Even though there is no way to justify the direct and intentional killing, the murder, of an innocent human being—particularly if said innocent human being is also a tiny defenseless helpless guiltless innocent preborn human being—that doesn’t stop countless numbers of people from trying to do exactly that. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had this conversation with somebody I’ve just met, somebody who has gone out of his or her way to start a conversation with me in a book store or coffee shop, or yell at me from across the street, or badger me on the sidewalk, or even run his car in front of me to within inches of my unprotected body, all in an effort to dissuade me of what I know to be true, and what they must know to be true, too, in their heart of hearts. That direct intentional and deliberate abortion is murder and that murder is wrong, reprehensible and evil. And cannot, never can be and never has been justified. Not ever. Never. Period.
But since most of the people who present these “arguments” seem never to have given them much serious thought, I thought I would re-present their positions here, in an effort to show how truly ridiculous and lacking in logic and even just good old not-so-common sense these ideas are.
Here goes. The top three reasons people give when they try to justify abortion when they talk to me.
1. The parents can’t afford to feed and take care of the baby.
Let me get this straight: the parents can’t afford to feed and take care of the baby, so the answer is to…kill the baby. Um, nope. I can’t accept that. Murder is not the answer. Ever hear of adoption?
2. Adoption is out. The parents couldn’t bear to part with the baby.
Let me get this one straight: Adoption is out because the parents can’t bear the pain it would cause them to part with the baby, so the answer is to… kill the baby. Nope! Sorry, wrong again. I can’t accept this. Murder is NOT the answer.
3. The parents weren’t ready to be parents.
And once again, let me see if I understand: the parents weren’t ready to be parents, yet they did the deed that often results in the creation of a new life, but they weren’t really ready, like, they didn’t really mean to become parents, so this should be a do-over or they should be able to go back and start over, and the answer is to…kill the baby. NO, I am shocked that people do not get this! The answer is still no. Murder is still NOT the answer!
Let’s see if I can put it in a way that the most die-hard liberal would understand. If I have a dog and I can barely afford to feed myself and things are getting really hard, or if I’m not even poor but I’d rather spend my money elsewhere, and I choose to solve my dilemma, which may or may not be a real dilemma, but I choose to solve my dilemma by killing my dog, is there a person reading this who would not be horrified?
And yet some of these same people would not blink an eye if I said I was going to abort my child?!
And for the next example: I have a dog but I have been transferred to another city by my employer and I really love my job, or I don’t love my job but I love my paycheck, but I can’t take my dog with me to the new apartment which I went out and picked—please notice that these are all decisions that I have made, actions that I have taken upon myself to take, not situations forced upon me by my dog—and I decide that the answer to my dilemma is to…kill my dog. Again, is there anyone out there who would agree with that notion? Is there anyone out there who would not call the authorities to complain about the dog killer in the neighborhood?
And if you think it’s okay for me to kill my dog because I can’t bear to leave him behind, is there anyone sitting next to you, reading over your shoulder who is beginning to eye you rather warily? Because I sure would!
And now for the last example: If I decide that I’m not really ready to be a dog-owner, and I decide that the best way for me to deal with my dilemma (or rather, to deal with the consequences of my earlier action in going out and getting a dog or in accepting one that came to me by whatever way in which he did come to me) is to…kill the dog, then there is something terribly, terribly, awfully, horribly wrong with my value system, and maybe something a whole lot wrong with me besides! It may be that my heart and mind and soul are in a state of near-death and I may need emergency assistance to keep me from going right over the edge into the abyss!
Now consider this: If you wouldn’t do some action to a dog, and you wouldn’t want anyone else to do that same action to a dog, and if you would try to stop them or at least think very badly of them for ever afterward, then tell me, pray tell me please, why in the name of all that is decent and logical would you do the same or allow the same action to be done to a human of any age, particularly a tiny human who hasn’t done anything to anybody at any time whatsoever ever to deserve such a thing, as if anybody could deserve such a thing?!
Catholic Heart and Mind 
God bless you Disciple on your pro-life stance!
How would you respond when asked by a pro-choicer, ‘have you adopted or why don’t adopt all of the children in orphanages?’
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I have been asked that many times by pro-choicers and it always amazes me. Do they care about anyone or any issue? Does one have to solve every problem at once instead of trying to do what one can? Does not solving every problem at once (because one is quite unable to do so) mean that one cannot try to do anything at all, shouldn’t do anything at all, doesn’t care about anything at all because one hasn’t solved all problems at once? The question is frequent but also patently absurd. It is an attempt to silence the one being questioned. It is a shameful attempt by those who are or should be filled with shame to shame someone whose stance is not shameful in the least. It is an attempt to bully someone into submissive silence. It has never worked on me and I pray that it never will.
I am adopted. I thank GOD that my birth mother had the heart and love and compassion to put me up for adoption and give me a chance at a good life. I thank GOD that my adoptive parents, the only parents I have every known, adopted me and gave me more opportunities for a good life. And I pray that the pro-life work I do–whether speaking or writing or praying or standing on the sidewalk outside an abortion mill–will make a difference in someone’s life and possibly prevent someone’s death. If that is all I can do, it is not nothing and is more than some do.
I cannot do everything, I cannot save everyone, maybe I can’t even save anyone. But my Lord can and I am here to do His will, in whatever small way I can. Lord knows I am the lowest of the low, not a saint, not very wise, small of brain and weak, oh, so weak. But I will do what I can with His grace, and with His grace, may it be enough.
Thank you for reading and commenting, Ceci. Peace be with you and yours always. GOd bless you. :)
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You lied about what I wrote.
If you can’t tell the truth about what I wrote when you are commenting to me, how on earth can you be expected to be believed on any other topic?
We are failing to have a discussion because you are a liar, and will not admit that you lied.
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Nope, you still don’t get it. One day you may. What I wrote is there on the page for anyone and everyone to see. I have not covered it up, I have not removed it, I have not removed your insults, or any of your other ill-considered and ill-tempered remarks. I leave it to other readers to decide what they think about any of it.
Your argument had and still has nothing to do with what I am talking about. Apparently, logic is a method that does not suit you. Apparently, you have not bothered to read any of the other posts to which I pointed. Apparently, your mind is made up and no amount of fact or truth will have any effect on it. You will have to answer before God for your life, I will have to answer for mine. I pray that you are awakened gently to the truth before it is too late.
There is nothing you can say or that anyone else can say that can every justify abortion. End of discussion, attempted discussion, unattempted discussion, argument, whatever you want or don’t want to call it.
Abortion is murder. Those who commit abortion are murderers. Those who condone abortion are condoning murder. And that is that. The rest is commentary.
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You are not reading what I am writing.
You wrote “So killing a cat was painful. But the thought of killing a [fetus], not so much” – which I kindly decided to presume was because you had not read the blog post in which I say exactly the opposite. But you admitted you had read it, and you admit you read the specific line in which I say exactly the opposite. You are a shameless and unapologetic liar. I can’t see how to continue a discussion with you on that basis.
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What discussion? There is no discussion. There is nothing to discuss. Abortion is murder. No discussion will change that. I am not discussing anything with you. I am stating facts. l am saddened that instead of responding to what I have written, you can only respond with name-calling and insults. I assume that is because you know you are wrong and don’t want to admit it.
I read what you wrote. It has nothing to do with what I wrote. I didn’t use an example of having to decide about euthanasia on an animal. I used an example about deciding to kill an animal for decidedly less “noble” reasons. If you would actually read my posts instead of lashing out at what you expect or imagine me to have written, we might actually be able to have a discussion. As it is, no discussion has taken place.
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I did read that line to which you refer.
So when you wrote that I was claiming having a late-term abortion was less painful a choice than having to kill a cat, you were actually, actively lying, because you knew I had said the exact reverse?
In that case, I don’t know what to say to you: you are a shameless liar.
But I apologize for the personal ad hom about your lack of courage compared to clinic staff.
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You are not reading what I am writing. Or at least, if you are, you don’t show it by your comments. Really, I don’t understand why you are reading what I am saying or why you are bothering to comment. Surely you do not expect that I will change my mind and turn my back on what I know to be true and embrace the lies which you have embraced. I bear you no ill will, but I do not agree with you. As long as you hold your present stance, I never will.
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I did read it. I did read that line to which you refer. You still are not reading what I wrote. You are not responding to it. You apparently did not read the other post to which I directed you. Or the Abortioneers site where you can read about abortionists who admit they are killing humans, that babies and fetuses are humans and that they are proud of what they do.
Fetus does not mean “non-human” or “non-person”. It means, “little one” and is a Latin term, not a cold biological term for something that is not human.
I have read and responded. I will not comment on your blog. I made my comment here. I stand by it. I am not being cold. I am being real. My heart aches for you, for having to kill your cat. For having so little insight while deceiving yourself that you do. I cannot sugarcoat this reality without doing you a disservice. I cannot make these evil ideas sound better than they are without lying.
Abortion is the deliberate and intentional killing, the murder, of the most innocent human being that can exist.
Abortion is M U R D E R.
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If I have a dog and I can barely afford to feed myself and things are getting really hard, or if I’m not even poor but I’d rather spend my money elsewhere, and I choose to solve my dilemma, which may or may not be a real dilemma, but I choose to solve my dilemma by killing my dog, is there a person reading this who would not be horrified?
Let me share with you an actual decision I really did have to make, a few years ago: The day I killed. A cat, not a dog…
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So killing a cat was painful. But the thought of killing a baby, not so much. Just pretend the baby is not a baby, then everything is ok. Nope, sorry, not buying it. Killing a pet is painful. Killing a human is murder. I have held animals as they died. I have not chosen to have one put to sleep. I have held them in my arms and told them if they were ready to go that it was all right, that I understood. They went peacefully. It was painful, it hurt. It is not the same thing at all as what I am talking about, either about abortion or in the circumstances I used in my arguments following my arguments about abortion. Reading what I actually wrote would be helpful. Responding to what I actually wrote would be helpful.
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So killing a cat was painful. But the thought of killing a baby, not so much.
I wish you had actually read my post and were responding to it, because I do acknowledge, when writing about how painful the decision was to have my cat killed, that it doesn’t compare to the decision a woman in late pregnancy discovering her much-wanted fetus will not live, or will have only a very short and very painful life, if she elects to give birth.
The point of my story was: sometimes a responsible person is placed in a position where there are no good choices left, but there is still a decision to be made. To argue that because that person may not make the choice you make they must therefore not care and not find the choice painful, shows a truly appalling lack of empathy and insight.
Please, do try reading my post on my blog and responding to what I wrote there.
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I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had this conversation – a ll in an effort to dissuade me of what I know to be true, and what they must know to be true, too, in their heart of hearts: that forcing a woman through pregnancy and childbirth against her will is a crime against human rights.
Denial of access to safe, legal abortion is the cause of death for about 70,000 women each year.
Pro-lifers in the US have killed nine people in pursuit of their cause to deny access to safe abortion: have committed arson, butyric acid attacks, anthrax threats, and other terrorist threats on healthcare clinics.
No one commits or supports this kind of evil campaign against doctors, nurses, and patients, without knowing they’re doing something vile and wrong.
Saving women’s lives, supporting women’s human rights, is the right thing to do.
Attacking life, health, and justice, is always evil – and inventing a pretended concern for fetuses won’t take away the evil.
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I do not agree with you. I think you have decided that abortion is all right, even a good, even a right. And that you will not listen. I believe you have been in these conversations. I do not believe you have heard.
I will continue to pray for you. But I will continue to speak out against the murder of innocent beings, as I have when pro-abortionists have been killed. Btw, a pro-life person does not murder, if he murders, he is not pro-life. If he murders, he is something else. He is pro-death, not pro-life.
You can say what you like, but I am pro-life and abortion is evil, murder of any sort is evil, and I know it, no sleight of hand or wordy argument can ever make it right.
I’m sorry your heart is so hard.
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I think you have decided that abortion is all right, even a good, even a right.
Yes: I have decided that a woman’s body belongs to herself, and it’s up to her, and to no one else, to make all decisions concerning herself, her body, her health, her life.
I know that not all conceptions can be continued till birth. So does everyone, who has any kind of serious, informed opinion.
It follows, necessarily, that some pregnancies have to be terminated. Who gets to decide? Only the pregnant woman can, unless someone else is to be allowed to enslave or force her.
I’m sorry for your hard heart, but kind of used to it: I don’t think anyone can be a pro-lifer, a supporter of a terrorist movement against healthcare and against women, without being a person who has no empathy or kindness in them for other human beings: who thinks it right to enslave and force others.
Btw, a pro-life person does not murder
Tell that to the families of the doctors, nurses, and other clinic staff and volunteers, who have been murdered by pro-lifers.
Tell that to the staff of health clinics who work in fear because pro-lifers send letter bombs, commit arson attacks, and otherwise threaten with violence and destruction people who work to provide legal and necessary healthcare.
I doubt you would have the moral courage to be able to walk into a healthcare clinic past a mob of howling pro-lifers, knowing that if your security slips up, at home, at work, at church, it could mean your death at the hands of a pro-lifer determined that women shall be enslaved, not free.
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It seems you have forgotten the negative effects that abortion has had on women themselves! But let us grant you that women might somehow benefit from abortion in some way. Even if this was somehow beneficial, the problem is that you have begged the question in assuming that fetuses are not persons. You can’t simply imply that we are “pretending” to be concerned for fetuses, for we believe that life starts at conception. To simply state as brute fact that we are either pretending or that we are wrong is to beg the question, a logical fallacy.
Second, you used an argumentum ad hominem in attempting to show that pro-lifers are somehow inherently evil. This does nothing to the actual argument. I would agree in saying pro-life groups should not commit violence, but to accuse pro-lifers of being violent is not to address the debate or their points but to engage in an ad-hominem attack on pro-lifers. Therefore, I must conclude that these points you have brought up have both been logical fallacies.
Finally, let us no more grant that abortion is somehow beneficial to women and think about some things:
1. Some women are harmed by abortion physically
2. Many women are harmed emotionally by abortion
3. Abortion is actually helping to exterminate women in some countries, as people choose to abort girls and keep boys (see China’s 1 child law or India’s beliefs and the ever-growing imbalance of genders)
So, I am forced to conclude that all of your arguments are either fallacious (see the first two points) or misinformed.
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Hi, JW. That was some analysis you did there. That is helpful. What will also be helpful is for us to keep everyone in prayers who is attached to this idea that for them to have their rights to certain lifestyle choices that they must somehow deprive someone else of the right to live. And that it is legitimate to do so. Note that I said legitimate, not legal. Not everything legal is legitimate.
In this country it was once legal to treat black people as if they were non-humans, non-persons. Now it is legal to treat babies as non-humans, non-persons. And if folks like Peter Singer have their way, babies up to the age of 2 years old will also be treated as non-humans, non-persons. And people with so-called impairments and disabilities.
This is a very real battle with far-reaching consequences. That is what I can’t get a lot of people to realize. Thank God, some people have listened to me and to others writing and talking about this. But so many are too attached to their supposed freedoms and rights to realize that those very freedoms and rights will vanish into thin air if this thinking and this legislation continues to develop in this direction.
God help us all if that happens.
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It seems you have forgotten the negative effects that abortion has had on women themselves!
Pro-lifers have invented an imaginary syndrome, not recognized by any medical authority, claiming that there is an actual health risk to having an abortion. Is this what you mean?
Even so: the position is the same for any lover of human rights. Even were pro-lifers right in identifying this “post abortion syndrome”, which no research substantiates, the fact remains: it would be the patient’s right to decide. A late-term abortion can be a risky operation – it’s why no doctor will agree to perform it unless the risks of continuing the pregnancy are higher to the woman than the risks of terminating. It’s the still the woman’s right to decide, no one else’s.
the problem is that you have begged the question in assuming that fetuses are not persons.
No, I have not.
It makes no difference to my position, that women are human beings and may not have their human rights abrogated, whether or not you consider a fetus to be a human person.
If you need a liver, and will die without one, or kidney, or even a pint of blood, you are not allowed to force that from someone else. Not your own child, not your own parent, not your spouse. The use of living human organs, even to save another person’s life, is rightly restricted – in every civilised country in the world – to the choice of the living human being whose body would be used.
The sole exception to this rule, in countries where laws ban legal abortion, is the uterus – the only organ men do not share with women, and the only organ which men have made rules and laws and customs declaring women have no right to decide how to use her living body.
Pro-life arguments that a fetus is a human being and therefore abortion can’t be allowed rest on a single unexamined assumptions: that women are not human, and therefore the fetus’s human rights trump the woman’s rights.
But this is not so. No one’s human rights can be abrogated. A woman’s body is her own: she alone has the moral, ethical, and in fully civilised countries the legal right to make decisions with regard to any use of her living organs.
Second, you used an argumentum ad hominem in attempting to show that pro-lifers are somehow inherently evil.
Well, I think pro-life is an inherently evil choice, because it reduces women to a sub-human state – to be regarded as slaves, animals, and incubators. To decide that women shall not have full human rights because once a woman’s uterus holds a fertilised egg she must have no choice but to be used as an incubator, forced to labor for nine months to make egg into baby, is to reduce women to the status of incubators and slaves. To argue further, as some pro-lifers do, that a raped women shouldn’t be allowed emergency contraception or access to abortion or healthcare if she gets an illegal abortion, is to reduce women to the status of breeding animals. These are inherently evil positions to hold: and the dehumanisation of other human beings unsurprisingly leads to violence, both against the human beings so dehumanized and the people – the clinic staff, the clinic volunteers – who treat women as human beings.
I concede, however, that the personal ad hom against Disciple, asserting that Disciple wouldn’t have the courage to do what a doctor or a nurse in a health clinic that provides abortions does, or what a patient who comes there for care does – walk past a howling mob of pro-lifers yelling insults and threats, knowing that this kind of mob has committed murder, arson, and other violence in the past and will again.
Further, the pro-life movement in the US is thoroughly bound up with right-wing anti-family policies denying women and children welfare help and healthcare, working mothers denied maternity leave and breastfeeding support, and is thoroughly tied up with the pro-abortion position that women should not have access to contraception, even emergency contraception after rape.
All of this speaks to the inherent evil of the pro-life movement, regardless of whether individual pro-lifers have committed crimes even as minor as joining a mob outside a clinic to put the patients and the staff in fear.
1. Some women are harmed by abortion physically
Far more women are harmed by pregnancy and childbirth. 70,000 women a year die in illegal abortions. 150,000 women a year die in childbirth. The standard result, as we’ve seen in Romania and in South America, when a country makes abortion illegal, is that maternal morbidity and mortality figures rise. The proper course of action with any medical procedure is for the patient – the pregnant woman – to decide what the right thing is for her to do, with the neutral advice of her doctor to give her the facts.
2. Many women are harmed emotionally by abortion
So pro-lifers claim: but (a) they ignore the fact that forced pregnancy harms women emotionally, demonstrably far more than abortion (b) the plain fact is, it’s not for anyone but the woman involved to decide what she should do – she’s the best one able to decide what will harm her least.
3. Abortion is actually helping to exterminate women in some countries, as people choose to abort girls and keep boys (see China’s 1 child law or India’s beliefs and the ever-growing imbalance of genders)
Forced abortion is exactly as wrong as forced pregnancy: forcing a woman to give birth against her will because she is a woman and you believe her to be subhuman, is exactly as wrong and for the same reasons as forcing a woman to have an abortion because the fetus is a girl. Support a woman’s right to choose in all countries – as I do.
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Pretending that there is no legitimacy to the pro-life cause is hardly the way to proceed rationally and logically in your argument, Jesurgislac. Most pro-aborts who are honest and up on their facts gave up this tactic already. Please do read up and inform yourself as to the truth of what you defend. It’s a shame to waste so much energy on the tactics on the battlefield of yesterday when the battle has moved far down the field ahead of you.
Abortion is not just about a woman’s right to use her body as she sees fit. So many abortions are forced, however, that it is hard to ignore, though some manage to do just that.
But abortion is also about the body inside the woman’s body, the little person who is growing away, fully and innocently expecting one day to be born and be held by the woman whose voice she has heard so many times, to be loved by the woman whose heartbeat is the music by which she lives. The child in the womb is a child, which is why we say, “I am with child.” The child in the womb is not part of the woman’s body. The child in the womb is somebody else, separate DNA, separate blood type, separate heartbeat, separate brainwaves. The child in the womb is small but not less of a person.
This is not hard to see. Some find it hard to admit. Especially if they have had abortions or have helped others to do so. I helped a friend get an abortion by paying for it and driving her to the clinic and waiting for her to take her home. That was the worst thing I could do for my friend and we aren’t friends any more. Abortion opened an abyss between us 30 years ago that has not closed even a little in all that time. Not because I hold anything against her, but I suspect that she holds my “helping” her against me. I have never preached against abortion to her, I have never had the opportunity, nor would I do so. But I do acknowledge my guilt. I was wrong. Horribly wrong. I helped to kill another human being.
A few years later I would have a miscarriage. The doctor accused me of trying to abort the baby myself. Anyone who knows me knows that I would never hurt a baby, I don’t even like to kill bugs and will go to great lengths not to. I surely would not hurt a baby, at any stage of her growth.
The one abortion that I helped a friend obtain was the only abortion I have had anything to do with. And I work now to help others see the truth.
I certainly don’t believe in forced anything. I don’t believe in forced abortions or forced pregnancies. But I have more knowledge of forced abortions than forced pregnancies. I think that both of these problems stem from seeing women as objects to be used by men, and that women often feel that they have no choice, no freedom and that is why they end up pregnant, that is why they end up tempted to abort.
Both of these situations are horrible. Neither situation justifies abortion. Both situations justify the proper treatment of women and babies.
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I never referred to any syndrome. I was rather referring to my points 1-3. Thus, your comment is a straw man fallacy.
You have begged the question, or if you have not, then surely your idea of human rights needs some kind of outlining.
Let us say that a fetus is a person. How then can we justifiably kill a person because of the choice of another person?
But you are assuming the fetus is not a person and using that to trump anything else.
“Pro-life arguments that a fetus is a human being and therefore abortion can’t be allowed rest on a single unexamined assumptions: that women are not human, and therefore the fetus’s human rights trump the woman’s rights.”
What? I never claimed that. Rather I would be saying that a right to life is greater than a life to choose to end a life (assuming the fetus is a person).
But unless you want to claim that someone’s choice is a valid basis for ending lives, then you have indeed begged the question in favor of your position.
Further, it doesn’t matter whether or not you believe that pro-life is an evil position. You have still launched an ad hominem by simply calling it evil rather than addressing any specific issue.
“Far more women are harmed by pregnancy and childbirth. ”
If this is your justification for being pro-choice I must indeed question it. For if this is a valid reason to take such a stance, we should say that no woman should have children ever, for pregnancy/childbirth is more harmful than abortion.
“So pro-lifers claim: but (a) they ignore the fact that forced pregnancy harms women emotionally, demonstrably far more than abortion…”
As neither one have us has presented any kind of real data yet, I think this may just degrade into mudslinging.
“Forced abortion is exactly as wrong as forced pregnancy: forcing a woman to give birth against her will because she is a woman and you believe her to be subhuman, is exactly as wrong and for the same reasons as forcing a woman to have an abortion because the fetus is a girl.”
Yet another straw man fallacy. I didn’t argue that we were forcing any births, only that abortion has encouraged selection of children based no gender, which is ironically (and horribly) destroying women.
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Pro-lifers killed 9 abortionists? I imagine the murder of innocent unborn children, ripping them apart without even a pain med, is pretty violent. Don’t call it women’s health, call it what it is, the death of a child. Pro-lifers don’t want to see the by-products of this procedure – tiny hands, feet and organs chopped to pieces. Reality offends them so they pretend it’s about women’s health.
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Greetings, Kim. I think you meant to say that pro-choicers are the ones offended by reality and so pretend that abortion is about women’s health. Though I certainly don’t enjoy seeing photos of abortions either. The commenter making the accusations about pro-lifers has some pretty strange ideas but, alas, ideas that are shared by many in the pro-choice alternate universe. All we can do is keep speaking the truth and keep praying for their conversions. And vote all pro-abortion politicians out of office.
Thanks for reading and commenting, Kim. Peace be with you. :)
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AMEN!
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Hi, Betty. :)
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