PRO-LIFE, PRO-TRUTH

[Heddi]

https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2017/03/pro-life-pro-truth

It is an exciting time to be pro-life. The political situation, all the way up to the Supreme Court itself, seems ripe for us to make major strides. Religious members of the movement are embarking on our 40 Days for Life campaign, in which we pray, fast, hold vigil, and perform community outreach, all in service of saving men, women, and children from abortion. We enter this season with words ringing in our ears from Vice President Pence’s speech at the March for Life. “I’ve long believed a society can be judged by how care for our most vulnerable,” he said, echoing the humanitarian sentiments our movement has always centered on. “Life is winning again in America!”

..
When I speak to my pro-choice friends, I’m often able to find some common ground. They do not necessarily admit that human life has a God-given dignity, but they certainly assign it value—and even assign some value to life in the womb, though they leave this contingent on a mother’s choice. Some of my friends are sympathetic to the pro-life movement’s ideal of a world where mother and child are both offered love and support, a world less subject to the cultural and economic forces that can make motherhood unthinkable for women in unplanned pregnancies. The problem is, they don’t trust the broader pro-life movement’s motives. One friend told me he liked the picture I drew of a holistic ethic of life, but would deride it if he heard a pro-life spokesman share it.
..

Crisis pregnancy centers and pro-life women’s health care organizations do a lot of good work helping uninsured women get care. But they sometimes succumb to the temptation to overstate the statistical connection between abortion and clinical depression—rather than simply share stories of real women experiencing post-abortion grief, they exaggerate the pervasiveness of the condition beyond what mental health studies show. There are even anecdotes about centers telling women abortion is linked to breast cancer, a patently wrong claim.
...

We must, of course, speak the truth about the evils of abortion. But we must do so without self-righteousness, and with compassion for how hard it is for our pro-choice friends and neighbors to change their minds about such a weighty moral question. The abortion industry works hard to gaslight the American people. For the sake of liberals who are (understandably) queasy about defending abortion on its merits, Democratic politicians like to pretend that Planned Parenthood offers mammograms (it doesn’t), that it is a common source of pre-natal care (it’s not), and that abortion represents only 3 percent of its services (the real number is unclear, but far higher—though again, it doesn’t help our cause to inflate it to 94 percent).
...

So it’s not quite right to say the truth is our greatest weapon. The truth is not a weapon we use. Instead, it is we who should be the weapons Truth wields—in defense of life.


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Edited to add -- I'm posting as a warning of the types of people that now own our government, our country, and sadly, our uteruses. This is what we're up against. I'm not posting b/c I agree with it (I am vehemently pro-abortion, not just pro choices). We cannot fight our enemy unless we know who our enemy is and what tactics they are using against us.

The softer, kinder, gentler anti-abortionists are just as evil and misogynistic as the Jerry Falwells and Phyllis Schafly's of the past. They are softening their language but not their attempt to use my body and reproductive rights as a battleground for their war of souls. Fuck them. Fuck their message.

[Freddie]

1. You had me at "abortion industry"

This stuff has no place here. Please delete.

[Atticus]

2. THIS!

[Heddi]

3. we can't fight them if we don't know what we're up against

I'm not pro-life. I'm pro abortion. But these are the bullshit artists that we're fighting against. These are the maniacal monsters that make up our government. Our fight isn't going to be easy -- it never was -- but it has gotten sizably more difficult since the election

[Freddie]

4. Thank you for clarification

Wasn't sure where you were coming from
with this.
I'm pro-choice because I have a daughter and a granddaughter. Their lives and well-being are worth countless millions of zygotes.

[Heddi]

5. I used to be pro-choice. I'm now 100% pro-abortion

for any woman who wants an abortion, for any reason, at any point in the pregnancy. As a woman, and an RN, I firmly believe that the minute we start putting caveats "well, as long it's for this reason..." "well, as long as it's in this time frame.." we give the anti-choice (anti-woman, anti-child) right ammunition. Give them an inch and they'll take 14 miles.

When people say "oh well NO ONE is pro abortion"---yeah, I am. And the "oh well so if a woman is going into labor and wants an abortion as the baby is crowning, huh, what about then" yes. Exactly then. Because the number of women who will want to abort a crowning neonate as it is coming out of the womb is exactly zero. SO yes, allow those imaginary women the right to have an abortion up to the moments preceding birth. And allow the woman who wants to use abortion as birth control the right to do that beause it's so much cheaper to spend $700 for an abortion every month than birth control.

[guillaumeb]

6. I read the "pro-life" article.

Where is the section about war, or the death penalty, or people dying due to lack of healthcare?

Pro-life means prolife, it does not mean simply pro-fetus.

I am glad for your sake that you added the bottom part.

[Heddi]

9. glad for my sake?

how condescending

[guillaumeb]

10. Not condescending.

Just realizing that some posters might assume you agree with the content. As has been already demonstrated.

[Girard442]

7. That's as refreshing and uplifting as...

...a warm and touching personal perspective on the delightfulness of grape Kool-Aid fortified with cyanide.

[bekkilyn]

8. They are pre-forced-birth, not pro-life. (nt)

[Lordquinton]

11. Letting anti-women groups define the narritive

Was a big mistake. They aren't pro in this debate, they are the negative side, wanting to restrict women's health choices, and hiding it behind their religion. Which is why Catholic Hospitals should not be allowed to pick and choose what services they give out.

Funny how people will argue until they are blue about the Catholics right to believe that women should die before receiving treatment, but the notion that maybe women should have open access to healthcare is not a right, or even a privilege, jist an occasional perk if they are rich, or live in the right place.

[Heddi]

12. I love the arguments for the Catholic/Religious takeover of hospitals

1) WELL THEY'RE SERVING A NEED THAT WASN"T THERE BEFORE> Um no. they're buying up secular healthcare systems/hospitals/provider groups and turning them into religious institutions. They're not filling a void -- they're creating a void by removing the choice that was there before

2) IF YOU WANT AN ABORTION/TUBAL LIGATION/END OF LIFE CARE YOU CAN GO SOMEWHERE ELSE -- difficult when, as pointed in #1, all of the secular hospitals in an area have been bought out by (typically) Catholic or other religious groups. In Washington state, where the Providence group is one of many Catholic-owned hospital affiliations that have bought up nearly every. single. hospital in the state. There ARE no other "somewhere elses." If you are a woman and need an abortion, or want tubal ligation after your C-Section, you have no choice because that choice has been removed from the community.

See--and that's the thing that gets me -- It's not enough for Religion to be against something. Hey, be against it all you want. But don't force YOUR views on ME and MY CHOICE. Don't remove my option for choice -- and that's what religions do, either through their often successful attempts to influence legislation, to their often successful attempts to monopolize health care.

Let me worry about my soul, and my eternal salvation. Fuckers.