Pro-lifers and their lies and religion
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This is my favorite picture..notice how the sign starts out with "GOD HATES..."
'Pro-life' protesters
Welcomed or not wanted, students debate appropriate use of the First Amendment
Sheena Jeffers
Hannah Murch is touring the nation for the sixth year. With her long blond hair pulled into a light blue scarf, she stands between James Branch Cabell Library and Shafer Court Dining Center, ignoring tiny sweat beads forming from the glaring sun. Her job is to hold a large poster of what she says is an aborted baby. Bleeding, dismembered and lying against a white background, the baby, which the poster claims is named Malachai, stirred heated conversation Wednesday.
Murch is a missionary with Life and Liberty Ministries, an anti-abortion organization founded in 1994 to visit high schools, college campuses and busy intersections.
They come to VCU - no permit required since it is a public university, they say - with a mission:
"To call people to turn away from their sin, to repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand. This is a small time that we have here on this earth, and it is for a reason. That is to love God and love our neighbor, and that is why we come here," said Michael Marcavage, assistant to Dennis Green, the founder of LLM.
Saying abortion is the sin people need to turn away from, Marcavage brought missionaries and photographs of what they said were aborted children and stood outside of Shafer Court Dining Center and the University Student Commons.
"We're grieved by this holocaust taking place in America," he said. "It's happening over 4,000 times a day, where these children are losing their lives. Their beating hearts are stopped, and they're torn limb for limb from their mother's womb in the name of choice."
Marcavage said this "holocaust" continues because of silence, indifference and apathy, "but most importantly because of our rebellion toward Almighty God."
Murch, a loyal LLM missionary, said she is active with the street-outreach mission because it's a good opportunity to get out the gospel. She said she does not understand why abortion is tolerated.
Some VCU students, on the other hand, do not understand LLM's approach to making its point. Many students wanted to discuss the issue of abortion, not religion.
Standing in the middle of the commotion, every now and then "yellow journalism" or "propaganda" forced its way through the conversations.
Roy Roberts, a sophomore business information systems major, was one of those students who did not understand the organization's choice
of presentation.
"One thing I don't like is they're using a religion to support it," he said.
Roberts, a self-proclaimed atheist, said he felt the religious arguments did not help the pro-life side of the debate.
"They're cherry-picking their religion. They're choosing stuff from Proverbs and Leviticus, and they're ignoring the rest of it," he said.
Roberts described the pictures as "grotesque" and said that while he may not agree with the organization's argument, the pictures are slightly intrusive.
"It takes a rather strong stomach to walk past these things."
Mary Lucas, a freshman nursing major and her friend, Melissa Lloyd, a freshman forensic science major, agreed with Roberts.
"I think it's ridiculous that they're showing these pictures all over campus, especially in front of the dining hall," Lucas said. "That's tasteless."
Lucas said she respects LLM's right to be at VCU, but the pictures took it too far.
"I think they're approaching it in the wrong way," she said.
Lloyd, who is against abortion, said LLM's strategy is not doing anything for either side.
LLM, however, said it is only embracing its First Amendment rights.
Also embracing the First Amendment, Planned Parenthood arrived not long after LLM.
Laurel Murray, president of the student orgnization Voices for Planned Parenthood, or VOX, said the protesters had the same right to be there as VOX did.
Only a few feet away from the protesters, VOX was seeking signatures for a petition to keep emergency contraception on campus.
"I'm all for getting your side out there, mobilizing and getting into grassroots activism as in talking to people on the street like this," Murray said. "But personally, I think it's totally offensive, and I think a lot of students agree with me."
Murray said the group's pictures and information were not accurate.
"These are fabricated pictures completely made up for their purpose," she said. "These are pictures of like a miscarriage, or they could be completely made up. This is not an accurate representation."
In response to Marcavage's claims, Murray said, "Everything he's saying is wrong. I think I heard him talking something about how babies are ripped limb by limb - that's absolutely ridiculous. The man obviously has spent no time in a clinic where abortions are performed."
Murray said the bottom line is the pictures and information are harmful to women.
"This is not what a woman wants to see," she said.
Murray stressed a woman's decision to have an abortion may be one of the most difficult to make.
"We need to respect her privacy and her ability to control her reproductive destiny," she said.
As the crowd grew, the debates heightened, and students became more vocal.
Jon Eckert, a sophomore political science major, and James Chinn, a junior accounting major, appeared with bent coat hangers.
"If abortion is illegal, this is what people are going to use for abortions," he said, pointing the hanger at the missionaries.
Murray said that is sadly true.
"When made illegal, abortion does not go away; it goes underground and becomes unsafe," she said.
Hannah Bloedorn, a 15-year-old home-schooled student on tour with LLM, was one of LLM's main features. Bloedorn is a child of rape.
She said she has dedicated her life to the Bible and Jesus Christ, just the way her mother did after she was raped.
She said that although her mother was encouraged to have an abortion, she said "absolutely not."
Her mother's decision made all the difference, she said.
"I'm so glad I'm here today."
As the hours went by, the heat drove LLM to pack up their pictures. They said their job was completed.
Aaron Murch, a missionary of LLM, said, "Even if they don't agree with us right off, at least they're thinking about it."
LLM is on a week-long tour of Virginia, and VCU's reputation with the tour is quite known for being full of heated conversation, Murch said.
Some students, like Kerry Epperson, a sophomore exercise science major, signed a petition to have the group and their pictures removed from campus. They also do not want the group returning next year.
"Regardless of your beliefs, and regardless of these people's beliefs, you should have the right to walk through campus without having to see pictures of mangled babies," Epperson said.
Epperson called the pictures "completely obscene" and said the LLM missionaries were over-dramatic.
"Those posters are 6 to 7 feet high," she said. "You can see them all over campus; you can't avoid them."
Epperson plans to take the petition to University President Eugene P. Trani to keep LLM off VCU's campus.
E.J. White, a junior political science major, said he welcomes groups with differing ideas. He said he feels college campuses are the place to learn to be critical thinkers and take in foreign ideas.
As students walked by calling the pictures "inaccurate," White defended LLM's right to present their ideas.
"Accurate or inaccurate, it doesn't say in the First Amendment that whenever you speak, you have to speak the truth," White said. "It's up to the people listening to you to decide whether or not you're worth listening to."
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Anti abortion people are a bunch of assholes.
Abortions don't kill people, unaborted people kill people!
genius. absolute genius.
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and if you weren't here, would you be sad?
*chuckle*
in synonymous words, White said, "They are not speaking the truth."
in even more synonymous words, White said ,"They are blatantly lying."
if only Mr. White realized what he was saying. he's going to make a fine politician some day.
Fear is the mindkiller.
Bumper sticker material for sure.
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Speaking of ignorance and dishonesty from pro lifers who are so fucking clueless that they refuse to admit or just cant see the reality of the fact that God is the leading killer of babies.
Here is a blog post from Mark, Rational Response Squad Oklahoma
http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendID=101305055&blogID=184662766&
God is Pro-Abortion
God is Pro Abortion, I almost want to leave it at that, and have everyone that ask why, look it up for themselves. The answer, is so common and happens every, moment of the day. Well, luckily, I am going to prove to you, if God were to actually exist, that he (He, She, It, etc.,) would be "Pro-Abortion".
You might be wondering "How is it that God, is "Pro-Abortion" he doesn't do abortions or, support them. "It even says right here in the bible that God is against abortion!" - Anonymous fundamentalist.
Isaiah 44:2 - Thus saith the LORD that made thee, and formed thee from the womb, which will help thee; Fear not, O Jacob, my servant; and thou, Jesurun, whom I have chosen.
"Here is another scripture"…
Jeremiah 1:4-5 - Then the word of the LORD came unto me, saying,
Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee, and I ordained 1 thee a prophet unto the nations.
Well, obviously that doesn't say anything about God being "Anti-Abortion" It just says God was the one who created you. He knew you before you "He formed you in the belly"
I am saying that God is Pro-Abortion simply because he allows (Yes, allows) miscarriages. Not just a few or a couple hundred, or even several thousand. There are 800,000 (That's eight hundred thousand) miscarriages each Year! That is higher than smoking (Tobacco) related deaths, which is recorded at an estimated 400,000, Each Year!
15-20% of all recorded pregnancies, have miscarriages before the woman comes up on 20 weeks! On average, a miscarriage is around the 13th week, that's 80% of the women who have miscarriages! That is going right into the second trimester of a pregnancy!
So the next question is, why would God allow for so many miscarriages? I mean obviously we do not have free will since God already knows everything! You know, God is all knowing? How can we have free will if he knows us before we are born? If he knows when we will die? What we will do, before we do and, if we will go to Heaven or, Hell before our Great, great grandparents are born? After all, God is an Omniscient God…
Psalms 147: 4-5 - He telleth the number of the stars; he calleth them all by their names.
Great is our Lord, and of great power: his understanding is infinite.
Lets look at what the definition of abortion is---
Main Entry: abor·tion
Pronunciation: &-'bor-sh&n
Function: noun
1 : the termination of a pregnancy after, accompanied by, resulting in, or closely followed by the death of the embryo or fetus: a : spontaneous expulsion of a human fetus during the first 12 weeks of gestationa b : induced expulsion of a human fetus c : expulsion of a fetus by a domestic animal often due to infection at any time before completion of pregnancy…
Interesting, now lets look at the definition for miscarriage---
Main Entry: mis·car·riage
Pronunciation: "mis-'ker-ij, -'ka-rij, 'mis-"
Function: noun
1 : corrupt or incompetent management; especially : a failure in the administration of justice
2 : spontaneous expulsion of a human fetus before it is viable and especially between the 12th and 28th weeks of gestation
Now to get technical, "Expulsion" means the act of expelling.
Now we have just covered abortion and miscarriage, they both mean the same thing, except, miscarriage being a "Nature abortion"
I will agree with you fundamentalist on this one, it just simply was "Gods will" Or how about "God works in mysterious ways"
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I like that very good. fits quite well with the sign from the anti-abortionists that started off with "God Hates...." (those that shed innocent blood). How ironic eh?God must then hate him/her/itself?
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In my Catholic school biology book, no less, we learned that the technical term for a miscarriage is a spontaneous abortion.
It's beyond me why one is regarded as a horrible sin and the other, the perfectly acceptable although sad product of nature.
The difference is a simple medical procedure. I guess a piece of metal is evil.
I have a more simple arguement.
Christians believe that fetuses are ensouled. And at least in my experience, they believe that anyone under a certain age is automatically going to heaven because they just can't know any better.
So why would you have them have a baby they don't even want, and risk that baby not becoming a Christian and going to heaven, when killing it in the womb would ensure that it's soul goes to heaven?
They obviously aren't thinking for the long term here.
Christians used to kill Native South American babies to make sure they went to heaven.
You know, I never bought that this whole discussion was about whether or not people who give/receive abortions are "baby killers". Neither do I believe that this is a debate on science, morality or a precise question on when life begins. This about one thing and one thing only: sex.
In every debate I have ever had about abortion, The pro-life opposition has always resorted to this argument:
"Well, if those people were willing to get on their backs and spread their legs, they should pay the consequences!"
And why should they have to do that?
Once again, religion is the shield here. These epople are not fighting for morality or dead babies. This all about sexual repression. They would have you feel shame over having sex simply to feel good or to express love rather than procreation because they feel shame over their own sexuality. These people don't care about children. How could they, when they believe childbirth to be punishment?
No, a woman should not have pay a price for expressing love or feeling plreasure. That expectation is at best cruel and at worst boderline sadistic.
Jesus died for somebody's sins, but not mine
I agree that this is also about sexual repression. The interesting point here is to note that they usually place the blame on the woman. "Well, if she didn't have to spread her legs open, this would've never happened." If I had a fucking dime for everytime I heard that, I would be on this board on a full time basis, helping Sapient out while drinking beer.
The thing is...it's part of the misogynistic message the three major theistic religions endorse. Islam just carries it one step further, when it comes to misogyny. Sexual repression is a form of control, used by the churches/mosques/synagogues. The whole concept of the Virgin Mary is in and of itself a very misogynistic idea. Women's purity is divine. If a woman expresses a desire for love or sex before marriage, (because marriage, according to theism, is owner ship of a woman) she is a whore, shunned etc..etc..etc.... The reason being is that it takes away from the virginal purity sex deviant fantasy of men. That is why virginit is so well ingrained in all three major theistic religions. now someone like our muslim friend on here, will spin it to say something like..show me where in the qu'ran does its say..blah blah blah..but the truth is...history is the true judge or all religions.
The Anti-abortion movement is just another symptom of a morally corrupt ideology we call religion.
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I agree with you 100%. The reason why they would want followers to be sexually repressed is so that they can be easily controlled. Once you've gotten someone's natural desires in check, you can pretty much control their every move. I believe that religion was invented partly out of ignorance, but mainly to control the slaves or large groups of people. It is barbaric. Not a lot of people can see this, though. Maybe we should start slipping LSD into the sacraments.
Maybe then they'd wake up and see how they've been used for the ignorant little puppets that they are.
This is true. It says right in the bible That menstration and the pain of childbirth are punishment for eve's "betrayal". The christian doctrine says that woman must suffer eternally for eating an apple and convincing someone else that it was a good idea. A fucking apple.
Well, I suppose the intent of that story was to "expose" the imagined nature of women....That when left to their own devices, they will ultimately betray men. This is their reasoning for putting women in spiritual shackles. Islam makes the same damning implications about women, going so far as too command that they keep their faces and bodies completley covered. I could go on about this all day, but unfourtunatley, I don't have any of those dimes either..
I also agree 100%. Religions primary intent is control but alternatly, to incite action as well. It works on two levels with religious leaders stating "Obey us, or go to hell." as well as "Do this, or go to hell." The diffrences are subtle, but important.
On one hand, they demand compliance. Strict obedience is nessecary for this brand of control. To point a blade at the religious leader is to point a blade at god himself, so any hope of rebellion or uprising is obliterated. Alternately, the masses are insighted to take action agaisn't the opponents of the religious leaders. Modern day examples of this range from the above noted abortion protest, to the rash of violent insurgency in the middle east. Very closely relating to this topic would be the sting of assasinations of abortion doctors in the 90s. It's important to note than this acts (widely, but not completley) are independent of the religious institutions/leaders themselves. What is the end result? You have a implicitly obedient army ready to take action for you, but not nessecarily in your name. This way, your hands stay clean (relatively) you do not ecept the blame, or suffer the consequences of your actions.
This is the gameplan of many extremist religious cults. It's also the gameplan of every major religion throughout history. It is barbaric, and it's a shame not enough people notice that the similarities between the Branch Davidians and the baptsts are more than coincidental.
Jesus died for somebody's sins, but not mine
If they really wanted to do something, let them put their money where their mouth is and save all the aborted babies, including the natural miscarriages.
By the way, is it possible to perform CPR on a blastocyst?
Along the same lines, I wonder just how many unwanted or abused children have been adopted or fostered by these pro-lifers. Seems like they should all have housefuls of these children.
Do we see these folks out there teaching contraception so unwanted pregnancies don't happen in the first place? (And NO, I didn't say "teaching abstinence.")
Do we see these folks working with runaways, abused or homeless children?
Do we see these folks working with underpriviledged children to assure they have a better life now that they are here in this world?
Do we see these people working in any way to improve the lives of the children that are already here?
Nope. They are too busy protesting and intimidating women outside clinics.
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Susan
I'm always trying to find some humor in what these people say just to keep my rage in check.
Thank you for making excellent points and sharing with the community. I'm proud to have you as a RRS member.
Keep up the good work.
Susan, Razorcade and others,
The pro-life movement, as you all know, is your typical emotional knee-jerk reactionary movement that we see as a direct result of thought supression from the church that is caused by indoctrination. That is why it's sooooo easy to use abortion as a political tool along with gay marriage etc.... it's emotional, not rational.
Nevermind the fact that children born in single family homes (usually unwanted) are raised so poorly (abuse, drugs etc..), that they become children of the street (of course there are exceptions), and then, they start to commit crimes against society, and then ALL those pro-lifers out there, are the first to say...GIVE EM THE DEATH SENTENCE!!! These are the same people that are against welfare programs to support these "unwanted" children. And are the last to wait in line (wait, who am I kiddin', they don't wait in line, they're too busy holding signs of photoshopped dead babies on college campuses) to adopt some of these children. The cycle is one of vicious irrationality.
These people, are usually the ones that drive SUV's are well off and have no idea what it's like to live in rural appalachia, or in some urban hell rot neigborhood. What do they care?
Here's another somewhat personal story for you. I know a girl, who lives in southwest Virginia (mountain folk as I lovingly call em) which is a very rural, poor part of the state (appalachia, and if you guys ever venture into Virginia, I highly urge you to visit the southwestern part, it's gorgeous, but sooooo poor and religious). Anyway, of course, she comes from a very religious family and she got pregnant when she was 18, she just had this kid....she has no job, her "fiancee" works at mcdonalds (the only one around) for 7 bucks an hour. They live in a home (for 200 bucks a month) which literally has a dirt kitchen floor. We're talking pooooooooor. Any rational mother of this teen ager who got pregnant would have rushed her to the nearest planned parenthood, discussed options and would have urged her daughter to probably wait until she was more "stable" to have a kid. But no, because abortions are agaisnt god. So what did she do instead, she brainwashed her daughter, again 18 with no job, no future, to keep the baby. This girl is now depressed, realized her mistake and doesn'te even want to be around the kid. They are on Welfare, so I'm practically funding to support this kid and MANY others, and this kid, in appalachia will have no future and the cycle of irrational blind belief continues. These are people that vote 100% republican, which is completely antithetical to their lifestyle....these are people that follow church doctrine, well I'll take it back..these are people that think they are following church doctrine by voting "right" (pun intended) but don't have the vision to realize that an uneducated, jobless 18 year old SHOULD NOT BE HAVING KIDS. But it's all god's will, he has a plan. Well I guess that plan includes my tax money. Whcih is fine, it's not the kids fault. But this is the kind of hypocritical, irrational thinking that we are facing today. Abortions=bad. So let's raise a kid in complete poverty so that it can suffer his/her whole life (with exceptions of course). It's another notch on god's army.
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Razor, if you'd like a bit of humor, I'll share a true story from when I lived in St. Louis. It didn't happen to me, but it was in the newspaper and I heard about it from my dentist's office.
My dentist was in the same building as a family planning clinic. The pro-lifers were there every weekend with their picket signs. Before they were forced to stay a certain distance away, they would surround cars as they drove into the parking lot. They would shove flyers into the open windows. They would try to keep women from getting out of their cars. They would shout things about killing babies.
Most of the women were there to get their teeth cleaned.
I always kinda hoped it would happen to me because I wanted to tell them that I was there for a "procedure" and watch them go balistic before I told them that the "procedure" was a dental visit. I also fervently hoped it would happen in front of the many children they had with them.
Alas, I never got the chance.
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