Wednesday, July 03, 2013

OPERATION RESCUE THEIR IMAGE.

There's a lot of boo-hoo today about how the folks protesting the new anti-abortion laws in Texas and North Carolina use bad language and mean jokes. National Review's Kathryn J. Lopez demonstrates how seriously you should take this with her unusual description of the mashed-fetus photos customarily waved at abortion clinic patients:
I’ve had some interesting run-ins over the years with graphic anti-abortion displays, which I don’t think are always the best opening to conversations, in part because so many women have had abortions that you really have to lead with a great reserve of love. But even the graphic-image displays do not tend to be motivated by anger or hatred but love for lives lost and an appropriate zeal to end this atrocity.
I wonder how their targets appreciated these waves of love and appropriate zeal.

I'm not sure whether these people genuinely think their viciousness isn't really vicious because Jesus, or whether they've made a calculation that, with their opponents gaining traction, they have to quickly rehab their image with the public so they can claim the victim card for themselves. Any minute now Betsy Woodruff will interview Randall Terry on the protesters' outrageous behavior.

87 comments:

  1. sharculese11:33 AM

    Why can't our opponents just cede the moral high ground to us like we demand!?!

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  2. sharculese11:35 AM

    I'm not sure whether these people genuinely think their viciousness isn't really vicious because Jesus



    But J-Dough told us the antis have a monopoly on moral imagination. How can it be that their so steeped in their own bullshit that they don't realize what cocks they come off as?

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  3. The whining of the victor, "Whaaa! I bruised my knuckles on your face!". Sense of perspective? What's that? If they all really think that abortion is a Holocaust, they'd better all be ready to suicide bomb. Mean what you fuckin' say.

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  4. dstatton11:43 AM

    I'd like to be cynical and believe that they are all nothing but calculating assholes, but I'm pretty sure K-Lo believes her own bullshit.

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  5. KatWillow12:00 PM

    Supporting sex education, inexpensive contraception, free or at least low priced pre-and-post natal care: THAT'S how you convince me you are a sincere "pro life" person. Shooting abortion doctors, passing ghastly laws that hurt women and children, insisting contraception is murder: not so much.

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  6. tigrismus12:20 PM

    But even the graphic-image displays do not tend to be motivated by anger or hatred but love for lives lost and an appropriate zeal to end this atrocity.

    Sick photos and yelling at women entering clinics are hateful and abusive, it's not appropriate zeal nor troo love any more than "bitch made me hit her" is.

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  7. Mr. Wonderful12:20 PM

    They don't "revere life," they fetishize fetuses. "Vunce babies are born/Who cares vare dey come down?/Dat's not my department," says Werner von Prolife.

    A woman I used to know, who worked at a clinic, said, "Ask any director of a women's health facility how many 'pro-life' mothers show up, preggo daughters in tow, for a discrete d-and-c." What I want to know is whether those mothers' opinions about abortion, Planned Parenthood, etc., change after such a procedure. I have no idea.



    Of course, I would think, "They'd have to. Otherwise the cognitive dissonance would drive them mad." But to a pro-life advocate of the death penalty, the invasion of Iraq, and promiscuous gun ownership, cognitive dissonance is a way of life.

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  8. I think that's a bingo.

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  9. BigHank5312:42 PM

    The whole anti-abortion gig is just another grift; the difference is that this one is emotional. After a long day of protesting, you can sit around and feel sorry for all the imaginary babies you didn't save, and then you can feel sorry for yourself because of everything else you didn't do with your Saturday, and then you can feel smug because you just racked a whole pile of Jeebus Points, which you can redeem for valuable prizes.


    If they ever do wind up banning abortion, of course, you could surf on the wave of self-satisfied spite that will come out of the right. Those filthy irresponsible sluts will straighten up and fly right now!


    One does wonder what their reaction will be when they get the bill for the orphanages.

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  10. JennOfArk1:00 PM

    I think I've just had an epiphany.
    The biggest part of the religious right's problem with teh ghey is that it can't be punished with fear of pregnancy or slut-shaming policies like vaginal "wanding". And how are you gonna stop people from having recreational sex if there's no possibility of forcing them to carry an unplanned pregnancy to term, with all the financial and other hardships that entails?
    They hate the gays because they have no sexual cudgel to wield against them...which come to think of it, is probably where they got the idea, once loudly trumpeted but these days kept in the quiet of their shriveled, black little hearts, that "AIDS is God's way of punishing homosexuality." Sick bastids that they is.

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  11. mortimer1:10 PM

    That's a double-plus bingo, and you could add a bunch of stuff to both lists. Like supporting children's health care, education, a living wage for parents, single or otherwise, etc. Not cutting unemployment benefits for parents or food benefits for children, etc.

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  12. I'm not sure whether these people genuinely think their viciousness isn't really vicious because Jesus,


    No, these people genuinely think their viciousness is sanctified because Jesus. Tim LaHaye and his ilk have instructed them that the Sermon on the Mount is not aspirational, but purely a description of the future kingdom of God which is inapplicable to current Christian behavior. Meanwhile, Domionists believe that Jesus demands that Christians strap on the "Gott Mit Uns" belt buckles, lace up the steel-toed jackboots, and stomp the heathen filth to death in order to conquer the world for Christ. Never mind the ones who mindlessly coast on having recited magic words once in a church, which grants them a perpetual Get Out of Greedy Bloodthirsty Bigoted Shithead Jail Free card.

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  13. mortimer1:16 PM

    One does wonder what their reaction will be when they get the bill for the orphanages.


    I think the wondering is pretty much over by this point.

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  14. Any minute now Betsy Woodruff will interview Randall Terry on the protesters' outrageous behavior.


    [Clears throat tentatively]


    Um, Ms. Woodruff, ma'am? Get back to me when those scary pro-abortion protestors get up to the bombing and murdering count of your team, okay, you self-righteous hypocritical diseased pig's asshole?

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  15. Gromet1:21 PM

    "If we approve of abortion, it will become worse, because other people are not as discrete as we are and don't have as much at stake," I suspect is the thinking. "So we must remain vociferously against it." See, it's part of how classy they are. Of course, there's a huge race and money angle to this thinking, and that's where the cognitive dissonance steps in. "I'm not racist; I've always felt Lena Horne was a true beauty. But you definitely should not let the gardener into the house; he'll tell his gang what kind of TV you have."

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  16. synykyl1:23 PM

    They should just be grateful that our side only shoots back with jokes.

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  17. mortimer1:29 PM

    If only they didn't limit the duct tape to covering their mouths and started applying it to their typing fingers.

    (My favoritist anti-abortion victims in the whole world are still these people, who think anyone born after 1972 is ipso facto a holocaust survivor. Imagine how badly they must want to be virtual martyrs to make them invent their very own imaginary holocaust to live through.)

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  18. Eric Hossner1:39 PM

    "Hail Satan" is pretty funny, but not nearly as funny as "...which I don't think are always the best opening to conversations...

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  19. PulletSurprise1:39 PM

    "Bombings? Hardly! Those are spontaneous valedictory bonfires!"

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  20. Gromet1:43 PM

    I went to the beach one beautiful weekend years ago, and on the boardwalk some of these horrible people had set up enormous photos of mashed fetii. I looked away as soon as I could but the day was ruined. I felt ill, and still do a bit, thinking of it. Do I hold it against Planned Parenthood? No, I hold it against the guys who thought a beautiful beach day was an opportunity to make people look at posters of blood. I simply don't want to be surprised with a series of 4-foot blowups of an abortion. OR of a very messy heart transplant, or lipo, or tumor removal.



    Look, if I think I need a heart transplant, I'm going to get in line for one, no matter how "gross" it is to cut me open and pull out my heart and stitch in some dead guy's. You can't show me enough posters to stop me, you can only piss me off. How do they not get this?

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  21. montag21:44 PM

    I think that bill will go in the glovebox with all the unpaid parking tickets they accrued while picketing Planned Parenthood.

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  22. FlipYrWhig1:45 PM

    I pretty much guarantee that such an experience would not change their minds, in the same way that being on food stamps doesn't make conservatives less aggrieved about "welfare." The rationalization works like so: "MY family's case was desperate. There was no other option. It wasn't at all like THOSE PEOPLE, who treat it as an easy way out they're entitled to."

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  23. montag21:47 PM

    That reminds me. Even at my advancing age, I do not want to see video of my colonoscopy, thank you.

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  24. Halloween_Jack2:15 PM

    graphic anti-abortion displays, which I don’t think are always the best opening to conversations

    A rarer sighting than Bigfoot or the ivory-billed woodpecker: Kathy Jean showing a glimmer of self-awareness. And my personal experience with people with a fetii-foto fetish is the guy in my college dorm who'd post this shit on his door, then whine when it got torn down by his neighbors, so his motivation was that sense of persecution gained, which, come to think of it, really does come down to anger and hatred, plus the justification to assuage the guilt.

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  25. montag22:39 PM

    Indeed. And then there're those small matters of sabotage, assault and battery, firebombings, explosions, assassinations, etc.


    K-Lo would be loathe to admit it, but there are good reasons why sane people compare them to the Taliban.

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  26. Paul T. Lazaro2:42 PM

    "But even the graphic-image displays do not tend to be motivated by anger or hatred but love for lives lost and an appropriate zeal to end this atrocity."



    And the assassination of Dr. Tiller? That was full on love and zeal, bitchez!

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  27. tigrismus2:46 PM

    Like a high velocity hug!

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  28. Paul T. Lazaro2:47 PM

    Totes!

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  29. montag22:50 PM

    Yeah, that well may be part of it, at least from a public policy strategy angle.


    But, never discount the likelihood that they're just leaping screaming fuckwitted religious crackpots who think they have God on speed dial. Remember what Havelock Ellis said over a hundred years ago: "The complexion of the modern world would be very different had there been an insane asylum in ancient Jerusalem."

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  30. tigrismus2:54 PM

    One does wonder what their reaction will be when they get the bill for the orphanages.

    The Motherhood Responsibility Act, which outlaws orphanages and requires mothers to keep all children they birth. It also cuts funding for early education, child care assistance and WIC because, hey, DEFICIT!

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  31. montag23:04 PM

    Don't forget to save some of that for Terry, who's one of the main man ayatollahs in this cult.

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  32. montag23:05 PM

    The virtual martyr is closely related to the chickenhawk, I think.

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  33. Dr. Hunky Jimpjorps3:18 PM

    Those posters are literally just an Appeal to Ew, Icky. That's great that you found grody pictures of medical waste; I'm sure you'll stop driving your cars that run on gross dinosaur corpses and eat your cheeseburgers that come from the tit squeezings and chopped-up muscles of animals that poop all over the place, since you're so devoted to not staining your pristine imagination with things that look gross.

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  34. Dr. Hunky Jimpjorps3:20 PM

    I think I've heard it called "my abortion is the only moral abortion".

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  35. MikeJ3:25 PM

    Who was the actor that was going on about how his family had been "on welfare and food stamps and nobody ever helped us!"

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  36. Ramon3:37 PM

    The pictures they share are all from the time before abortion was safe and legal. Now-a-days most abortions happen before the embryo is much more that a clump of cells. The pics they share is what we will go back to if they had their way.

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  37. tigrismus3:51 PM

    Heh, Craig T. Nelson.

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  38. John D.3:57 PM

    Yup. It all boils down to filtering the "deserving" from the "undeserving." Which in turn boils down to brute tribalism.

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  39. sharculese4:07 PM

    Tim LaHaye and his ilk have instructed them that the Sermon on the Mount is not aspirational, but purely a description of the future kingdom of God which is inapplicable to current Christian behavior.



    Never has the phrase "Christ, what an asshole," been more appropriate.

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  40. Glock H. Palin, Esq.4:09 PM

    Shooting abortion doctors, passing ghastly laws that hurt women and children, insisting contraception is murder: not so much.

    Oh, come now, that's merely "appropriate zeal". It's not like those are actions motivated by "motivated by anger or hatred" like sticking your tongue out at a camera or sarcastically hailing Satan.

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  41. mrstilton4:25 PM

    "2 Girls, 1 Scope"?

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  42. mrstilton4:26 PM

    If their concept of Christ is even 10% correct, that should be a colon, not a comma.

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  43. Substance McGravitas4:33 PM

    And in recent years, in particular, when I worried people might despair
    or harden on account of all the politics about abortion, I’ve seen such
    peace and joy at pro-life rallies.


    Peace and joy is what it's all about when you think there are millions of babies being ground up in murder factories. On the other hand the line-up at the DMV is UNFUCKINGBELIEVABLE!!!

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  44. Back during my stint in the Love, American Style Special Forces, we were repeatedly reminded not to bother aiming for the torso, regardless of whether we thought the target was wearing a smoochproof vest or not. It's the head that's a kissing area.

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  45. tigrismus4:54 PM

    Jonah: the Department of Motor Vehicles is too often a p.r. disaster for race relations and for liberals generally


    LOL WUT

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  46. KatWillow5:52 PM

    There are some people who are genuinely horrified by abortion. But in my experience most of the "pro-lifers" are enraged hate-filled people looking for a respectable outlet for their fury. Used to be minorities could be openly hated, then gays... now its just "liberal fascist commies". (Today I saw a bumper sticker with the Obama "O", only it said cOmmunism! Sheesh._

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  47. KatWillow5:55 PM

    I think they perceive ThemSelves as Different. All those other women having abortions "on demand" are just usin' it as a type of contraception.

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  48. KatWillow5:57 PM

    Yeah, just imagine if our side used squirt guns with something icky in them. Sigh. Imagine it.

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  49. I'll stick with the Original Python, thank you.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D8WmvMCTW_g

    ~

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  50. KatWillow6:05 PM

    They'll think up new and more horrible laws to "protect babies". Like if a pregnant woman drinks or takes drugs or uses a hot tub... They already are jailing pregnant woman for the "baby's" sake.

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  51. KatWillow6:06 PM

    She believes The Church's bullshit. I don't think she ever had an original idea in her life.

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  52. KatWillow6:08 PM

    I've never had a problem with any DMVs in several states. The people are nice, friendly, helpful. And I got my first license in 1970.

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  53. I know!



    The picture on my driver's license is terrible.
    ~

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  54. montag26:31 PM

    BTW, Roy, the post title is USDA prime.

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  55. mgmonklewis6:36 PM

    Forget the typing fingers. Just be thorough: Use the duct tape over both mouth and nose.

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  56. tigrismus6:45 PM

    They made you dig out and come ashore, didn't they? BASTARDS.

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  57. montag27:03 PM

    Kinda proves Ellis' point. They're all walking around loose.

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  58. UNION THUGS! UNION THU--oh, wait...

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  59. merl18:21 PM

    Now that fetuses have been re-named "unborn children" they are only going to become more enraged and unhinged!!11! Normally I enjoy that for the laughs but some of these people live out their fantasies.

    For example, Zimmerman actually tried to live out his Walter Mitty fantasy. If he isn't convicted; then he will be successful except for some slight inconvenience and unwanted notoriety .

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  60. merl18:22 PM

    the right wing radio junkie was also on public assistance for a time.

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  61. redoubt8:32 PM

    Aim Center Mush

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  62. Big_Bad_Bald_Bastard8:46 PM

    Next thing, she'll be saying Eric Rudolph set those bombs out of love and zeal.

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  63. Big_Bad_Bald_Bastard8:47 PM

    Slight inconvenience and unwanted notoriety? He'll be riding that wingnut welfare gravy train for life, as the "boy wonder" to Wayne LaPierre's Batshitcrazyman.

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  64. Big_Bad_Bald_Bastard8:49 PM

    Same here, the line usually moves quickly, and I always bring a book anyway.

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  65. merl18:50 PM

    that's true, I meant the slight incovenience of jail time and petty annoyances like trials and shit. After all the poor guy is fat now.

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  66. Big_Bad_Bald_Bastard8:51 PM

    You mean, you're not going to show it at your next party?

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  67. Big_Bad_Bald_Bastard8:54 PM

    I think another reason they hate gays is that the existence of gays proves that biology is mightier than religious authority, no matter how horrendous the punishments that the authoritarians dish out.

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  68. redoubt8:55 PM

    Anytime the Boy Historian has to stand in line with a bunch of peasants, including the Cheetos checkout line, is a "PR disaster for race relations and liberals generally"

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  69. Big_Bad_Bald_Bastard8:57 PM

    In my neighborhood, somebody put a "Oba-Mao" sticker on a STOP sign.

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  70. BigHank5310:42 PM

    That's actually not a bad method of getting rid of all the crap booze you have left over from the last party.

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  71. Stay away from the DMV in Downtown Brooklyn, though. It's a madhouse.



    There's a DMV right near South Ferry in Lower Manhattan, though, that's never got any lines at all.

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  72. JennOfArk10:51 PM

    I wouldn't be at all against squirting them down with really nasty bong water, that has been stored in mayonnaise jars under some young stoner's bed and allowed to fester and concentrate aromas for several months.
    Just sayin'.

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  73. Matt Jones11:35 PM

    Perhaps some crime-scene photos of the church where Dr. Tiller was shot would be a useful counter-protest. Hard to hector people for Jeebus when your doctor-murdering boner is showing. ;)

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  74. DocAmazing11:59 PM

    It's not arson; it's the fire of the Holy Spirit.

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  75. You think Jonah reads? He asks his readers to do that for him, he simply doesn't have the time and he's got this deadline coming up...

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  76. dstatton10:17 AM

    I stand corrected.

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  77. Duncan11:21 AM

    Oh yes indeed. I read a book by a sociologist who did fieldwork as a volunteer in a women's health clinic, and she reported that a lot of women who got abortions told her, "I'm not like those other women" and "I don't always do this."

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  78. Duncan11:26 AM

    Actually, no it doesn't prove that. People resist religious authority for religion too, which doesn't mean that people become Christians (for example) and defy persecution because their genes made them do it.

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  79. satch4:07 PM

    Unfortunately, we ceded them the high ground when we let the anti choice wingnuts get away with calling a blastocyst an "unborn baby". It only got worse when, in a stroke of marketing genius worth every penny the wingnut think tanks got for coming up with it, they started calling late term therapeutic abortions "partial birth abortions", and claiming that they were as easy to get as flat screen TVs at Wal-Mart, even though in reality, they are vanishingly rare and done to save the life of the woman when a pregnancy goes drastically wrong. Our side's reluctance to stand up and in no uncertain terms say "NO, a fertilized egg is NOT a baby", and to fight to keep Roe v Wade as written and not let the other side lie about its provisions means that we are continually playing catch-up.

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  80. Hey, it's still the 4th on the Best Coast, just wanted to give a shout-out to Roy and all the irregulars, hoping you had good food, family, good friends and good times today. Screw King George III!

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  81. Halloween_Jack8:24 AM

    I believe that the average NRO commenter is the sort of person who causes lines in the DMV because they are in the middle of yet another tweetwar by the time they get to the head and won't pause it.

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  82. mothadma9:23 AM

    I’ve had some interesting run-ins over the years with graphic
    anti-abortion displays, which I don’t think are always the best opening
    to conversations, in part because so many women have had abortions that
    you really have to lead with a great reserve of love. But even the
    graphic-image displays do not tend to be motivated by anger or hatred
    but love for lives lost and an appropriate zeal to end this atrocity.

    spybubble descargar gratis

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  83. What do you mean, next thing?

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    ReplyDelete