Her name brings to mind a certain book about post-extremely-nutty-Christian-takeover America.

“I didn’t read the links you sent me, just what you e-mailed” “you didn’t seem credible”

hmm… ignore the supporting *facts* and just go with your gut instinct on the credibility of the person e-mailing you. Ya, that’s the way to get to the bottom of this.

She doesn’t want the truth, she doesn’t want anything that wouldn’t support her own world-view.

And I’d bet that if you went up to her and asked if spreading lies was Christian, she’d say it wasn’t too… there’s got to be some kind of way past this duality that people hold in their heads. Something that could set off an epiphany for them where they would wake up one morning and realize that they have to hold to one set of their beliefs or the other because at the moment they aren’t compatible.

I’m not asking that they stick with the love your neighbour Christian schtick. I just want a consistent, honest worldview from them, where they can’t say “turn the other cheek” in the same breath as “torture is right for America”.

Of course he wants to kill babies. All of us libruls do. Hell, I got up late today and I still managed to kill five by lunchtime.

By the way, (rhetorical question alert) did the Born Alive Infant Protection Act do anything to ensure that all children have adequate access to health care, food, shelter, clothing, education, and all the other things a child needs to survive and have a healthy life? Nope. Just more of the same “the babies must live, but who gives a damn what happens after that” crap. Pro-life hell. They’re all just pro-birth.

After birth they’re no good until they’re old enough to join the army.

But really, what is an ostensible news broadcast doing airing crap like this?

Sigh, the worst part is that she doesn’t realize that she’s wrong - she’s been lied to by the CWA, and that impression has probably been reinforced by her Fox-nwes-watching and her tax-evading-pastor yelling from the pulpit that the unborn babies need us to not vote for McCain.

Is she ignorant? Sure. Should she check the facts before she opens her mouth? Absolutely. The problem is that she’s probably been raised from childhood to believe that the mainstream media is in the grip of Satan and that you can’t believe anything that doesn’t match what your pastor/CWA/Fox channel tells you.

I speak as someone who read Frank Peretti books as a child and honestly believed, from them, that politicians are possessed by demons. Thank god for college.

Since I’m pretty sure that killing an already-born, living infant is already murder, what the hell is this Born Alive Infant Protection Act about?

That should have read: “need us to vote for McCain and not Obama.”

I can has edit?

what the hell is this Born Alive Infant Protection Act about?

It’s an excuse to make legal trouble for doctors who perform abortions:

http://www.nrlc.org/federal/born_alive_infants/BAIPLaw0405.html

what the hell is this Born Alive Infant Protection Act about?

One of God’s cruel whimsies is to allow seriously defective fetuses to grow, and yet to survive abortion around 22 weeks of gestation. A nurse at Christ Hospital in Illinois was told to put such a fetus in a supply closet until it quit breathing. She was outraged, and persuaded an Illinois legislator to create a bill to ensure that such fetuses would be humanely cared for the few hours that it could survive on its own. Obama kept it bottled up in his Health and Human Services committee, because the wording of the bill could be construed to ban abortions post 22 days, when the heart starts beating. A similar federal law rewritten to avoid a ban was later passed.

The oddest thing about the whole affair is that, as one might expect, Christ Hospital was founded by a religious organization, now a joint venture of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and the United Church of Christ.

After wading through the first page and a half of google results from wingnut groups, here is the actual text of the bill. Though it has a lot of BS text about “regardless of whether the expulsion or extraction occurs as a result of natural or induced labor, cesarean section, or induced abortion,” considering that as Seraph noted, all those other cases are covered by existing law, it’s pretty easy to see that the real point of the bill is to raise the idea that an abortion procedure can result in a live birth. I presume this is some kind of wingnut fairy tale, like late-term abortions that are not to protect the life or health of the mother, so the only purpose of the bill is to pretend that abortion providers are baby-killing monsters, and thereby slam anyone unwilling to step onto the slippery slope of defining nonviable fetuses who show any sign of life as legal persons.

In other words, exactly what they’re doing.

Ok, really now, how ignorant (and/or stupid) do you have to be to think that any candidate with any support at all is running on a platform of infanticide?

(But I bet she’ll happily pull the lever for McCain, who’s going to have Iraqi and Iranian babies incinerated by bombs, or let American babies die of hunger or inadequate health care, or doom babies worldwide to a short and painful life with AIDS because honest prevention and treatment makes people like Joy feel icky.)

Does Joy realize that as a resident of MEDINA , that she may have some “Arab tendencies,” too?

She doesn’t want the truth, she doesn’t want anything that wouldn’t support her own world-view.

And she sure as hell doesn’t want to meet a black man. 

Oooh.  She might have to touch him.  What if it rubs off?  What if he tries to rape her?!?!  o-O

He is an Arab Muslim after all.  Out to kill American babies.  To eat, no doubt.

——————————-

The federal “born alive” bill was co-sponsored by Santorum, ya know.

Ugh.  I’m reminded of that link to Catholic Answers Forum that BJsurvivor posted in the “nope, it really is misogyny” thread, where they discussed how the only permissible way to deal with an ectopic pregnancy was to remove the fallopian tube, because simply aborting the already-doomed embryo was murder, but if you removed the “diseased tissue” of the tube, the abortion was a mere side-effect.

(Which makes you wonder just how stupid they think their omniscient God is…from what I’ve read, He’s not too impressed by technicalities, and He’s been around a bit too long to be taken in by shell games.)

It’s all about rules for anti-choicers, isn’t it?  It has nothing to do with women in pain, in danger of their lives, or maimed for life - that’s a given.  But it also has nothing to do with the few hours of pointless agony that a baby “born” under these conditions has to look forward to.  It’s nothing to do with actually helping people or easing suffering, nothing to do with pragmatic aspects of dealing with shitty situations.  It’s all about making sure the Rules are obeyed.

And I have to wonder where they think these Rules come from, because it’s sure not the Bible.  Brutally oppressive it might be, but the Old Testament can be pretty pragmatic.  If a woman is killed or injured by a pregnancy, that harms the survival of the tribe.  A live, healthy woman is more of an asset to the tribe than a baby - especially a sick or dead one.  Therefore, the woman comes first.  Heck, check out Exodus 21:22-25 - even an accidental “abortion” is only a civil matter.

So where is all this coming from?

Or is the only hope to outnumber them at the poles?…

Yes.

Seraph, I had forgotten it until you brought it up, but in Leviticus, I think it is, a woman accused of adultery has to drink a “holy water” concoction. If she’s innocent, nothing will happen - if she’s guilty, the baby will be aborted.

Does that mean God <3’s Abortions?

Ha, found it at the X Rated Bible source: http://www.postfun.com/pfp/NC-17Bible.html

“Numbers 5:11-21 The description of a bizarre, brutal and abusive ritual to be performed on a wife SUSPECTED of adultery. Considered to be an induced abortion to rid a woman of another man’s child.”

Mmm, the actual text is a bit ambiguous… could be taken to mean infertility instead of abortion, but it sounds like an abortion to me, especially considering adultery was a problem because a stranger’s son could inherit your property and that was a big no-no.

That’s effing hilarious. “born alive abortions”.....you can’t ‘abort’ something if it isn’t inside something else…. ‘aborting’ a human being is called homocide.

I love these people. They make Obama seem more credible and his opposition less credible with every word or gasp that comes out of their mouths. Really, they’re doing justice for our cause.

Just wait till these nutters start attacking women who have miscarriages. They’ve already started on women who have stillborns (which, if you carried it to term you probably wanted the baby and in this case it is one of the saddest things that can happen to a woman-obviously worse than a miscarriage in my opinion).

Ah, the good ol’ CWA (Coont Wads of Amurka).

“Barack Obama not only favors [that], but apparently also favors born-alive abortions—that is, even if the baby’s completely outside the woman.”

Umm, if the baby’s completely outside the woman, then the abortion has already been completed.

(Er, assuming, of course, that the placenta follows, and/or the umbilical cord has been cut, if one wants to get technical.)

(This is one of those points at which one wants to scream, abortion is the termination of a pregnancy, not of a fetus/baby/snowflake/zygote/WTF-ever they’re calling ‘em these days.

Joy Atwood?  Her name is JOY ATWOOD?

OMG, the irony just . . . is she for real?

I presume this is some kind of wingnut fairy tale, like late-term abortions that are not to protect the life or health of the mother

In the vast majority of cases, the procedure is performed on a healthy mother with a healthy fetus that is 20 weeks or more along.

Ron Fitzsimmons, former executive director of the National Coalition of Abortion Providers, quoted in the New York Times.

After birth they’re no good until they’re old enough to join the army.

They’re also good for keeping their parents in line.  If the working poor have multiple kids waiting at home, and they’re not guaranteed health care, food, et cetera, by a just and fair society, then those kids’ survival is dependent on the parents’ income, which is dependent on the parents’ jobs, which can be made dependent on the parents not rocking the boat, unionizing and demanding living wages and fair labor practices.

Henrietta G. Tavish, did he say whether they serve champaign and h’orderves afterward? 

MikeEss,

No, his comments were limited to refuting the notion that late term abortions were performed primarily to protect the life of the mother or kill a defective fetus.

Ron Fitzsimmons isn’t exactly the person to hang your reputation on.  A study done after Fitzsimmons revealed his lie shows that there are fewer than 1,000 late-term abortions performed in the United States each year, and the number is probably closer to 600.

I wonder how many of those elective late term abortions were a result of the financial and legal obstacles that are in place around the country.  Ironic, too, since the “pro life” groups are the ones behind restrictions that would make abortions - once finally obtained - later, more expensive, and more dangerous for the woman getting it. 

Good show.

All the wonderful detailed and nuanced arguments aside, who gives a fat rat’s ass what a republican like this moron in Ohio think about Obama?  What chance was there that this woman would have voted for any Democratic candidate?

Answer: none.

This a great new way to get the left to chase its tail.  Same with this pumapac bullshit and these supposed Clinton supporters who will now vote for mccain.  There isn’t a rational dem in the country that would vote for mccain, regardless of what evil Obama supposedly did to her.

Stop the insanity.  Quit empowering these trolls.

“Or is the only hope to outnumber them at the poles?…”

That was a lot easier before the Northern icecap started melting every summer.  Antarctica is still an option, but that’s a killer flight from the US.

....Oh, C’MON!!!

>8^D

“What chance was there that this woman would have voted for any Democratic candidate?”

Indeed.  However, they managed here to consume X minutes of progressives’ time that could have been used more productively, so it’s a win for the neocons.

What Mike said, Henrietta.  I get a “Page Not Found”, too.

Kodiak:

there’s got to be some kind of way past this duality that people hold in their heads. Something that could set off an epiphany for them

Well, there is 42.  But moments after we figure that out a giant space ship is going to destroy the planet to make way for a galactic highway.  Unless, of course, we’re already on Earth v2.0.  Anybody looked to see if the fjords are signed by Slartibartfast?

Seriously though - I’m with you.  I do wonder if there’s a way to wake people up.  Are they hypnotized and we should say random weird phrases (want to see an elephant?), or can we just slap these people silly?  I kind of like the slapping thing cause it really would make me feel better.

This http://www.cwalac.org/article_693.shtml
is the Concerned Women of America page about the “Born Alive Infant Protection Act.” And this http://www.citizenlink.org/content/A000007034.cfm
is a post by Jill Stanek, the nurse behind the legislation, giving her view of Obama’s involvement with the Illinois version of the legislation. (There’s a federal law with the same title.) This
http://www.nrlc.org/federal/born_alive_infants/BAIPA_ 2001_HJC_report.pdf
is the report of the House Judiciary Committe on the federal law.

As for evidence of existence of a real problem, the House report shows little. The evidence cited primarily relates to babies who were abandoned after birth at Christ Hospital in Oak Lawn, IL, as described by Ms. Stanek and a fellow nurse. (Hector B. refers to this above.) This hospital reportedly cleaned up its act after Ms. Stanek went public.

The only other evidence cited in the House report regarding abandonment of such babies in US is one episode in Cincinnati, OH. (The report also refers to an episode in Germany, and one in “Professor Peter Singer’s native country of Australia.”)

So, yes, there was a real problem, in one Illinois hospital at least, with babies being born early as the result of induced labor, primarily in cases of Down’s syndrome and spina bifada, yet being given neither comfort nor medical care. On this subject, Ms. Atwood is somewhat confused, but not completely. As for the “Arab tendencies” stuff, who knows where she got it, or what she even thinks that it means.

And here is Obama’s statement regarding the “Born Alive Birth Protection Act,” the differences between the Illinois and federal versions, and why he supported the federal version but not the version before the Illinois legislature while he was serving in it: “The federal one stripped out any language that could have been used to challenge the landmark Roe v. Wade abortion legalization decision.” In other words, not because he wants to kill babies.
http://factcheck.barackobama.com/factcheck/2008/04/02/washington_times_wrong_on_obam.php

Your comment alone may have lost us Virginia.

Madsen? Woolf? The little girl who wrote the letter asking about the existence of Santa Claus? WE NEED MORE DETAILS!

I married the funniest human being on the planet!  My husband was watching this video with me and said that “she must be a plant, and by ‘plant’ I mean… not a plant from the Obama campaign, but not a member of the same kingdom of life as us.”

To know the mindset where the Concerned Women for America springs from, the organization’s founder and CEO is Beverly LaHaye, whose husband Tim has made millions from the Rapture-as-adventure-fiction series Left Behind.

Not quite sure why these folks are so conserned about politics and other temporal matters, given that they profess to expect to be “Raptured” any damn day now.

MAJeff: ” “In the vast majority of cases, the procedure is performed on a healthy mother with a healthy fetus that is 20 weeks or more along.” Even if it’s true, so what?”

-The “so what” is, if the late-term abortion procedure that is used is early induction of labor, then the result may be a baby that is still alive. The baby probably will not survive but it might, all depending on how late-term the abortion is. (22-23 weeks is the typical cut-off for survival.) What should be done for the baby if it survives? Should it be cared for in any way? If so, should it be given only comfort care? Or should it be given care intended to prolong its life?

-One school of thought says no, that caring for the baby would defeat the purpose of the abortion. The other school of thought says that once the fetus has emerged & become a baby, it has an independent existence and is entitled to care. The “Born Alive Protection Act” takes the latter view.

(Off Topic)
So the post at 9:35 above has made me aware of a really cool feature of the new site.  Apparently, long urls don’t break the page by making every other comment in the thread overly wide.
(/Off Topic)

“Arab tendencies” she says. Hmm. Oh no. OH NO. Someone alert the press - I figured it out! Upon election, he will make us all eat…. hummus! (Dun-dun-duuuuuuuuuuun!)

“One school of thought says no, that caring for the baby would defeat the purpose of the abortion. The other school of thought says that once the fetus has emerged & become a baby, it has an independent existence and is entitled to care. The “Born Alive Protection Act” takes the latter view”

I thought the ‘purpose of the abortion’ was to end the pregnancy. As someone pointed out earlier, that’s what ‘abortion’ means - the termination of a process, in this case pregnancy.  So the survival of the fetus or baby is not particularly relevant to that.

There’s definitely a valid discussion to have about what level of care is appropriate for very premature babies given their small chance of survival, but that is a separate issue from abortion, and I suspect any attempt to conflate the two is generally aimed at restricting women’s right to abortion.  This ‘born alive’ act seems a good example of that.

Or will you be unable to because it doesn’t actually exist?…

MikeEss, Seraph

Here’s the corrected link:

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C05E6DF1731F935A15751C0A961958260

“In the vast majority of cases, the procedure is performed on a healthy mother with a healthy fetus that is 20 weeks or more along . . .” Even if it’s true, so what?

MAJeff,

I was responding the an earlier comment which said “I presume this is some kind of wingnut fairy tale, like late-term abortions that are not to protect the life or health of the mother.”  Mr. Fitzsimmons, as the New York Times article notes,  admitted that he ‘lied through [his] teeth’’ when he said the procedure was used rarely and only on women whose lives were in danger or whose fetuses were damaged.

Sarah: There could be different purposes for terminating a pregancy early. Suppose the pregnancy was endangering the life of the mother. In that case, the purpose would be to protect the mother’s health. If the fetus unexpectedly survived the early termination, the mother might be happy, since her intent was not to end the fetus’s life or to prevent its becoming a baby. Or, not so happy, if the baby suffered developmental disabilities as a result of being born early.

Or, suppose the purpose of the pregnancy was to end the life of the fetus. That might be the case if the fetus tested positive for an abnormality. What if the fetus nevertheless survives the abortion? If it survives briefly, what care should it receive? Comfort care? Comfort care only? Comfort care plus care intended to extend its life if possible? Suppose the result is to let a baby with Down’s syndrome grow up, just the result the mother intended to prevent?

Whatever the purpose of the abortion, if the fetus emerges alive, then there’s a dilemma: try to save it or not? You voted for not, and there are reasonable arguments that can be made in support of that proposition. For example, the baby might be destined for a short miserable life (e.g., Tay Sachs disease), and trying to extend its life might result only in more misery.

But there are reasonable arguments that can be made on the other side, too. For example, regardless of what the mother intended, one could say that upon emerging, the fetus, now a baby, becomes an independent being with its own rights, and the mother’s wishes are irrelevant, since it’s no longer encroaching on her body. That could mean saving a baby’s even if it will now live for a long time with, say, Down’s syndrome, even though that’s not what the mother wanted to have happen.

So this is a genuine issue. But it’s a small one: only one hospital is known to have totally ignored the needs of inadvertently-born babies. And Ms. Atwood has been fed misinformation by Concerned Women for America about Obama’s position.

Here’s the corrected link:

So it was exactly the guy I said he was when I pointed you to two articles in my 5:50 pm comment explaining why you probably shouldn’t build your entire case based on his comments.  You did read the articles I linked to, right?

Oh, and “late-term abortion” is very much a term of art, and there is no agreement as to what exactly it means.  It can be anywhere between 16 and 27 weeks, depending on who you’re talking to.

Nitpicker - Yes, I agree it’s a genuine issue, I just think it’s a separate one from abortion, though as you say it is one that might occasionally arise following an abortion.  My understanding is that when a baby is born very prematurely, or with a severe, life-limiting disability or health problem, then the decision on what treatment (if any) to provide is taken by the mother/parents and health care professionals together.  Usually that’s straightforward - though obviously very difficult and distressing for the parents - though there have been high-profile cases where there was disagreement on what to do, ending in legal challenges.  But generally both the parent’s wishes and beliefs are considered, along with professional medical opinion and ethical standards. 

Honestly I think every case like this is different, and while of course there should be general standards and guidelines, each situation has to be examined on its own merits.  From what I know of it, I don’t believe the ‘Born Alive Protection Act’ is a serious and nuanced attempt to address this very difficult and complex issue, but is a crude and obvious ploy to restrict women’s autonomy and human rights.

So it was exactly the guy I said he was when I pointed you to two articles in my 5:50 pm comment explaining why you probably shouldn’t build your entire case based on his comments.  You did read the articles I linked to, right?

Mnemosyne,

You didn’t leave a comment, at 5:50 or any other time, which explained why I shouldn’t rely on Ron Fitzsimmon’s statement that the majority abortions performed after 20 weeks are performed on healthy women and healthy fetuses for non-health-related reasons.  The articles you linked to certainly didn’t negate anything I said, and you didn’t quote any language from them that refuted Fitzsimmon’s assertion.

you can’t ‘abort’ something if it isn’t inside something else…. ‘aborting’ a human being is called homocide.

A bit of a pet peeve here.

One “aborts” pregnancies, causing them to end before their ordinary/natural completion.

You didn’t leave a comment, at 5:50 or any other time, which explained why I shouldn’t rely on Ron Fitzsimmon’s statement that the majority abortions performed after 20 weeks are performed on healthy women and healthy fetuses for non-health-related reasons.  The articles you linked to certainly didn’t negate anything I said, and you didn’t quote any language from them that refuted Fitzsimmon’s assertion.

Fitzsimmons is an admitted liar who exaggerated the number of late-term abortions as shown by the Guttmacher Institute statistics that came out a year AFTER he said that he lied.

My question is, was he lying then or is he lying now?  Why are you taking the word of an admitted liar as gospel?