Due entirely to Christian beliefs of some Americans, hundreds of thousands of

[SamG]

Last edited Sat Apr 7, 2012, 05:47 PM - Edit history (1)

American women between 11-60 have already lost their rights to contraception in Texas.

Some women may die as a result of this:

FORT WORTH, Texas (AP) – Delia Henry was tired but had no idea her blood sugar was high when she went to Planned Parenthood for her annual gynecological exam. The clinic referred her to a doctor, who diagnosed her with diabetes.
.....
The 31-year-old nursing student said she would have skipped the exam since she has no insurance, but she had just signed up for Texas' Women's Health Program, which provides cancer screenings, contraceptives and basic health care to about 130,000 low-income women through Medicaid.
But under a state law taking effect Wednesday, Henry and other eligible women won't be able to get care at Planned Parenthood clinics — which treat about 44% of the program's patients — or other facilities with ties to abortion providers, meaning those women will have to find new health-care providers.
The $40 million program is at the center of a faceoff between conservative Republican lawmakers and the federal government, which provides 90% of the program's funding. Although Texas already forbids taxpayer money from going to organizations that provide abortions, the law will cut off clinics with any affiliation to a provider, even if it's just a shared name, employee or board member.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/story/2012-03-11/texas-planned-parenthood/53483484/1

Perhaps as many as several million women in the USA will be denied proper reproductive health care within the remaining months of this year, in states as distant as Ohio, Michigan, Florida, Indiana, and Tennessee. All this because of religious beliefs asserted by a few hundred lawmakers in those several states.

The "war on women's health", undeniably, has a a basis in religion, not in science.

Gov. Mitch Daniels, a possible Republican presidential candidate, is expected soon to sign a bill that would make Indiana the first state to strip Planned Parenthood of government funding.

If that happens, Indiana resident Nicole Robbins says she doesn't know what she'll do. The 31-year-old single mother had been paying out of pocket to go to a midtown Indianapolis Planned Parenthood when she first became a patient five years ago but switched to Medicaid after she lost her job. The funding cut means Planned Parenthood will no longer accept Medicaid.

http://www.npr.org/2011/05/10/136174361/indiana-bill-would-slash-planned-parenthood-funding


For those of you, whom I respect, who have progressive ideals, and liberal principles of equality for men and women, no matter which religious set of beliefs you may hold, this is a wake-up call. There is a virulent, aggressive systemic pattern of denial of rights and medical benefits to your fellow American sisters and wives and mothers and daughters sweeping America in 2012, and the results are already being put into effect, without a vote of the people, by a vote of extremely religious, mainly Christian lawmakers, intent upon denial of the rights and options of women to control their own reproductive health. And the result of these well-documented legislative actions, all based upon religious beliefs of the lawmakers in these many states, the results will be disastrous for tens of thousands, and potentially millions of women in America this year.

For those who see religious belief as a "private" thing, for those who feel the threat from religious extremism is minor or inconsequential, I invite you to re-assess your position on this, and ask you to simply read any of the articles I link to here in this thread.

Health Care & Reproductive Rights

http://www.nwlc.org/repro

10 Reasons the Rest of the World Thinks the U.S. Is Nuts

I have a question for Terry England, Sam Brownback, Rick Santorum, Rick Perry and too many others: I have three daughters, two of them twins. If one of my twins had been stillborn would you have made me carry her to term, thereby endangering both the other twin and me? Or, would you have insisted that the state order a mandatory fetal extraction of the living twin fetus from my womb so that I could continue to carry the stillborn one to term and possibly die myself? My family is curious and since you believe my uterus is your public property, I am, too.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/soraya-chemaly/womens-reproductive-rights_b_1345214.html


2011 at the Midpoint: The State of Reproductive Rights

http://reproductiverights.org/en/feature/2011-at-the-midpoint-the-state-of-reproductive-rights

Just two weeks before we launched our legal campaign in Kansas, we filed suit in Texas against its intrusive and patronizing mandate that women seeking abortions must first view their ultrasound, have it described to them in detail, and hear a fetal heartbeat—even if they say “no.” Laws requiring ultrasounds, at times paired with state-authored, ideological counseling, were passed in several other states.

Meanwhile, legislators in North Dakota passed in 2011 another law taking a back-door approach to blocking women’s access to abortion. Flying in the face of the World Health Organization, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, and other medical and professional organizations worldwide, the North Dakota law introduces unnecessary restrictions on the safe and common use of FDA-approved drugs to induce first-trimester abortions that would, in effect, ban medication abortions in the state entirely.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/soraya-chemaly/womens-reproductive-rights_b_1345214.html

Religion and Reproductive Rights

http://www.aclu.org/reproductive-freedom/religion-and-reproductive-rights

Religious Interference in Healthcare (2011 resource): Across the country, we are seeing a troubling trend to allow hospitals, insurance plans, pharmacies, and other health care entities to place religious beliefs over patient’s healthcare needs.Lawmakers in Congress, for example, are poised to undo 30 years of federal law protecting patients’ access to emergency care. If they succeed, hospitals could refuse to perform medically necessary abortions for pregnant women in life-threatening situations. That means, a pregnant woman could be left to die in a hospital emergency room because of the religious beliefs of the hospital owners. Already, we’ve seen pharmacies object to filling requests for birth control bills, including emergency contraception, because of their religious beliefs. Such refusals can pose a particular burden on women living in rural areas who may have to drive long distances just to reach another pharmacy. We should not permit institutions to impose religious beliefs on their patients and thus jeopardize our health. Our laws must ensure that a patient’s health is never compromised by the religious objections of some.

Using Religion to Discriminate

http://www.aclu.org/using-religion-discriminate

[darkstar3]

1. And as the people responsible for this rally forces by falsely claiming "religious freedom",

it only gets worse.

[SamG]

2. There were very clear and insightful reasons why the...

Founding Fathers argued for weeks and months and wrote extensively about the concepts and missions of state and religious beliefs, and about the IMPERATIVE need to separate the two.

Unfortunately, due largely to the ineffectual education most elected lawmakers of today received in their schooling years, and due, also, to the overly aggressive nature of religious efforts to model themselves after corporate worldwide or national televangelist entities, we now find our nation in the vice grip of solely corporate interests, some non-religious, whose intent is profit at any cost, banks, insurance companies, other commericial corporations from Coke to big oil, and the others, entirely based upon the selling of a mythology, that of Christianity, to the maximum non-taxable amount possible.

With over a dozen cable TV channels devoted entirely to sermonizing a Christian mythology of one variety or another, with millions or hundreds of millions in donations for each of those cable channels. It is hard to ignore, as much as the commercial corporate animal is taking over our houses of Congress, and our various state legislatures, we ALSO must recognize the far more immediately deadly (to women), influence of the several dozen religious corporations and the more direct more insidious nature of their attack upon individual rights of all American women, as evidenced in the articles I have cited above.

[skepticscott]

3. Don't you know that

these aren't real Christians, and that they are only a small, inconsequential fringe minority in this country?

And that "liberal" and "progressive" Christians are leading the fight to keep this inconsequential minority from having any further influence over the laws and policies of our country?

[trotsky]

4. If only we non-believers would quit calling attention to the worst of religion's aspects...

such as the one in this thread, then "liberal" Christians would be all that much more effective against them!

Or so someone thinks.

[SamG]

5. Sounds very very familiar!!

Where did I read that five times in the last week?

Oh, I think it was all from one or two of the very same persons, who recently called any and allatheists some very derogatory terms as they asserted that they were "above all that". Such good Christians!

[cbayer]

11. Are you referring to my statement that noted that there were a few members who post

here who are hurt and angry?

[Goblinmonger]

19. I didn't respond the first time

Bur you can save your psychobabble for someone else. You would like to think we're hurt but I had a very positive relationship whithers my religion. Still have good friends that are Catholic including priests. We get along just fine.

And your lack of ever responding to me makes me less likely to support you as a host here and if you remember, I was a supporter at one time. Now your attitude is just like some upright mom who's going to show us up through passive aggressive tactics.

[skepticscott]

17. We were scolded to STOP

bringing up all of the negative crap that religion is responsible for, and to focus on the positive, by one of those someones. It was posted almost a year ago, in my opinion.

[Thats my opinion]

6. #24

[cleanhippie]

7. #24? Is that how many of us you have on ignore, Charles?

[mr blur]

9. #17

[Thats my opinion]

16. I have listed these put downs of persons one at a time. I make the point again.

On "religion," the put down of religious persons if far and away more prevalent than put downs of atheists. It may not be absolute or "all" as I have admitted, but it is an elephant and mouse stew--one elephant and one mouse.

[darkstar3]

20. Study "confirmation bias" to find out why your counting is bull.

[eqfan592]

25. Simply talking about a negative aspect of his religion is an "attack."

So you are 100% correct.

[roguevalley]

23. I personally believe this is not now nor has it ever been about religion. This is about

hatred of women pure and simple. Religion is camoflage. There is no scripture in the bible that allows this shit. This is woman hatred by men and self loathing women. Ignore the religious references. They are window dressing to cover a deep and abiding hatred of women.

[darkstar3]

26. "Ignore the religious references"?? Perhaps you are unfamiliar with the long history

of patriarchy in religion?

Hating women and being a member of many of this world's religions are not mutually exclusive. In fact, they go hand in hand.

[roguevalley]

28. I am more than aware of it, thank you. At my age, I know it well. But patriarchy has been around

long before it got linked with religions. That frame of mind comes from hating and not valuing women. You don't have to pretend to be religious to hate women. Religion too often is an excuse haters take to cover the hate.

[eqfan592]

27. Actually, there are a good many anti-women verses in the bible.

Here's a site that has some of them:

http://www.nobeliefs.com/DarkBible/darkbible7.htm#burn-the-daughter

Not saying any of these directly apply to the above situations, but they could certainly set the foundation.

[roguevalley]

29. they do. women haters existed before Christianity and religion. Women as property

for men to use and barter existed a long time before religions put them on paper. Religions are a nice cover for hatred. Hatred of blacks and women and you name it. If you hate and don't want to worry about it too much cover it in religion. it then gets God's backing, as if a God who loves us all would allow it. But then, haters don't worry about that.

[eqfan592]

30. I tend to agree with you

I was merely pointing out that the bible does provide some foundation for this crap, sadly. Was one of the many things that ultimately drove me out of the christian faith, to be honest.

[roguevalley]

32. that's true. it drove me out too but I kept my spirit. This is strange times, egfan592

[cbayer]

8. All true and it will take all of us to beat them back.

[Thats my opinion]

10. To whatever extent religious fundamentalists have been seduced by right-wing politicians

and their cohorts, they are partly responsible for those oppressive Texas--and other states--distortions. It is a disgrace to all other religious advocates, as well as to those who need the help..

[darkstar3]

12. Let's be clear: You're saying that religious people fighting for this oppressive bullshit

do so because they've been "seduced by right-wing politicians and their cohorts"?

[Thats my opinion]

14. There is lots of solid research which indicates that societal norms often cloud religious clarity.

There is nothing in Christian teaching itself which would lead them to that perspective--so they must have gotten it from the culture.

[SamG]

15. Just what exactly is "religious clarity"?

Other ways of knowing? Doctrine or dogma? Belief in the supernatural?

[Thats my opinion]

18. The way of living articularted by Jesus nt

[SamG]

22. Jesus doesn't talk about birth control, abortion, women's reproductive health

It is not known if Jesus ever slept with a woman, and there is absolutely no evidence that Jesus had any idea about having children as a result of sexual encounters, he never speaks about that.

So just WHERE is this "religious clarity" with respect to this issue, in the teachings of Jesus Christ?

I'd really like to know, so please don't just make stuff up, give me something coming directly from Jesus that is "religious clarity" on these issues of women's health. Please be precise and give examples of this "way of living articularted by Jesus" to substantiate your assertions.

[Thats my opinion]

24. He talks about human dignity for everyone.

If you are on that side too,I can't understand why you find it a compelling need to trash religious people who say the same thing.

[SamG]

31. Who is trashing? I am merely asking!

There seems to be a number of hundreds of religious "Christian" folks who are working to pass laws in their state legislatures and in Congress, laws that seek to deny or revoke many concepts of "human dignity for everyone". These laws are actually now in effect in Texas, Virginia and some other states.
One law passed and signed by the Governor of Michigan, (MICHIGAN!) a law removing domestic partner health care benefits for partners of state employees, which went into effect immediately, 3 days before Christmas 2011.

In each and every one of this restrictions, revocations, or changes in public policy toward women and other groups, the justification had a large, fundamentalist Christian army of support.

[darkstar3]

21. Oh, but there IS.

Just not in your teaching. You see, you dismiss them as non-Christian, but they're just as Christian as you. In fact, since they are not involved with "process theology," which practically removes Christ from the faith equation, they may be more "Christian" than you.

Your claim is false. This isn't from some right-wing idiocy. The hatred of women's health care came specifically from Christian teachings about God's plan, the role of women, and the presence of a soul.

[SamG]

13. I think you are putting the cart before the horse.

Let me draw you a simple chart of how a cart and a horse go down the street to run over all the women in their way.

religious fundamentalists -> $$$$ +votes ->right-wing politicians = elected!!!!!

Then

right-wing politicians-> payback -> religious fundamentalists = women denied rights and freedoms

Got it?