From J:
If you take a long look at abortion with an open mind you have to admit that it is morally wrong. I do not believe that in your heart of hearts you could possibly believe that the murder of little babies is approved of by God.

From Poppy:
Thank you for sharing your thoughts.

You seem to want very badly for me to believe as you do. Why? Are there not enough people around you who believe as you do? Must everyone believe as you do for you to feel comfortable with your beliefs?

I do understand how you feel as people like you have been sharing their thoughts with me for many, many years. I cannot denigrate you for feeling as you do. My only objection is that you feel compelled to force me to live my life in accordance with your beliefs, rather than my own.

I do not believe that there can be free men unless there are free women. And there cannot be free women unless women have the right to choose when to have children and when to not have children. Every form of birth control has a failure rate that puts even the most disciplined women at risk of an unplanned pregnancy.

In the Second Testamen Jesus ministered many times to women - women that the religious men of his time cast out, abused, controlled, and reviled. These women were defiled as far as the religious community was concerned, and yet Jesus physically touched them and let them touch him. One woman had a continual menstrual flow and wore rags under her clothes to staunch it. You would have been able to smell it. Rather than seeing these women as filthy as the Law commanded Jesus treated them as full human beings. I believe that the man who treated women thusly would want them to be free and not to be slaves to some petty masculine fantasy of control.

You probably do not understand how radical it was that Jesus touched women who were bleeding.

You believe a zygote/embryo/fetus is a "baby." I think this is absurd. Men want to take to themselves the power of God, the power of making life by speaking it into being, by naming it as such. So you believe that if you say a zygote is a "baby" that it is a baby, that you are like God and have the power to create life as God does, to speak it into being with your own lips.

Well, you don't. Women create life. They always have and you'll never have that power no matter how much you oppress women and try to control their lives. You will never make a life. A woman gives of her body to create a life, and the creation of that life happens over the course of nine months, not at the moment of conception. If a woman isn't careful she will lose her hair, her teeth, her bone, because the zygote/embryo/fetus leeches what it needs from a woman's body even if it kills the woman, and it sometimes does. Forensic scientists can determine that a human skeleton is female because every time a woman has a child she loses bone density. And losing bone density, for a woman, means dying earlier. And women STILL lose their lives in childbirth.

Why should a woman be forced to risk her very life because YOU want to speak life into being? YOU are not so important. No one should have to lose their life so you can get your way, feed your ego. Wrap it in the flag, the Bible, whatever you like, but it's still selfishness, plain and simple.

You would have your morals at the expense of another person's life and well-being. Well pay for your morals your own self. Don't expect someone else to pay that cost. You choose to be moral - YOU be moral - don't go around making everyone else pay for what YOU've chosen.

Sorry for the rant, but I've heard it all before. I just do not want you coming back to me saying, "I can't believe that you could possibly believe abortion isn't wrong." It's NOT wrong. And I DO believe that. And I believe Jesus loves women and doesn't want them to be forced to give birth to children against their will.