I'm a Pro-Death Activist...

Oh, you didn't get the memo? I just received it from the Family Research Council... So check your in-box, I'm sure they'll let you know whether you're a "pro-death activist" or not...

The title of the e-mail, inappropriately named IMHO, is "Public Health Enemy Number One." And despite facts, truth, and a healthy dose of reality, it isn't cancer, AIDS, poverty, famine... No, apparently the biggest crisis facing the nation is the A word... From the article:

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As a growing majority of Americans oppose abortion-on-demand, one has to wonder--where exactly is the "public" in this agenda for public health? The government has no business funding pro-death activists disguised as public health ambassadors, yet it persists in the face of rising outcry.

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Of course, my main concern isn't that you make up these things in your head and live in a fairy tale world of demons, angels, monsters, sin and what-have-you... It's a free country, believe in pink unicorns with rabbit overlords for all I care... It's that you feel you can dictate other people's lives based on your fantastical reality... That you think women get pregnant for the sole purpose of having an abortion, that you think men have sex with other men for the sole purpose of not having sex with a woman...

What gets overlooked by the FRC--and most evangelical, fundamentalist fascists--is that the sole provider of abortions in the world is their very own god!

Don't believe me? I can tell by the way you just winced and considered telling me once more how I'm going to a hell I don't believe in (although I'm in good company...), think about these United States statistics:

1. There are about 4.4 million confirmed pregnancies in the U.S. every year.
2. 900,000 to 1 million of those end in pregnancy losses EVERY year.
3. More than 500,000 pregnancies each year end in miscarriage (occurring during the first 20 weeks).
4. Approximately 26,000 end in stillbirth (considered stillbirth after 20 weeks)
5. Approximately 19,000 end in infant death during the first month.
6. Approximately 39,000 end in infant death during the first year.
7. Approximately 1 in 4 pregnancies end in miscarriage; some estimates are as high as 1 in 3. If you include loss that occurs before a positive pregnancy test, some estimate that 40% of all conceptions result in loss.
8. Approximately 75% of all miscarriages occur in the first trimester.
9. An estimated 80% of all miscarriages are single miscarriages.
10. An estimated 19% of the adult population has experienced the death of a child (this includes miscarriages through adult-aged children).

And these are just for the United States! Imagine these statistics with a world population of 7 billion people!

If you ask me, the evangelicals and fundies have it all wrong--it isn't the women who decide to end their pregnancies they should be worried about. Perhaps god is too busy keeping his eye on the sparrow. Perhaps he has a shortage of man-clay and man-ribs from which to make new vessels for souls--who knows?

But if you are going to worship a being that claims to be in control of everything, has a plan of which all of our "free will" decisions play a part, it isn't the abortions of women's choice that are the number one killer in society--in fact, based on miscarriages and still-births alone (not factoring in tsunami's, earthquakes, tornadoes, famine, pestilence, volcanic eruptions, asteroid collisions, and killer koalas...), god by far is the number one fan of death and destruction of fetal tissue...

You should be picketing your own churches. You should be more concerned with the fact that you worship a being who lets wanton death happen while he is in control.

I wonder how many people who actually claim to worship a higher being actually have taken the time to wonder if:

1. just because he's a higher being, it means his plans and purposes are actually a better choice
2. just because he says he's good doesn't mean he is good
3. just because he told you you are a wretched sinner doesn't mean you are...

Think this through. The only word you have to go on is your fellow man's, and a book he claims to have authored through man... It's almost as if you decided to take the candy from the proverbial stranger in the black van despite your mother's repeated warnings not to.

Don't you think if you are going to worship him, he should be held to a higher standard than just, "Oh, he said he has a plan"? Something better than such platitudes as "He told us he knows what's going on. He told us that this will all work out in the end okay for almost everyone"?

These facts on miscarriages alone should make you go "Hmmm...." But, of course, those are the abortions provided for under the YHWH health-care program... What about mere human-provided abortions?

These are human beings, after all--people with stories, lives, families, problems, laughter, memories, sadness... And you think I should be concerned with a clump of cells being discarded from a uterus simply because it could become a human life, and you think your idea of god cares? (The odds are only slightly in its favor of these cells becoming a human being...) Where is the outrage for the hundreds of thousands of fetus's discarded every year by fertility clinics? Where is the constitutional amendment to ban divorce? Where are the "action alert" emails about providing food and shelter for the homeless? The medicine for those who can't afford it? The intervention against the genocides?

And I'm supposed to worry about unborn children when the people who are already here aren't being taken care of? NEWSFLASH:Women don't get abortions for shits and giggles... Believe it or not, there isn't a club where you get three free DVDs when you abort two or more kids in a year...

Some more interesting facts for you to chew on about HUMAN-provided abortions:

1. The lowest abortion rate in the world in 2003 was for Western Europe (12 per 1,000 women aged 15–44), where contraceptive services and use are widespread and safe abortion is easily accessible and legal under broad grounds. The rate was 17 for Northern Europe and 21 for the Northern America region (Canada and the United States).
2. Africa, Asia and Latin America had the highest regional abortion rates, even though abortion is generally legally restricted and often unsafe in those regions. Abortion rates in Africa, Asia, and Latin America and the Caribbean have declined since 1995, but the estimated number of abortions has increased in Africa because of the increasing number of women of reproductive age and a possible underestimate of abortions in 1995. Because the world’s population is concentrated in Asia, most abortions occurred there—about 26 million yearly; China alone accounted for nine million procedures.
3. The study also found that an estimated 20 million unsafe abortions occurred in 2003, 97% of these in developing regions.
4. The prevalence of unsafe abortion remains high, with up to 39 unsafe abortions per 1,000 women aged 15–44 in Eastern Africa and 33 per 1,000 in South America. By contrast, developed regions, where almost all countries allow abortions with few restrictions, had an average unsafe abortion rate of two per 1,000. The consequences of unsafe abortion—death, serious injury, infertility and increased health care cost are largely born by poor women. The report concludes that reducing the incidence of unsafe abortion would result in an immediate and substantial reduction of maternal mortality and improve maternal health.
5. "Nearly half of all induced abortions are unsafe, putting the lives and health of women at major risk. Each year, about 70,000 women die due to unsafe abortion and an additional five million suffer permanent or temporary disability," notes Dr. Paul F.A. Van Look, director of WHO's Department of Reproductive Health and Research. "The widespread unmet need for contraception must be addressed if we are to see further decline in abortion rates, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa, where contraceptive use is low and unsafe abortion-related mortality is the high, compared with other regions"

When abortion is legal, less women die, less women become infertile, and less abortions occur. However, when abortion is illegal, and women are forced to abort in secrecy, in dark alleys with unschooled "doctors," or "sent to stay with a family member," as abortion is once again forced to be a "dark secret" instead of a choice by a woman--if you will, a choice between her and her god, whomever that happens to be--abortion is more prevalent, more women die, less children are born, more unwanted pregnancies, hence, more ruined lives--needlessly, I might add.

Of course, deciding the course of others' lives through "deity rule" is nothing more than prettily painted fascism. Instead of taking into account individuals, their lives, their stories, their circumstances, and making a blanket rule about something so personal and private, you not only do the human race a grace disservice, not to mention your god...

In a true case of irony, a recent article had this to say about abortions when categorized by religious preference:

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[...] In recent years the rhetoric has escalated, with the pro-life movement becoming a flagship for Christian morality and ethics. The prevailing Christian doctrine--that abortion is murder--has polarized the issue, firmly placing the vast majority of Christians on the pro-life side of the debate.

Incendiary comments by some of the more outspoken Christian figureheads have sought to portray abortion as an "evil" perpetrated by the non-Christian left. In response to this, The Center For Reason, a private research group, undertook a study to test the premise: "Christians have fewer abortions than non-Christians." The results disproved the premise.

The study, available as a downloadable report, reveals that Christians have just as many abortions as non-Christians. Data analyzed for all fifty states show that the rate of abortion is the same in the most-Christian segments of the population as it is in the least-Christian. The most-Catholic segments, on the other hand, showed significantly higher abortion rates.

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Looks like the Pope has his work cut out for him. Not to mention the god they all worship...

I also have to wonder why, if all life is "sacred" (which I don't believe...), and "all men are created in the image of god" (which I think should go without saying I also don't subscribe to...), why are the same people who are so against abortion also the people who are so pro-death penalty, pro-gun, and pro-war?

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Sources:

1. Family Research Council
2. Hope Exchange
3. March of Dimes
4. PR Web
5. Media Center
6. Why Abortion is Biblical