women inside and outside the flock. In 1967, more than five years before Roe, a group of pastors founded the Clergy Consultation Service on Abortion, a network of Christian-faith leaders committed to helping women get both legal and illegal abortions from licensed professionals. By the time Roe passed, as many as half a million women had obtained a safe abortion thanks to the CCS, whose members claimed to be compelled by “higher laws and moral obligations transcending legal codes.” They used the Bible’s authority to argue for abortion care as not just a basic human right but a moral Christian imperative.
Then, of course, Roe was decided, eventually galvanizing an anti-abortion minority that had been building its own grassroots coalition for the past few decades and that could be drawn into the GOP on this issue alone. With the law on their side — and their hackles raised by the unsavory and baldly political tactics of their more conservative brethren — many pro-abortion-rights Protestants retreated. “As I was coming along in ministry they taught me not to be explicitly ‘Christian’ when I spoke out in the public square, because they didn’t want to, quote, ‘be like the Christian Right,’” says the Rev. Jennifer Butler, founder of Faith in Public Life. “They were embarrassed the Christian Right used their voice in the way that it did.”
What resulted was that more mainline Protestantism seemed to recuse itself from the abortion conversation, ceding the appearance of moral authority to the conservative minority. Yet according to a Pew survey published this past May, a majority of not just religious people but of Christians, specifically, support a woman’s right to abortion care in some, if not all, cases. Twenty percent of Black Protestants say abortion should be legal without exception; a full 77 percent of white evangelicals think it should be legal at least sometimes. Fifty-nine percent of Christians in the United States did not want Roe overturned. And as evidence for the notion that some people who malign the abortions of others may be far more lenient when facing the prospect of their own unwanted pregnancy, a 2014 Relationships in America survey found that while conservative women were much more likely to oppose abortion, they were only slightly less likely to have had one.
In fact, for many Christians, and especially in the lead-up to Friday’s landmark Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision, speaking up in support of abortion access has become increasingly important — not in spite of their faith, but because of it. “It’s not just that many Christians aren’t out celebrating today; it’s that many Christians across the country are out protesting,” says Guthrie Graves-Fitzsimmons, author of Just Faith: Reclaiming Progressive Christianity, who spoke to me on Friday after returning from a protest in front of the Supreme Court, where he’d been joined by other faith leaders. “There’s a consistent outrage from Christians about the decision, in addition to the much more widely-known and talked about praise for the decision. People have fought for reproductive justice because of their Christian faith throughout history, and that will continue now.”
And it will continue because for many Christians, fighting for bodily autonomy is actually biblical, an extension of the belief that we are made in the image of God, that our bodies are holy, and that the government should not intervene in that holiness. It’s biblical because it grants people the free will that God has endowed them with, because it supports the sanctity and dignity of life across the spectrum and the call to live life abundantly. And, crucially, it’s biblical because reproductive justice aligns with the teachings of Jesus. “I see Jesus as one who continually meets folks who are at the margins of society and listens to them and amplifies their voices and welcomes them where they have not received welcome in a really long time, if ever,” says the Rev. Lauren Jones Mayfield, the chairperson of Planned Parenthood’s national Clergy Advocacy Board. “When we are on the side of the marginalized, I think that we are with the patients who are walking into the health centers rather than protesting on the sidewalks outside of them.”
What’s more, abortion access is biblical because it’s actually in the bible. While Jesus never mentions abortion or opines on when life begins, other parts of the bible do, equating life with breath and even offering instructions on how to perform the procedure. For those who would use other verses — and there are always other verses — to equate abortion with murder or argue that bodily autonomy also pertains to an embryo or fetus, pro-abortion Christians counsel against the far right’s certitude of its own righteousness in this matter. The frequent conservative rejoinder “thou shalt not kill” is improperly applied here, says the Rev. Dr. Jacqui Lewis, a senior minister at Collegiate Church, the oldest continuous Protestant church in America. As she points out, the Old Testament, which includes that commandment, also includes plenty of other laws that baldly conflict with it and that have been the subject of earnest Jewish debate throughout the centuries. “‘If the far-right Christian-ish people want to debate ‘thou shalt not kill,’ get a rabbi, not your far-right pastor, but a rabbi to come talk to your church and speak about what those texts mean and what Jewish people think about abortions,” she says. “That same Jewish code, those same Jewish laws, also had provisions for when you must have an abortion.”
Which is why, for many pro-abortion Christians, access to abortion care is actually a matter of — wait for it — religious liberty. It’s about allowing not only for the religious difference of people of other faiths or no faith at all, but also allowing for other interpretations of Christianity. “Really, they’re trampling on my religious liberty when they enforce their way of looking at things on me legislatively,” says Butler. “That’s not the purpose of religious liberty. It’s to grant people the freedom to make moral decisions,” even — or perhaps especially — if those decisions arrive at different outcomes. For Butler and others, allowing a religious minority to dictate public policy leads to exactly the sort of coercion and force the founders were attempting to escape and that Jesus frequently denounced. Making way for other interpretations should be a foundational principle not just of democracy but also of faith — otherwise, it isn’t faith at all; it’s just stale indoctrination.
People of color have been fighting that stale indoctrination for years, fortifying a faith that respects women’s bodily autonomy. “There are communities and churches of color that have been connected to this work from the beginning,” says Mayfield, whose home state of Kentucky was one of three that had a trigger law in effect banning abortion immediately the moment Roe was overturned. “The white, progressive church is coming to this conversation a little bit late, but at least we’re here for the conversation now, and we do well to follow the movement of people of color and pastors of color who have been trying to galvanize on the issue of abortion since the religious right started to take over.”
For many pro-abortion Christians, the issue boils down to an authentic pursuit of the life of Christ, one that they see as meeting people where they are and trusting them to make decisions faithfully. “I think Jesus would be like, ‘What are you doing? What are you doing in my name? Why are you oppressing the women in my name?’” says Lewis. “Listen to the guy who was an outsider, who was a homeless person, who was a refugee, who was poor, who God chose — let’s just be honest — to come in that marginal place to heal the world.” She pauses, letting that thought resonate. “What would Jesus do? What would he do, really?”
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/political-commentary/think-christianity-is-anti-abortion-think-again-1374697/
@kevcvs57 saidIf we can label someone as less than we can do whatever we want, kill them, sell body parts for profit, slice off bit and put them in a stew and eat them. What would it matter, if we acknowledge human life by DNA not just simply what stage of life it is in we will be forced to acknowledge it is human sacrifice for various reasons.
Again the presumption that a foetus is a ‘someone’ as if you’ve already won that argument, if your legal argument is based in any measure on the existence of god or gods then it is no legal argument at all.
Bringing God into the discussion or leaving Him out doesn’t change what I just said, adding God means a reckoning will come for what we did and agreed to.
If that is the discussion you want to have, I suggest you take it to the Spiritual forum.
@kellyjay saidA foetus is not a human being and that is not just a matter of labelling it is a rational conclusion, the undeveloped foetus has a parasitic relationship with its host and it’s host can choose to continue that parasitic relationship or not.
If we can label someone as less than we can do whatever we want, kill them, sell body parts for profit, slice off bit and put them in a stew and eat them. What would it matter, if we acknowledge human life by DNA not just simply what stage of life it is in we will be forced to acknowledge it is human sacrifice for various reasons.
Bringing God into the discussion or leav ...[text shortened]... eed to.
If that is the discussion you want to have, I suggest you take it to the Spiritual forum.
If you think you can make a science based case for a non sentient clump of cells having an equal standing with an actual human being then do that but do not debate as if that case is already made because it is disingenuous.
@kevcvs57 saidSo says you, and by your definition the death of millions is justified.
A foetus is not a human being and that is not just a matter of labelling it is a rational conclusion, the undeveloped foetus has a parasitic relationship with its host and it’s host can choose to continue that parasitic relationship or not.
If you think you can make a science based case for a non sentient clump of cells having an equal standing with an actual human being then do that but do not debate as if that case is already made because it is disingenuous.
@moonbus saidThat is covered under self preservation.
Wrong (as usual). The strongest urge there is is hunger. Even hunger, one can rise above. Anyone who has fasted knows that he can master his stomach, instead of being mastered by his stomach. Anyone who has fasted knows that he can choose when, what, and how much to eat, instead of stuffing his face every time his belly growls. Anyone who has decided to end his life can just ...[text shortened]... of us are, anyway.
"Don't hang back with the brutes!" Tennesse Williams, Streetcar Named Desire
@KellyJay
There is one tiny problem here. The world population is already using FIFTY PERCENT of the available nutrients on the planet.
So we need to get rid of about 4 billion HUMAN parasites. Maybe SEVEN billion. Leave a couple hundred million like there was 2000 years ago and maybe we would be in better shape now, and all you can do is bitch about abortion of a fetus which doesn't even have a functioning brain. AND the way you fukkers treat the woman after winning your pathetic battle, drop the bitch like a hot rock and go on to the next pyrrhic victory, rape, incest no matter the bitch couldn't close her legs so SHE is the problem.
@sonhouse said"So we need to get rid of about 4 billion HUMAN parasites. Maybe SEVEN billion. Leave a couple hundred million like there was 2000 years ago and maybe we would be in better shape now"
@KellyJay
There is one tiny problem here. The world population is already using FIFTY PERCENT of the available nutrients on the planet.
So we need to get rid of about 4 billion HUMAN parasites. Maybe SEVEN billion. Leave a couple hundred million like there was 2000 years ago and maybe we would be in better shape now, and all you can do is bitch about abortion of a fetus wh ...[text shortened]... ext pyrrhic victory, rape, incest no matter the bitch couldn't close her legs so SHE is the problem.
Are you proposing mass genocide? That is what it sounds like.
"The world population is already using FIFTY PERCENT of the available nutrients on the planet."
Man does not use 50% of the planet. Your assertion is impossible.
@Metal-Brain
To little minds seeped in conspiracy like you sure;
https://www.theworldcounts.com/challenges/planet-earth/state-of-the-planet/overuse-of-resources-on-earth
@kellyjay saidNow your just lying, the vast vast majority of terminations are exactly as I described.
So says you, and by your definition the death of millions is justified.
Your efforts to portray women as committing the murder of a child when terminating a clump of cells is as disgusting and disingenuous as your pretence that your extremist religious views are not informing your position on this topic.
@sonhouse saidDeath as a solution is very high among us; why do you complain about gun
@KellyJay
There is one tiny problem here. The world population is already using FIFTY PERCENT of the available nutrients on the planet.
So we need to get rid of about 4 billion HUMAN parasites. Maybe SEVEN billion. Leave a couple hundred million like there was 2000 years ago and maybe we would be in better shape now, and all you can do is bitch about abortion of a fetus wh ...[text shortened]... ext pyrrhic victory, rape, incest no matter the bitch couldn't close her legs so SHE is the problem.
deaths if death is the answer? The root cause of many of our ills is our embracing
death as 'the solution' kill the unborn, kill the one that made me mad, that I dislike,
that has something I want. Getting ride of billions is your solution; you are not one
I'd want to solve any of my problems, considering how much hate you spew here
toward those you disagree.
@KellyJay
So for you it is WAY more important to save the poor little zygotes than ANY adult being gunned down in a school. Got it.
Don't construe what I said and assume what I meant was I wanted to kill 7 billion people, I was making a true statement there are WAY too many people on the planet, me included.
However, I think a big adjustment is coming the way poop in our own backyards meaning our flagrant use of fossil fuels which is based on the deaths of plants and animals from billions of years of life and that will end at some point because we are running out. We have to get off the tit of fossil fuels or we will find temps of 140 degrees in towns and Florida and other places gone, buried under a hundred feet of water, same with New York City and any other city near water.
It looks like the accumulated greed of humans around the planet will stop the attempt to lower CO2 enough to stave off a 5 degree up in average temps over the next hundred years or so.
If we don't get fusion running and much more efficient and cheaper solar cells we will be in trouble.
For instance, right now there are electric cars coming out with solar cells on top that maybe gets you ten percent more range with the 25% cells of today but there is engineering work going on making solar PAINT covering the entire car and THAT needs to get up to 50% or better, if and when those things don't happen, we are screwed and THAT is a fact.