so first you insult her religious belief by implying that there is a contradiction between being a republican and a christian, and then you imagine that she has "murderus impulses" because she disagrees with you on abortion. Yeah dude, you really took the high road in this one. Score one for alternet!

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I really do not think that anyone, including the Democrats, can argue with people who parrot their religious leaders truths. They do not think for themselves and they dismiss anything that does not agree with what they have been told is the gospel truth. "The squeaky wheel gets the grease" is a very old fashion saying, but it is still true.

Being a female who grew up in a time when our sex was not allowed to get angry, I do not know how to deal with some types of ambiguity and conflict it causes me to feel. There is healthy anger and then there is irrational anger. Example, a drug I take used to cost $4.95/30. Last year when Walgreens was supposed to be helping seniors this generic discount the drug when up to $43.79. It was listed at the lower price online also. I tried to tell them it was the wrong price, but their computer said otherwise. I became irrational and told them to keep their drugs, marched out of the store. I was in raged, but there was nothing I could do to change the price. I was shaking so hard, I hardly could put my key in the ignition.

I think, as this article points out, I have had no way to spend my anger about so many things this Bush&CO have done. I did not really make a lot of sense at the time, except it was not fair. How many times have we said it is not fair in the last five years? Now I get so angry to see or hear Bush say anything, so I do not listen to or watch him.

Abortion is the one thing the religious right can use to stir people up, since it has to do with sex. Self-righteous people use the same kind of rage to deal with abortion. They are little people in a country that uses sex to sell everything. What ever fears they were taught as children, still lives buried in their psyches. Bad women have sex for other reasons than making babies, therefore we must punish them for enjoying sex. This is not rational. It goes back over 1000 years of church teachings. Enjoying of sex is a mortal sin, as in witchcraft. People were killed for it.

Irrational people cannot deal with their own feelings, it is so much easier to project and judge others. They can feel self righteous and make someone's else's life miserable. They sure cannot deal with any ambiguity. Things are either white or black. There are no grays in their world.

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The author asserts a correct interpretation regarding the current "Christian" movement, at least partially. His use of projection to account for the motive behind their intense need to see evil in others is accurate. However this is a defense mechanism formulated through the theories on Psychoanalysis by Sigmund Freud. Psychologists are behaviorists and no longer beleive in an unconcious. It is a potent subterranean force and the two dominant areas are sexuality and aggression. Conflict with either causes stress which is assuaged by defences such as projection (seeing what you fear most in yourself in others), splitting (the ultimate good vs evil with no in between), and repression (simply denying reality). Repressing sexuality and aggression only creates an imbalance as they not only become more intense but take outlets in other manners. Fear of gays equals fear of castration. Fear of terrorists equals fear of our own aggression. And so on and so on. The only resolution is to take the internal journey of self awareness. Only then will these "Christians" balance judgement and punishment with acceptance and compassion. I am not holding my breath!

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Steve Almond neglected to mention those of us who oppose abortion on moral grounds, but allow freedom of choice. Abortion seems to be the most divisive single issue ever, & since there seems to be no middle ground for minds to meet, the only answer is for both sides to agree on a majority vote in a referendum, & then live with the consequences.

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there was little he could do with a closed-minded repug. Then again, like Lakoff would say, "Don't expect to convert staunch conservatives." All they're going to do is insist on the same rightwing bullshit even when it doesn't add up.

Yes, suburban VA has had a little of single of both sexes vote repug but not because of "abortion". Two major questions the Democrats can use to successfully frame the debate and both involve taking the "conservative" ideology and using it against them kind of like the way Kaine used the ideology against KILgore and won:

1. If you believe in "ownership society", why not extend that priviledge to women? After all, it's not that any of these women who are pursuing an "abortion" are doing it because they simply don't feel like having children.

2. Bush and his cronies in Congress and corporate America never need a permission slip to abort thousands to millions of lives year after year what with their destructive policies whether we're talking about the economy, the environment, foreign policy, etc ... so why force women to get a permission slip if they're truly unable to give birth to that child, most likely the result of rape or incest?

The day(s) more of us American people grow a real spine, the neocon movement will collapse and go down in flames.

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Isn't it curious that the people who most ardently oppose abortion are the same people who most ardently support the death penalty.

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"Christ preached non-violence and ministered to the poor." Yes!

As one who participates in anti-war, anti-death penalty, and anti-abortion actions, I thought I could inform you that the motivation for each is the same. I believe that killing people is wrong. The "projection" that motivates being for life -- relating to war, the death penalty, or abortion -- is the simple moral command shared by many, "do onto others as you would have others do onto you."

Personally war arouses my emotions to motivate me to work against injustice more that abortion does.

But medically the unborn child is a separate individual human being from the mother. The issue is what human beings have value.

Anti-war people sometimes publish photos of people killed in war for the same reason anti-abortion people publish photos of children killed by abortion; it helps people realize the humanity of the victims.

If you are interested in this point of view, check the group Consistant Life. Their mission statement is "We are committed to the protection of life, which is threatened in today's world by war, abortion, poverty, racism, capital punishment and euthanasia. We believe that these issues are linked under a 'consistent ethic of life'. We challenge those working on all or some of these issues to maintain a cooperative spirit of peace, reconciliation, and respect in protecting the unprotected."

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Thank you for pointing out the solipsism, hypocrisy, and violence of the religious right. They don't even meet the standards of their own religion. Reproductive rights are absolutely essential for women to even begin to consider themselves free and independent citizens. I also apprecite your concern for the real tragedies of the world as it is--violence, poverty, war. I have lived all my life in the reactionary and repressive south, and I am increasingly fearful of what will happen to Roe. I read such articles as yours to remind me that I am not alone. Thank you and thank you and thank you for a voice of reason and, though some commentators may not see it, compassion.

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... that this article would BE a history of "pro-life" violence.

Y'know, a comprehensive list of specific incidents. (Bombings, killings, etc.)

Anybody have a link to one?

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I am a 56 year old grandmother and could never imagine a circumstance under which I would have an abortion (moot point now). The subject of a "theraputic abortion" actually came up when I became pregnant with my third child after two difficult pregnancies, but I refused. All that said, the idea of the roll back of Roe scares me silly.

My maternal grandmother died of peritonitis caused by a botched abortion when my mother was 9 months old. The reasons for her choice have been lost over time; she was married and had one child. This left my mother to be raised by a succession of aunts, and then finally, by the Poor Clares in a convent. She never had a family per se, and the nun's ideas about discipline were draconian at best, and would be more than just a little illegal today.

She had no idea about how to be a mother. I was alternately neglected, pampered and beaten. I remember kneeling with a pencil under each knee for hours. When I played with fire, she lit the stove and held my tiny hands over the flames until they blistered.

I cannot know for sure, but I think my life would have been profoundly different had she been raised by a loving mother. Let's not go back there, to the days when a woman's body was not her own.

They are making it more difficult to obtain or learn about effective contraception, which cannot help but lead to even more unwanted pregnancies. It defies reason.

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Thank you for a good commentary on the pro-choice/ anti-choice debate. Everyone who is offended by this article is just being defensive- something discussed in the article that the anti-choicers reading must have skimmed over...

I am a women's health nurse who takes care of women who have second trimester abortions. The general public DOES NOT REALIZE the potential impacts of Alito and reversal of Roe v. Wade.

As a women's health nurse, I am mortified about what could happen if abortion became illegal again. As a woman, I am terrified. What if my IUD fails? I don't want children, period. I don't want to be forced to go through nine months of pregnancy, period. I guess I should just stop having sex...

Which is the whole point of the religious right. Men can keep having sex, they won't get pregnant. Women must bear the costs.

I love the "baby daddies" bit in the article. I'll start believing that the religious right really care about 'little babies' when they start supporting universal health care, fair distribution of wealth, the end of gender discrimination which lends to female and child poverty, and fair trade, which will give women the tools (money) they need in developing countries to feed their children.

Don't even get me started on the Global Gag Rule....

Thanks again for a great article, and thanks alternet for the space to have dialogue.

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Two things that will not happen at the same time:

1. An ideologically pure Democratic position on abortion rights.

2. Democrats winning national elections without the benefit of a major scandal like Watergate.

Winning a majority in the Electoral College requires the Democratic candidate to carry at least one borderline redneck state like Florida or Missouri.

If you want to peel away 5-plus percent of the NASCAR dad vote in 2008, you're going to have to give up a little of your ideological purity on abortion rights.

Stop insulting the intelligence and capacity for compassion of Southern evangelicals, and maybe another five percent of them will vote for your Presidential candidate in 2008.

Keep calling them unfeeling bigots who want to keep upper middle-class white coeds barefoot and pregnant, and your guy will not win in 2008 unless somebody catches a prominent Republican with a dead girl or a live boy.

The choice, pardon the pun, is yours.

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I would urge anyone concerned about abortion rights to check out a 1990 movie called "The Handmaid's Tale", which was also a book. It presents a frightening picture of the future that the right-to-lifers will inevitably lead us to.

This was a courageous and provocative movie starring Robert Duvall and Faye Dunaway.

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I enjoyed the article, but I think that both Mr. Almond and the young woman who wrote to him are arguing from separate premises without acknowledging that this is the problem. She believes that the fetus is a person with moral standing. He does not. (That's pretty clear -- my guess is that Almond would NOT think a woman justified in, say, killing her boss, even if he interfered with her well being, her potential academic career, etc.) The question should instead be about whether a non-sentient, non-experiencing being is a person with moral standing. The fetus does not begin to have experiences until the fifth or sixth month of gestation (according to the New England Journal of Medicine, 1986 -- the cutoff comes even later according to a more current medical sources). The cortical architecture is not yet complete until this stage. And by the sixth month, 99% of all abortions have been performed. Mr. Almond could therefore argue that 99% of all abortions do not involve the killing of a person, since they do not involve the killing of a sentient being. His correspondent might then claim that moral rights (such as the right not to be killed) are conferred by something other than sentience, but she cannot invoke biblical accounts of personhood with no basis in science without violating the separation of church and state.

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Why do we leave it up to the extreme right to speak for the foetus? Where is the understanding of where Roe V. Wade leaves us on the issue of carte blanche regarding abortion? Is it possible that this is an unfinished issue and we need to exercise intellectual muscle to keep up with science, understand the nuances of when indeed, a foetus becomes an unborn child? This bothers me, a far leftie.....I want to know the truth and I miscarried at
6 1/2 months....he looked like a baby to me. What about looking at the science of when a foetus can sense pain? Is this a good ethical point to draw the line on having an abortion? Let us show our compassion and strength to being willing to investigate the truth, fearlessly.

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thank you, mr almond, for your observations. As a 50 yr old woman who had an abortion at age 23, I would like to point out the "error" in your thinking/language. Neither I nor the women I know who have had abortions have experienced any "anguish" over the decision to end a pregnancy and in your closing statement you referred to "unborn babies"..This allows the right to reframe the discussion by using incorrect language. It is NOT a child until AFTER it is born. It is the mythology of the right that abortion is a gut- wrenching, "anguished" decision. Not necessarily so....some women who have assimilated the cultural garbage that we are taking a life may have bad feelings, but in a world where abortion is viewed for what it is, a medical procedure that is sometimes necessary for a myriad of reasons, there is no "anguish" involved. Twisting the language, projection and other tactics used by "prolifers" is exactly why some women may feel bad about an abortion. Your point is exactly right though, it is REALLY about a women's right to control her OWN body, not the church, not the state, WOMEN must decide their fate. thank you for sharing your thoughtful insights on this volatile issue, but like most of the people who make the laws, control the power and write op/ed pieces, this is a decision you will never have to make. And when you do decide to comment on the issue, try to consider the language you use and make an effort to at least be precise, if not completely informed. sincerely, lee slaughter

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I am female, call myself Christian, dislike abortion but support the right to choose, and have said to friends who wish to outlaw abortion: "Until you, personally and corporately, are willing and able to provide whatever medical, psychological, financial, or any other support any and all women need to carry a child to term, and are willing to similarly support the child after birth, then you have no right to tell her what she can or cannot do regarding her pregnancy." No one as yet has volunteered to take on that task.

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A good case can be made for early-term abortion; however late-term abortion is absolutely horrific and there is no excuse for it. The fact that there are people (mainly on the left) that support this measure is sickening.

Nor has it occurred to her that those women who get abortions suffer considerable anguish, that they are not sex-crazed degenerates who waltz into the stirrups whistling "Zip-A-Dee-Do-Da."

Except the ones that wear 'I had an abortion' t-shirts during rallies... they seem to be quite fine with it, even proud. Which brings me to my next point. Abortion is nothing to be proud of. If you're in the position where you're considering abortion it means you screwed up royally somewhere along the way(with the exception of rape victims). So smarten up.

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That the Fundies in Christianity have an apparently deep seated hatred of women and view them only as vessals for procreation is obvious. What is amazing is the stupendous amount of hypocrisy involved here. I personally know many women who are violently opposed to abortion who have had them when push comes to shove. I've known many fundie men who could care less about whether or not their sperm has created one of the "unborn" who were aborted unless they felt that they weren't in control of the woman's decision. In fact, these people only care so passionately about the "unborn" when it is some one else's life they meddle in. When it comes to a choice, fundies are just like everyone else - principles be damned. Quite simply, reproductive choices are no one else's damn business except the woman involved and no one in their right mind can really determine or should make the determination that she is irresponsible, etc.

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When abortion is illegal, women have illegal abortions. This is simply a fact, whatever our opinion of it. A society that makes abortion illegal puts women, especially very young and ignorant ones, in grave danger. I had an illegal abortion when I was a teenager in the latter 1960s, just a few years before Roe v. Wade. It was the full-on Back Alley Experience of the Bad Old Days, which will come back if Roe is overturned. If you have a rosy vision of abortion disappearing because it's no longer legal, you're deluded. The reality is, for example, my experience: a 17-year-old tramping the streets of New York and Jersey City, alone, a wad of cash in her pocket, looking for an abortionist, not knowing if the person she found was going to be a doctor, a motorcycle mechanic, a prostitute or a mortician, if she was going to be poked with a catheter, an umbrella spine or a solution of soapsuds and Clorox on a kitchen table or a bathroom floor, knowing virtually for certain that she was going to be sexually molested and humiliated and almost certainly ripped off, and that dying of hemorrhage or septic shock was a very real possibility because she might not get any help at all because of her "crime."

Enough time has passed that people's memories are getting fuzzy. A generation has grown up in an era of safe, legal abortion, with no real notion of the reality of the pre-Roe era, when women were separated from existing medical technology because of laws and ideology, and often died horribly because of it. Worse, there are "pro-life" historical revisionists extant nowadays who are saying that all those horror stories you hear about pre-Roe abortion--coat hangers, bleeding to death on motel room floors, being met by strange men and riding blindfolded in the back of a car--are a big exaggeration, mere propaganda. Those of us who were "there" need to testify loud and clear. And we say: Never Again!

Read more at:

http://www.motherjones.com

Look for an article from Sept./Oct 2004 called "The Way it Was." More reading: THE WORST OF TIMES, by Patricia G. Miller

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Outlawing abortion--in any circumstance--is tantamount to forcing women to bear children. That, in turn, is tantamount to treating women like cattle. It's that simple.

Don't like abortion? Don't have one! Lots of people, including the alleged patriots in Washington, have a fundamental misunderstanding of freedom. Only allowing others do do what fails to offend YOU is NOT freedom, ferchrissakes!

The poster who (unintentionally, it seems) echoed right-wing propaganda above--ie that needing an abortion is a sure sign "you've screwed up royally" (!)-- should learn about a nasty little reality known as "contraceptive failure."

Ok, that was three points. Sorry.

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Some women, even lefties, DO feel anguish over abortions. It doesn't give anything to right-wing fools to acknowledge this simple reality.

Do ALL women feel this way? No. But you can't claim that none do, or that it's wrong to feel that way--any more than right-wingers can claim that all women feel this anguish, and that NOT feeling it is wrong.

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I read that of those who take the chastity pledge, only about 12% follow through. The rest have unprotected sex with all the risks. It's interesting that the people who want to deny birth control and abortion, are the same people who want to deny financial aid, food, and health care to children and mothers who really need help a heck of a lot more than Exxon. They want to make sure the world is populated with people who will live their life in poverty and then stand back and say "it's their own fault," or worse, "it's God's will."

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You raise an interesting point about the connection between being anti-choice and being anti-sex-for-pleasure (especially for women, I might add). Witness the rise of abstinence-only training, zealous pharmacists withholding birth control from single women, the FDA failing to approve the morning-after pill, the far-right protesting a vaccine for preventing virus-related cervical cancer. You gotta wonder, what is so damn threatening about female sexual gratification? And isn’t it unhealthy, tragic and downright creepy that old white men (Dobson, Robertson, Alito etc.) are so obsessed by it?

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Creepy indeed. It's the all-American White Bread version of the Taliban.

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I found the following on the blog at prickwear.com, it is rather interesting:

This test is meant to illustrate how our enemy can so often look just like us, only holier. Profile these assholes:
1. In June of 1964 three civil rights workers in Mississippi were gunned down and buried in a ditch that had been dug out earlier, specifically to rest their rotting corpses, by a group of
a. Muslim male extremists between the ages of 17 and 50
b. Christian male extremists between the ages of 17 and 50 (the man most recently tried in this case, Edgar Killen, was 38 and an ordained Baptist minister at the time that he conspired to murder the men)
2. From 1976 to 1983 as many as 30,000 were killed and tortured in Argentina; many of those who disappeared were disemboweled and thrown from airplanes into the ocean; others were killed and buried in mass graves. These atrocities were committed by
a. Muslim male extremists between the ages of 17 and 50
b. Christian male extremists between the ages of 17 and 50 (during the “Dirty War”. Look it up)
3. Tony Alamo was charged with felony child abuse for his involvement in the beating in 1988 of an 11-year-old boy that was so severe it left him unable to sit for almost three weeks. Alamo was a leader of a religious sect in California, and a
a. Muslim male extremists between the ages of 17 and 50
b. Christian extremist between the ages of 17 and 50 (spank them into submission, that always works. Especially for the Christian father that in January of this year beat his son to death trying to “box” with him because he was afraid his son was going to turn out gay)
4. Paul Hill was the first person executed in the US for anti-abortion violence, after he was convicted of the 1994 slayings of Dr. John Britton and his bodyguard. Hill was a
a. Muslim male extremists between the ages of 17 and 50
b. Christian extremist between the ages of 17 and 50 (and was also a former Presbyterian minister—double trouble! Thank you so much for helping rid the world of those pesky doctors.)

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5. On April 19, 1995 an explosion ripped through the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. It was, up to that point, the worst terrorist attack ever undertaken on American soil. The blast killed 168 people—19 of them children—and injured hundreds. The two “masterminds” of this attack were
a. Muslim male extremists between the ages of 17 and 50
b. Christian male extremists between the ages of 17 and 50 (we all remember Mr. McVeigh and Terry Nichols)
6. In 1998 Matthew Shepard was beaten and left for dead by two men. He was found the next day, alive but never regaining consciousness due to his catastrophic brain damage. He had been pistol-whipped 18 times with a revolver. Since being imprisoned, his murderers have both justified their actions by claiming that they were dictated by the Bible. His murderers are shining examples of misguided
a. Muslim male extremists between the ages of 17 and 50
b. Christian extremists between the ages of 17 and 40 (in quite possibly my favorite example of Christian hate-mongering, Reverend Fred Phelps and his supporters picketed Shepard’s funeral, displaying signs with slogans such as “Matt Shepard rots in Hell” and “God Hates Fags.”)
7. In January of 1998 a bomb was detonated in a Birmingham, Alabama women’s clinic. The blast killed one and left over a hundred injured. The man found to be responsible for this heinous crime was also found to be responsible for a blast during the 1996 Olympics that killed a woman and injured 100, as well as an attack on a gay nightclub. The bomber, Eric Rudolph was a
a. Muslim male extremists between the ages of 17 and 50
b. Christian male extremist between the ages of 17 and 40 (Rudolph wrote a statement during his trial that included frequent quotes from the Bible and condemnations of homosexuality)

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8. A group of soldiers responsible for detaining prisoners of war in Abu Ghraib used their authority to force the prisoners to simulate oral sex on each other, eat pork and drink alcohol (in violation of the Muslim faith), as well as beating at least one prisoner with a baton until he begged to be killed. The first soldier to be court marshaled for the situation showed no remorse whatsoever and was often seen smiling as he walked with his lawyer up the steps of the courthouse. This man, Cpl. Graner was a
a. Muslim male extremists between the ages of 17 and 50
b. Christian extremist between the ages of 17 and 40 (at his Pennsylvania home, his truck bears a license plate with the word Jesus and a picture of a cross. Even more ironic is the stone in the garden painted with a Bible verse from the book of Hosea “Sow for yourselves righteousness, reap the fruit of unfailing love…” (10:12))
9. Proving there are always new ways to shake things up, pharmacists all over the country are now refusing women’s prescriptions for birth control and the morning-after pill. Some of these pharmacists are so adamant about forcing their morality upon others that they hold the prescription hostage and will not transfer it to a doctor willing to fill it. The pharmacists who are imposing restrictions on these women’s reproductive rights claim that their religious views do not allow them to fill such prescriptions. Who the fuck thinks they can do this?
a. Muslim male extremists between the ages of 17 and 50
b. Christian extremists between the ages of 17 and 50 (there have reportedly been cases of pharmacists who mistakenly believe that contraception is a form of abortion and refuse to dispense it to anyone, or who will only provide birth-control pills to a woman if she is married. Find a new job asshole!)

You know I just can’t even keep doing this. Your moral exhibitionism makes me sick. So I propose that we begin to profile a new group of dangerous people—conservative, right wing, proselytizing Christians with every intention of homogenizing the globe, who don’t know shit about Jesus. Amen brother.

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I tell you folks, those thousands of killed children through all the legal abortions is nothing compared to the millions and millions spontaneous abortions happening to women every day, often without them even knowing it! When I get my hands on whoever is responsible for this genocide, I’m gonna kick his heavenly butt!

Seriously though, it is beyond me that people don’t realize that medical / surgical abortions represent major progress in the human society. Abortions are a part of life and if some fanatics think that they can fight war against abortions then we already know what results to expect looking at the success of the drug war. I like the author’s closing paragraph:

"The choice to abort an unborn child is, without a doubt, a modern tragedy. Forcing poor women to seek out illegal practitioners is a medieval one"

amen

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Whether or not abortion is a "tragedy" can only be weighed against each individual woman's circumstances, which we cannot know and which is none of our business. What is definitely a tragedy is a woman, afraid to call for help, bleeding to death alone on a motel room floor from a botched illegal abortion. Abortion is not "modern;" it's been around since the beginning of recorded history. What's "modern" is making it safe and legal. What's "medieval" is passing laws that lock women away from existing medical technology.

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No Democratic candidate for President can afford to embrace an ideologically pure position on abortion. The issue is just too divisive in swing states like Missouri, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Florida, and certainly in the “Bible Belt” Southern states.

No matter who the Democratic candidate is in 2008, they will have to win at least three of these four swing states to obtain a majority in the Electoral College.

It isn’t about being right, wrong, fair or ideologically pure. It’s about winning national elections. All other politics is local.

Don’t knock bait-and-switch politics. It’s been working just fine for the Republicans. The ultimate bait-and-switch at the national level is the Karl Rove tactic of talking about "values" to Southern Evangelicals so they’ll vote against their economic self-interests.

This is the "God, Guns and Gays" strategy that keeps the corporate lackeys in power. Economic populists like John Edwards are on the right track: hammer home the idea that corporate dominance of the country and the political system by Wal-Mart and Exxon is bad for Mom and Pop, bad for bread-and-butter issues.

If Democrats like Edwards can find common cause with just five percent more of these NASCAR dads, they might even swing a couple of Southern states' Electoral votes into the Democratic column.

But if party extremists keep hammering away on divisive issues like abortion, gay marriage, gun control and global warming, the rednecks will turn a deaf ear to any message about economic populism.

Clinton was right on this issue -- it's the economy, stupid. Stick to pocketbook issues like battling union-busting corporations and right-to-work laws in states like Oklahoma and Nevada, and you may peel away enough of these redneck voters to win back the Presidency without a scandal in your hip pocket.

If the right keeps winning national elections with the "God, Guns and Gays" bait-and-switch, trust me, they will eventually move all federal courts to the right, and the filibuster won't save you.

Win national elections, repeat after me, win national elections.

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You are exactly right about the rightious-extremist's guilty compulsion to project their own secret nasties onto the rest of us. It's always all about them. That's why they can't let us alone - why it's so urgent that we all agree with them.

Thank you especially though for this observation:
"It should come as no surprise that the anti-choice movement is ascendant at the moment. The Bush era has marked, above all, a dramatic shift away from the tragic complexity of the world. Instead, the citizens of this country have been encouraged to indulge their most childish impulses: rage, hypocrisy, self-absorption."

That's exactly what these people are selling! I've been confounded by why seemingly sentient people have supported Bush against their own real-world interests. It's the allure of this carefree frat-boy fantasy. Who cares if you can't pay your bills? Here's a self indulgent utopia for closet sado-masochists. [Which is what all religious fanatics are in their hearts after all, with all that bipolar cycling between self-rightous rage and groveling self flagelation.] They're all sucking on blue velvet while us dumb leftists worry about our fellow man struggling in a hell of starvation, torture, toxic flood waters and white phosphorous. We could relieve ourselves of this burden of conscience and embrace the Republican frat-boy philosophy: "God belongs to me; I'm not responsible - even for myself; The law only applies to my inferiors; Only I deserve a free lunch; ""Not all poor people are murderers""; Mommy will make Daddy clean up yet another of my messes by throwing money around"; etc.
This explains a lot. Thanks for the epiphany.

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pointing out the obvious is not an insult and your reframing the issue from that of projection to intolerance accomplished nothing except point out your inability to reason. Zero-sum score, buddy, back to the winger benches for you!

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We make commitments to be a family with people of your soul group before you are born. Karma is something we all talk about. I am bad to you this lifetime the next lifetime you are bad to me. The soul of my baby to be can wait until the situation is right for our karmic play. How can a soul die? It is part of the divine energy of Love. The soul is the energy of God/Goddess/divine Universe does not die, it stays where it is and learns what Souls learn between lifetimes.

There is a great book that has been read in a lot in New Age study groups. It is called the "Celestine Prophecy." It talks of such things and the reasons we have children and the responsibility that it entails. It take a whole village to raise a child. Children are supposed to be loved and supported. I do not think you have to be a Christian to read this book, for it is a good read that seems very autobiographical. Like everything in the book really happened.

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I thought the reasoning was sound, but his assumption that this student is a "virgin" and then referring to her as "this young horndoggle needs the specter of being a baby killer to keep her from … impure thoughts" revealed the author to be Not a Very Nice Guy. In addition to arrogantly assuming the impure thoughts were about him, it's not only a cheap shot, it's sort of a sexually violent one ("Yeah, yeah, baby.....you're just not a liberal because you've never tried MY ginormous meat! *hehe*") Yeah....real funny, asshole.

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*deep breath*

Aaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh! AAAAaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!
AAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHhhhhh!

Ok, so I'm a 21-year-old guy and I'm almost definitely more left-wing than any of you. I have absolutely no moral qualms about any kind of consensual sex for recreation. I don't belive in God. And I don't believe that the government should restrict the rights of those born in America for the sake of those unborn in America. I'm definitely pro-choice.

Fine. Okay.

But let's take a step back. What is the point of this kind of argument?! Are you guys listening to yourselves? This kind of article achieves only two things: It pisses off just about everybody who disagrees with it, and it encourages those who do agree with it to be more closed-minded about the issue. I guarantee you, not one person in the world read this article and said, "Wow! I have been projecting my lamentations about the world on unborn non-persons this whole time! Okay, let's kill them now."

Pro-life, pro-choice, anti-life, anti-choice...all this wordplay and arguing comes down to one question, and it has nothing to do with projection or blame or politics. When does life begin? Does it begin at birth? Does it begin at conception? Are you throwing away babies when you beat off into a tissue?

Of course no one is satisfied with the actual answer: Life begins when lightning strikes the organic, molten surface of a primordial planet where the conditions are just right. Humans are quite capable of destroying life, but even cutting-edge chemists and roboticists have thus far failed to create it. "Yes, but...." Uh-huh. I told you you wouldn't be satisfied.

So go ahead. Talk about how God couldn't possibly dole out souls before an embryo has reached the stage where it can't divide into twins anymore. Talk about how the government's job is to bolster its citizens' quality of life, not their sheer number. Talk about how an aborted fetus might have become a doctor that saved millions. Say the same thing about a teen mother. Argue about freaking abortion! STOP ATTACKING EACH OTHER! I'M NOT EVEN KIDDING!

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of the conflicted, pregnant teenager who doesn't want to get an abortion and is sorry, so sorry that she has to? That's just more rhetoric. Many women seek abortion because it is the most practical solution to their problem, and they don't feel bad. Women's feelings about their own abortions should not, in any case, be part of an argument for or against the legality of abortion. Either the fetus does or does not have a right to life that supercedes that of the mother. When you say "yeah, but women feel so torn part and guilty about their abortions, it's not as if it were an easy decision for them to make," you validate the conservative gambit that maintains women are forced to consider abortion by boyfriends or parents who pretend to have her best interest at heart, but really do not, because if it were truly up to her, her maternal instinct would win out, because all women are mothers at heart, except for the evil and unnatural modern ones without whom the world would be better off. I know that Mr. Almond does not intend to convey this message, but it is nonetheless the message at the heart of the image of the poor waif crying in the abortion clinic recovery room.

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Killing one is killing all , baby or adult . Takeing a life is takeing a life , young or old .
The gov. shouldn't be in a persons privat life . thats between a woman and her GOD she alone has to answer to him and he alone will do the judging . God will judge every one connected . Right or worng we all will answer to him .

Maybe Hillter's mother mother should have had an abortion !!!!!!!

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The thing nobody seems to think about is that yes, while all life is sacred, there is always sacrifice of life for life. EVERYTHING that we eat is a life sacrificed. When I eat a cow or broccoli, I am ingesting that life form's vitality. There are myriad lives being sacrificed for my pleasure/convenience, whether it be the bugs I hit in my car, or the clothes I wear or my computer made by children in Sri Lanka. Abortion is really not all that different. I am pro-abortion but anti war and I realize that may not be congruent, because I sure use the argument that pro-lifers are also pro-war and pro-death penalty to make points at times.

And I agree with others that until "pro-lifers" are more willing to take serious responsibility for all the lives they "save" by ending abortion, we can't end it.

I mean, is the point just creating cannon and prison fodder?

Sometimes I wonder.

Read Derrick Jensen's "The Culture of Make Believe" for some fascinating discussion of related issues.

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I was hoping for an article on the history of violence committed by pro-life groups. Instead we were fed a claim that those in the pro-life movement are projecting their own violence onto others in an article where the writer projects his own psyche onto pro-lifers.

As the article progresses the writer gives up on analysis and continues with primarily name-calling. This is roughly a similar methodology to Bill O'Reilly (though O'Reilly never attempts analysis - straight to name-calling). When the left lowers itself to promoting falsehoods and name-calling, such as Almond does in this column, there is very little difference between the left and the extreme right.

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We are carrying out Gods will when we go after those who clip thier nails and throw them in the trash to parish. Every one knows with cloning practically any cell in the body can become a person if Gods will is carried out. Save the Clones!

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I believe the debate is very simple. One side is on the side of morality. Individuals are supposed to know what is "wrong" and must live "right." The only bad thing about living this way is that there is no explanation for the "just ifs." if you are raped it is your fault because you should have known not to enter that situation. If you are poor you need to pull your self up by the "bootstraps" even though you don't have straps, boots or the skills that would allow you to buy the boots. If you believe in the idea of evolution and not creation you are defective even though the Bible is pretty much creative nonfiction filled with biases from many different writers meant to teach and not to be taken literally.

The other side of this is the reality view. People are raped, get drunk, have sex, are atheist, and understand that people are very different and should be accepted for being this way. The only problem is that the former view dominates for multiple reasons. The major one is that it is easier to make people fear something than to accept something.

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Why is it OK to murder hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians, women, children, the elderly and their pets but it's not OK for an American woman to have a fetus growing in her body killed?

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anti abortion people are just like the men AND women of medival europe who tried to supress women. in both cases sexuality was supressed by torturing (today emotionally), and in i think 65% of the women tried were killed, the statsics vary. in medival europe 95% of the population tried were women. for the most part the foundation of our faith stress the fact that women are more prone to evil. in one case and point in a quote from abrahams view of heaven and hell, in heaven most of the population was made up of the poor in hell there were many women, that isn't word for word but you get the idea, and that's a certain womens rights activist rewrote the bible in a different light so instead of it being written by men (i mean for all we know god could be a women) it was written by a women, but although she was somewhat biased, she didn't say the men are inheritly evil and thus should be discrimanted against and tortured and raped for several millenia.

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The real reasons those in control of the Christian/Catholic "faiths" are against women making a free choice is:

a) These religions were created to serve the interests of men (heads of government, industry and religion), who need servants, soldiers and now consumers.

b) The same kinds of men need every weapon at their disposal in order to keep women in their place, at home performing unpaid labour that keeps our current dominant social system running. All this "respect for life" propaganda is just how those in power sell the idea to their public. No Child Left Behind? Crap. Ask your self if they (presently defining "they" as heads of government, industry and religion) really respected life would they be forgetting about those precious babies nearly the minute they are born?

c) My personal theory is that Christians/Catholics (and let's face it, the only real difference between Christians and Catholics is the geographically differing power bases that each branch evolved to serve even if they themselves think the differences are more than that) due to their obsession with the concept of "sin" (which in its self is simply another means for the elite to control the masses) have it in their heads that the only truly innocent in this world are in fact those who have not been sullied by the inherent sin that this world infects a new life with shortly after birth. e.g., The child starts to talk back... Perhaps the child does not accept that he is a worthless sinner and only with total fealty to the almighty church can he be saved.

Therefore, in true illogical brainwashed style, the Christian fights to the death for the right of a "true innocent" to live... Up to the point when that life is no longer a "true innocent" e.g., when that life actually becomes a person and can think for its self. Once this happens, the Christian is no longer interested in saving what has become an imperfect and sinful human being and moves on to the next mass of cells that can be classified as a "true innocent".

This motivating process is all on an unconcious level of their mind of course, as are most motivations of people who fear more than anything else to face reality and what's written on their own soul. Easier for them to preach love and forgiveness while they hypocritically practice nither. Ask them though and they'll kill you before they even consider the possibility their motivations are not pure and loving

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As much as I would love to attack the high and mighty religious minded people of our country, I think it's time we stepped back and realized the facts of this issue. Firstly, the threat of Roe v.Wade being revoked is now at the door. From the religious perspective, this is great. We don't want "baby killers" in this god-fearing country. However, statistics show that abortion rates have been steadily decreasing since Roe.v. Wade was passed. In addition, the millenial generation has thus far achieved the lowest teen preganancy and abortion rates of any generation since the beginning of the 20th century. Secondy, in the bid to revoke Roe v. Wade legislators are now putting bills through the legislature justifying a doctor's ability to contain information about abortions and emergency contraception from a pregnant woman who may need one of those proceedures to live. The same goes with pharmacists who are now legally able to deny presecriptions based on their moral beliefs. Now women, no matter what their sexual or non-sexual activities may be, are being denied reproduction-related perscriptions because some pharmacist thinks anyone on the pill is morally corrupt. In addition, the government now wants to cut government funding to organizations that propose emergency contraception and abortion to female patients during counseling. This means organizations like planned parenthood will soon be forced to shut down because the government feels it necessary, and more importantly feels it has the right to regulate the reproductive practice of the female citezens in this country. However, last time I checked, the government has not proposed any new laws which would inhibit the males' reproductive/sexual rights. No one is stopping them from buying condoms, abandoning the women they've impregnated or forcing them to regulate their mastabatory practices. The facts seem to be simple here. As much as I would like to think that these extremist actions will in some way ensure absolute and universal abstinence among our nation's citezens. However, until mother nature decides to take a step down or, possibly reverse millenia of natural biological sexual inclinations, I think the attack on the female uterus can be halted in favor of a more worthy endevor. I mean come on,we still have all those idiot heathens to contend with who seem to think Christians are a bunch of ass holes.It's funny how uneducated, unindustrialized, and unmaterialized simpletons can be right some times huh?

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You begin with a histrionic slur: "Not all anti-abortionists kill people." implying that most of us do when the handful of crazies who have done so have been disowned by the pro-life movement. Compare this to the large number of killers in the liberal underground of the Sixties, like the Weathermen, many of whom are unrepentant and are still idolized by the left and even given college professorships. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weather_Underground.

You continue with "And because I'd like to understand why a virtual stranger would accuse me of being a baby killer." when you have just accused, in your subtitle, a huge portion of the country that has pro-life values of being killers. Finally you say "This is one of the hallmarks of the Right in this country: an abject refusal to face their own rage." when liberals constantly talk about their own "rage" in sites like this: http://liberalrage.livejournal.com/ and liberal rage is evident even at major events like the 2004 Hollywood fundraiser where the Democrat Party would not release the video because of the disgusting behavior it depicted:
http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/07/14/fundraiser.flap/

You might take a hint from Robet Burns' lines:

"O wad some Power the giftie gie us / To see oursels as ithers see us!" (poem: "To a Louse") and see if your own criticism fits you first before applying it to another.

No one is so full of rage as he/she who sins against God. Separation from God is called Hell. It is not a place but a state of existence. Violation of God's commandments is called "Hell on Earth". The person who can destroy a developing human life because he/she (never an "it") is inconvenient is surely in Hell. Sex is part of a continuum which involves marriage, children, and above all love.

Those who artificially try to stop the sex contimuum at orgasm end up committing the crime of abortion and the greater crime of blinding yourselves to the humanity of an unborn child. That blindness is the civil rights crime of STAGISM = discrimination based on stage of biological development and it is equal in evil to the blindness called RACISM = discrimination based on race, skin color, and facial features. I was once a "fetus" and I claim that stage of development as my own - I was fully human in spirit though not in form. And no one can take away my Right to Life. It may be legal now but it is immoral in terms of humanity.

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Check it out, Mr. Hell-On-Earth:

http://www.sapphireblue.com/25years/

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I notice that pro-choicers have no trouble pulling out their own bloody photos when it suits you although you constantly decry the placards of aborted children that we show on the street.

Yes, that woman's death was a tragedy and it was hell-on-earth for her. But she was committing the crime of child-murder when she died in the process so she is not entirely innocent - aborted children are. " Approximately 1,370,000 abortions occur annually in the U.S. according to the Alan Guttmacher Institute "
http://womensissues.about.com/cs/abortionstats
/a/aaabortionstats.htm

You cry over one woman and rightly so. We have a million such reasons to cry - check it out, Ms. Morticia, if you dare:
http://www.priestsforlife.org/resources/abortionimages
/#galleries

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But thanks anyway. Got any more?

I'm glad you wrote in, because you are "Exhibit A" in what women have been up against since the beginning of recorded history.

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...not all of us pro-choicers decry the use of bloody images. I welcome the side-by-side comparison of pictures of dead fetuses and dead women.

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Yes, I gather that you're pro-abortion, or pro-choice. I gather also that, at least one of the reasons for this stance is the personal convenience it affords to people with unplanned or unwanted pregnancies. But, by and large, I missed the argument to counter the view of the "religious right" that abortion is immoral because it results in the termination of a human life. Instead of that argument, all I found was "those who oppose choice are not simply benighted crusaders, but bullies who are exploiting the abortion issue to exalt their pathologies." In other words, since you can't come up with a decent argument, you simply diagnose those with whom you disagree as pathological. A neat trick, but not likely to persuade anybody except those who, as a matter of blind faith, have already decided that you're right.

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You say: "But, by and large, I missed the argument to counter the view of the 'religious right' that abortion is immoral because it results in the termination of a human life." I agree that many pro-choice and pro-life people argue at cross purposes, with one side assuming that the fetus is a full fledged person and the other thinking of it as a bunch of cells. There is an argument for the pro-choice position, however. First, not everything that's human and alive has moral rights. Cancer cells are both human and alive, yet we have a right to destroy them. Individual gametes are human and alive (sperm even move) yet most people do not regard the use of spermicide as mass murder. I personally would argue that the acquisition of sentience (the primitive capacity to feel pain) is a necessary prerequisite for the possession of interests and rights. Sentience does not occur until the beginning of the third trimester (see reference to medical source information in entry by Xanthippe above). That means that there isn't a person in the case until a stage of development by which nearly 99% of all abortions are performed. Roe v. Wade (which permits third trimester restrictions) would stand.

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Your argument is elegant. But let me stress, at the risk of being repetitious, that women who are determined to end their pregnancies care little for parsing such niceties as "when life begins" and the "definition" of human life, and so forth. This is not how they make their decisions. When they want to end a pregnancy, they become possessed of a primal drive that grows out of their own highly personal and intimate circumstances. The favorite term of anti-choicers is that women abort because it's a matter of "convenience," a word that carries a definite semantic subtext: irresponsible, frivolous, selfish. "Convenience" may be the reason some women abort, but there are other reasons for other women: terror, desperation, exhaustion. Abortion does not go away when it's illegal. It goes underground, and women follow. They WILL put themselves in harm's way to end a pregnancy. This is simply a fact, whatever our opinion of it. They've proven this down through the centuries. Pro-choice recognizes this reality and takes a pragmatic approach. Anyone working to make abortion illegal again is, in effect, working to put the illegal abortionist back into business, send him his customers and employ him (or her, in plenty of cases) to dole out crude, dirty, barbaric savage punishment to those who break the law. Some anti-choicers, like the recent poster a couple of comments back from this one, are able to accommodate that, because the women are, after all, baby-murderers. Others assuage their consciences by resorting to historical revisionism, saying that all those horror stories you hear about coat hangers and bleeding to death and being met by strange men and riding blindfolded in the backs of cars are an exaggeration, mere propaganda. Those of us who were "there" know that the horrors of pre-Roe are no exaggeration, and we know that the real issue, the only issue, is the inevitable return of illegal abortion if Roe is overturned.

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