Britain’s independent pre-abortion counseling “good economics”
Forget the moral rights and wrongs. Forget, too, talk of a woman’s right vs a baby’s right. Britons should see abortion as a consumer issue….
Until now, organisations that provide terminations were allowed to counsel women who sought advice before their abortion. These organisations are sometimes called “abortion charities”, because they offer women abortions free of charge through the NHS. But despite their “charity” status these are private providers who get £60 million a year from the Department of Health for their services. Given their vested interest in the procedure, you can imagine the advice they were giving the woman seeking counsel: go for it, girl. Or rather, get rid of it, girl.
Had this been the situation in any other section of the market, consumer groups would have been up in arms long ago….
A business that stands to gain from a procedure… cannot provide independent counsel to those contemplating the procedure. That’s not judgmental moralising, just good economics.
~ Author and broadcaster Christina Odone, The Telegraph, August 29
[Photo via prolife.org.nz]
Jill Stanek is a nurse turned speaker, columnist and blogger, a national figure in the effort to protect both preborn and postborn innocent human life.
Very true. The abortion industry is special in a lot of ways. Not just in the fact that they are allowed to counsel women and pressure them into buying an abortion but also when you look at health regulations. Is any other facet of “medicine” so unregulated as abortion? Would a heart surgeon push back against any health regulations that made his or her patients safer? Yet abortionists routinely fight even the most basic health standards.
The way I see it, would you trust McDonald’s to counsel people about healthy eating and healthier food options available somewhere else before selling them burger and fries? No!
Off topic, but it bugs me every time – it should be illegal for McDonald’s to show commercials with a bunch of skinny healthy people in them! I see it as a serious misinformation. Same applies to other unhealthy food establishments.
Yes, let’s throw morals and rights out the window and focus entirely on BUSINESS. That’s NEVER gone wrong before…
The rule in red-hot politicized things is ALWAYS — look for egregious exceptions to common sense to be hailed as the best ideas evah! Look for normal, everyday right thinking to be set aside.
This is true with human sexuality in schools, for example. Pick any other area you wish where comparable concerns about pedagogy, science, point of view, parental responsibility are involved — commonsense will be in play. But the moment it’s sex — whoop! Time for an orgy of irrationality!
Until now, organizations that provide terminations were allowed to counsel women who sought advice before their abortion. These organizations are sometimes called “abortion charities”, because they offer women abortions free of charge through the NHS. But despite their “charity” status these are private providers who get £60 million a year from the Department of Health for their services.
Does the Dept. of Health reimburse them for every abortion provided? If so, then I can see the argument – that the employees have a vested interest in abortions being provided.
If not, if the payments are made, regardless, (or made on other bases, etc.) then I suspect this is yet another silly thing….
Vita: The way I see it, would you trust McDonald’s to counsel people about healthy eating and healthier food options available somewhere else before selling them burger and fries? No!
Indeed, as above.
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Off topic, but it bugs me every time – it should be illegal for McDonald’s to show commercials with a bunch of skinny healthy people in them! I see it as a serious misinformation. Same applies to other unhealthy food establishments.
Yeah, the unsaid-but-implied deal being that “people who eat at McDonald’s are happy, healthy, beautiful, etc.” They’re not going to show a bunch of 400 lb. men and 300 lb. women dressed in sweat pants, acne all over their faces, every other tooth missing, now are they? ;)
Rasqual: . Pick any other area you wish where comparable concerns about pedagogy, science, point of view, parental responsibility are involved — commonsense will be in play. But the moment it’s sex — whoop! Time for an orgy of irrationality!
Dude, don’t forget about all the resistance to teaching evolution…
“Yep, scientists are infallible. We must listen to everything they say,” said Fred Flintstone as he ate his brontosaurus burger.
Doh! No such animal as a brontosaurus!!
My point: always have a healthy skepticism, even toward ‘scientists.’
Doh! No such animal as a brontosaurus!!
I don’t think Fred Flinstone is real, but “Brontosaurus” is now called apatosaurus.
Doug, given how the UK healthcare system is set up, yes they get paid for each individual abortion, not a specified allotment per year regardless. Less abortions equal less monies.
On another aside, do you realize that most of the people who ‘invented’ or discovered science as we know it today were creationists who rejected long age evolution? Like Newton, Boyle (or is it Bolye I can never remember), Kelvin, Lister, Pasteur, Pascal, Steno (that would be the Father of Modern Geology for the record), Bacon, Kepler, and Mendel just to name a few! In fact it was a belief in an ordered universe that followed set laws set down by a Lawgiver that allowed Sir Francis Bacon to develope the Scientific Method, Mendel to devolope genetics and pundant square predictions, Kepler his laws of planetary motion, etc, etc, etc. This belief in an ordered and knowable creation allowed science to develope and explode in Europe. People who believe in young earth creation are in GREAT COMPANY! And there are many, many phd level scientists, doctors, professors, researchers, etc today that still stand shoulder to shoulder in scientific understanding and inquiry with the great minds of yesterday.
Jespren – no doubt – there were lots of cool people in the past that didn’t believe (or didn’t know about) evolution. That said, there really is no longer any meaningful, peer-reviewed resistance to the fact that evolution is fact, that it operates, etc.
Evolution, by itself, is not saying “the earth was not created.” However, on “young earth creation” then I think it matters just how young you mean. If this is the deal where the earth is 6,000 or 10,000 years old, that too is really out the window….
Doug (again sorry for the delay), the term ‘young earth creationist’ (or Biblical Creationist) is almost exclusively used to refer to a 6-10,000 year span (most commonly about 6,000 years and very rarely to people who believe in greater but still less than the billions needed by evolution). Most of the people I mentioned earlier believed in this timespan for the lifespan of the world. And such a thing has never been disproven. And many scientists today still find plenty of evidence for such an interpretation. A wonderful look at a great piece of research that strongly refutes old-earth evolution is the R.A.T.E research, made availible in laymen friendly format in the book, Thousands Not Billions, Challenging the icon of evolution, Questioning the age of the Earth (their full technical research is also availible but I can’t remember the name it was published under). As for ‘meaningful, peer-reviewed resistance’, the problem is peer-reviewed journals simple refuse anything that goes against the humanistic evolutionary worldview. It doesn’t say anything for or against the merits of the studies, the scientists involved, or the veracity of the research, all it says is that most peer-reviewed journals adamently refuse anything that counters billions of years Darwinian evolution. Even completely secular scientists have ran into such problems (such as secular humanist Behe suggesting panspermia due to the Darwinian-refuting research of irreducible complexity, Darwin’s Black Box is a good read. Or the Smithsonian employee who was fired for allowing a research paper that *mentioned* intelligent design to be published). I would also strongly recommend Ben Stein’s Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed. There also *are* peer-reviewed scientific journals that do accept papers from creation and/or Darwinians Evolution questioning scientists. A good one that is availible easily to a layman can be found accessible online at http://www.answersingenesis.org/ar .
Even leading evolutionists have admitted that evolution is more faith than fact (and I can provide you with some quotes it you’d like). The problem is they, and much of the public, are religiously invested in long-age evolution being correct so they turn a willingly blind eye to disproofs, lack of evidence, and evidence to the contrairy.
Btw, one big problem is that molecules to man Darwinian evolution is frequently used interchangably by secular humanists for natural selection when in fact they are wildly different things. So to a secular humanists the real life examples of natural selection get used as ‘proof’ the goo-to-you evolution is correct, when in actuality natural selection goes a long way to disproving goo-to-you evolution (or at the very least is completely separate). Natural selection is a downward, loss of information resulting in more specific and less (overall) robust and varried individual populations, while Darwinian evolution required upward, information gaining resulting in less specific and more (overall) robust and varried individuals. That’s *why* evolution is so married to long ages. They figure they can magically pull *more* information from a process that creates *less* information is they shove billions of years in the equation. But an ad infinitum arguement doesn’t make an impossibility any more possible, it just delays the question.
Jespren, shame on Ben Stein – his “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed” was just plain lame. Not saying all the rest you mentioned were, but on the age of the earth, and the universe, for that matter, I have never seen anything remotely persuasive that “tens of thousands of years,” for example, is the case rather than billions.
many scientists today still find plenty of evidence for such an interpretation
You mean like the earth being 10,000 years old?! Holy Crow… ;)
http://www.answersingenesis.org/ar
That link doesn’t work for me, but I sent to the website, and looked through the “Evolution Exposed” series. There is a lot of pointing to gaps in our knowledge of evolution, and unsupported statements that “X cannot be true because it’s not proven by Scripture,” but I see no good refutation of evolution or that the earth is not between 4 and 5 billion years old.
yes, evolution is a theory, and we don’t know everything about it, just like gravity is a theory and we don’t know everything about it. Both can be demonstrated to occur and operate, however. I also found this paragraph:
Natural selection is an observable process that falls into the category of operational science. We have observed mosquitoes, birds, and many microorganisms undergoing change in relatively short periods of time. New species have been observed to arise. Biblical creationists agree with evolutionists on most of the ideas associated with natural selection, except the idea that natural selection leads to molecules-to-man evolution.
“New species have been observed to arise.” Wow – surprised to see that. As far as the “creation” of life, I agree there is much we don’t know – perhaps most of it. Glad to see that at least the site accepts that mutation and natural selection does happen.
Yet when we get to the notion that the earth and/or the universe is only thousands or tens of thousands of years old, it is simply proven far beyond any reasonable doubt that billions of years is the truth.
Doug, I liked Expelled, but then I’ve been kicked out of class for bring up evidence that ran contrairy to evolution. Have you actually seen the movie (I ask because I got a lot of people saying it was stupid or laughable who turned out to have just read on of the evolutionary critiques of it.)
Actually, about 6,000 and change. If I remember Ussher’s timeline correctly it’s do to celebrate it’s 6,015th birthday in late October of this year. (James Ussher’s Annals of History actually lists date and time, 23rd of October, but can’t remember the time, 9am or 9pm I believe. And that’s not to say he’s correct to the year, much less the day, but his comprehensive work on ancient history has been the gold standard for hundred’s of years) Frankly, and with no disrepect meant, there would be absolutely no reason for you to have been exposed to any of the counter arguments to evolutionary long-ages. It’s not something the secular scientific community wants to shout from the rooftops!
I think coming at it another way would likely work better. Why do *you* say billions of years have been “proven beyond any reasonable doubt”? I will be happy to respond with specific examples/evidence as I think that would likely propell the conversation more than me just throwing stuff out there.
As I said earlier, Biblical creationists, general creationists, or intellegent design theorists don’t object to observational genetic variation, commonly refered to as natural selection. But natural selection is a LOSS of information. You can get a handful of very specified types from a single kind of creature from it. But you’ll never get a bunch of different kinds of creatures from a single ancestor, which requires a GAIN of information. Think of it in common terms. From the canine family we can take the basic canine and get wolves, poodles, great danes, and dalmations. That’s natural selection (with dogs it’s also artificial selection but it’s the same machanics) but all those are still canines, will never be anything but canines, and in fact have a great deal less information, and on the whole are less robust than ‘mutts’ e.i. the original kind. Now molecules to man evolution would require something along the lines of taking a dalmation, breeding it with other dalmations, and eventually not only producing a wolf, a poodle, a boxer, and a mutt, but a cat as well. One we see happen in real life, it’s observational science, easily observed (first documented by a Biblical creationist monk btw) and the other exists only in the realms of human speculation and has never been observed to happen nor has clear proof of it happening in the past been brought forth.
While I will fully enjoy continuing this side debate with you, of you’d like to do some browsing i’d suggest some of the semi-technical (or laymen) articles you’ll find here: (hopefully this link works, if not go to the ‘get answers’ tab on the http://www.answersingenesis.org homepage and click on the ‘young age evidence’ link towards the bottom left)
http://www.answersingenesis.org/get-answers#/topics/young-age-evidence
Jespren – I did watch ‘Expelled’ – I forget if it was one whole time, all the way through, or if it was broken up into shorter Youtube segments (or the like). At the most it’s a statement of belief, rather than any proven science or meaningful criticism of evolution.
No offense meant to you in what I say below. I just have to shake my head at some of the stuff that Answers In Genesis comes up with, but you have a fine and facile mind, and I always appreciate your posts.
AnswersInGenesis is misleading and deceptive. Radiometric dating, observed lightspeed and distances, cosmic ray effects, continental drift, rate of expansion of the universe, the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe finding that the universe is over 13 billion years old, the oceans’ mineral content, Bristlecone pine trees, ice cores, radioactive nuclides, studies of rings on coral fossils (somewhat akin to tree rings), etc. show a much, much older age for the earth than 6,000 years. AIG mentions that different methods give different exact ages, and that there is some inherent error in many methods – and I agree with that. The assumption on AIG’s part is then that this somehow negates the still-standing mountain of evidence that the earth is vastly older than 6,000 years (or 10,000 for that matter). We are not talking about 10% error or 30% error here. We are talking about many, many orders of magnitude. The difference between 6,000 and 4.5 billion years is 75,000,000 percent. There is nothing that even remotely suggests that any such error in the scientific methods are present.
Here’s a gem: http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/nab/does-c14-disprove-the-bible
I quote: Scientists use a technique called radiometric dating to estimate the ages of rocks, fossils, and the earth. Many people have been led to believe that radiometric dating methods have proved the earth to be billions of years old. This has caused many in the church to reevaluate the biblical creation account, specifically the meaning of the word “day” in Genesis 1. With our focus on one particular form of radiometric dating—carbon dating—we will see that carbon dating strongly supports a young earth. Note that, contrary to a popular misconception, carbon dating is not used to date rocks at millions of years old.
Good Grief, AIG – you just said that carbon dating is not used for that! Any logical person sees through this kind of thing. AIG goes on to talk about fossils and carbon-14 dating, and Good Grief again – almost always, old fossils have had all the organics replaced by inorganic compounds. You want to know the age of them? You use a different dating technique. AIG is just one more site designed for people too gullible to know any better, or too blinded by beliefs that cannot be proven to be anything more than imaginary.
Doug, I’m not going to be offended, I know I’m intelligent, and I am fully aware of the amount of study I’ve done, and the other people, many geniuses, who also are “too gullible” or “too blinded by beliefs”. Besides, you’re not rejecting me, I’m just a messenger, and intelligent enough to know God’s a whole lot smarter than I. You’re rejecting God, He’s a big boy, He can stand up for Himself. My job as messenger is just to deliver the message and answer questions about it, but it would be just as foolish of me to get personally offened as it would for a mailcarrier to get offended if he sees someone on his route toss some mail aside.
There are more than a hundred different forms of radiometric dating, and some can even give a negative age for a sample! Only a small handful give ages consistant with billions of years (about 15 give dates consistant with thousands of years). Radiometric dating assumes a closed, fixed system, yet there are many variables that are known to exist. Scientists ‘shave’ and adjust the outcome based upon their expectations. The most famous example of this, and I was actually speaking with a PhD geologist the other day on this, was the first radiometric dating of the moon produced an answer older than the earth. So they declareed a certain amount of daughter element to be non-native to the parent decay and came up with a date more to their liking. There are many dating methods/observations that contradict long ages, such as ocean mineralization/salinity, helium flux in the atmosphere, multistrata fossils, soft tissue fossilization, partial fossilization, modern items in coal streams or modern items that have been fossilized, red shift, sun expansion, magnetic fields on cold planets, hot moons, planetary rings, spiral arm galaxies, lack of fossils, hot springs, oil gysers, rapid pole reversals, radiohalos, and comets, as well as several serious problems with some of what you mentioned, such as varriations in the speed of light and rate of decay, non-homogenous backscatter radiation, rapid growth of multiple tree/coral rings observed within a single year, ice buildup, and known processes that add or subtract parent/daughter elements. Then there are some you mentioned that actually are quiet embarrassments to long age believers, such as bristlecone pines, ice cores, and tree rings (I know I’m repeating myself some). Look, ‘we’ (Biblical Creationists) don’t need to find a dating method that ‘proves’ 6,000 years. We already have a 1st hand account that says that, all we need to prove is any clock that disagrees with that 1st hand account is less accurate. The Bible has hundreds of prophecies, most of which have already been fullfilled with 100% accuracy, yet evolutionists can send the same sample to 3 different labs and, using the same datingmethod, come up with 3 different ages, sometimes wildly varrying. A broken watch is a broken watch, why in the world would you trust it?
And I think you misconstrued the c-14 piece. C-14 has an upper limit, an age at which no more c-14 should be in the sample. And, long age speaking, it’s fairly low, around 100,000 years. If you try to ‘date’ something older than that using c-14 you should come back with nothing. No C-14 present. It’s considered an extremely accurate way to date ‘younger’ items but, as you alluded it, totally useless on ‘older items’. But here’s the dirty little secret. Even diamonds have c-14 in them, therefore ‘proving’ they are less than 100,000 years old. Million year old fossil? C-14 present. Billion year old diamond? C-14 present. It’s either proof positive these things actually *are* less than 100,000 years old *or* it’s proof positive that radioactive decay is *not* a closed system that can be accurately used for dating. Either way long-age evolutionists are royally scrooged by C-14. Answers in Genesis have several articles concerning C-14 found in things it can’t ‘possibly’ be found in, such as the article you quoted in part.
Long age dating requires a belief in what’s called Uniformitarianism, which is summed up by the phrase ‘the present is the key to the past’. If uniformitarianism isn’t correct then *all* long age assumptions are demolished (something most evolutionists will readily admit). The problem is lots of things show change, even in what we today consider to be very stable systems like the speed or light or rate of decay. If you can prove that any confluence of events that can be found could change even one ‘stable’ system you’ve disproved uniformitarianism. We’ve know time isn’t a true constant since theory of relativity. And rates of decay have been shown to varry as well by several different experiments and scientists in the last dozen or so years. What’s more everytime we see a natural disaster we see errosion and soil layers that evolutionists would look at and say took thousands if not millions of years appear overnight (or in a few days). Just look at some of the rapidly cut valleys or rapidly deposited soil layers after the mount saint helen’s blast for example. In other words evolution needs a slow, steady, reliable rate of decay, deposit, erosion, fossilization, and coalification. But what we observe is periods of general stability followed by short bursts of rapid deposits and erosions, rapid fossilization and coalification (and statification), and unreliable rates of decay. It takes a *lot* more faith to believe that a broken clock can give a correct time without any way to verify it with observations (the hallmark of science afterall is observe, hypothesize, test) and that a theory can contradict a law (1st and 2nd law of therodynamics, 1st law of motion, and law of biogenesis are all contradicted by the theory of Darwinian evolution) than to believe that a first hand account that has verrified itself through prophecy (among other things) is accurate.
I do not hold my beliefs in blind faith, nor in gullibility. In fact the Bible demands 100% accuracy of it’s prophets, any prophet that got even *one* prophecy wrong was to be considered not of God and to be ignored. Furthermore the Bible says it is the Word of God and God can not lie nor be contradictory (A can not be both A and B at the same time and in the same situation defined by the laws of logic). So anyone who truly believes the Bible (and in the God of the Bible) would be honor and belief bound to reject that belief if the Bible was shown to be inaccurate or contradictory. Unfortunately, few evolutionists hold such convictions.
Whew, Jespren, quite a post there. :)
Long age dating requires a belief in what’s called Uniformitarianism, which is summed up by the phrase ‘the present is the key to the past’. If uniformitarianism isn’t correct then *all* long age assumptions are demolished (something most evolutionists will readily admit). The problem is lots of things show change, even in what we today consider to be very stable systems like the speed or light or rate of decay.
I think you are over-generalizing to quite an extent, there. In no way do things have to stay exactly the same to validate the “old” age of the earth. Again, we’re not talking about a few percentage points or even a few multiples. We’re talking about one figure being 7,500,000 times the other.
Do you really think the speed of light varies?
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And I think you misconstrued the c-14 piece. C-14 has an upper limit, an age at which no more c-14 should be in the sample. And, long age speaking, it’s fairly low, around 100,000 years. If you try to ‘date’ something older than that using c-14 you should come back with nothing. No C-14 present. It’s considered an extremely accurate way to date ‘younger’ items but, as you alluded it, totally useless on ‘older items’. But here’s the dirty little secret. Even diamonds have c-14 in them, therefore ‘proving’ they are less than 100,000 years old. Million year old fossil? C-14 present. Billion year old diamond? C-14 present. It’s either proof positive these things actually *are* less than 100,000 years old *or* it’s proof positive that radioactive decay is *not* a closed system that can be accurately used for dating. Either way long-age evolutionists are royally scrooged by C-14. Answers in Genesis have several articles concerning C-14 found in things it can’t ‘possibly’ be found in, such as the article you quoted in part.
Are the “non-zero” values for C-14 really more than the measurement error, though? If not, then that would be no proof that there was C-14 present.
It’s probably not a totally “closed” system, either – but in no way would that mean that there is anywhere near the error necessary to explain a 6,000 year old earth. Were the samples contaminated? Was there Carbon-13 in them (which does have a little neutron absorption going on)? Is the C-14 from nitrogen, which is commonly found in diamonds – about 0.1% – there is a very slow changing to C-14 there too, from radiation. Happens all the time in the atmosphere – Nitrogen (7 protons, 7 neutrons) gets hit with another neutron, gives off a hydrogen atom (1 proton), and what’s left is Carbon-14 (6 protons, 8 neutrons).
So, yes, there are things to consider with C-14 dating, but this is not to say that it can’t rule out a “young earth.”
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Then there are some you mentioned that actually are quiet embarrassments to long age believers, such as bristlecone pines, ice cores, and tree rings (I know I’m repeating myself some).
Why do you say the bristlecones, etc., are “embarrasments”? If we have a tree that’s over 4000 years old, and we cross-reference its rings with those of dead trees that were old when the first one was young, we see more than 8000 years from the bristlecones alone. The same process with European Oaks and German Pines give greater figures yet, minimum ages of over 10,000 and 12,000 years, respectively.
Partial answer (naptime!) More later: Not only has the speed of light been shown to vary by secular researchers (it’s impacted by gravity among other things) even some secular research scientists have postulated that, given the theory of relativity, the big bang may have created an effect where the universe was expanding so quickly at the beginning that millions of years could pass in the farthest reaches of space while only a short time (comparitively) had passed here on earth. Very similiar to some young earth creationist theories it uses the effects of relativity to explain how we can have things that both appear very old (like collapsed stars) and very young (like comets and spiral galaxies). The various theories involving red shift, relativity, time, and the speed of light are facinating reads if you can plow through them.
Yes, the non-zero values of C-14 are far more than margin of error, and even secular labs are not claiming contamination (given that most of these tests were carried out in well know, mainstream labs). And if you take a thing that’s supposed to be 3 billion years old and get an age of under 100,000 years, that’s an order of magnitude, that’s not some piddly handful of years. Evolution *can’t* survive with only 100,000 years. And if the clock is broken, the clock is broken. You don’t take a time piece that’s broken and say ‘well, I like the time it gives me so I’ll keep it’, no, you toss it. There is no evolutionary answer to C-14 in ‘old’ samples. The leading scientists simply say ‘that’s impossible’ and move on. In fact many labs will refuse to test samples for C-14 because it’s such an embarrassment when found!
Not only has the speed of light been shown to vary by secular researchers (it’s impacted by gravity among other things)
Jespren, I don’t think that’s actually the speed of light that’s varying, but rather how it appears to us in 2 or 3 dimensions. Localized measurements are what gives us the “relativity,” but as far as I know, the speed of light (in a vacuum, for example) i a constant.
even some secular research scientists have postulated that, given the theory of relativity, the big bang may have created an effect where the universe was expanding so quickly at the beginning that millions of years could pass in the farthest reaches of space while only a short time (comparitively) had passed here on earth.
Well, that’s a heck of a postulation. :)
Yes, the non-zero values of C-14 are far more than margin of error, and even secular labs are not claiming contamination (given that most of these tests were carried out in well know, mainstream labs). And if you take a thing that’s supposed to be 3 billion years old and get an age of under 100,000 years, that’s an order of magnitude, that’s not some piddly handful of years.
Well, if the nitrogen, for example, is in there – and it is, in general, as with diamond – then the explanation is easy and there’s no necessary “broken clock.“