"I am a woman, not a womb!": Protest against Huge anti-abortion March in SF!

Good cause to be concerned about roe vs wade, but my views have changed concerning my judgment of people who choose to abort. My faith says I should not judge but this article I read just about floored me. It presents a very convincing argument as to the constitutionality of the roe vs wade decision and how it is even consistent with religion, check it out I know it will challenge you


http://keironjackman.wordpress.com/2010/01/25/abortion-religion-politics/

Great article and pictures of the brave young women and men challenging these Christian Fascists on the anniversary of Roe V Wade. As to the person who posted the first comment about Roe V Wade and their link to their post, there is NO comparison to living people and to real,living women who are pregnant and therefore carrying a potential human life. So,if a woman has an incomplete abortion( this is a miscarriage which has not finished that process), you would prefer to see her die than to enable her to get the care that she needs to save her life? So, if a woman for whatever reason is unwilling and/or unable to continue with a pregnancy, you would force her to carry the pregnancy to term? What about a woman who has been raped or an incest survivor? These Christian Fascists ALSO want to deny women the right and access to contraception! They have also killed doctors and health care workers who have taken care of women who seek reproductive health care. Are you going to go along with the argument that Scott Roederer who is on trial right now for his assassination of Dr. George Tiller,that what he did was "justifiable homicide to 'save the lives of the unborn'"? There is a very real danger that he may get off on a lesser charge or acquitted outright if this line of reasoning in any fashion continues during the trial. If you wanted to be consistent about being "pro-life", then WHY don't you oppose the death penalty which has been revealed to be fraught with racial and class bias as well as numerous cases of tampering with evidence by the prosecutors ,police and judiciary!(Illinois is a case in point) What we need here is more science and people changing reality, not reliance on religion to make arguments.

If the Libertarians (instead of Rush Limbaugh!) were in control of the Republican Party's ideology, their motto on abortion would be very simple;

"Don't want an abortion, then don't have one!"

That would alter the current debate where religious fanatics and illogical dogma have intruded on a public health issue. Talk about who would pay for abortions, then we're on to another subject matter.

However, looking at the long term effects of human overpopulation, followed by large scale natural disasters, famines and droughts that result from human overpopulation in any given ecosystem, we should all be thankful for those women who chose the least selfish route and had an abortion. This planet's resources are being overdrawn by the increasing demands of human society, especially in the U.S. and other first world countries that base their entire economies on perpetual economic growth.

The "conspiracy theory" about overpopulation and forced mass die-offs under crisis conditions is simple; natural disasters in overpopulated regions are big money makers for the relief agencies and the rebuilders. Likewise an ever increasing replacable and expendable human population resulting from denial of birth control for lower income populations is also an economic interest for the status quo of the ruling elites, the "corporatist cabal" if you want a more specific description of who "they" are..

So in the same realm, the corporatist cabal pushes for increased human population growth by denial of birth control measures to less fortunate populations, then wait for the eventual population pressure build-up on land and resources that would result in a catastrophe and mass die-off. The profit is made from the early years as slave labor and the later years as clean-up and rebuilding following the ever more predictable catastrophe..

Case in point in recent news would be Haiti, the ousted President Aristide was harshly critisized by the Catholic Church for wanting to support the ancestral religion of Voudoun (aka "voodoo") where African ancestor spirits embody various natural entities, such as rivers. The "lwa" or spirit of the river is given offerings and treated with honor and respect, as the river is correctly understood as being the lifeblood of the human village.

This teaching of Voudoun in Haiti would likely have resulting in the Haitian people regaining interest in protecting their damaged ecosystem, the deforestation from overharvest of timber resources from early rubber plantation experiments prior to WW2 to the charcoal harvests of later years caused the hills to become weakened and lacking support. Reforestation is needed for Haiti to become habitable in the future.

The Catholic Church saw the teaching of Voudoun as a threat to their internal authority in the country and also to their worldview that Earth is "temporary" and that protecting the ecosystem is foolish as we're supposed to live for the "afterlife". So for speaking out against free trade policies of WTO and asking for Voudoun to regain credibility in Haitian society, Pres. Aristide was given the boot soon after a CIA orchestrated coup, complete with rumors amongst the wealthy elites of Petionville that Aristide was sacrificing human infants and drinking their blood in Voudoun rituals at his mansion.

We're full circle again to human infants, and how manipulation of what is "best for the unborn" overwhelms and discussion of what kind of a world are we bringing children into, and if it is fair to expect them to rejoice after awakening into a world filled with human created poverty, suffering, torture, wars, genocides, famines, droughts, etc...

We should all strive to improve conditions for the newborn children, though some people should consider limiting their offspring so that others may have room to survive. the days of "be fruitful and multiply" from the bible were written centuries ago before the population of humans catapulted into the 6 billion range. Now the children can look forward to decimated ecosystems, polluted air and wars over natural resources like oil, corporate theft of water, control of food, etc...

Needless to say i am no fan of the Catholic Church under their current leadership, especially when they had the chance for real reform under Pope John I who only survived 33 days in office prior to his death from "food poisoning". Among other needed reforms, John Paul I called for a repeal of the Catholic Church's stance on abortion and birth control, understanding that what women do with their bodies is up to them, and nobody else.



Background on the questionable death of Pope John Paul I;

"In PAPAL POLITICS AND WOMEN author Ann Pettifer provides a comprehensive overview of the contraception debate within the Catholic Church and the actions of the far-right leadership to control billions of women.

"An equally important feature of the debate--about which the non-Catholic world is largely ignorant--is that, for decades, hostility to birth control has been the touchstone of papal authority. The Vatican has long believed that if it lost control of this issue, the whole edifice of papal infallibility might collapse like a house of cards.

"With the Church under siege on many fronts--the ordination of women and mandatory celibacy come to mind--it might seem odd at first that it should so fanatically stake its authority on holding the line on contraception.

"In 1968, in spite of a thorough investigation by a blue-ribbon Vatican commission, which had concluded that the Church should reverse its teaching on contraception, the Pope at the time, Paul VI, decided otherwise in his encyclical, Humanae Vitae. The commissions report was ignored and the Church’s opposition to birth control was reiterated."

She also reveals the machinations of the "Catholic fascist cult Opus Dei," revealing some of the questions surrounding the death of Pope John Paul I after only 33 days in office and the election and consolidation of power of the present pontif.

Looking for a possible reason for the untimely death of John Paul I, she provides us with this quote from the pope to be, "I assure all of you, that bishops would be more than happy to find a doctrine that declared the use of contraceptives legitimate under certain conditions."

entire article found @;
http://www.population-security.org/pett-98-10.htm

Between the pregnant woman, her unborn child and "god" is the only place where discussion of abortion is appropriate. The man's job is to wait for the verdict from the woman and her decisions. Don't like it, keep your babymaking magic wand in your pants, hombres!!

"However, looking at the long term effects of human overpopulation... we should all be thankful for those women who chose the least selfish route and had an abortion." Whoa, there, buddy. Stop right there with that statement! Women should be free to bear children if they wish, or not bear them if they don't want to. Some countries actually have incentives for women to bear children...their population is too low! (Japan, S. Korea for example). Others strongly dis-incentivize woman from having more than one child (China). In both cases women are being USED by governments, instead of governments providing for women and their offspring.

I found the comment on over population really interesting. I'm waiting for this argument to gain in popularity, esp. its approval of woman who have had abortion as acting in "life's" best interests (doing this at work, so my thinking is truncated)

Coercion will be as present in an abortion-for-sustainability's-sake world as it is in a world where (as the poster pointed out correctly) human surplus/ unwanted children (who turn into human collateral in natural disasters with man made outcomes) have monetary and symbolic value.

Coercion is the common enemy of women seeking to control their reproductive lives. Forcing women through gestation and birth is as horrendous as forcing women to abort against their wishes (or forcing the, to use contraceptives, or forcing them through sterilization procedures)

Over population is a fear that seems to come from the same quarter over and over again- privileged denizens from industrialized first world, habituated to and accustomed to recreating in parks/open spaces/wilderness areas and the like. Most of my friends who get alarmed about population issues fit the "tree hugger" profile almost exactly, along with the other cultural preferences associated with environmentalism. From them, I get props for aborting BECAUSE I am observing a balance, which is critically needed to preserve "life" in it's broadest use of the term. But i would never abort to suit their sensibilities if i felt birth was what I wanted.

Just throwing thoughts out there. I am glad that this issue was brought up.

The latest from "Culture Change" website may shed some light on the human population crisis, clearly it is more than just priviliged tree-huggers who need to be concerned about human overpopulation!!


"Food and Population"


by Peter Goodchild
01 February 2010


"There may be something resembling sustainability, depending partly on one’s definitions, but it would have little to do with the simplistic concepts that are usually put forward. In the first place, there is nothing “natural” about agriculture. Agriculture has only been practiced for about ten percent of the entire history of Homo sapiens, and in that sense it is still an experiment with uncertain results. To plow the earth is to “go against Nature,” since it means disturbing the soil, the intricate, complex surface of the planet. Even the slightest and shallowest disturbance causes chemical and biological losses of various sorts. Yet in some countries one can drive for days without seeing an end to cultivated land (or, of course, concrete and asphalt). Almost no attention is paid to the final consequences of such practices, and the relentless quest for money makes it unlikely that serious attention will ever be paid. Even on a theoretical level, the permanent feeding of humanity is not simple. Any long-term solution would require paying as much attention to restoration of the land as has previously been paid to its cultivation.

Secondly and more importantly, to maintain a permanent balance between population and cultivation would require a considerable reduction in the former. It is foolish to say that the gap between food and population can be met by increasing the production of food. The error, a rather obvious one, is that an increase in food is inevitably followed by a further increase in population, which in turn leads to another shortage of food. Since the dawn of the human race, people have been trying to find ways to increase the food supply; often they have succeeded. Perhaps the biggest success of all was agriculture itself, the discovery that one can deliberately put seeds into the ground and foster their growth, rather than going off into the jungle to look for plants growing in the wild. That particular revolution led to a great increase in human population. The original problem, however, simply recurred. The solution (some means of increasing food) always leads straight back to the original problem (an excess population).

But these two forces do not act merely in a circular fashion. It would be more exact to say that they act as an ever-widening spiral. If we double the food supply, and thereby induce a doubling of human population, the new problem (that of excessive population) is not entirely identical to the original problem, because as the spiral widens it creates further dangers.

At some point, we push the planet Earth to the point where it can no longer maintain that spiral. We can convert vast quantities of petrochemicals into fertilizers and pesticides, we can draw water out of the deepest aquifers and even desalinate the oceans, but at some point we have to face the fact that the Earth is only a small rock, small enough that it can be encircled by a jet plane in a matter of hours. We are squeezing both our residential areas and our farmlands beyond endurance. The greatest danger of such a spiral is that when it breaks, it will do so in a far more destructive way than if the problem had been solved earlier. When the human race suddenly finds itself unable to manage the reciprocity of overpopulation and food production, there will be no more choices left to make."

entire article found @;
http://www.culturechange.org/cms/index.php

The most humane way of controlling human overpopulation is education about and promotion of safe birth control and legal access to abortions if and when the birth control fails to work properly. The problem occurs when certain religious entities (Catholic Church, Christian Evangelicals, Mormons, etc...) willfully and deliberately deny certain significant populations access to affordable and safe birth control methods.

BTW - Should we admonish China for being ethically responsible and encouragng Chinese women to only have one child? What is wrong with Japanese people choosing education and single life over early childbirth? Why does the Japanese government need to "provide incentives" to have more children?

By abortion and birth control being "least selfish" choice am talking about the greater good of humanity, not the free will of the individual to reproduce themselves. Some people are sacrificing the joys of having children so that other children elsewhere may have improved chances of survival. That simple!!