What "Pro-Life" means
Alabama has given us all a window into the mind of a modern Republican.
These are Republican values in 2019.
The government of Alabama just decided that providing an abortion to a 12-year-old girl who was raped by her father is a more serious crime than raping a 12-year-old girl.On Wednesday, Governor Kay Ivey enacted the most restrictive abortion ban in the United States. Under its provisions, performing an abortion on someone who has been pregnant for more than six weeks is a Class A felony, carrying a minimum sentence of ten years in prison, no matter how said person became pregnant. Statutory rape and incest, meanwhile, remain Class C felonies — carrying a minimum prison sentence of just over one year.
77 percent of voters nationwide felt abortion should be legal in cases of rape and incest during the first trimester of pregnancy. Alabama felt it was their duty to not give in to the wishes of the vast majority of the citizens of the country and 2/3rd of their state.
Texas considered going even further, but backed off at the last moment.
Anti-choice politicians are pushing a bill that would allow women who obtain abortion care to be given the death penalty.
Seriously. We're not joking. This is not okay. https://t.co/Qq23QvDfEJ
— NAF (@NatAbortionFed) April 10, 2019
“if it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.”
- Senate nominee Todd Akin
It's OK for Alabama because they are doing it out of a deep love of life.
The very next day those very same lovers of life put a man to death.
But for Ivey, the bill is not political but metaphysical, “a powerful testament to Alabamians’ deeply held belief that every life is precious and that every life is a sacred gift from God.”
That was Wednesday. The very next day, on Thursday, the State of Alabama—of which Ivey, whose stated ideology is pro-life, is the chief executive—was scheduled to execute Michael Brandon Samra, a convicted murderer who confessed to slitting the throat of two young girls in 1997, a heinous and appalling act.There was only one person on Earth with the power to save Samra’s life—a sacred gift from God—or keep him in prison for the rest of his days to ponder the meaning of his act. That person was Kay Ivey, the pro-life governor of Alabama. According to the Associated Press, on Thursday, Ivey rejected an appeal “for mercy.”
I'm sure that Samra is a real piece of sh*t, but I thought that "every life is a sacred gift from God".
Maybe that's only on Wednesdays, because generally people are alive until they are executed.
It's difficult to find exact numbers for the pro-life/pro-death crowd, but I did find a couple old studies to give you some idea about these people.
Employing the three most extreme cases of anti-abortion opinion (fetal defect, rape, and maternal health), Johnson and Tamney classified respondents as "inconsistent" if they opposed abortion under any one of these three extreme circumstances and also supported the death penalty...Their findings revealed that those with such seemingly inconsistent views tended to be members of fundamentalist Protestant denominations who held strict dogmatic beliefs. Such persons are concerned about young people's sexual morality and believe in the use of physical force to solve problems (perhaps more strongly than they believe in "preserving life").
...Claggett and Shafer (1991), whose findings are most relevant to the present study, identified the anti-abortion and pro-death penalty respondents as "just desserts"...Employing this scheme, Claggett and Shafer found that 35 per- cent of the general public fall into the just deserts category. Whites and "low Protestants," or born-agains, are more likely than others to belong to this group.
Digging into the data, we find that the vast majority of the pro-life crowd are also pro-death.
Among 182 respondents opposed to abortion even in a case of fetal defect, nearly 70 percent support the death penalty. Among those who oppose abortion even when the pregnancy is the result of rape, 65.2 percent favor capital punishment. Among those who oppose abortion even when maternal health is threatened, 64.6 percent favor capital punishment. In short, the majority of those who oppose abortion even in these extreme cases also support capital punishment.
I would describe them as such:
These people are big on making dramatic judgements of people and small on sympathy.
They are the ones to cast the first stone.
While I don't have any newer studies, you can still see a similar trend in the polls.
If you compare states that have the death penalty with states that restrict abortion, you’ll see the same pattern. Of the 33 states that restrict public funding of abortion, 27 permit capital punishment. Of the 17 states that don’t restrict abortion funding, 12 don’t permit capital punishment. And of the 39 executions carried out last year, 38 occurred in states that have banned “partial-birth” or second-trimester abortions.
Comments
Too bad George Carlin is dead.
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AvF1Q3UidWM]
Modern education is little more than toeing the line for the capitalist pigs.
Guerrilla Liberalism won't liberate the US or the world from the iron fist of capital.
I would have mentioned
the pro-life/pro-war connection, but that data is even harder to find.
I won't even comment.
It would just be me beating my head against a wall and full of profanity. What's the point? Americans are simply too stupid to grasp reality or science or quite frankly even simple decency and respect. If I could leave this shithole I would. And one fine day these rwnj assholes are going to be personally effected and watch them blame all of us who don't feel the need to shove our nose into someone else's extremely personal decisions get blamed for it. Idiot America. USA USA USA!!!
Only a fool lets someone else tell him who his enemy is. Assata Shakur
The notion that there will be Republicans in 20119
is just plain depressing.
Then again, if there are Republicans in 20119, that might indicate that their forebears finally recognized that Climate Change was a serious issue, and that stuff needed to be done, pronto.
/s
As to life, Republicans generally are against it, whether human or otherwise.
Not that Democrats are much better, all things considered.
(Edited)
Gëzuar!!
from a reasonably stable genius.
Hey if a woman has sex....
then she should have to accept the consequences. This is what happens when people become adults don't you know?
Can't afford to have a kid now? You should have thought about that before you had sex.
Can't afford to have another kid? Then find a job that will support you and your family.
Condom broke? Then it's gawd's will for you to become pregnant.
Incest or rape? Become pregnant? Well why not look at it like something good happening after a horrible event? One congress critter actually said that.
I have seen people saying every one of these things on my local news website. Of course many people who are against abortion are also against universal health care and social programs that help people less fortunate than they are. This especially goes for republicans. But then they are pro military and pro death penalty. How this works in their minds is that our military is a force for good and the death penalty is because if people don't want to die then they shouldn't have done the crime. Oh to be able to live in a black and white world like so many people do. This goes for people who get shot by cops. "Do what they tell you to do and you won't get murdered." No matter how many stories come out showing people doing that. But what about the times when cops don't say a word and just unload their guns? We can ask Tamir Rice about that. Right?
And you just know
that after they outlaw choice, they'll go after birth control, because really, if you prevent pregnancy contraceptives are really abortifacients.
I think the opposite
I think that moderate Republican voters will be horrified when they actually get what they've been voting for
You mean anti-tax misers.
republicans because of the money. "Oh my daughter! Oh my ducats!"
I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.
I am reminded what Karen Hughes said.
This from Karen Hughes (Bush republican):
Communication lessons from the election
Just utterly mind-boggling these laws. This is not only a religious war on women, but also a class war given that the women to suffer the most will be women from the working classes.
I am still trying to understand
why state legislatures are passing laws that effectively outlaw abortion when the Supreme Court had already ruled abortions to be legal. Further, this article published in the LA Times seems to indicate that the Supreme Court would be unwilling to overturn Roe versus Wade.
One more thing that puzzles me. Where is the medical profession's stance on this issue of state legislatures regulating the practice of medicine? Abortion is a medical procedure. There is nothing to mandate that a doctor must perform an abortion so why is there a mandate that a doctor cannot perform an abortion?
Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy
I wouldn't count on it
I believe the last time the SCOTUS ruled on abortion restrictions it was a 5-4 decision.
Yes, precedent gets overturned (see Separate But Equal).
They are strictly preparing the right kinds of cases
...to be heard by the new conservative Supreme Court. Those who have legal complaints will be forced into specific areas of legal theory that the Court has shown a willingness to hear. Thus Roe could be struck down because it violates a different set of rights. In other words the laws are designed to force lawsuits. Or, so I've read.
What I can't understand is what is to gain by reducing women's social status to that of livestock.
More dead soldires, more cheap labor.
That's what it all comes down to, all in the name of capital. Sure, they might talk about the 'sanctity of life', but really it's about the sanctity of profit. Well, that and the fact that this is all part of the continued rollback of capitalist concessions that's taken place for the last 50 years. Too bad no one in mainstream politics or economics has the balls to mention this out loud.
Modern education is little more than toeing the line for the capitalist pigs.
Guerrilla Liberalism won't liberate the US or the world from the iron fist of capital.
Gotta keep those prisons full too.
Only a fool lets someone else tell him who his enemy is. Assata Shakur
I think they have a woody for anything that afflicts
the afflicted. I think turning up the stress level increases the number of desperate workers willing to work for a bowl of gruel. A comfortable, healthy, well fed, well educated populace just doesn't recognize that it's god-given place is groveling at the feet of the wealthy.
So increasing the number of injured and PTSD afflicted soldiers while underfunding their treatment works just fine for them. Forcing ill-equipped children to become parents before they are ready while shredding social safety nets is great fun for them. Love the fetus, hate the child ya know.
As regards the "pro-life" term:
Let's Call the Pro-Lifers What They Are: Pro-Death
Women die because of anti-abortion law.
The ruling classes need an extra party to make the rest of us feel as if we participate in democracy. That's what the Democrats are for. They make the US more durable than the Soviet Union was.
What it could be
D.R. 2012
The girl died, and so did the fetus.
Argentina 2018
This is not only forced birth
but forced pregnancy or pregnancy against her will. It says that women's lives aren't really that important after all if after being raped they are forced to have the child even if it ruins their lives. This event will traumatize that poor girl. What type of life will she have after this? Maybe drugs, alcohol or suicide. No man should have any say over a woman's decision.
But even if Roe stays intact there has been lots of damage done by states. Some have passed laws saying that doctors have to have admitting privileges at hospitals and some won't give it to them. No abortions can be done then. Plus laws that say women have to wait 3 days after making their decision. This means taking more time off work or having to stay longer in cities where it's being done. Or finding child care for days. Or having to have invasive ultrasounds which costs money that they might not have. Lots of ways to make it more difficult to get one.
Many of the laws being made are nuisance laws
...that make it difficult or impossible for a woman to resist being forced into enduring a pregnancy and giving birth. This reduces her rights to that of livestock. She has the legal status of a bitch in a puppy mill. But I think you hit upon the most important point here:
The key point is that there are more important lives than that of a woman.
Eventually, that theory will be extended. Most women will survive a forced birth, where her body is used by the State as livestock — but the trauma and physical damage has been done. The mental damage is incalculable. She has an irreparably damaged life, and she carries the physical marks of being used like an animal.
This is about defining the value of a human life that is currently being lived.
Accepting that this is a State's declaration of the value of certain human lives — I can guarantee that these same States are pro capital punishment. The enforcement of this law will be carried out with that in mind. This, then, opens the door to a broad new dystopia. We have here a legal theory that could condone forced organ harvesting, for example, and forced organ donations. This legal theory can tolerate certain lives being forced into rapid medical experimentation and, ultimately, people sacrificed for any number of social benefits.
That Rubicon would be crossed through the use of prisoners. An aggravated DUI could cost a kidney, plus jail time. We are almost there; laws like this are how we arrive. The US culture was built on a foundation of human slavery and complete genocide — and this seems like a perfectly natural and unsurprising evolution toward human sacrifices and sacrifices of humanity, which may be demanded by the State as a potential good.
What is important for the resistance is to use the discipline of framing. The issue must be discussed with explicit words of intellectually honesty. Euphanisms of these words must be corrected and honest-outcome words imposed on public discussions at every turn. Rhetoric like I have used matters when dealing with an already indoctrinated people.
Overt, blatant, flagrant 13th AND 14th Amendment violation
grotesquely and cynically abused to "protect" the "rights" of the not-yet-born while stripping them from ALL LIVING WOMEN.
Why is no one crying this aloud to the heavens?
There is no justice. There can be no peace.
@TheOtherMaven What they try to
What they try to argue is that a fetus is not a person (out of one side of their mouths) so the mother can not be slave to the fetus. Then out of the other side of their mouths they scream the fetus is a human being whose life needs to be saved.
Forced organ donation
Was the theme of Larry Niven’s short story The Jigsaw Man. He wrote quite a few stories about organlegging and social stratification (e.g., A Gift From Earth).
We can’t save the world by playing by the rules, because the rules have to be changed.
- Greta Thunberg
@gjohnsit Two fresh souls for
Two fresh souls for heaven. Well since the Church decided unbaptized babies don't go to limbo after all...
" In the beginning, the universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry, and is generally considered to have been a bad move. -- Douglas Adams, The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy "
This country's death rates for pregnant women is
going up. Especially for black women who often have more problems during pregnancy than whites. The lifespan of Americans is going down not up for the first time since...can't remember, but for a long gawd damn time. Suicide is going up too because people are being stressed to the max. Everything but wages are going up here and instead of congress doing something to help they are making it worse. Wonder how many people are still trying to dig out from the government shutdown? Late fees. Disconnect fees. Repossessed cars and houses. Government contracted workers didn't get any back pay because of Trump. Congress tried getting it included in the legislation paying back government workers, but not them. Why'd he do that? Because he could.
This government has declared war on its citizens. This is plainly obvious isn't it? From deregulation of the EPA and other agencies, the tax bill that saw many people having to pay more this year. To rescinding lots of items that could be claimed as a tax right off.... to Trump's next budget that guts just about everything that helps us. The water keeps getting warmer and still we sit.
The US has the highest maternal death rate
...of all 40 developed nations.
The US also has the highest rate of infant mortality.
Of course, other developed nations have universal health care. We pay with the lives of women and children for not endowing the human right of life, through health care, on the American people.
Pro Life actually means
Forced Birth.
As simple as that.
Gawd's punishment for engaging
in s-e-x without benefit of marriage.
the little things you can do are more valuable than the giant things you can't! - @thanatokephaloides. On Twitter @wink1radio. (-2.1) All about building progressive media.
Here in Alabama
I can say folks are brainwashed by their church, community, and public sentiment. It reminds me of the civil rights movement. We were blind then (and now) too.
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yHnKeajhoIw]
(10 min)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XIpfCVt2eb4 (8 min)
Alabama .... where waist are wide and minds are narrow.
Don't forget to set your watch back 50 years.
“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”
This will get people to vote for democrats
Pro-life doesn't mean what you think it means.
n/t
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981
yes, up is down, life is death and murder is giving birth
US being governed by 'death cultists'? Where does that lead to? Mass suicide?
https://www.euronews.com/live
Let's go
full on SPARTAN!
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981
I guess it depends.
Are little brown people being bombed, born or terminated?
Regardless of the path in life I chose, I realize it's always forward, never straight.
We should jack up the child support
payments and demand Daddies pay for health insurance and day care.
See the ensuing clash between Jesus and Capitalism.
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981
"Most rapes are consensual rapes"
What the ever lovin f'ck? This asswipe needs to look up the definition of rape.
Women always want it,
even with a knife at their throat or gun to their heart or their darling grandpa crawls into their bed to comfort them during the storm.
We women are all Eve with an apple in hand.
If not for a woman, we would all be in Eden.
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981
The moron soaked in oxy
At this point, the stupidity is baffling.
Gëzuar!!
from a reasonably stable genius.
and now:
missouri, as well.
The Great Abortionist In The Sky
I have pointed out, in many debates with "pro-life" people, that an estimated two-thirds to three-quarters of all inseminated eggs in females are naturally aborted in the first days and weeks of "pregnancy", generally without the woman even knowing she was pregnant.
Who is responsible for these abortions? Well, that's the system set up by God, if in fact you believe in God and presume to be God's interpreter on Earth. Who else would be responsible? That means that the way that God had planned life, you know, during the six days that he was working, made abortion, miscarriages and other cancellations of pregnancy a natural (that is, God's Plan) for handling pregnancy. God is the Great Abortionist In The Sky.
There is nothing in the Bible that mentions abortion and its sinfulness. If God had intended for abortion to be considered killing, then the governor of Alabama is going to hell. That is, if you believe in God and hell. Or Hell.
But in reality, each person who believes in a god or gods carries his belief in his head, and though it might be inferred what "God" is in each human mind, each person, even people sitting next to each other in the same pew, have a different view of what "God" is. This person might think "God" lets killing in war slide a little, that person might think that cops who shoot people in the street, if they have a pure heart, get a pass. Walking by a homeless person in the middle of winter is okay because you're not responsible for that person, and he or she might not freeze to death.
However, logic never wins. Pro-lifers just shake their heads, walk away, and I'm guessing fifteen minutes later they're back to the same old sh!t.
anti-abortion violence in the US:
from wikipedia categories:
murders
Attempted murder, assault, and kidnapping
Arson, bombing, and property crime
Anthrax threats
'The song "Get Your Gunn" from Marilyn Manson's 1994 album Portrait of an American Family is about the killing of David Gunn' (yeah, it's raw)
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=phjXoYqYE2U]