“In my Father’s shed are many tools—some sharper than others.”
–Jesus (unverified)
Similarly, I pray that women will not find themselves in the position where abortion seems like their best option.
They are probably praying for the physical and mental obstruction of pregnant women to get abortions, either by stopping the women themselves, or stopping the doctors.
I’ve attended, as a spectator, lots of anti-abortion rallies in college, and have talked to a few of them. Never do they ask for the circumstances of abortion to be eliminated, or that women who would get abortions stop becoming pregnant. It is always about getting already pregnant women to not have the god-given right of abortions! 
Knowing that some of these people think anything that actually prevents pregnancy before it happens is akin to abortion, I see no evidence these people actually thought anything through before they put their sanctimonious words down on cardboard
This thread convinced me to talk to some 40 Days For Life protesters (or vigil holders, or whatever), briefly, this morning. Not a ton of them – three men probably 40-70 and one ancient woman. God help me, they made me feel a bit sad for them (even though they clearly couldn’t give a shit about me or what I want in my womb, as a fertile, sexually active woman).
This is an issue none of them could possibly have to deal with directly, due to their gender or age. Saying you are against abortion, when you think abortion = killing babies, is such a simple black-and-white issue I think it really gives them comfort and makes them think they’re on the undeniable right side. There is really no point in discussing circumstances that lead up to unwanted pregnancy or the state of child care or maternity leave. You can’t see yourself as a white knight if the issue is clouded. So they stick to that one issue, that one very clear window of opportunity – keeping that fetus alive from conception (or pregnancy test) to delivery. Reminds me the bit of some kind of sport. They only care about guarding the net or whatever – defense, offense, strategy – nothing to do with them.
So am I.
Even when I was a pro-lifer, I had to support therapeutic abortion. So I can’t countenance “ending all abortion.”
I abandoned the right-to-life stance when I realized it was useless. If women are sufficiently educated to avoid teratogens & deliver healthy babies (which is a major moral good); then women who want to end their pregnancies can certainly finagle something (and that’s far preferable to denying women education to “save babies”/“punish sluts”).
Never and always, eh? Well, you did talk to a few, so that’s good enough for me. Boy, those pro-lifers are simpletons, aren’t they? Absolutely incapable of nuanced thought.
I talked to a couple the other day. As a result I’ve concluded that pro-lifers always, absolutely always, wear glasses and nail polish. It’s true, I witnessed it.
I’m not sure the ones who carry signs in protests are a representative sample of pro-lifers in general.
(I think the ones who one with nuanced thought find better things to do with their time - and better ways to convey their sentiments.)
Then you’d be in the camp trying to debate the efficacy of a given strategy for peace (for the latter). And I’d suggest that “peace” and “ending abortion” as outcomes aren’t terribly confounding notions. Pretty straightforward, unless we want to argue over the margins.
But the outcome is not. Hence my questions: “Really, this seems mysterious? … Or do you really just want to debate the practicality of ending abortions?”
Perhaps. But we nuanced thinkers should try not to generalize in any event, right?
Hey, I never claimed I was a nuanced thinker!
Hey, we nuanced thinkers have a way of detecting each other’s presence. It’s like Spider-sense.
Okay, fine, you caught me. And if you want to get all nuanced about it…then it’s perfectly fine for nuanced thinkers to generalize when speaking of a population if one of the following conditions holds:
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Your statement is true for 100% of the specific cases: “All humans are air-breathers” is a general statement about humans, but since it’s true for each individual human, it’s incontestable.
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A sufficiently large enough percentage of the things or cases generally being spoken about have the trait. “People who smoke are more prone to getting lung cancer than people who don’t.” This statement is not considered too controversial - but it can break down in the specific cases, such as a person who only smokes socially perhaps once a week compared with a non-smoker who works in a coal mine. The dodgy bit about general statements of this kind are when somebody pipes up and says, “I got your disproof right here!” This is a problem for you whenever it happens, but the more likely it is to happen with a randomly selected individual case, the worse off you are from an accuracy and argumentive standpoint. This makes such generalizations (and generalizations in general) more suspicious than non-generalizing statements. Notwithstanding this fact, though, sometime the exceptions are sufficiently rare that the generalization is still a meaningful, informative, and generally accurate statement about the members of the population, and thus is useful to such lofty nuanced folks as ourselves.
Er, what was this thread about again?
True enough, if you’re doing so in the way described in definition #1:
A true nuanced thinker, though, would have known I meant in the the sense of definition #2. I’m beginning to have my doubts about you.
I think you may be trying to advocate pro-choice, in a sneaky, sneaky manner. I do not object, but I don’t think yours is much of a question…
At least if you change your mind you’ll have a citein place for your new position! 
Except foetuses in utero.
I think the term Pro-life is used wrong, most who claim to be pro-life forget the life once it is full term and needs welfare help or taxes to provide for them.Some think if they throw a dollar or two in the collection basket they have done their job. The term should be pro-birth or anti choice.
Some of the same so called pro-life advocates are pro-gun and pro-war. They are not interested in the life of the woman who is already born; and since they cannot know her circumstance have no right to tell her what to do with her body. Nor would it be right to tell a woman she couldn’t have a child. But our society should (in my opinion) teach responsible parenthood from the time a child is old enough to understand what it means. That would include personal responsibility in all matters of life!
I kind of wish they would just put the theory to a test, jump off a cliff and pray that god saves them. If religious people were empiricists, we would end up with less religion one way or the other.
Why do you suppose it’s anything more complicated than advocating to criminalize abortion for everyone forever? I’m sure they’d have no problem with celibacy-only education, but I don’t think it’s any mystery what these people are lobbying for. It’s never real pregnancy prevention or supporting the unfortunate, it’s always about using the law to make sex have drastic consequences that enforce puritan morality.
What she (he?) said.
I think regardless of what side of the debate you’re on, we can all agree that no woman should feel like she “has” to have an abortion.