Awesome.  No other words needed.

Do not forget the Gospel for a part of the Gospel. Life isn’t everything. Jesus is. Trust in Him.

I’m confused by Ms. Nubel’s strategy to stop having sex with Republicans.  I thought abstaining from sex is impossible and that it is widely known that no matter what the risks, people would have sex anyway…hmmm.  Is being conservative the STD that will ultimately stop people in their tracks?  I hope so!

Nella: “Is being conservative the STD that will ultimately stop people in their tracks?”

Hahahahahahaha.  Love it.

So Ms. Nubel et al will stop having promiscuous sex in order to “punish” those who want to defund Planned Parenthood. Um, okay. Sure. Sounds great! What else can we do to merit some punishment?

“...it will be more difficult to find reasonably priced and easily accessible reproductive care and, in turn, sex will become riskier for all.”

Except for, you know…married people who practice sexual morality.  We don’t really have risks, aside from extremely rare pregnancy issues and the like.

So, basically, what she wants is for people who normally have casual sex to abstain from sex?  I don’t have a problem with that.

She also wants to acknowledge the risks involved in sex and shows that (regardless of her views on contraception), the only way to remove those risks is abstinence?  I don’t have a problem with that, either.

She also wants to wait to have sex with someone with whom she shares basic philosophical beliefs (regardless of how twisted her specific beliefs are)?  Still not having a problem with this.

She even implies that marriage is the proper place for sex, since (adultery and freak medical scenarios aside) there’s no risk for STD’s, etc.

Maybe it’s just me, but her idea doesn’t sound half-bad!

Nice article.  Though I would say that the article is a little harder on the Republicans than they deserve (this time).  While they did have to give in on Planned Parenthood, they did manage to reinstate the restrictions on the District of Columbia spending public funds on abortion.  We might be taking two steps forward and one step back… but at least we are still one step forward.

Awesome, awesome post. You hit the ball out of the park. Great points.

@marylandbill - Please, the DC ban is phonier than Donald Trump’s birth certificate. We’re still funding Planned Parenthood in DC, just now they have to use more creative accounting. Catholics need to stop being cheap dates for the Republicans.

Simcha,

I really love your articles, keep up the good work!

I was almost feeling lonely after reading so many people saying “at least DC funded abortions have been removed”. Well, “at least” is far from enough, nor consoling. I’m glad to see that I’m not the only one distressed about keeping financing PP’s child-killing procedures, even if they swear to God (do they believe in one?) or to Nothingness that the money is only used for “non-related matters” (is there such a thing?), like a reform in the clinic where… well, they perform abortions.

Micah, good points!  She may have inadvertenly supported another cause. LOL

Ha - apparently you’re contagious, because I just made myself laugh, too…I didn’t read “gutless” with a “g”, but rather with an “n” - until the autocorrect in my brain kicked in I was rofl…now I’m going to compose myself, get my mind out of the gutter, and finish reading your amazing piece.

The GOP usually deserves the gutless wonder rap, but not this time. No one shuts down the government over a mere rider. It’s an appropriations bill, and the debate was over appropriations. The GOP used the defund PP momentum to exact important concessions and build momentum to do more in the upcoming budget process.

The rider here was attached to an appropriation that lasts only through September, so it is totally small potatoes and would not defund PP for long. The real battle for defunding will be in the 2012 budget, not the series of appropriations that get us through the end of the fiscal year.

And reinstating the Dornan amendment defunding abortion in DC is a big Dem blink, politically speaking, not nothing. Ask the Pro-Life lobbyists if they are happy. What just happened was John Boehner forced some daylight between the Democrats and Planned Parenthood…. They blinked, and gave concessions rather than shut down the govt as they threatened. It’s not enough, but it’s a huge step forward in the politics of this debate, and now’s not the time to be sowing discouragement!

Simcha Fisher has become my new favorite online journalist. Actually, I think she already was, but now it’s official.

That argument doesn’t hold water. Don’t forget, the Republicans forced Obama and the Dems to continue the Bush tax cuts before the Tea Party Congress had even been sworn in. How could they do that?  Because that is their priority. Not abortion, not as long as they can take us for granted. Maybe if we’re good little pro lifers, John Boehner will phone in to next year’s March For Life.

Am I the only person who read this and is now obsessed with Mongolian Death Worms?

You’re doing that logic thing.  Don’t you know that is incompatible with the liberal ideologue mindset?
As for the republican party, they’ll never deliver a pro-life agenda so long as they know pro-life people will hold their nose and vote for them. The DC deal is simply a head-fake.  All life is sacred and they caved.

The Jerk:
With respect, comparing a Tax Cut with abortion is ridiculous.  In the first place, no Republican wants to raise taxes, and not that many Democrats want to either (Though they are more willing to entertain the notion out of “necessity” than the Republicans are.  So, most Democrats will give in relatively easily to a tax cut if they don’t have to give in on areas that matter to them.
—
I think you are also wrong about the ban on DC using public funds for abortions for two reasons.  The first is that it reduces the pool of money available.  Planned Parenthood only gets X dollars, and DC was able to spend Y dollars on abortion.  So prior to the 2011 Budget, abortion providers were able to spend X+Y.  Now they can only spend X.  The difference may be small but it is real.  The second is that I think it is important that the government not be seen as openly funding abortion.  Even if federal money is finding its way to abortion clinics, at least everyone knows that the money is being used illicitly.  If it is openly going to abortion clinics, then the government is now openly endorsing abortion.  Again, the difference may be small, but it is there.
—
Mind you, I am not a blind Republican lackey.  I voted against the Maryland Republican Candidate for Governor last time because he was pro-choice (I voted the Constitution Party).  That being said, I am not going to blame Republicans just because they didn’t win this battle.

You do realize that Planned Parenthood doesn’t use federal tax dollars for abortions, right? And that they distribute contraceptives. Which help prevent abortions. Simple as that.
 
You can encourage abstinence as much as you want, but the simple fact remains that people are going to have sex regardless. Teach them about contraceptives, and guess what! The majority of them won’t ever have to consider an abortion.

While I can’t prove I voted for Daffy Duck, I can prove I voted for someone other than a Democrat or a Republican: http://sleepingbeastly.blogspot.com/2008/12/election-fallout.html

Michelle,
Yes, federal tax dollars doesn’t go directly for abortions. But will always be there, indirectly. Let me guide you through this: PP can use it for anything else, so that they can make abortion cheaper. In the worst case scenario, the federal tax dollars would pay all their bills, and then, they would be able to make abortions for free. Would you still say that the money doesn’t go to abortion if it is made free thanks to federal tax money? I don’t think so. The same applies for making it cheaper: the money is there, hiring secretaries, doctors, reforming buildings, etc. And we are paying for it, so that abortions are cheaper. Please, correct me if there is any flaw in this reasoning.

Michelle,

Let’s say a guy you know is a drug addict comes do you and asks for money to feed his family. “No,” you say, “you’ll use it for drugs.”

“No I won’t!” he says. “I already have my drug money. I just need food money now.”

Same concept. It all gets put in the same pot. The more $$ PP receives from the government, the more money they can spend on abortion. The less money they get from the government, the less money they can spend on abortion.

Also, by PP’s own stats, over HALF of women were using a contraceptive method when they got pregnant. Doesn’t seem like contraception is all that effective at preventing abortion. All contraception does is fool women into believing that they can have more promiscuous sex, which puts them at higher risk for pregnancy.

Michelle,
You do realize that claiming that Planned Parenthood doesn’t use tax dollars is a legal fiction?  The money provided for the other “services” they provide essentially helps keep the whole organization running.  So even if Planned Parenthood is scrupulous about keeping the money separate (and does anyone really believe they are?), the money helps indirectly support abortions.  If that wasn’t the case, don’t you think Planned Parenthood would have set up the Abortion Services under a different organization?
—
Also, I would like to point out that your belief that contraceptives prevent abortion seems logical, but history doesn’t back it up.  A large number of Planned Parenthood’s abortion customers are on Birth Control… Birth Control that failed.  Essentially putting someone on Birth Control increases their tolerance for Risk thus essentially reducing or eliminating any advantage the Birth Control might provide; it is even possible that it makes the person more likely to have an unwanted pregnancy in the long run.

Hugo,

That’s all fine, but the fact remains that only about 3% of what Planned Parenthood does is abortions. By refusing to fund them, you remove support for contraception and STD testing. Without those things, more abortions would be necessary. Yes, Planned Parenthood does abortions, but they put FAR more effort into preventing unwanted pregnancies and diseases. Defunding them is counterproductive to decreasing abortions.
 
(my source: http://www.plannedparenthood.org/files/PPFA/PPFA_Annual_Report_08-09-FINAL-12-10-10.pdf - the relevant pie chart is on page 6)

Michelle,

You are mistaken. The 3% statistic is misleading because Planned Parenthood unbundles its services when reporting them. Last year, Planned Parenthood saw 3 million clients and performed 324,008 abortions—at least one in 10 Planned Parenthood clients receives an abortion. As Abby Johnson, ex-Planned Parenthood director and employee of eight years has shared, they push for abortions above anything else because it’s the most profitable part of their business.

JoAnna and MarylandBill,
 
Of course contraception isn’t perfect. The only way to be absolutely certain you won’t get pregnant is abstinence - there’s no arguing that. But what’s the alternative? People are, I promise you, not going to stop having sex. If you remove the source of their contraceptives, they are still going to have sex. They’ll be more likely to get pregnant than if they were using contraceptives, and there will be more unwanted pregnancies. Without a safe place to get an abortion, there will be more back-alley abortions, and more women will be harmed as a result.
 
Keep in mind also that most of the people on birth control are trying to prevent unwanted pregnancies - obviously, if they get pregnant, quite a few of them will want abortions. A lot of people who aren’t on birth control want children. That statistic isn’t quite as relevant as you might think.

Michelle—

Here is further info using the data from the PP annual report that you cited above:

http://exposeplannedparenthood.net/get-the-facts/planned-parenthood-your-tax-dollars/

“But what’s the alternative? People are, I promise you, not going to stop having sex.”

Michelle, are you saying that people are animals and are unable to consciously control their sexual urges? It is soft bigotry to say that the lower masses (i.e., the poor) can’t control their primal urges, so therefore we must make sure they don’t reproduce.

People will stop having sex once they have incentive to do so. Right now, with contraception being handed out like candy and the “back-up” plan of abortion, there is no incentive to be sexually responsible. That incentive will not happen while PP is in existence.

JoAnna,
 
This is ridiculous data. Of course Planned Parenthood is going to be giving more abortions than arranging adoptions and providing prenatal care. If you want your baby adopted or you’re looking for prenatal care, you’re probably not going to be going to Planned Parenthood in the first place.
 
And that isn’t what I said at all - I said nothing about the “lower masses.” That’s something you added to make me sound bigoted. People are just not going to stop having sex, period, regardless of social class - I never said they can’t, just that they won’t. Providing contraception and abortion services are NOT to “make sure they don’t reproduce.” That’s absolutely absurd, and I don’t know where you’re getting that from. Contraception is for people who want it. Abortion is for people who want it. There’s no agenda behind them - just providing people services so they can make the best choices for their lifestyles.

Michelle,

Please demonstrate how that data is “ridiculous.” And this? “If you want your baby adopted or you’re looking for prenatal care, you’re probably not going to be going to Planned Parenthood in the first place.”

Wow, you just contradicted yourself. If abortion is only 3% of PP’s services, and no one who wants an adoption referral or prenatal care (!) will go there, then what pray tell is the other 97% of their business? Surely you don’t believe that all they do is hand out BCP and condoms all day?

As for your soft bigotry—and yes, that’s exactly what it is, because you’re looking down your nose at people and saying that there is NO POSSIBLE WAY they can control their sexual urges, so we shouldn’t even expect them to try—do you think it’s coincidence that most PPs are in lower-income areas?

Michelle, I’m pretty sure abortion also involves at least one person who did want it, who never got the choice.

Not want it.

You know something, even if PP did not provide ANY abortion services, the fact that tax dollars are going to fund contraceptive services for millions of women just blows my mind.  Why do I have to pay for that?

JoAnna,
 
I told you why that’s ridiculous. People go to the places best-known for providing the services they want. If you wanted a salad, you wouldn’t go to a steakhouse, would you? If you wanted prenatal care, you probably wouldn’t go to Planned Parenthood.
 
Take a look at the page I linked to. They provide contraception, STD testing, women’s health services, and cancer prevention and screening, among other things. They’re in lower income areas because those people are less likely to have health insurance so they can obtain these services from other places.
 
How difficult does this have to be? I told you I know perfectly well people CAN control their urges. Should we expect them to control them within reason? Absolutely. But it’s absurd to think that people only have sex because they think it has no consequences. You are looking down at people and saying they are incapable of making the best decisions for themselves.

Also, Jerk, keep in mind that the vast majority of abortions are done by nature.

There’s not much that can make sex less risky, not when 20% of American adults already have genital Herpes, and unless something changes it will be nearly 1 in 2 women and 2 in 5 men in just 15 years, and condoms are only 40-50% effective in preventing its transmission.  Considering that having Herpes increases the chances that one will transmit or contract HIV (even when there is no current outbreak), I think it’s pretty clear that the possibility of contraceptives making sex “safer” is a dream.

Michele,

You said:
“People are just not going to stop having sex, period.”

There is quite a lot of other things people won’t stop doing. For example:
People are just not going to stop killing each other.
People are just not going to stop stealing.

I don’t think I should pay anything to help assassins or robbers. The same works for abortions.

Michelle,

People are MORE LIKELY to have sex if they think it’s consequence-free. If there are real consequences, they are less likely to have sex. It’s pretty simple, really.

Do you really believe that 97% of PP’s services involves “women’s health”? If so, then cutting out their abortion business completely should be NO PROBLEM! Why bother providing a service that’s hardly ever used (by your logic)?

Also, you need to take a Biology 101 class if you don’t know the difference between a spontaneous abortion (which is not the deliberate killing of an innocent human being, also known as a miscarriage) and an induced/procured abortion (which is the direct killing of an innocent human being). I have had two miscarriages and I am VERY offended that you accuse me of deliberately killing my children. They were both wanted and I was heartbroken when they died.

I wrote a blog post about the distinction here: http://a-star-of-hope.blogspot.com/2011/03/abortion-vs-miscarriage-response-to.html

If your list of books were to be required reading, just think how much better our world could be.  Great article!

Michelle,
Yes, it might be true that “people” won’t stop having sex (and by sex here, we mean extramarital sex), just as “people” won’t stop driving drunk.
—
That being said, if we lived in a world without birth control and abortion, I bet “people” would start being more careful and many of the current “people” would drop out of that unidentified group and become more careful outside of marriage.  If you look back just a fifty years or so, many women (and men too!) did in fact wait until marriage if for no other reason than the social consequences were so great.  And while I don’t want to return to a world where single mothers were turned into pariahs, I do want a world where we don’t provide incentives for irresponsible behavior.
—
Here is another thing that might happen.  If women stop having sex so readily with the various men in their lives, then perhaps men will be forced to shape up too… and like actually get to know the women they want to date.. and start treating women as people rather than sex objects (Which as I have argued elsewhere, us men should do anyway… but a little help from the women would be nice :)).
—
Regarding back-alley abortions; this has always, in my mind, been the worst argument for legal abortion.  If the same standard was applied to other illegal and immoral activities, then we would truly live in a lawless society.

Michelle,

First of all, why shouldn’t people pay for their lifestyle choices themselves?  Condoms really aren’t that expensive, and many ob/gyns perform elective abortion and will willingly set up a payment plan. Why should tax dollars pay for them? 

Secondly, a lot of women don’t really “want” an abortion.  They get harassed or even threatened by the baby’s father and family members or they “feel” like they have no other choice.  Facing an unplanned pregnancy can be scary and fear can and does overshadow commons sense or what we know to be right, especially at a time when your changing hormones are doing a number on you.

Contraception is for people who want it because they have been inundated with tons of misinformation about it from it’s effective rates (user vs. perfect), to how it should be properly used (condoms are not made to withstand every type of sex act), to its risks (Depo-Provera shots make women more susceptible to STD’s).  It’s just logic that if people think you can have consequence-free sex people are going to have more of it.

And I always wonder how many of PP services are truly utilized by “the poor”.  Does “the poor” include fully-insured high school and college students who are just trying go behind their parents’ backs?  And how many of “the poor” have no qualms about racking up credit card debt for lots of non-essentials but can’t fathom setting up a payment plan for medical services (like my way under-insured and low-income mother-in-law does for her yearly pap smear)?  I believe there are lots of truly poor people who are uninsured or under-insured, but I really wonder what percentage of truly poor people PP “assists”.

Michelle,

Consider this.  A person on birth control has already made an explicit statement that she does not want to be pregnant.  In other words, she is already half-way to an abortion, because once she is pregnant while not wishing to be pregnant, the next logical step is to “get rid of” the pregnancy.  This is why increasing the amount of birth control will NEVER end abortion.  In fact, the use of birth control ensures that abortion will always be “necessary” because there will always be women who are pregnant who don’t want to be.

In addition, what birth control of any sort (pill, IUD, condom, etc.) does is foster a mentality of consequence-free sex which often leads to promiscuity.  If one can’t be “caught”, one is more likely to transgress, yes?  So teenagers will have sex because we’ve told them it’s “safe”, adultery will happen because “no one will know”, and people will never grow out of this lifestyle unless they are really shaken by something.

Do you really want to end abortion?  Then do what Simcha so wonderfully recommends.  Really educate people about the real purpose of sex.  There are young men and women who have never been told that abstinence is possible or even *healthier* for them.  They buy into the culture that says “free sex” is best, not realizing that free sex is not really free.  Rather than buy into the mindset that some people will always need birth control because they simply don’t know any better, rail against it.  Speak out, and educate that person who doesn’t know any better!  They might not ever if you don’t tell them.

Michelle, so Planned Parenthood offers natural abortions? Good to know.

I did!  I voted for Daffy Duck for governor of Michigan!
(Discount on what?)

“Modern Sex 101: You’re Doing It Wrong” - LOVE IT!

I also love your point that the secular world views sex as inherently risky. Also that you mentioned the “Christian salt” guy. Both examples show serious ignorance of what Christianity really means.

I don’t usually like to comment if I haven’t read all of the comments, but why not? I was wondering—maybe it’s already been brought up—even if “ALL” PP did was to provide birth control, isn’t birth control itself sometimes an abortifacient? So… doesn’t that mean they are still indirectly providing abortions with taxpayer $? Just sayin.

Health centers across the country, state and federally funded (think WIC programs) are in most large towns/cities and also happily give out BC, screen for STD’s, offer free if not discounted help to women who need it.  They won’t provide abortions though they refer for them to - guess who - PP!! 

As these centers do exist and could expand if even more federal dollars were available.  So, in truth, what is happening is that as taxpayers we pay twice in our taxes for these services with our forced backing for PP.

My dh has worked for one of these state run health centers in years past - in the well/water department.  The nice ladies who worked in the offices next to him had baskets of condoms on their desks and info on how to get other methods free or almost, info on every STD and what to do and were eager to make sure everyone had access to all of it.

To think that we need PP is a lie - plain and simple.

JoAnna,
 
Try, for once, to read what I wrote and not what you want me to have said. I never accused you of aborting your baby deliberately, NOWHERE was that implied. But I fail to see the difference between a miscarriage and an abortion when the end results are exactly the same. I also never said abortion services weren’t used - obviously they are. I just said that PP’s other services help prevent MORE abortions. I’m done here, since you keep putting words in my mouth. 
 
Maryland Bill,
 
I’m not arguing that people can’t or shouldn’t avoid excessive extramarital sex. I just don’t think that limiting access to contraceptives will suddenly make a drastic difference in people’s sexual habits. Maybe, over the course of several generations, there would be a change, but in the short term you will see more abortions as a result of limited access to contraceptives.
 
Barbara C,
 
When people are struggling to pay the rent and feed their families, I’m pretty sure contraceptives are low on the list. Yes, if you’re financially stable enough to afford it, you can go elsewhere for these services. No arguing that. Back to my back-alley abortion point, if someone really wants to force a woman to miscarry, they can achieve it other ways - violence, or forcing a woman to have an unsafe abortion. Of course no one should be forced to have an abortion, but those are special cases, and limiting access to safe abortions will only worsen the situation and increase violence towards women.
 
Pam,
 
I never said contraceptives will end abortion - only decrease the numbers of them. But yes, I agree that education is the best way to ensure people make the best choices for them. I don’t agree that abstinence-only education is a good idea, though. I don’t think people use birth control because they don’t know that not having sex is an option - that is, I think, a pretty obvious fact. Of course people should know that contraceptives aren’t 100% effective, but they shouldn’t be told that they have no choice BUT abstinence, otherwise any extramarital sex will be more likely to be unsafe. A culture that makes having children out of wedlock absolutely unacceptable will make abortions seem quite a bit more attractive.

Michelle,

So you see no difference between killing your grandmother or letting her die of natural causes? The ends are the same.

Joanna,
 
Your grandmother is a sentient being that is more than an unrecognizable clump of cells with no mentality.

I don’t know why people keep using birth control (and I think they usually mean “the pill” or some other hormone) as making sex safer…  It’s not safer than not having sex, and the rate of STD’s is higher because people are having more sex - on the pill.  You mean you’re more likely to not become pregnant? But you are more like to contract any number of horrendous diseases. 

But Michelle, just look at your history - there was a lot less extramarital sex before birth control.  So, reverse the logic of what you said about abstinence being the “only option”. 

And its very sad, Michelle, that you don’t see the difference between an induced abortion wherein the child is vacuumed limb by limb from his or her mother’s womb, and wherein a child dies of natural causes.  While you might not see the difference, the baby certainly does.

I’ll pray for you.

Michelle:

I am 12 weeks pregnant today.  My baby has all it’s organs, 10 fingers, ten toes, brain waves, a heart beat, kidney function, tooth buds and toenails.  This is the stage when most abortions are performed. 

Last week when I went in for my prenatal appointment, the doctor couldn’t find the heartbeat.  Know why? He pressed down too hard and woke the sleeping baby.  We had to do an ultrasound and you could see the little girl or boy kicking around in there - obviously disturbed by the intrusion.  The heartbeat doppler works as a kind of echo and if the baby is moving too much, the heartbeat won’t echo.

You really need to read a biology book.

Michelle, you were once just a clump of cells. What difference does size make in the equation?
Also, half of all women that get abortions stated that they were using contraception at the time the pregnancy occurred. More contraception is not the answer to less abortions.

Well if this isn’t a *head desk* moment, I don’t know what is. Hilarious.

Wow, Michelle ... that’s all I can say to you. WOW! You are so blind, it’s not even funny. As for the intrepid souls who have actually been trying to reason with her: major kudos to you! You are much more patient than I could ever be. Unfortunately, I think you would have an easier time teaching a toddler the nuances of advanced calculus.

Michelle, The fact is that we don’t have the right to take the life of another human being.  If you want to use the sentient argument, then technically a child doesn’t become sentient until 1 year of age, when they realize that they are not their parents, that is proven in by child development sciences.  Now, about the unborn, though the unborn are dependent on their mothers, they are not a part of their mothers bodies.  They have their own distinct DNA, and are forming in the natural way that our species develops and reproduces.  The best way to prevent unwanted pregnancies is to educate about the human body, and to make sure that everybody knows that contraceptives aren’t 100%, that there really isn’t such a thing as “safe sex”.

Michelle’s point are:
1)legal abortion saves lives.
2)fetuses are just a bunch of cells.
3)pre-marital/out-of-the-wedlock sex is unavoidable.
My refutations are:
1)America never had one million deaths of mother caused by abortion when it was not legal - not even close to that; but has one million aborted babies every year.
2)try to draw a line. There is no singular event after conception that can be appointed as the “now-he/she-is-a-human-being!Wow!!” moment. It is human from the very beginning.
3)watch out for your husband. Being chaste with zero partners is as hard as being faithful to a single partner.

Why not start sex education in kindergarten as proposed by the Illinois legislature (voted for by Obama) that way the children will be ready and experienced by the time they become able to have children. With all the technology available today they can remain steril all their lives. Woops! Who will we sell the items that prevent birth to then????

You know, Jack, the main reason I don’t believe you’re actually a priest is because of your poor spelling and punctuation.  In general, I don’t believe in being rude to commenters—even ones who routinely miss the point—but I have no patience with people who pretend to be something they’re not.

Wow, I love your wit!!! I always told grandmama that she should publish that little pamphlet. Even though the Republican party blinked at the end, I’m at least glad they put it out there and gave it a good fight. Sigh, if they had just fought it to the end, the supporters of PP might have… Well, no, I can’t say that either, that’s just too harsh. Speaking of gene pools, the water is fine for all life. Just saying.

Punishing Republicans with abstinence.  Please don’t do them any favors, ladies. It will only encourage them.

Michelle -

“But I fail to see the difference between a miscarriage and an abortion when the end results are exactly the same.”

I refuse to believe any sentient being is that stupid.

“I just don’t think that limiting access to contraceptives will suddenly make a drastic difference in people’s sexual habits. Maybe, over the course of several generations, there would be a change, but in the short term you will see more abortions as a result of limited access to contraceptives.”

So limit access to abortions.  Certainly don’t force me to pay for them through the government.  PP is the largest abortion provider in the country, and the their number only increases.  If contraceptives were as effective as they claim, their abortion numbers would be decreasing.  Simple logic.

“When people are struggling to pay the rent and feed their families, I’m pretty sure contraceptives are low on the list.”

And yet abortions are far more costly, even at Planned Parenthood.  There isn’t exactly a payment plan.  And of course there is always adoption, but that is bad for business.

“Of course people should know that contraceptives aren’t 100% effective, but they shouldn’t be told that they have no choice BUT abstinence, otherwise any extramarital sex will be more likely to be unsafe.”

Birth control is a level 5 carcinogen and it disrupts an entire biological system.  It is always unsafe.  The political Left has hysterics over the most minute increases of estrogen in milk, and yet wants the government to subsidize young girls and women stuffing their bodies full of synthetic hormones?  But um… informed choices…yeah.  Why doesn’t PP give that information?  And please don’t tell me that it is more dangerous for people to be having sex without birth control.  Because that is withholding information. 

The truth is that sex, while an exhilarating pastime, always has life-altering consequences, and nothing in this world can eliminate them - not birth control, not abortions, not sterilization, not condoms, not anything.  Abstinence and self control is the only true protection and it couldn’t hurt to place slightly more emphasis on it as a culture instead of constantly celebrating one’s sexuality, because really, we get it.  People want to have sex.

Your arguments are cliche, unimaginative, and dangerous - designed only to protect the status quo which is a miserable failure.  Birth control doesn’t eliminate the “need” for abortions.  The whole selling point for birth control was sexual “liberation.”  And with increased sexual activity comes an increase in the consequences regardless of birth control use - as we can see very plainly.

But the most deranged aspect of PP’s cult of death is who they target and why. Check the latest statistics on African Americans.  Over 50% of African American women have had abortions and the size of the community is decreasing.  Down 2% since the 1980s.  Planned Parenthood is doing exactly what it set out to do, which is eliminate those who Margaret Sanger deemed undesirable.  It worked on the Jews in spectacularly horrible ways, and now it’s working on blacks.  You can wave around bloody hangers all you want, but they are no excuse for soft genocide.

Michelle,

You really do need a Biology 101 class.

Tell me, at what point does that “clump of cells” become an actual human being?

Please, the Republicans were never serious about this. It would have never passed the Senate. Why didn’t they try this when they had a Republican president and a majority in the Senate? Republicans know they have the pro-lifers in their back pockets and they throw out bones like this to them to keep them on the team - “See, we tried!” Pro-lifers have got to stop being shills for the Republican party if they want any real change.

Well, yes, you have a very valid point. On the other hand, our current president would not have been elected if he didn’t enough votes from those claiming to be pro-lifers. If McCain had been elected, for example, odds are they would have pushed for Supreme Court candidates that were more in keeping with the ideas of the pro-life movement. Now, even if we do elect a pro-life president next time, the change in the Supreme Court under Obama will likely have consequences for decades. We had our chance and blew it. For what? Because McCain didn’t give a time line for the return of troops? Obama did (or is starting to), but he wasn’t able to stick to his original goal. My guess is that McCain would have done it in about the same amount of time. I also don’t think the deficit would have gotten any worse than it is now, nor our other economic issues, but we were just so sure that Obama would be able to do something. We bought too much into the word “Change”. Well, you can keep your change. Our President, to be fair to him, pretty much set out to do what he said he would. This time, we were our own “shills” and sold ourselves out. We invested in our own lie, and now we lie in bed with that lie and face the fact that we sold out, and for what? A bag of tarnished silver while we have to face decades of knowing that we had a chance to reverse Roe V. Wade?

My sex education came mostly from school.  My mother told me my body was ready, but I wasn’t ready.  That was it, she just did what her mom did.  Now that I know that’s not going to cut I, I plan on teaching my children abstinence based education by telling them the good, the bad and the ugly and letting them know that it is best to wait till your married and mature enough to ask questions about each others sexual history.  There is so much more to pre-marital sex than getting a STD or pregnant.  No one tells you about the emotional toll or the potential harmful side effects of ALL birth control (even condoms).  I’m speaking from experience which I feel will be very valuable in educating my children.

Michelle,

It should be noted, the clump of cells argument doesn’t work anymore. That was pre-current technology. The fact that the tax money is not supposed to go toward abortion services at PP is a shell game. If Planned Parenthood did not provide abortions but only women’s health services—this wouldn’t have even been an issue. I appreciate that the other services that Planned Parenthood provides are important to many. But since the way the organization actually generates money is through abortion, it’s hard to imagine that they are giving women a “choice” when they are in the business of selling that particular one.

As another poster said, I would recommend, that you read “Unplanned” by Abbey Johnson. It’s by a woman who worked for/managed a Planned Parenthood facility for 8 years but then had a change of heart. It’s actually very good and a quick read. Thoughtful and not preachy. Abby offers a very sensible account of why she supported the organization, etc., to begin with. I know many women may see themselves in her thought processes, etc.

And Simcha. Oh, you make me smile. (sing it.)

And I appreciate Michah’s comments.

If an unborn child is just a bunch of cells, someone please explain how the unborn child inside of me, at only 8 weeks gestation, kept moving and curling away from the pressure of the ultrasound wand.  Explain how it took 5 minutes to get a crown to rump measurement because the child refused to cooperate.  Explain how yesterday, at 12 weeks gestation, the child was forcefully pushing away from the wand, and completely flipping away each time the wand changed position.

I have a hard time believing after what I have seen from my own child, that an unborn child has no sensation or awareness that it is being ripped apart and suctioned out of the womb when it is killed in an abortion.

Michelle,
As a previous commenter noted, at what point do you recognize a fetus as a potential baby?  Viability?  Viability can occur as early as 20-21 weeks’ gestation.  So if a child is born prematurely at 20 weeks, it’s a baby, but if it’s aborted at 21 weeks, then it’s what?  Still a clump of cells? Here’s a question for you, too:  Does a man also have a “right to choose” after his child has been conceived?  I realize that men can and sadly do walk away from their unborn children all the time, but they don’t have the legal right to do so: a woman who is carrying a man’s child can take that man to court if he refuses to acknowledge paternity, and if paternity is proven, he can be held financially responsible for that child until he or she is 18.  Legal abortion allows women the “right to choose” whether or not they wish to keep or bear their children, so shouldn’t men have the same right post-conception?  Shouldn’t the father of the child have the established legal right to wash his hands of any child he doesn’t want?

When I saw the horrible headline, I wondered, what now? Thank God, this didn’t come the news media. I think that is amazing with just over 7000 years, that mankind knew where he came from and NEVER needed “sex education” which is only as old as that horrible, dangerous “pill”. We know that when the man’s sperm unites with his wife’s seed, a new life is created in which it must be given the chance to develop and grow, unless, for some reason beyond our understanding, God calls His child home, which we would call it a miscarriage, while taking the life of the child deliberately is called an ABORTION, which is of course, murder. A simple test for everyone: name all the good that “planned parenthood” has done. On purpose, not a thing! Where did the idea of this so-called “planned parenthood” come from? If you guessed Hitler and Sanger, you are right. Yes, we should not only defund this evil empire, but also take away it’s non-profit status, which is a huge farce. Where have all the real democrats and worse, where are all the Roman Catholics that suppose to be in office down there in D.C. gone to? With JFK in office, they just seemed to vanish. Looking over the list of Catholics that are suppose to be in office from the Northeast, I can’t find one that is a Roman Catholic. Oh, I find a lot that belong to Pope Ted Kennedy’s American catholic church, which might explain why this country is so God-less and our politicians are so corrupt. Who profits from this hideous “sex-education” that is in not only the public schools, but sorrowfully, in the “catholic schools”? Of course, “P.P.” makes out like a band-it as they sell the “pill” at a profit of over 70% and their condoms have almost a 50% failure rate, which of course gives the “need” of an abortion; but how about another group that is hiding in the background which controls the pornography industry? The Mafia, and guess what? They own the companies that print most of the books, etc. that is being used at our tax-payers expense! Thank God that our Holy Popes know and try to teach the Church about this horrible evil that we have allowed to destroy our children! If you want to see a horrible sight, ask your Pastor to preach about birth control from the pulpit as Pope Benedict has commanded them to do. Why you might just get excommunicated from his church. With over 70% of “catholics” using birth-control and far too many cowardly bishops and priests that think the real church is wrong, you would become an outcast and labeled as a fruit-cake(being that this is a Catholic site, I can’t use their own words). Any sex-education comes from the home as Pope John Paul II has told us and not from unqualified “teachers” that predominate the school systems. If you are still here and don’t believe me about the evil of “sex education” and/or birth control, then contact Judy Brown at A.L.L. and she will open your eyes. May God have mercy on this country and once again, send His blessings down upon it.  +JMJ+

I hate it when people use the argument, “PP also provides essential women’s health care like STD testing and birth control, etc” as if there is no other place in the US to get those routine tests done! News flash: birth control is NOT essential women’s health care, does more harm than good to most women! I know three women who have had dangerous health problems as a result of birth control use…blood clots, etc.

I like how you make it clear what sex is like for Jocelyn and others who have grown up with The Sex Lie. To live with the inversion of the real sexual act—it must be hell. Instead of love and trust, when you’re in the middle of it, having to think about how to get that person as far away from you as possible, to erase any trace of them from your body and life. Including, of course, a child. What a terrifying way to live!

“But I fail to see the difference between a miscarriage and an abortion when the end results are exactly the same.”  <——This statement from Michelle is biggest bunch of ignorant horseshit I have ever read.

I had a miscarriage, and I can tell you this Michelle: I would have fought tooth and nail, I would have given up anything in order to bring that baby into the world. At the same time that I was having a miscarriage, that my baby was dying inside me, some woman who was also 8 weeks pregnant walked into a Planned Parenthood and paid someone to crush her baby’s spine, organs, and end its life.
While I wept over the natural death that my baby died before I ever got to meet him/her, some other woman who was also 8 weeks pregnant purposefully and willfully ended the life of her child. She threw her baby away like a piece of garbage, while I wept over mine for months.

That’s the difference between a miscarriage and an abortion, and I hope someday you say that crap to someone’s face and they smack you. You deserve it.

Sarah- I am sorry you went through that… :(
Another reason why a miscarriage is very different than an abortion is biology…how long does an abortion take? A few hours? or less? but a miscarriage is slow- and ‘better’ for the woman’s body. It is sadly nature taking its course.
I had a miscarriage when the baby was 20 weeks. The baby was dead for a week before I knew. Then, I waited for a few days before I went in the hospital for the labor. So- I was spiritually and mentally ready (as I could be). My body was prepared hormone-wise instead of the shocking biological change that is abortion. I also didn’t have any sharp instruments to injure me as I had the miscarriage. Women are sad after a miscarriage, but they do not have an increased statistical likelihood of clinical depression or suicide like after abortion.

So- even without thinking the baby is a baby, a miscarriage is very different than abortion.

remnantofremnant.blogspot.com

I am very touched by both Priest’s wife’s (Byzantine rite?) and Sarah’s. My sister had an abortion (the family hid this from because they knew, even at 19, that I would oppose it). It was a few years later, while watching a made for TV movie about a couple, and their expert medical personnel,  that worked hard to keep their premature baby alive, only to see it die, that my sister broke down. This was based on a true story. Her words, “They tried so hard to save their baby, and I just killed mine”. She has not been able to get pregnant ever since. She acknowledges that it was the PP procedure that caused this. She was barely 17.

I also had a miscarriage at 10 weeks, and I was shocked by the physical trauma that I went through. It took a long time for my body to heal physically. And now more than ever I shake my head at those that say that abortion is “health care”. Put aside for a moment the fact that you’re killing a life. It is also physical trauma. And it is done intentionally in the name of health care.

Excellent article Simcha. Thank you for posting the ‘required reading’ at the end. Very well chosen. I am grateful also for the humor based in truth. Yes, by all means, let Nubel and her peers do a Lysistrata-like protest! You go gyrls!

In 1957 Mike Wallace interviewed Margaret Sanger. Here is a snippet of the interview: (*emphasis mine*)

WALLACE: .... Let’s look at another argument against Birth Control, Mrs. Sanger, published in Red Book Magazine, in March of 1956.It says “Birth Control is a devastating social force, which tends to *weaken the moral fibre of the community*. Immunity from parenthood *encourages promiscuity*, particularly when unmarried persons can so easily avail themselves of the devices.” Do you doubt that?

SANGER: I doubt it.

WALLACE: You do…

SANGER: Certainly.

And yet ask any of the older generation, born in the 1920’s or 30’s, and they will tell you that indeed *this* is EXACTLY what happened.

This “everyone is going to have sex anyways” is propaganda introduced in the ‘70’s to keep us enchained because there are those that benefit $greatly$ by us buying this lie, and thanks to us, they have enough $ to keep feeding us the lie, and now it is funded by our tax dollars, so I and others, who have chosen to be chaste in life, now am forced to pay for others unhealthy behavior. Not only by funding artificial birth control, but by also funding the medical care of the results of artificial birth control amongst the low income (breast cancer, strokes, clots, eptopic pregnancies, depression, etc). Now granted, I support my tax dollars going to aid those in need. But I object to feeding the Beast which is eating up the health of my fellow human beings.

Yes, it took us a bit to get here, and considering we have ridden a slippery slope downward we need to walk a bit to get back to level land. And no we don’t want to go all the way back to all of the Victorian concepts. But there is a middle ground that we zipped right past where we need to be, and it is better that we STOP NOW!! and start to that healthy ground.

Because to say “well if we stop now it’ll be just horrible because people are going to have sex anyways and then there will be a zillion back alley abortions so we have to continue going down this path” is only keeping us on this slippery path downward which is evident to anyone with eyes to see, harmful.

We need to stop abusing sex NOW! 50 million dead, and almost 100 million men and women harmed. Dear God, how blind our selfishness has made us. How eager we are to swallow lies when it suits our immediate passions.

And Michelle, if you come back to read these at all. Let me give you a scenario:
You are walking along a beautiful oceanside cliff, holding the hand of your mother. You feel very peaceful. Life as you know it is good.

1)You faint, slip and fall to the rocks below, your mother cries out and tries vainly to save you.

2)Your mother pushes you to the rocks below, her intent is your death, you struggle vainly to live.

The end result is the same….can you tell the difference?

I hope all of you stop having sex.  Eight children is too many to be deemed responsible, so if someone is dumb enough to give you a platform, you should preach responsible procreation, not reckless lets-see-how-many-we-can-have-because-kids-are-a-gift-from-god family-making.  If the Catholic Church wants to get rid of services like Planned Parenthood, then they need to be a part of the solution, not just shouting at the top of their lungs about how pissed they are.  There are about 600,000 children in the foster care system in our country.  Unless the Catholic Church, every church for that matter, and pro-lifers are willing to adopt those children and dry up the huge pool of unwanted kids, then ridiculous women like you have no business talking about other people’s sex lives and decisions.

Kim,

I advise reading this post. It’ll clear up some of your misconceptions.

http://littlecatholicbubble.blogspot.com/2011/03/pro-lifers-love-fetus-but-they-dont.html

Pro-lifers and Catholics ARE part of the solution. Pro-choicers just choose to ignore that fact when they are fighting to get the government to subsidize their lives of irresponsible, promiscuous sex.

Regardless, it’s wrong to kill children whether they are wanted or unwanted.

Kim,
I think 600,000 is a little high, but lets accept that number for the moment.  And yes thousands of parents, every year, go to China, Russia and other countries to adopt children.  That, I think, should tell you something.
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Lets take a closer look at the facts of Foster Care.  If you had done a little research you would have come on the following website—http://www.childwelfare.gov/pubs/factsheets/foster.cfm.  That site would tell you the following facts (for the year 2008).  1. 46% of children in foster care are in the system for less that 1 year and 70% are out of the system within 2 years.  2. In about half the cases, the goal in foster care is to reunite children with their parents—which means they can’t be adopted.  3. When the children do leave foster care, 71% are either reunited with their parents (or whoever was their legal guardian before entering the foster care system) or are adopted. 
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So, in summary, when one considers the facts about foster care, and the considerable hurdles in place for someone unknown to a child in foster care to adopt a child in foster care, I think it is pretty clear that bringing up foster care in this debate is nothing more than a red herring.
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Further, your logic regarding Catholics with large families being part of the problem that makes Planned Parenthood necessary seems deeply flawed.  While, I don’t have the data, my guess is that most (actually I bet the vast majority) women who are the mothers of large Catholic families stay as far away from Planned Parenthood as they can outside of protesting the abortions that occur there.
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The simple fact of the matter is, that while public funds are being used to provide medical services to treat the consequences of people’s sex lives and decisions, it opens up those sex lives and decisions to public debate.  As a Catholic and an American, I object to my tax dollars going to subsidize the irresponsible sex lives of many in our culture. 
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Oh, one final thought, if you understood Capitalism at all, you would realize that one of the big problems our country (and indeed much of the first world, and soon China and India as well) are facing is a lack of young people.  Large families like Simcha’s might be all that stands between you and a retirement of abject poverty.

Kim, the family planning methods endorsed by the Catholic Church are the Natural Family Planning methods. Billings Method, and Creighton Model Fertility Care methods are excellent family planning methods which are just as effective (99%)as the Pill for delaying procreation without all the harmful side effects. Studies done in India and South America over 10 years by WHO actually show a zero unwanted conception rate. That is 100% effective. Yet it is a rare ob/gyn who will suggest NFP to their patient, and Planned Parenthood certainly does not. My own experience is they only speak of the effectiveness of the Rythmn method, a method that was outdated in the 1960’s. In light of this, the Catholic Church is indeed part of the solution. NFP is also very successful in aiding couples struggling with infertility. The Pope Paul VI Institute using Creighton’s NaPro technology has an effectiveness rate of 35-85% (depending on the fertility problem) compared with IVF industry’s 15-35%. This aids in reducing the numbers of couples on the waiting list to adopt babies. Planned Parenthood on the other hand, in aborting 98% of the unborn babies that come into their clinic only increases this waiting list, and makes the wait of these couples even longer and more heartbreaking.

A good bit up on the comments section, a woman named Michelle asked what the difference was between a miscarriage and an abortion. “You get the same result, right?” Let me tell you the difference, Michelle.

The majority of miscarriages occur because of a fatal chromosomal anomaly in the embryo. Most of the rest occur as a function of flaws in the women’s reproductive system. Either the egg is damaged, the sperm is damaged, or the womb is damaged. In no cases do you actually have a viable pregnancy with a healthy unborn. In most or all cases, the unborn has died naturally days or weeks before the miscarriage begins.

An abortion, on the other hand, interrupts a healthy pregnancy. Did you know that miscarriage can be anticipated by charting the woman’s level of pregnancy hormones? Those hormones double daily in a healthy pregnancy, and start rewiring the woman’s body to a far greater extent than is ever achieved in a nonviable pregnancy that ends in miscarriage. In fact, that’s the current theory on why breast cancer risk rises with abortion. The pregnancy hormones are high enough to start changing the breast cells, leaving more of them vulnerable to cancer when the process is suddenly and violently interrupted.

In short, the hormone levels of a healthy pregnancy quickly outpace those of a pregnancy doomed to miscarriage, and the abortion causes a violent interruption of the process rather than a gentler transition prompted naturally by the human body. The difference between a miscarriage and an abortion is like the difference between braking your vehicle at a stop sign and getting T-boned in the intersection.

To the unborn, it is also the difference between the natural death of a sick person and the violent death of a healthy person.

@Paula,  Wow! I had no idea that NFP had such a high pregnancy rate. Great facts.  I already knew that NFP had a great successful rate.  I wish more people knew how effective they are.  My sister practiced this method for many years with great success.

Funny, witty, and downright true. Wonderful as always Mrs. Fisher.

Distributing contracraceptives is pouring gasoline on a raging fire, and we keep doing it expecting a different outcome, the definition of insanity. Soaring STD rates, divorce, abortion; a flood of disasters has come to mankind since Lambeth said a little bit of contraception can be a good thing.
Contraception is the costliest scourge, in blood and treasure to ever afflict mankind.

Yeah, Planned Parenthood got its charity status because of lies promoted the the Evil Atheist Democratic Conspiracy that is out to murder children so they can remain in power. They don’t believe in god, so why should they care about life? If women get pregnant when they don’t want to, why don’t they say no? And why pick on Republicans? They are pillars of our society and defenders of the faith. The Bible and the church are their moral compass. They practice what the preach, keeping faithful to their spouses and put family first. Just think of how horrible the world would be if they did get into power?  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1pwwvBygoFA&feature=related

What is the point of planned parenthood? Recent studies show that for example the Dutch are making great progress, having the lowest teen pregnancy rates worldwide (http://bit.ly/qkbe5). Why is this? Many people think it is due to their sex education system, which is developed quite well. Maybe, instead of expecting schools to teach children morality and the missionary position, we should adopt a few other Dutch lessons. Employers could encourage staff to go home at 5pm for a family supper, parents could discuss contraception with their children, and the BBC could ask David Attenborough to turn his attention to human reproduction. Another example is the website WannaWatchHow.com. This website shows sexual education videos that are ment for young adults. I guess young adults like to learn it this way instead of the boring schoolbooks right?

I think all of you who argue that your religion and faith will keep you moral are full of !@#$%. Planned Parenthood provides education, contraception, and self confidence to people who, if they followed your advice, would feel guilty about having sex—even if by rape, incest, or being fooled by claims of “love”, or simply because they are ignorant (thanks to their parents’ religious beliefs) about sex. They help people deal with the world as it is, not the perfect world you think it would be if everyone had proper morals like you.

Religious people have abortions for convenience just as any other women does: http://www.prweb.com/releases/2006/03/prweb357377.htm

The reality is that many men leave or don’t take responsibility, and get away with few, if any, consequences. Almost all religious people blame the female: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/03/11/residents-of-town-where-awful-gang-rape-occurred_n_834535.html?ref=fb&src=sp#sb=1234714,b=facebook

Motherhood is not desirable for every woman, and pregnancy is a medical condition that can seriously affect a woman’s health. Sexual desire is as natural as breathing and eating. It is necessary for a healthy life. And HELLO—we are animals, unless you are creationists as well.

Do you believe woman who has had sex and then menstruated has had a miscarriage, because a blastocyst failed to attached to her uterus? Is there a space in Catholic cemeteries for sanitary napkins of married women? The Bible is not a science book, and the Pope is not a physician.

If you think God is so wonderful and heave is a better place, why don’t you go there?

Adrienne,
With respect, you seem very bitter.  Alas, I cannot take a look at the evidence from your first citation since the website for the Center for Reason no longer exists.  That being said, I have little reason to doubt that Christians have abortions at a rate similar to the general population since they make up 85% of the general population.  Abortion and extra-marital sex are sins, just like many other things are sins.  All people, Christians included, sin.  We do, however, believe that some sins have such a negative impact (like the killing of an unborn child) that our society should should not stand by and simply let it happen, or worse, fund organizations that actually materially cooperate in that sin.
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Let me ask you this; should prostitution be legal?  After all, men have sexual desire, and some times they don’t have a girlfriend.  And we are animals after all—or are we?  But what about the cost to the women?  Both the prostitutes who are exploited and to other women who will be harmed in other ways? 
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So are we animals?  I have no problem believing that we physically evolved from animals.  But does that make us animals?  I think the fact that we even can have this conversation shows how wide a gap exists between us and our nearest animal relatives.
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Final thought.  You claim that Planned Parenthood help people deal with the world as it is.  The thing is, the world hasn’t always been this way.  Oh sure, there have always been women who got pregnant with children they didn’t want and sometimes without the benefit of a husband.  But prior to about 50 years ago, it was relatively uncommon (at least compared with today).  Planned Parenthood, through pushing its agenda of contraception and abortion has had a major factor in making the “world as it is”.

MarylandBill:
I’m sorry the original link was broken. I sent a second-hand article when I found the the Center for Reason didn’t work. I’ll do more research.
That said, how can I be anything else but bitter toward the misogyny of the Judeo-Christian religions? Your god is a tyrant and an abuser, who can’t tolerate not being worshiped. “Thou shalt have no other gods before me” is the first commandment, and there is hell to pay for liking a different god better—let alone a goddess. Until “the people of the book” came along, sex was not a “sin”.
Contraception was practiced before the pill” was developed: http://www.ehow.com/about_4780317_ancient-methods-birth-control.html
When it didn’t work there were plenty of exposures and outright infanticides: http://www.wou.edu/las/socsci/history/thesis 08/MindyNicholsThesis.pdf
No one is saying this was right. It was a reality, just like it is today, that many children were unwanted for various reasons. Many called it “giving their children to god”.
Abraham was willing to sacrifice Isaac for god: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDfoJ29CR4E
OK, god sent a messenger to stop him, and you may argue that this makes him a better god than the others because he preferred to take children by disease, poverty, and natural disaster rather than have their parents kill them. This left the only method of birth control that would work without fail was abstinence—and it was generally accepted that it was the woman who had to be asexual. This is the basis Judeo-Christian misogyny.
Why shouldn’t prostitution be legal—for everyone? Our economy works by selling services—why is it different to sell sex than any other service that we can’t get for free? If it were legal, prostitutes would have legal rights to make the sex safe. Why should men who don’t have girlfriends (or boyfriends) have the opportunity to buy instead of being celibate? AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases could be more controlled. Men and women would not have to be ashamed of their desires and feel like monsters for being attracted but not in love. As a matter of fact, you may be interested that there is a movement to make prostitution legal: http://www.iusw.org/
We are highly evolved animals. The invention of gods was a milestone in human evolution in that is led to the development of civilization, and to self knowledge. We understand that our actions have consequences and developed our mores to promote good consequences and discourage bad consequences. Today, we also have science with definite evidence on how the universe was created and how life developed and we don’t need gods to tell us what to do with ourselves.
As to your final thought, Planned Parenthood doesn’t promote sex or abortions, but it doesn’t try to prevent sex or safe abortions. Unlike Senator John Kyl’s “not intended to be factual” statement to congress, (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/04/12/jon-stewart-rips-jon-kyl-planned-parenthood_n_847920.html) only around 3% of PP’s budget. Most of their budget is devoted to family planning, women’s health, contraception, and sexual education. They don’t promote the preposterous concept that sex is a “sin”.
More than 50 years ago, women who had !@#$% were ostracized, and the children themselves were degraded. Get Donna Reed, the Nelson family, and Father Knows Best out of your head.

Poor Adrienne: Of course you love planned parenthood which was started with the help of Hitler as it is an organization of LIARS which makes you feel right at home with them (you must adore the Obamas, two of your kind!) as in all of your rantings; you didn’t come up with one truthful statement.  If you evolved from an animal, which one as there are so many to choose from?  Of course with your foul mouth and ignorance, maybe you are a daughter of a mule or a hyena or just a complete idiot?  A life without Jesus must be so empty and hopeless, which must be why you are on a Catholic site looking for the TRUTH.  At least you will be in our prayers for a complete conversion and to be headed for Heaven, not Hell,( where the folks from “planned parenthood” will suffer for ever).  +JMJ+

Yes, infanticide was practiced in the past; as your own information points out however, it mostly happened outside that time and place known as the Christian World (obviously it happened from time to time in the Christian world, but at least it wasn’t considered an acceptable practice). 
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Perhaps this is why God didn’t want people worshiping other gods.  Lets assume for the moment, that the God of the Bible is real and the Bible’s claims about God are real.  If that is the case, then perhaps God banned the worship of other gods because they were man made gods that gave license to the worst aspects of humanity.
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Now lets address prostitution.  I had hoped that my point about prostitution would at least establish a moral common ground for the purposes of debate.  As it is, I am afraid that your values might be so far removed from anything that would have once been considered virtuous as to make debate nothing more than two people talking past each other.  That being said, I would point out that prostitution inherently devalues women.  It reduces women to being valued only for the use of their bodies by others, not their talents, their minds or their labor (let alone their inherent worth as people).  Even if legalizing it were to end the slavery that currently dominates the industry, I suspect that some prostitution would still always attempt to operate outside the law to cater to the tastes of those who prefer underage girls or boys.
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I find it amusing that you don’t believe that Planned Parenthood doesn’t promote sex or abortions.  If you give someone a tool, they will use it.  If you give people condoms they will use them.  When you consider the failure rate of most birth control, I suspect that much of Planned Parenthood abortion clients are also their “family planning” clients as well.  They may not be purposely promoting those things (though I have my doubt), but that doesn’t mean they aren’t. 
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Also, Christians don’t view sex as sinful, we view it as a gift.  However, like all of God’s gifts, misuse is sinful. 
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Final thought.  You claim that humans are simply animals correct?  Then why is it that those who view animals as little more than animals are the ones who try hardest to avoid the notion that the purpose of sex is reproduction?

MarylandBill
No, infanticide was not discontinued in the Christian world—Christianity drove infanticide and prostitution underground. Christianity made sex outside marriage a sin, and it was easier for a man to deny paternity than for women to deny maternity. Women who had children out of marriage were no longer worthy of marriage. !@#$% often could not marry as well because they were socially unacceptable. Married women, on the other hand, were forced to have as many children as their husbands wanted—regardless of her health or ability to care for them. Husbands who did not force their wives used the services of prostitutes. Of course, it is difficult to find records of infanticide because most were not caught, and there were orphanages where unwanted children could be dumped. (Do we have to go into the issue of child abuse by “Christians”?) I did find a paper that documents how cases of infanticide were handled in 16th century England: http://www.alanmacfarlane.com/savage/A-INFANT.PDF
“If that is the case, then perhaps God banned the worship of other gods because they were man made gods that gave license to the worst aspects of humanity.”
Do you think your god wasn’t also manmade? I suggest the basic evolutionary process of producing offspring to pass our genes to the next generation is the reason why sex is necessary and desirable. Male competitiveness in our own and other species is evidence that it matters very much to males to make sure females have only their own offspring not the offspring of other males. Humans, who are supposed to be the most intelligent of animals, developed a religion that segregates women from male rivals to ensure their wives’ offspring was also their own. By killing off pagans and other heretics their religious ideals spread across the western world.
How dare you question my virtue? Where do you get the right to judge me? I suggest that your “holier than thou” Christian attitude is more to your instinctive abhorrence of female sexual freedom, and (although you haven’t expressed it) the Christian abhorrence of homosexuality.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-L3JMk7C1A
Is it better that women’s bodies are not valued at all? This society makes women either “pure” or !@#$%. If there is a market for underage girls or boys, whose fault is that? Children have no control over their lives, it’s adults who sell them and adults (mostly male) who buy them. I think we agree that such child exploitation is criminal. The “slippery slope” argument against legalizing prostitution between consenting adults doesn’t hold water.
“I find it amusing that you don’t believe that Planned Parenthood doesn’t promote sex or abortions.  If you give someone a tool, they will use it.  If you give people condoms they will use them.  When you consider the failure rate of most birth control, I suspect that much of Planned Parenthood abortion clients are also their “family planning” clients as well.  They may not be purposely promoting those things (though I have my doubt), but that doesn’t mean they aren’t.”
Why aren’t you objecting to industries that manufacture guns? If you give someone a gun, they will use it. If you teach someone how to use that gun without killing a random person, they will use that information as well. I suspect that the NRA does nothing for victims of gun violence—because moral gun owners only want to protect their families and people who get shot probably deserve it.
Planned Parenthood promotes safe sex, you idiot. It promotes contraception so that an ova and sperm do not join so abortion is not necessary. It allows women to make a choice about their own lives, with their husbands/partners if they are there.
Abortion is not promoted as a method of birth control, only as an option in a complicated healthcare matter. Were you against Terri Shaivo’s husband terminating her brain-dead existence? Do terminal patients have the right to refuse care that would extend their pain a few for days? Would you have a pharmacist refuse to sell me contraceptives to treat dysmenorrhea? Are you against using Viagra, or don’t you know that god decides when you should have erection dysfunction?
Sex is a gift under men’s terms, with Christian backing. You want to make sure it’s your genes that get passed on. You can’t respect a woman who is sexual on her own terms. You degrade women’s bodies as much as any pimp does.
Yes, humans are animals. We know sex is necessary for reproduction, which is why the desire to have sex has also evolved. The major difference between us and our ape cousins is that we have developed an imagination—we can think of ideas beyond what is in front of us. We create gods.
It is only your god that makes sex solely for the purpose of reproduction. You are instinctively motivated to prevent women from having “too much” sex to prevent them from producing offspring from other men. Motherhood is only respected why you are certain the husband is the father, except for the theology that went that extra mile to get the Virgin Mary off the hook.

JMJ
1.  The association of Margaret Sanger is a “pro-life” fallacy promoted to criminalize her motives for social birth control:  http://www.nyu.edu/projects/sanger/secure/newsletter/articles/sanger-hitler_equation.html As the article states, it is hard to find documents that present her apart from Nazis, black genocide, and other fascist mentality that anti-evolutionists blame on Darwin. You will find it impossible to find a neutral document on a pro-life, Christian website. Your god cannot tolerate reason against his authority.
2.  Obama is not as liberal as I hoped he would be but compared to the Right Wing agenda he is all we got.
3.  I have no time to explain the Fact of Evolution by Natural Selection. Here is a site that will help you, if you have the nerve to look at science. http://www.talkorigins.org/
4.  My life is happy enough, thank you. People would not become atheists if religion had all the answers. http://testimonials.exchristian.net/2006/07/from-depressed-christian-to-happy.html
5.  I checked out Catholic sites because of an advertisement on TV from catholic.org or some such crap, and as I have some Catholic friends that are rational except for their professed faith, I thought I’d get you version of the universe. I have given you many arguments that you have to answer if you want me to accept Jesus with any sincerity. If you have no comments but to condemn my language and damn me to hell, your point is taken and you can shut up now.

Adrienne, Peace to you.

A: “Your god is a tyrant and an abuser, who can’t tolerate not being worshiped. “Thou shalt have no other gods before me” is the first commandment, and there is hell to pay for liking a different god better—let alone a goddess. Until “the people of the book” came along, sex was not a “sin”.

Myself: This would be like a bachelor saying to husbands “Your wife is a tyrant and an abuser, who cannot tolerate not being worshiped. “Thou shalt have no other wives before me” is her requirement of you, and there is hell to pay for liking a different woman better, let alone having a boyfriend.”

Well in my marriage Adrienne, indeed there would be hell to pay.

Adrienne, “my” God loves us so much He desires a relationship with us, a relationship based on true and faithful Love, with the assurance that nothing will come between us. Would you be satisfied with a man in your life who dismissed you as much as you expect me to dismiss my God? If I dismissed my God in the manner you think He ought to be dismissed, that would be very telling of my relationship with Him, would it not? Just as telling as it would be of your relationship if you were in a marriage and willing to allow your husband to have other women live with you in your home and come into your bed, while making you sleep in the guest room, or even maybe have to move out altogether. Is that a healthy relationship in your opinion Adrienne? Is that reflective of real Love?

PaulaHC:
A wife (or husband) is a human being who can be touched, show emotion, take observable actions, etc. S/he is also capable of earning respect. If the spouse were really the kind of tyrant I described, the bachelor would be perfectly correct in his (her) statement. I have yet to see any evidence that your god or any god “loves” humans or anything else.
It has to do with the question of evil: If god is all powerful and all good, why is there evil in the world? And why would a god create creatures with sexual desire and then demand that we deny and suppress them? Your God act like a jealous husband who is paranoid about his wife being unfaithful even when there is no evidence.
Better to have loved and lost than to live with the psycho forever.

Hello Adrienne, Peace to you.

A spouse in Afghanistan for 5 years is not physically present in a relationship either as you have described. Does this mean the relationship does not exist? Does this mean that fidelity is not necessary for that time? Does a spouse need to earn respect before being treated with respect? God allows you to choose Him or not to choose Him, is this not respectful? Yet you seem to be requiring more from God then you want Him to require from you. He must prove Himself to you, but you have no interest in paying Him any mind.

The reason there is evil in the world is because creatures believe they know better then God when He requests they do not do evil. The reason there is evil in the world is because people believe that they can decide for themselves what is right from wrong, that they do not need a god to tell them what they should or should not do. The reason there is evil in the world is because people believe that some of their actions affect only themselves, and do not affect others, and therefore should have the right to do these actions. Well, they do have a right to make such choices, and the result is evil.

God does not ask us to deny or supress sexual desire any more then He asks us to deny or supress hunger for food. However if we abuse sex, just like if we abuse food, we harm ourselves.

You have compared God to a jealous husband who has no justification just after you have asked about evil? Do you honestly not see the connection?

I don’t “require” anything from god because I don’t believe god exists? Should I require anything of leprechauns or Thor?
Why should I pay attention to something that is not evident to me? Maybe there is no evidence that god does not exist, but why should I pay attention unless I see evidence that would support his existence? Why are humans so self-involved if god created us to look out for each other? Is evil caused simply by human choices made independent from “god’s will”? Are infants, pregnant women (who don’t want to abort) injured or killed in a tornado because they did something they did not think would hurt anybody (like maybe thinking she did not want a baby at this time)? http://news.change.org/stories/pregnant-iowa-woman-arrested-for-falling-down
So we need a supervisory being to tell us right from wrong? Since I am an atheist, I think it is right to kill a person if I want to (which I do not—though there are some obituaries that I can read with pleasure)so long as I make sure I won’t get caught by the secular law? Did god give us superior brains because he, as the thought police, find other species boring?
If a though or action is truly good, or at least harmless, do we need a god to tell us so? Or is it good in its own right, with positive consequences to our society as we know it? If we need a god to give us morals, then morals are not our choice and we have no free will. If we can judge for our selves, based on the observed consequences of human actions, what is right or wrong, why do we need a god?

I don’t “require” anything from god because I don’t believe god exists? Should I require anything of leprechauns or Thor?
Why should I pay attention to something that is not evident to me? Maybe there is no evidence that god does not exist, but why should I pay attention unless I see evidence that would support his existence? Why are humans so self-involved if god created us to look out for each other? Is evil caused simply by human choices made independent from “god’s will”? Are infants, pregnant women (who don’t want to abort) injured or killed in a tornado because they did something they did not think would hurt anybody (like maybe thinking she did not want a baby at this time)? http://news.change.org/stories/pregnant-iowa-woman-arrested-for-falling-down
So we need a supervisory being to tell us right from wrong? Since I am an atheist, I think it is right to kill a person if I want to (which I do not—though there are some obituaries that I can read with pleasure)so long as I make sure I won’t get caught by the secular law? Did god give us superior brains because he, as the thought police, find other species boring?
If a though or action is truly good, or at least harmless, do we need a god to tell us so? Or is it good in its own right, with positive consequences to our society as we know it? If we need a god to give us morals, then morals are not our choice and we have no free will. If we can judge for our selves, based on the observed consequences of human actions, what is right or wrong, why do we need a god?
Don’t any of you peop0le read philosophy?

I don’t “require” anything from god because I don’t believe god exists? Should I require anything of leprechauns or Thor?
Why should I pay attention to something that is not evident to me? Maybe there is no evidence that god does not exist, but why should I pay attention unless I see evidence that would support his existence? Why are humans so self-involved if god created us to look out for each other? Is evil caused simply by human choices made independent from “god’s will”? Are infants, pregnant women (who don’t want to abort) injured or killed in a tornado because they did something they did not think would hurt anybody (like maybe thinking she did not want a baby at this time)? http://news.change.org/stories/pregnant-iowa-woman-arrested-for-falling-down
So we need a supervisory being to tell us right from wrong? Since I am an atheist, I think it is right to kill a person if I want to (which I do not—though there are some obituaries that I can read with pleasure)so long as I make sure I won’t get caught by the secular law? Did god give us superior brains because he, as the thought police, find other species boring?
If a though or action is truly good, or at least harmless, do we need a god to tell us so? Or is it good in its own right, with positive consequences to our society as we know it? If we need a god to give us morals, then morals are not our choice and we have no free will. If we can judge for our selves, based on the observed consequences of human actions, what is right or wrong, why do we need a god?
Don’t any of you people read philosophy?

Sorry for the repeated post. My internet connection was screwed up by the forces of nature.

Poor stupid Adrienne:  Instead of reading false books and going on to useless web-sites, why don’t you search for the TRUTH!! What are you afraid of?  Read Sanger’s books and articles, even though they are full of hate (which is what you enjoy), she tells us about her “life” with Hitler (Obama’s idol). It is amazing that with 150 years of lies about evolution, their is NOT one single fact to “prove it” and even Darwin realized that he was wrong. God gave us a free will to choose right or wrong and with it comes Heaven or Hell and YOU are the only one (not me or anybody else) that will decide to live for God or die to the evil one.  All of us Christians want you and your friends to be in Heaven as that is the WILL OF GOD. God can take your life right now and there isn’t a thing that you can do to stop Him!!!  It is so sad that you can’t appreciate the gift of life that God has given you and as for me shutting up, well, bad news girlie, but as long as you keep lying and denying the truth, someone will be here to pray for you and to keep you aware of the spiritual danger that is in store for you. It is the Holy Spirit that keeps you coming to these Catholic pages and it is only the Holy Spirit that can melt your heart and lead you to Jesus.  Stay with us as we love you, but we will never love the evil and hate that you seem to enjoy.  MAY THE PEACE OF JESUS AND HIS MOTHER PREVAIL IN YOUR HEART11 +JMJ+

Adrienne,
I see there is little point in debate at this point.  Your hatred for the Church and God makes it pointless for me to provide arguments because you essentially have made up your mind a priori.  I hate to say it, but I suspect that God could come down from heaven and show himself to you and you would still claim he is man made.
—
That being said, I wanted to address a number of points. 
—
1. I did not judge your virtue; I said that your values were too divergent from anything that would once have been considered virtuous.  That is objectively true, unless you wish to claim that your values were the norm in America in say 1940. 
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2. I did not say anything about guns because that was not the point under discussion.  In fact, I personally think that this country could use fewer guns, but that is my own personal opinion.  Guns and indeed many weapons are tools that can have many legitimate moral usages.  As a Catholic, I don’t believe that is the case for abortion or birth control.
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3. You claim that birth control should prevent abortion, yet any reasonable examination of the facts would question this view point.  Since abortion was legalized in this country, after the legalization of contraception, hundreds of thousands of abortions have been performed every year (with Planned Parenthood being the largest provider of abortions in the country).  Contraception fails.  Indeed, the failure rate of contraception is high enough that there is a very good chance that a woman using contraception will experience at least one “unintended” pregnancy in her life.
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4. You claim I have judged you, though I don’t think so, other than to observe that the basis of our moral compasses is built on totally different foundations.  That being said, you certainly have judged me.  I don’t hold women to a higher standard than men.  Indeed, if anything, as a man, I try to hold myself and other men to a higher standard.  No woman who has extra-marital sex does so without a partner (usually but not always a man) who has committed at least as great a sin as she has.  I am not perfect, and I never have expected women or anyone else to be either.
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5. Final thought, and I really mean final since I have taken myself off notifications for this list so I don’t simply argue for the sake of arguing.  You seem ready to condemn both the Church’s ideals and its failure to live up to those ideals.  I personally say that the best way to judge a culture is by its ideals, since no culture actually can achieve its ideals (unless the ideals are so ridiculously low as to not be worth trying to achieve).  I know I would prefer live in a culture that tries and fails to live up to the Church’s ideals, than one that celebrates the abortion of nearly a million children every year.

Hi Adrienne, Peace to you.
No prob about the repeated posts. I’ve done that myself several ways, thinking my original post has not been accepted for some reason, or worse, I hit the ‘back’ button and reposted reposted reposted, lol.

You brought up leprechauns and Thor, do you spend as much time debating leprechauns and Thor with others? I was not aware that there were enough of others who had faith in leprechauns and Thor as to worthy consideration that they may actually be existant as is obviously the case with the Judeo-Christian God.

What other beings which you do not believe in that you give as much attention to as you are doing to God on this thread? Has someone forced you to be here, to post your original post?  Why should you be paying this much attention regarding something that is not evident to you?  Why have you simply not dismissed and ignored the statements regarding this supposed ‘imaginary’ being?

You asked why should you pay attention unless you see evidence that would support His existence. Well, no one is forcing you to be here and continue this discussion of Him. I realize that my comment “you have no interest in paying Him any mind” is what prompted this question of yours.

Is not the fact that so many people over the centuries have claimed and claim they have a relationship with this particular ‘imaginary’ Being a form of evidence? You have no evidence of my husband, so if I told you of him, would you doubt his existance also? Now granted, we know of males on earth, so I understand that the concept that I would have a relationship with a male isn’t as much of a reach as my claim to a relationship with a God. However for you to say that God does not exist is claiming that all of us who claim a relationship with God are liars. Do you honestly believe that the vast majority of humans continue to be that deluded? Even if we were, the fact that there is so many of us is “evidence”.

Also, are you or are you not aware of a concept of God? Well obviously you are. Why then do you think this also is not evidence of His existance? (Keeping in mind that evidence and proof are two different things.) If there is an omnipotent Being, that which created us and is far superior…nay perfect, absolutely perfect, in intelligence and presence, is that something we can conceive on our own?

It is impossible for a lesser being to be able to conceive a greater being.

Yet man has had the concept of a greater being for ages. We had a concept of a greater being before we had a concept of beings of similar nature possibly living in the stars, for example, long before such an idea of the latter was even brought to our consciences, we have had a concept of God, a being that has no foundation in anything temporal. How can this be? Where did such a concept come from?

My point, Adrienne, is that the fact that we even have an idea of a diety, the fact that we have a concept of a Spiritual Being, is more evidence. Not proof, but evidence. So there is evidence, I just presented you with two, and there are more…but two should be enough. And where there is evidence, there cannot be complete denial until that evidence is found to be sourced elsewhere.

You asked why are humans so self-involved if god created us to look out for each other?
Because we are not Perfection like Him.

You suggested that tornados are evil…but they are not. Not all difficulties are evil. Evil is a willful action. Tornados, earthquakes, volcanoes, floods, etc are not willful actions. Even certain things resulting from human failures (car accidents, electrical fires, bridge collapses, etc) are not necessarily due to evil…tho some are because of a result of greed on some people who willfully cut corners to put a little more $ in their pockets, and that is evil. Evil is willful acts.

Do we need a supervisory being to tell us right from wrong? Some people apparently do. It is why we have laws. Our jails are full of people who thought wrong was right, and they are in jail because we are forcing our moral values on them. Our disasterous housing market is a result of people who thought wrong was right. Some people don’t need to be told, but obviously others do.  If people did not need to be told right from wrong, we would have no need for laws, for courts. You may not need God’s laws to tell you to not kill another person, neither do I. But God apparently believed that some people do. And is He wrong (assuming of course that He exists)? Have you heard of anyone killing another person?

Do you think that when a person is shooting another they are thinking “This is wrong” or are they thinking “I have a right to do this”? I know the answer to this. Of course every case is different, but I worked in a jail facility for many years. There was a man (man A)in custody who shot another man (man B)who was running away from him. Man A was being charged with murder and he was very upset. He claimed that he should be charged with manslaughter only because he yelled out to man B who was running away from him “Stop! Stop or I will shoot you!” and when man B (who was running away because he was afraid he was going to get killed) did not stop, man A shot him in the back. Man B of course fell down, then man A went up to him and shot man B dead, point blank. Man A, now in custody thought he had every right to kill man B because he (man A) yelled out “stop” and man B did not. He honestly could not understand why he was being charged with murder.

Adrienne, do you think this guy did not need to be told he should not kill by a ‘supervisory being’? I don’t know for sure, but I’m pretty sure that man A at some point was taught that killing another person was wrong…but somewhere along the line he decided for himself that it was o.k.
Now you may not need to be told this, but some others do.

Now as to why God gave us superior brains, I do not know.

“If a thought or action is truly good, or at least harmless, do we need a god
to tell us so?” That depends on the thought or action I suppose. I do know that I need to tell my children that some things are good and some things are not because I can see things they cannot depending on their age and comprehension. For example, when my Little Ones were 3 I needed to tell them not to run out in the middle of the street. They did not understand why because after all “I can run Mommy, really, see how fast I can run! I won’t fall down.” Telling them they might get hit by a car simply did not register. They could not comprehend.

If God does exist (and again, there is enough evidence that He might exist) then He has to have a better comprehension of things then we do. It would be as audacious for us to believe that we could possibly know all there is to know about things that could/would harm us (be from our own action, or from the natural), but would it be audacious for an omnipotent creator to think He knew all things? For example: We are told in the Old Testament that the Jews were not to eat pork. Can you think of why this might be knowing now things of pork that humans did not know then?

“...is it good in its own right, with positive consequences to our society as we know it?” Is a thing good because it brings about positive consequences or do we have positive consequences because we do something good? Is it a result, or a reward? I think there is a bit of both depending on how you look at it. However I do believe that the result is not the determination of whether or not something is good. An example, there is no doubt that there are those who hid Jews during the holocaust, and the Jews were caught. As a result both the hidden Jews and those that hid them were slaughtered. So was hiding them a good thing to do? Some would say yes, some would say no. I say yes, because I believe that good is not based on the result of the action. In a world without a God, would I believe the same? I don’t know. (I’m not sure if this answers your question.)

You stated “If we need a god to give us morals, then morals are not our choice and we have no free will.”
Please expound your concept a bit more. Thank you.

“If we can judge for our selves, based on the observed consequences of human actions, what is right or wrong, why do we need a god?”
Is that all you think an omnipotent creator would do, would be ‘good for’? To judge?

“Don’t any of you people read philosophy?” Yes ;-)

JMJ:
You are one piece of god’s work! Telling me I’m stupid, mislead by falsehoods and totally evil, and yet claim you want me with you in heaven and all I have to do it exchange my mind for yours. You don’t really like me—why do you want me with you? Don’t you want to watch from your cloud as I suffer for eternity because I chose scientific method over faith?
I have tried my best to find websites that inform of verified scientific facts that can be demonstrated repeatedly. The real problem is that it takes longer to explain these facts and why they are truth than the sound bites of a preacher or Fox News. http://www.politifact.com/search/?q=fox+news
My bad: You could lead a fundamentalist to science but you can’t make him think.
Natural disasters happen all the time, gang violence and murders happen all the time. Usually innocent persons are killed in the same events as guilty persons (there were Muslims, Jews, Atheists and Christians in the Twin Towers on 9/11). There is plenty of evidence that I can be killed at any time. There is no evidence of a heaven or a hell, or any kind of cognitive existence after we die. Is the fear of hell that makes you a Catholic? Are you working on Pascal’s Wager that the odds are better if you believe? If you start feeling pain in your chest that runs down your left arm, would you go to a Christian faith healer or to an emergency room because you may be having a heart attack? The science of medicine is one of the as well as all other sciences are practiced today because Evolution is a fact.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=QWiqGOpu_tA
Either you don’t realize what you say from one minute to the next, or you have a lot of chutzpah suggesting I enjoy hating people. If you substituted “God” for “Mein Fuher” in your own diatribe, you would get the theme of almost every Nazi speech on record. Hitler, like your god, tended to kill anyone who didn’t believe in him. Moreover, everything you claim is a lie is documented and can be researched in any respectable library.
You are simply trying to scare me into your faith. If you weren’t afraid of being wrong, you would not be interested in my being “saved.”

MarylandBill:
No, if God came down from heaven and showed himself to me, that would be evidence of his existence and blow my whole philosophy out of the water. Why can’t he come down and show me? Could it be that he doesn’t exist? I keep asking for evidence and no one can show me anything that cannot be disproven. All I get is the words of people who get their beliefs from a work of fiction that is full of contradictions and oppressive rules. I see bad things happen to good people and vice versa without regard to their belief in Jesus or anything else.
1.  Ah, the 1940’s were the best of times—here is a conservative analysis that might interest you: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303714704576385262844826944.html The Wall Street Journal site demands you subscribe (no cost) but the gist of the article implies that the virtue of the era in was conformity. People sacrificed for their country and believed god was on their side. Nothing like a common enemy to stop the fighting between brothers. You won’t get an argument from me about that.
2.  I was comparing the catholic attitude toward sex with the NRA’s attitude toward guns. I guess my analogy did not come across. A condom is used as a method of safe sex, where you would rather have no sex (unless under Catholic terms). Sex education informs people about sex and it’s possible consequences. Catholics would have persons know as little about sex as possible, only that god and the bible say it is wrong unless it happens between a man and a woman who have been sanctioned by the church. You say sex is a gift from god, want to teach how it works.
The NRA believes that ownership of a gun, or several guns, is a constitutional and/or god-given right. They acknowledge that people with guns may accidently harm others if they don’t know how to use a gun safely. Some guns even have a safety clip to prevent children from shooting themselves or others. They do not simply tell gun owners that god does not want them to use their guns unless they believe in the bible or are sanctioned by a church.
My point is that sex and guns are realities that have social consequences. Planned Parenthood offers comprehensive, unbiased sex education so that people of both sexes can make decisions as to whether they want to abstain, practice sex without producing a child or transferring a disease, or let the chips fall where they may. Catholics tell people to abstain until you are married, have sex only when you want to have children, and go to hell if you don’t obey. You call that free will?
3.  Here is a report from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) on the statistics of induced abortions in 2007: http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/ss6001a1.htm?s_cid=ss6001a1_w
As the tables and statistical analysis is hard and time consuming to read, I’m copying the conclusion by the analysts (THE ALL-CAPS ARE MY EMPHASIS):
<quote>According to the most recent national estimates, nearly one fifth of all pregnancies in the United States end in abortion (5). Multiple factors can influence the incidence of abortion, including the availability of abortion providers (11,68—70); the adoption of state regulations, such as mandatory waiting periods and parental involvement laws (49,71); increasing acceptance of nonmarital childbearing (72,73); shifts in the racial/ethnic composition of the U.S. population (74,75); and changes in the economy and the resulting impact on fertility preferences and access to health-cares services, including contraception (76,77).
However, even with these influences, MOST ABORTIONS ARE PRECEDED BY AN UNINTENDED PREGNANCY, with intended pregnancies estimated to account for 4% of all abortions (21), including those which presumably are performed for maternal medical indications and fetal abnormalities. PROVIDING WOMEN WITH THE KNOWLEDGE AND RESOURCES NECESSARY TO MAKE DECISIONS ABOUT THEIR SEXUAL BEHAVIOR AND USE OF CONTRACEPTION CAN HELP THEM AVOID UNINTENDED PREGNANCIES AND THUS REDUCE THE NUMBER OF WOMEN SEEKING ABORTION.
However, efforts to reduce the number of unintended pregnancies in the United States have been challenging. Findings from the National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG), the primary national source of data on unintended pregnancy in the United States, suggest that unintended pregnancy rates decreased during 1982—1995 in conjunction with an increase in the proportion of women at risk for unintended pregnancy****** who were using contraception (79—81). However, by 2002, contraceptive use among women at risk for unintended pregnancy had decreased (80), and decreases in unintended pregnancy had plateaued (21). Data from the 2006—2008 NSFG indicate that contraceptive use among women at risk for unintended pregnancy has not increased subsequently, and only small increases have occurred in the use of the most effective forms of reversible contraception (78). Previous research has shown that the total number of unintended pregnancies and abortions is similar for the comparatively small group of women at risk for unintended pregnancy who are not using any form of contraception and for the much larger group of women who are not using contraception effectively (21,82,83). THEREFORE, IMPROVEMENTS IN USE OF FAMILY PLANNING FOR BOTH OF THESE GROUPS ARE NEEDED TO REDUCE THE NUMBER OF UNINTENDED PREGNANCIES, AND THUS THE NUMBER OF ABORTIONS THAT ARE PERFORMED, IN THE UNITED STATES.<end quote>
I would appreciate any statistical or other validating documentation as backup for your claims on how contraception and sex education do not decrease the number of abortions.
4.  No, I don’t think you hold women to a higher standard than men, or men to a higher standard than women. I think you hold god as the highest standard and judge people by how well they comply to his rules as presented by the bible and the Catholic church. You think you are good because you agree with, and follow as best you can, Catholic principles; you think I am “not good” because I do not.
I do not disagree out of hatred for Catholics or Christians in general. I don’t find your beliefs a personal threat in themselves. Your friend JMJ is right in one thing—I do explore Catholic and other religious websites in a search for truth. I just never get any evidence of truth at these sites. I cannot live with the cognitive dissonance it takes to believe in god with all the valid evidence against god’s existence and the simple statement that I will burn in hell after death if I don’t have faith. JMJ is one of the hateful Catholics, and my encounter with him (her?) is one reason I may get defensive over judgment of my virtue.
What I find most irritating about Christians who follow the dogma of their church is their willful ignorance of facts and their willingness to lie in defense of their “faith”. JMJ would rather believe I’m an idiot who believes (religiously!) in evolution and could “choose” to believe in god if I really wanted to be good. Religion has always opposed scientific thought until it could no longer deny the reality proven by science. http://entangledstates.org/2008/01/16/the-pope-and-ga/  Yet Christians, particularly Creationists are trying to give scientific “proof” of god with pseudoscience. Once they are confronted with valid scientific evidence they start scream ad hominem statements and relating Darwin and Sanger to Hitler and Nazism.
Maybe you won’t see this reply, because you turned off your notification on this thread. This is another example of willful ignorance. If you happen to see it after all, please explain why your standards are better than mine?

MarylandBill
No, if God came down from heaven and showed himself to me, that would be evidence of his existence and blow my whole philosophy out of the water. Why can’t he come down and show me? Could it be that he doesn’t exist? I keep asking for evidence and no one can show me anything that cannot be disproven. All I get is the words of people who get their beliefs from a work of fiction that is full of contradictions and oppressive rules. I see bad things happen to good people and vice versa without regard to their belief in Jesus or anything else.
I don’t think you hold women to a higher standard than men, or men to a higher standard than women. I think you hold god as the highest standard and judge people by how well they comply to his rules as presented by the bible and the Catholic church. You think you are good because you agree with, and follow as best you can, Catholic principles; you think I am “not good” because I do not.
I do not disagree out of hatred for Catholics or Christians in general. I don’t find your beliefs a personal threat in themselves. Your friend JMJ is right in one thing—I do explore Catholic and other religious websites in a search for truth. I just never get any evidence of truth at these sites. I cannot live with the cognitive dissonance it takes to believe in god with all the valid evidence against god’s existence and the simple statement that I will burn in hell after death if I don’t have faith. JMJ is one of the hateful Catholics, and my encounter with him (her?) is one reason I may get defensive over judgment of my virtue.
What I find most irritating about Christians who follow the dogma of their church is their willful ignorance of facts and their willingness to lie in defense of their “faith”. JMJ would rather believe I’m an idiot who believes (religiously!) in evolution and could “choose” to believe in god if I really wanted to be good. Religion has always opposed scientific thought until it could no longer deny the reality proven by science. http://entangledstates.org/2008/01/16/the-pope-and-ga/  Yet Christians, particularly Creationists are trying to give scientific “proof” of god with pseudoscience. Once they are confronted with valid scientific evidence they start scream ad hominem statements and relating Darwin and Sanger to Hitler and Nazism.
Maybe you won’t see this reply, because you turned off your notification on this thread. This is another example of willful ignorance. If you happen to see it after all, please explain why your standards are better than mine?

Hi, Paula HC. My best wishes to you.
My last post was almost rejected as spam, so I cut a few of my lines out, as MarylandBill said he stopped notifications from this thread because of me. LOL!
I appreciate that you are willing to meet and refute my comments, and I reply with all respect.
First of all, the reference to leprechauns an Thor are meant to imply that many people—whole societies—believed in these imaginary beings, and the belief led to many actions we would find curious and irrational in our time. I contend that belief in the Christian or any other god that can be placated by ritual or behavior sanctioned by that god has the same effect on human behavior. Millions of people believe in the Christian god, but that is no argument of proof that there is a god. You could send me a picture of a man you say is your husband, and I can check vital statistics records to confirm that your marriage took place—I would believe that man is your husband if you say so. But if someone were to show me that the man in the picture was not the same person whose name is on your marriage certificate, my belief would be wrong.
Unfortunately, I cannot dismiss you god without argument simply because I don’t believe. It is important to me because people who believe in your god insist that everybody else must believe as well. They are affecting my access to health care:  http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/santorum-health-care-reform-will-make-you-less-what-god-created-you-be rewriting history: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/01/25/anderson-cooper-bachmann-american-history_n_813695.html and want to deny my citizenship: http://darklythroughtheglass.wordpress.com/2010/02/01/georgebushcitizensquote/ . The airwaves are controlled by Christian pundits who combine atheists, liberals, Satanists, Nazis, communists, serial killers and Democrats into a huge anti-Christian conspiracy intent on destroying belief in God. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zEuAVgmWt0U
JMJ is a minor example, but he and his ilk have enough power to get incredibly stupid people in to the race for President of the US and I am sufficiently terrified. Never under-estimate the destruction that can be caused by ignorant people in large groups.
What you accept as evidence for god are logical arguments:  First,  the Ontological Proof for God’s existence attributed to Saint Anselm and used by Descartes. This has be found to be a logical fallacy even by other Christians: http://www.philosophyofreligion.info/theistic-proofs/the-ontological-argument/
Your second argument is that from authority: “Do you honestly believe that the vast majority of humans continue to be that deluded? Even if we were, the fact that there is so many of us is “evidence”.” This is another logical fallacy (see the fallacy from authority): http://www.theskepticsguide.org/resources/logicalfallacies.aspx
Yes, I do believe the vast majority of humans continue to be deluded. Your previous statement of your “relationship with God” based on a “true and faithful love” is pure romance. Your God will save the pure, helpless damsel (the church) in distress and they will live happily ever after in their heavenly castle. That you consider your relationship with God as a marriage testifies to this romantic delusion. You don’t seem to understand why I am not attracted to him.
I agree that tornados, earthquakes, floods, etc are not evil, because there is no intent to do harm and occur according to the laws of physics. Pat Robertson will argue otherwise http://articles.cnn.com/2010-01-13/us/haiti.pat.robertson_1_pat-robertson-disasters-and-terrorist-attacks-devil?_s=PM:US,  but that is his problem. I agree the real evils we are dealing with—the horrible economy, the corruption of the banking industry and mega-corporations, etc are the result of human actions. In most crimes of passion, I would suggest that perpetrators are emotionally and mentally disturbed and not concerned with right or wrong. (BTW, I think it’s really interesting that you worked in a jail facility. You must have some fascinating experiences.)
You example of Man A is, I’m guessing, someone who could not accept that he wasn’t justified in shooting a man who was already wounded and rendered harmless by the first shot (whatever the reason Man B was running). It seems Man A knew that killing was wrong, but thought he could get away with it under those particular circumstances.
The evil perpetuated by the corporate bankers who caused the housing market to collapse, cheat Enron investors, tell their lies on Fox news and science classrooms and all the other evil can be blamed on people who were told what is right and wrong (whether from the bible or other ethics training). They work out ways to do wrong things by making them right. They are using their Christianity to convince people that either (A) they are doing right because they are Christian, or (B) if you point out they are wrong, you are not a Christian and you therefore you are evil.
My question: Is your concept of god the same as theirs? It’s supposed to come from the same sources—the bible, Christian theology, regular church attendance, etc. Why do they even want to do the things that cause so much harm to others if their relationship with god is based on love?
I suggest your concept of god promotes your tendency to love others and be loved in return, while their concept of god promotes their greed and ruthlessness. The concept of god can strengthen what is most relevant to us.
I sometimes wish I could conjure a concept of god, but I’m too humble to believe that the whole universe was created by a supernatural deity who cares about everything I do and would want to hurt me if I didn’t follow his rules.

Apparently this site thinks I’m spam so I will lay off for awhile. I tried to understand, but you didn’t like my questions or comments.

Some of you almost helped me feel welcome, but most of you did not. You won’t win new members or get old ones back with that attitude.

Isn’t Adrienne amazing? Must be a college grad with all her useless nonsense and a complete failure of giving out truthful statements.  Why couldn’t she tell us just what animal that she evolved from?  How often did she “catch” the wind on her hand and played with it and just what is it that she breathes and can’t see?  I’m sure that she can’t believe in air or wind as they are unseen just like God in His Spirit form (of course we can “see” Him in Jesus every day at our Catholic Church. 150 years of lies by the so-called “scientist” and still not one piece of evidence to prove their point.  It is too bad that she doesn’t realize that God (religion) and science can and has worked side-by-side.  The problem is when we take God out of the equation as she is doing and trying to be gods our-self.  God will not be mocked!!  If our love for our fellow travelers on this planet is “hate” in her eyes, so be it.  The truth will always prevail in the end.  I thank God that I wasn’t educated as she was: knowledge without God.  Such a pity and waste.  +JMJ+

Only a Christian would be proud of a lack of knowledge.

I know you people don’t like to read anything longer than a couple of paragraphs, but maybe this will tell you something. http://thehill.com/images/stories/whitepapers/pdf/AbstinenceIB.pdf

Here is an article with a summary of the main points:  http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2011/06/abstinence-only_sex_ed_still_a.php

JMJ can skip this—there is only one book for him/her.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=gBDNPXhfEbA#at=363
Now women who have don’t get abortions are being accused of murder. Stop using your faith in god to persecute women!

To Adrienne: As a highly educated scientist I object to the implication that Catholics reject science. You just have your own warped sense of science which is completely wrong. You have twisted science to take the place of God since you reject Him.

Furthermore, abortion is murder. Anyone familiar with anatomy and physiology cannot honestly reject the unborn child as only a clump of cells. It is only the atheistic scientists who reject this for their own purposes and those who they have lied to and who believe them because they think they are scientists. It is not true science to ignore the facts that support the Catholic viewpoint. Yopu are very selective in what science you consider true science.

Great article about STD education. I found this link, in case anyone is infected and doesn’t know how to go about telling their partner. Hope it can offer some help!  http://getstdtested.com/std-information-booklet