Sooo, Rachel Maddow, you’re admitting The Pill kills newly conceived humans?
Liberal MSNBC commentator Rachel Maddow attempted to combine the topics of gay marriage and the personhood movement on her September 29 show, only for her talking points to collapse into a blob of inconsistencies.
Rationalizing why citizens in over two dozen states have voted to ban gay marriage, which Maddow, a lesbian, supports, she said, “When we vote on minority rights for many if not all stripes in this country, we tend to vote ‘no.’ It’s part of the whole concept of rights, they are not supposed to be up for a vote. They are supposed to be inalienable, even by majority vote.”
More of Maddow’s thoughts on the concept of “rights” when it comes to gay marriage: “And again, when you vote on rights anywhere in this country, generally you get reminded of why there was a need to call some things ‘rights’ and to protect those rights from a vote, to protect them from majority rule.”
Maddow was inadvertently making the case to add a personhood amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which she would obviously oppose, since she supports abortion.
But when it came to state personhood initiatives, which would have the effect of banning abortions, Maddow, trying to have it both ways, was pleased that to date the only effort to have made the ballot has failed.
“And even though, as I say, Americans generally love to vote against rights, particularly controversial rights, this thing tanked when they got it on the ballot in Colorado,” crowed Maddow, adding later, “So even in a country that loves to vote against each other’s rights, anti-abortion activists trying to ban the pill with these personhood bills, so far these things aren’t flying….”
Which is it, Rachel? Do Americans love or hate minority rights?
But Maddow is worried about the upcoming Mississippi personhood initiative, Amendment 26, to be voted on this November, because Mississippians are not just conservative, they are über conservative. Here’s the definition of “person” that will be on their ballot:
The term “person” or “persons” shall include every human being from the moment of fertilization, cloning or the functional eq1uivalent thereof.
Calling this the “Birth Control Ban and Total Abortion Ban,” Maddow complained, “The way the most widely used forms of birth control work is that sometimes they stop the fertilization of an egg. Sometimes they stop the implantation of an egg that has been fertilized. So if a fertilized egg is now going to be a person in Mississippi, does that mean that using birth control is going to be committing murder in Mississippi? Birth control is gonna be illegal?”
I love personhood initiatives for many reasons, but one important one is they educate the American public that hormonal contraceptive and the IUD may kill babies. They force pro-aborts like Maddow to say out loud that The Pill may end a human life.
In touting the group opposing the Mississippi personhood intiative, Maddow failed to mention (or to give her the benefit of the doubt, perhaps she didn’t do her research) that Mississippians for Healthy Families was organized by the executive directors of ACLU Mississippi, Planned Parenthood Southeast, and Planned Parenthood Greater Memphis Region.
Of course, Planned Parenthood has a financial interest in abortions and contraceptives.
But that has no bearing on its opposition to the Mississippi Personhood Initiative, I’m sure. The group is merely standing up for the “right” of mothers to kill their children.
Beware, Rachel. Supporters of the “right” to abort are quickly shrinking to a minority.
[Photo of “Vote Yes on 26” sign via the The Maddow Blog]
I almost consider it a badge of honor to have been mocked by Rachel Maddow.
Glad I didn’t know who she was when I did the interview or I might have messed up
my answer.
http://maddowblog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2010/09/29/5200358-gop-for-big-government-in-a-small-uterus
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Unlike the right to life, which does exist in common sense, natural law, and in the US Constitution, the “right” to marriage is fiction. The left - quelle surprise - gets it exactly backwards.
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Wow. Maddow actually said something true and accurate. I’m gonna keep my eyes peeled for a rider on a pale horse, because that has got to be a sign of the Apocalypse. :P
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“and in the US Constitution, the “right” to marriage is fiction”
It’s not in the Constitution but neither is “eminent domain” and “separation of powers.” The Supreme Court, however, did establish the right of interracial couples to marry. At the time of the “Loving” decision, interracial marriage was still considered a criminal offense in some states.
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So, Jill, what contraceptive methods DO you support?
Or do you believe that only those fertile females prepared to become mothers should engage in the type of sex that can result in pregnancy?
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I really wanted to laugh when she started talking about the inalienable right to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. That’s exactly what US pro-lifers believe too! They don’t think the rights of the unborn should be voted on either!
What a bizarre TV night for me…
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i see raisehell madcow gets it wrong again. i hope they soon pull her show and shell be in the unemployment line with her bff keith blowharderman
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Denise, I believe contraception is morally wrong based on my understanding of Biblical teaching. Couples should not have sex unless they are married. They should then welcome conception as the gift from God that it is. This is not to say the sexual act should be for purely procreative reasons. God created sex as a pleasurable experience.
It is also clear after volumes of studies that hormonal contraception in particular is harmful to women’s health.
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I always wonder why people care if married couples use contraception (non abortive types). It seems exhausting to worry so much about what others do in the privacy of their own bedrooms.
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marriage is between a man and a woman. people like ellen and elton john (sorry but im not calling him sir) can believe they are married but its not honored in gods eyes. its a sham.
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Jill Stanek says:
October 3, 2011 at 4:08 pm
Denise, I believe contraception is morally wrong based on my understanding of Biblical teaching. Couples should not have sex unless they are married. They should then welcome conception as the gift from God that it is. That is not to say the sexual act should be for purely procreative reasons. God created sex as a pleasurable experience.
It is also clear after volumes of studies that hormonal contraception in particular is harmful to women’s health.
(Denise) Do you believe contraceptives should be OUTLAWED?
What about women who are unsuited to be mothers but crave intimacy and eroticism?
What about women who are suited to be mothers but do not want large families?
Do you think it’s reasonable to expect them to be celibate?
Or to limit sexual expression to acts that don’t result in pregnancy? Of course, I’ve pointed out that this is possible and I did it until I was 24.
It seems to me that if you truly care about life, you would want fertile young females on contraceptives even if they are chaste because a rape leaves them with the brutal Hobson’s choice of undergoing an abortion or carrying and giving birth to a rapist’s child.
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“I always wonder why people care if married couples use contraception (non abortive types).”
Oh, that’s easy. They just feel that their moral mandate to inflict their beliefs on the private sexual behavior of others is slightly broader than yours. I think it’s funny how a number of people here who would gladly see abortion made illegal entirely on the basis that they consider it wrong suddenly turn into libertarians when contraception comes up, often using the same reasoning and language that they are quick to dismiss when it’s part of a pro-choice argument.
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Oh, that’s easy. Condoms don’t kill.
It’s like the difference between spanking and beating your kids. One is a choice I think is wrong, but it is a private decision. The other is a damaging societal ill that can permanently damage or kill a kid.
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The child conceived as a result of a rape is also the victim’s child. Rebecca Kiessling has compiled stories by rape victims and after reading some of them – I wonder – whose idea is it for rape victims to get abortions? Often it is not the rape victim, rather it is some well-meaning family member or friend who recommends it as a way for the rape victim to move on. But a woman does not move on from abortion.
http://www.rebeccakiessling.com/PregnantByRape.html
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“At the time of the “Loving” decision, interracial marriage was still considered a criminal offense in some states.”
There’s nothing about “interracial” marriage that changes the fundamental definition of marriage as one man and one woman. It was only right that those laws be overturned. (I put interracial in quotes because imo race is a much more arbitrary way of classifying people than by sex, but even if I saw the two classifications having exactly the same precision, overturning those laws was the right thing to do.)
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Barb says:
October 3, 2011 at 5:14 pm
The child conceived as a result of a rape is also the victim’s child. Rebecca Kiessling has compiled stories by rape victims and after reading some of them – I wonder – whose idea is it for rape victims to get abortions? Often it is not the rape victim, rather it is some well-meaning family member or friend who recommends it as a way for the rape victim to move on. But a woman does not move on from abortion.http://www.rebeccakiessling.com/PregnantByRape.html
(Denise) I know Rebecca Kiessling. I’m not saying females victimized by rape should abort. I’m saying that no female wants to ever be in that position and I think as much as possible should be done to prevent a girl or woman from being in that position. Do you HOPE your daughter will be pregnant through a brutal assault? Probably not. That’s separate from what she should do if such a tragic event happens.
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Denise, I don’t expect you to understand. You asked what I believed about contraception and I told you.
I think contraceptives that kill humans should be banned, yes, such as The Pill and the IUD. If a Personhood Amendment to the Constitution were ratified, that would be the law of the land.
Some women who think they aren’t “suited to be mothers” actually are, and some women who think they are suited to be mothers actually aren’t. If you propose sterility for the former, what do you propose for the latter?
Are you saying you support putting to death the children of vicious criminals?
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Jill Stanek says:
October 3, 2011 at 6:10 pm
Denise, I don’t expect you to understand. You asked what I believed about contraception and I told you.
I think contraceptives that kill humans should be banned, yes, such as The Pill and the IUD. If a Personhood Amendment to the Constitution were ratified, that would be the law of the land.
Some women who think they aren’t “suited to be mothers” actually are, and some women who think they are suited to be mothers actually aren’t. If you propose sterility for the former, what do you propose for the latter?>>
(Denise) I recognize that there are limits to what can be done. I have friends who believe parenting should be licensed. I don’t see that as realistic but as somewhat utopian. Some women will think they are suitable to be mothers and aren’t. Tragically, their progeny will — all-too-often — end up filling our prisons, becoming part of our homeless population, and having severe mental illnesses. I support social programs that will help recognize and treat disturbed children and give assistance to mothers and other caregivers to do better. I’m not saying we can make this a perfect world.
<<Are you saying you support putting to death the children of vicious criminals?>>
(Denise) I’m not sure what this question is in reference to. I know people whose mother or father was a criminal and am friends with them.
Is this about abortion for rape victims? If so, I already said that I think the best solution is to avoid this situation as much as we possibly can by having fertile females who aren’t trying to get pregnant use some sort of contraception. I also advocate a return to chaperoned dating.
The Pill would be banned under your plan for the fertile. I took it when I was sterile for another reason and was quite pleased with the result.
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“Or do you believe that only those fertile females prepared to become mothers should engage in the type of sex that can result in pregnancy?”
Denise, anyone engaging in sexual intercourse must be prepared to welcome the child the may result from their sexual activity. Period. Sex makes babies. It’s not a recreational pastime or hobby. The fact that we humans greatly enjoy the pleasure of sex and are bonded through the experience only points to the graciousness of God and His generous will that we know the ecstasy of physical love and self-giving. It doesn’t mean we can prevent sexual intercourse from accomplishing what God intended it to accomplish.
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denise abortion clinics dont report rape or incest so if this angers you go after the kill mills.
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Hmm, SPEAKING of Mississippi, did y’all know that the state has some of the highest poverty and teen birth rates in the country, and that it also ranks on the absolute bottom tier as far as high school graduation rates go? To reiterate: where are all the oh-so-helpful crisis pregnancy centers???
Maybe one of the blastocysts “saved” by this “personhood” amendment will have the cure for the state’s abject poverty levels. Heck, if a fetus can stand trial in Ohio, why can’t an undifferentiated mass of human cells at least intern for a think tank??
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Gads I HATE the term “rapist’s child!!!”
Ignorant.
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heather says:
October 3, 2011 at 7:38 pm
denise abortion clinics dont report rape or incest so if this angers you go after the kill mills.
(Denise) I have heard this. I’m aware of the Planned Parenthood sting. I find it utterly outrageous that an abortion clinic doesn’t AUTOMATICALLY report anything that suggests someone was raped or in another way sexually abused.
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Here you go, Megan.
http://www.ramahinternational.org/mississippi.html
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Wow, busy week for the abortion fans. Hey, now that DN is out of the closet as a pro-abortion advocate, I can’t help but notice she’s now going over the stale old what-if’s that all the other abortion advocates have already tired themselves out with. Hey, you know that reading the archives might save you some trouble, right?
I can’t even believe some people are so warped that they think all post-pubescent girls should just make the Big Pharma even richer and themselves less healthy by eating un-needed doses of birth control pills or enduring the damaging complications of iud’s 365 days a year on the off chance they might get raped. Hey, maybe the nurse’s office at the local junior high should insist that all girls wear the female condom for three weeks out of a month just in case?
You are way out there!! Whatever is in your brownies, you gotta use less of it.
Meanwhile, at one of her relinquishment parties, she will try to sell post-rape greeting cards that read “Knock knock who’s there? Orange. Orange who? Orange you glad you took your mandated birth control pills?”
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LOL! I’m so sorry, I couldn’t resist – I’d gone days without tossing even a morsel of kibble!
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ninek says:
October 4, 2011 at 1:24 am
Wow, busy week for the abortion fans. Hey, now that DN is out of the closet as a pro-abortion advocate, I can’t help but notice she’s now going over the stale old what-if’s that all the other abortion advocates have already tired themselves out with.
(Denise) I am appalled, disgusted and horrified by abortion. It is ugly to me. I believe that making it illegal across the board just drives it underground. My plan — FORCING FEMALES TO SEE WHAT THE UNBORN LOOKS LIKE AND KNOW WHAT AN ABORTION DOES TO IT — would actually be EFFECTIVE because it would motivate many to WANT to carry to term or to be more conscientious in the use of contraceptives or to abstain from the act that causes pregnancy. A healthy pregnancy requires that the female take good care of herself during it. CONCERN for the unborn motivates her to do that.
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I had the idea for relinquishment showers at a point in time when I believed there should be a campaign to persuade females with problem pregnancies to carry to term and then place the baby for adoption. That was before I knew of the many negative things associated with adoption.
For those who oppose my suggestion to put all fertile females who don’t want to get pregnant on some sort of contraception to prevent pregnancy through rape, what are your suggestions for preventing pregnancy through rape?
If your daughter had just been raped and wanted some sort of emergency treatment because she was terrified she might get pregnant, would you help her get that treatment?
Or would you tell her that having a baby conceived through the assault would be a good experience for her and to just accept that she might be pregnant?
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How about you start researching why rapists rape?
How about you look into the interviews with incarcerated rapists? Pornography is a big factor in their sick legacies.
How about you push for longer sentences for rapists?
Maybe you could focus on the perps and the evil that they do? Hmmmmm?
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Carla says:
October 4, 2011 at 9:32 am
How about you start researching why rapists rape?
How about you look into the interviews with incarcerated rapists? Pornography is a big factor in their sick legacies.
How about you push for longer sentences for rapists?
Maybe you could focus on the perps and the evil that they do? Hmmmmm?
(Denise) I’ve already written on several rapists. I wrote the story for Crime Library on serial rape-murderer Carlton Michael Gary, on the murder of 12-Polly Klaas, on the “Wichita Horror” in which both men and women were forced into a grotesque sexual orgy. I wrote the article on former priest John Geoghan who molested and raped young boys.
Sentences for the crime of forcible rape are already pretty tough.
It seems at least possible that pornography IS a factor in their crimes. After all, advertising is a multi-million dollar business because it influences. The false notions of sexuality pushed by much pornography might distort the sexuality of at least some men.
My opinion is that rape is the result of one or both of the following:
1) Male sexuality becomes completely severed from empathy and/or
2) Male sexuality becomes fused with rage and hatred.
The reasons the above occur are not fully understand. A background of instability, of shuffling from home to home, is often a factor. Carlton Michael Gary was NOT adopted (neither were any of the others mentioned above). His biological father took no interest in him and contributed nothing to his support. His mother often wasn’t able to care for him and he went from her home to his aunt to his grandmother.
Rapists often grow up in homes where there is a great deal of drinking. Alcohol figures heavily in this crime as it does in many others.
Rapists were often mistreated as children. They were often the target of bullying. They were often sexually molested or stimulated prior to adolescence. Sometimes that stimulation was exposure to porn.
All of the above are factors that go into the creation of the perps.
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Jen: “Denise, anyone engaging in sexual intercourse must be prepared to welcome the child the may result from their sexual activity. Period. Sex makes babies. ”
Not always. Your statement absolutely has to be false if the actions of NFP practitioners avoiding conception are to have any explanation at all.
If a couple wishing to avoid pregnancy using a condom erred and conceived, there’s nothing “inherent” about their use of a condom that suggests they would not be open to the life thus conceived — any more than a couple using NFP to avoid pregnancy might be. On the other hand, it’s as possible for a couple using NFP “unsuccessfully” to choose abortion as not; there’s nothing magical about NFP that sanctifies someone who’s a baby killer at heart.
“It’s not a recreational pastime or hobby. The fact that we humans greatly enjoy the pleasure of sex and are bonded through the experience only points to the graciousness of God and His generous will that we know the ecstasy of physical love and self-giving. It doesn’t mean we can prevent sexual intercourse from accomplishing what God intended it to accomplish.”
And yet NFP practitioners successfully to avoid pregnancy all the time. So it turns out that yes, we can prevent sexual intercourse from accomplishing what God intended it to accomplish. We just play a chronological shell game with God, apparently. “Keep your eye on the ball, God! Nope! Not under that one! Ha!”
That God intends sex to be the means whereby children are created is obvious. That he intends a particular sex act to produce a child is unknowable. That humans exercise a great deal of by no means reliable control over whether they thus create children is obvious as well, whether by NFP or other non-killing means.
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“The false notions of sexuality pushed by much pornography might distort the sexuality of at least some men.
My opinion is that rape is the result of one or both of the following:
1) Male sexuality becomes completely severed from empathy and/or”
Nice little moebius loop ya got goin’ there. But hey, let’s put all the weight on the victims and make them use 365 days of BC a year so they don’t get pregnant, right? Cause preventing rape is like so complicated n stuff. You must love the mandatory vaccinations of Gardasil. Who cares how many girls die from it? Just vaccinate, BC, and make sure we can abort, right abortion advocates?
Do tell: when you say you know Rebecca Kiesling, do you mean personally or just you know of her? Because it wouldn’t be very nice to just sweep her life aside as you did if you really knew her. Would you tell her to her face, that though you consider abortion so very ugly, you would have been fine with her mother snuffing her life out? That wouldn’t exactly make MY day.
OK, ok, Paladin, I’m getting my boots on. Now, just hand me the shovel and save me the ‘told you so’s’. LOL!
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Hey Jill,
On the Yes on 26 website where they have an FAQ they say that the Personhood amendment would not outlaw hormonal contraceptives including the pill. I think in order for it to be abortifacient there has to be proof but yet there is strong proof that it does not prevent implantation.
link:http://yeson26.net/stories/yeson26-faq.aspx
Chris C
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actually rape and incest could be one in the same. i told a strory on this blog about a father who impregnated his 2 pre teen daughters 3 times each. thats also rape. the only reason the creep was exposed is because one of the girls gave birth to dads baby and the story of the rapes came out.
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“To reiterate: where are all the oh-so-helpful crisis pregnancy centers???”
Megan, do you pose this question to everyone who says that they want to make abortion rare (as opposed to asking prolifers only)? Anyone who calls him- or herself, “prochoice,” could be operating shelters for pregnant women/new mothers and their children. For some reason, however, in spite of saying they want to give women a choice, people who favor legalized abortion never seem to do this difficult work. To my knowledge, it’s only prolifers who do it.
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“Do tell: when you say you know Rebecca Kiesling, do you mean personally or just you know of her? Because it wouldn’t be very nice to just sweep her life aside as you did if you really knew her. Would you tell her to her face, that though you consider abortion so very ugly, you would have been fine with her mother snuffing her life out? That wouldn’t exactly make MY day.”
I have actually responded to Rebecca via email about just this. Her mother was denied access to an abortion, thus forced to have her , and ending in adopting her out. Rebecca is completely butthurt over the fact that her mother did not want her. The woman does not stand for the majority of woman that are raped and impregnated by the perp, she stands for the majority of children born from women who did not want them..period end of story.
” Nice little moebius loop ya got goin’ there. But hey, let’s put all the weight on the victims and make them use 365 days of BC a year so they don’t get pregnant, right? ”
I do believe that insuring that one does not become pregnant due to rape is not “putting all the weight on the victim” as you so put it. In that thinking you lead me to believe that you blame the victim for being raped and failing to ask the rapist before hand to use a condom to ensure no offspring would result.
” actually rape and incest could be one in the same. i told a strory on this blog about a father who impregnated his 2 pre teen daughters 3 times each. thats also rape. the only reason the creep was exposed is because one of the girls gave birth to dads baby and the story of the rapes came out.”
so what is your point? you are glad that a child was result to this brutal sexual abuse since it helped to catch the person? are you using that as a reason to ban all contraceptives so certain perps can be caught 9 months later?
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“To reiterate: where are all the oh-so-helpful crisis pregnancy centers???”
” Megan, do you pose this question to everyone who says that they want to make abortion rare (as opposed to asking prolifers only)?”
these crisis pregnancy centers have been shown to give false information concerning contraceptives, they mislead women about the health and psychological effects of abortion and misrepresent the services they offer.a Congressional report that found that “87% provide false and misleading information about birth control and abortion.” That statement refers to the a 2006 report requested by Rep. Henry Waxman, in which 23 of 25 such centers receiving federal funds were contacted by investigators posing as pregnant 17-year-old women trying to decide whether to have an abortion. The investigators reported that the contacted centers provided “false and misleading information” about a link between abortion and breast cancer, the effect of abortion on future fertility, the effect of abortion on future fertility, and the mental health effects of abortion.
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anyone engaging in sexual intercourse must be prepared to welcome the child the may result from their sexual activity. Period. Sex makes babies
Way to go there in lowering your body to be solely used for only procreation. We all know that pregnancy comes about from sex (100 percent of pregnancy are linked to just this) what most fail to realize is that it is not a 100 percent chance that you will become pregnant when you take steps insure you do not. It seems to me the procreation only crowd are completely into shaming one who views sex as more than continuing the species. Just because I have a uterus does not mean I am hostage to it.
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“My plan — FORCING FEMALES TO SEE WHAT THE UNBORN LOOKS LIKE AND KNOW WHAT AN ABORTION DOES TO IT — would actually be EFFECTIVE because it would motivate many to WANT to carry to term or to be more conscientious in the use of contraceptives or to abstain from the act that causes pregnancy. ”
I really hate to burst your bubble but most are completely aware of what they are doing when the consider abortion. Being forced to view the sonogram is nothing more than psychological warfare from the right. I was forced to actually view one along with countless of other women. It did not change my mind. Sure many will change theirs but those were women that where not 100 percent sure it is what they wanted to do in the first place .
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“I love personhood initiatives for many reasons, but one important one is they educate the American public that hormonal contraceptive and the IUD may kill babies. They force pro-aborts like Maddow to say out loud that The Pill may end a human life.”
Progestin and estrogen in the pill travel through the bloodstream to the pituitary gland. They prevent release of LH and FSH hormons from it. This prevents the growth of an egg and ovulation. Without ovulation a woman cannot become pregnant.
If you continued taking your birth control pill because you didn’t realize you were pregnant, don’t be alarmed. Despite years of this accident happening, there’s very little evidence that exposure to the hormones in birth control pills causes birth defects. Once you learn that you’re pregnant, stop taking the birth control pill.
In short one must actually be pregnant to terminate a pregnancy Reproduction 101.
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AnonL: Why would it be psychological warfare if “what’s in there” is nothing to be concerned about? “We want to deter you from throwing away clipped fingernails, so we’re going to show you photos of perfectly formed fingernails, in all their beauty.” If the fetus is ontologically no different than a fingernail (generally the view of those offering abortions), how does this differ: ”We want to deter you from throwing away unborn children, so we’re going to show you photos of perfectly formed fetuses, in all their beauty.” It wouldn’t be “psychological warfare,” it’d be just silly — not something to take umbrage over, but something to laugh at.
“Sure many will change theirs but those were women that where not 100 percent sure it is what they wanted to do in the first place .”
Well then. It seems a fully informed choice is one better made.
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“You must love the mandatory vaccinations of Gardasil. Who cares how many girls die from it? Just vaccinate, BC, and make sure we can abort, right abortion advocates?”
I would think being pro life and all you would want to ensure that woman are protected against 2 types of HPV that cause 75 percent of cervical cancer. You know the cancer that used to be the leading cause of death to women. In 2007 alone 12,280 women in the United States were diagnosed with cervical cancer. It also protects against 70 percent of vaginal cancer cases and 50 percent of vulva cancer cases. But I suppose that isn’t important right? Shouldn’t chance it because some will not be protected or might be allergic. I’m sure the FDA took it all into account when they okayd it. But you are probably one that doesnt’ believe in vaccination for your children, which is all up to you but don’t for one second think you can force that nonsense you believe on others in an attempt to shame them for trying to protect their daughters anyway they know how.
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Why would it be psychological warfare if “what’s in there” is nothing to be concerned about?
first off don’t assume that a pregnant woman does not understand that a fetus is inside of her. In the states that have already passed this there are usually no exceptions made for victims of rape or incest. a medical ultrasound is performed so that the doctor can ascertain relevant medical information (such as the gestational age of the foetus), in order to determine “the most appropriate medical course”. Mandatory ultrasound, on the other hand, provides non-medical information to the patient. It assumes that women seeking abortions do not understand the nature and consequences of the abortion procedure. Research shows that ultrasound technicians “typically ‘personalise’ and ‘sentimentalise’ ultrasound images”, so the meaning given to ultrasound images is far from purely medical.By imposing a mandatory ultrasound upon women, the state is arguably doing everything possible to shift the woman’s thoughts, her experience, and her expectations from someone who has decided not to remain pregnant into the position of an ordinary mother-to-be
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Personally I believe that if a woman wants to view the image, by all means allow her but do not force those who wish not to.
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AnonL, hold on a second. I’ve had extensive dental work. My dentist has sat down with me, showed me my xrays and explained in detail what we were looking at and what was going to be done. At my last root canal, THAT fellow also had the films, right there in plain sight, though I KNEW (had even been sent home with literature prior, with more graphics detailing endodontic therapy) what he was going to do and consented to it. Were they committing “psychological warfare” against me? How DARE they show me the root as a part of informed consent? I’d actually had one other root canal before, so this was repetitive to boot. Were these medical professionals “shaming” me?
You state you were “forced” to view an ultrasound. What, or should I ask, WHO was on that ultrasound? Only two possible answers: your son or your daughter. Not just tissue, like my tooth root was. Your child had DNA separate from yours (hint: all the cells of my body contain my DNA). You’ve several posts above repeating the word “shaming”. My tooth example, you might argue, falls short because there are no ‘crazies’ against root canals. But the truth be told, opinions of people you don’t know is not why you feel shame at having continued on in the abortion procedure, consenting to have someone violently end the life of the same child you saw on that screen. Your own heart condemns you, not me. I condemn what you did, and that you still push for other women to destroy themselves and their little ones, but I tell you there is a place where you can find forgiveness.
There’s a need to clarify so much of what you wrote above, but I must point out the glaring flaw of your 11:36 a.m. post: “We all know that pregnancy comes about from sex (100 percent of pregnancy are linked to just this)…” No, 100% of pregnancies do not come about from sex. IVF and sperm donor pregnancies do not.
I speak with abortion-bound women on a regular basis, and the majority do NOT know what abortion does and are unfamiliar with fetal development. They are shocked to discover the truth. The anti-choice-that-results-in-a-live-baby volunteers physically block our handing the pamplet that contains said information and free resources to pregnant women, even when those women reach out to take them.
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first off don’t assume that a pregnant woman does not understand that a fetus is inside of her.
that was supposed to say it assumes not don’t assume. Excuse me.
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“AnonL, hold on a second. I’ve had extensive dental work. My dentist has sat down with me, showed me my xrays and explained in detail what we were looking at and what was going to be done. At my last root canal, THAT fellow also had the films, right there in plain sight, though I KNEW (had even been sent home with literature prior, with more graphics detailing endodontic therapy) what he was going to do and consented to it. Were they committing “psychological warfare” against me? How DARE they show me the root as a part of informed consent? I’d actually had one other root canal before, so this was repetitive to boot. Were these medical professionals “shaming” me? ”
you are not fully understanding they already do a basic ultrasound. An ultrasound for women seeking abortion already covers medical information consisting of the gestational age of the fetus, and the risks involved in the procedure.The common law doctrine of informed consent recognises that competent adult patients have the capacity and the prerogative to make their own medical decisions.Doctors owe a corresponding duty to patients to inform them about the risks and benefits of any medical treatment. Not a duty to break down every single detail of the fetus to the mother. Detailed Mandatory ultrasound disrupts the law’s traditional respect for privacy, bodily integrity, and decisional autonomy.
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@AnonL: I have actually responded to Rebecca via email about just this. Her mother was denied access to an abortion, thus forced to have her , and ending in adopting her out. Rebecca is completely butthurt over the fact that her mother did not want her. The woman does not stand for the majority of woman that are raped and impregnated by the perp, she stands for the majority of children born from women who did not want them..period end of story.
You arrogant, little child. Someone had to grow up knowing for a cold fact that their own mother would have killed her if she’d been able to and you have the gall to belittle the incredibly harsh realization of that fact by claiming she’s only “butthurt” over it?
Geesh, no wonder you’re a pro-abort. It takes a soul frozen solid to the core to say a thing like that.
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“Your own heart condemns you, not me. I condemn what you did, and that you still push for other women to destroy themselves and their little ones, but I tell you there is a place where you can find forgiveness. ”
I feel no shame for what I did. You do not know the circumstance to any of it so that statement of yours is pretty null and void to me. And please refrain from inserting any religious innuendos I’m an Atheist. I do not push for other women to always have an abortion. I push for all women to have a choice in what is best for their situation.
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Bodily autonomy: Might makes right. The ultimate form of bullying.
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You arrogant, little child. Someone had to grow up knowing for a cold fact that their own mother would have killed her if she’d been able to and you have the gall to belittle the incredibly harsh realization of that fact by claiming she’s only “butthurt” over it?
oh dear I am sorry for pointing out the fact that the woman is obviously emotionally upset beyond words about it and now drives to insure that all women that are raped are not allowed to have an abortion just because her anger towards her mother wanting one aka butthurt.
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You didn’t answer my question: Who was on that ultrasound screen? Why did viewing an ultrasound contitute “psychological warfare” on you? You were the one who stated that, so I’m asking you to clarify this position. What changed (not your decision, obviously) by viewing the ultrasound of the child you were aborting that day?
Bodily integrity? Your son or daughter possessed no right continued bodily integrity because…?? In fact, his or her body was whole (integral) and functioning just as any human being’s body ought to be at that stage of development at the time of your ultrasound, am I right?
Location and dependency on you are not justifiable answers. When my breast-fed daughters needed me to continue thriving, I did not have “decisional autonomy” to starve them to death or strangle them if I didn’t want to feed them (bottle feeding was not possible).
If you were a home-bound insulin-dependent diabetic or an emphysema patient needing oxygen, and one person were able to deprive you with either to the point of death, would this be OK? Why or why not?
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“Bodily autonomy: Might makes right. The ultimate form of bullying.”
derp
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oh dear I am sorry for pointing out the fact that the woman is obviously emotionally upset beyond words about it and now drives to insure that all women that are raped are not allowed to have an abortion just because her anger towards her mother wanting one aka butthurt.
Herp-a-derp
Did you stop to think for a second that it’s not “butthurt” motivating this woman, but the fact that someone wanted to kill her at one point in her life, and that she feels it never should’ve been in question and perhaps she feels empathy for and wants to save other endangered lives like her own? Or is empathy and compassion too much for you to grasp? Oh, wait, you had your own child killed, so, yeah, I suppose it is.
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Who was on that ultrasound screen? Why did viewing an ultrasound contitute “psychological warfare” on you? You were the one who stated that, so I’m asking you to clarify this position. What changed (not your decision, obviously) by viewing the ultrasound of the child you were aborting that day?
I didn’t say it inflicted any form of psychological warfare on me persay. I said that it would constitute as such. Given forceful viewing can emotionally damage a woman especially those in rape/incest cases that do not wish to continue their pregnancy.
In fact, his or her body was whole (integral) and functioning just as any human being’s body ought to be at that stage of development at the time of your ultrasound, am I right?
the fetus was actually dead mind you so no.
When my breast-fed daughters needed me to continue thriving, I did not have “decisional autonomy” to starve them to death or strangle them if I didn’t want to feed them (bottle feeding was not possible).
Grasping for straws much. You can not honestly compare a fetus to a child already born and dependent on you.
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“Did you stop to think for a second that it’s not “butthurt” motivating this woman, but the fact that someone wanted to kill her at one point in her life, and that she feels it never should’ve been in question and perhaps she feels empathy for and wants to save other endangered lives like her own? Or is empathy and compassion too much for you to grasp? Oh, wait, you had your own child killed, so, yeah, I suppose it is.”
in my correspondence with her she out right said that if a 12 year old was raped she should be forced to carry the offspring to term. how that is empathic is beyond me. As for killing my own child, the fetus was not viable therefore what happened had to, but thanks for your meaningful statement.
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I’ve heard Rebecca Kiessling speak, she knows her value doesn’t come from the “wantedness” of others. She was adopted into the most important family of all (oops, was that a “religious innuendo”?), one into which many of us here have also been adopted.
Her words, I quote “…ultimately I know that my worth is, that I have an infinite value. Jesus paid an infinite price and, that’s my worth! I mean, Jesus died and he paid an infinite price. I am not worthless, I am priceless!” Yeah, ‘butthurt’ would be the first word I’d use to describe her /sarc off.
Ok, AnonL, you say you feel no shame. B-b-but I thought you were arguing that’s what the ultrasound was supposed to accomplish?
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Years of psychological torment from knowing your mother wants you dead = butthurt. Good to know.
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Ok, AnonL, you say you feel no shame. B-b-but I thought you were arguing that’s what the ultrasound was supposed to accomplish?
everyone person is different. but apparently we want to make one woman’s experience the norm in this group. Where as I feel no shame others do feel shame.
“…ultimately I know that my worth is, that I have an infinite value. Jesus paid an infinite price and, that’s my worth! I mean, Jesus died and he paid an infinite price. I am not worthless, I am priceless!” Yeah, ‘butthurt’ would be the first word I’d use to describe her /sarc off.
what do you think drove her to make it where abortions would not be okay with rape? Jesus? really you think Jesus drove her to believe that even in cases where 11 year old girls are raped by their fathers they would be better off carrying the child against their wishes? Anger drove her to make a stand against rape abortions. Jesus is her platform not the motivator.
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This thread is nauseating. (I’m impressed with my pro-life friends here who are in the ring! Go go go!)
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AnonL at 1:29 p.m. says:
“I didn’t say it inflicted any form of psychological warfare on me persay. I said that it would constitute as such. Given forceful viewing can emotionally damage a woman especially those in rape/incest cases that do not wish to continue their pregnancy.”
Ok, so your tune changes when pressed. I get it. Your concern, then, is for the less than 1% of cases which rape and incest comprise? I would posit that forceful abortion holds greater potential to emotionally damage a rape/incest victim than does ‘forceful viewing’. Please equate yourself with David Reardon’s research detailed in Victims and Victors.
AnonL said: “the fetus was actually dead mind you so no.”
Then I hate to burst your bubble, but you didn’t have an abortion. It was a D&C, but not an abortion. Did they used the term “missed miscarriage” or “spontaneous abortion”? That may be what confused you. What you are describing is not an abortion, AnonL.
AnonL wrote: “Grasping for straws much. You can not honestly compare a fetus to a child already born and dependent on you.”
I did honestly compare the two. Why can I not? The fetus (offspring) is the same, just further along in the development continuum and in a different location. Same human being. Please show me how that is not the case? In fact, it was much easier when my girls were in utero: when they needed nourishment, I didn’t have to wake up!
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I was forced to actually view one along with countless of other women. It did not change my mind.
I feel no shame for what I did.
the fetus was actually dead mind you so no.
Confused here. Did you abort a living child or did you have a procedure to remove a miscarried child, AnonL? Or are you speaking about two different events?
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Yeah… It must be anger motivating her. Not the terrifying realization (because she barely escaped death herself) that her life was completely at the mercy of someone else’s whims, simply because she wasn’t wanted by her mother.
I don’t see how anyone could want to live in a society that allows people to kill their offspring based on how much they like them.
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Ah. It makes sense, now. AnonL is a manipulated tool of the pro-legal-abortionists, just like that one Tracy chick who pops in here from time to time. They’re useful because lying about how we want mothers of babies who have died in miscarriage to die of sepsis sounds a lot better for them than the girl who wants to be able to fit into her prom dress or go to a concert.
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..
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Aborting a fetus and willfully killing a child that is a separate entity than yourself is not the same thing.
You are connected to a fetus, but that child’s body has its own functioning systems, its own pumping heart, its own brain waves, its own limbs, and its own DNA.
Please explain how abortion is not “willfully killing a child” and how it is not a separate entity rather than simply asserting it as being so. The placenta and body of the fetus belong to the fetus – the placenta is a part of the fetus and not of you. It is attached to your uterus but is a separate entity which draws nutrients from you but is not part of you.
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“crisis pregnancy centers have been shown to give false information concerning contraceptives,” etc.
Hi, Anon: If this is true in some cases, then whoever is doing this is wrong to do so. Again, any individual or group who believes that they can do a better job at giving women the opportunity to have and keep their babies is free to do so.
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@AnonL: oh dear I am sorry for pointing out the fact that the woman is obviously emotionally upset beyond words about it and now drives to insure that all women that are raped are not allowed to have an abortion just because her anger towards her mother wanting one aka butthurt.
Oh. You’re “sorry.” You take a completely flippant attitude towards the unborn victims of abortion, towards the very fact of Kiessling’s life or death, towards her relationship with her mother, and towards the emotional impact of rape on people we don’t often–as a culture–acknowledge as even having to deal with that fallout, but you’re “sorry.” Sorry for having no empathy whatsoever or sorry for failing to even think about the implications of what you said? Because in either case, I have to say, this sorry excuse for an apology isn’t cutting it.
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AnonL writes: “what do you think drove her to make it where abortions would not be okay with rape? Jesus? really you think Jesus drove her to believe that even in cases where 11 year old girls are raped by their fathers they would be better off carrying the child against their wishes? Anger drove her to make a stand against rape abortions. Jesus is her platform not the motivator.”
Back up. You said she was operating out of anger towards her birth mother’s declaration she would have aborted her, and was ‘butthurt’. I countered that I have listened to her, and that is not my impression at all, that she knows her worth does not come from another human being wanting her alive or dead. I took it one step further to explain where her worth DOES come from and the above is your regurgitation of it.
Since you, as a proclaimed atheist, do not know what you don’t know, I gently suggest you refrain from leaps like your 1:41 p.m. statement betrays. Do you want me to break it down for you?
No one pays a ransom for something/one that is worthless. Jesus gave His life as a ransom for every human being. You may disagree as to who He is, but that’s your prerogative (Jesus doesn’t “drive” anyone to believe anything, though He’s quite compelling!). I know who He is, because I know Him, and He’s wonderful :) So in your above scenario, I must clarify a few points: YES, Jesus loves the 11-year-old incest victim. YES, He loves her unborn child (who He knows already), and YES he even loves the perpetrator, the father in your scenario. How is justice accomplished by the unborn child dying because of his/her father’s crime? Again, Victims & Victors clearly demonstrates that rape and incest victims who’ve aborted have TWO traumas to overcome. In the first (sexual assault), they were victims. In the second (abortion), they take part. I remember reading one quote that, in aborting, she (the rape victim) felt she had lowered herself to victimize someone else who was helpless: her own child.
The pro-life point of view is that every life has intrinsic value. That view is consistent with God’s view of people, demonstrated in Jesus’ life and death. He is not a platform. He’s a solid rock, the cornerstone, the very foundation. Your sands have been shifting merely in the course of this blog post’s comments section. You might want to double check your footing.
Now, I’ve got a lot to get done today. AnonL, you didn’t have an abortion. Mary Lee, your daughter’s fantastic & astute (other thread). Would that we all could have such clarity!
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rasqual says:
And yet NFP practitioners successfully to avoid pregnancy all the time. So it turns out that yes, we can prevent sexual intercourse from accomplishing what God intended it to accomplish.
NFP practitioners don’t prevent sexual intercourse from accomplishing what God intended. Every time a couple practicing NFP have sexual intercourse, it is open to life. God intended a woman’s fertility cycle too.
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Representative Henry Waxman is not a credible source of information. His 2006 report on pregnancy resource centers contains fallacies, itself.
First, there is enough evidence of a connection between abortion and breast cancer.
In “Risk Factors for Triple-Negative Breast Cancer in Women under Age 45”, Dr. Jessica Dolle et al listed abortion as one of the risk factors (1.4, compared to oral contraception use for 3-6 years, 1.3) “Specifically, older age, family history of breast cancer, earlier menarche age, induced abortion, and oral contraceptive use were associated with an increased risk for breast cancer.” p. 1163 (Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention, April 2009).
Second, complications from abortion can affect future fertility. Unnatural stretching of the cervix during the abortion can lead to “incompetent cervix” – the inability of the cervix to remain closed results in pre-mature delivery. Also Pelvic Inflammatory Disease can render a woman sterile. These were two of the abortion complications listed in the Michigan Dept. of Community Health website
So the pregnancy resource centers come closer to telling the truth than Planned Parenthood.
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Every time a couple practicing NFP have sexual intercourse, it is open to life.
And every time a pro-life contracepting couple has sexual intercourse, it is open to new life.
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ninek says:
October 4, 2011 at 10:22 am
Do tell: when you say you know Rebecca Kiesling, do you mean personally or just you know of her?
(Denise) I mean that we’ve corresponded through email.
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About my correspondence with Rebecca Kiessling: she and I are not close friends and our discussions have been limited. One time I wrote that I wish her organization had been around and active to help a man a friend of mine told me about. His single mother had told him a cover story about his absent father. She had never wanted him to know how he was conceived. He was in his early 20s when he accidentally discovered he had been conceived in a rape. He committed suicide very shortly afterward. I wrote to Rebecca that if he had gotten in touch with her organization, it might have saved his life. In the subject line of the email, I wrote, “A Sad Story.” She wrote back, “That is sad.” She said she also thought her group could have helped him.
As I’ve previously written, the novel “Son of the Morning” by Joyce Carol Oates is relevant to the discussion of pregnancy through rape. 15-year-old Elsa Vickery is set upon by a group of men who leave her to walk home without underpants, with her little finger pulled out of its socket, and “smeared with her own sour-smelling blood.” She gets pregnant. Her father and brother want to pursue an illegal abortion. Elsa doesn’t. She thinks, “She was going to have a baby so what was the point of all this fussing and carrying on about it?”
Elsa no longer attends school and is isolated during her pregnancy. At one point, she comes close to abusing her baby.
The baby grows up to become a famous Christian evangelist.
I mentioned this novel to Rebecca Kiessling and she directed me to the true stories on her website of people conceived in rape, writing “Several of them have become ministers.”
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Abortion advocates, I want to introduce you to the face of your new enemy: the average American. Yes, the average person who will tell you, “I’m not a pro-lifer but I do believe abortion is wrong…” Get used to hearing it, more and more often.
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“Anyone who calls him- or herself, “prochoice,” could be operating shelters for pregnant women/new mothers and their children. For some reason, however, in spite of saying they want to give women a choice, people who favor legalized abortion never seem to do this difficult work. To my knowledge, it’s only prolifers who do it.”
Oops, wrong. I currently work in a low-income, community healthcare setting and we run a visiting nurse program for young mothers. We also serve as a point of entry into the wider healthcare system for lots of uninsured folks, including many working class people who’ve been laid off at the local factory and have no health insurance–you know, the people that conservative legislators assume God will just magically take care of. Yes, I do that difficult work, without disseminating misinformation or trying to manipulate people into doing what I think is morally correct. Fancy that.
“Years of psychological torment from knowing your mother wants you dead = butthurt. Good to know.”
Well, uh, what do you expect when a human being must relinquish fundamental control of her body? OH, and not just ONE time but two, in this case? Are you drinking the pro-life Koolaid now too, Jack? Do you think that women who can’t legally end their pregnancies will just say “shucks” and happily resign themselves to the condition?
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“Bodily autonomy: what prevents the government from performing experiments on you without your consent (Tuskegee, cough cough); what allows you to be tried with due process; what makes it illegal for you to be forced to work without compensation; what allows people in this country to be free from violence, and what makes rape illegal in the first place. Bodily autonomy: a concept fundamental to our post-enlightenment understanding of what it means to be a person.”
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Well, I have never been anything other than prolife, Megan, so I am not sure what you are talking about.
No, I don’t think that everyone is going to be all “hip hip hooray!!” about carrying an unwanted pregnancy to term, no more than I think every parent is ecstatic about their born children. I just don’t think humanity depends on how happy your parents are to see you born. You might understand how Rebecca feels if your mother had wanted to have you aborted. I do.
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“Oops, wrong. I currently work in a low-income, community healthcare setting and we run a visiting nurse program for young mothers.”
Megan, I wrote, “to my knowledge,” because I acknowledge that there could be people who favor legalized abortion that do “cpc” (quotations because I hate the term, “crisis pregnancy center”) -type work that I’m not aware of. Of course I realize that many people who favor legalized abortion work for nonprofits that do good. What I’m referring to, though, is a group of “prochoice” people providing women with a residence, meals, toiletry supplies, baby clothes and supplies, ESL, etc etc etc, all or mostly privately funded by like-minded people. That’s what the “cpc” near my home does for its women and children. Your program, valuable as I’m sure it is, and “cpc”-type work are not really the same thing substantively. As far as I’m aware, it is only prolifers who do this work.
A visiting nurse program for new mothers sounds great. I’m a nurse myself and I know how critically important home care is. On a practical note, though, if your program doesn’t have a residential component, then you’re not giving women THE opportunity that many of them need to keep their babies, ie, a safe place to stay.
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Lrning: “NFP practitioners don’t prevent sexual intercourse from accomplishing what God intended. Every time a couple practicing NFP have sexual intercourse, it is open to life. God intended a woman’s fertility cycle too.”
Every time we used contraception, I was open to life. If contraception had failed, I’d have celebrated life.
Are you saying no NFP practitioners would lament getting pregnant? That people who are trying to prevent pregnancy would in every case celebrate it?
I don’t buy it. Catholics abort. Why are not NFP practitioners as capable of being selfish as anyone else?
This is what I see as a form of idolatry — worse than Amway fanatics. It’s almost cultic. Snake oil. “Use our stuff and you’ll be righteous!”
I’m not saying that’s your attitude. But your words, unqualified by any acknowledgement that NFP is not a second incarnation of Christ, seem idolatrous on their face.
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Megan says:
October 4, 2011 at 7:49 pm
Do you think that women who can’t legally end their pregnancies will just say “shucks” and happily resign themselves to the condition?
(Denise) I believe that those who want abortion illegal believe that its illegality produces a general climate in which unplanned pregnancies are ACCEPTED — not necessarily immediately celebrated — as the beginning or enlarging of a family. The pregnant female may not be initially overjoyed but will come to accept the pregnancy and a family will begin or grow.
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“I just don’t think humanity depends on how happy your parents are to see you born. You might understand how Rebecca feels if your mother had wanted to have you aborted. I do.”
How can you demand that we care about the *feelings* of the children of rape survivors if, in your worldview, the *feelings* of the pregnant women don’t matter? Can you not see how ridiculous that demand is? If you think women should have to carry all pregnancies to term, without exception, then you need to simply deal with the fact that some women aren’t going to be thrilled to be mothers, and might end up psychologically messing up their kids. Heck, my mother was downright unhappy at times with stay-at-home motherhood. Did it make me feel bad? Yeah, sometimes. But I appreciated that my mom actually sacrificed a lot to have kids, that she had flaws like everybody else, and that I wasn’t the center of the universe. I got over it and moved on. I wasn’t so selfish that I needed to redress what wrongs I had been dealt by publicly lobbying for pregnant women to have their basic rights taken away.
“On a practical note, though, if your program doesn’t have a residential component, then you’re not giving women THE opportunity that many of them need to keep their babies, ie, a safe place to stay.”
No, but we do link women to the very well-resourced women’s shelter in town if they come to our center seeking temporary residence. But then again, we don’t provide rosaries or false hopes either, so I guess it’s lose-lose.
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“How can you demand that we care about the *feelings* of the children of rape survivors if, in your worldview, the *feelings* of the pregnant women don’t matter? Can you not see how ridiculous that demand is? If you think women should have to carry all pregnancies to term, without exception, then you need to simply deal with the fact that some women aren’t going to be thrilled to be mothers, and might end up psychologically messing up their kids. ”
How does thinking that human beings have the right to live, even if they aren’t wanted, translate into not caring about pregnant women? A humane solution does not involve the death of a human being. You can help women struggling with their pregnancies without legal elective abortion. When I was living on the streets, people talked to the pregnant street girls like you do, it’s your choice, it’s your body, you aren’t going to be able to be a mother anyway. Guess what? Abortion didn’t do anything but make their situations worse. How is it that pro-lifers, who would help and encourage these girls and allow them to find away to keep their baby and get out of that life, are the ones who don’t care about women? And yeah, some people will be miserable about having to keep an unwanted pregnancy. But that’s life, some people are miserable about every law. You cannot make everyone happy, the most you can do is try to help as many people as possible, and protect the right of people to be safe from losing their life.
And has abortion lessened the incidence of child abuse? Like, at all? Nope.
“Heck, my mother was downright unhappy at times with stay-at-home motherhood. Did it make me feel bad? Yeah, sometimes. But I appreciated that my mom actually sacrificed a lot to have kids, that she had flaws like everybody else, and that I wasn’t the center of the universe. I got over it and moved on. I wasn’t so selfish that I needed to redress what wrongs I had been dealt by publicly lobbying for pregnant women to have their basic rights taken away.”
Oh, come on! I was abused as a child, soooo I should just get over it and not use my experiences to help other people who went through what I did? I call BS. Half the reason people are passionate about righting ANY wrong is because it affected them deeply.
I think that the right to be free of being killed is a more basic right than autonomy. Yes, I know you disagree.
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If the most effective contraceptives are outlawed — and the law is effective which it might not be, i.e. Prohibition — we should expect families to on average be much larger than they are now. Would this suggest we must put in a family allowance so that there will always be security for the new baby?
Large families tend to make more economic sense in an agricultural setting. Should an attempt be made to reverse the urbanization of America? CAN we go back to a more rural environment?
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Well, I do know Rebecca Kiessling personally. She, like all other Americans, have the right to lobby to redress unjust laws – whether the abortion advocates view them as unjust or not. Funny thing about “progressives” – they are extremely intolerant of people with opposing ideas.
It gets down to fundamentals. Abortion ends innocent human life without due process. Not only is this life innocent – it is the actual child of the woman who is authorizing its death.
As for rape victims – which of you pro-abortion posters have conceived as a result of being raped? You don’t need rape to justify your abortions. Besides you have not impressed me as being very knowledgeable about how rape victims feel, anyhow.
Enough rape victims who aborted said the abortion was a worse experience because through it, they relived the rape – feeling violated.
Its not the rape victims who are complaining about Rebecca Kiessling.
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xalisae says:
And every time a pro-life contracepting couple has sexual intercourse, it is open to new life.
Um, no it isn’t. That’s against the very definition of contraception – prevention of conception. Now, a contracepting couple can be willing to accept a life should it start despite their intention to prevent it. But that doesn’t make their sexual intercourse open to life. They have taken steps to prevent sexual intercourse from accomplishing what God intended it to accomplish.
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rasqual says:
Every time we used contraception, I was open to life.
By using contraception, you were taking steps to prevent conception. That is not “open to life”.
If contraception had failed, I’d have celebrated life.
Great!
Are you saying no NFP practitioners would lament getting pregnant? That people who are trying to prevent pregnancy would in every case celebrate it?
No, I’m saying that NFP practitioners do not prevent sexual intercourse from accomplishing what God seeks to accomplish. Each act of sexual intercourse is open to life.
I don’t buy it. Catholics abort. Why are not NFP practitioners as capable of being selfish as anyone else?
Um, I never said they weren’t. I only said that each act of sexual intercourse is open to life.
This is what I see as a form of idolatry — worse than Amway fanatics. It’s almost cultic. Snake oil. “Use our stuff and you’ll be righteous!”
I’m not saying that’s your attitude. But your words, unqualified by any acknowledgement that NFP is not a second incarnation of Christ, seem idolatrous on their face.
This is just odd. I don’t think it’s possible to read the words I wrote and believe I am worshiping NFP as my Lord and Savior. I am simply pointing out that there is a difference between an act of sexual intercourse when contracepting and when not.
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Lrning: “They have taken steps to prevent sexual intercourse from accomplishing what God intended it to accomplish.” So? NFP practitioners conspire systematically on an almost constant basis to avoid pregnancy. Someone using a condom does so almost with a shrug before sex. NFP is a systematic plan to thwart God with timing; other folk just use latex.
What’s the difference, from a standpoint of an intention to enjoy sex and avoid pregnancy? None — other than that NFP practitioners can be self-righteous about their method without considering their identical intent. (I mean, of course, NFP users who are avoiding pregnancy, not those using it in order to become pregnant).
This is simply incoherent:
Every time we used contraception, I was open to life.“By using contraception, you were taking steps to prevent conception. That is not ‘open to life’.”
Then neither is strategic enjoyment of sex during periods determined to be infertile by way of NFP.
“I’m saying that NFP practitioners do not prevent sexual intercourse from accomplishing what God seeks to accomplish. Each act of sexual intercourse is open to life.”
Right. They just prevent their entire lives from accomplishing it. Instead of one act with latex thwarting God, their quotidian routine of monitoring and timing things conspires to thwart God on a grand scale. It’s a much more calculated and deliberate thwarting of God.
And at any rate, I know of no one who has demonstrated that God intends any particular conception. That he intends children to be conceived through sex, in the abstract, is certain. That he intends a particular one, in any particular sex act, is hardly obvious. A rapist adulterer may impregnate someone, and it’s not clear that anyone intended any such thing at all.
Odd it may be, but in this forum I’m gradually gaining the impression that those who consider contraception sinful seem to believe their practice of NFP sanctifies their sex. And no, if NFP is used to avoid pregnancy, it’s no more “open to life” than we were when we were using contraception. An “unexpected” pregnancy would have be equally welcome in either case — that is, provided the NFP practitioners were not hedonists who were counting on its reliability and would have aborted had they become pregnant (that would have distinguished them from our attitude).
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Nice post, rasqual. I agree.
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JackBorsch says:
October 4, 2011 at 8:18 pm
Well, I have never been anything other than prolife, Megan, so I am not sure what you are talking about.
No, I don’t think that everyone is going to be all “hip hip hooray!!” about carrying an unwanted pregnancy to term, no more than I think every parent is ecstatic about their born children.
(Denise) I believe that people who support outlawing abortion believe that such laws produce an attitude of ACCEPTANCE of pregnancy even if initially unwanted. As the pregnancy progresses, it inevitably has an effect on the feelings of the pregnant girl or woman and she may come to want a baby as the result of continuing the pregnancy.
IF she carries to term an STILL doesn’t want to raise the baby, adoption placement is available. I’ve pointed out the many serious flaws with adoption but it is available for that very small minority who both carry to term and then do not want to raise.
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Rasqual,
“Right. They just prevent their entire lives from accomplishing it. Instead of one act with latex thwarting God, their quotidian routine of monitoring and timing things conspires to thwart God on a grand scale. It’s a much more calculated and deliberate thwarting of God.”
You make a lot of assumptions about a couple using NFP in the quote above.
You also seem to be reading a whole lot into my posts that isn’t there. I said “NFP practitioners don’t prevent sexual intercourse from accomplishing what God intended. Every time a couple practicing NFP have sexual intercourse, it is open to life. God intended a woman’s fertility cycle too.”
And that is true. For those practicing NFP, nothing is done to prevent each act of sexual intercourse from resulting in conception. NFP can also be practiced selfishly and sinfully.
You may be misunderstanding me when I say “open to life”. I’m not referring to the intentions of the couple. I’m referring to the sexual intercourse itself. Life begins at conception. Each act of sexual intercourse using NFP is open to conception. The same is not true for sexual intercourse when the couple is contracepting.
I’ve made no claims that NFP practicing couples are more righteous than others. Whether they are using NFP sinfully or not is between the couple and God.
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Lrning: “You make a lot of assumptions about a couple using NFP in the quote above.”
I’m merely aping the assumptions folks in these parts seem to make about folks who use contraception.
“NFP practitioners don’t prevent sexual intercourse from accomplishing what God intended.”
Does God intend sexual intercourse to produce offspring? If so, then timing one’s intercourse to prevent offspring prevents it from accomplishing what God intended.
And what does it mean for an act of intercourse to be “open to conception” by your definition if the woman is infertile during that particular act? You mean “in theory?” What does THAT mean? If someone used a condom when infertility would have prevented pregnancy anyway, that would have been no more or less “open to life” than were the sex act a consequence of strategic NFP.
I understand the “open to life” thing, I really do. So if you remove intention and it’s all about whether an act can possibly produce children, then using a condom during an infertile period is not “unopen” to life, because no one could possibly “intend” that such sex should conceive.
This is where, no doubt, the case for differentiating NFP from contraception takes a turn toward the benefits of ignorance in NFP’s defense: “But you can’t know when you’re fertile for sure.” Right? “Open” to life is leaving room for what we can’t control, is that it?
But this is just different means of control. NFP practitioners are still seeking to avoid fertile sex. That’s the intention. That’s the whole point. And NFP is remarkably reliable in that regard.
What if a couple uses NFP to get pregnant, but for some bizarre reason they wish to ensure that they don’t get pregnant during times NFP tells them they will be infertile. Why would they do that, you ask? Who knows, they’re nuts. But since we don’t KNOW for sure whether other times might actually be fertile (which is part and parcel of the whole “open” thing), in their nutsness they’re wanting to be sure they only conceive during the magic week. So they use condoms the rest of the time.
Sinful? After all, they’re breeding like rabbits during the magic week, dashing into the center of God’s intention at that time. They’re simply using condoms at other times.
Would it be a sin to use a condom one day before a woman’s period? What does “open to life” mean on that day?
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“But then again, we don’t provide rosaries or false hopes either, so I guess it’s lose-lose.”
The employees/volunteers at my shelter are overwhelmingly Catholic, and the women do have to take a Bible studies class. They are also encouraged to pursue some type of spiritual/religious instruction (Catholic or otherwise), but no one is forced to do or become anything that they don’t want to be. That’s in recognition of the fact that human beings ARE spiritual. There’s nothing wrong with recognizing that and acting on it, since it is the truth. As far as “false hope,” I’m not sure what you mean. Are the women told their lives will be a walk in the park once they leave the residence? I doubt it. They’re women who have been down some very difficult roads in their lives and I don’t think any of them believe life is going to be all sunshine and roses from here on out. But what does that mean? That they would have been better off aborting? I don’t think so and from the feedback the residence gets, the women don’t seem to believe that either. Also – I’ve been really polite and not snarky at all to you when responding to your posts. Is there some reason you can’t discuss issues in the same respectful way? Is sarcasm your way of distracting from the fact that you can’t answer the question I posed about “prochoice” people doing this type of work?
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AnonL: “Way to go there in lowering your body to be solely used for only procreation.”
As opposed to allowing yourself to be used solely for pleasure?
“the fetus was actually dead mind you so no.”
Oh not another one. A miscarriage is not an abortion (despite the medical term spontaneous abortion). You’re either an fool or a manipulative liar if you think the abortion debate is about removal of a dead fetus rather than the willful death of a live one.
“Grasping for straws much. You can not honestly compare a fetus to a child already born and dependent on you.”
Argument please. Why can you be forced to use your body for a born child who depends on it, but not when that same child depends on your body in utero?
Denise:
“I believe that people who support outlawing abortion believe that such laws produce an attitude of ACCEPTANCE of pregnancy even if initially unwanted.”
No, we just believe that laws should restrain you from violence whether you like it or not.
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CT says:
October 5, 2011 at 12:39 pm
Denise:“I believe that people who support outlawing abortion believe that such laws produce an attitude of ACCEPTANCE of pregnancy even if initially unwanted.” No, we just believe that laws should restrain you from violence whether you like it or not.
(Denise) So you believe it likely females will be miserable and resentful throughout their pregnancies?
That they are likely to act self-destructively, drinking and drugging to dull the pain and thus giving birth to damaged babies?
Do you believe females who are miserable and self-destructive throughout pregnancy will be good mothers to the resulting children?
Although it is available, only a small minority will place for adoption if they carry to term.
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I wonder what happened to AnonL. Hasn’t been back since yesterday after we discussed the difference between the removal of a miscarried child and the removal of a living one in an abortion. Hmm.
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Rasqual, your last post makes me dizzy with the mental gymnastics required to try to make doing something the exact same as not doing that something. It just doesn’t add up. But I think, based on this comment “I’m merely aping the assumptions folks in these parts seem to make about folks who use contraception” that you’re really not discussing the topic with me, since I’ve made no assumptions about folks who use contraception. I’m definitely not one that believes that a person can’t be pro-life and use contraception. I spent a good part of my adult life using contraception and still managed to be pro-life, despite what some folks here say.
Your last few posts read to me like someone that is trying to convince themselves that something they are doing is okay, so you assume a lot of negative things about the people that aren’t doing what you’re doing in an attempt to make you feel better about your decision. Whatever.
But it’s intellectually dishonest to try to present NFP as the same as contraception. They are polar opposites. Contraception is taking steps to render sexual intercourse sterile. NFP is simply knowledge of a woman’s natural fertility cycle. That knowledge can be used to achieve or avoid pregnancy and can be used licitly or sinfully. The act of sexual intercourse is not changed in any way with NFP. Please note that I am not making a statement about the couples that practice either method.
But NOT having sex in order to avoid pregnancy will never = having sex artificially rendered sterile to avoid pregnancy.
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Joanne said:
the women do have to take a Bible studies class.and no one is forced to do or become anything that they don’t want to be
What if a woman is not Christian and does not want to study the bible? What if she was Hindu or Muslim and prefers to study her own religious text? Is she kicked out of the shelter? Or is she forced to study the Christian bible?
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You mean “but having sex in a special pattern according to a woman’s cycle to avoid pregnancy is the same thing as engaging in sex while using methods of decreasing the chance of pregnancy even though a small chance persists.”
Same-same. Both open to new life.
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You mean “but having sex in a special pattern according to a woman’s cycle to avoid pregnancy is the same thing as engaging in sex while using methods of decreasing the chance of pregnancy even though a small chance persists.”
Same-same. Both open to new life.
You stated that very succinctly, Xalisae. I couldn’t agree more! :)
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Hi, len: I don’t know that that situation has come up, to be honest. I have never heard of anyone being kicked out of the residence. The women who run the program are so dedicated to helping the mothers and their children, and have so much love for them, that I would imagine the only thing that would result in someone being asked to leave would be either a woman doing something illegal or something that compromised the safety of the staff or other residents. But as I said, I’ve never heard of it happening. As far as Bible study, most of the women are either African American or from the Caribbean, so they do for the most part have a Catholic or Christian background. I’m sure Hindu or Muslim women can study whatever they want in their free time. Are you asking if certain people’s religious material is BANNED from the residence? I’ve never asked, but I’m sure it wouldn’t be.
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xalisae: You mean “but having sex in a special pattern according to a woman’s cycle to avoid pregnancy is the same thing as engaging in sex while using methods of decreasing the chance of pregnancy even though a small chance persists.”
They are not same thing. A couple using NFP doesn’t HAVE sex at certain times to avoid pregnancy. They avoid pregnancy by NOT having sex at certain times. It’s an important difference. If a married couple is using NFP illicitly, they are not sinning when they have sex. They are sinning when they choose to abstain from sex for selfish reasons. It’s a sin of omission. If a married couple is using NFP licitly, they are not sinning when abstaining for just reasons.
Contraception is a sin of commission and is always sinful.
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Lrning: “Your last few posts read to me like someone that is trying to convince themselves that something they are doing is okay…”
Nope. Haven’t contracepted a darned thing for 20 or 30 years.
How about this: I’m intellectually freaked out by folks I’m sincerely coming to see as NFP idolaters? Seriously. Sincerely. Honestly.
Part of that suspicion comes from fielding accusations. That’s part of the cult-like aspect of it. Good grief.
“you assume a lot of negative things about the people that aren’t doing what you’re doing in an attempt to make you feel better about your decision. ”
Nope. I’m merely finding explanations wanting. I’m assuming nothing negative about anyone (find a SINGLE remark that’s assuming anything about any of my interlocutors, specifically, as opposed to merely exploring the abstract issues themselves). Except, perhaps, Bruce — whose ludicrous idolatry is beyond belief.
“But it’s intellectually dishonest to try to present NFP as the same as contraception. They are polar opposites. Contraception is taking steps to render sexual intercourse sterile. ”
Fine. So we poke pinholes in condoms and employ them with as much self-righteousness. Problem solved. Can you see how ridiculous this defense of NFP is? Let’s just make our methods less well-controlled, and we can all be self-righteous! Handy.
“But NOT having sex in order to avoid pregnancy will never = having sex artificially rendered sterile to avoid pregnancy.”
Why? Sexual desire is strongest during fertile periods for both male and female, for well-documented reasons. It seems to me that God obviously intended that sexual activity would be most prevalent during these times, or else he wouldn’t have designed us this way. Therefore, using mucus and thermometers to over-ride the natural desires God intends coincident with fertility, is pure evil.
Capiche?
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rasqual says:
(find a SINGLE remark that’s assuming anything about any of my interlocutors, specifically, as opposed to merely exploring the abstract issues themselves).
If only it were a single remark:
I’m intellectually freaked out by folks I’m sincerely coming to see as NFP idolaters? Seriously. Sincerely. Honestly.
That’s part of the cult-like aspect of it.
NFP practitioners conspire systematically on an almost constant basis to avoid pregnancy. Someone using a condom does so almost with a shrug before sex. NFP is a systematic plan to thwart God with timing; other folk just use latex.
None — other than that NFP practitioners can be self-righteous about their method without considering their identical intent.
Right. They just prevent their entire lives from accomplishing it. (The “it” being God’s will.)
Instead of one act with latex thwarting God, their quotidian routine of monitoring and timing things conspires to thwart God on a grand scale. It’s a much more calculated and deliberate thwarting of God.
This is what I see as a form of idolatry — worse than Amway fanatics. It’s almost cultic. Snake oil. “Use our stuff and you’ll be righteous!”
According to you, NFP practitioners are self-righteous, cult-like idolaters that spend their lives seeking to thwart God’s will. Gee, nice.
Fine. So we poke pinholes in condoms and employ them with as much self-righteousness. Problem solved. Can you see how ridiculous this defense of NFP is? Let’s just make our methods less well-controlled, and we can all be self-righteous! Handy.
I can tell from your statement above (among others) that you do not grasp the theology behind why NFP can be licit and contraception cannot. Perhaps this is why you’re “intellectually freaked out”. Why not try to understand the reasons behind the teaching rather than just give in to a gut reaction about it being the result of cult-like idolatry. The average couple that practices NFP is doing so to avoid sin and accomplish God’s will for their lives.
“But NOT having sex in order to avoid pregnancy will never = having sex artificially rendered sterile to avoid pregnancy.”
Why?
Because NOT doing something is not the same as DOING something.
Sexual desire is strongest during fertile periods for both male and female, for well-documented reasons. It seems to me that God obviously intended that sexual activity would be most prevalent during these times, or else he wouldn’t have designed us this way. Therefore, using mucus and thermometers to over-ride the natural desires God intends coincident with fertility, is pure evil.
Ah, you’re starting to see the picture. Yes, God intended us to enjoy the unitive and procreative benefits of sex, and designed us beautifully to encourage procreation. And choosing to abstain during the fertile times is not easy. But how is exhibiting self-control necessarily “pure evil”? Or do you believe that God requires us to give in to every urge for sex? Exhibiting self-control for just reasons is not sinful. However, this is the area that most NFP opponents like to ignore. A necessary part of licit NFP is prayer and assessing whether the reasons for abstaining during fertile periods are just or selfish. If a couple is abstaining for selfish reasons, NFP becomes sinful.
I don’t understand the cult-like, self-righteous, and idolatry accusations about NFP practitioners and can only assume it is due to a lack of understanding about NFP. Licit spacing of pregnancies using NFP requires prayer, self-control, great communication between spouses, and discernment of God’s will. That sounds “pure evil” to you? You support “using a condom” “with a shrug before sex” yet find the careful process of discerning God’s will and self-control involved in NFP to be “evil”?
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Lrning: “If only it were a single remark.”
:::sigh:::
Does anyone around here know the difference between arguing about something in the abstract, where all kinds of things may be said about it (on the one hand), and predicating about one’s interlocutors (on the other)?
Notice my use of third person pronouns. You quoted them. So notice them. That’s speaking in the abstract.
Even when saying that I’m seeing folks I think are idolatrous with NFP, I’m not accusing specific people. Just “folks”.
If anyone wishes to take it personally, they’re actively stepping into an abstract space I’m talking about. They’re owning it themselves — I’m not casting it.
Meanwhile, in this forum, I’ve fielded numerous unwarranted inferences about my character — specifically and explicitly — from people cocksure of their inferential abilities but on summary inspection turning out to be dead wrong. What could impel such arrogance? I have no idea.
“According to you, NFP practitioners are self-righteous, cult-like idolaters that spend their lives seeking to thwart God’s will. Gee, nice.”
According to Bruce and others here, contraception users are engaging in a practice no different than a homosexual orgy. “Gee, nice.” So when arguing the issues, use of abstract language is characterized as vile when your interlocutors are doing it — but what — merely factual when NFP fanatics do it? I use the word “fanatics” just there because it seems to me that only someone fanatical about NFP would be so sensitive to criticism of it, that they’d lose all proportion of reason and start slandering their interlocutor specifically while taking umbrage with their interlocutor’s abstract treatment of NFP. Sacred cows.
“The average couple that practices NFP is doing so to avoid sin and accomplish God’s will for their lives. ”
Not sure how. They’re actively pursuing the pleasures of sex while fastidiously avoiding God’s provision of fertile times. God designed them to have the strongest sexual desire during a fertile period, but they suppress this God-intended desire, preferring the pleasures of non-generative sex to the normal fulfillment of these God-given desires. The’re using their fallen, sinful intellect to thwart God’s purpose for sex to be predominant during fertile times.
“Because NOT doing something is not the same as DOING something.”
So if I owe you $100 and don’t pay you, I’m not sinning, right? After all, I’m not DOING anything by not paying you. I’m precisely not doing something.
By avoiding fertile periods, NFP practitioners are actively conspiring to thwart God’s intentions.
“Ah, you’re starting to see the picture…”
(pound head on wall)
No. You’re not understanding that I’m arguing a particular position to discover whether a contrary view is defensible. You seem to imagine that I’m ADVOCATING everything I pose, and that I genuinely disagree with everything I’m controverting. You’re getting personal about this instead of just rationally engaging the propositions, assuming things about me and answering your assumptions instead of dealing with the issue on the face of it (e.g., “your last few posts read to me like someone that is trying to convince themselves that something they are doing is okay”).
“But how is exhibiting self-control necessarily ‘pure evil’?”
Argh. Geez…
Because it’s not self-control simpliciter. You’re trying to make me look silly by attributing to me that I regard self-control as a problem. That’s insane. It’s not “self-control,” it’s strategic avoidance of God’s provided means to generate new life. It’s going around what he’s put there.
A person who feels the pull of God’s Holy Spirit on their lives, calling them to repent and turn to him, is capable of exercising “self-control” and resisting that urge. Is “self-control” a virtue in such cases?
More to the point, good grief, think about this. You’re celebrating the self-control (“we’re sacrificing pleasure, here, mind you!”), but what’s the very purpose of that self-control? To pray and fast for a season, then come together again? Not really. The purpose of that self-control — the end to which it aspires — is to prevent pregnancy. So here you have something you seem to think is an intrinsically virtuous thing (self-control), but the only reason one is exercising it is in order to thwart God’s design, to avoid his provision of fertility. Thus is a virtue made handmaid to a vice. And you think this good?
” Or do you believe that God requires us to give in to every urge for sex? ”
Of course not. But NFP practitioners seem to think the best time to give in to the urge is the worst time for procreation — despite the fact that that is God’s given time, and that God gave stronger sexual desires during that time with obvious intent that this should make sex more naturally likely during this time. So much for the “N” in NFP. It’s entire premise — unless used to assist fertility — is anti-God.
Now let’s try something here. Instead of shaking your head and lamenting my sorry state for actually believing something like that, why don’t you try something really novel (you may infer, BTW, that I’ve parked some hidden condescension tags around this paragraph): why don’t you try NOT assuming that I personally believe or advocate everything I just wrote — and then, amazing to consider, why don’t you just deal with the content of what I’m saying. The propositions are independent of my mind. They seek to establish certain things which may be countered, perhaps. *I* am not a problem to solve, however therapeutic or helpful your good character may compel you to imagine this is just such an occasion. Nor am I an enemy to gain victory over, as Bruce seems to imagine. I’m a person offering propositions that seem to carry weight (to me). Let them matter for what they are. In other words, don’t do this:
“You support ‘using a condom’ ‘with a shrug before sex’ yet find the careful process of discerning God’s will and self-control involved in NFP to be ‘evil’?”
Has anything I said implied in any way that I support using a condom, let alone “with a shrug before sex.” No. Examine my remarks. I’m posing a position, a point of view. Who on EARTH says it’s mine?
If you only argue to advocate things, how on earth do you ever discover things? If you imagine everyone arguing against a view you may hold has something against you, how can you ever learn from them — or help them learn?
Since I’m accustomed to people being able to argue without being so personally vested in things, from all this I infer that for some folks in these parts (not all), a perceived slight to NFP is on par with sacrilege (admittedly, my inferential pump was primed for this when Bruce gushed about ”another victory for God and NFP,” which is about the most ridiculous thing I’ve read on these boards, ever).
Would a hole in a condom sanctify its use? Come now. Scholastic hyper-rationalism dramatically informs your worldview, certainly on NFP. Don’t stop short of examining a few more angels on this pinhead (I think I run a danger of punning against myself there). ;-)
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Rasqual, do you have any interest in gaining an understanding of NFP, specifically how it differs from contraception?
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Sure. And are you cocky and unteachable, or are you just in obligatory pedagogical mode for the ignoranti?
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Okay, I have 2 links to share about NFP that I’ll post separately so they get through.
This one deals mostly with the theology:
http://nccbuscc.org/prolife/issues/nfp/nfpweek/nfpcontraception.shtml
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And this one is from a more practical standpoint:
http://www.priestsforlife.org/articles/nfpdifferences.html
Am I cocky and unteachable? Perhaps I am, because from what I’ve seen so far, I don’t think you have anything to teach me about the morality of contraception.
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Rasqual: obligatory pedagogical mode for the ignoranti?
:) Nice string there, Rasqual. Language can be a beautiful thing. I was never one much for the “eschew obfuscation, espouse elucidation”, admonition, being quite content with prolix verbosity as well as salubrious draughts of floribund circumlocution.
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Hmmm, my last post was perhaps harsh and incomplete. Through our discussion here Rasqual, the Holy Spirit has brought to my mind long forgotten sins from the past and a recognition of some current ones. I now begin the blessed and difficult path of repentance and conversion because of it. I will be forever grateful. Thank you.
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“In the act that expresses their love, spouses are called to make a reciprocal gift of themselves to each other in the totality of their person: nothing that is part of their being can be excluded from this gift.”
Well then, there’s plenty of sin ever present, because as an aspiration this is wonderful — as a moralistic shibboleth it damns us all on other grounds.
Again, I lament Catholic hyper-rationalism’s relegation of things that should be in the realm of wisdom, to the realm of morality.
Going back to HV12, I find nothing that exonerates NFP.
Furthermore, it’s odd to imagine that anytime one gives any of whom one is, one is obliged to give all of whom one is. When I serve someone a meal consisting of several parts, I don’t expect them to cram some representative morsel of each variety into their mouth at once. “If I don’t load up some beans, quiche, pork chop, salad and jello simultaneously — and choke it down with milk — I’m inherently yada yada…” I know of no self-evident are argued principle that makes it a sin to not do everything at one time that one is capable of doing, nor being to any particular person on all occasions when one is anything to them at all, everything one is. And again, as an aspiration that’s dandy — as a moral requirement its folly because believing on able to deliver “all” one is, is a delusion.
Now bear in mind that I consider HV to be one of the finest documents ever coming out of Rome.
Whoops! “natural regulation,” introduced without justification as a given. I’d say this brief tutorial drops the ball right there, trying to sneak an unjustified thwarting of God into a condemnation of non-NFP by offering NFP an uncritically examined waiver.
What’s the justification for regulating for “fertility regulation” at all?
Gah!
Now I get to your second link, and discover that my remarks to date in this thread are well ahead of, and specifically addressing, the well-stated points there. Well-stated, I say, because they hone in on precisely the issues that concern me. But they neither defend against my criticisms, nor establish a contrary.
Seriously, your second link is a perfect repository of the kind of nonsense I’m taking issue with.
I don’t even know where to start. It’s target rich. In NFP discussions in these parts, this single page should be the go-to all the time. It well-exposes both what NFP poses, and it well-exposes latent and, I’d say, illicit assumptions of NFP’s defenders.
NFP practitioners conspire on a grand scale, using fastidious methods, to gain knowledge they can use to thwart God’s natural intention that sexual desire should produce more occasions of sex during fertile periods than outside.
And yeah, as I said a while back, this DOES reduce to an argument from ignorance. Being “open” to life depends on not knowing for sure what will happen” during sex, apparently. But heck, how does one know whether a condom will break?
“When I have sex with you, it is because I freely choose to show you my love, not because I need to satisfy an urge.” Using NFP requires abstinence from intercourse during the fertile days if a pregnancy has to be avoided.”
Good GRIEF. Fine, then don’t have sex. Why bother with NFP at all?
LOL
I’m sorry, this is just hilarious. Practitioners check their mucus and their temperatures and go through all that ritual, why? To avoid pregnancy. Then they say they’re not having sex just to satisfy an urge? Then dispense with all the NFP stuff and just abstain.
Why NOT? Why NOT abstain instead? “Because sex is God’s intention between husband and wife.” Right. But so is not having sex. Happens all time. Or, better put, not having sex is a frequent thing — in fact, it’s the constant status quo punctuated by times of sex. NFP practitioners don’t do it just for pleasure, though. No, they wouldn’t do that. But on the other hand, they’re not doing it for generative purposes either — because the raison d’etre of NFP, for folks using it to avoid pregnancy, is to avoid conception.
Good grief, I’m having to point out the obvious around here. How does one do that? How do I tell you you’re on a mountain? A mountain’s attributes are not clear when one is atop it (“A mountain rises above the plain, obscuring the horizon”). One’s latent assumptions are not evident.
The second-to-last paragraph is utterly incoherent. If a person is using NFP to avoid pregnancy, they’re practicing “family avoidance.”
“But they may only be doing so during a time of hardship.” So hardship is a sufficient reason for reducing sex to mere pleasure? ”No, not mere — it’s open to life!”
So is sex with a condom with a hole poked in it.
How about doing a study, comparing NFP practitioners seeking to avoid fecundity with users of condoms with various size holes poked in them?
At some point on the continuum of “scale of defect” in the condoms, there’ll be a cohort of condom users whose fertility matches the NFP practitioners. Since condom users will be having sex just any ol’ time, though, they’ll be “open to life” 24/7/30, not just during outside-of-fertile times like the NFP folk. Indeed, they’ll be better receiving God’s gift of heightened desire during fertile periods.
I think Catholic researchers should consider promoting condoms that are open to life. They’re certainly morally superior to NFP, inasmuch as they do not lead couples to do an end-run around God’s provision of a fertile period.
Absurd? Why?
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Rasqual,
Context, context, context. I have stated numerous times that NFP can be illicitly and sinfully employed to avoid pregnancy. Both of my links include that concept as well. I have no wish to discuss the innumerable ways NFP can be sinfully utilized. Let’s focus this discussion on two questions:
1) Why is artificial contraception always sinful?
2) How can utilizing NFP to avoid pregnancy ever be licit?
I’ll start with #2 first. Licit NFP cannot be understood outside the context of a God honoring life and marriage. Within this context, sex is more than just a pleasurable activity, it is a renewal of the marriage covenant. Through this covenant, the two became one and God intended this union to be fruitful. A God honoring marriage is one that is “ordered toward the good of the spouses and the procreation and education of offspring”. (CCC 1601)
Examining nature, through which God can be known, we see that God did not intend every instance of sexual intercourse to result in pregnancy, since He gave us a fertility cycle that includes infertile periods.
We are called to live out our vocations as spouse and parent to the best of our ability and in accordance with God’s will. The marriage covenant is ordered “toward the good of the spouses” and the “education of offspring”, as well as “procreation”. Using reason, we can see that there are times that the vocation of marriage and parenthood demand that we be especially responsible with God’s procreative gift. Utilizing God’s design, with discernment of His will, given serious reason, it is permissible for us to practice the virtue of self-control in order to space the births of our children.
I’m out of time, but will return later to address question #1.
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So, when faithfully living out the vocation of marriage and responsible parenting requires a couple to avoid pregnancy, they can licitly utilize NFP, which relies on God’s design of fertility and is in keeping with the total self-giving and self-sacrificing love that is at the heart of the marriage covenant. The same is not true for contraception.
#1) Why is artificial contraception always sinful?
Contraception interferes with God’s plan of marriage. The mutual love of a husband and wife should be total self-giving and self-sacrificing and their conjugal love is a reflection of this unity. Contraception results in love that is less than total self-giving.
Contraception interferes with God’s procreative design of conjugal love. Rather than relying on God’s design of fertility, contraception destroys fertility and renders sexual intercourse sterile.
Contraception is an affront to God’s plan of marriage and procreation, and as such, is always sinful.
NFP can be utilized in accordance with God’s plan of marriage and procreation, and as such, can be licit.
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As far as the hole in the condom scenario, any act of contraception interferes with the total self-giving of marital love. As to whether it would conflict with God’s plan of procreation, such a question approaches the topic with a “what is the least I can do to satisfy God’s will” and is an offense against the greatest commandment, “You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.”
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Hey rasqual…Since they like to make a big stink here about PP’s condoms they’re handing out being sub-par and leading to more pregnancies, maybe they should re-evaluate. PP is just more “open to new life” than NFP practitioners. XD
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“I’ll start with #2 first. Licit NFP cannot be understood outside the context of a God honoring life and marriage.”
Short version of everything said: “You heathens can’t possibly even understand this because we’re all so much more righteous and better than you, so when you try to look at things rationally, outside the influence of our super-better-than-you-righteous-goggles, it just looks nonsensical because you’re so dirty and evil.”
*yawn*
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Um, no. It means that NFP, practiced outside the context of a God honoring life and marriage, is not licit.
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Short version of everything said: “You heathens can’t possibly even understand this because we’re all so much more righteous and better than you, so when you try to look at things rationally, outside the influence of our super-better-than-you-righteous-goggles, it just looks nonsensical because you’re so dirty and evil.”
Wow. Nice. Don’t ever disagree with xalisae because it only means you think you are better than her.
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Licit NFP cannot be understood outside the context of a God honoring life and marriage.
P.S. Forgive my snark, but someone telling me I can’t possibly understand something implies that I have a defect of some sort. I take issue with that.
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I think the problem isn’t that you guys think that non-abortive contraception is wrong or immoral. The problem is that is starts to sound a lot like nosing into other people’s private business, when there are babies dying and children being abused. Us that use contraception constantly hear how we “just want sex for pleasure” (which I honestly don’t see a problem with), and how we “treat children like the plague” (my favorite! I certainly treat my two kids like a disease!) and that our marriages are “no different from a homosexual orgy” (LMAO!!). I mean come on, live and let live a little. I think spanking kids is wrong, but I don’t go around calling parents who spank child haters and tell them their parenting style is no different from a barroom brawl. :)
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I disagree that you constantly hear how you “just want sex for pleasure” or that you “treat children like the plague” or that your marriages are “no different from a homosexual orgy” I have never said anything close to this and if you are honest, you would admit that the majority of NFP supporters don’t say this either.
I had sex before marriage, I used contraception before and during marriage. At the time I argued that I was not doing anything immoral. I now realize and admit that my behaviors and choices were immoral.
Because I support NFP and oppose contraception, I am called self-righteous and stupid. I disagree with both accusations.
I think spanking kids is wrong too. I don’t call parents who spank child haters either but I do voice my opinion that there is a better way to discipline. I also think that spanking can lead to further poor choices in disciplining children. Just like contraception can lead to further poor choices. . . .
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Those are direct quotes from people on this very blog, Praxedes. I wasn’t singling you out, from what I have seen you are a kind person and you generally are being earnest and trying to be helpful. I don’t think you are stupid or self-righteous. I am just seriously tired of being told I am not prolife or being told I wouldn’t want my kid if I slipped up and got my wife pregnant. It’s galling, and I want people to stay out of my bedroom.
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xalisae says:
Forgive my snark, but someone telling me I can’t possibly understand…
You misunderstood what I wrote and I restated it for better clarity. Are you persisting in your misunderstanding because my restatement didn’t provide clarity or because you want to imagine I was insulting you?
In case it’s the former, I’ll try again.
I said “Licit NFP cannot be understood outside the context of a God honoring life and marriage.” I didn’t say no one can understand licit NFP unless they are living a God honoring life and marriage. My statement was a response to rasqual using scenarios involving illicit use of NFP as an argument against licit NFP. I stated the context in which NFP can be licit.
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JackBorsch, I have never said that anyone that uses contraception is a child hater, not pro-life, or likened your marriage to a homosexual orgy. Nor do I agree that the self-righteous label applies to me. I know I’m a sinner and am not righteous at all. But I am a supporter of NFP and when I read statements concerning NFP that are false, I speak up.
These discussions may seem to be butting in to other people’s business. That’s probably because “live and let live” is not a Christian precept for dealing with sin.
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Jack,
When you say “you guys”, you do lump all of us in together. You are right that I do try to be helpful. Just because I disagree, doesn’t mean I don’t care. If I didn’t care, I wouldn’t waste my time.
I can only know what you do in your bedroom if you share that info. If you don’t want comments on your choices, don’t share.
I do see how much you and xalisae see and care about the humanity of the unborn. Prolifers are great!
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The World Health Organization among others labels oral contraceptives as Group I carcinogens. (The same category as cigarettes)
I lose perspective on this issue when the price of cigarettes is skyrocketing and the pill is being marketed to young girls as ‘medicine’
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JackBorsch: “I don’t go around calling parents who spank child haters and tell them their parenting style is no different from a barroom brawl.”
LOL
Lrning: “Examining nature, through which God can be known, we see that God did not intend every instance of sexual intercourse to result in pregnancy, since He gave us a fertility cycle that includes infertile periods.”
Examining nature, we can see that sexual arousal is peak during fertile periods. NFP practitioners go to obsessive lengths to ensure that they’re not having sex when God architected sexual attraction to be at its zenith.
Thwarting God, intrinsically. This is called “self-control” — claiming virtue for something that’s intrinsically anti-God.
“As far as the hole in the condom scenario…”
No, your answer is inadequate and evasive. Not consciously, I’m sure. In short, Catholic hyper-rationalism is your inheritance, but you don’t practice it. It’s insanely ironic and perverse that that’s a good thing. :-/
xalisae: ” You heathens can’t possibly even understand…” I think you misunderstood what she meant by her remark. She didn’t mean anyone not involved in NFP under those conditions couldn’t understand. She meant that normatively, NFP under those conditions is a rational benchmark — not NFP under other conditions. And I agree. But she’s unaware of how Catholic hyper-rationalism has betrayed both wisdom and morality by making what should be a question of wisdom one of morality.
Sorry for the absence, but I was paddle/camping on the Wisconsin River this weekend. Last huzzah, I think, for the season. Spectacularly perfect weather. Wow.
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Rasqual: Examining nature, we can see that sexual arousal is peak during fertile periods. NFP practitioners go to obsessive lengths to ensure that they’re not having sex when God architected sexual attraction to be at its zenith.
Thwarting God, intrinsically. This is called “self-control” — claiming virtue for something that’s intrinsically anti-God.
Are you proposing that choosing not to have sex during the fertile period is always against God’s will? Please provide your support. The fact that theoretically sexual arousal is at it’s peak during this time is insufficient to establish that God wills every fertile period to result in sexual intercourse. Using reason, we can discern that there are times that using sexual arousal as the sole benchmark to determine whether sexual intercourse should occur or not can be an act of selfishness instead of love. Does God will selfishness? What if the sexual arousal is not mutual? What if one spouse is ill? Is the spouse that is not feeling sexual arousal anti-God?
Are you proposing that it is never licit to avoid pregnancy? Please provide your support. Using reason, we can discern that there are scenarios in which a loving, personal God would not demand that a couple embrace procreation.
Scenario 1: A wife has stage 4 cancer and has 3 months to live. Would a loving, personal God demand that she and her husband conceive a child, only to watch the child die with her? If this husband and wife choose to avoid pregnancy through NFP, yet still desire intimacy, are they necessarily thwarting God’s will? Is it possible that in avoiding pregnancy they are acting in accordance with God’s will for them?
Scenario 2: A Chinese couple already has one child and they do not have the money to pay the fine necessary to have a second child. They are not able to borrow the needed amount or to leave the country. Would a loving, personal God demand that they conceive another child, only to have that child forcibly aborted and the couple’s home and way of life destroyed? Is it possible that in avoiding pregnancy they are acting in accordance with God’s will for them?
A few corrections are needed for your statement to be accurate: Examining nature, we can see that sexual arousal is peak during fertile periods. Licit NFP practitioners go to great lengths to ensure that they’re acting in accordance with God’s will for their lives when choosing to abstain at the time when God architected sexual attraction to be at its zenith.
Hyper-rationalism is not part of Catholic theology. While God can be known through reason, divine revelation is necessary to enter into real intimacy with Him.
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Lrning: “Are you proposing that choosing not to have sex during the fertile period is always against God’s will?”
If the reason is because one does not wish to produce new life, then a person is clearly not “open to life” in their heart. Whether a particular method is “intrinsically evil” seems moot when the person employing a non-intrinsically evil method is resisting God’s obvious intention for sex, which, according to nature, should result in more instances of sex during fertile periods. Couples actively avoiding that period while wantonly enjoying sex at other times — however “open to life” their sex may be — are obviously motivated by pleasure, not by a heart in concord with God’s natural means of bringing man and wife together in union, in harmony with — not against — their God-given natural desires.
It seems nearly blasphemous to claim as virtue (self-control) what is actually resisting God’s intention as it’s clearly expressed in nature.
“The fact that theoretically sexual arousal is at it’s peak during this time is insufficient to establish that God wills every fertile period to result in sexual intercourse. ”
But it’s simple enough to establish that those who actively resist this God-given inclination to give themselves freely and fully to their spouses during this time, are resisting the will of God unless there is some God-given reason to avoid fertility. The mere desire of a man and wife to enjoy each other’s sexual union surely doesn’t warrant selective scheduling in order to actively thwart God’s generous provision of fecundity.
Let’s do a mutatis mutandis thing with your remarks: Using reason, we can discern that using child-avoidance as the motive for timing occasions of sexual intercourse can be an act of selfishness instead of love. Does God will selfishness? What if the sexual arousal is mutual but one spouse wishes to have sex only in a way that will avoid children?
“What if one spouse is ill? Is the spouse that is not feeling sexual arousal anti-God?”
Conveniently, that’s not our concern. We’re talking about couples who strategically avoid fertile periods because they don’t want children. Their “method” may be “open to life” but their hearts are set on avoiding it.
Think of it this way, Lrning: God loaded the dice of desire to favor fertile times. You and I both know that. The dice are loaded. Statistically, things like illness will average out to be a factor anytime — not just during the fertile period. When all is said and done, fertility will still have a net surplus of mutual desire. And yet NFP couples strategically avoid sex during this time that God has intended to prompt sexual union more than any other time.
NFP couples, in short, are re-loading the dice. They’re not content with the proportion of desire God gave them.
They do with a calendar what folks they look down on do with latex. That’s self-righteousness. They damn others’ methods, but harbor intent to avoid children in their heart all the same. They honor the letter of their law but actively transgress its spirit.
Your Chinese couple obviously doesn’t trust in God’s provision. At any rate, if it’s an ethical concern for them to avoid children — if God’s will is for them to avoid pregnancy — then they should be more rigorous in centering themselves in God’s will. It’d be wise of them to avoid fertile periods AND use a condom, just to be all the more certain that they’ll avoid the children God doesn’t want them to have. In this case, not using a condom would be intrinsically evil.
If, on the other hand, they have no idea what God’s will is one way or another, it seems to me that they should trust the desires God gave them, and trust God to provide in the case that they have more children. Being open to life means being open to God’s generous provision for their needs as well. His eye is on the sparrow.
“Hyper-rationalism is not part of Catholic theology. While God can be known through reason, divine revelation is necessary to enter into real intimacy with Him.”
I heartily agree. Which means that those who hitch their cart to scholasticism’s unfortunate legacy are not engaging in Catholic theology.
And I’d say as well that those who relegate to morality what seems more suited to the area of wisdom, are, ironically, being foolish. Many of your remarks about what differentiates licit from illicit NFP (that very phrase is evidence of the problem your hyper-rationalism foists) are showcasing tremendous self-control in avoiding the language of wisdom, deferring to the vocabulary of morality. But for some issues, morality is a pharisaic straight-jacket, and works counter to God’s concern that we exercise wisdom.
Yes, whether this is such a thing is the issue we may differ on. But the conversation so far has given me more reason to differ than to agree.
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Rasqual: If the reason is because one does not wish to produce new life, then a person is clearly not “open to life” in their heart.
Are you proposing that avoiding pregnancy is never in accordance with God’s will? What is your support?
Rasqual: resisting God’s obvious intention for sex
How is it “obvious” that because God designed us to “load the dice” in favor of procreation, He intends each instance of sexual attraction to be acted upon?
Rasqual: are obviously motivated by pleasure
How is it “obvious” that the couple is motivated by pleasure instead of the need for intimacy or renewal of their fidelity?
Rasqual: It seems nearly blasphemous to claim as virtue (self-control) what is actually resisting God’s intention as it’s clearly expressed in nature.
Yes, it does. But you haven’t established that God intends every couple to act upon every instance of sexual arousal.
Rasqual: But it’s simple enough to establish that those who actively resist this God-given inclination to give themselves freely and fully to their spouses during this time, are resisting the will of God unless there is some God-given reason to avoid fertility.
Yes. Can you expand on your understanding of what encompasses a “God-given reason to avoid fertility”?
Rasqual: Using reason, we can discern that using child-avoidance as the motive for timing occasions of sexual intercourse can be an act of selfishness instead of love. Does God will selfishness? What if the sexual arousal is mutual but one spouse wishes to have sex only in a way that will avoid children?
I wholeheartedly agree. This is why licit NFP requires great communication between spouses and frequent re-evaluation/prayer/discernment as to whether abstaining is in accordance with God’s will.
Rasqual: They do with a calendar what folks they look down on do with latex. That’s self-righteousness. They damn others’ methods, but harbor intent to avoid children in their heart all the same. They honor the letter of their law but actively transgress its spirit.
By not qualifying your use of “NFP couples”, you are by omission speaking of ALL NFP couples. I can guarantee that all “NFP couples” do not “look down on” those that use condoms. NFP couples do not use a calendar to render their sexual intercourse sterile. And you have yet to establish that intent to avoid children is always unacceptable to God.
Rasqual: Your Chinese couple obviously doesn’t trust in God’s provision.
How so? Are you saying that they should feel confident that despite witnessing several neighbors and family members having babies forcibly aborted and homes destroyed, God will not allow the same to befall them? Is not their intelligence and the fruit of self-control part of God’s provision as well?
Rasqual: In this case, not using a condom would be intrinsically evil.
What about their “God-given inclination to give themselves freely and fully to their spouses during this time”? Sex with a condom is neither freely nor fully giving.
Rasqual: But for some issues, morality is a pharisaic straight-jacket, and works counter to God’s concern that we exercise wisdom.
I don’t see the disconnect between morality and wisdom that you do. Wisdom informs morality. Morality reflects wisdom.
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