Demonization of Democrats - Opinion piece in The Hill:

[milestogo]

The Pagan roots of Democrats’ abortion extremism
BY GRAEDON ZORZI, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR - 10/01/22 3:00 PM ET
THE VIEWS EXPRESSED BY CONTRIBUTORS ARE THEIR OWN AND NOT THE VIEW OF THE HILL

Arizona’s recent ruling on abortion will set women “back more than a century,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre claimed last week. But it’s the Democrats who are trying to turn the clock back on abortion. Democrats, including President Biden, are quickly moving toward the extreme position that a woman alone can, in consultation with her doctor, make any decision at any time on abortion. That position would set women back all the way to the first century, a brutal age that ended only when the Christian era brought new protections for infants before and after birth.

Jean-Pierre’s comments followed a ruling in Arizona that reinstated a law banning abortions except in cases when the mother’s life is in jeopardy. Arizona passed the law in 1864 and reenacted it several times, most recently in 1977. Arizona’s law includes prison sentences for those who help women get abortions. After the law was reinstated by Judge Kellie Johnson on Friday afternoon, the president of Planned Parenthood Arizona, Brittany Fonteno, responded, saying, “No archaic law should dictate our reproductive freedom.”

But Democrats’ position on abortion is the archaic one. Abortion is an archaic practice. In Pagan Rome, abortion was commonplace, performed by a variety of surgical and medicinal methods and taken for granted by philosophers. Plato, for example, laid out in Book V of the “Republic” various regulations for what offspring should be conceived and prescribed abortion for any infants conceived outside of those regulations, including by women older than 40 and men older than 55.

The ancient Pagans largely accepted infanticide as well, and the exposure of infants was common. The Greek father had an absolute right to expose his children. Exposure of infants, especially girls, was common and often linked to economic concerns about raising too many children. But even in large families “more than one daughter was practically never reared.” Termination of female infants was so common as to contribute to a dramatically skewed sex ratio, estimated at “131 males per 100 females in the city of Rome, and 140 males per 100 females in Italy, Asia Minor, and North Africa.”

https://thehill.com/opinion/healthcare/3670242-the-pagan-roots-of-democrats-abortion-extremism/

So now Democrats are supporting infanticide. And especially female infants. This is the kind of bullshit arguments they use.

[yardwork]

1. Yale must be so proud to have awarded this bigot a PhD.

He also doesn't appear to have learned any history while obtaining his degree. What an embarrassment.

Graedon Zorzi is assistant professor of theology and philosophy at Patrick Henry College. He holds a PhD from Yale University in political science and religious studies. He is an ordained Anglican priest.

[betsuni]

2. Spectacularly absurd.

I don't think I can close my mouth for a couple of hours after it fell open in disbelief on reading this thing.

[milestogo]

3. It strikes me as funny that he chooses "pagan" as the term to beat us with.

[NowISeetheLight]

8. Yes...

It's like "groomer' for the gays. Rile up the Christian Taliban base.

[CrispyQ]

4. I have a family member who believes the Q-anon story

that women carry their pregnancies to term & then in the delivery room, when the baby is born, the woman & doctor execute the baby. By gunshot? Lethal injection? IDK. They don't say.

A few weeks ago on DU someone posted a CNN video of an interview with a woman who believes that pregnant dem people carry their pregnancies to term & when the baby is born, the blood is extracted through their brains & used for something. Longevity? Secret mental powers? Either she didn't say or I don't recall cuz I was in a total state of shock.

A few years ago when Trump was still in the White House, I saw an interview of a young woman, late 20s, married with two kids & she'd gotten involved with some Q-anon folks online. She believed that Biden & dem leadership were involved in a giant pedophile ring. When the interviewer asked if she really believed all that, she said, "I don't want to, but, yeah, I do." I call bullshit on her. She wants to believe the bullshit.

These people vote & are highly motivated to lie, cheat, steal, & create unimaginable chaos this election & even worse in 2024.

[milestogo]

5. In some hospitals the baby goes straight from the delivery room to the cafeteria

and made into hospital food.

And the people who believe pizzagate will believe that too.

[CrispyQ]

6. I had to cut the family nut job out of my life.

There was no talking to them. They always brought up politics no matter how often we'd agree not to talk politics.

[NowISeetheLight]

9. 90 Degrees of Crazy

These nutjobs are beyond me. I don't remember so many ignorant idiots at one time. It's the lower educated morons. Common sense is out the window. They're even worse than the flat-earthers. At least those nuts aren't trying to destroy democracy.

[Farmer-Rick]

7. The writer is a priest

He came right out of a Christian college to another Christian college. They published his lies because when priests say stuff you got to believe it, especially if it involves little children. Just ask all those pedophile priests in the Catholic Church.

Let's be real. In biblical times there was no reliable methods for an abortion. Herbal remedies were always iffy because the amount of active chemicals in the plants could not be reliably measured. Abortions back then were probably as risky as birth. The manual implements used to extract fetuses look like instruments of torture. I doubt abortions were as common as the priest thinks they were. He sounds like a Trump worshipper.

Birth was a much more dangerous experience during ancient Roman times then today. "In ancient Rome, thousands of deaths were recorded during childbirth. Information about deceased women from upper classes and plebeians has survived to our times, but surely the problem also concerned slaves.

However, we also have information about “ordinary” Romans. One of the tombstones in North Africa was engraved: “she survived thirty-six years and forty days. It was her tenth birth. She died on the third day”. In Croatia, a tombstone from the epitaph was discovered: “she suffered torments in childbirth for four days and did not give birth, and she died anyway”. the famous women who died in childbirth is Julia – the daughter of Caesar and wife of Pompey’s also Tullia – beloved daughter of Cicero.

"Mary Beard claims that statistically 1 in 50 women died during childbirth. Younger women were at greater risk. As mentioned before, a high impact on the high death rate was due to undeveloped medicine, non-compliance with basic hygiene rules, and often associated infections, haemorrhage or obstruction."

https://www.google.com/amp/s/imperiumromanum.pl/en/curiosities/roman-women-often-died-during-childbirth/amp/

The Romans were very casual about the life of a baby. You can read letters from Roman soldier telling their wives that if it's a girl, take it to the river. If you found a newborn on the trash pile or by the river, and you raised it, it was your slave for life.

Yet no where in the Bible does it urge an end to infantcide. Jesus never said do not throw out your infant daughter. He spoke against adultery and how to worship but he never said to not throw away your new born babies. A kind of strange thing to leave out if you don't want people to sin. More likely if there was a Jesus, he didn't have a problem with infantcide because it was so common, like slavery.

Just don't believe the lies this priest is spreading with the help of The Hill.

[SharonClark]

10. He and Alito must have contests

to determine who can bring up the most arcane and medievalist arguments against modernity.

[Martin68]

11. It's an interesting argument, but it fails to acknowledge the the Bible did not consider an unborn

fetus to be a child endowed with a soul. Perhaps that's one reason Jesus said nary a word about abortion - or homosexuality, 2nd Amendment rights, or sex education.

[milestogo]

12. And that why Jews have no objection to abortion.

Life is breath, and one does not breathe until birth.

[Martin68]

17. Exactly.

[Liberal In Texas]

13. Another fine example of why not to pay any attention to The Hill.

And I wish people would stop posting their crap here.

[Hekate]

15. This

[hatrack]

14. An effusion of intellectual fart-gas from a right-wing nutjob sky pilot . . .

I've often said that Politico is a cloud of flies. The Hill is the pile of shit that it orbits.

And here's a case in point.

[GenThePerservering]

16. The Hill is mostly good

for toilet paper.

[Wounded Bear]

18. Are we sure that isn't sarcasm?

[librechik]

19. The Hill used to be worth reading.

now it's just vile crap like this