Contraception debate continued

To cut this shorter, I’m cutting anything where I do not put a link or respond to something completely relevant (which is admittedly subjective). If I don’t respond to it, it’s not relevant enough to be included – that includes a lot of parts where you pretend to understand my religion, or where you say something completely without any reference and I make a smartass comment back. I’m also cutting the class arguments unless they apply to contraception, because that’s what this is about. I may make a few exceptions.

And "conservatives" who support contraceptives aren't really being purely conservative, because a true conservative does not in any way do anything that might have an abortive effect on human life.

Well, it’s fortunate then that contraceptive methods don’t have an abortive effect on human life. That just made this debate so much easier! Phew, glad to get that out of the way.

I mean, since the scientific organizations state that pregnancy begins with implantation. Since we’re arguing based on science, we're operating from the assumption that pregnancy doesn’t start with fertilization. Unless, of course, you want to give me scientific evidence that it does.

LOGICALLY, sex is a natural, human act. LOGICALLY, in the animal kingdom, sex's primary function is to propagate the species. LOGICALLY, as with all bodily functions, there are consequences that result from sexual intercourse. The most LOGICAL of these consequences is also the primary function of sex, that is: human life. Therefore, LOGIC dictates that if the conclusion of having a baby is "less pleasant," "unanticipated," or otherwise undesired, that the best solution would be to not engage in the sexual function, LOGICALLY speaking, of course, captain.

Well, LOGICALLY speaking, jumping out of an airplane should result in one’s death; since LOGICALLY human beings cannot fall out of the sky without dying; however, LOGICALLY, one can put on a parachute, and then LOGICALLY one will not crash into the ground and die.

God said so it’s the only perfect way not to kill babies keep eggs from getting fertilized and, very occasionally, implanted, since pregnancy starts at fertilization implantation.>

You pretty much didn’t read any of the links I posted anywhere, did you? Your citing that there are some places that have free adoption really doesn’t change the fact that most people have to pay a great deal of money to adopt.

Oh, and, again, my method of birth control is 99.9% effective, which is pretty damn close to perfect, and, since it isn’t an abortifacient anyway (since a. pregnancy starts at implantation and b. the prevention of implantation is very rare), it’s irrelevant, right? Since we’re being scientific and all.

I'm willing to do things that have a 10% chance of going right. I like to live dangerously. But when another human being's life comes into the equation, I'm far more considerate. If I know that an option would lead to 100% guaranteed defense of human life, I take it, every time.

Well, then, it’s a good thing that contraception isn’t an abortifacient, isn’t it? So, then, using something that will prevent pregnancy between 98% and 99.9% of the time is very safe, by your standards, and doesn’t affect a human being’s life! (Unless you consider an egg, which is not even a pregnancy yet by scientific standards, to be more of a life than that of a living, breathing, sentient female, which would not surprise me.)

Um, throughout your entire rant, you have demonstrated a CLEAR lack of understanding for what logic is. Logic is basically the same thing as reason, which means that you can come to a reasonable conclusion based on facts. Simply saying that something is logical doesn't make it logical. You have to *demonstrate* the logic behind your conclusions. I have regularly done this. You have yet to.

Logic is this. And the problem is that I have consistently demonstrated a scientific basis for my reasoning, which is logical, where your reasoning has been entirely composed of, “I heard this,” “I think this but cannot support it with evidence,” and, “MY UNSCIENTIFIC VIEWS AREN’T RELIGIOUSLY INFLUENCED!” Until you want to start ponying up sources that aren’t tied to your religion (which, frankly, would be better than the no resources at all you’ve provided on this topic), I have every reason to call you illogical or, at the least, unscientific.

Please, indulge me: what is the logical process you have used to come to the conclusion that contraceptives are more worthwhile than abstinence? Why is your answer logical and mine not?

The argument isn’t about whether they are more worthwhile. However, since we’re being logical, when placing contraceptive usage versus abstinence on a risk-rewards matrix, depending on your personal views of the rewards of sex, contraceptives, when utilized consistently and properly, would be more worthwhile than abstinence. It really depends on how you view sex – however, the 0.01% chance of becoming pregnant is insufficient risk for most people to be abstinent.

My problem with government funding Planned Parenthood with MY money is that PP is an organization based solely on the proposition that human life is expendable, which DIRECTLY contradicts everything this country stands for: LIFE, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Do you know what "eugenics" is? Look it up, then go look up Margaret Sanger, the creator of PP. Then look up other people, like her, who have sponsored eugenics.

And, if you think that Planned Parenthood is still based in Margaret Sanger’s views on eugenics, than you’re the kind of person who still thinks that the Republican party is still the party of civil rights…but I won’t spoil the surprise for those of you who haven’t read the whole note yet. However, in light of the the fact that most of the people who get abortions are low-income women of color who already have children, you can decide to view that as either a need to make birth a more viable choice for those women, by ensuring that they have the resources to raise a child they may want but cannot afford – or you can think it means that Planned Parenthood is tricking stupid black people who don’t know what they’re doing. One actually helps people, and one condescends to people by assuming that they are too stupid to know what abortion is and what their personal situation is, which is what most pro-life people seem to want to do anyway.

Planned Parenthood offers many, many services, and one of them is abortion. Others include services that can save lives, such as prenatal care, which is something you claim to care so deeply about. They offer the choice (and that word is key here) for women not only to abort, but to actually have low-cost care for their pregnancies. Choice is a double-edged sword, and people who are pro-choice support the right of women to be able to choose to have a child without fear of being impoverished.

THAT is why I support public funding for Planned Parenthood, combined with the fact that they do provide contraceptives, which, again, relieve the economic burden of children who cannot be supported.

Or, if we taught and supported abstinence, we would have even less spent on either of them.

Utterly debunked. Abstinence-only programs not only manage to fail to change teenage sexual behaviours, but they also provide inaccurate information about condoms and violate human rights principles! Triple threat!

WHOA! Hold the phone, here! YOU were the one who made the class-based argument, NOT me! Remember this?

"What about couples who are married and cannot afford any, or more, children?”

Your argument doesn’t have to point out class to be class-based in its privilege. In point of fact, the fact that it ignored people who cannot afford to have children was what made it class-based. It’s the sexual equivalent of Marie Antoinette’s “let them eat cake.”

Classes are for monarchies, fascists, and communists. Here, in America, class does not determine status.

Even if it does determine your quality of living and the length of your life. But, no, acknowledging reality is for communists.

Women ARE in control of their own bodies in our country. They can control themselves in deciding whether or not they have sex.

They can? Be careful; your privilege is showing.

And, since we have medical solutions to unplanned pregnancy (as in, ways to prevent it, even excluding abortion), why on earth do you have the right to make the decision for them as to whether or not they should have sex?

Contraceptives don't grant control over women's own bodies, they trick women into thinking they can live a life without consequence, and all the while damaging their bodies, often beyond repair.

And yes, contraceptives DO damage the human body. Think about it: their primary function is to destroy human tissue. Do you not see the potential danger in that?

You keep using this word, contraception. I do not think it means what you think it means. The word you’re looking for is abortion, and whether or not that is moral is a topic for another post. The two are not synonymous, if we’re being, again, scientific. Also, give me proof that contraception damages women’s bodies beyond repair. I can give you studies that say the pill helps prevent ovarian cancer, that condoms prevent the transmission of many STDs, and a lot of other good things, I’m sure; except that I really don’t want to run this too much longer and am very sick of being the only one to make scientific claims. I’m on, like, the third revision and I’ve brought it down from eight thousand words and seventeen pages, so I’ll let you be a big boy and research the rest yourself.

I'm just arguing that NFP is not only more natural, but cheaper. As a pagan and a proponent of the poor, both of those factors should mean something to you.

Maybe you shouldn’t bring up my religion again, since you seem much more interested in its relevance to this debate than I am, and since, perhaps, I might actually know a fair bit more about it than you do. I also am a fan of contraception because it is an effective method of birth control, as opposed to the silliness you posted about. I mean, I could be a fan of the poor eating Ramen Noodles exclusively since it’s cheaper than decent food; however, I would rather they have access to quality food, and I feel the same way about contraception.

I voluntarily cut a very long thing that I wrote about the nature of love and sex because they are ultimately irrelevant to a debate on contraception. We can debate who views sex as more sacred somewhere else. (It hurt my face to cut that part, because it was good.)

Long answer: Go ahead and have sex, but beware that you're at a higher risk of becoming pregnant. It's juts a plumb fact.

Yes; I am at a 0.01% risk of getting pregnant. Boy howdy, that’s some risk.

And if you do chose to attempt to overrule the natural law, go ahead.

You mean, like we do with chemotherapy and cancer? Okay, awesome.

And you claim to be a Christian.

"Thou shalt not steal." That is the Law.

Render unto Caesar. That’s your Messiah talking.

Oh, and all this, too. But that tends to be forgotten in Conservative Christianity 101.

VERY IMPORTANT POINT ALERT! VERY IMPORTANT POINT ALERT!

Oh, he’s about to point out something important, folks! I’m sure it’s incredibly relevant!

You're the one rating the value of human life here; I have the common courtesy to afford all human beings the same inherent value, even if they are unfortunate enough to be born to parents who don't make a lot.

Oh, reeeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaally? You "afford all human beings the same inherent value," eh? What about babies? What about newborns, just a few minutes out of the womb? What about babies in the process of being born? What about babies minutes from being born? What about an 8 month old unborn child? 6 months? 3 months? 1 month? 1 week? 1 day?

It’s a good thing we’re debating contraception instead of abortion, then, because that would be a whole other topic! After all, a sperm is not a person. An egg is not a person. A fertilized egg is not a person. A pregnancy does not start until a fertilized egg implants itself in the uterus. Since we’re being scientific. After that, we can debate abortion ‘til the cows come home. But right now the argument is about contraception, and there is no evidence that contraception prevents human life, and I’m arguing that I support Planned Parenthood’s mission to provide contraception. If you want to make this about abortion, make it about abortion, but I’m not going to coddle your need to conflate contraception and abortion by actually having that debate in the same thread. You need to do that yourownself. If your argument is that contraception is abortion, we are no longer having a scientific debate, but a religious one, and you need to say it outright.

http://www.catholiccharitiesdallas.org/PregnantNeedHelp/HowWeCanHelp/tabid/112/Default.aspx

This is just one of HUNDREDS of such Catholic organizations, and THOUSANDS of Christian and secular alternatives exist as well. I particularly like this bit (I snipped the stuff because it’s irrelevant):

Oh, my, GODS, it’s a substantiated claim! Although, in all fairness, it’s ignoring the part where I said:

“Consider also that adoption, while sometimes costing nothing, costs more than you're saying on most occasions. You're not accounting for the many different factors involved.”

Nonetheless, I will continue to actually address this.

And it's all free, so it doesn't matter how poor you might be. Wonderful bit of charity there, isn't it?

Yes, and it’s still great that women can use contraception and not have to go through the whole process at all, isn’t it? It saves the grief counseling, the painful and arduous pregnancy, and the charity significant amounts of money when people simply behave responsibly and prevent pregnancy, whether that be through abstinence or through contraception. This still doesn’t address what I said about the reality of adoption for the vast majority of people, nor does it address the fact that pregnancy still isn’t free for the vast majority of people, or that it is, again, an arduous medical condition to undergo.

Until you've been pregnant you can seriously shut your mouth.

Ah, the liberalism rears it's ugly head once more.

I tried to break that down point-by-point, but it insulted my intelligence to try. I literally want to go slam my head into a wall, so I stopped.

If you are incapable of comprehending that telling someone to go through something you will never experience that is unnecessary and medically preventable is an absolute moral wrong, this debate is over. Period. I hope you’re not that ignorant, but that whole diatribe you just gave was completely idiotic, and was a complete waste of a good minute or so of my life to read. I’m not wasting twenty more minutes of my time trying to explain something to you that anyone with any common sense can comprehend. You’re literate and articulate enough to think through it, so do it yourself; I’m not here to hold your hand and explain ethics to you.

Which is why you utilize contraception - it's cheaper than the cost of pregnancy and it's cheaper than abortion.

But it's not as cheap as NOT HAVING SEX. That's FREE.

Yes, and fairies will start flying out of my butt any minute now, as soon as people stop having sex when they don’t want kids. Give me a scientific reason that people should not have sex whenever they can prevent pregnancy.

What gives me that ridiculous idea of thinking that I can tell people what I think is this wonderful little thing called the First Amendment. Freedom of speech.

Let me clarify. What gives you the crazy idea that you actually have any scientific basis for any of your opinions, sufficient to base public policy on?

Now, why do I feel that my opinion has merit backing it? Well, using your scale of "pregnancy = validity," and considering the fact that I come from a big, Catholic family, I probably do have more experience with pregnancy than you do. :P

Lighten up and giggle with me at my innocent stereotyping for a bit.

Sorry, dude; your stereotyping really isn’t innocent, since it’s based on reasoning that is used to oppress people. That’s like saying, “Lighten up and giggle with me at my innocent nigger joke for a bit.”

And no, you really don’t have more experience with pregnancy than I do; I actually have been through two high-risk ones. Pregnancy isn’t what lends validity; the experience of it or possibility of experiencing it, however, do give one a great deal more credibility when talking about whether or not people should undergo it. I have been pregnant. I have been through the migraines, the bleeding early on that makes you panic, the mood swings, the weight gain, the weakening of my heart, the first movements, feeling those movements stop whenever I had to be put on a medication to calm my heart down, the hours and hours of labor where an epidural didn’t take, two major surgeries for childbirth, and losing one of my children to divorce. I know pregnancy, and parenthood, far more intimately than you, and I think that yes, my opinion has a great deal more validity than that of someone who has never been pregnant, has never been a parent, and will never go through both the physical experience of pregnancy or the emotional turmoil of losing a child that was physically part of you in one way or another. Until you run the risk of growing a person inside of you, yes, you can shut your mouth, as far as I’m concerned. However, since you likely won’t, someone needs to explain your epic fail to you. Might as well be me.

And, of course, you don't have to have been in a space shuttle to know that the Earth is round.

However, you quite possibly have to have been on a space shuttle to know what being on a space shuttle is like. I’m snipping the rest of this argument because it also insults, not only my intelligence, but the intelligence of sentient beings everywhere.

We're also about allowing people autonomy when it comes to their own bodies - even if they are consider a lower class of human being, like the poor or women.

What about slaves? (Democrats, 1800's) What about the Japanese? (Democrats, 1940s) What about blacks? (Democrats, 1960s)

Wow, Democrats make mistakes! Amazing! And what’s even more amazing is that, once the Democratic party actually became the party of civil rights, the racists fled and became Dixiecrats, then Republicans. Crazy, that. Political parties change over time! Who’da thunk?

Liberal Democrats have always been on the wrong side of defining human dignity, ever since slavery.

If by “liberal Democrats” you mean “conservative Democrats.” This word, liberal; I do not think it means what you think it means, either. Democrats have not always been, “favorable to progress or reform, as in political or religious affairs.” Nor have they always been, “favorable to or in accord with concepts of maximum individual freedom possible, esp. as guaranteed by law and secured by governmental protection of civil liberties.” And they have not always been, nor are all of them currently, “free from prejudice or bigotry; tolerant.”

Words have meanings, and this has escaped you for this entire debate.

Conservatives? We had Abe Lincoln, Martin Luther King Jr., the Emancipation Proclamation, and Ronald Reagan, all of which fought to maintain and defend the dignity of ALL human life, and we continue it until this day.

Abe Lincoln, by the definition of “liberal” that I just gave, was a liberal. So was MLK, who actively campaigned for Democrats, by the by. And “Republican” did not mean the same thing then that it does now – hell, it didn’t mean the same thing twenty years ago that it does now. Neither did “Democrat”. The world changes, and, while I am not particularly surprised that a conservative is not capable of comprehending that (damn those liberal dictionaries!), that doesn’t mean that it isn’t so.

While I feel passionately about equal rights for homosexuals to adopt, that is irrelevant to the contraception debate, so I will voluntarily cut it.

In spent about 2 hours longer writing this than I planned. Next time, make a shorter post, or I will. I hope, if nothing else, I've given you more to think about, and alleviated some of these false notions you had of me.

You didn’t do much of the sort, and didn’t bother to substantiate any of your claims aside from the fact that there are Catholic charities. You can make it as short as you want, but you’re still making my case for me. Also, I will continue to engage in what you think of as insulting behaviour as long as you continue to seem to think that women have less intelligence and value than something reputable scientists don’t even consider a pregnancy, that women are selfish for having sex without getting pregnant (like men get to), and that it’s still the 1800s politically.

If you do not go to more effort to substantiate your claims in the next one (and without using sources funded by religious groups, because I can see that coming from a mile away), I am not going to bother to engage with you anymore. This takes a lot of time, yeah, but it also might just inform people, where you’re not bothering to do anything of the sort.