Political Crossfire Forums

[Lumina]

I honestly don't know where protests such as you describe are ongoing. I am a member of the Coalition for Life, and my community has become the nationwide model for peaceful protest. I wouldn't have anything to do with shouting or even quiet verbal abuse--that's absolutely counterproductive.

[levin893]

Look if your a man and you want to take a stance on abortion, go ahead. Just keep in mind you'll never be put in that situation. I'm not saying ever person on capital hill is irresponsible. I do, however, feel they don't take a step back often enough to reevaluate the situation.

[CommiepinkoLefty]

Lumina wrote: I honestly don't know where protests such as you describe are ongoing. I am a member of the Coalition for Life, and my community has become the nationwide model for peaceful protest. I wouldn't have anything to do with shouting or even quiet verbal abuse--that's absolutely counterproductive.

The only thing you might do sitting outside an abortion clinic "peacefully" protesting is make a poor girl make an awful choice and turn away from abortion.

Face it, abortion will never be outlawed. It's similar to alcohol in the sense that if you do outlaw it people will still do it. You would see thousands of unfortunate women dying from infections as a result.

If the woman wants to have a kid, she won't be going to an abortion clinic in the first place.

I'm not saying it's wrong to protest something like that, I just think the manner in which you do it warrents insults from passerbys.

[Lumina]

[quote="CommiepinkoLefty]The only thing you might do sitting outside an abortion clinic "peacefully" protesting is make a poor girl make an awful choice and turn away from abortion.[quote]

Standing, actually, and standing silently with heads bowed. Sorry that you think that turning away from abortion is an "awful choice." Having one, IMO, is the awful choice...and there really are others.

[quote="CommiepinkoLefty]Face it, abortion will never be outlawed. It's similar to alcohol in the sense that if you do outlaw it people will still do it. You would see thousands of unfortunate women dying from infections as a result. [quote]

I wonder why you think abortion will never be outlawed. It's been legal only since 1972. I think what most people want is the end to abortion-on-demand as a method of birth control.

If you're going to use the back-alley-coathanger argument, back-in-the-day, there was a terrible stigma attached to illegitimate birth. A girl was "ruined." Celebrity out-of-wedlock births and etc. have removed that shame, which is perhaps a good thing. Having children out of wedlock can actually be quite beneficial to those who are lazy and willing to take handouts. Several of my daughter's high school friends have done precisely this. You see, with a baby, you're eligible for HUD housing (based on ability to pay, which averages from $27 to $50 a month in the cases of which I'm personally aware in my community).

And the wealthiest girls were always able to obtain abortions anyway, so that's not the issue either. When you think about the women who do have abortions, are they very young or members of various minority groups? Sometimes. And sometimes they are married women who believe they cannot afford another baby. But if there is a "typical" abortion patient, and I am not claiming that there is, based on what I see at Planned Parenthood, the patients are college girls for whom an unplanned pregnancy is an inconvenience.

[quote="CommiepinkoLefty]If the woman wants to have a kid, she won't be going to an abortion clinic in the first place. Quote:

An unplanned pregnancy can cause panic. Some women race off to have one without receiving any counseling or without benefit of someone sane-- a loving family member, perhaps, or a teacher or youth minister--explaining that there really are other options. Having an abortion is a decision that a woman will have to live with for the rest of her life--it's a choice that can be a terrible burden of guilt and regret.

Goodness, I know so many people who are childless and who've spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on fertility treatments that didn't work. Friends who have had to adopt internationally because adoption rules (home study and etc.) can be so complicated. (It took one of my friends a decade to adopt her wonderful son, now 17, from Korea because her father, from whom she was estranged, had fought in Vietnam and had told the home-study people, "No grandchild of mine will be a ***damned ****.")

And to be perfectly frank and utterly crass, there is quite a black market for healthy American babies, particularly if they're white. I don't want to think too deeply about this because it's so horrible, but which is worse--killing a preborn child or selling it to parents who desperately want children and are willing to pay?

The point is that there are many other options today. So you're "inconvenienced" for 5-6 months. In my community and others there are various organizations that will take a pregnant girl in and take care of her and help her keep up with her classes if necessary and can see to it that if she wants to keep her baby, she can. Job-training and jobs, transportation, housing, the works.

[quote="CommiepinkoLefty]I'm not saying it's wrong to protest something like that, I just think the manner in which you do it warrents insults from passerbys.

How would you have people protest? By screaming and cursing? By waving about pictures of bloody aborted babies? What do you object to if all people are doing is standing on a public sidewalk and praying? Is it the standing on the sidewalk? The silence? The praying? What?

[Selfish_Meme]

Lumina wrote: How would you have people protest? By screaming and cursing? By waving about pictures of bloody aborted babies? What do you object to if all people are doing is standing on a public sidewalk and praying? Is it the standing on the sidewalk? The silence? The praying? What?
Voting or moving.

[Lumina]

Selfish_Meme wrote: Lumina wrote: How would you have people protest? By screaming and cursing? By waving about pictures of bloody aborted babies? What do you object to if all people are doing is standing on a public sidewalk and praying? Is it the standing on the sidewalk? The silence? The praying? What?
Voting or moving.

Do you think that I don't vote? What kind of bizarre assumption is that?

And why should I move from my community? I was here before PP opened its clinic and way before it began performing abortions.

What a shame you think that peaceful assembly is a bad thing and that running away from a problem is a solution!

[Selfish_Meme]

I think that you can choose to move and you can express your concerns with laws by voting. You however want to use another way to impose your values upon others even though your society in general doesn't hold with those views. Then you have the temerity to come here and complain that other people have decied to express their views in a way you don't like.

[JayDubya]

There is absolutely nothing wrong with peaceful protest.

Furthermore, Texans shouldn't have to move. We should have our state right to vote on the issue that Blackmun and the SCotUS unfairly took away. Our voting is almost entirely irrelevant (save for President) as long as the Supreme Court holds to its terrifically bad and unjust decision.

Blackmun used the Bill of Rights to justify pissing all over the Bill of Rights.

[No2wookie]

Why is it an awful choice to peacefully persuade a poor girl to not have an abortion?

[Lumina]

Selfish_Meme wrote: I think that you can choose to move and you can express your concerns with laws by voting. You however want to use another way to impose your values upon others even though your society in general doesn't hold with those views. Then you have the temerity to come here and complain that other people have decied to express their views in a way you don't like.

Your statement that my society in general doesn't hold with those views is false.

"Thirty years after Roe vs. Wade, public support for legal abortion is highly conditional: In some cases, such as to save the woman's life, it's overwhelming; but in others — notably, solely to terminate an unwanted pregnancy — most Americans oppose the procedure."

While "only" 42 percent want to make abortions more difficult to obtain, "57 percent oppose abortion solely to end an unwanted pregnancy — 'if the mother is unmarried and does not want the baby.' "

http://abcnews.go.com/sections/us/DailyNews/abortion_poll030122.html

[CommiepinkoLefty]

No2wookie wrote: Why is it an awful choice to peacefully persuade a poor girl to not have an abortion?

Because if she doesn't want a child she shouldn't have one. Simple as that. Too many people in the world today anyways, and there sadly isn't a place for unwanted children. the foster care networks in our country are pathetic.

How do you pro-lifers hope to keep the population at a reasonable level when you battle for the rights of a group of cells? What's even more hipocritical is how many of you speak out against the use of contraceptives and pre-marital sex. The truth is almost noone abstains from it, but it seems you people wont here it. It honestly seems like you're living in your own imaginary world sometimes.

To tell you the truth, abortion isn't a great thing, but accidents happen and even those who use contraceptives can get unlucky. Abortion should ALWAYS be an availiable and socially acceptable means of birth control.

[Selfish_Meme]

Lumina wrote: Your statement that my society in general doesn't hold with those views is false.

OK I will give you that the polls show the greatest support for more restrictions, which I actually support as well, but it doesn't invalidate the rest of what I said, which you didn't address at all.

[No2wookie]

If a girl got peacefully persuaded not to have an abortion, that means she was unsure but eventually decided she wanted the child.



You people? I object to such cobbled together wording. Unless you're just trying to tick me off, present your argument thoughtfully and considerately. If you're just trying to tick me off, use the PM feature.

[levin893]

Selfish_Meme wrote: I think that you can choose to move and you can express your concerns with laws by voting. You however want to use another way to impose your values upon others even though your society in general doesn't hold with those views. Then you have the temerity to come here and complain that other people have decied to express their views in a way you don't like.

Clearly voting is an option, although is less likely to have an impact than peacefully protesting. I'm curious to know how you feel when people stand on streetcorners and protest the war, or when workers protest unfair wages at supermarkets.

[Selfish_Meme]

I think that industrial action is fair enough, you don't have any say in how companies are run, unlike government, and its really the only way to break a deadlock that everybody feels strongly about.

Protesting what your own Government does is like trying to cast an extra vote. You have the opportunity to campaign to get the law changed legally. Frightening poor women is just shameful. Feeling guilty doesn't mean you are guilty, pro-lifers were using the same arguments here that girls were coerced into abortions, now you are coercing them out of them. Yes just by standing there, any type of sexually related medical practice is going to make a girl feel very vulnerable, and easy to discourage. You are thereby restricting their liberty to go about their business legally. So you infringe the Declaration of Independance to promote it.

Hypocritical.

[Lumina]

What peaceful, silent protest looks like:

[LostSoul3412]

Lumina wrote: My community has had a Planned Parenthood Clinic for 30 years, and it wasn't until this organization built a new clinic and began providing abortions that peaceful protesting began. College students such as my son's girlfriend go to PP for women's health services, and this never provoked any objection, but since abortions have been performed, the battle has been on. In fact, my community has become the national model for peaceful protest. This morning I was out at the site--on the public right-of-way, of course--and the experience was particularly scary.

We always stand with our backs to the street, and the fact is that if you protest anything, you need to expect loud, vulgar objections to this.
Today, though, vehicles passed by shouting, "F*** you, you f****** douche bags!" I hardly ever think thoughts like this, but I wondered to day if one of us would take a bullet in the back.

I'm curious about the opinions of this sort of response from those of you who are pro-abortion/pro-choice. Again, the protests are silent...just folks who are pro-life standing and praying. Opinions?

Assuming that you're in no way impeding the commerce of the institution, are on public property, and are not targeting any individual, then you have every legal and Constitutional right to protest. Seems to me that your demonstration fit those requirements.

[Blinky]

Lumina wrote: What peaceful, silent protest looks like:



I wouldn't have a problem with anti-abortion protests if they all looked like that. Sadly however, a lot of them consist of angry mobs of self righteous sticky-beaks waving placards with pictures of dead babies and displaying models of partly formed fetuses, while calling women attending the clinics murderers and baby-killers.
Its atrocious, and likely to do little but emotionally scar the woman trying to go through with what is already a difficult decision.

[Lumina]

Blinky wrote: Lumina wrote: What peaceful, silent protest looks like:



I wouldn't have a problem with anti-abortion protests if they all looked like that. Sadly however, a lot of them consist of angry mobs of self righteous sticky-beaks waving placards with pictures of dead babies and displaying models of partly formed fetuses, while calling women attending the clinics murderers and baby-killers.
Its atrocious, and likely to do little but emotionally scar the woman trying to go through with what is already a difficult decision.

I am aware that there have been extreme exceptions to the peaceful rule. But I'd like you to show me evidence of "angry mobs" since, oh, the mid-'80's.

I'd also appreciate your explaining what "sticky-beaks" are. I realize that there are a few who wave bloody-fetus pictures, but these aren't the overwhelming majority. And when was the last clinic bombing? And as horrendous and EVIL as they were, how many were there?

I'm out there in the "protest-trenches," and I am not seeing--nor have I in the past eight, nearly nine years, any evidence at all of what you say.
So where are the bloody-fetus picture-waving people? Name the places and please provide the links.

And please show me the emotional scars of those women who have been traumatized at abortion clinics by peaceful protest. Explain to me please how these women have been emotionally scarred by silent people standing outside the abortion clinic and praying?

Trust me, the emotional scarring is from the abortion itself...not from those giving silent physical witness to what the woman is about to do.
The purpose of my standing there is to persuade other women, before it's too late, that there are alternatives to abortion. How does my silent testimony "scar" them, much less "scar" them more than the abortion itself?

[Selfish_Meme]

Because it is a very private vulnerable time for them, you are infringing the right that allows them to have the abortion in the first place. Its like going to have a pap smear in a football stadium.

I would also like to see any evidence you are NOT emotionally traumatising them. Yes abortions are traumatic, and you just add to it.