I'm sitting in a Pro Life meeting right now...

_ · August 2008

cincybearcat wrote:

Just trying to see the view from the otherside.

Thank you for that.

_ · August 2008

cincybearcat wrote:

So, as responsibilty rises, abortions decrease.

Therefore, we must find a way to raise the responsibility level of younger women and men.

I would say something more along the lines of: as empowerment & knowledge increase, abortion decreases.

Also, maybe it's not that older women have less unintended pregnancy per se, but just that since they are more likely to have higher-paying jobs and stable relationships/husbands they are better able to deal with a child they didn't plan for.

know1 · August 2008

scb wrote:

Well I guess you misunderstand me then. I'm not arguing in favor of women having abortions. My argument is for you to leave them the fuck alone and stop judging people whose situations you can't possibily begin to understand. I am simply arguing against your (or whoever's) assertion that women who have abortions are just too irresponsible and lazy to use conctracption. I'm tyring to shed some light on the real world for you. And you can sit up in your comfortable ivory tower and judge others all you want, but clearly you don't understand the real-life barriers that prevent many people from getting healthcare. It doesn't matter whether you say from afar that women should be able to overcome these barriers. Oftentimes they can't. If you don't like those facts, maybe you should try to do something to help instead of just casting stones from afar.

You're right, it's a bad thing to be so judgemental, huh?

I think it's pretty evident that I don't have the monopoly on casting stones.

Contraception is not as difficult to obtain as you're trying to justify. In addition, men and women don't even have to have sex if they're unprepared. All of those excuses are just a way to justify being pro-abortion.

_ · August 2008

know1 wrote:

You're right, it's a bad thing to be so judgemental, huh? I think it's pretty evident that I don't have the monopoly on casting stones.

So calling you our on your stone-casting makes me a stone-caster myself, huh? I'll have to consider that.

know1 wrote:

Contraception is not as difficult to obtain as you're trying to justify. In addition, men and women don't even have to have sex if they're unprepared. All of those excuses are just a way to justify being pro-abortion.

How do you think you can know how difficult it is for another person in a completely different circumstance to obtain contraception? You just keep saying things are easy (and applying that judgement to everyone) but haven't been able to back up that claim. You can't.

Have you ever lived in a hogan with no phone, electricity, running water, or vehicle, in a location with no doctor, pharmacy, or jobs, and had 4 kids, 2 grandmas, and a niece to care for? Have you had a pair of ovaries which you had to keep from ovulating?

know1 · August 2008

scb wrote:

So calling you our on your stone-casting makes me a stone-caster myself, huh? I'll have to consider that.

Nah - it was more about the ivory tower stuff. That being said, I'm not casting stones.

scb wrote:

How do you think you can know how difficult it is for another person in a completely different circumstance to obtain contraception? You just keep saying things are easy (and applying that judgement to everyone) but haven't been able to back up that claim. You can't.

Have you ever lived in a hogan with no phone, electricity, running water, or vehicle, in a location with no doctor, pharmacy, or jobs, and had 4 kids, 2 grandmas, and a niece to care for? Have you had a pair of ovaries which you had to keep from ovulating?

It is pretty easy when you drill down to the core: Don't have sex if you can't get contraception. Not too difficult - I've done it.

_ · August 2008

know1 wrote:

It is pretty easy when you drill down to the core: Don't have sex if you can't get contraception. Not too difficult - I've done it.

Once again with the judgements about what's difficult and what's not for other people. Nobody cares what you've done or haven't done because that's not relevant. Stop trying to judge other people's lives through the lense of your own life. It doesn't work that way. You should at least try to see their lives through their eyes. Correct me if I'm wrong, but you don't seem to have any interest in doing that.

But let's just say, purely for the sake of argument, that your solution is realistic. That just brings us back to the failure rate of contraception, about which you (or someone else) will say, "They knew contraception could fail, so they shouldn't have sex unless they wanted a kid." Of course, having sex only if you want to procreate is not realistic either. I'd love see all the wives out there refuse to have sex with their husbands unless they wanted to have a child. As soon as the men stopped getting any, the attitudes & laws in this country would change real fast!

The bottom line is this: It's a complex decision based on complex, personal circumstances. So no one should purport to know or judge anyone else's situation or what they should do.

know1 · August 2008

scb wrote:

Once again with the judgements about what's difficult and what's not for other people. Nobody cares what you've done or haven't done because that's not relevant. Stop trying to judge other people's lives through the lense of your own life. It doesn't work that way. You should at least try to see their lives through their eyes. Correct me if I'm wrong, but you don't seem to have any interest in doing that.

But let's just say, purely for the sake of argument, that your solution is realistic. That just brings us back to the failure rate of contraception, about which you (or someone else) will say, "They knew contraception could fail, so they shouldn't have sex unless they wanted a kid." Of course, having sex only if you want to procreate is not realistic either. I'd love see all the wives out there refuse to have sex with their husbands unless they wanted to have a child. As soon as the men stopped getting any, the attitudes & laws in this country would change real fast!

The bottom line is this: It's a complex decision based on complex, personal circumstances. So no one should purport to know or judge anyone else's situation or what they should do.

First you tell me that I can't understand anyone's situation and then when I make a correlation, you say that nobody cares about what I've done since it's not relevant. Pick a tactic and stick with it, OK?

Really though. I didn't start out judging anyone's life. When you introduced ridiculous examples of why it's apparently nearly impossible not to get pregnant, I refuted them and then suddenly became a judge...of a hypothetical person!

How about we debate this: What percentage of people having abortions would you say are women living in a trailer in the middle of nowhere with 4 kids, no car, no money, etc. etc. etc. who cannot possibly stop having sex and have no earthly way to get contraception?

Cree Nations · August 2008

Any human should be pro for all life. However, in the case of pregnancy and a woman. As long as she has all her marbles, it's her call...always....ALWAYS

CityMouse · August 2008

drsluggo wrote:

and how can people be anti-war yet pro-baby killing.

Either way- its a huge stretch to post this in the PJ music forum - goto the political one with this crap..

because when you kill people in a war you are killing a person. with thoughts and feelings and a family and friends.

when you abort a FETUS (not a baby) you are killing a few cells that have started to multiply.

that's why it's called "abortion." You are "aborting" the process of the fetus eventually becoming a baby.

writersu · August 2008

cincybearcat wrote:

So, as responsibilty rises, abortions decrease.

Therefore, we must find a way to raise the responsibility level of younger women and men.

yeah, that is for sure. I have teenagers (as most people here who know me, know......17,16,14 and (not a teen YET 11), but as much as I do not want to think about any of them; boys or my daughter having sex, and as much as I will first try to tell them there is no hurry certainly, the reality is that they will desire to try and their hormones may win over me, so the truth is they need to be responsible. That is pregnancy and aids, vd, etc.
And although at first we covered the post that stated that abortion is not traumatic on your body, I will step up and say it is. No more info; none needed I am sure........it is. We also need to be teaching that our bodies; male or female are precious and need to be treated as such.

writersu · August 2008

scb wrote:

So calling you our on your stone-casting makes me a stone-caster myself, huh? I'll have to consider that.

How do you think you can know how difficult it is for another person in a completely different circumstance to obtain contraception? You just keep saying things are easy (and applying that judgement to everyone) but haven't been able to back up that claim. You can't.

Have you ever lived in a hogan with no phone, electricity, running water, or vehicle, in a location with no doctor, pharmacy, or jobs, and had 4 kids, 2 grandmas, and a niece to care for? Have you had a pair of ovaries which you had to keep from ovulating?

Ok, you know I am on your team here, right?

but I need to ask, have you? or are you just insinuating a possible scenario?

writersu · August 2008

Cree Nations wrote:

Any human should be pro for all life. However, in the case of pregnancy and a woman. As long as she has all her marbles, it's her call...always....ALWAYS

yeah. someone brought up the point that there are two people in this scenario, but the truth is while there may be a few men who are strong enough to be present and caring in the whole process, there are also many who do not ever even know (maybe not relationship sex) so the whole thing really does fall on the woman. Like it or not, it is our bodies we are taking care of here, and it is our responsibility.

bizzat92 · August 2008

know1 wrote:

I agree with pretty much everything that you say here about government and taxes with the exception of the correlation to abortion.

I know that there is debate about when life really begins, but as long as their is debate and no absolute answer, I feel that we should err on the side of not killing a life...or infringing our choices upon that life.

The fact is, I believe that the woman and man make their choice when they have sex. As long as there is doubt as to the question of life past that point, they should deal with their choice in such a way that guarantees they are not killing the consequence of their choice.

Well the point i was trying to make was it is not my job, your job, someone elses job or the governments job to tell someone they cant do something. We have already given up waaaaaaay to much of our freedoms because certain people have decided they didnt like it or it was offensive to their sensibilities. Limits need to be placed on government involvement in our lifes.

_ · August 2008

writersu wrote:

Ok, you know I am on your team here, right?

Wait, wait...! I was responding to know1, not to you! :eek: Sorry for any confusion!

Yes, I know you are on my team.

writersu wrote:

but I need to ask, have you? or are you just insinuating a possible scenario?

Fortunately, I have never been in that exact situation. (I mean the living situation; I've been in the ovary situation.

) But I live in New Mexico and used to live on one of the native american reservations, where I had many friends and neighbors in similar situations. I now live in the city, where I work at the hospital which sees much of the state's poor, uninsured, rural population.

Beyond the women's reproductive health issue, it is simply a reality that many of our patients face social, economical, and geographical barriers to obtaining regular healthcare. Many people are extremely poor and don't have cars or gas money. Many people live in very rural areas where not only are there no doctors, pharmacies, or bus routes, but there aren't even paved roads or street addresses. Many people don't have phones and certainly don't have internet access. It's not as uncommon as you might think to find people living without electricty or even running water.

It's common to have patients miss their important appointments (of any kind) because they couldn't get a ride, and then to try to call them to reschedule only to find out that the phone number you have on file is a "message phone," meaning it's their uncle's number and next time he happens to see them he'll let them know you called. Of course, that doesn't mean he can give them a ride back to his house during working hours so they can call you back and reschedule their appointment.

It's not surprising to have a woman from one of these rural areas call because she's in labor (if she can access a phone) and have to send an ambulance to pick her up because she has no current transportation, or, if there are any complications, have her air-lifted in. It's not uncommon to keep women who are near term in the hospital when they could otherwise have gone home just because, even though they have transportation, it rained or snowed in their area and the unpaved roads are impassable. And, as I mentioned earlier, the #1 reason our beds can't always be cleared of postpartum women who have no other medical reason to stay is because they don't have a safe ride home for themselves and their new babies.

We had a patient who drove in to town recently with her husband and kids for an appointment, but the second part of her treatment couldn't happen for 3 days. They had no money for gas to drive back home, back to town three days later, and back home again. They had no money for even a "cheap" hotel. They slept in their car for the first two days, but then her husband had to go back to make it to work. Last I heard, she had no idea where she was going to sleep on the 3rd night or how she was going to get back home again.

So, no, I'm not just insinuating a possible scenario. I wish I were. I wouldn't have realized how difficult some things that I take for granted can be, especially here in the U.S., unless I had witnessed it. So I understand that people don't know. But that's why I'm trying to tell them.

writersu · August 2008

scb wrote:

Wait, wait...! I was responding to know1, not to you! :eek: Sorry for any confusion! Yes, I know you are on my team.

Fortunately, I have never been in that exact situation. (I mean the living situation; I've been in the ovary situation. ) But I live in New Mexico and used to live on one of the native american reservations, where I had many friends and neighbors in similar situations. I now live in the city, where I work at the hospital which sees much of the state's poor, uninsured, rural population.

Beyond the women's reproductive health issue, it is simply a reality that many of our patients face social, economical, and geographical barriers to obtaining regular healthcare. Many people are extremely poor and don't have cars or gas money. Many people live in very rural areas where not only are there no doctors, pharmacies, or bus routes, but there aren't even paved roads or street addresses. Many people don't have phones and certainly don't have internet access. It's not as uncommon as you might think to find people living without electricty or even running water.

It's common to have patients miss their important appointments (of any kind) because they couldn't get a ride, and then to try to call them to reschedule only to find out that the phone number you have on file is a "message phone," meaning it's their uncle's number and next time he happens to see them he'll let them know you called. Of course, that doesn't mean he can give them a ride back to his house during working hours so they can call you back and reschedule their appointment.

It's not surprising to have a woman from one of these rural areas call because she's in labor (if she can access a phone) and have to send an ambulance to pick her up because she has no current transportation, or, if there are any complications, have her air-lifted in. It's not uncommon to keep women who are near term in the hospital when they could otherwise have gone home just because, even though they have transportation, it rained or snowed in their area and the unpaved roads are impassable. And, as I mentioned earlier, the #1 reason our beds can't always be cleared of postpartum women who have no other medical reason to stay is because they don't have a safe ride home for themselves and their new babies.

We had a patient who drove in to town recently with her husband and kids for an appointment, but the second part of her treatment couldn't happen for 3 days. They had no money for gas to drive back home, back to town three days later, and back home again. They had no money for even a "cheap" hotel. They slept in their car for the first two days, but then her husband had to go back to make it to work. Last I heard, she had no idea where she was going to sleep on the 3rd night or how she was going to get back home again.

So, no, I'm not just insinuating a possible scenario. I wish I were. I wouldn't have realized how difficult some things that I take for granted can be, especially here in the U.S., unless I had witnessed it. So I understand that people don't know. But that's why I'm trying to tell them.

Wow, that is so horrible. You really have a hard time with this subject because you KNOW the truth. That is really huge and I admire you for your work; truly.

in_hiding79 · August 2008

SoMuchClearer wrote:

I'm typing this from my iPhone.

I'm an audio engineer and starting today I'll be recording and mixing a conference for the Catholic Diocese on PRO LIFE in Philadelphia.

Ugh... It's gonna be a long weekend! What an "abortion" this show is gonna be! (sorry couldn't resist)

Regardless of your belief, please don't bombard me with political commentary.

Just wanted to say that it brings mr back to MTV Unplugged... I think I'll scribe "PRO-CHOICE" in my forearm with a sharpie and then pretend to be Superman while I lay on my bar stool!

Must be very annoying at that meeting..

_ · August 2008

writersu wrote:

Wow, that is so horrible. You really have a hard time with this subject because you KNOW the truth. That is really huge and I admire you for your work; truly.

Thank you for that. That's so sweet of you to say.

And, yes, that IS why I have such a hard time with this subject. :(

Edit: But don't admire me. Admire the women and men who are out there simply doing the best they can to get through lives which aren't easy.

writersu · August 2008

scb wrote:

Thank you for that. That's so sweet of you to say. And, yes, that IS why I have such a hard time with this subject. :(

Edit: But don't admire me. Admire the women and men who are out there simply doing the best they can to get through lives which aren't easy.

I know, right??

And it KILLS me when commercials show like yuppy families on computers and cell phones and say shit like, "it is a two income society". uh, yeah, sure...... whatever.

But still I will say that it is a gift for you to be there working with these people and to have the empathy you have. So many of us can think we are miles away from this situation and treat them like they are lower than the rest of us. I am so careful not to do this because when I do, God gives me a huge kick in the shins and says, "ok, big shot, here.........!"

works every time......

ouch..............

_ · August 2008

writersu wrote:

But still I will say that it is a gift for you to be there working with these people and to have the empathy you have.

It really is a gift - for me. The people I have known (within or outside the context of my job) have given me this empathy. Or, to the extent that I already had empathy, they have given me perspective. We could all use some more perspective. (I still don't think I'll ever truly know what it's like to be a human being in this world until I spend time outside the U.S. & other so-called First World countries.)

writersu wrote:

So many of us can think we are miles away from this situation and treat them like they are lower than the rest of us. I am so careful not to do this because when I do, God gives me a huge kick in the shins and says, "ok, big shot, here.........!"

works every time......

ouch..............

Haha! This reminds me of a shirt I once saw. It had an image of a king standing on a mountaintop looking pridefully down at his kingdom. Unbeknownst to him was a giant hand behind him, presumably the hand of God, getting ready to flick him off the mountain.

I'm sitting in a Pro Life meeting right now...

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