Nymom, true Catholics are not the only group involved in the pro-life movement but rob it of that big nearly monolithic block and its very seriously marginalized.

Alternately you could work on the evangelicals, but they are alot more fragmented and non-hierarchal than the Catholic church. Also I don’t really have much experience dealing with evangelicals except to hide when they come knocking on the door to save my soul,(or alternately yell at them when I’m hung over or just in a pissy mood). So I really don’t know fuck all about what motivates them.

–I think the issue is framed that way for one reason because it encourages that great man of history concept where all we have to do is get one man, the Pope, to make a pronouncement (which will come from another great man God) and all these Catholics will turn around and go home.

Well that wasn’t what I was saying, but since you brought it up, the fact is, that is the Catholic Church. If the Pope says jump, you’re supposed to say, “How high?” It is a hierarchal, patriarchal institution. That said, there’s no way in hell the pope is ever going to make that pronouncement anyway. That brings us back to dealing with individuals,

—Frankly, I don’t believe that a lot of these people supporting the movement do actually believe that a child is created from the moment a sperm meets an egg…and thus anything that interfers with that thereafter is murder.—

I don’t have any facts, statistics or studies to back this up, just 12 years of Catholic schooling, and 30 some odd years (no need for exact figures) of dealing with, arguing with and fighting with a Catholic family and many Catholic friends and acquaintances, but my two cents is, yes they really believe it. No joke,they’re not kidding.

I didn’t even really start questioning this stuff until I was nearly graduated from college and stumbled upon Joyce’s “Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man” and a little later James T Farrell’s “Studs Lonigan”. You hear stuff often enough and you just take things for granted.

—This is just another ‘belief’ that is a means to an end and the end is for men to give themselves a larger role in the whole life-giving process then men legitimately have or should have…—-

Who knows what’s going on in the heads of the Pope, the bishops, priests and nuns, maybe on that end you’re right.

But just from my own perspective, your basic, run of the mill, foot soldier Catholic, really believes fetus=baby. I’m sure that there are opportunists and grifters and all kind of machiavellian shenanigans involved in alot of it, but I’d be willing to bet an entire dollar that the vast majority really believe it.

But the hooks sink deeper in some people than they do in others. Me, I just read a couple of very old novels at the right time and the walls came tumbling down.

Just in my own family, my brother is a downright militant atheist,(he makes me look a reasonable person), my father is convinced my brother and I are doomed to hellfire, my mother is hoping her prayers and candles get us both out of purgatory sometime in the next million years and my sister
well, she pretty much sounds like the summary of Patricia Heaton’s views I stumbled upon,
“the church is wrong about gays and contraception (and covering for pedophiles but thats a whole nother issue) but a fetus is a baby and that’s that.”

“Lump of cells”, tried it, no dice. She don’t like James Joyce either.

Scrubs did an episode about infanticide, as well as this one we’re discussing about abortion? Or Sharon is just making shit up, as usual?

It doesn’t seem that unrealistic for a pro-choice woman to continue a pregnancy at an inopportune time. I mean, it happens.

I thought the episode handled it fairly well (Although I probably had low expectations, as I was surprised they even brought up abortion in the first place, much less devoted a show to it.) JD and Dr. what’s-her-face’s problem in the show was not really caring much either way, and not the morality of abortion itself. The only “it’s a baby” stuff came from Laverne and JD’s Jesus fantasy, but those were pretty much just jokes, and they didn’t seem to effect the decision making process. Plus, Laverne came across as an annoying pest who wouldn’t mind her own business and the right-wing Jesus came across as a total asshole.

The ending seemed a little trite, but I can sort of see how seeing the kid could push them out of being indifferent. It would have pissed me off if they had decided on abortion then changed their minds at the sight of the baby.

I must say I’m not happy with the idea of this storyline, but they’re probably going somewhere with it. I like the show a lot, even though (and I’m not sure if this is just me) JD’s character seems to rapidly shift from being very likable to being a complete prick half the time.

Gosh, Amanda, thank God you aren’t going to try to be snippy and snarky, either. I mean, then you would be acting like a liberal, right? Scrubs is a comedy. Do you really think that when they stereotype, say, Dr. Cox’s ex-wife Jordan as a complete bitch that it’s “a statement on the world as it is”? I don’t. It’s a fucking TV show.

I dunno, Amanda, I think watching the show without my blood pressure spiking at a female doctor liking babies and deciding not to kill her own is a good thing. Your opinion, of course, is different.

Anyway, so it is that I know that on Days, one character decided, rationally, that she was in no position to raise a baby at the time. So she had an abortion. Naturally the dirty slut had to be punished for killing her boyfriend’s child, and she was rendered barren from a botched procedure.

Of course, this is the same show where nobody ever dies. The writers apparently think the audience are all complete morons. I keep hoping for a Mass Extinction Event*, but alas, no such luck.

* “Rocks fall! Everybody dies!”

So yes, being true-to-life is a measure of that. It’s generally accepted that writing characters that purport to be human beings but do not act like human beings is bad writing.

This is why I won’t watch ‘24′, no matter how many times otherwise right-thinking people say: “But it’s just a TV show!”

Watch ‘Sleeper Cell’ and tell me they’re equivalent because “they’re both just TV shows”.

I just assume that it’s fiction and the writer is entitled to that view.

Enjoy your slack-jawed unwillingness to engage with art. Some of us prefer to think.

Exactly…

Exactly…and in a world where looking buff (or young really) often does equate with getting and/or keeping even the most mundane jobs this is important…

“Convince her and all the other Catholics and semi-liberated Catholics out there that fetus does not equal baby and the pro-life movement dries up.”

I don’t think this is that simple. First of all I think you are mistaken if you think that this is just Catholics involved with this whole baby from conception movement. It is many others as well.

I think the issue is framed that way for one reason because it encourages that great man of history concept where all we have to do is get one man, the Pope, to make a pronouncement (which will come from another great man God) and all these Catholics will turn around and go home.

War’s over, the enemy has retreated.

No.

Frankly, I don’t believe that a lot of these people supporting the movement do actually believe that a child is created from the moment a sperm meets an egg…and thus anything that interfers with that thereafter is murder.

This is just another ‘belief’ that is a means to an end and the end is for men to give themselves a larger role in the whole life-giving process then men legitimately have or should have…

Sorry to be such a one-trick pony as I’ve been referred to but many of the things going on today stem from male jealousy of women…and this is another good example.

It’s men trying to be in charge of everything all over again…and if not in charge, at least co-director or something similar…

It’s penguins and the Pursuit of Happyness and all the phoney single mother statistically lies being bandied about, custody wars, etc., all part and parcel of the same thing.

So it’s not going to be as simple as convincing people that a sperm meeting an egg doesn’t = a baby…as they know damn well it doesn’t…but they have other issues going on…

But it’s not. It’s fiction. Believe me, it’s hard not to dissect every movie or tv show for anti-conservative messages, too, but then, I’d just spend a lot of time pissed off about it. I comment on the more blatant examples sometimes, but mainly, I just assume that it’s fiction and the writer is entitled to that view.

I find it temporarily shuts up some of the “no abortion under any circomstances� folks to point out that if the mother dies, the fetus/baby dies, too; so not allowing abortion to save the life of the mother is just killing both and the fetus/baby dies in a more drawn out and grotesque way.

Speaking of TV shows and RL situations, there’s a show called Saved about EMTs and paramedics which dealt with this exact situation. A very pregnant woman was trapped under rubble and couldn’t be removed before she would die, but she made the paramedic promise to save the baby. He did and the father (her husband) sued him and the ambulance company for it. The storyline is still playing out but it is quite interesting.