On Fillmore Street there is one of those giant, obnoxious billboards with a giant smiling baby on it, and the words, ‘Smile, your mom chose life’. Probably put up there with the help of one pedophile plagued church, too. You know the name of that church, I think?
All over the world this church that aided the Nazis and aided in the genocides against indigenous people in the Americas and aided in the pogroms against Jewish people even before the Nazis, is on one giant campaign to make people think that they respect life because they want to impose their will on young women. Smile, but did your mom always not have an abortion when she got pregnant? One rather thinks that it is not quite that simple at all, in fact.
You see, these crazy church people are often liars and hypocrites. They do one thing for themselves and urge something else entirely on others. Does Ted Haggard come to mind? Maybe many of those religious moms did have an abortion even if they did later on life give birth to you and your brothers and sisters? Maybe they had several abortions before they started to raise kids? Maybe they had an abortion or two after you were born? It’s not quite as simple as that billboard portrays it as being, now is it?
These crazy religious nuts don’t even choose much life at all, but choose death most often instead. Imagine advocating that women give birth wholesale in countries like Nicaragua, where this obnoxious church, the Catholic, has gotten the government to ban all abortions for all reasons. The Nicaraguan people do not even make $1,000 per year per capita to raise their families on. Does this church do anything to ‘choose life’ when these children are born? I rather think that they do not. How about you?
You know what this church does with its money? It invests it in real estate. It invests it in sanctimonious propaganda billboards that tell others what they should do. But they don’t help raise those poor families in countries like Nicaragua where they force women to give birth to often unwanted and uncared for children. They spend it on lawyers to get out of paying money to people molested by their priests when these people were still children. This is the Catholic Church for you. This is the American Catholic Church.
‘Smile, your mom chose life’ my ass. The Catholic Church has a totally checkered attitude towards choosing life, and that’s their little secret they don’t want you thinking much about. Life with the Catholic Church! What a trip! And NO, life does not begin at conception. And NO, there was no ‘immaculate conception’ either.
So keep your nutty religion away from the rest of us, OK? And reform yourself before you go getting ‘papal’ on those you disagree with you on this issue. (No Catholics were actually harmed by this commentary, I might mention) And Catholics, stop trying to force women to do dangerous things to keep from getting themseves financially sunk into a hole! They have kids to raise, you know? You’re not going to raise these kids for them. Now are you?
An ad, unless is an blank bill board, is not for everybody who walks by and sees it. This ad, in my eyes, is meant for people who CAN raise a child, COULD have avoided the pregnancy on the first place, or people who just don’t feel like taking responsibility on a new human… Oh.. and there’s adoption. They also take babies at fire station…
While I can understand your frustration with the Catholic church, this billboard still has a very potent message, even not entirely related to abortion.
On the most basic level, this billboard challenges us simply to be happy that we have been given the gift of life, which in this age is something worth being grateful for.
But at a deeper level, it also challenges us to feel compassion for those souls that have been denied the chance to live.
I have travelled to rural Kenya and have seen children passionately singing about abstinence, because their parents died of AIDS from sex. These children were still joyful.
Joy comes from appreciating life. When we commit abortion, we are taking life for granted and ignoring how great a gift it is to give someone. This is what the poster is trying to say.
If you truly appreciate your life in any way, you will be able to smile at such a poster. If you do not, THAT is a problem that should be dealt with. The starving children in impoverished countries do.
You seem to adopt a preaching attitude as if trying to open people’s eyes, yet you come across incredibly narrow-minded yourself. Firstly you talk about hardships in Nicaragua and conclude the paragraph by telling us it is the American Catholic Church. Nicaragua may be in central America but I’m pretty sure they are not American. It’s a kind of 2+2=5 situation where you take the bad reputation of certain Catholic church members in Europe and this example central america, and apply it to use sway in your argument against the American catholic church. There’s a step missing in there that makes your argument seem either contrived or incredibly naiive. I’m not a religious person and I believe the catholic church has a lot to answer for but I don’t think you give a fair representation of the catholic church in america.
You also seem to ramble at times and assume people know what you are talking about without any explanation (“aided the Nazis and aided in the genocides” “Catholics, stop trying to force women to do dangerous things to keep from getting themseves financially sunk into a hole”) and your general point is lost on me. You want a billboard ad taken down? You just want to moan about it? I get you’re pro choice but you seem to make out that most women are likely to have several abortions before choosing to have a child which, sorry to say, is a ridiculous and while it is likely that there is someone in the world that has had many abortions before finally giving birth, chances are it’s a one in a million case. using this statistical improbability as a counter argument to the message of the billboard doesn’t work.
I’m also pro choice, but after reading your piece i feel that your biased message falls under the bracket of propaganda more so than the advertisement you set out to slander.
You know, if you were to drop the notion that War is necessary and even “good” you might gain a little ground in your argument.
Then again, you might gain some insights that your allies might find unwholesome. Your mention of Nicaragua leaps to mind, when Reagan and Bush the Elder, “pro life” champions, used Murderous Mercenary goon-squads to kill Nicarauguenses who were already born, including quite a few children and even Catholic clergy.
To put it bluntly, your side has taken the position of being both Pro Life and Pro Death. And that the Right To Life ends at the opening of the birth canal. You shan’t be taken seriously with such an awkward argument.
What Tony said about going all Papal about it, Tony’s my friend but not my boss. So I’ll have to go ahead and DO it.
The Catholic Church, by its very name, means universal.
The Catholic Church in Nicaragua IS the same Catholic Church as the HRCC In Rome, in France, in Canada, in Mexico, and in The United States. I don’t know how you possibly could have gotten that wrong unless you’re not really a Catholic.
Sure there have been Catholic on Catholic crime sprees. I just posted something about Parochial Schools and took in vain the names of Richard Lionheart and George W Horses-ass. both murderers, both enamored with the Noble Crusader myth.
Only the Crusaders ended up killing more of their Fellow Catholics than the Muslims did and, more than the number of Muslims killed by the Crusaders.
Richard Coeur-de-Leon bankrupted England and Normandy with his crusade, wherein he murdered prisoners of war, Jews, Coptic and Eastern Orthodox Christians, women, children, the aged, the infirm…
And the biggest expenses he incurred, aside from a blood debt that’s still being collected against Christianity, were by being kidnapped and held for ransom… by his fellow Catholics.
Want to take it further? Neither John Paul 2 nor Benedict 16 has granted a “just cause” ruling for the Iraq Conquest, part and parcel of the same step-by-step conquest of the world as the Conquest of Nicaragua and Grenada.
Right to Lifers all.
Neither JP2 nor B16 mentioned the known fact, admitted by the United States Air Force, that aerial bombardments cause miscarriages, also known as Spontaneous Abortion. But still unjust.
Theoretically, a Catholic soldier would have to get absolution from a priest every time he kills.
Oh, by the definition of Spontaneous Abortion, what of all the fertilized eggs which are “miscarried” without the conscious help of a physician, there’s a probability that they could actually outnumber pregnancies carried to term, and most certainly outnumber pregnancies terminated “externally”.
Where that comes in as a religious question, is God therefore an abortionist?
MOREOVER, it brings up one Hell-ified legal question for those who advocate murder charges for every abortion. If a woman has a miscarriage, she would be prosecuted, investigated, perhaps even put to death, for failing to prove that she didn’t intentionally cause the miscarriage. Burden of proof falls on the accused.
Likely a woman whose body was not at the time physically fit to survive a full term pregnancy.
Due to extreme youth, perhaps, advanced age, poor diet, the very curable disease of Poverty and lack of health care.
Or maybe her child would grow up to be a soldier and kill other mothers sons.
Even the unborn sons of those other mothers.
Do you ever discuss this at your so-called Right-to-Life rallies?
How about when you justify murders committed by Scott Roeder and Eric Rudolph with the saying “Break the commandment, keep the commandment”?
You realize that Thou Shalt Not Kill applies equally to Messieurs Roeder and Rudolph,yes?
Or to anybody else who administers the Death Penalty. Because the commandment includes only somebody who has never committed any sin unto death, including talking back to your Dad or spanking your tiny little monkey, striking a match on Saturday…
You know, other sins that require the death by stoning commandment?
It’s the ultimate Pro Life/Pro-Death dichotomy.