pro-life

Republicans Are Not Pro-Life

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The Republican Party claims to be “the right to life” Party. But it seems the only lives they are concerned about are those of unborn fetuses.

It’s very clear to me that these “pro-life” Republicans are not pro-life. Once a baby is delivered, these pro-lifers don’t give two shits about what happens to its life. They are not concerned about the health or wellbeing of the child once born. They are not concerned about the education of the child once born, about protecting the life of the child once born from school shootings.

What about ensuring that the air a child breathes is not noxious, or the quality of the water they drink is not toxic? They give no thoughts to the lives or circumstances of the women who are forced to give birth to unplanned or unwanted children because these “pro-lifers” are too preoccupied with passing laws putting more and more restrictions designed to deny the rights of women to manage their own reproductive rights. But when it comes to passing laws designed to restrict the proliferation of deadly weapons in order to protect the lives of Americans of all ages, races, genders, and religions, they are conspicuously silent — maybe from all the thoughts they’re thinking and the prayers they’re offering.

The truth is that these “pro-life” Republicans are not at all pro-life. What they really are is “pro-birth.” What happens after a child’s birth is not something they care about at all.

Who Won The Week — 05/15/22

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The idea behind Who Won the Week is to give you the opportunity to select who (or what) you think “won” this past week. Your selection can be anyone or anything — politicians, celebrities, athletes, authors, bloggers, your friends or family members, books, movies, TV shows, businesses, organizations, whatever.

For the first time since I started Who Won the Week, I am designating another blogger, Jill Dennison, as this week’s winner. This morning she posted something (a bit of a justifiable rant, in my opinion) on her blog. It’s a rant that I consider a must read post. You can read her post by following this link to get to her blog. I’ve also copied and pasted her post below.

WHOA … THE HYPOCRISY!!!

What, exactly, is the ‘Right to Life’? Whose life? To what extent are we willing to go to preserve life? And what, exactly is life? I’m frankly sick of hearing people say they are “pro-life” when all they really mean is they are against abortion. Something in the news yesterday, though, connected some dots and made me stop … and after a bit of cursing and punching the coffee pot for not heating quickly enough, I sat down and said, “WHOA … the hypocrisy!!!!” What was that something? The second mass shooting of the weekend yesterday afternoon in a grocery store in a predominantly Black neighborhood in Buffalo, New York, where at last count, 13 people were shot, 10 murdered.

Folks, let me make something perfectly clear here: the nearly-uncontrolled right to own guns is completely inconsistent with the right to life. Completely. If a person buys a gun, he or she does so with the intention of using that gun to kill. Guns literally have no other purpose than to maim and murder.

Next time someone tells you they are ‘pro-life,’ ask them if they own a gun. If they say ‘yes,’ then you can inform them that they are a potential taker of life, so no, they are not pro-life at all, they are just using the term to justify their stance on taking away women’s rights.

The shooter in Buffalo was an 18-year-old white male who apparently hates Black people for some reason, for the government is treating this as a hate crime based on his ‘manifesto.’ Gee, I wonder where he got that prejudice from? Look first at the parents, but then look at society today. Wonder why an 18-year-old kid even has access to a gun? Last Wednesday, a judge in ruled that California’s ban on the sale of semiautomatic weapons to people under 21 is unconstitutional. What’s next … will it be ruled unconstitutional to ban giving guns to children age 14? Age 10? Age 5? The gun culture in this nation is truly insane. In no other nation is a civilian allowed to own an assault weapon, let alone an arsenal!

If you’ve followed this blog for any length of time, you know my stance on guns … they do not belong in the hands of civilians. Full stop. Need further proof?

In Milwaukee, Wisconsin on Friday night, there was yet another mass shooting that left 17 people injured, but no fatalities thus far, miraculously. This one took place late Friday night shortly after fans left a nearby NBA playoff game. Two other shootings in the same general vicinity took place earlier that evening, leaving an additional four people injured.

My message to every single member of the United States Congress is this …

Do not offer ‘condolences’ to the families of the victims in Milwaukee or Buffalo. Do not offer meaningless ‘thoughts and prayers.’ DO SOMETHING! Initiate and pass serious and meaningful gun legislation to get the guns out of the hands of people! No 18-year-old child has the need for a gun. Nobody who has EVER been accused of abusing another person in any way should be allowed to own a gun. And NOBODY anywhere, ever, for any reason has a need for an assault weapon! Shut down the gun shows where even the most basic rules are openly disregarded. Override with federal legislation the individual state laws that allow for carrying concealed weapons, for possession of a gun without a license, and make the federal law ‘One Strike, You’re Out’!

But alas, mine is a pipe dream, for those very people who claim to be ‘pro-life’ would scream, yell, and threaten any who even suggested such laws. No matter that gun violence is the leading cause of death in the U.S. You have a roughly 1-in-315 lifetime chance of death from gun violence.

For those who would claim that the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution gives them the right to own as many guns of any sort as they wish, let me clarify the exact wording of that Amendment:

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

NOWHERE does it say that people should be allowed to keep a gun in the glove compartment of their car or walk into a grocery store with one concealed in pocket or purse. NOWHERE does it say that guns should be freely available to teens. NOWHERE does it say that a person should be allowed to own an assault weapon that didn’t even exist when the Constitution was written in 1787!

Those who believe that abortion is an infringement on the right to life, better wake up and look at the gun culture, the lack of gun laws in this country, for already this year 15,862 people have lost their life to a person with a gun. That is more than the total gun deaths all year in 2016! But yet, do you hear anybody speaking for the ‘right to life’ of those victims?

Friday it was Milwaukee, Saturday it was Buffalo … will your neighborhood be Sunday’s statistics?

If you want to participate, write your own post designating who you think won the week and why you think they deserve your nod. Then link back to this post and tag you post with FWWTW.

What about you? Who (or what) do you think won the week?

Fandango’s Flashback Friday — April 15th

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Wouldn’t you like to expose your newer readers to some of your earlier posts that they might never have seen? Or remind your long term followers of posts that they might not remember? Each Friday I will publish a post I wrote on this exact date in a previous year.

How about you? Why don’t you reach back into your own archives and highlight a post that you wrote on this very date in a previous year? You can repost your Friday Flashback post on your blog and pingback to this post. Or you can just write a comment below with a link to the post you selected.

If you’ve been blogging for less than a year, go ahead and choose a post that you previously published on this day (the 15th) of any month within the past year and link to that post in a comment.

This was originally posted on April 15, 2018.

Is God Really Pro-Life?

img_1216

I saw this bumper sticker above on a car the other day and it made me wonder how someone would know that God is pro-life.

Is this the same pro-life God who killed all the first born males in Egypt so that Pharaoh would “let His people go?”

Is this the same pro-life God who drowned all life on earth except for Noah and his family and the pairs of animals that gathered on Noah’s ark?

The same pro-life God who permitted the Nazis to exterminate more than six million living human beings (including, no doubt, pregnant women) during World War II? Who allowed hundreds of thousands of Japanese (including, no doubt, pregnant women) to die when the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Who stands by twiddling His thumbs while Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad gasses his own people (including, no doubt, pregnant women)?

So where, exactly, do people get the idea that God is pro-life? From the Bible, you say? Oh really?

The God depicted in the Bible is the greatest mass murderer of all time. He killed millions of pregnant women and their fetuses in Noah’s flood. And what about the conquest of Canaan, the incineration of Sodom and Gomorrah, and in numerous other major slaughters described in the Bible? When the entire populations of towns are massacred as part of “God’s will,” you can be sure that pregnant women and their unborn children were among the victims.

Why did God, who allegedly loves the unborn and hates abortion, kill so many unborn children — as well as living children, adolescents, and adults — throughout biblical history? What makes anyone believe that God cares about unborn children?

The anti-abortion movement continues to declare that, in the name of God, abortion is murder. Do those opposing abortion on religious grounds know that the Bible does not consider a fetus to be a full human life or the killing of a fetus to be murder? The Bible requires the death penalty for 60 specified “criminal” violations, but abortion is not one of them.

In fact, nowhere in the Bible will you find any passage that describes a prohibition or penalty for a woman who chooses to terminate her pregnancy. Not a single verse. Yet many politicians and advocacy groups claim that their belief that abortion is murder originated in the Bible.

So where, then, is the evidence that God loves the unborn and disapproves of abortion?

Better yet, where is the evidence that God exists?

I realize that this post may piss some people off and I may even lose some followers as a result. But as Pharaoh said, “So let it be written, so let it be done.”

Fandango’s Flashback Friday — October 30

Fandango23 Comments

Wouldn’t you like to expose your newer readers to some of your earlier posts that they might never have seen? Or remind your long term followers of posts that they might not remember? Each Friday I will publish a post I wrote on this exact date in a previous year.

How about you? Why don’t you reach back into your own archives and highlight a post that you wrote on this very date in a previous year? You can repost your Friday Flashback post on your blog and pingback to this post. Or you can just write a comment below with a link to the post you selected.

If you’ve been blogging for less than a year, go ahead and choose a post that you previously published on this day (the 30th) of any month within the past year and link to that post in a comment.

This was originally posted on my old blog on October 30, 2007. I think, given that Amy Coney Barrett, a far-right conservative, was just sworn in as the newest Justice of the Supreme Court, it’s a great time to flash back to this post. Barrett is an outspoken opponent of Roe v. Wade, and the Supreme Court is about to hear cases on abortion. With Barrett’s addition to the high court, it now has a 6-3 conservative majority, and that increases the likelihood that abortions may, once again, be declared illegal in the United States.

Pro-Choice Isn’t the Same as Pro-Abortion

I am becoming quite annoyed by the labels people use to describe their positions on the abortion question. They are “pro-this” and “anti-that,” making it seem like it’s a black and white issue, which it clearly is not.

When someone claims to be “pro-life,” for example, does that imply that being anything else is “anti-life”? When someone says they’re “pro-choice,” does that also mean that they’re “pro-abortion”?

The debate over abortion is a highly divisive one in which people feel intensely passionate. Unfortunately, it seems that most people on both sides of the issue who openly express their opinions are intractable in their positions. For the record, I am “pro-choice.” But that does not make me, or anyone who supports a woman’s right to choose, “pro-abortion.”

I believe that abortion should be a last resort for women, but a resort nonetheless. Who but a woman who finds herself with an unplanned, unwanted pregnancy is in the best position to assess the situation and the impact upon her life, evaluate the available options, and decide what the best course of action is? It is no doubt a highly personal and agonizing decision to have to make and I think there are very few who take lightly the decision to have an abortion.

What right do those who oppose abortion have to deny a woman a lawful course of action simply because it is against their religion, beliefs, or morality for a woman to have an abortion?

For those whose religious or moral beliefs are such that they oppose abortion, the answer is simple. Don’t have one. But don’t deny the choice to others who might not feel the same way or share those same beliefs. Don’t picket and protest outside of Planned Parenthood clinics in order to harass, intimidate, and try to shame those who are seeking to examine all of their available options.

The Life and Death Paradox

Fandango68 Comments

Supreme Court Crisis Pregnancy Centers, Washington, USA - 20 Mar 2018Okay, it’s time to stir things up a bit.

I don’t understand why those who oppose abortion also often oppose contraception. It seems rather paradoxical to me.

Contraception prevents unplanned, unwanted pregnancies, and women who choose to have abortions do so, to a large extent, because of unplanned, unwanted pregnancies. So doesn’t it follow that advocating the use of contraceptives and promoting their availability would reduce the demand for abortions?

But that logic seems to be beyond what many religious and social conservatives can grasp, so they continue to follow the paradox of being opposed to both abortion and contraception.

DAD7BB0F-89CB-4F7F-A4E3-2793DAB675A3In a related paradox, social conservatives often oppose sex education in public schools other than “abstinence-only.” They take this position even though the data shows that there is a greater teen pregnancy rate in school systems that teach abstinence-only than there is when a broad-based sex education program, including teaching about the use of condoms and other forms of birth control, is included in the curriculum.

“Oh Lordy, don’t teach the kids about condoms,” they say, apparently because they believe knowledge about condoms and their use promotes sexual activity.

Oh yeah, it also prevents pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases.

7CE49602-FC1E-4F86-8736-845B45DE6432And then there’s the paradox that many who are pro-life also support the death penalty. Can you really be pro-life and pro-death penalty? Where is the logic in believing it’s okay to terminate the life of an adult human being but it’s not okay to abort a fetus? And by the way, a fetus is not a baby, and thus, having (or performing) an abortion is not killing a baby.

Sure, those on death row are presumably bad people, but they are living, breathing human beings nonetheless. A fetus is not yet a living, breathing person, but pro-lifers are appalled at the idea of terminating a pregnancy while seemingly having no qualms when it comes to terminating the life of a prison inmate.

Liberals generally support a woman’s right to choose because they believe that a woman should not be forced to bring an unplanned, unwanted baby into a bad situation and that the government shouldn’t insert itself into private matters about what a woman can do with her own body.

And liberals tend to oppose the death penalty because they believe that the government doesn’t have the right or moral authority to take the lives of people, even allegedly very bad people, especially with the growing number of instances where DNA testing shows that some death row inmates were wrongly convicted.

Conversely, conservatives who oppose abortion do so because they believe that a fetus is a “person” as of the date of conception. But at the same time, they tend to support the death penalty because they want those evil, nasty criminals to pay the ultimate price for their crimes.

The question in my mind is whether there is a moral equivalence between abortion and the death penalty. When you get to the heart of the matter, it really boils down to the very sympathetic image of an unborn baby pitted against the very unsympathetic image of a hardened criminal who has been sentenced to death for committing heinous crimes against society.

Am I the only one who finds these matters of abortion, contraception, and the death penalty paradoxical? How about you?

Is God Really Pro-Life?

Fandango26 Comments

img_1216I saw this bumper sticker above on a car the other day and it made me wonder how someone would know that God is pro-life.

Is this the same pro-life God who killed all the first born males in Egypt so that Pharaoh would “let His people go?”

Is this the same pro-life God who drowned all life on earth except for Noah and his family and the pairs of animals that gathered on Noah’s ark?

The same pro-life God who permitted the Nazis to exterminate more than six million living human beings (including, no doubt, pregnant women) during World War II? Who allowed hundreds of thousands of Japanese (including, no doubt, pregnant women) to die when the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Who stands by twiddling His thumbs while Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad gasses his own people (including, no doubt, pregnant women)?

So where, exactly, do people get the idea that God is pro-life? From the Bible, you say? Oh really?

The God depicted in the Bible is the greatest mass murderer of all time. He killed millions of pregnant women and their fetuses in Noah’s flood. And what about the conquest of Canaan, the incineration of Sodom and Gomorrah, and in numerous other major slaughters described in the Bible? When the entire populations of towns are massacred as part of “God’s will,” you can be sure that pregnant women and their unborn children were among the victims.

Why did God, who allegedly loves the unborn and hates abortion, kill so many unborn children — as well as living children, adolescents, and adults — throughout biblical history? What makes anyone believe that God cares about unborn children?

The anti-abortion movement continues to declare that, in the name of God, abortion is murder. Do those opposing abortion on religious grounds know that the Bible does not consider a fetus to be a full human life or the killing of a fetus to be murder? The Bible requires the death penalty for 60 specified “criminal” violations, but abortion is not one of them.

In fact, nowhere in the Bible will you find any passage that describes a prohibition or penalty for a woman who chooses to terminate her pregnancy. Not a single verse. Yet many politicians and advocacy groups claim that their belief that abortion is murder originate in the Bible.

So where, then, is the evidence that God loves the unborn and disapproves of abortion?

Better yet, where is the evidence that God exists?

I realize that this post may piss some people off and I may even lose some followers as a result. But as Pharaoh said, “So let it be written, so let it be done.”