Disbelief over couple’s online poll to decide whether or not to abort their baby
I dunno maybe I am a prude, but this one sickened me.
I’ll let David of Anglican Samizdat fill you in and you can find more over at Christian Today.
eChurch Blog
I am not out of my mind, most excellent Festus, but I utter words of sober truth.
November 19th, 2010 at 4:36 pm
I don’t know about this. It is possible that these are two pro-lifers drawing attention to the casual manner in which the destruction of living human beings is being treated. The fact that they have had an ultrasound and have given the baby a nickname does point to this. If they really intended to have an abortion I shouldn’t think they would have gone this far.
Interesting that the majority of votes are in favour of no abortion. I think this just shows that when people are confronted with the reality of a living baby they will not want to destroy it.
A pretty sick stunt, though, I agree, and they are probably just attention seekers, but in these days of reality TV where public humiliation passes for entertainment I can’t say I’m surprised.
November 19th, 2010 at 4:42 pm
[...] HT [...]
November 19th, 2010 at 7:58 pm
What a nasty stunt! My own feeling is if they’re sincerely this detached – and really intend to act on the results of the poll – then they’re probably not ready to be parents.
November 19th, 2010 at 10:01 pm
God forgive their cold-blooded heartlessness. I hope the baby is allowed to live and I hope he never knows his parents once considered an online poll to decide whether he should live or not.
November 19th, 2010 at 10:27 pm
This surely has to be a pro-life stunt. Has it written all over it. Will be interesting to see follow up after the ‘experiment’ is over.
Sadly the main casualty is likely to be truth. Who in their right minds would vote for the couple to have an abortion, purely on the basis of this blog, having never even met them, no matter what their stance on abortion might be?
So the vote will inevitably be to keep the baby, and this will be used as ‘evidence’ to support a pro-life agenda.
Quite a stunt, but whatever the outcome this is a very perverse thing to do, and will cause distress not to pro-choice advocates but to pro-life advocates. These people should really be ashamed.
November 19th, 2010 at 11:01 pm
This link is quite enlightening. I’m sure there are others:
http://www.ministryoftruth.me.uk/
November 20th, 2010 at 10:18 am
I can’t imagine anyone taking the site seriously. It simply screams ‘Fundie, liar and far-to-the-right -of -human-decency’.
It always seems that a faith that relies for its strength on lies and deception is weak indeed.
November 20th, 2010 at 11:11 am
@ cnocspeireag: Well said.
November 20th, 2010 at 11:13 am
@ Simian: Way to go! The Ministry of Truth link provides this further info:
“The Ministry of Truth [Me] has now found evidence linking this site to a climate change denier site ‘The Church of Global Warming‘.”
All done by tracking their Google Analytics account. Neat. A trick I’ll remember.
November 20th, 2010 at 11:17 am
Yes, I’ve started following that blog myself now…
November 20th, 2010 at 11:30 am
Hypocrisy, every time a vote is cast for a anti-abortion or pro-abortion politician the mechanics are the same only it is not one life lost or saved but hundreds of thousands.
November 20th, 2010 at 1:55 pm
“Hypocrisy, every time a vote is cast for a anti-abortion or pro-abortion politician the mechanics are the same only it is not one life lost or saved but hundreds of thousands.”
Depending if they get elected, of course.
November 20th, 2010 at 2:41 pm
I quote “Simian Says: November 19th, 2010 at 10:27 pm
This surely has to be a pro-life stunt. Has it written all over it. Will be interesting to see follow up after the ‘experiment’ is over.”
Why do you think this way. I can assure you, you know nothing about pro-lifers or you could not imagine them capable of such a thing. I recommend you go online to SPUC or RTL or HLI for a short; I am certain your unconscious crassness will smart your conscience after that. I have been pro-life for decades and never met one, or read any of their articles etc. that would justify your prejudice. If you want to talk about stunts, let’s discuss how the American media annually ignores the pro-life march in New York, always submitting figures around one tenth of the actual which can be verified from videos and from police reports. The march is huge and its participants peaceful. They do not use the f and b and c and more b’s and gestures which the small groups abusing them as they walk do use. I have been called a c word and given two fingers in Britain because I held a placard saying, Women Regret Abortion. I had abortions caused by the coil. I did not understand what was happening at the time because of my ignorance fed by my GP who told me it prevents conception. It does no such thing! It causes abortions. I was horrified because I was not anti-baby but was spacing my family hoping for more children when my husband would agree. I cannot banish feelings of regret at what might have been. Shame on you for your spiteful words towards millions of men and women you do not know.
November 22nd, 2010 at 9:53 am
@ Marcella: I can’t claim to speak for millions of men and women I do not know. However I can say that in my experience anti-abortion materials are consistently dishonest and manipulative.
The basic argument is, and forgive me for over-simplifying, that abortion is the same as infanticide. This, whether you agree or not, is a logical argument if you believe its premises.
But, this not being persuasive enough, anti-abortion campaigners typically try to strengthen their argument with untrue claims. They try to frighten women with warnings about the grave health risks of abortion. This is plain dishonest. Abortion poses significantly fewer health risks than carrying a baby to term. Carrying on with the pregnancy is a bigger risk than terminating it though, for most women, neither is a high risk activity.
The mental health risks fall on the same continuum. The most common reaction post-abortion is relief. Serious mental illness is rare after abortion, much more rare than it is post-partum. What research there is suggests the long term emotional effects of giving a baby up for adoption are nearly as bad as bereavement. This is why in many places adoptions are being arranged in very different ways, with the natural mother in close contact.
Recently we have seen prayer vigils outside clinics. Prayer is not street theatre, or should not be. To me it looks like bullying, even intimidation. It also assumes as fact things it cannot know. For a telling example of just how such protesters are perceived, see cnocspeireag’s shocking link: “What Happened When I Yelled Back at the “Christians” Calling My Wife a Murderer.”
Cnocspeireag’s link was produced during a previous debate here on US-style anti-abortion Christian protesters target Marie Stopes clinic in Britain. You might find it interesting to read some of the posts.
November 22nd, 2010 at 11:47 am
I will never agree with the statistics Sophie quotes as my sources show very different figures. No Christian I know would call a person entering a clinic a murderer, ie: shout “You murderer!” but killing an unborn child is murder so people don’t like being asked “Please don’t kill your unborn child.” It is kindness to point out a person’s wrong behaviour and Jesus did it all the time. I listened to cnocpeireag’s link. Pro-lifers asked the man and his wife not to kill their unborn child because that is what happens in abortion clinics. It appears the couple were referred to it from another clinic to remove their already dead baby, which is very sad and I understand the man’s anger. But, the pro-lifers were not to know.
To have a baby taken away just because a doctor says it is unlikely to live is wrong. I have read of cases where ultrasounds have been proven to be wrong because the babies are born normal. I find this terribly shocking! Why were these parents told insistently to abort, that the baby is abnormal and then a normal baby is born? What is going on? The latest case is in Mexico, and the parents refused. Their baby is normal! Far better to let nature take its course, then accept what God gives you with love. I believe God gives parents of “abnormal” babies the strength to cope, and they grow spiritually in holiness because of their committment to life. And whatever Sophie’s sources say, my sources show that the “relief” she writes about is inevitably temporary in all but the most hardened and promiscuous women and men.
I often hear people who hate pro-lifers say what that father said: “Why don’t you go and help mothers who need help, you hypocrites?” Well, that is very much part of the pro-life scene, thank you very much! We do offer an alternative! We do offer financial and emotional support! Always. Always. We will always guide a person in this situation to charities set up for this purpose.
The pro-lifers I know hold our placards saying things such as, “Abrtion hurts women,” or, “I regret my abortion”, and we pray. Those other pro-lifers who hold a placard that offends a person, because it shows a photographic REALITY of abortion, are simply telling the truth. The truth hurts sometimes. Why is it wrong to show an aborted baby but not wrong to dismember one in the abortion process? I will never understand anyone who accepts this act but not the showing of the act. Living babies are torn apart in a procedure we would not use on animals. It is wrong. Human sexuality has become little more than an animal act among too many people in the world and countless numbers of couples have become totally unwilling to accept the consequences of their behaviour. It is sad beyond measure.
November 22nd, 2010 at 12:49 pm
I completely forgot an incident that happened to me many years ago in my parish church. I was a beginner at pro-life activity. I had been sent some grisly photos of aborted babies and put them at the back of the church with the permission of my priest who told the parishioners that I was available to discuss them, and to enlist anyone who wanted to join the charity working against abortion. Several adult women read the cards, then with expressions of deep disgust turned away, trying to kill me with their looks. Five teenagers picked up a bunch and stood together looking at them. Their softly spoken, “Oh, my God!” and “Oh, no, my teacher says a baby of 14 weeks is just a blob of unformed tissue!” etc were an eye-opener to me. Then they asked if they could take as many as they liked. As they left, one girl said to the others, “I will never have an abortion. We have to tell all our friends the truth .” It was telling that the adults hated me for exposing it, so I guessed they had had at least one, and the girls were open and tender hearted about the life-worthiness of babies.
November 22nd, 2010 at 4:42 pm
@ Marcella: Surely you can see that frightening women with lies about abortion risks, when – if it were up to you – they’d be forced to carry their babies to term regardless of the risk is dishonest?
Anti-abortionists have failed to win the argument through the ballot box. Nor have they convinced the general public – with support for abortion over 70% even among Catholics. Activists are reduced to forcing their point across by bullying and intimidation of vulnerable individuals. This is pretty low.
Pickets outside clinics are a source of huge stress and fear for any woman for whom confidentiality is a must. Some women attending abortion clinics face death at the hands of their family if identified. The pickets may not be logging individuals, but how are the women to know? It’s already clear that such activists will exert pressure on women by whatever means they think they can get away with.
You admit you showed “grisly photos of aborted babies” to teenagers. I suppose photos of small children round the grave of their mother dead of an untreated ectopic pregnancy wouldn’t give quite the right message. It would, however, be an inevitable result if your views carried forward.
I assume the mature women reacted with disgust because they were mature and your material aroused their disgust. It seems very odd to assume that people who disagree with you must have had an abortion. I think you’ll find that most people thing showing pictures like this is a nasty, manipulative thing to do. It would be just as manipulative to show images of the converse. Pro-choice campaigners could show images of what can happen when abortion isn’t legal and that’s not pretty either. We don’t, nor do we lie about the consequences of abortion.
November 22nd, 2010 at 7:57 pm
Dear Sophie, and all who agree with her. I will respond in two or three posts as there are so many disingenous comments in your response to mine.
Firstly, live birthing in the Western world is safer than abortion, and it is not dishonest to point out the real risks of abortion. And pro-abortion clinics and counselors certainly do lie about the consequences of abortion. It is not in their interests to tell the truth and lose clients. It is a very, very big business, with mega thousands of jobs involved worldwide. There are plenty of cases on the internet now, where detectives have gone into clinics pretending to want an abortion. I believe there is a case pending regarding a clinic in the States that lied to an investigator pretending to be 14 years old with a 10 week old baby in her womb. The nurse did not do a scan, lied about the whole procedure, and did not report what would have been a suspected rape/child abuse case if the “mother” was truly pregnant.
Women do often suffer scarring internally after abortion that causes miscarriages later on when a woman decides she wants to keep a child, and they should be told that but they are not, at least they are not in Britain I understand. Iwill always try to dissuade someone I know by talking about the physical risks if they cannot be persuaded by the wrongness of the act.
You assert that showing images of abortion is manipulation. But pro-abortionist have access to the media which we do not have, and the media is not shy about bringing illegal abortion into the news when they can find it!! These cases are always trumpeted as the reason why legal abortion must be permitted as a woman’s right and discussed at the highest levels. Yet, as many mothers die in underdevoped countries during natural childbirth as die from abortions because of the squalid conditions and lack of facilities in their hospitals. I call the Western Press’s reactions pure manipulation.
I am not comfortable with showing graphic images because I am cowardly and don’t like confrontation and have not done it since the event I wrote about. I was very surprised by the reaction of those Catholic mums. But I knew them and knew that they saw nothing wrong with abortion, hence their disgust at being confronted with those four pictures did not surprise me. I take your point that I should not have assumed they have had abortions. However, they do not know I wondered if they had, and I would never have hinted such a thing. I was not judging anyone by simply having a display of pictures as I did not know in advance who would look and who would not. The ones I knew to be pro-life were encouraging.
The other eight photos were of viable babies, from a few days until 28 weeks, and one poster was the famous Michael Clancy photo of a baby sticking his hand through the cut in his mother’s womb and holding onto the sugeon’s little finger. A nurse told the photographer, “Oh, they often do that.” (The surgeon was doing an operation on the baby in the womb.” )
will continue later
November 22nd, 2010 at 8:00 pm
I have a personal story of the judgemental unkindness of pro-abortion medical staff. My son and his wife’s first baby had no arms and no legs but his brain and body appeared normal. She was treated with shocking rudeness by hospital staff after she refused an abortion and said she would let Nature take its course. My son said they would accept and love their son however disabled he would be, if he did live. They were called “irresponsible” and openly sneered at. How cruel is that? Their hearts were still hammering with shock, she was weeping, and those two horrible women and the male doctor were “awful” in my son’s word. Am I being judgemental to imagine the same team would treat a person killing their child with lots of tea and sympathy? My son’s child died at six months and again the parents were treated with contempt by the hospital staff for “waiting”. (“We told you so”, was the attitude and they were cold and unfriendly throughout.) By allowing Nature to decide the death of their baby, a couple’s grief is not made worse with remorse and it is no good protesting, Sophie, because many many women do feel remorse, instant remorse, such as I felt when I awoke after being sterilised so how much worse must it be to reject an actual baby? My sadness never leaves me because I really wanted more children. An assistant of Britney Spears is the latest to tell her story. Look it up.
November 22nd, 2010 at 8:11 pm
Me again.
Next, more women die during abortion than during live birthing. You cannot deny that. Pro-lifers would never advocate allowing a woman to die of an ectopic pregnancy; your comparision is not logical. During this misfortune, the baby has to be removed or the woman bleeds to death and the baby dies anyway. I saved a friend’s life by diagnosing what was happening to her and overcoming hers and her husband’s reluctance to accept the possibility. They were thinking she had a bad tummy bug but I just knew somehow. We lived a hundred miles from the nearest hospital (this was in Africa) so I convinced them better be safe than sorry. The surgeon told them she was probably a few minutes from death when they took her into theatre. It is nonsense to infer as you do that ectopic deaths are a natural result of policies to help the baby to live and its mother to cope . Give me proven examples of pro-life charities that support such thinking. If such exist, then they are not Catholics for sure.
Illegal abortions are no worse in the result to the child. Much play was made in Roe v Wade about the numbers of back-street abortions and the gullible public and press never stopped to think: wait a minute, by its very nature such a procedure is secret and its doctors and victims certainly never advertised what they had done so how come these huge numbers? If the Italian figures were true, (given by David Steel MP in the House of Commons) it would have meant that every female in Italy from birth to menapause had had an abortion. The lie was swallowed without questioning by the Press. I wish I still had these documents. Over the years I have thrown stuff out for lack of space , and planning not to leave too much around for my children to clear up when I am gone . Later on, the doctor most instrumental in pushing that law through in the States converted, and has written a book about how the team lied and manipulated charts and figures. I can’t remember his name at the moment, but will look it up later. They deliberately chose Stalin’s strategy: if the lie is big enough and you repeat it often enough, you will be believed. How manipulative is that?!
Last year, there were nearly 200,000 legal abortions in Britain because it is now being used as a form of “contraceptive” by people who cannot be bothered with condoms and the Pill. They want the freedom so to speak but not the results of such freedom.
I have read that the BMA’s own tables showed last year that the majority of these women aborted for social reasons. Those ‘social’ reasons vary as much at the type of woman varies. To me, they are quite simply selfish and don’t have room for babies. I have read so many stories of such women who now live with sorrow and guilt because they are childless; it is plain wrong to underplay their numbers. (Those who are pressurised by boyfriends or husbands or families have all my sympathy. I pray they will be found by pro-lifers and helped before it is too late.)
November 22nd, 2010 at 8:20 pm
P.S. I think the pro-lifers who stand on streets with graphic images are very brave. The pictures are the truth. It is hard for “the world” to accept Truth sometimes. I do also think they should not call out, and the unusual case of that distraught father shows why. What they say is correct, but they don’t actually need to say it. The pictures speak for themselves. The chance to talk will happen when someone goes over to them. Otherwise the best thing to do is focus on prayer.
November 22nd, 2010 at 8:25 pm
Oh dear, my fingers fly on the keyboard, and my brain does not alwayskeep up! The sentence below came out jumbled:
“I was very surprised by the reaction of those Catholic mums. But I knew them and knew that they saw nothing wrong with abortion, hence their disgust at being confronted with those four pictures did not surprise me.”
What I wanted to say was, “I was not surprised by the reaction of those Catholic mums. I knew them and knew they saw nothing wrong with abortion, hence their disgust at being confronted with those four pictures.”
November 22nd, 2010 at 10:12 pm
This is very long and perhaps some of you are tired of seeing my name in the discussions. I thought I would make this my very last post. With best wishes to all the sincere people, whatever side they are on in the debate. Obviously, I pray for the “opposition” to have a change of heart!
Negative Psychological Impact of Abortion Results from ‘Hard-Wiring’ in Women’s Brains: Scholars
BY LIFESITENEWS.COM
Tue Sep 21, 2010 11:15 EST
Comments (0)
By Thaddeus M. Baklinski
NEW YORK, September 21, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) – “Women are hard-wired for relationships—and a woman’s relationship to her baby is one of the most powerful of all, whether she realizes it or not. The hard-wiring of the brain may explain many women’s disturbing post-abortion feelings,” write Evelyn Birge Vitz and Paul C. Vitz in an article published in the September 20 issue of Public Discourse. Evelyn Vitz is Professor of French and Affiliated Professor of Comparative Literature at New York University. Paul C. Vitz is Professor Emeritus of Psychology at New York University and Senior Scholar at the Institute for the Psychological Sciences.
In the article the authors relate spending a semester with students studying the stories of women who shared their experiences after an abortion. The authors found that “many of these women are in acute pain; some are almost totally incapacitated” by their post-abortion feelings.
“What is particularly striking is that most of the women who have these powerful emotional reactions to their abortion are stunned by them. They were not opposed to abortion; many were actively pro-choice. They were blind-sided by their own reaction. One woman lamented—and thousands of others echo her mystified anguish—‘If this was the right decision, why do I feel so terrible?’”
Noting that “this disturbing phenomenon is so widespread, and found among women from varied backgrounds and different parts of the world,” the authors postulate that “it seems likely that the brain itself—in particular, the nature of women’s brains—may shed some particularly useful light on this unexpected negative emotional reaction.”
The authors cite research into the differences between women’s and men’s brains, especially as these differences relate to the realms of emotion, stress, and memory.”A few of these differences can make a very large difference with regard to decision-making and its emotional consequences,” the authors say, pointing out that “the part of the brain that processes emotion, generally called the limbic system, of women functions differently than that of men.”Women experience emotions largely in relation to other people: what moves women most is relationships. Females are more personal and interpersonal than men.”
On the handling of stress, the authors note that research has found that “men’s behavior under stress is generally characterized by what is called “fight or flight,” whereas women respond to stress by turning toward nurturing behavior, nicknamed “tend and befriend.”
In post-abortion stress disorder this “tend and befriend” response may manifest itself as depression and anxiety due to the lack of a focal point for the response.
“When responding to the stress of the abortion, she may well be drawn to nurturing, to ‘tending and befriending’ behavior: this is, we saw, characteristic of women. But one of the key persons she might have tended and befriended—her unborn child—she has just terminated. She therefore has no ready outlet to cope with this significant stress.”
“Add to this already toxic mix the very power of the memories involved in most unwanted pregnancies and abortion experiences,” the authors write, “such as the nausea or other physical symptoms, often exacerbated by hormonal instability and mood swings; the anxiety over the unwanted pregnancy; the drama of the pregnancy test; often, the difficulty of making the decision, then the waiting before the abortion can take place; perhaps protesters in front of the clinic; the abortion clinic waiting room, crowded perhaps with other emotional women and men; the abortion itself—the doctors and nurses, the stirrups, the vacuum or other machinery—then the recovery room; the pain and bleeding afterward.”All these dramatic experiences are likely to provide her with indelible memories. A woman may return to them and relive them over and over.”
The authors conclude that “though a woman can decide rationally to have an abortion … a terrible and shocking reaction sets in after their abortion. Often what lasts is not the relief or the power of the logical arguments: these may prove very short-lived. It is, rather, the failed, betrayed relationship between the woman and her fetus—now, in her mind, her dead baby—that has staying power.”
The authors call for a greater honesty from the medical profession toward women contemplating abortion “to prevent at least some women from having to experience this painful surprise.”
“Women need to be told the truth. They need to be prepared for what may be the consequences of this major life decision. This is what informed choice means.”
November 22nd, 2010 at 10:57 pm
Oooh, I feel Godwin’s law hovering over my head – can I dismiss it? No, I must invoke it! They did not know about the people in trains heading towards the gas chambers. They did not want to know, they did not find out. They kept their heads down, or looked the other way. Photographs would have forced them to face up to what was happening, and they wouldn’t have wanted that.
See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil, eh, Sophie? Don’t look at nasty pictures of tiny body parts ripped apart and then you can pretend it doesn’t happen.
Marcella, keep up the good work. We will win. Eventually we will win. Sophie is not telling the truth when she says we are not damaged by abortion. Women are damanged, the whole of humanity is damaged. A society which cannot care for its most vulnerable – the elderly, the sick, the unborn – is in deep, deep trouble.
I once thought that no Christian could possibly condone abortion. How wrong I was! God forgive us!
November 23rd, 2010 at 10:46 am
@ Jill: How might you expect a woman who has had repeated miscarriages and desperately wants a baby to react to such images? Because those hugely blown-up pictures could just as well be of the products of miscarriage, which is very common.
God doesn’t appear to be pro-life, though we do better than many other animals in terms of how many conceptions make it to adulthood. As Jim posted during a previous debate:
“…approximately 1 in 4 pregnancies end in miscarriage; and some estimates are as high as 1 in 3. If you include loss that occurs before a positive pregnancy test, some estimate that 40% of all conceptions result in loss.”
November 23rd, 2010 at 11:14 am
Sophie, you are in crying need of education on abortion procedures. I will not describe them here, but do read the horrifying details, especially those which take place during the second and third trimesters. They bear absolutely no resemblance to the products of a miscarriage, I can assure you.
The SPUC is a good site, not gratuitously graphic, but enough to show the horrors of this evil trade.
http://www.spuc.org.uk/ethics/abortion/abortion-images
November 23rd, 2010 at 1:07 pm
@ Marcella: The Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists advises there is “no causal association between an induced abortion for an unwanted pregnancy and future psychiatric illness or self-harm. In the cases where psychiatric illness is detected, this is a result of a pre-existing psychological condition.”
The source and design of research is critically important. The paper you quote was neither peer-reviewed nor rigorously designed. The authors simply studied anecdotal evidence found on the internet. The authors had no means – nor did they try – to ascertain whether any of these anecdotes were even true. The flaws in such a study are so obvious as to not need listing, and its findings are scientifically meaningless.
Furthermore the magazine in which the paper was published, Public Discourse, is not a scientific journal. It’s the mouthpiece of the Witherspoon Institute, which describes itself as “an independent research center that works to enhance public understanding of the moral foundations of free and democratic societies.” The Witherspoon Institute promotes republican and conservative religious views, taking an anti-abortion/anti-gay stance.
November 23rd, 2010 at 1:25 pm
@ Jill: As a sister-in-law underwent a very late abortion, on the cusp of legality, because of chromosomal defects incompatible with life, I don’t think I need educating. And I wonder where you get the idea that a spontaneous abortion can never resemble a medical one.
Anti-abortionists seem incredulous that people can know what happens during abortion and still be pro-choice. But we self-evidently are, and we hold these views for ethical reasons that are as convincing to us as yours are to you.
Maternal mortality from illegal abortion is just one of the reasons many are pro-choice. Photos of the results would be even more emotive than the ones on the SPUC site, but pro-choice activists tend to leave the shock horror tactics to the other side.
November 23rd, 2010 at 1:32 pm
Here’s a link to a Guardian article
“Shock tactics: Anti-abortion campaigners are being allowed into schools to present their arguments to teenagers, and are making converts. But what about the facts?”
Campaigners “stand accused of presenting information that is at best questionable and at worst incorrect. Spuc, for example, tells teenagers there are links between abortion and breast cancer, although organisations such as Cancer Research UK and Breakthrough Breast Cancer have consistently presented research to prove there is no link. The Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RCOG) categorically states that abortion is not associated with an increase in breast-cancer risk. Life says it tells pupils that, although abortion is becoming safer, there are studies that have shown an increased risk of infertility. The RCOG states that there are no proven associations.”
Same old, same old. Lies and misinformation.
November 23rd, 2010 at 1:36 pm
Read this,Sophie. It refutes just about everything you say.
http://www.epm.org/resources/2010/Jan/6/does-abortion-harm-womans-physical-and-mental-heal/
Basic biology alone must tell you that abusing the human body in any way is going to have damaging repercussions. This applies to a number of areas, not just abortion, and Christian teaching backs this up. Denying it is just a waste of time, and a waste of countless lives.
November 23rd, 2010 at 1:57 pm
@ Jill: I prefer data from reputable medical sources; the BMA, the RCOG or the RCPsych, for example. Randy Alcorn isn’t really in the same league…
November 23rd, 2010 at 9:48 pm
I’ve been preoccupied with deadlines the past few days so just catching up with this…
Well, I was surprised by Marcella’s immediate reaction to my first post. I speak from personal experience of well meaning but sadly misguided stunts. Time will tell whether my theory is correct (not long now…) If I am proved correct I find myself wondering what will be Marcella’s reaction?
If you take a look at the website now you’ll note that it has already degenerated into sick farce, as the voting has been totally hijacked by hackers, whilst the authors still say they will stand by their word and that they can work out which are honest votes.
Surely this whole thing is at best naive and at worst malevolent? I cannot for the life of me foresee a “good” outcome, whatever they decide. What will be the outcome? A few more people who have become yet more cynical and uncaring about real life? A few more people who have had their darker and deeply unpleasant fantasies indulged? A few more people who believe without real justification that their views one way or the other are vindicated?
I do hope and pray that this is indeed just a stunt. The alternative is far more scary as an indictment on human nature.
Let’s see what the authors of that awful website have to say for themselves after the event…
November 24th, 2010 at 9:46 am
This just in:
Christian Post – ‘Birth or Not’ Couple Never Intended to Have Abortion
November 24th, 2010 at 9:57 pm
@ Marcella
Would you like to comment on this revelation, in the light of your reaction to my initial post ?
November 25th, 2010 at 2:35 pm
From The Christian Post:
“Pete Arnold told CNN that he bought the “BirthorNot” website domain name before his wife Alisha was pregnant to spark debate. He conceded that they never meant to have an abortion.”
As I wrote at the outset “in my experience anti-abortion materials are consistently dishonest and manipulative.” It’s sad.