[Brian Allgar]

Charlie, your persistent misuse of the word “genocide” is deeply and wilfully offensive. A responsible doctor may agree to terminate a pregnancy for many valid reasons, including (but not limited to) the health, and indeed the choice, of the pregnant woman. Each case is different and, by definition, individual. To compare that with, for example, Hitler murdering millions of people in gas ovens because they happened to be Jewish is contemptible. I should have thought that someone who writes poetry would care more about the meaning of words.

[Charlie Southerland]

Statistics are numbers that are hard things to bear sometimes. They are not reflective of emotion, sympathy, empathy, or love. They are just numbers. Statistics can be made to reflect or impart some type of response in humans depending on how they are used. There are statistics about the near extinction of California condors, bald eagles, spotted owls and bison. All of those statistics of those particular creatures prompted responses from the populace and the various local, state, and federal governments. There were calls to action, a call to arms to do something to save these species and see their species flourish. In 1960, wild turkeys were reintroduced to parts of the Midwest because their numbers there were near extinction. I remember seeing the turkeys flourish. There were no open seasons on them for many years. If you were caught with one in your possession, you were fined by the ounce, thrown in jail, your guns taken away, and your hunting license revoked. Nowadays, turkeys are everywhere in the Midwest thanks to the conservation efforts of the various agencies and sportsmen who had a vision for the future. I am grateful. I am also grateful for the efforts to save the condors, eagles,owls and buffalo. I have a pair of nesting bald eagles on my farm.

Since Roe v Wade in 1973, around 64 million babies have been aborted in the United States legally. That's 64 million human beings. Many of them were unwanted. So, they were destroyed, allowed to be destroyed by government agencies and the people who created them in the first place. Imagine the love of 64 million children growing up, then imagine they barely ever existed. Imagine their children, two generations worth of humanity wiped from the face of the earth. Imagine them in school or church or sports or work. We have destroyed much of our population now in 43 short years. Yet the voices for continuing this extermination process are louder than ever. There are those who shout out "Black Lives Matter"— there are those who riot in the streets for "social justice", or minimum wage increases or down with corporations. There are those who shout to end the Fed, or the IRS or corporate welfare or an end to subsidies. There are plenty of social ills to shout about. What is most important? Easily, the answer is life. Without life, who is left to complain? People who complain about all the social ills claim that the rich could do with less, that everyone should share, equally, if possible, yet, when it comes to life, the lives of 64 million beautiful souls, many of the social justice warriors suddenly become selfish and callous. The right to choose must be preserved. The right to choose to have a better life without the burden of an unwanted child. The right to say it's OK to kill 64 million of them to preserve prosperity. That's what it all comes down to.

There is a political party whose major theme is to continue that kind of prosperity. That political party has a D at the beginning of its name. It is proud of its defense of the right to choose—the right to abort—the right to kill, exterminate its heirs for prosperity's sake. There is no logical defense for this. None. It is inhuman. Call it what you will, if doing so makes you feel better.

[John Whitworth]

The word 'genocide' was not coIned until 1943. It originally meant very specifically the planned extermination of the Jews by the Nazis, in particular by Hitler himelf and by Himmler. Its use was later extended to mean the planned extermination of any group, not necessarily an ethnic group. Thus is could now cover foetuse unwanted by the mother, whuiich is what what Charlie uses it to cover, as far as I can see. Of course you could argue that a foetus is not a human being, but only potentially so, but that would cover one right up to the moment of birth, and nobody, as far as I know, uses it in that way.
.

[Brian Allgar]

Originally Posted by John Whitworth

The word 'genocide' was not coIned until 1943. It originally meant very specifically the planned extermination of the Jews by the Nazis, in particular by Hitler himelf and by Himmler. Its use was later extended to mean the planned extermination of any group, not necessarily an ethnic group. Thus is could now cover foetuse unwanted by the mother, whuiich is what what Charlie uses it to cover, as far as I can see. Of course you could argue that a foetus is not a human being, but only potentially so, but that would cover one right up to the moment of birth, and nobody, as far as I know, uses it in that way.
.

John, that is dangerous nonsense. Abortion is performed for many different and valid reasons on individuals, case by case and with their consent. There is no way that any decent person could describe it as "the planned extermination of a group". Shame on you.

[Andrew Mandelbaum]

Originally Posted by Ann Drysdale

And I have - sucessfully - mended a broken snail.

The word "grace" cannot appear in the Old Testament because it is written in Hebrew. If it appears in translation it is at the discretion of the translator, who will have his own definition of "grace", just as I have mine.

The Order of the Menders of the Broken Snails. There is a religion that would interest me. How did you do it? We could use some actually useful ideas in this thread.

[Brian Allgar]

Originally Posted by Andrew Mandelbaum

The Order of the Menders of the Broken Snails. There is a religion that would interest me. How did you do it? We could use some actually useful ideas in this thread.

Nah, Andrew, if the snail is broken, it's because God wanted it to be broken. To attempt to mend it is blasphemy.

[John Whitworth]

Brian, I was giving you the history of the word. Foetuses unwanted by the mother undoubedly constitute a group, and foetuses are foetuses right up to the moment of birth. In what way is that 'dangerous nonsense'?

It would be better, in my opinion, to use the word 'genocide' only in reference to the jews, in which case the word itself in unnecessary. The phrase 'jewish holocaust' would cover it. But I am afraid we are stuck with 'genocide'. That being so, you cannot be humpty-dumptyish about it and say Charlie's use of it is off-limits because you say it is.

Is the phase 'gay genocide' allowable in your opinion? What about ethnic cleansing as genocide? Is Isil engaged in genocide? The group in this case is all non-muslms.

[Andrew Mandelbaum]

"First, linking aborted fetuses to the victims of genocide creates a link between mothers who chose to abort their pregnancy and perpetrators of genocide. This assertion is false and discriminatory towards women. The motive of a woman who seeks to end an unwanted pregnancy can hardly be compared to the motives of the Nazis and their collaborators who were responsible for the Holocaust.

Moreover, many, if not most, abortions are carried out in consideration of a woman’s or family’s welfare, not in hate toward the unborn fetus. Medical workers who support abortions are not executioners and murderers, but people who, for the most part, are concerned for the health of women and are committed to reducing the risk of this procedure.

Neither is comparing the Killing Fields of Cambodia to an abortion clinic sound reasoning, as people who freely choose abortion are responsible for their cases alone, and aren’t part of wider agenda to kill all unborn fetuses. There is no campaign of mothers bent on the destruction of unborn children everywhere. "


From The Sentinel Project, a genocide watchdog

[Charlie Southerland]

Why do you think they call it "Planned Parenthood" Brian. A lot of pregnancies are unplanned. I can't remember ever having heard of an unplanned abortion. Per se. One does have to make an appointment for a procedure under normal circumstances. Per se. Yes?

I am also surprised, Brian, that you haven't made the connection to genocide yet.

When you go to the nursery at a hospital, there are usually a "group" of babies. No? When you go to an abortion clinic such as a Planned Parenthood supported clinic, usually the group being aborted are babies. No?

If there are 10 abortions a day at a facility would you dismiss that as a group of planned exterminations? Does it take numbers to impress you?

Does not 64 million exterminated, (terminated) pregnancies impress you.

Here's a number that might impress you. The entire population of France last year was 66 million. Imagine that someone nuked the entire country and only 2 million folks were left alive. Would that qualify as genocide?

It would be considered insane. That is the legacy of 64 million babies killed over 43 years here in the States.

How much more perspective do you need?

We are talking about the forced abrogation of fundamental human rights of a class of innocent harmless citizens here.

Why does it bother me so much? Several reasons, the foremost being protecting life. The second which spawned this part of the debate is the idea that if Trump wins the Presidency, the Supreme Court will overturn Roe V Wade and women will be forced into the dark seedy recesses of back alleys to get their abortions with wire coat hangers. It is that kind of rhetoric and uninformed drivel spouted by educated people that winds me up. There'll be lots more of it too.

[Janice D. Soderling]

The word 'genocide' was not coIned until 1943. It originally meant very specifically the planned extermination of the Jews by the Nazis, in particular by Hitler himelf and by Himmler. Its use was later extended to mean the planned extermination of any group, not necessarily an ethnic group. Thus is could now cover foetuse unwanted by the mother, whuiich is what what Charlie uses it to cover, as far as I can see. Of course you could argue that a foetus is not a human being, but only potentially so, but that would cover one right up to the moment of birth, and nobody, as far as I know, uses it in that way.

Nice try to cover your buddy's back, John. but all it does is put you in the dunce corner alongside him.

The term Genocide was coined bearing the Armenian experience in mind

Wholesales massacres are not a new invention. Records of mass killing, whether of bloodthirsty, pillaging hordes, or organised armies of conquerors or colonists, have added shades of red to the pages of history books and chronicles since very ancient times. The concept of genocide, however – to be more specific, its use as a legal term in international law – is a 20th century phenomenon, and it stems from the Armenian experience of the First World War, in the dying days of the Ottoman Empire.
The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide was passed unanimously by the UN General Assembly in 1948. The individual behind that document, its development, its meaning, and its adoption, was one Raphael Lemkin, a Polish Jew born in 1900 in what is Belarus today. Lemkin closely followed the widely-reported massacres and deportations of Armenians in his youth, and invoked that experience later with the Jewish Holocaust, during which his own family perished.
As the Nazis invaded Poland, Lemkin found safe haven in the United States, where he gained a reputation as a legal scholar following his work at Duke University, in the US government, and at Yale – positions that allowed him to pursue efforts against targeted killings at the Nuremberg trials of German officers, and also at the UN. He came up with “genocide” as an original term in order to highlight the phenomenon and give it enough depth to stand on its own as a legal category. Lemkin mentions in a TV interview of the time how the word, which combines Greek and Latin roots, was informed by the Armenian experience.

http://100years100facts.com/facts/te...perience-mind/

"Genocide" is a legal definition which has nothing to do with abortion.

I am filled with wrath at the idea of you two elderly gentlemen (I too can use words loosely) taking it upon your misogynist selves to judge women who have, for many and various reasons, chosen to or been obliged to, undergo a termination of pregnancy. What gives either of you the right to bandy words like "unwanted", "destroyed", extermination" to define this difficult choice.

Imagine the love of 64 million children growing up, then imagine they barely ever existed. Imagine their children, two generations worth of humanity wiped from the face of the earth. Imagine them in school or church or sports or work. We have destroyed much of our population now in 43 short years. Yet the voices for continuing this extermination process are louder than ever.

Imagine instead, Southerland, that they and their siblings/mother might live the American nightmare of food stamps, indecent minimum wages, slum housing, job insecurity, and nonexistent child care.

If your heart truly went out to these unfortunate fetuses as you purport, you would be campaigning for a better society; instead you say in post #3 of this thread that you are a conservative libertarian. We know what they want and it isn't to help their fellow man who might be in dire straits: a true libertarian wants to eliminate the Internal Revenue Service, Social Security and income taxes. That would most certainly increase the abortion rate as it would eliminate everything funded by government from public roads to food stamps.

You brandish a figure of 64 million and I am curious to know where you got that figure. Most of the sites you would favor say slightly over 58.5 m but these too tend to luridly exaggerate. Would you (I know you won't) give us a dependable source for this figure?

How dare you pretend that any of your purported 64 million abortions are undertaken lightly. How dare you claim that each would have resulted in a healthy, happy child who in turn would have healthy, happy, children. Here are some facts:

WHO HAS ABORTIONS?

• Twelve percent of U.S. abortion patients in 2014 were teenagers: Those aged 18–19 accounted for 8% of all abortions, 15–17-year-olds for 3% and teenagers younger than 15 for 0.2%.[3]

• More than half of all abortion patients in 2014 were in their 20s: Patients aged 20–24 obtained 34% of all abortions, and patients aged 25–29 obtained 27%.[3]

• White patients accounted for 39% of abortion procedures in 2014, blacks for 28%, Hispanics for 25% and patients of other races and ethnicities for 9%.[3]

• Seventeen percent of abortion patients in 2014 identified as mainline Protestant, 13% as evangelical Protestant and 24% as Catholic; 38% reported no religious affiliation.[3]

• In 2014, some 46% of all abortion patients had never married and were not cohabiting.[3]

• Fifty-nine percent of abortions in 2014 were obtained by patients who had had at least one previous birth.[3]

• Forty-nine percent of abortion patients in 2014 had incomes of less than 100% of the federal poverty level ($11,670 for a single adult with no children).*,[3]

• Twenty-six percent of abortion patients in 2014 had incomes of 100–199% of the federal poverty level.[3]

• The reasons patients gave for having an abortion underscored their understanding of the responsibilities of parenthood and family life. The three most common reasons—each cited by three-fourths of patients—were concern for or responsibility to other individuals; the inability to afford a child; and the belief that having a baby would interfere with work, school or the ability to care for dependents. Half said they did not want to be a single parent or were having problems with their husband or partner.[5]

• Fifty-one percent of abortion patients had used a contraceptive method in the month they got pregnant, most commonly condoms (27%) or a hormonal method (17%).[6]

You should be ashamed of yourself, Charles Southerland, for your lack of compassion and empathy. And you, John, should stop to think before you chime in.

And since Annie opened that door, I will say that I have not had an abortion but I would not be ashamed to say so if I had.

I have seen the developing lives of many who were refused help, the earliest I remember was a freshman girl in my high school who was forced at age 14 into a shotgun wedding and who became a battered wife with no education or exit door. One of many in the statistics.

Crossposted with a whole passel of people.