GeezerSue

I don't need to defend what I believe because I'm not trying to make YOU do anything...except maybe leave other people alone. The "Daddy" comment was entirely tongue-in-cheek. Maybe I need to use little smileys or something. You live in Orange County, California. You are SURROUNDED by a thoroughly conservative, Christian value system. If you grew up anywhere in the US, you were exposed to a predominantly Christian--sometimes Judeo-Christian--mindset. We are all influenced by Christianity the same way anyone growing up in Iraq would be influenced by Islam...whether they were personally involved in the believing or not. The problem with your position is that in all the other examples you give, there is a PERSON involved...someone who was born a person. Not so with a fetus. Enjoy your trip. Please note that the pregnant women on your plane did NOT have to pay passenger taxes on their fetuses as those are charged PER PERSON....

I have always shared money--and other stuff--with those who are needier than I am. Kind of interesting...you want government outlawing choice in reproductive matters but NOT requiring that even the unwilling do their part to support all those "unplanned" kids? I'd much rather have my government in my bank than in my uterus (well, I don't HAVE a uterus anymore, but ANY of that area)...but to each her own... BTW, Dubya and Laura pay about 31% of their income in taxes. Lots of us do. But they earn more than I do. Without the tax breaks he gave himself, he would have paid more. I guess he didn't feel like sharing. Interestingly enough, SOME of his charitable contribution money went to the Chapel at Camp David. Now THERE'S a cause that will help so many Americans...especially the poor ones. Yup, that's Dubya.

Gadgetlady, I'm sorry that my point wasn't more clear. I was not challenging your right to choose to believe that life begins when Daddy gets that gleam in his eye...whatever. Believe what you choose to believe. I was challenging several of the random things you mentioned...such as your belief that by using the word "fetus" you were speaking Latin and that by using the term "unborn child" you were translating from Latin. That was wrong. And I was challenging your (implied) claim that your religion does not inform the rest of what you believe. And I was challenging your claim that because YOU believe that life begins whenever you think it does, that it somehow makes it so. AND I was challenging your claim that you think that YOUR (religion-based, like it or not) beliefs about when life begins somehow impart a responsibility on others to behave in a way that conforms with your beliefs. You can carry on until the cows come home about what starts when...it matters not a whit to me. What matters is WHO DECIDES? And, with or without the permission of the religous right, I HAVE decided for myself and I will continue marching outside those clinics to keep them open for my daughter or any other woman who might need them to be open.

This is, by definition, an example of what is called a "faith claim." That is, you BELIEVE that this position is true. REAL science has to do with empirical data...NOT with what someone thinks. Our religious beliefs "inform" our other beliefs and practices. That's why--for example--many Quakers are "conscientious objectors." It's why a Muslim physician in our old neighborhood wouldn't prescribe BC pills to unmarried women. It's why you won't find many Christian Scientist surgeons. What we believe--including our religious beliefs--strongly influences what ELSE we believe.

The word "fetus," while it originates with the Latin is an English word. And, to assume that the word means the same thing in the two languages is a common error. For example, the word for "pregnant" in Spanish, sounds an awful lot like the word "embarassed" in English. They are not, however, interchangable. There are entire dictionaries devoted to these False Cognates. My old Cassell's Latin-English dictionary tells us that the word fetus, in Latin, means "pregnant, fruitful or fertile" or even "newly delivered." It can also mean "the bearing, bringng forth or hatching of young." It likewise applies to plants. To try to simplify things for others may be a kind gesture...but accuracy is helpful in these ventures. In English, too, a fetus is a fetus...not any kind of baby except in the imagination of those who wish it to be.

If those walls could talk! Do you REALLY think that was a FIRST? We always do better financially when Republicans run the place...but what's right and what's wrong can seldom be measured in dollars. I don't feel good about a few extra bucks in the bank knowing how many more families are living on the street...and how few families that USED TO HAVE medical insurance do not now have it...and how many working people cannot afford to send their kids to PUBLIC community college. Nah...I'd rather share a few bucks and l have less poverty in my midst.

Yes, but everyone is NOT entitled to make up their own facts. Uh...surely you meant Osama. right? You DO know that Saddam Hussein had NOTHING--zero, zip, zilch--to do with 9/11. Even Dubya now admits knowing that. Clinton was hiding from...?? Our national debt--which mens the tax burden we are passing on to your children and grandchildren--has never been anywhere near this huge. I'm sure this means something to you... "I guess when abortion is finally the only way to go, and gays and lesbians and the go and legally in everystate the go then we'll be where the democrats wanted us to be." but I'm having trouble following what gays and lesbians and abortion have to do with each other...or with most of us for that matter.

I had a LapBand and the Duodenal Switch (DS), which is far more invasive. And, like Anthony, my recovery included recovering from band-related problems. There is a Sue on the OH Gastric Sleeve board who was revised from band to sleeve for reasons not involving complication. I don't want to misquote her, so why don't you wander over there and ask. http://obesityhelp.com/forums/VSG/

What "punished?" (And it's a fetus, but you can call it whatever you like.)

Not every person having an abortion is a confused kid. I'm thinking about a married woman I met a few times--the sister of a friend--an RN, who had Type I Diabetes....could never conceive...had two adopted children...lived in a farming area in middle Illinois. At age 40, her vision took a dump. Doctor couldn't figure why. Other problems...mostly related to diabetes. Finally, up to the big city. She was pregnant. After twenty years of unprotected sex (the first ten because she wanted to get pregnant and the next ten because she knew she couldn't get pregnant), she was pregnant. Husband worked in the city--a 2.5 hour drive each way...because they couldn't make a living with the little farm. They kids were driven everywhere locally by the mom. They had a few acres to farm, the rest were leased out. And there she was, with her two adopted children who had already each lost a mom, getting sicker by the day and going blind...because she was pregnant for the first time in her life at age 40 with advanced diabetes. AND, according to the testing available then, the fetus wasn't doing well either. So, they opted for an abortion and it was VERY difficult for them because they had always believed that abortions were just wrong. After the abortion, she was one of the first people implanted with an insulin pump that constantly monitored her blood glucose levels and delivered the drug to her as her body needed it. I've lost touch with the family, but I know that after that pregnancy, her health was in rapid decline. I'm just sayin', she--in concert with her husband and doctor--made the best decision she could at that time. Who are any of us to criticize her? For me, the issue is one simple question...who decides?

My husband doesn't have the band but he does have psoriasis. If you can convince your insurance company that you have psoriatic arthritis--which he has and which convincing his doctor did--you may want to consider Enbrel. You may NOT want to consider it without insurance company participation, because it would cost us $2500/month...but that's up to you. It is a WONDER DRUG. Not only is he no longer a pink alligator, the arthritis is drastically improved. His psoriasis STARTED on his elbows and then went to his arms and then legs and knees and some on his head...a few on his back, his face and in his ears and on his groin. That's when he said, "ENOUGH!!!" and got the Enbrel. It is HUGELY IMPROVED. He also uses a topical medication and he tans three times a week as part of his doctor's program. I hope you find relief...it can be a burden.

So...all abortions are performed for convenience and are an act of selfishness? Mind-reading much? I know some VERY moral, VERY religious (perhaps a coincidence, perhaps not) people who were put in VERY bad situations due to an unexpected pregnancy...it was not a matter of convenience for them...it was very INconvenient to choose to do something thay had aways thought they would never do...but, if you know better, then maybe YOU should choose for all of us, right?

Been there, done that...but, the "comfort room" would have creeped me out. Silly me, I was sad/disappointed for a day or so, but figured that spontaneous first trimester abortions (with or without fetal expulsion) were "nature's way of telling me" (figure of speech, of course...I don't generally commune with nature, upper or lower case) that something was just not meant to be. This happened to me more than once, BTW. I also knew people who went completely overboard nuts with THEIR spontaneous first trimester abortions (aka miscarriages) and there was drama and hysteria and memorial services with empty little pretend coffins and all kinds of sick shit and I just never got it. These are the kind of people who, when they opt for a therapeutic abortion later decide that they committed a great sin and end up on the religious right's websites and talk shows seeking absolution for the public at large. (Interestingly enough, the most dramatic of my acquaintances who went Drama Queen over a miscarriage has three kids...one a convicted felon on crack living in her garage, one a former cop that no department will rehire and who never paid a dime of child support for HIS kids, and the third who got arrested while shoplifting...she was rather visible at age 17 and nine-months pregnant and wearing her Catholic School uniform in maternity style, so imagine how surprised she was when she got arrested again, a year later for shoplifting at the same store while NOT pregnant. She figured they wouldn't recognize her. What this family needed was another kid...)

You can call them "babies"...I can call them "evidence of a crime" (in some cases), but what they ARE is fetuses...and that's all. We can anthropomorphize til the cows come home, they just aren't people....(uh...the fetuses, not the cows...just being clear.)

Why would she NOT be a person? Just because she was not wanted?

No, Carlene, the IRS doesn't give a rat's ass about labor or potentiality. You are either a person (born live, at that) or not.

So, in answer to NARAL's ongoing question--"Who decides?"--the answer is that YOU decide...for everyone else? Therein lies the problem. I'm all about your deciding for YOU...but I think the rest of us ought to get the same privilege.

Well, I think it would be ok for the govenrment to step in and make a law to make people learn the difference between a person and a fetus.

This is a recent development, a result of the pandering to the views of the far right and hysterical reaction to horrid crimes. Besides who cares and who benefits--other than the emotionally involved--from such a ruling? First, what's the point? Killing Lacey Peterson wasn't enough? It's somehow worse if we call the fetus a person? Then, if the personhood argument were valid throughout government, the IRS would have to change its definintion of what a person is...and, so far--and as usual--when its money vs. values with the far-right-owned congress, money usually wins...and we are not--according to the IRS, a federal agency whose rules would, in many cases, outrank local laws-- --people, until we are born.

Thank you...a demonstrable lack of logic ALWAYS confuses me...glad you were able to see yours.

But since it isn't YOUR birth control, why is it YOUR concern?

So, it was the abortion that screwed up her life? Not the fact that she was 20-weeks pregnant at age 14? I'm confused.

Oh, yeah...and almost ALL of the anti-choice groups are--when you pin them down--also anti-contraception. It just that most of their blind followers, don't pin them down.

Well, Sweetie, you aren't the ONLY personal witness here. My big, blue sign and I were there, too. Along with a big bunch of gay guys (ACT UP LA) who wouldn't have had sex with a woman if she PAID them, and a bunch of husbands there with their wives...so there goes the rapist theory. (And while I've never been asked to blow up a church, I suspect that a number of "good, God-fearing Christians of the KKK-ilk HAVE been involved in such activities.) Not to mention that your source TOTALLY lacks credibility. If what you are saying is that you were pushed when you placed your body between a fully competent woman and her medical care because YOU assumed she MIGHT be having something done that YOU didn't approve of, then you--and any other self-serving, my-values-determine-what-you-can-do self-righteous pawn of the religion-factories--are really lucky you weren't in MY way. I'll go to my medical care regardless of what anyone else thinks...and anyone who decides to sacrifice their body to stop me may well find their body...you know...sacrificed. But that was THEIR choice. Oh...and anyone who thinks that the only service provided at those clinics is abortion is a moron. And WWJD? He'd provide free medical care to those who needed it and hang out with a hooker, last I heard.

There is NO debate as to whether Revisionist History is rampant among the culties, though. Article Xi MAY not have been included in Arabic, but it WAS in the English, as adopted by Congress.