BJean

There were a couple of other pro-lifers who were extremely graphic in their posts. You have been much more graphic than I thought was necessary, but that's your tactic. Whatever floats your boat. I'm with Mark on that part of the issue. I think that it is extremely disgusting to most people and doesn't make most people want to jump on your bandwagon. Of course I understand that you do not think you should sugar-coat anything, for anyone, because you equate it to the era of Hitler and slavery. Both dispicable in everyone's minds, so who wouldn't align with those analogies? One would have to be a Nazi, with racial bigotry in your heart not to agree with you, right? Maybe it works on some people. Probably people who do not think it through and see it for what it is - another clever tactic in the right-to-lifer's well-stocked arsenal to shoot down any person or thought about a woman's right to choose whether go through with an ill-conceived pregnancy, without government interference.

396: You question whether I'm new here? Are you new? I wasn't suggesting that you were or were not bringing it up to your friends. I was addressing the issue that they had not decided to discuss it with you, their friend. I am sure it was a loving thing for you to do to not discuss it with them because you knew you would not be able to be generous in your support of them. I'm not criticizing you for not talking with them about it, just observing that I find it sad that if they are good friends of yours, they didn't feel comfortable sharing something that was probably very important in their lives, with you. It's back to the old respect thing we were discussing, really. You know not being able to respect others with differing opinions and beliefs.

I'd like to know exactly how you found out that I'm rich. gadget: Mark, and I believe Laurend, made it quite clear that they respect you and your opinions about murdering babies. Although you said earlier that you "could care less." So I'm surprised you're asking. I hate that this has become some kind of personal jab posting stuff. It reminds me of some of the other discussions that have gone one earlier having to do with religion. They served no constructive purpose and just made us all feel bad. I think many of us just got completely fed up with the incredibly graphic and inflammatory verbage that pro-lifers like to post to try to insult and lay guilt upon those who believe in a woman's right to choose whether she can have an abortion or not have an abortion without the government's interference.

Green, BJean is jealous. Where's a nice hot Italian Stallion when you need him? I do not discriminate because of age. Sex yes, but not age. Unless he's as old as I, and that's just too depressing. All kidding aside...:rolleyes (not) (good thing my DH isn't looking over my shoulder! He might not think I'm really kidding.) I have had a great week with regard to the LB!!!! I finally found out why I was having such a difficult time. Surprising to me, I was overfilled. I had heard so many people here talk about PB'ing too much and all that, and even not being able to swallow water (or spit!) Mine was not THAT tight, but I was having a lot of trouble eating regular good food. I could eat about 3 bites of something and if I didn't eat it quite slowly, and in very small bites, I would PB. Later I would be ravenous!! That's when I decided to allow myself one square of chocolate. That was so satisfying it lead to another. Then I decided I could handle a child's size Italian Gelato. That lead to a regular size one, which led to a large. (not all in the same sitting, mind you) The next thing I knew I was not losing weight and I even regained the few pounds I had lost in the previous few weeks. I was scared to death to go for another fill since I figured I wouldn't be able to swallow my own spit and I was already so hungry with the fill I had! I had no idea that being overfilled was just as bad for causing hunger as being underfilled! I haven't read anyone here state it that way. I just couldn't imagine anyone sabbotaging their band with junk. Now I understand exactly how that can happen. Well, I had an appt. with the nutritionist and doctor, and today the exercise physiologist. I'm so happy!!! I am back on track and after just a couple of days of the proper fill, I am losing again. Not fast, but able to avoid the really high calorie junk foods. I can eat a decent meal (slowly, small bites) and consequently I am not starving and obsessing about food 24/7. Woo hoo! I just hope this continues and I can really lose the next 40 lbs.! I was accepted in a freebee Larry North exercise program designed just for LB patients. Starts on the 19th. I am very pumped! I have shot knees and the physiologist said that the only restriction at this point is no squats or stair stepper type exercises. Yea. Wish me luck!

My point was, oh gracious and wonderful mother that you undoubtedly are, that I was speaking to the person to whom I directed my post, not to you. I wasn't in fact presuming anything, I was sure of it.

As a matter of fact, gadget, in presidential debates all of the participants are very quick to state that they respect their opponents and their opponents viewpoints. They know that if they don't respect others in a debate, it will make them look stupid and it will give their arguments less credibility because of that stupidity. By the way, you said that if someone doesn't respect your opinion, that you could care less. How much less?

gadget- you are so presumptuous about some of our posts. You just love to put words and meanings into other people's posts. Always negative ones when you disagree with them. I was not snapping my fingers at you. I was, by my post, observing that you probably felt the way you've now stated that you do feel...disrespectful for anyone who believes that women should have the right to choose to have or not to have an abortion, without interference from the government.

Eddie, you're a cool dude. I wish I could single handedly make things right for you and your man.

Good post, Green!

Hmmm, Mark, I hear crickets.

396: I did not accuse you of judging people. Although from your post about judging people, quoting the Bible, etc., it seems that maybe you really are judging those friends of yours. Otherwise why mount a defense when no one was attacking you about it? I don't wonder that they wouldn't want to discuss something as important and personal as abortion with you if they already know you're going to judge them in a negative way. Afterall, they're your beliefs, your convictions, so very much more important than your friends or their needs. Since you brought up the Bible, do you think that Jesus would make negative comments about his friends if they had had an abortion? He might not recommend an abortion to a friend in trouble, but I doubt seriously if he would not be totally loving and supportive of a woman in trouble, even after she had brutally murdered her human being (clump of cells.)

I beg your pardon. If Mark called YOU a name in that post you quoted, I certainly apologize. But I didn't read it that way.

gadget you've been guilty of dishing out hostility when you've felt someone was being hostile toward your posts. Most of us have. That doesn't constitute name-calling.

396- why don't you carry those babies for your friends for nine months, go through delivery, and raise them and handle all the attendant problems for the next 20 years of your life? If you think that it only has to do with them being "inconvenienced" you just have no clue. By the way, that's a real scientific study you did on the reasons why women get abortions. You haven't even spoken with the women you mentioned, so how in the world can you believe you fully understand their situations, much less the majority of other women's situations?

I missed the name-calling too. Except in Daffodil's posts.

laurend, I don't know about you, but after reading one of the above posts, I rest my case.

FuelMan: We must be about the same age. I totally understand your viewpoint and it is very refreshing to hear someone speak to the problems of society that contribute to making abortion sometimes the only choice for some women. If we made some really serious changes with regard to ensuring that pregnant women and the unwanted children that they are pregnant with, are well taken care of and respected, it would go a long way to solve many of the problems of unwanted pregnancies that we've been discussing here. Some of my earlier posts in this arugment were a reaction to the insistence by the anti-abortion people that these troubled women simply give their children up for adoption. I stopped short of wondering if they had some financial stake in more adoptions. I felt that was just too awful a concept. But I do know that there are people who are in that business, as distasteful as it may be. My arguments had to do with the mother who has nurtured her baby through all the stages its' development, from fertilized egg through the pregnancy and to finally, hopefully, delivering a wonderful living breathing human being. Women are generally nurturing creatures and to transition through all of the stages of conception through delivery and experience the unconditional love that they feel for their baby, it is unconcsionable to ask a woman to then lovingly surrender that child to someone else. It isn't selfish for a mother to want to keep her child - it is nature's way and it is the preferable way, just as I think you were saying. Your suggestions are far superior and more practical - to put women in the position of being able to love and nurture their babies and raise them in a healthy environment. What a huge contrast to the ideas of adoption or abortion. As for the war, I'm afraid most of the people who've posted that they are completely, vehemently opposed to abortion, are the same people who support our president and the war he has committed us to. It is as much a mystery to me as all of the intelligent and thoughtful things that laurend, mark, niecyrenee and a few others have pointed out as weaknesses in many of the anti-abortion posts in this thread. Thanks very much for your input FireMan, I believe you made some very relevant points!

Frankly I'm pleased to see that you Laurend, and maybe even you Susannah, agree with my assessment of the situation to which you refer.

Thanks Karey!! You're doing very, very well. I'll bet you are feeling fantastic! I've been reading your progress and I'm impressed. Thanks for your encouragement. I find out today and I'll post back later. Shell that's amazing! What a breakthrough - and to learn that it had to do with one of your meds. I can't believe they finally tied it down to that one medication. Thank goodness. You're doing great! I'm sure you're feeling better too.

Good grief, how did I get aligned with people who make such nasty comments about the competition... Sunta your point is very well taken. I am a small business owner and although I fully obey the laws, and never intend to break them, I got this mental picture of someone telling me that I HAD to do business with someone who I did not want to do business with, for whatever reason. It has nothing to do with sexual preference, or anything specific, for that matter. I fully support anti-discrimination policies in the work force. I just hate the idea of big brother looking over my shoulder and deciding that I have to buy my office coffee from one particular bean processor or other. Guess I was thinking in much too simple terms. Personally I can't imagine discriminating against someone for their sexual preference, whether the preference is by choice or by "intelligent design."

I never cease to be amazed at how the "pro-life" people refer to women who have had abortions as having made that choice out of convenience. Someone earlier even inferred that women who have abortions are doing it because they want to further their careers. What planet are you living on, people? Why do you insist on spouting your "facts" that women use abortion as birth control and only out of convenience and to further their careers? You are wrong if you think that most women make the decision to have an abortion just out of convenience. Please don't post some silly stats that prove nothing. There can be no stats that give an accurate assessment of the psycological and physical reasons why all women seek abortions. You can probably give stats on the sample you may have, but there is no questionnaire or controlled scientific study participation requirement that is used in most cases of women seeking abortion. I said it before and I will say it again - if you are truly interested in preventing abortions, work toward that goal by helping distressed pregnant women. Women have always aborted babies and they will always abort babies. It won't matter if you manage to get a law passed that makes abortion illegal. Women will get abortions if their situation makes having a child impossible for them. Your harsh approach makes me wonder if you secretly (or maybe even openly) would like to think that a woman who would abort a baby could die in an alley from a botched abortion. You obviously have no respect for that woman and you think she is "stained" and not worthy of your compassion in any way. At one point it was posted that women who get abortions are not making decisions about their own reproductive organs... I mean, huh??? Sometimes I think you just want to fight. You love the mean-spirited fight that this topic inspires. You seem to revel in it. The more you can point fingers and scream murder, and fan the flames, the happier you seem to be. I just do not understand the logic and it flies in the face of your statement about caring about human life. If you do care about human life, it is an extremely narrow range of caring that you seem to have. Whether you want to continue this thread and rant and rave on, I say fine. But just know that women who desparately need abortions will get them. No law can change that. We can be civil about it and do all we can to assist women who are faced with an unwanted pregnancy. Or we can fight them, belittle them, tell them they are murderers, tell them they are killing a living, breathing human being (which of course, they aren't.) None of it will change the fact that a woman who is faced with having a child, when she is unable to do so, may choose to have an abortion, laws or no laws.

P.S. The reason I can't describe what all they did to him is because I just don't have the stomache for it. Get off Dr. Kevorkian's case. You obviously do not know what you're talking about.

tink: you obviously didn't read my post from last night. My dad had a living will and a DNR. His doctor refused to allow him to die. His doctor was one of those doctors who after saving so many lives, decided that HE was God. I wish I could describe exactly what all they did to my dad just so his doctor wouldn't have to face the fact that his surgical procedure caused my dad's death. That louse kept my dad on life support, with no possibility of recovery, for an entire month. It was horribly gruesome and extremely painful for my father, like torture.

Thanks, tink. I believe I understand your opinion too and I certainly believe there is room enough on earth for both of us to live together in harmony as long as we can respect each others' opinions and beliefs on this issue.

Read what tink says. You'll get my point. You see they don't believe that there is a scientific answer to when life begins or how the world came about. They've decided everything points to intelligent design. How are you going to argue science with someone who believes that?