The pro-life alternatives to Planned Parenthood employ scare tactics, lies

[Indy Texas]

http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2013/08/09/naral_virginia_catches_crisis_pregnancy_centers_lying_about_abortion_and.html

And basically ensure more unplanned pregnancies, rather than less. They aren't pro-life. They are pro-birth, anti-birth control and against public health.

To those here who oppose PP, do you really expect me to believe you're all going to abstain from sex until you're married? Are you comfortable with the prospect of sleeping with a girl who doesn't use the pill or an IUD because she's been fed pseudoscience that they'll make her hair and her uterus fall out?

[bedstuy]

What else is new?

Mainstream pro-life people are really doing themselves a disservice by associating themselves with anti-contraception nuts and the Todd Akin school of make-believe obstetrics.  If you're actually pro-life, you should be pushing to make contraceptives and the morning-after pill available. 

[Marokai Backbeat]

The folks that the "pro-life movement" attracts are pretty effective at pushing me away from a message I would otherwise be receptive to. What do morning-after pills and freely available contraceptives have to do with wanting to protect babies? Why do so many people who call themselves "pro-life" make utterly misogynistic and generally offensive comments about how a woman's body works, and obsess over abstinence programs being forced on schools? Why do these same people generally come from a side of the American political spectrum wherein there is widespread opposition to expanding healthcare and social services for young families and babies?

This is why I just generally can't take that entire movement seriously, and it actively pisses me off because this is yet another example of the American right-wing just being stupid and pissing away a chance to have a decent point of opposition. I genuinely don't get why so many people who call themselves pro-life take such bizarre and puritanical positions that only half-way have anything to do with abortion.

If the pro-life movement simply maintained their broad opposition to most abortions but was actually in favor of contraceptive use, didn't act like they were generally ickified by sex, and supported creating and expanding greater programs for family planning, adoption agencies, food and healthcare programs for infant care, and really made themselves all about "protecting vulnerable life" it would be incredibly hard to argue with from the perspective of other politicians. Support for pro-life individuals and causes would shoot up dramatically. I'd be tempted to count myself among them.

But I guess to the right-wing, such things really don't matter, do they? If you're getting the votes, that's all you need.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

Some of those quotes are awful, and it's a shame.  I wish that they would stick to the latest medical evidence, and would not so often see as their mission to dissuade women from using birth control or to proselytize.  Still NARAL has their own agenda and it looks like it's calling a "lie" whatver they can get away with, including whenever anyone mentions any possible side of .  The largest category is warning women that abortion can have psychological or emotional effects, which in itself isn't some crazy idea.  They also complain about calling a fetus a "baby."
Meanwhile, PPs and other abortion centers have their own misinformation and scare tactics, such as one where abortion was encouraged because "women die having babies" and claimed that heartbearts don't occur until the middle of the second trimester.

[Lief 🗽]

Again, the fact that the "pro-life" movement only cares about the welfare of babies when it allows them to pass laws restricting the sexual freedom of women is incredibly telling with regards to their real goals.

[Alcon]

The government has more important things than worry about who does what with who. What's next? Government subsidized wipes for people who like to poop on each other during sex? I mean we have to be clean right? That's about how serious I take far left kooks who present this straw man. Fine if I have to pay for someone else's birth control, then tax dollars must go towards wipes, diapers, and disinfectants for those who can't afford to perform a hot carl safely.

I'm not meaning to be presumptive, but screw it: are you old enough to register for this site?

[barfbag]

The government has more important things than worry about who does what with who. What's next? Government subsidized wipes for people who like to poop on each other during sex? I mean we have to be clean right? That's about how serious I take far left kooks who present this straw man. Fine if I have to pay for someone else's birth control, then tax dollars must go towards wipes, diapers, and disinfectants for those who can't afford to perform a hot carl safely.

I'm not meaning to be presumptive, but screw it: are you old enough to register for this site?

I'm not meaning to be presumptive, but screw it: do you think of yourself as somehow above toilet humor? I've never heard of a human who doesn't laugh at fart jokes.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

Again, the fact that the "pro-life" movement only cares about the welfare of babies when it allows them to pass laws restricting the sexual freedom of women is incredibly telling with regards to their real goals.

Do you have any basis for this claim, or is it just convenient for you to believe?

[Marokai Backbeat]

Again, the fact that the "pro-life" movement only cares about the welfare of babies when it allows them to pass laws restricting the sexual freedom of women is incredibly telling with regards to their real goals.

Do you have any basis for this claim, or is it just convenient for you to believe?

Please explain why the average pro-life Republican is opposed to freely available contraceptives? Or why they're nowhere to be found whenever adoption agencies, or family planning organizations need funding? Or why they tend to forcefully oppose expanding healthcare and food services for children or the poor? Or what the bizarrely insecure objections to comprehensive sex education comes from, and where the reluctance to even talk about or understand sex comes from?

Actually, don't bother, because I don't want to hear the fake and absurdly naive Inks-ian reasons pulled out of your ass. The fact is, American "pro-life" conservatism is obsessively focused on banning abortions and supporting abstinence, and practically nothing else. Such behavior makes no sense, and instead just comes across as prudish/misogynistic, and does little more than encourage unsafe abortions and further pregnancies. The movement itself fashions itself as "supporting life" to the point of serious government intervention, and yet, seems utterly unconcerned by the welfare of a child after the point of birth, and actively supports or opposes a range of policies that only leads to more unsafe sex and unplanned pregnancies.

It doesn't help that the movement is riddled with old white men that make ghastly and offensive comments about abortion, rape, or the way a woman's body works in general, and smacks of nothing more than a vapid and shallow way to rile up religious voters at the expense of their economic self interest.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

Actually, don't bother, because I don't want to hear

then don't pretend to give a sh**te

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Conservatives in my experience tend to be offended by the concept of an 'unwanted child' (unwanted by society, not by its parents, because it's unfortunately obvious that a child can be unwanted by its parents and that this is a very bad thing when it happens), although they also tend not to translate this offense into policy proposals very well at all.

[Antonio the Sixth]

The government has more important things than worry about who does what with who. What's next? Government subsidized wipes for people who like to poop on each other during sex? I mean we have to be clean right? That's about how serious I take far left kooks who present this straw man. Fine if I have to pay for someone else's birth control, then tax dollars must go towards wipes, diapers, and disinfectants for those who can't afford to perform a hot carl safely.

I'm not meaning to be presumptive, but screw it: are you old enough to register for this site?

I'm not meaning to be presumptive, but screw it: do you think of yourself as somehow above toilet humor? I've never heard of a human who doesn't laugh at fart jokes.

That's probably because you're surrounded by pathetic morons like yourself.

[barfbag]

The government has more important things than worry about who does what with who. What's next? Government subsidized wipes for people who like to poop on each other during sex? I mean we have to be clean right? That's about how serious I take far left kooks who present this straw man. Fine if I have to pay for someone else's birth control, then tax dollars must go towards wipes, diapers, and disinfectants for those who can't afford to perform a hot carl safely.

I'm not meaning to be presumptive, but screw it: are you old enough to register for this site?

I'm not meaning to be presumptive, but screw it: do you think of yourself as somehow above toilet humor? I've never heard of a human who doesn't laugh at fart jokes.

That's probably because you're surrounded by pathetic morons like yourself.

Good so now you get it about how serious intelligent people take the politicized "war on women."

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

Meanwhile, PPs and other abortion centers have their own misinformation and scare tactics, such as one where abortion was encouraged because "women die having babies" and claimed that heartbearts don't occur until the middle of the second trimester.

I agree that it's a problem for PP or any other clinical organization to mislead clients, particularly when those clients tend to be relatively uneducated and in vulnerable positions.

But the worst case scenario of PP's misinformation is that a woman who was probably going to have an abortion anyway is going to have an abortion. I fail to see how it's a problem from a societal point of view for such a woman to have an abortion. Less money spent on education, less money spent on healthcare, less money spent on transfer payments. Some women do regret having an abortion later on, but that's a personal problem.

The worst case scenario of anti-choice misinformation is a raft of unplanned pregnancies that could have been prevented by proper contraception use and that are continued to term by making women scared of abortion. Society ultimately bears the cost of those women having babies. It's not a personal problem. It's a public problem.

Why are people like you so offended by the idea that society is better off when every child is a wanted child with parents who can care for them? Why do the same conservatives who complain about all the money we have to spent on caring for unwanted children then actively sabotage efforts to keep them from existing in the first place?

You have a choice. Society can either pay anywhere from a few dollars for birth control pills to $500 for an abortion, or we can pay tens of thousands of dollars to support an unwanted child. You think you can get away with not paying for either one. You can't.

As Nathan suggested, I find the idea of that child is unwanted in an objective sense offensive. I also find it anti-human to suggest that a human life is just dead weight, and so we should just terminate a child's life, decrease the surplus population, etc. It's also economically short-sighted. I'm sure if we just sterilized everyone we would save a whole bunch of money, right? No, it doesn't work that way, since people create value as well as consume it. This is why immigration is considered a net plus economically even if it's low-skill.  But even if not, screw societal interest - I'll take an individual human life and other "personal problems" any time, since I'm not a utilitarian. (and I'm aware there is a fair amount of hypocrisy and incongruity in terms of anti-abortion politics, though to various extents that's the way political positions tend to exist with any issue.)