gadgetlady

No, I didn't assume the worst about your DIL and son. I assumed they had medical complications that weren't related to drugs. It seemed like you didn't really care one way or the other.

I was just reading this to my dh and I said, "I wonder how a person gets to a place where they're so pro-abortion that reading about aborted babies who survive the procedure doesn't affect them." Its guidelines say that babies aborted after more than 21 weeks and six days of gestation should have their hearts stopped by an injection of potassium chloride before being delivered. So that way you you don't get all that pesky crying when they survive.

It's just priceless that the term "botched" here means "failure to kill". It appears you would have preferred that they kill your grandchildren? "Abort and 'start over'" -- isn't that just a perfect description for a scenario where we view human beings as disposable? If we didn't make a good dinner, we can just toss it and start over. If we didn't wallpaper the room right, we can just tear it down and start over. If our children aren't or might not be perfect, we can just kill them and start over. We don't "own" our children, and if we want to or try to kill them, the state has the right to intervene. As they do on a daily basis when they take children out of the care of their biological parents and put them in foster care. The reasoning is precisely because they are not owned entities with whom we have a right to do whatever we want -- including dismemberment.

You can express grief over hearing about it, but you can't deny that it happens. If you want to talk about grief, imagine the grief the poor babies who survive the abortion feel -- especially when they grow up (IF they grow up) and learn that their mother tried to kill them. Your grief at hearing about it pales in comparison.

I just read this article -- even though it's old -- very potent stuff out of the UK: Fifty babies a year are alive after abortion - Times Online A few excerpts -- but the entire article is worth reading! A GOVERNMENT agency is launching an inquiry into doctors’ reports that up to 50 babies a year are born alive after botched National Health Service abortions. Its guidelines say that babies aborted after more than 21 weeks and six days of gestation should have their hearts stopped by an injection of potassium chloride before being delivered. In practice, few doctors are willing or able to perform the delicate procedure. “They can be born breathing and crying at 19 weeks’ gestation,” he said. “I am not anti-abortion, but as far as I am concerned this is sub-standard medicine.” The number of terminations carried out in the 18th week of pregnancy or later has risen from 5,166 in 1994 to 7,432 last year. The issue will be highlighted by Gianna Jessen, 28, who survived an attempt to abort her. She is to speak at a parliamentary meeting on December 6 organised by the Alive and Kicking campaign, which is lobbying for a reduction of the abortion limit to 18 weeks. Jessen, a musician from Nashville, Tennessee, was left with cerebral palsy but is to run in the London marathon next April to raise funds for fellow sufferers. “If abortion is about women’s rights, then what were my rights?” she asked.

Thanks for your perspective on this, luluc. Would you say the donating process was easy? Or did you have to jump through hoops to do it? Or pay anything to do it? I'm really curious about this now, because it was always my impression that donating was relatively easy and there were plenty of couples to accept them. I haven't known any Christians that are against in vitro either -- or any that think sex is only for procreation, which is the other thing that was said in the same post.

Do you know this for a fact or is this just a guess? It's not something I've ever searched for information on, but I certainly could try. I'm just wondering where you got the information that there aren't enough people looking for donated embryos. I think it might be tough to figure out, because you'd have to find out how many couples were seeking donated embryos and didn't find any available, not how many embryos were destroyed or otherwise disposed of (because not everyone donates them). I don't know if these types of numbers are kept, or even if once the programs became more widely known those numbers would see significant change. :w00t: Now I'm curious!

So first there was no solution for the embryos that weren't implanted. Now you just don't like the solution. I don't completely understand your question about "the couples that don't qualify." That don't qualify to be an adoptive couple? That doesn't affect the embryo; it only affects the couple.

LOL! That's like apologizing to someone by saying "I'm sorry you misunderstood what I said." I do believe in steering the debate clear from personal accusations. But I also believe that people* can personally attack someone while simultaneously trying to make it look like they're* not. I'm sorry people"* don't understand (or claim they* don't understand) the subtlety of the matter. *by people and they, I mean you. Does that make it a little clearer how one can make a personally directed statement while simultaneously trying to maintain the illusion of neutrality? I do try. I also fail sometimes. I apologized last time I allowed someone to drag me into a personal attack, because I believe my response was petty. This time, however, I have tried to direct my response to be more illustrative of veiled attack on me.

Embryo donations or adoptions. Embryo Adoption & Donation Snowflakes Embryo Adoption Program

The only thing I have a problem with is the throwing out or sending for research purposes. I don't have a problem with in vitro at all (in fact I have several friends and family members who have done it). Don't you remember? You changed my mind on this issue. I agreed with you and said we should throw the book at women who abort. See? This thread DOES change minds!

I don't think this is a personality contest, and I absolutely do not like getting personal (sometimes I get drawn in but I do try very hard to avoid it). But I also don't like thinly (or thickly) veiled personal attacks, and when they keep happening I call them as I see them. You got it! I won't -- and don't -- expect anything different from you. I will be very careful in the future to clarify when I quote you why I perceive your nebulous attacks to be personal.

Are you saying a hunk of skin sitting on a table meets the criteria for life? That it grows and reproduces, matures, etc.?

I assume you mean because of natural miscarriages and/or lack of implantation? There's a big difference between natural death and surgical death. Do you seriously believe that? Because that's not what the Bible teaches. As a Christian I think you would know that. Why?

I'm not surprised. Anyone else who's a Christian and pro-abortion want to answer?

So 1% of 1,300,000 abortions every year is 13,000 viable babies killed every year. And that's an ethically valid choice? If it were anything other than the sacred right to abortion, any situation where 35 innocent people were being killed daily against their will through an elective surgical procedure, the US populace would be literally up in arms! Are you saying this isn't currently available? Because it is. And yet, the high abortion rate persists. IMO, that means it's not working. I never said I "get to decide". Whether someone is a Christian is between them and their God. However, I think it's perfectly reasonable to question the statistics about the quantities of people who profess Christianity vs. those who actually follow it. If I told you I was an atheist, but you saw me praying before every meal, wouldn't you have the right to question my commitment to atheism? On the one hand, I think this just solidifies the claim that abortion isn't a religious issue. On the other hand, as a Christian myself I do think it's fair to ask Christians who are pro-abortion how they reconcile some very specific things in the Bible with their belief that killing the unborn is acceptable. I've asked those questions on this thread before and no one's ever answered, but I'd be willing to ask again if anyone who's both Christian and in favor of abortion wants to take a stab at it.

Do you believe I am "someone" who puts conditions on Christianity, makes judgments about how or why women become pregnant, and wants to tell they what the must do in that situation? I have to assume you do, although you're using nebulous language and are not clear about it. Operating under the assumption, since you weren't 100% clear, that you are lumping me in with the group that meets the conditions above: I don't put conditions on Christianity, other than the obvious that if one don't even make an attempt to follow Christ or his teachings, one would be hard-pressed to call oneself a Christian. I have a lot of Christian friends who aren't the dreaded fundamentalist breed that you so often cite, and I consider them Christians. I know many on the opposing side of the abortion issue like to paint pro-lifers as black-and-white fundamentalists who have no capacity for compromise or a complete inability to understand anything outside of their personal beliefs, but that's just not the case -- at least not with me. I also don't make judgments on how or why women become pregnant. I personally believe there are some sexual activities that are (or can be) damaging emotionally and physically, but I have never, ever stood in judgment of a pregnant mother. Finally, I believe it is acceptable for anyone to tell another person that it is wrong to kill another human being -- despite their being in a situation where they don't want to have a live child

The problem is that by not addressing me directly, but rather only addressing the ideas that I have just stated, you can hide behind the fact that you "aren't addressing me" when you call the "ideas" narrow-minded, angry, etc. That's the problem I have. I don't have a problem at all with your stating your beliefs and backing them up with facts. But I believe you circumvent the "don't attack the person" model by cleverly not mentioning the person but only the beliefs they just espoused, and then calling those beliefs and the people who espouse them all sorts of derogatory names. It would be like my knowing you were a cat-lover because you just said it, and then saying "you know, those dirty SOB cat-lovers, blah blah blah", and then when you called me on it I said angelically, "But I wasn't talking about you! I was just talking about the idea of cat-lovers!" Just because the subject of religion has come up on the thread doesn't mean abortion is a religious issue. I don't believe that either. But why is this the core of the issue?

Here's the problem. If you are wrong and abortion is the taking of a human life, then we as a society are responsible for genocide. So shouldn't we get beyond just plain beliefs and look at scientific fact? Because individual beliefs don't determine when life begins -- if you allow them to, you get situations where infanticide becomes OK in the eyes of some, because they don't believe human life has begun yet. I know you may scoff at this correlation, but it's a reality. People really believe it. And if belief is all we go by to determine the inception of human life, there's nothing really wrong with what they believe and how they choose to act on that belief. After all, if you don't know if a person's dead, you don't bury them. You figure it out first.

I'm out of time now but I do want to say you are patently wrong. I do not believe I am good and others are wrong and bad (I believe people are wrong on this issue -- just like you believe I am wrong on this issue -- but that doesn't make them bad people). I don't wish to control others. I don't wish to tell others what they can and cannot do unless they are interfering with the life of another person. And I do not think I have the corner on goodness and light. I am a sinner and a sinful person and I try to do my best; I am certainly in no position to judge others who are sinners and sinful people as well.

Thank you for correcting my spelling. I try to proof everything I write but I missed that one. Heresay is definitely different then hearsay, both of which are different from heresy! I will edit my post above. That being said, given that this was House Oversight and Government Reform Committee meeting, I'm sure what was said was documented in writing, making it not hearsay. The government does things like that specifically to counteract hearsay.

As if those who are in favor of abortion on this thread don't think they're right and I'm wrong?

three of the four "health experts" who testified against it said they would oppose abstinence even if scientific evaluation showed it to be as or more effective than so-called comprehensive sex ed. Dr. Harvey Fineberg of the Institute of Medicine was the only one in this anti-abstinence group to maintain a sense of scientific integrity by quietly answering yes. is hearsay?

I beg to differ. She has a pattern of addressing something I said within the past 3-10 posts, but making it a generalized comment and then attacking the nebulous people who hold to the belief that I just addressed. Be that as it may, I think I explained it well above and will drop the issue now, hoping that in the future when BJean has issue with a comment I make, she directly addresses the comment rather than the nebulous group of people who have those types of beliefs.

Interestingly, this just arrived in my inbox: Yesterday, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee held an extremely one-sided hearing to assess the effectiveness of authentic abstinence education. It took just one look at the witness list to see how Chairman Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) had stacked the deck against abstinence proponents. When asked by Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.) if they would support abstinence education, three of the four "health experts" who testified against it said they would oppose abstinence even if scientific evaluation showed it to be as or more effective than so-called comprehensive sex ed. Dr. Harvey Fineberg of the Institute of Medicine was the only one in this anti-abstinence group to maintain a sense of scientific integrity by quietly answering yes. On the positive side, Dr. Stan Weed, the lone pro-abstinence health expert at the hearing, testified solidly on behalf of the positive impact of abstinence-centered education. He presented research that demonstrates the effectiveness of abstinence programs across the country, including two of his own studies that showed decreases in rates of sexual initiation by 45 and 50 percent in youth when compared to non-program groups. Missing from the discussion was the fact that the Chairman's own state has never accepted federally allocated Title V money for abstinence education--and its teens are suffering greatly for it. California is a tragic example of what can happen in today's culture in the absence of strong abstinence-centered education. Since rejecting the abstinence funds in the first year they were offered to states, the rates of STIs in California youth exploded at an estimated 1.1 million new cases per year in 2005. Congressman Waxman should recognize the dire need of young people in his own state and stop protecting entities that promote high-risk behavior to youth. Again, statistics can prove anything you want them to prove. But the fact that 3 out of the 4 "experts" on the panel would oppose abstinence education even if it proved effective should tell us something about their motivation.The reason I don't want anyone other than me teaching my kids about sex is because I don't know their motives, their philosophy, their background, or their goals.