BJean

Well there are stories in the Bible of the sacrifice of animals. And there are stories of all creatures being made by God. There are stories of war being acceptable and then we had Hitler, who was supposedly a Christian. If you had been a German living under his dictatorship at that time, perhaps you would have believed that Hitler was being guided by God when he tried to exterminate Jews. Some Muslims believe that we Americans are infidels who should be destroyed. They're guided, they believe, by Allah, to do all they can to get rid of us. These are the reasons I am so against wars. I don't believe we should be killing each other. I believe that we should be able to live and let live. We need to learn how to live together in one global "villiage". But as long as there are people who can justify war and killing in the name of their God, how can we negotiate peace? I believe our President understands this and that is why he works for diplomatic resolutions and why he is tolerant of other world leaders even when he does not agree with their politics. Many of us who are older went through a time in politics when that was an accepted and desired goal for any president. Many of us are puzzled about the aggressive and warlike posture that many Americans take. Dick Cheney and others have made people think that war and domination is a good thing. It is not a good thing.

Hummingbird, the tough part of it was that the husband had to make the choice at all. I thought the doctors should have just done all they could to save the life of the mother because I thought her life was something that was a sure thing. Even if they tried to save the babies, there were no guarantees for them - so many things would have had to happen for them to be born alive and healthy. Their odds weren't good. The girl, on the other hand, should have had every opportunity that the medical profession could have given her, for a long, healthy life. Not that I wouldn't have wanted to save the babies, if possible. But having to make that choice, I can't imagine giving her a death sentence in favor of 2 tiny little unknowns. Which is what happened. And the babies weren't able to be saved after all. It was a huge bungled, emotional mess that culminated in the loss of a beautiful young woman who deserved to live. It's one of the primary reasons that I do not want the government intervening in people's lives, insisting that women absolutely do not have a choice. I agree that is should not have been considered an abortion (and that term was never used), but it was, in effect, the decision that he had to face.

You're smart for having a living will and discussing your wishes with your husband.

Thank you C'sM. Needless to say I've never gotten over it. I still want to cry when I think about her. I don't wish him ill will, and I know he must have endured a lot of pain over the entire thing. But I have never understood how he was able to fall in love and remarry and start another family so quickly after her death. It has made me consider abortion and God's will in a different way than some people do. And I can tell you that no situation is simple. Women who use abortion as birth control (are there really such women?) are plainly stupid and need help in their lives. But women who have complications that require them to make a decision, however painful, to terminate a pregnancy, should not be judged by others.

Oh yeah, makes sense, patty. Down with any changes to our health care system because it is so grand having the profit-making, greed-driven insurance companies making all my medical decisions for me.

Jesus would not have judged someone and turned them away without food just because the person had another problem than just hunger. It has been written that Christ said, judge not lest ye be judged. It seems very hypocritical to say you try to follow the Bible and yet in a very real, everyday situation, you have set yourself up to be that woman's judge and jury. I know this has been discussed to what sounded like a conclusion but I continue to think of it and be shocked by it.

And jessress, I will share a gut wrenching decision that my former brother-in-law had to make when he was newly married and in his mid-twenties. He was a minister and evangalist and actively involved in the Southern Baptist convention. He and his stunningly beautiful wife had graduated top of their class in college. He went to seminary she sang like an angel. Their life together had the promise of much love, beauty and service to the church. She became pregnant with twins. They were estatic. Their extended family of the large congregation where they worshipped, was thrilled for them. Then she very quickly became sick with a mysterious illness that was confounding to her ob/gyn. He hospitalized her. Specialists were called in on the case and the doctors quickly concluded that the only way to save her was to take the babies, because it was the pregnancy that was threatening her life. She was so sick she was in alternate states of unconscious and delerium. They asked her dear sweet husband to make the decision to terminate the pregnancy to save his wife. Or alternatively, they said, they could induce a coma, put her on life support and try to just keep her alive long enough to allow the twins to become viable. What a horrendous decision he was faced with. He decided that they should do all they could to save the babies. So she was quickly intubated, put on life support and the team of medical staff gave up trying to save her life, only the babies. Within a week, they were all three dead. Gone was the beautiful young wife. Gone was the promise of 2 children. Gone were his dreams of a life with his lover and friend because death parted them. Did it have to happen that way? No. He could have chosen to save his wife and try again for babies (which is what the doctors recommended). But he felt that it was God's will that the babies be saved. He thought that God was telling him to save the babies no matter what. For her parents though, it was the worst decision he could have made. They begged him to allow the doctors to try to save her. They didn't have the opportunity for more children. Their daughter was their only child and the light of their life. Even many of the church members felt that he had made the wrong decision. But of course there was support for him from other members of the congregation and the minister himself completely supported him and comforted him. The memories and pain were difficult for him and so he chose to move to another state to get away from the constant reminders in our close-knit town. Within a couple of years, he was remarried, appointed as an assistant pastor of a church and continued his work as a summertime traveling evangelist. He and his new wife eventually had 3 children. His life was good. Personally I don't know how he lives with himself. Oh yes I do... he convinced himself it was God's plan for his first wife to fall ill and die with her unborn fetuses. It was God's plan and he was merely doing what God told him to do when he chose to put her in a coma and on life support to try to save the babies. It was a nightmare 30 years ago and continues to be a nightmare for those of us who loved that beautiful, dark-haired, fabulously talented young woman.

jessress: I loved your posts. Thank you so much for bringing another set of beliefs, life experiences and viewpoint to these discussions!! You are, I think, a very typical young woman who has to dig very deep to fully understand and come to grips with the reality of whether or not a woman has the right to choose or if the government should choose for her. Your husband, on the other hand, did not have the benefit of all the discussion here or the chance to do the soul searching that you did before answering the question. If he did, his answer might be different - MIGHT be. If he were a woman his answer MIGHT be different too. But whether or not he may ever change his mind on the subject (as in the extreme circumstance where he had to choose between you and a baby), his viewpoint and beliefs are his and he has every right to believe whatever he believes. But thank goodness he is not in the position to make that decision for each and every woman who is faced with the horrible delimma. What a horrendous responsibility that would be, right? Well if the government were making the decision for women, it wouldn't be one person, who had to face the consequences of his decision as in the case of your husband. It would be a relatively anonymous, faceless entity doing it with no remorse or compassion or regret if the decision turned out to be a seriously bad one. Btw, I know what you're saying about generalizations regarding what kind of individuals make up both political parties. I definitely am guilty of cheering when someone says good things about the people of my party and cheering when they say bad things about the opposition party. But you are so right. There are good people and bad people in both parties. To say that one party is more Christian or of higher moral standards is not 100% true and it undoubtedly serves little purpose for someone to state that it is true. By the same token, not every Democrat has the best interests of America at heart. Generalizations always get us into trouble. In both discussions about women's right to choose as well as putting labels individuals in political parties. I loved your posts. Thank you very much.

C'sM: "This is because they are unable to engage in meaningful, intelligent, fact-based discussions. Maybe they don't want to do that because they don't have the facts on their side." That's exactly right. They can't argue the merits because they'll lose and they know it. The Republicans are experts at lying and exaggerating and distorting the truth. And that's what we're supposed to be impressed with because they SAY they are Christians? Talk is cheap and by gosh actions always speak louder than words.

So your preacher only speaks of Biblical things, never political or social problems within the community? Because I'm wondering if he/she is aware that you don't feel that someone who is a smoker but in need of food, should be given food food because sof her smoking habit. Because if she has cigarettes, she could afford food if she wanted it and doesn't deserve hand outs, eth?

Making abortion illegal didn't work for us. It didn't keep women who needed an abortion from getting one. It made them law-breakers as it did the compassionate doctors who helped the women. And it made back street abortions a fact of life. The butchers who did them were able to take advantage of desperate women and often either maim or kill them.

Just as abortion is legal and should be,( as far as you're concerned)why not make drugs legal then? Duh! Because they shouldn't be!!! Just like abortion shouldn't be. patty: "Just because someone might use drugs in the back alley illegally (like they might have an abortion in the back alley illegally) doean't mean we should make them legal so that those who think of doing that won't get hurt." Bad reasoning. Having people do their drugs in a back alley really isn't why we make them illegal. It has to do with the indirect effect it has on society. And we make them illegal even though the direct result of someone doing illegal drugs is a virtually victimless crime. And although there are many negative ways that society is affected by people doing illegal drugs, it has been proven over a long period of time that making drugs illegal isn't working for us. We need to solve the problem of people doing illegal drugs instead of being so closed minded to alternative ways to keep people from doing them. If legalizing drugs, thereby creating a more straight forward way of dealing with the problem (including having control of the drugs), is a reasonable alternative, then we should do it.

I've sat through the sermons of countless preachers and priests and never once have adamantly agreed with everything they said. The fact that you do sure seems to indicate something about how brainwashed you are or how easily you are influenced by your preacher.

Uh I'm afraid she's right patty. That wasn't an analogy. At least not as I understand the word. Maybe your interpretation of the dictionary is different from ours. There's always that chance I guess. We don't often agree on meanings and interpretations, eh?

Yeah, well what about us poor delicate abused women?

Yeah and Cheney is still talking tripe and why people listen to that greedy bird squawk is beyond me.

Yes we keep drugs illegal and it's worked so well for us. Yeah, right. patty you're entirely wrong with your constant generalizations about which of the two extreme political viewpoints is held by the more morally upright citizens. It is even more biased and unfair than nearly everything you've posted. And that's saying a lot. Reading and quoting the Bible does not in any way define a person's moral standards. All it tells us is that the person can read and quote the Bible. The only way we can gauge a person's moral standards is to observe their behavior. If you go by the behavior of extremist, so-called Christian right wingers, one can quickly determine that for all their claims of being better people because of their Christian beliefs, they do not behave in such a way that they garner our respect. In fact, quite the opposite is true. So for you to continue to claim that right wingers and extremist conservatives take the higher moral ground is sure making you lose any credibility whatsoever.

and patty, I wrote my post. Who wrote yours?

Yeah, just a joke patty. I get it.

Well if liberals remind you of your lazy, good for nothing puppy... teabaggers and birthers remind me of one of Michael Vick's fighting pit bull dogs. Rush Limbaugh and Rupert Murdoch and the other "trainers" are the Michael Vicks of the right wing extremist pit bulls. Those guys, like Michael Vick, stand to make a lot of money and the poor pit bulls only know what makes sense to them after they're trained to gnarl, bite, thrash and kill if possible. They'll fight to the death no matter what it costs them personally.

Snap! two thumbs up.

Just because I disagree with you about everything you post? And because I call you out when I think you've posted something that doesn't make any sense? Hey, I'm actually not as mean as I sound. And I am a very compassionate person about many things. And I admit that I am very entrenched in my beliefs about politics and religion. I have come to be like this because I have learned a whole lot while I've been living. I'm not some innocent young pie-in-the-sky dreamer. I've been there and have seen that. So I have a lot to say on stuff. And when I think someone, anyone, is full of bull, I say so. But I don't know you personally. After reading your posts for so long I have a pretty good idea of who you are. I've known a lot of people like you. But of course you could be a big hairy guy that's 15 years old just yanking everybody's chain. That's the beauty of this forum. We can be whoever we decide we want to be. It's fun and it's anonymous so no harm, no foul. I use it strictly for my own theraputic shot in the arm.

I think I can speak for some of the posters here when I say that many anti-choice people prove that they demonstrate with their words and arguments that they do not care one whit about the women who are facing the horrible and gut-wrenching decision of whether to have an abortion. They argue for no gun legislation whatsoever. They wholeheartedly support capital punishment. Heck patty, even you say you want to imprison a woman who would make a decision to have an abortion. You don't care about the woman or her problems. You have made a decision about abortion being murder and you'll argue til the world looks level that women need to be forced to have babies and that women should not have the decision-making capability to make their own choices about whether or not to bring a living breathing human being into the world. Your answer to everything is that 1) adoption makes it ok to bring an unwanted, unplanned for or possibly deformed or handicapped child into the world and 2) the woman deserves what she gets for having sex. Some caring person you and other anti-choice people prove yourselves to be. Whether you fostered or adopted or personally had 10 kids means nothing when you make those incredibly incompassionate arguments about life and liberty in the U.S.A.

Good HONEST arguments about reforming certain programs and lowering taxes for middle income people and small business owners is welcome. Those things are interesting and give us valid points to debate. But the teabaggers, birthers, Joe the Plumber, Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh, the "Company" and the rest of the the gangsters that work for Rupert Murdoch are making the intelligent and informed conservatives look really, really bad. They're trying to scare the progressives with their proverbial torches, but they're slowly and surely burning the Republican party into the ground.

C'sM: You go girl!!! People accuse progressive people of drinking the "yes we can kool-aide" but I find that to be ludicrous. We've been saying the same things for years. We've been putting up with the Republicans and right wing for years. This president didn't invent any of what we're fighting for. He only gave us hope. The Republicans and ya-hoos like the bean brain pictured above have been led down some mighty absurd paths where they like to make believe that it's about the economy and taxes and big government. But those of us who know that the Republicans have been the downfall of a good solid strong middle America, just ain't buying the teabaggin' B.S. they're peddling.