Much like when Sarah Palin said she was thinking about aborting her child when she found out he would have down syndrome. Again, no one thought to say a CHOICE was available to her….
Do these people not realize that they, too, relied on having the freedoms they are trying to take away?

Back to the assasination of Dr. Tiller…. fundamentalists and dominionists are working hard (and successfully) to make this country run on a totalitarian system. I truly think some of these people have pulled so far away from living a Christian lifestyle that they have turned the “Word of God” into a “War of God.” I’m no so sure any God would approve of such behavior.

I think that you’re leaving out the political and social context of the Jesus era: the revolution, the terrorism, etc. Jesus wasn’t living in a spiritual vacuum.

Without a doubt, the nations (really Rome by itself) adopted the new religion and bent it to suit the states purpose…or more precisely, the church fathers bent the faith to fit Rome’s purpose. But considering that, how can you then proffer a Biblical quote as what Jesus thought?

The key to finding Christian thought is to look at all the branches of the faith that were persecuted and quashed, from those who followed Jesus while remaining Jews to the Cathars of 13th Century Languedoc.

Hope cannot exist without despair. And one will never defeat the other…no matter how many Tillers or Popes tell us otherwise. The binary pairs cannot be separated, only transcended by following the path between them.

#2 The brain never develops, there is no brain just meat. The fact that if born the “Child” could actually “live” for up to several months, points up the fact that the brain is not necessary for that time and humaness is likely not actually “there” even at birth.

The other all too common cause I did not see above? Incest/Rape where the girl is a child herself (9-10) and has been too abused/scared to say anything until she begins to show. In several interviews this sort of case that Dr. Tiller was most moved by, and as far as I can tell the cases that got him the most trouble with the Empathy-deleted folk who assailed him.

Jesus offered himself as ‘Hope’ to his people. His existence spawned a new Religion around ‘Hope’ for all mankind yet the blood continued to be spilt by Theocratic Nations in his name and that of the all powerful bloody Church of Rome. Hope was thus squandered. Hope did not survive or endure in the Church – the organised power structure of control and punishment that brought fear down upon a poor soul’s head. Hope does not live in modern day Churches – more akin to social club gatherings with a cup of tea and biscuit after the singsong and head bobbing.

True living ‘Hope’ is found in the soul of man where it can blossom regardless of the travails and adversities of what it is to have a physical life in this world. It is a tender bloom that looms large in those young in chronological physical years and also those found to be young of heart. It can underpin the will to survive or push through in spite of seemingly insurmountable odds.

Hope beckons, motivates, inspires and fortifies but it does not command, instruct, regulate, postulate, formulate, debate legalities or decide the course of action. Hope is a gift found in the desert, is the candle flickering at the window, is the poet’s voice, it is the artist’s brush.

Hope blooms whilst humans in accordance with the dictates of their conscience, their sense of repugnance which informs their moral stance, their belief in their own capabilities and intelligence, their sense of order, the depths of their love or compassion and their bonds to others decide how much of this great FuckUp they can improve or make worse on any given day.

Hope once bloomed in Dr Tiller for his patients.

I’m not entirely sure what you mean, but i assume you are referring to the fact that certain abortion critics are applying the biblical words directly to the subject rather then interpreting the purpose of those words and trying to achieve the purpose.

The second article, though interesting, is harder to apply. I see that it ties in well to the fact that even though child death and abnormality exists, it is hope that keeps the children and parents going? not giving up on each other? mmm… not sure where exactly you are aiming.

http://www.rationalchristianity.net/abolish_law.html

…at least tthere is hope:

http://www.greek-gods-and-goddesses.com/pandoras-box.html

There is no justification for sacrificing one life for the sake of another…” the life of a dove is worth the same as that of a man… not just his calf muscle, however equal to the dove in weight” – it is the plot of an old story, the name of which evades me at the moment… This would entail that sacrificing the life of a fetus for the life of the mother is unjustifiable; unless the fetus is already dead, in which case it’s not really abortion, its just removal of dead tissue (with undeniable remorse and sadness along with a range of emotions unknown to me attached to it). The same goes for the opposite. Sacrificing the life of the mother for the life of the fetus is unjustifiable…

The brain can only process binary decisions. Something is either good or bad… all grey areas are classified at some point or another into good bad or sometimes even both… which is absolutely incredible from a purely IT point of view… Anyway… All complex decisions are broken down into simpler ones… however quick and unnoticeable this process may be… that’s how it happens. If you have to choose between apple sauce and raspberry jam… how do you analyze the incredible amounts of data that come with this decision. It can be based on literally thousands of various inputs from hundreds of sources and utilize all six (five for the non believers) senses… The range of possible ways to get to a solution is ‘mind boggling’ … consider the following though. Each input is broken down into consequences which are classified as a one or a zero or an unsure. The ‘unsures’ are the data inputs which will only be broken down if further inputs are needed. When all the data KEY WORD ==> deemed relevant, is processed, a decision can be reached based on which side brings the most good, satisfaction, happiness, value, whatever… If the decision can’t be reached based on the data, then the uncertainties are defined further until one side clearly dominates the other and the Jam is secured into the shopping cart. Clearly Jam has much better texture… even though the sauce seems healthier.

Abortion is too complex to analyze on a binary scale. That’s why there can be no absolutes in this discussion. The consequences of it, however can be processed much easier.

Death of the mother
Death of the fetus
Death of the mother and the fetus
Permanently disabled fetus
Permanently disabled mother
Life of the mother, death of the fetus
Death of the mother, disabled unfulfilled life of the fetus
Life of the mother, disabled life of the fetus
Life of the fetus, disabled unfulfilled life of the mother
…. … .. .. .. ….. ….
Life of the mother, Life of the fetus

Out of all these potential outcomes of choosing abortion or life, none of them are binary decisions. So we have to go deeper/

Death of the mother: probability*weight= k
Death of fetus : Probability*weight=k
Death of both: probability*weight=k

Disabilityof the fetus: Probability*weight ….
Disability of the mother : …
Life of the mother: etc…
…
…
To the end of days…

Each case is so unique and different, that there is literally no end to the breakdown process… there is no algorithm to decide who should live and who should die… it’s inhuman to assign probabilities to a life. How do you calculate the weight ratios of the life of the mother versus the life of a fetus? How the @#$% can someone even pose such a question?

The only thing we can do is look at the data we ‘deem’ relevant. The “right-wing Christian terrorist” groups do it… I do it… I can only assume you do it as well. I deem relevant the viability of the fetus. I would deem relevant the perceived level of disability this child will have, and the ability of the mother so support the healthy development of such a child. I deem relevant the ability of the mother to give birth. Her life is important to all her loved ones while her fetus is important, perhaps, only to her. I deem the consequences for the human body a relevant input… abortion techniques used today are, as little as I understand, bad for the female reproductive system in some cases resulting in further infertility. These, among a few others would enter into the ‘algorithm’ of my decision. Any further inputs, my brain won’t process easily… unless written down, broken down and analyzed as discreet outcomes etc etc…

The right-wing Christian terrorist probably has other inputs. Including, but not restricted to the views of “[Operation Rescue] Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Ann Coulter, Michael Savage, Bill O’Reilly and/or Glenn Beck.”

We can conclude from this, that if a person is only capable of processing a given number of inputs (no particular research, that I know of at least, supports this at the moment) and those inputs are limited and restricted to those mentioned above, then his/er decisions are, in fact, not only influenced, but are driven by those inputs.

Im stretching a bit here… but if this can be shown as an agency relationship between the inputs and the actions, then the aforementioned group of people is guilty of some serious felonies.

Off topic:
The worst thing that has ever happened in media is the fact that Hans Fritzsche, a radio broadcaster of Goebbels’ propaganda inciting unmentionable cruelty that can hardly be compared to what happened here, was brought to the Nuremberg tribunal. He was there, and he was acquitted.

The best Christian creation myth is that of Sophia. Wherein “God” is a product of Sophia’s loneliness and sorrow, an imperfect being who then creates an imperfect world. He wants to believe that he is all powerful, but knows that it is not…hence his jealousy. it is Sophia who animates life with her breath.

And it is a messenger of Sophia who tells Eve to eat the fruit. Eve liberates Adam when she offers wisdom to him; that is why “God” is angry. God is so angry that he rapes Eve twice: producing Cain and Abel. Our imperfection is the seed of He that we worship.

Christ, Sophia’s Aeonic pair, saves her from her entrapment here. His earthly manifestation came to awaken the spark of Sophia, latent in all men, so that they might be liberated. That he loved Mary best is because she represented his Aeonic counterpart and the true nature of man: wisdom. Their partnership represents the transcendence of duality…or at-one-ment.

It really is too bad that so many of us have fallen for the gobbledy-gook that passes for Christian thought foisted on us by Mother Church and her reformationists. The heresies make more sense more beautifully…and they actually teach something worth knowing.

Of course – how true! The Old Testament God of the Hebrews got his rocks off on rape, pillage, slaughtering of non-jews, bringing about plagues, afflicting ’sinners’ and those who shopped elsewhere for their spiritual needs. What a great guy! God the Master of Destruction as defined by the world’s most popular book of learning…

If only the Dictionary could offer a single unifying definition of what ‘God’ is…

Although his work was distasteful to me in the extreme I am glad Dr Tiller offered his services to those in need. Rightly he was regulated and investigated – as should anyone carrying out such tragic operations on viable human lives in the making.

Interestingly, this isn’t the first time I’ve heard John Brown and the abolitionist movement invoked by your side. The problem is, the two situations are not at all analogous.

The abolitionist movement in the US in the 19th century was driven largely by evangelicals who, unlike our current religionists, were extremely liberal for their day. They tended to be pacifists, or near pacifists, founded colleges, often helped smuggle slaves to Canada (illegal, but non-violent), and worked diligently for a legal solution. Many, if not most, of the abolitionists were women, or men driven by their women, who had other causes, such as temperance and womens’ suffrage, and may have represented roughly 10% of the free state population. Most of them absolutely abhorred the slavery-related violence occurring in bloody Kansas, the place that spawned John “Pottawatomie” Brown. The rhetoric published and used by abolitionists on the lecture circuit decried the peculiar institution of slavery, but sought to use moral suasion to effect its end, not violent and ill-conceived actions such as Brown’s or Nat Turner’s.

Such is not the case with our modern anti-abortionists. Many of them are evangelicals, but that is where the similarity ends. Their rhetoric is a virtual call to arms and, ultimately, to murder. They demonize those who disagree with them, which has long been the human equivalent of saying “those people deserve to die, and we must kill them.”

A more appropriate analogy to modern anti-abortionists would be the Ku Klux Klan, a vigilante group that felt the law was morally wrong, and went about enforcing that belief with torture and murder.

You anti-abortionists enjoy whipping vigilantes into a murderous rage, then you spread your hands to show us they’re white as snow. And then you are stunned when we don’t buy it.

Second, my post was pretty straightforward. I heard there had been a shooting. I offered a wager as to who the killer would turn out to be. Nobody – NOBODY – took me up on it, and that includes the “pro-lifers” out there. And since I know that my piece was linked fairly widely, including by one “pro-life” site (that was yarping, ironically, about how predictable people like me are) I can’t help but conclude that the freak-righters knew I was right and knew it instantly.

Twist all you like, but this one isn’t real complicated. I called it. Nobody wanted a piece of it. I was right. Game, set, match.

By the way, the 1st Amendment has never afforded free speech protection to those using speech to whip up violence. You ought to have stayed in school until at least the sixth grade.

The killing of George Tiller is a crime as well, and the man who killed George Tiller will be brought to justice. He did the act. He is responsible.

2. Your argument that “jihad” is what the prolife movement is all about is ridiculous. There are millions of people who are prolife. If we really wanted to kill abortionists, do you actually think there would only be 8 abortionists killed (and 17 other attempts) in 35+ years since Roe v. Wade?

3. If you try to blame everyone who has every said something against Tiller or against abortion for this act by one man and advocate “stopping the right-wing extremists at all costs,” you become the very thing you hate.

4. And for those who want to shut down the free speech of prolife people, I think you ought to read the First Amendment again. That protection of free speech is there for a reason. And even the opinions we hate the most–no matter how wrong we think they are–are protected. Let’s not lose that for anyone.

Darrell: nope, i think it’s a perfect time.

Not to get overly philosophical, but is there a good argument (i.e. not Biblical) that says human life has inherent value? Being partially Russian, i’m incapable of believing that it does.

Now let’s go back to the good old days when the Holy Founders built this good, Christian nation. To the best of my knowledge, abortion was legal before “quickening” (as i understand it, detectable fetal movement like kicks). In other words, early term abortions were aok. Who knows how the laws would have been applied to late term abortions, but my guess is that medical technology was such that the mother’s life would have been in grave danger from the abortion at that point too.

Am i wrong about the Colonial/Founding Generation era abortion laws? I’m too lazy to look it up, but at least i’m not making Swift jokes, eh?

Ahm, if you’re going to assert claims about your intelligence in a community of highly intelligent and highly educated people, you might want to stay away from sentence structures such as, “is as worse as.”

Just a suggestion.

Smart people don’t need thou shalt nots. Basic principles suffice, and there’s nothing I’ve said here that comes close to violating the standard I’ve been setting at S&R for the last couple of years. We don’t suffer fools gladly, if at all.

The argument you might be better off making is “don’t feed the trolls.”