Put your money where your mouth is.
More specifically, make a useful contribution to the problem rather than what pro-life folks are mostly doing now. (Trying to shut down access to abortion clinics that really only affects the poor, and for some select activist, also harassing women on potentially one of the worst days of their lives.)
For all those that consider that it is a full fledged human life during the first months that 99+% of all abortions occur, (in the first 24 weeks,) and there is indeed a lot of people that feel that abortion is murder. All these people that feel the need to enforce their opinion on pregnant women, as well as the very rich religious organizations, there is a lot of money and power.
Billions of dollars could be channeled into reducing the number of weeks until a baby is viable through medical science, and billions more could be spent giving access to this high end medical procedure to all women instead of just the rich. Billions will be spent for the care and raising of all the unwanted children. These people can also continue (and will probably need to expand) their process to adopt unwanted children.
Yes it will be very expensive, yes it will require a lot of sacrifice on the part of pro-lifers (especially in raising others unwanted children yourselves,) but as so many pro-life people say every human life is precious and murder is always wrong. Instead of pro lifers trying to force their opinion on others, help fix it.
With billions spent on medical research, and the removal of some red tape that frequently is sourced from religious pressure, It is likely within a decade the age of viability could be reduced to 15 weeks, and within a few decades after that, down to 1 week or less. Then it is simply a matter of ensuring all women have access to this medical miracle technology. To people that feel abortion is murder, they can greatly reduce and then altogether stop the "murder" of millions of "humans" every year.
What is the pro-life crowd waiting for? Or do they only want to enforce their opinion on others, but if their opinion is going to cost them lots of money they make a hasty exit, and end the conversation of a solution that would work for everyone?
Pro life folks: put up, or shut up, stop being a part of the problem, stop being hypocritical. You say every human life is priceless, act on it!
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Yep, you are reinforcing the questions that I asked Breezy and JoC..I do not expect an answer
"If the mother loses control of her body at the moment of conception who takes control?"
.If anyone want the rights to a blastocyst, embryo, fetus then society collectively must asume lifelong responsibility for it and for the host
And who would decide the future of the mother and embryo/child? A committee? The rapist? The ex boyfriend? Their parents?. Sounds very Sharia Council of Elders doesn't it...?
I know the Catholic priesthood would welcome a steady supply of vulnerable children but is that the way you want it pro lifers?
I agree Logic for TW, it would cost billions but then we could just levy the churches that oppose abortion, I am sure they would welcome the chance to support their decisions.
Watch them flip in a week when their income is threatened.
No "thoughts and prayers, no return to the "homes for unwed mothers" definitely not "marry the rapist" or stone the poor woman.
Put up or shut up 'pro lifers'
On the planet Xylum in the M89 Galaxy the humanoid life form harvests all of the females eggs at puberty and then fertilizes them and implants them into artificial wombs until gestation is complete. The babies are then assigned to villages where they are raised and the process is then repeated.
I think they are all Tleilaxu.
"If anyone want the rights to a blastocyst, embryo, fetus then society collectively must asume lifelong responsibility for it and for the host"
How did you come to this conclusion?
Most societies already do this in some way or form. Maternity leaves, Tax breaks for couples with children. Say the woman doesn't want the child? The woman can still put the child up for adoption and that child will still have a chance to have a family.
"And who would decide the future of the mother and embryo/child?"
- Uhhhh. The mother of course. But in no case should any of the options be, "kill the child". You see where I'm going with this?
@ JoC
"Most societies already do this in some way or form. Maternity leaves, Tax breaks for couples with children."
Don't be absurd Joc anywhere that practices sharia law will stone the fornicator/raped/non virgin to death exactly as prescribed in your bible. This is aborting the potential child, disposing of the problem host and avoiding any charges against a man. *Or they make the offending rapist/suitor/relation marry the poor woman and abuse her for another so many long years.
In Western Civilization right up until the 70's , in the Republic of Ireland they are digging up the corpses of hundreds of once viable foetuses, embryos and actual term babies from the gardens of "homes for unmarried women" run by Catholic Nuns. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/mar/07/catholic-church-ch...
Have you not read the news about the vile Catholic priestly network that has existed for many many years preying on those unwanted, unloved and vulnerable children?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_Church_sex_abuse_cases_by_country
That is what your co religionists do to children. For centuries your religion has done this. You have forced poor and disadvantaged women to take unsafe methods of abortion, to deny a priest was the biological father of multiple children and all sorts of terrible stories because of the Catholic Religion. Never mind the other bastards.
Have you not read an heard the heartrending stories of the "stolen children" separated from birth mother and her children 'sold ' for donations to the adoption agency/religious orphanage/care center all over the world?
All these abuses have declined since we belatedly in the (so despised by theists) Western World gave women at least some control back over their bodies.
Do some reading of these survivors stories and the police records, you should vomit up your breakfast before delivering another apologetic like your last.
It is and was a religious based holocaust visited on the innocents. The "babies" you bleat about but don't want anything to do with.
'Thoughts and prayers' don't cut through the Catholic Churches mass murder and abuse of innocents.
*Line addedat edit.
Why are you bringing up religion at all in this discussion? Being pro-life does not equate to religious. See secularprolife.org. They're atheists who are pro-life.
As to the cases you've mentioned. That's true and it is regrettable. I won't make excuses for these people. The church, however, has never taught that abortion or sex abuse or killing innocent people is right or morally acceptable. The Didache (though not in the Bible; an early church document for sure) has even stated that abortion is wrong. The people in the church may do/have done/continue to do some abhorrent things and that's a reality I'm very much aware of.
But if we start invalidating belief systems based on what practitioners do and their actions, we can't believe in anything. Not even atheism.
@ JoC
"But if we start invalidating belief systems based on what practitioners do and their actions, we can't believe in anything"
Well well, you got that right.Welcome to the 'dark ' side.
As I have said elsewhere the problem that 'practitioners' have is that one and all have an "interpretation" of the word that gives them permission to practise such obscene acts.
Also remember at the time "Catholic Ireland and Catholic France" were very much a reality and nothing else permitted unless you emigrated. In other words they made the rules according to their faith and killed an tortured young girls, babies for the good of the soul. No amount of weasel words gets away from that one.
A god is either powerless or cruel and vindictive to allow torture of the innocent and vulnerable.
You went on to say
. "Not even atheism." How many times do you have to read, "Atheism is not a belief, it is the absence of belief in a god or gods." Please write it out 50 times ( there will be a test) before commenting like this.
Lastly, of course there are pro life atheists, atheists reflect the broad community without the belief in any deity to back up their opinions. What they do not do is call on a series of ancient texts from unprovable sources to start their argument.
(Edited for clarity)
Fine lets base the arguments on scientific facts, and rational reasoning what is immoral about a woman terminating a pregnancy when it is an insentient blastocyst that can't feel pain, or experience emotion, and will not suffer the termination in any meaningful way?
Why is it moral for your deity to torture a newborn baby to death over 7 days in the bible, because it was angered that it was conceived in an adulterous affair, but terminating a blastocyst is greeted with unexplained and unjustified histrionics?
Now we have covered both demographics.
@JoC: if we start invalidating belief systems based on what practitioners do and their actions, we can't believe in anything. Not even atheism.
And yet one of the first arguments that religionists use against atheism is to blame us for the crimes of so-called atheist leaders, such as Hitler, Stalin, and Mao. Unlike your church, there's no global organization of atheists and no book of atheist scripture, so I'm not sure why I'm supposed to feel responsible for the actions of others who may or may not have been atheists.
But your church is a different case. Communion means becoming part of a family, doesn't it? There must be some collective responsibility involved once you've eaten the cracker.
And tell me this, how high can corruption rise in an organization before the whole organization becomes corrupt? I think there must have been some quite high-level involvement in the Magdalene Laundries, for example. The Mother Teresa fraud also goes right to the top. They even made the evil hag a saint, perhaps in acknowledgment of all the money she brought into the Vatican Bank.
Have I blamed you for Hitler, Stalin or Mao? From the conversations/debates I've heard on this issue, a theist will usually bring up those three when the atheist asserts that when religion is widespread, the society becomes more immoral.
About corruption - good point you've raised. And usually corrupt organizations don't last that long. Most governments are corrupt to their core, should the people leave the country? No. They should opt to reform the government/organization from within. That's why the church has lasted this long (around 2000 years).
About Mother Teresa...
That's a whole topic we could go on and on about. It's quite the classic case of not understanding the context in which she was placed in. Tell me though, what's the one thing (of multiple things, I'm assuming) that you really dislike about Mother Teresa that you call her an evil hag?
@JoC: what's the one thing
I don't recall whether you've played the Hitler/Stalin/Mao card. I can assure you that it's an opening gambit for most theists when they realize they're talking to an atheist.
Mother Teresa: Millions in donations, much of which was looted by people like the Duvaliers and Robert Maxwell. Not a cent for analgesics or palliative care for people dying in agony. At the same time, she opted for modern heart surgery, including a pacemaker, for herself.
I don't recall using it myself. I may have used Hitler. Maybe not Stalin or Mao. I've heard it used before but always in response to, "Christians have done this evil thing."
On Mother Teresa:
The point of her mission was never to be a hospital. She saw poor people dying on the streets of Calcutta and decided to make a home where during their last days (at the very least) they would die being cared for. Also, to give people who were ostracized by the community a place to call home. People with HIV were also accepted. Treatment was a bonus but being a hospital her homes were not.
In fact, the Missionaries of Charity in my city has the name, "Home for the dying and destitute". It doesn't claim to be a hospital. Just a place where the lowest of lows can be treated with some dignity.
@JoC: die being cared for
Can you imagine what terminal cancer without painkillers is like? Pain relief should be the first bit of dignity you provide to someone in that state. It's not that expensive, either, especially for someone as rich as Mother Teresa. If you were in agony with a terminal disease, I bet you'd want more "care" than a cuddle from an old nun with a pain fetish.
@Algebe Re: To JoC - " If you were in agony with a terminal disease, I bet you'd want more "care" than a cuddle from an old nun with a pain fetish."
Nah. Not ol' JoC. He is too hardcore for pain killers. I imagine he would want to suffer just like his beloved Jesus. Matter of fact, he would probably even ask that he be randomly cut and poked with sharp objects every few hours just to increase his suffering. After all, the more he suffers, the closer he might get to the front row of heaven (or something like that). Didn't Mommy T. say suffering was good for the soul?
As rich as Mother Teresa? Where are you getting this info? True, she may have received millions of dollars in donations but you expect her to spend a bunch of that on the operating expenses of her homes of the dying. Remember, they were taking care of people whom noone else would take of. Not even doctors or their families. I say putting a roof over their head and a bed to lie down on would be the first bit of dignity to provide someone in any state.
I realize it's very easy to criticize people for not doing enough. I get that. Can you at least look at what she actually did do for the people who needed her help?
https://rvaidya2000.com/2015/11/19/where-are-the-billions-of-mother-tere...
I've seen several articles from India questioning where all the money went. It came from people like the Duvaliers of Haiti, Robert Maxwell, the British publisher who disappeared after cleaning out his employees' pension funds, and Charles Keating, who cost millions their life savings through shonky bank dealings.
According to a book by Gianluigi Nuzzi, Mother Teresa was the biggest depositor in the Vatican Bank and helped to keep it solvent.
https://www.rt.com/news/409393-mother-teresa-bank-account/
The amounts concerned would have made a huge difference to the lives of people in India. Just as important, if you received a gift from someone, for however good a purpose, but later found out it was stolen or extorted, what would you do, as a Christian? As an atheist with subjective morality, I'd return it to the rightful owners.
@Algebe Re: "... if you received a gift from someone, for however good a purpose, but later found out it was stolen or extorted, what would you do..."
Wow! Funny you should ask that. I actually had to deal with an incident like that several years ago, and it involved a very good friend of mine at the time.
Returned home from an Iraq deployment, and a good buddy of mine who had deployed with me (I'll call him Joe) was staying with me because we were still on orders and having to go to work at the armory for a period of time, and he lived a long way from it. So, my birthday comes around, and he gets me a gift. I opened it and it was an I-Pod ( a really nice one, too). This was back when they were very popular and very expensive. When I asked him about it (I was concerned about the price), he told me he got it used (and fairly cheap) from a friend who had upgraded. I was a happy man, as I am a really big music lover and had a helluva music collection just waiting to be downloaded onto the little device. Cool!
Fast forward a couple of months. We were finally off orders, and Joe had returned home. While at a regular drill one weekend, I was talking with another buddy (I'll call him Bill) who had deployed with me and Joe, and the subject of my new I-Pod came up. I was bragging about how happy I was with it, and that Joe had given it to me for my birthday. At that point, Bill mentioned something about how there had been a bunch of electronic devices stolen from the armory storage area during the time just before my birthday, and that he had heard Joe and another guy talking about how they were planning on taking some of those devices for themselves. Naturally, at that point, alarm bells started going off in my head. Plus, I felt like I had just been kicked in the gut. At that point, I dropped what I was doing right there on the spot, and I told my section sergeant I had to go see the company commander. Long story short, the I-Pod I had been given as a gift turned out to be one of the many items stolen from the armory. I gladly returned the I-Pod to the armory (I didn't even want to LOOK at it at that point), and I had to write up a sworn statement against my buddy about it. I WAS NOT A HAPPY PERSON. Matter of fact, that incident actually troubled me for a very long time. I trusted Joe like a brother. Literally trusted him with my life many times in Iraq. While staying with me, he practically became part of my family and attended family gatherings and such with me. I have not seen him nor heard from him since then. Oddly enough, I still miss him a bit sometimes even now if I happen to think about him. And I still feel a tiny twang of guilt sometimes about having to turn him in like that. But I refuse to keep something given to me if I discover it to be stolen or gotten by illicit means. If it is not rightfully mine, then I do not want it. But I suppose Christians can just pray about it and ask forgiveness, and that will make it all better and easier for them to keep it.
Have you checked the authenticity of these records? The first link is a blog with some quotes which seem to be hearsay. The second one simply talks about a book. I'll have to look into it. Thanks, though.
I reiterate again that millions may have gone to her order. I say, so? There are some charitable institutions whom you expect to have a proper accounting of all the expenses. Some, however, lack the resources to produce even that. Many saints in the RCC are good people but not good administrators. Of course Mother Teresa wasn't perfect. No one said she was. But she did all she could in her power to help the poor. Could a bunch of this money have been stolen? Maybe. But that would count against Mother Teresa's management skills, something that the church doesn't recognize when canonizing saints.
Another famous saint who wasn't the best administrator? St. Francis of Assisi. Why do you think there are more than 80 orders under the "Franciscan Order:
While I'm 99% confident you are not serious (based on your other "investiagtions"), just in case you are:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/275627314_Les_cotes_tenebreux_d...
Putting children in conditions that increase the spread of disease actually makes the situation worse, not better. (Unless you are trying to get a high conversion per death per dollar employed ratio).
She never submitted a set of accounts, ever. Hundreds of millions even by conservative estimates disappeared into her sticky hands and were never seen again. There are multiple testimonies from people within her organisation at all levels that none of it was spent on the poor in her care. They died in agony without even basic palliative care, and in absolute squalor. Often killed by the insanitary conditions and practices she produced, despite having massive funding at her disposal to make a real difference.
" Remember, they were taking care of people whom noone else would take of. "
No she wasn't, that's the point, she was using them as a means to an end. The glorification of her image and the order she started, and the money was either spent on convents to glorify the image she had of herself, or simply disappeared into the vast deep coffers of the already obscenely wealthy RCC.
"Not even doctors or their families."
There are doctors working without any agenda, but they have no money, and the families are also poor, hence can't help. The thanks they get for curing some of the poor is to see the RCC lie and pretend they were cured by a "miracle" from a saint, it's sickening.
" I say putting a roof over their head and a bed to lie down on would be the first bit of dignity to provide someone in any state."
That depends on the motive, and again it's simply untrue to claim no one was or is doing this.
"I realize it's very easy to criticize people for not doing enough. I get that. Can you at least look at what she actually did do for the people who needed her help?"
You're not listening JoC, she was motivated by religious bigotry and thought poverty was a good thing, as it brought the poor closer to Jesus through their suffering. please don't dishonestly distort the criticism if her actions as "not doing enough". This implies she tried and failed, she never even tried, she had massive sums that could ironically have made a real difference, but never intended the money she raised to relieve the suffering of the poor, or tackle poverty, she wanted both, and believed it was essential to bring them to Jesus. There was worse than that, where people of different faiths desperate for help, having been left to die in agony and squalor, were posthumously converted to Catholicism by her and the people working under her, without the knowledge or consent of their grieving relatives.
I now it's difficult for you to question these things, but you really need to look at the facts here with an open mind, and ignore the nonsense and the glitz the church has weaved around her image. To be honest I don't think this is possible for you or any Catholic who accepts the church's edicts, and her beatification and sainthood. There are people from within her organisation who were so appalled by what they saw compared to the public image they spoke out, but the RCC is very good at deflecting criticism, and the faithful are not very good at looking critically and objectively at their church.
Please then, tell me the true story of Mother Teresa. You seem to just love saying I'm wrong.
[EDIT: added a link which if good listening]
https://www.catholic.com/audio/caf/85
"About Mother Teresa...
That's a whole topic we could go on and on about. It's quite the classic case of not understanding the context in which she was placed in. Tell me though, what's the one thing (of multiple things, I'm assuming) that you really dislike about Mother Teresa that you call her an evil hag?"
She was a sadistic bigot, who fell in love with the fantasy image she had of herself.
Good talk. Glad you gave me a lot of details and evidence to back up that claim.
"Good talk. Glad you gave me a lot of details and evidence to back up that claim."
As opposed to your meticulously researched and evidence post I was responding to you mean? Come off it, how often can you tout this double standard before we all give up and just respond in kind. Wheezy has already exhausted that approach. However I'll play along for now...
https://medium.com/@KittyWenham/mother-teresas-sainthood-is-a-fraud-just...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Mother_Teresa
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2015/02/25/why-to-many...
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/1562284/Mother-Teresa-miracle-...
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/27/world/asia/mother-teresa-critic.html
"However, when we examine Mother Teresa’s actual deeds, practices, and beliefs — as well as consider the darker confessions of credible witnesses who saw what happened once the television cameras were turned off and press conferences were finished, a much more disturbing portrait emerges. One former nun who worked closely with her organization described the Missionaries of Charity as a “cult of suffering.” Were she alive today, Mother Teresa probably wouldn’t deny this accusation. Human suffering was indeed a virtue, she believed. Her words are a matter of record. "
http://www.nolandalla.com/was-mother-theresa-a-saint-or-a-fraud/
http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/mother-teresa-wasnt-a-saintly-person...
Now maybe you can show some objective evidence for any miracle used to justify the claim she was a saint?
Alegebe; One clarification; Hitler was not an atheist. See this
https://coelsblog.wordpress.com/2011/11/08/nazi-racial-ideology-was-reli...
@Aperez241:
He was far from atheist. He was raised a Catholic. But he's one of the classic atheist monsters that theists trot out to blame atheists for mega-death in the 20th century. Pol Pot is another. Many of these monsters had religious upbringings. And their crimes were fueled by racism, paranoia, and madness, but not atheism.
The one thing Hitler never claimed to be was an atheist. I mean who is stupid enough to think antisemitism is motivated by atheism?
Stalin wasn't an atheist either:
http://freethoughtpedia.com/wiki/Was_Stalin_an_atheist%3F#Argument:_Stal...
I have to admit I'm dubious about that, but he was definitely trained at a seminary. Another incontrovertible fact is that he claimed to have structured his secret police on the Catholic order of the Jesuits. There seems little doubt that Stalinism itself became a religion for some, to replace the cult of the Tsar's divine validation of his power.
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