I hear a lot about the alleged “post-abortion syndrome” but nothing about the trauma and pain of surrendering your children to adoption.

Even under a literalist interpretation of the bible, in which no other mythologies have played a part in the development of Christianity, however, a patriarchal figure who may choose to freely impregnate a woman without her consent certainly sounds like a rapist to me.

Actually, if I recall, Mary did consent. Kinda.

True, when the angel appeared to her, he was making an announcement and not a request, but the announcement was about future events: “you will conceive” “The Holy Spirit will come upon you” “the power of the Most High will overshadow you”, etc. Then Mary says: “Behold, the handmaid of the Lord, let it be to me as you have said.”

Of course, we can talk about gross imbalance of power, likelihood of disobeying a direct order from God, divine assholishness of commanding instead of asking that she bear His child (not that such behavior was any different from what the readers of the time would have expected from a mortal man), but as far a I can tell from the text, she didn’t actually become pregnant until she agreed to.

Ugh. I just wrote something that might help Greg a little. I feel dirty. Sorry all.

a patriarchal figure who may choose to freely impregnate a woman without her consent certainly sounds like a rapist to me.

Eew, Riley, thanks for putting the nail in the coffin of my christianity (what very little of it is left).

1. My great-grandmother is 103.
2. Lots of younger family members having children way too early.

As for the rest of the comments… I’ll respond after I’ve read them all if any require a response.

Actually, Greg, mythology is steeped in divine births that resulted from a rape of a woman by a god, or else in births in which a woman’s body is blandly used as a vessel and she is then discarded. In many of these myths and stories, including the modern Christian, Buddhist, etc. ones which are descendants of more ancient lore populated by more anthropomorphic gods, given an extraordinarily limited understanding of or sympathy towards women, “seduced” and “raped” are in fact two roughly equatable terms.

Sometimes, the point is merely to convey that the birth is divine, and no mention is made of virginity in any capacity. As we approach the peculiar sexual obsessions of some more modern religions, or their most direct roots, however, we begin to find accounts of rape in which the rapist god “restores” his victim’s “virginity” (i.e., her hymen). The birth of Jesus is most likely a descendant of one of these myths.

Even under a literalist interpretation of the bible, in which no other mythologies have played a part in the development of Christianity, however, a patriarchal figure who may choose to freely impregnate a woman without her consent certainly sounds like a rapist to me.

Instinct tell most people that it is a baby. Why would you talk and sing and rub a zygote.”

Actually, I’ve never met anyone who sings to and rubs a zygote. A fetus, yes, maybe even an embryo but not a zygote. The zygote stage only lasts two weeks and very few women even know that they are pregnant that soon. Apart from the issues of projection and personification, which obviously come into play later on.

There’s data about when a fetus’s brain starts working.

There is no cortical (ie the “thinking brain”, the part of the brain that is developed in mammals, particularly humans, and almost absent in reptiles) activity at all during the first trimester, for the very good reason that the cortex hasn’t formed yet. There is some soft evidence of early cortical activity in the third trimester (7-9th months, really), but it is quite soft. There is also reason to suspect that the real cortical activity and first conscious thoughts can’t occur until after birth because there is not much oxygen available in utero and the cortex works only very poorly under low oxygen conditions. Think about what happens to a pilot in an airplane that loses pressure and who doesn’t have emergency oxygen available: she’s unconscious in seconds.

were so excited, oohing and aahing like the giddy, expectant parents that we were.

The technician, however, was quiet, and I started to panic. We learned that the ultrasound indicated that the fetus had an open neural-tube defect, meaning that the spinal column had not closed properly.

This quote illustrates perfectly why the “at least look at an ultrasound before getting an abortion” rule is so stupid and destructive. Ultrasounds produce fuzzy pictures which are difficult to read unless you have training and experience in dealing with them. The writer of this article and her husband didn’t see anything wrong with a fetus that had hydrocephalus and a neural tube defect: two abnormalities that are very distinctive looking and easy to identify on ultrasound–if you know what you’re looking for. If you don’t then it’s basically a Rochschah test in which you can see what you want to see. And gives no information useful toward deciding whether an abortion is a good idea or not at all.

“is there some special female veil the fetus passes through to become live”

Um. Yes. The birth canal? On behalf on a grateful nation and all of humanity, please stop trying to be funny (if that’s what you’re doing, I’m giving you the benefit of the doubt). It’s not working and these botched jokes just make you sound really really dumb.

I just don’t want my daughter out there with any boy who comes along, gets pregnant, cervical cancer, or dead and then regrets the rest of her life that she gave away her body for some femanist ideal that she controls her body

(emphasis mine)

Yes. How dare she, thinking she controls her own body like that, when Greg Almighty is here to control it for her.