Slavery?

I subscribe to multiple pro-life newsletters from across this great nation (okay, and one or two foreign ones) and recently news came in from the buckeye state.

Of course, affirming the rights of the unborn is in no way comparable to denying the rights of slaves, and I've been over this before, but the Roebots are still using this argument and it still is ridiculous. Here is the unedited newsletter entry:

Urge Voinovich & Brown to Oppose Dawn Johnsen Nomination

Action Requested: Please contact U.S. Senators George Voinovich and Sherrod Brown and urge them to oppose the nomination of Dawn Johnsen to head the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel. Explanation: President Obama has nominated a radical pro-abortion activist, Dawn Johnsen, as the Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Office of Legal Counsel. Johnsen is a former Legal Director for the pro-abortion group, NARAL. She also worked for the ACLU Reproductive Freedom Project. While with NARAL, Johnsen was the lead author of a brief filed in the U.S. Supreme Court which argued that statutes that restrict abortion are "disturbingly suggestive of involuntary servitude, prohibited by the Thirteenth Amendment, in that forced pregnancy requires a woman to provide continuous physical service to the fetus. ..." The brief also stated: "The woman is constantly aware for nine months that her body is not wholly her own; the state has conscripted her body for its own ends.... [Abortion restrictions] reduce pregnant women to no more than fetal containers." Among other things, the head of the Office of Legal Counsel is responsible for advising the White House and Executive Agencies on constitutional questions and the constitutionality of all pending statutes. Yet, in her 2008 essay "A Progressive Agenda for Women's Reproductive Health and Liberty on Roe v. Wade's Thirty-Fifth Anniversary", Johnsen described as "wrongly decided" longstanding Supreme Court decisions that upheld the constitutionality of parental notice and consent statutes and restrictions on public funding of abortion, as well as the more recent decision upholding the ban on partial-birth abortion. It is thus clear that Johnsen's views and advice on the constitutionality of abortion-related issues will not just adhere to Roe v. Wade, but promote an even more radical view of totally unrestricted abortion on demand. ACTION: Contact Senators George Voinovich and Sherrod Brown and urge them to oppose the nomination of Dawn Johnsen as head of the Office of Legal Counsel, and to vote against any motion to cut off debate on the nomination. Tell them that Johnsen's history of pro-abortion advocacy indicates that she would use her position to promote her own views on unrestricted abortion on demand that go well beyond the holding in Roe v. Wade. You can contact Senator George Voinovich at: Washington office (202) 224-3353 Columbus office (614) 469-6697 Cleveland office (216) 522-7095 Cincinnati office (513) 684-3265 Toledo office (419) 259-3895 Nelsonville office (740) 441-6410 You can contact Senator Sherrod Brown at: Washington office (202) 224-2315 Cleveland office (216) 522-7272 Cincinnati office (513) 684-1021 Columbus office (614) 469-2083 Lorain office (440) 242-4100 Or click Here to send a message to both Senators

Reactionary?

Too many comrades are labeling any minority viewpoint among them "reactionary". Do they mot realize they are just breeding bourgeoisie?

Progress

Similar to the "It's legal" [nonsense], I will not accept the ad novitatem argument that abortion used to be illegal and now isn't. Even if I grant that the law, overall, tends toward the truth, it can have hiccups along the way.

Tax-funded Abortion

I'm all for socialized, well, everything, but not when it facilitates manslaughter. Obama, in his 2010 Budget reccommendations, called for the Dornan amendment to be repeal, which would allow tax-funded abortions in DC.

You know what to do.

Durr.. it's legal!

I am willing to debate abortion, but any arguments that defend abortion because the law says it's okay will be promptly ignored in the order in which they are recieved.

What‽

I was told by a comrade that infanticide is murder, but banning it is misogynist.

Anti-abortion and anti-religion

Being an antitheist doesn't mean I form my beliefs by simply picking a religion and negating everything in it (...they shall surely not be put to death, homosexuallity is not an abomination, sex before marriage is not immoral, thou shalt steal, don't love your neighbor as yourself, do unto others as you would not have them do unto you, thou shalt kill, etc.).

Re: Sam Harris on stem cell research

A quick Google search would've told Sam that not all those opposed to ESC research on ethical grounds is religious, and not all atheists are utilitarians.

After WWII, Germany split into two. Is this one nation becoming two? Even later, Germany merged into one nation. What happened to the extra nation?

Therefore, Germany was never a country.

Harris is positing that souls, entities he does not even believe in, cannot merge and fuse like cells. Why?

Religion

Seriously, the more I read it and the more I think of it, the more ridiculous religion seems. There's an invisible man in the sky, watching and judging our every move. How do we know this? It's said in a book. How do we know the book is true? Because the book says so!

But actually reading the book and its stories such as the Garden of Eden and Noah's Ark that are practically indistinguishable from all the other Origin and Flood stories of the time, and all of its laws that were clearly written by arrogant, self-centered, misogynistic, xenophobic bronze-age goat herders, and all of its scientific inaccuracies and flat-out self-contradictions, one realizes that to claim that it is somehow the literal truth or an ultimate guide to morality is absurd. Sustained social taboos against the criticism of religion will lead directly to further outrageous abuses.

What's the difference between a religion and a cult? About a century.

As said by lonerook860 of YouTube, religions are runaway cults that became political.

The Holey Babble

Should a woman be killed for being raped (Deut 22:23-24)? Oh, I'm sorry. Only if she was raped in the city. Because if she was raped in the city, she must'ven't cried out loud enough. The idea that no one was in range, or that nobody cared enough, or that she had a knife to her throat, of course, never crossed God's mind. And only if she was "betrothed unto a husband", because everyone knows women are property!

And if a man marries a woman and does not find an intact hymen (because women should never play sports!), she must be killed. (Deut 22:13-21)

If you say "...but that's the Old Testament!", I give you Matt 5:18-19.
If the Old Testament didn't apply, why keep it in the Bible? I'l tell you why: the OT is for cherry-picking; if it lets you deny evolution it's correct, but you can ignore the hatred of women and foreigners and just keep the homophobia.

Well, off to burn in hell for my polycotton (Deut. 22:11).

Service Learning

I seem to remember someone saying “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime where of the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.”.

Workers Party

I just got another reply. This one defended abortion because "We fundamentally disagree with those who believe that human life begins at conception [a basic scientific fact]; while the embryo and fetus hold the potential of becoming a human being, it is not until the third trimester that the fetus has developed the basic fundamental characteristics that allow it to be a human being" and "We disagree with the concept that a fetus can be part of an "oppressed class" or any other kind of oppressed entity. Oppression, like exploitation, is based on social relationships. For the time that it is a fetus, the entity's entire basis for its social relationships are as an appendage of its mother-host. It has no social relations beyond this, due in no small part to the fact that it has no direct interactions with others. It is not until the fetus is born that it begins to develop those relationships, and thus enters into its human phase of development -- at which point its protection is not only warranted, but needed."