The 2017 March for Life

[lilwriter85]

I didn't attend Catholic schools, but I've heard that some schools pretty much forcing students to March for Life type events. A cousin on my dad's side of the family went to a Catholic high school that was a bit liberal and events were optional. A cousin on my mom's side of the family had her two sons in a more conservative Catholic high school that made it mandatory for students to attend March for Life and the parents at the school had to run annual baby supply drive. I won't snark on the baby supply drive because at least shows that they gave some support to poor mothers.

[Terrie]

54 minutes ago, Toothfairy said:

 

I see fundies say science says it's life.

 

Science also says cancer is life, but I notice a distinct lack of pro-lifers trying to stop access to chemo.

[Jana814]

27 minutes ago, lilwriter85 said:

I didn't attend Catholic schools, but I've heard that some schools pretty much forcing students to March for Life type events. A cousin on my dad's side of the family went to a Catholic high school that was a bit liberal and events were optional. A cousin on my mom's side of the family had her two sons in a more conservative Catholic high school that made it mandatory for students to attend March for Life and the parents at the school had to run annual baby supply drive. I won't snark on the baby supply drive because at least shows that they gave some support to poor mothers.

That's nuts being forced to go to a March for Life event. 

[ViolaSebastian]

Good thing @Gabe is here to finally give us ladies the anatomical and reproductive education we all so sorely needed.

Spoiler

 

[Dandruff]

1 hour ago, Jana814 said:

That's nuts being forced to go to a March for Life event. 

It's not a choice, it's a march.

[dramallama]

2 hours ago, Toothfairy said:

Do they realize they're giving their bodies to the government? I'm against soda. Let's ban soda

So freedom, much conservative:  a government so small it can fit through my cervix.

[catlady]

10 hours ago, Gabe said:

 

How much do you give?

 

hey, @Gabe.  i give a lot.  i've spent the last 2.5 years housing and caring for a middle-aged disabled man.  my life revolves around him.   i plan my work schedule around his dayhab, medical appointments, and homecare visits (yes, we know how you feel about married women working, but that's female oppression of a different sort).  i have to open my home to various professionals five days per week.  i trust that those in my home while i am not present will not harm this man or steal from us.  i give my earned vacation hours over to the above-mentioned appointments to off-set the work i miss.  i work on saturday mornings to catch up on the work that doesn't get done on weekdays.  i have missed work on short notice to meet with social services reps in an effort to get him involved with a state agency that will give him access to long-term housing (that has been a paperwork nightmare; after 2+ years, we're still not done).  i monitor his free time to ensure he is safe and has activities appropriate to his abilities.  i pay out of pocket for the things he cannot afford with his own income.  i don't meet with friends after work because i go straight home to prepare dinner for him; my social life is plotted out weeks in advance.  yesterday i had to bow out of one event in February because it conflicts with a meeting with our homecare nurse.  my husband and i would have to hire a sitter if we wanted to go out as a couple; we seldom do this because he feels left out and that makes him sad.  i am responsible for his finances; i pay all of his bills, oversee his personal expenses, and keep records of everything so i can prove to the SSA that i am not stealing from him.  yep, i give a lot.  because he is a human being with a name and an identity who deserves to live a decent life.  because he is already born and continues to live.

 

[hoipolloi]

6 hours ago, Palimpsest said:

Yep, me too.  I would also not be at all surprised to learn that Trump has paid for a few abortions over the years.

In one of his many radio interviews  with Howard Stern, tRump described his unenthusiastic response ("Well, what are we going to do about this?") to Marla Maples' announcement of her pregnancy with their daughter Tiffany. Maybe that's why Tiffany is less favored than her adult half-siblings.

@Gabe - did you really come here to boysplain contraception, pregnancy, abortion, and motherhood to all of us? 

Again, your ignorance is exceeded only by your arrogance.

 

[Toothfairy]

Look. I'm a foster/adoptive parent. I help families and kids. Right now when I look at my foster kids I wonder what would've happened to them if I didn't say yes to them. I'm full right now. But cps keeps calling me. There's not enough foster homes. Teens every year age out and have nowhere to go. Yet we're worrying about a fetus who feels no pain and has no brain. Funny how I mention foster care, I get it's not my problem. Yet when I mention the fetus isn't my problem I get it's life. I could care less about a fetus. I'm prolife to my own uterus

[laPapessaGiovanna]

6 hours ago, Terrie said:

Doesn't mean we have to let them get away with it. Like I said, if they want to make the argument that it is morally equivalent, I won't stop them. I'll disagree, but I won't stop them. But, factually, they are not correct to call it pregnancy and abortion until there is implantation. That's not what the words mean. It would be like if Catholics started condemning condoms because they cause abortion. I might admit they can say it's immoral, but I'm not going to avoid calling them out on the blatant misuse of words. Conception is not the same thing as pregnancy.

Th RCC says it defends life "from conception", they don't fucking care if it implanted or not. As if an unimplanted  glomerul could live on its own! Science doesn't consider it a life because until it implants it has NO chance to live, like zero, nihil. Funny that a woman who aborts, in the very moment she does it she is automatically excommunicated while mafia killers and "ordinary murderers" aren't. To be absolved from the sin of abortion and the excommunication  be lifted there's a specific process (that pope Francis recently simplified a bit), to be absolved from "ordinary murder" you just need to repent and seek reconciliation in front of a priest. So lives aren't all equal to the RCC and a woman who chooses abortion is worse than a murderer because she refuses maternity, she doesn't conform to the virginity-maternity paradigm Mary style, basically the worst sin evah (please read with sarcasm).

The reason they are against birth control is infact very different. With bc you avoid leaving things "up to god" or "in god's hands" thus committing some sort of hubris. It's a contorted reasoning that they mainly keep for America (crazy Protestants already preach no bc so they can too) and Africa (same as before plus Africa is so black it must be full of heathens needing "evangelisation" and you need to explain them everything). Never mind that this sort of idiocy is helping to spread the AIDS pandemic and other STDs. Same in South America with Zika. This particularly enrages me because officially they literally don't utter an word on bc in countries like Italy, Spain, Ireland and Poland, people wouldn't tolerate it and churches would end up fuller of void than they already are. But in Africa and South America the RCC still has credibility and uses it to worsen people's lives. Weak with the strong and strong with the weak, this is one of the main reasons I have grown to despise the RCC.

3 hours ago, formergothardite said:

Gabe, are you outraged at Trump's latest policy about refugees? More people will die if we refuse to help. Do those lives not matter? 

Nah they are brown-ish, hungry, poor and mostly Muslims, clearly they can't cure cancer nor solve the world's problems with hunger and inequality. They are alive and present in their ugly reality with a mind of their own, you can't fantasise about their cute looks and outstanding possibilities at life (also they have obviously chosen to be born in the wrong place), they are useless and wrong. *sarcasm

[Toothfairy]

My daughter who was raped sent this to me. Awful. What is wrong with these people? 

More stupid signs. 

[formergothardite]

8 hours ago, hoipolloi said:

Again, your ignorance is exceeded only by your arrogance.

There is nothing quite like the arrogance and ignorance of a thoroughly indoctrinated fundamentalist. My husband got a chuckle out of me telling him Gabe came to explain birth control to us. 

As for the signs about how abortion breaks the woman's heart, well, studies show that women denied abortions go on to live much harder lives than the women who want an abortion and are able to get one. This is the March of Clueless People. 

[smittykins]

"Less than 1% of abortions are due to rape, so it's a moot point."

#Itonlyhastohappenonce

(the pregnancy, not the abortion)

[JermajestyDuggar]

4 hours ago, formergothardite said:

There is nothing quite like the arrogance and ignorance of a thoroughly indoctrinated fundamentalist. My husband got a chuckle out of me telling him Gabe came to explain birth control to us. 

As for the signs about how abortion breaks the woman's heart, well, studies show that women denied abortions go on to live much harder lives than the women who want an abortion and are able to get one. This is the March of Clueless People. 

Many women report feeling relief after an abortion. So I'm wondering who all these broken hearts belong to. 

[Terrie]

57 minutes ago, JermajestyDuggar said:

Many women report feeling relief after an abortion. So I'm wondering who all these broken hearts belong to. 

Probably men. They seem to have a really hard time with not being able to control women and their bodies.

[Jana814]

What the March of Life people don't get is that many women who have abortions do it because they feel as though it is what is best for them. What if the child was going to have a long-term medical problems and the woman feels they can't deal with it. 

[Carm_88]

1 minute ago, Jana814 said:

What the March of Life people don't get is that many women who have abortions do it because they feel as though it is what is best for them. What if the child was going to have a long-term medical problems and the woman feels they can't deal with it. 

They don't care about the reason. They care about the fact that it's a life, no matter how shitty that life might have been. The reason that a woman gets an abortion is no one's business but theirs. The thing that fundies hate is that women have that choice. They can choose what happens to their body and they are bucking against the patriarchy. Which makes their lives look less impressive because who wants to be under some man, when you can choose to fly to Europe because you finally saved enough money or whatever. They don't want strong independent women who can stand on their own two feet. 

[polecat]

I would like to know where that "less than one percent of abortions are due to rape" stat comes from. Perhaps for adult women (MAYBE, possibly, and even that's highly unlikely, imo), but there is no way that is an accurate number for teens because of the nature of teen pregnancy. More than half of teen moms have been sexually abused, and a substantial number of them are pregnant by an adult male. That's the very definition of rape. 

Unless they're saying that teens never choose abortion, I call complete and utter BS on that stat.

Maybe instead of worrying about what women are doing with their uteri, men can make a bigger effort to keep their penises to themselves. 

[dramallama]

45 minutes ago, polecat said:

I would like to know where that "less than one percent of abortions are due to rape" stat comes from. Perhaps for adult women (MAYBE, possibly, and even that's highly unlikely, imo), but there is no way that is an accurate number for teens because of the nature of teen pregnancy. More than half of teen moms have been sexually abused, and a substantial number of them are pregnant by an adult male. That's the very definition of rape. 

Unless they're saying that teens never choose abortion, I call complete and utter BS on that stat.

Maybe instead of worrying about what women are doing with their uteri, men can make a bigger effort to keep their penises to themselves. 

And the stats are just reasons the women cited.  Most rapes go unreported; it stands to reason that if a woman didn't report her rape and just wants to move past it without having to discuss it or have anyone else know, she might not tell the truth when asked.  Or she might not recognize what happened as rape - "I was passed out and unconscious, of course he had sex with me when that opportunity presented itself, it just happens, that's not rape" or "I didn't scream and fight and yell, so it wasn't rape" or "he didn't have a gun to my head" or "he's my husband, so it can't be rape" or "I was wearing a short skirt, I tempted him" etc etc etc.  

[hoipolloi]

1 hour ago, polecat said:

I would like to know where that "less than one percent of abortions are due to rape" stat comes from.

My first guess would be out of a fundie ass.

As @dramallama points out, though, whatever the true statistic, it's likely to be underreported by a significant amount.

[TeddyBonkers]

I'm late to the party, allow me to introduce myself. I was raised hearing the standard pro-life drumbeat. One of our regular substitute teachers at the parochial school had the teensiest little pin of baby feet, and she would tell us that the pin was the ACTUAL SIZE of 10 week baby in the womb. 

I just got off the phone with my mom; she is scandalized that one of my cousins doesn't support Trump.  I had to break it to her that I don't either. One thing led to another and I had to tell her that I believe in abortion for medical necessity, and the March for Life isn't doing a damn thing to help that cause. What does is more accessible birth control. I said, "Mom, I'm the only person I know that has no problem subsidizing people's birth control AND is pro-life."

 

[Meridae]

18 hours ago, Toothfairy said:

Look. I'm a foster/adoptive parent. I help families and kids. Right now when I look at my foster kids I wonder what would've happened to them if I didn't say yes to them. I'm full right now. But cps keeps calling me. There's not enough foster homes. Teens every year age out and have nowhere to go. Yet we're worrying about a fetus who feels no pain and has no brain. Funny how I mention foster care, I get it's not my problem. Yet when I mention the fetus isn't my problem I get it's life. I could care less about a fetus. I'm prolife to my own uterus

"You can't force me to foster and raise a child! It's not my problem their mother is a druggie! That's immoral and wrong and violates my rights! The government can't force me to be a parent against my will!"

...yeah, EXACTLY...  

[Cartmann99]

On 1/27/2017 at 3:58 PM, polecat said:

That said, in the pro-life world, I'm afraid this really is a distinction they can't and won't see. As far as they're concerned: fertilized egg = newborn baby = adult human (male, though, not female because females are only baby cookers)

How come the pro-life folks don't protest in front of fertility clinics? If a fertilized egg is the same thing as a newborn in their eyes, then shouldn't they be screaming about all those poor frozen babies?

[Dandruff]

6 hours ago, Jana814 said:

What the March of Life people don't get is that many women who have abortions do it because they feel as though it is what is best for them. What if the child was going to have a long-term medical problems and the woman feels they can't deal with it. 

Or the mother knows, that by continuing a pregnancy, she'd be condemning her child to a life of agony vs. a realistic chance at a good life.  The anti-choicers seem so fixated on "life", without apparent consideration of the corresponding quality of it.  I find that much more barbaric than a woman stopping a wanted pregnancy on grounds of compassion for the child.

[JermajestyDuggar]

47 minutes ago, Cartmann99 said:

How come the pro-life folks don't protest in front of fertility clinics? If a fertilized egg is the same thing as a newborn in their eyes, then shouldn't they be screaming about all those poor frozen babies?

You're right. Lots of embryos end up being destroyed at some point of the process. But it's so much easier to slut shame those who are getting an abortion compared to the women trying to conceive. I know of lots of fundies that are against IVF because embryos end up destroyed and they call it playing god. But where's the fun in shaming women trying to get pregnant?