The hypocrisy of the “Family Values” party.
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Currently, it doesn’t even come close. We don’t take care of our own, and we think it’s a virtue that we don’t. As in, there’s supposed to be some strength of character in being able to pull yourself up by your bootstraps, when in reality nobody has ever had to do that completely because everybody benefits from society to an extent. Too many people believe this bullshit about bootstraps, and they don’t stop to consider that in every case where they’ve pulled themselves up by their bootstraps, they were only able to do so because they were coming from a position of privilege.
What you are describing (and what I was describing) is Social Democracy. Pretty standard practice all over the developed world, but considered anathema here because soshulizm iz evul. Socialism has been demonized for over a hundred years now, and by now we automatically assume everything left of the Democratic Party is in line with the former USSR. The Democratic Party is behind this, make no mistake. This is also very deliberate, as it keeps us from wanting to make progress and even keeps us from understanding what progress is.
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Oh, I know all about Social Democracy. My politics are radicially Left, but unlike some of my peers, I have manners and I’m willing to compromise with people left of center. Centrists and people to the right can eat hot shit.
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What really pisses me off is when someone says “Science tells us that it’s a human being at conception,” or “abortion stops a beating heart,” or some such bullshit. Science doesn’t tell us anything of the sort. If anything, science shows a gradual development of a baby from zygote to birth. Even conception itself is a long process, IIRC. It’s up to a society to decide what’s right and wrong in terminating a pregnancy. And since we are so strongly split in this country (though far less than the anti-choice people would have you think), the only solution is to let each person decide according to her beliefs and in consultation with her doctor.
It’s interesting how rarely the argument “but a soul appears at conception!” is used anymore, since that would show how religion plays a part. That would be more difficult to justify imposing on another person (or at least used to be). Now bogus “science” is used.
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Yes, this. When I did my Navy IDC training in the 80’s, when abortions were “discouraged”, we did many D&Cs for “endometriosis” or “irregular bleeding.” But there’s a regulation about that now, according to my sources.
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You’re right. Some of them are just too dumb to realize their position is nonsense. My bad to lump them in with hateful, anti-woman bigots.
Edit:
Interestingly, most of the most vigorous lifers I know left the Catholic church because they didn’t like being told their IVF treatments involved abortion, as the church defines a soul as appearing at conception.
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Related:
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In my experience, it’s neither lack of empathy nor respect for unborn life.
Get 'em drunk and talking, and the anti-abortion sorts will usually eventually admit that it is about using forced pregnancy as a deterrent and punishment for women who have unauthorised sex.
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I took prenatal yoga classes. Many of the women in it were older, because in the career oriented DC area many women put off pregnancy while they focused on their jobs. I heard a lot of sad stories about fertility treatments.
I befriended another lady (we are still Facebook friends), who is Catholic. She had her daughter through IVF. She had chosen, for personal reasons, to be implanted with all 7 embryos. She had to sign a waiver. It was a calculated risk. She knew the exact viability of each embryo. There were two that took. One baby died. When she gave birth to her daughter, she was taken to a more private location so she could also deliver the dead twin.
I know it’s easy to demonize people who believe differently. She is lovely and true to her beliefs. I do understand the belief that life is sacred, and fragile, and out of our control. I couldn’t have done what she did.
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If a forced birther isn’t handing out condoms and the pill they can fuck right off.
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Even better than “anti-choice.” I agree with your statement.
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She’s not true to her beliefs. She purposely created 7 embryos she knew wouldn’t all survive. According to the Catholic Church, that’s abortion.
I don’t think pointing out that a hypocrite is a hypocrite is demonzing them. I don’t think it’s too much to ask that I get the same medical privacy that she got in making her reproductive choices.
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I don’t think she created them so they wouldn’t survive. One of them did survive. Her name is Katie. 
I think she chose to give them all a shot, knowing that she was taking a slight risk at one of those wacky multiple births that could compromise her own health.
I don’t think too many people make their individual health choices based on what would be best for everyone else in that situation.
I agree that she and others who are pro-life benefit from the choice. My neighbor as well; she had a choice. She, I think, really weighed the choice and saw it differently. I don’t know if either of them considered how it changed their moral calculations that it was their choice and not forced on them.
All I’m saying is that people who are pro-life aren’t all horrible people. Some are. Some are people pro-choice supporters can talk to, and I think there are people in there who could change their minds.
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And according to her religion, that’s abortion. I’m not here to argue the motives of a person I never met. I’m just pointing out that the actions she took are inconsistent with the beliefs she claims to hold.
She’s pro-life. She wants to take the choices she freely exercised from other women. You might think it’s not horrible to condemn other women to die in child birth, have babies they don’t want, or to carry inviable fetuses to term. It’s hard to imagine a good person doing something so horrible. So we might as well leave the discussion here.
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My view is that if someone really wanted to prevent abortions they’d do everything in their power to keep women from getting unwanted pregnancies in the first place. That means easy access to birth control and sex ed classes when kids are young. This is not happening so my only conclusion is that saving the babies is flat out not their intent. It’s an attempt to exert power over a group they feel they should hold power over: Women.
That’s for the leaders of these movements, at least. I see the rank and file as just being their useful idiots.
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Damn right!
Um yeah, that doesn’t compute:
http://rcav.org/catechism-teaching-on-ivf/
2377 Techniques involving only the married couple (homologous artificial insemination and fertilization) are perhaps less reprehensible, yet remain morally unacceptable.
Either she’s a hypocrite, or she doesn’t know or care what her own Church teaches about family planning. Probably a little of both.
People think that Catholics must love babies because they’re against abortion and birth control, but that’s not the case. The Catholic Church is also against IVF, artificial insemination, surrogacy, sperm donation, and anything else where there are factors other than a husband and a wife involved. Even if IVF were perfected to the point where there were no selective abortions, the Church would still be against it.
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Fun fact: I never received Christmas gifts from my old school French Catholic Grandma, as I was not a real child, being adopted rather than made from my parents union. I got to watch all the other actual grandkids open gifts. They seemed happy.
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I believe the term is “cafeteria Catholic”. The majority of Catholics in North America use birth control, for example. Human beings have an amazing ability to gloss over the religious or cultural rules that they find personally inconvenient (witness the original subject of this thread). For the most part I say it’s their own choice and they can deal with the self-contradiction any way they like. My admirably laissez-faire attitude comes to an end when the same people insist that everyone else must abide by the letter of their rules.
For someone like the POS congressman, who doesn’t even believe the rules he would like to impose, there needs to be a stronger word than hypocrite.
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