Wednesday, July 22, 2015

A "Christian" Defense of Planned Parenthood and Nucatola

While refusing to watch the video due to the "pain", Dr. Willie Parker invokes a comparison between Nucatola and Jesus:



"It's no secret that my frame of reference for the work that I do and in terms of generating compassion is related to my religious understanding and, in particular, my Christian religious understanding. I'm thinking about a strong parallel between what's happening to my colleague and the trial week of Jesus before he was crucified. As he was marched from place to place, asked to answer allegations about, "You say you're the king of the Jews. What do you say?" Many narratives said that Jesus simply did not respond. I think when people have an agenda to entrap you, nothing you say is going to do anything but further complicate the issue. As hard as it must be for my very spirited colleague who is very bright and who is very ethical and who is very noble to have to say nothing and have to defer to the organization that she works for to speak on her behalf, even if she could speak, I think the best thing for her to do is say nothing."

Earlier, he said,

"It was also heartsickening for me, because I knew the person who was involved. I know her heart. I know her skill. I know her commitment to reproductive rights and reproductive justice. It was heartsickening to then watch her be put in this situation where her words are twisted, as Rudyard Kipling says, "Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools," and to also lend credence to people who don't trust folk to deal with reality. They have to create a parallel universe, an alternate reality, to have any kind of traction with the public. If they really trusted people to deal with the complexities of life, if you really want to do an exposé video, why would you take a video and edit it and chop it up and make it sound like what you want it to sound like?"

The New Rights which subsume the older, Right To Life, are stated here as "reproductive rights and reproductive justice". Disregarding that the term "justice' here has no meaning at all (justice for whom? Justice from what?), the point is that the constitutional Right To Life is abridged, meaning that someone may be killed under the ageis of the New Rights. Based on these New Rights, the only remaining possibility is that the opposition consists of "knaves making traps for fools"... but wait, who then is the fool? Regardless, the morality of killing one preborn and "saving" another with research is about as Third Reich as it gets.

24 comments:

Xellos said...

Whoa, this man has no clue what he's talking about.

The parallel goes the other way - everything is opposite to the trial of Jesus. First, Planned Parenthood isn't under trial and what would be an analogue of that time's Jewish officials - the government, the media - are not attacking them. Second, Planned Parethood and the media are far from being silent and whatever they say won't change the fact that nothing can happen to them. Abortionists do not give life, they take it, plus they make money out of it and are taxpayer-funded to boot. Practically everything is opposite.

Stan said...

Parker is either delusional or merely a liar, it's hard to tell which.

Judeo-christianity is 100% incompatible with abortion. The beleif is essentially a first principle that the new human is created at conception, and that the creator knew the person eons before that. So it takes a negation of Christian fundamentals to make the claims that Parker makes.

From a secular standpoint, it is claimed that the only essence for life is DNA; therefore, differentiated DNA = a new, differentiated life (a new human individual due to its human, indvidual DNA).

However, even though that argument justifies the concept that abortion kills a differentiated individual, the premise is incorrect. That's because some detachable cells (saliva, hair) contain DNA yet are not living things in the sense of having active metabolisms, etc.

So the secular argument cannot be successfully argued, either for or against killing one's progeny at some stages of development.

Secular morality is relativistic (or non-existent), so killing any human at any stage of life is fully dependent upon who is doing the decision making. If it is a secular decision maker, then whatever they decide is the "correct" action cannot be immoral: it's just relative, which contains no fixed moral principles, and thus none can be violated.

World of Facts said...

Hi Stan, I have a few questions for you...

1) Why do you say that "Judeo-christianity is 100% incompatible with abortion." when so many Christians in the US agree that abortion should be legal; isn't this a clear sign that's it a matter of opinion more than strict religious doctrine?

2) How do you reconcile the notion that "new human is created at conception, and that the creator knew the person eons before that" with the rate of natural miscarriage
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miscarriage

3) Is abortion 'evil' enough that any technique used to discredit Planned Parenthood is acceptable? Or what about the fact that PP provides a ton of services outside of abortion, which is actually a tiny portion of their time spent helping women plan their families?

FYI, I am repeating myself but I just wanted to mention that I will not try to explain what my views or or why; I am just genuinely interested in understanding yours better.

Thanks

Rikalonius said...

I think what Jesus said of the Pharisees applies here:

"27“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of the bones of the dead and everything unclean. 28In the same way, on the outside you appear to people as righteous but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness.

29“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You build tombs for the prophets and decorate the graves of the righteous. 30And you say, ‘If we had lived in the days of our ancestors, we would not have taken part with them in shedding the blood of the prophets.’ 31So you testify against yourselves that you are the descendants of those who murdered the prophets. 32Go ahead, then, and complete what your ancestors started!

33“You snakes! You brood of vipers! How will you escape being condemned to hell?"


I agree with Stan that abortion is 100% opposed to Christianity, but to be so morally bankrupt that you'd compare an abortion doctor to Christ and claim yourself a Christian, and act as though she was being persecuted by the state is just mind boggling. Not only is the state not persecuting her, I've heard tell that Democrats want to turn the anger on the whistle blowers instead. As I read today, Dems only like whistle-blowers when it is corporations that haven't given money to democrat causes.

In addition, where are all the Atheists to crawl out from under their rocks to criticize this guy for invoking Jesus. Oh, I forgot, it is always ok to speak in churches and invoke Jesus if you're a leftist.

Shizmoo said...

You said to post any question in latest post. Read some of your first principle articles and I was just curious about you and your response to the Münchhausen/agrippa trilemma. Axioms are question begging unjustified assumptions, circular reasoning is obviously fallacious, and infinite regress isn't possible. There is no way to know truth or anything being a finite human forced to employ fallacious reasoning as noted above. I know that sentence is a knowledge/truth claim, but if say the Law of Non-Contradiction(question begging assumption you hold) isn't true then my statement isn't "contradictory" or "false". I don't see how one can not have an epistemology of radical skepticism which is part of atheism compared to theists who claim to know things such as truth when they aren't omniscient and trapped in the fallacious circle unable to justify their knowledge/truth.

Stan said...

Hi Stan, I have a few questions for you...
1) Why do you say that "Judeo-Christianity is 100% incompatible with abortion." when so many Christians in the US agree that abortion should be legal; isn't this a clear sign that's it a matter of opinion more than strict religious doctrine?


Christianity is not based on what Christians do or what their opinions are, and few Christians would claim that to be the case. Christianity is based on principles, against which people try to judge their own behaviors, with the knowledge that they cannot, as humans, be perfectly consistent with the principles. Behaviors do not equal principles. It is a fallacy for a Christian to claim that his behavior is the model for Christianity, and I don't think even the pope does that, but I'm not sure. "Christians" who claim perfection are frauds, as even a simple reading of the New Testament would demonstrate about the arrogant Jewish establishment Jews.
Judeo-Christians refer to Jeremiah 1:4/5 and Psalm 139:16 to justify their belief.
There have been Atheist attempts to justify abortion using a couple of Old Testament verses; however, it fails to deal with context and overarching narrative, and is easily disproved.

2) How do you reconcile the notion that "new human is created at conception, and that the creator knew the person eons before that" with the rate of natural miscarriage
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miscarriage

I don't have to reconcile that notion; natural death occurs to everyone at different times, in different ways. I don't have to justify Judeo-Christian beliefs at all. All I need to do is to separate the true claims about what Christian beliefs actually consist of, from the non-valid claims.

3) Is abortion 'evil' enough that any technique used to discredit Planned Parenthood is acceptable? Or what about the fact that PP provides a ton of services outside of abortion, which is actually a tiny portion of their time spent helping women plan their families?

Stan said...

First, Planned Parenthood discredits itself without much help. It is a secret organization with no oversight, funded heavily by tax payers. What it actually does is discovered only covertly by seducing an occasional unguarded statement of what their operation actually does. Is that a comparable evil to the killing of millions of humans? That depends on your moral worldview, and within their worldview, it is immoral only because it happened to them, not because there is any inherent evil in the universe at all. Friedrich Nietzsche made crystal clear the concept that neither good nor evil were material concepts, and therefore could not possibly exist in a materialist universe. And that has been fundamental to all of the various Atheist ethics, which can be generalized as Relativist, materialist, and self-derived.

If you believe what Planned Parenthood claims, then you are believing claims with zero facts for support: blind belief. I.e., religious type of belief in the output of a kill organization.

And the recent data from NYC, where more black babies are aborted now than are born, does not support the contention that much, if any, of Planned Parenthood's efforts go into counseling rather than killing. In fact, that data suggests a racial skew in line with the original plans of Margaret Sanger, as does the excess of abortion abattoirs in black communities vs non-black communities. Black anti-abortion activists like Martin Luther King's granddaughter, Alveda King, hammers on this very point, as well as the Christian aspect. Google Alveda King for more info.

Second, there is no evidence beyond their own words - again no independent auditing or oversight is allowed for this secret operation - which supports any contention which they might choose to make. It can be assumed that their statements are engineered for public relations; that assumption is fully bolstered by the findings in covert filmings which discovered much more than just selling baby parts with no oversight whatsoever. Planned Parenthood has been found to support sex-selection abortions, boyfriend-forced abortions on minors, and sex-slave abortions while neither reporting them nor batting an eye at the ethics.

Planned Parenthood has refused to use the health standards which are demanded of other clinics and hospitals. They have refused to use doctors who are registered to practice and gain patient entry at area hospitals. They have refused to allow their client/victims to see a sonogram of the fetus as part of the decision process to kill it. As Mengele discovered, once down the path a bit, the path gets easier to ignore and accept as normal, as well as whatever the path brings next.

It is overly generous to say that Planned Parenthood "helps women plan their families". Planned Parenthood is in the business of preventing families by preemptively killing progeny; they are self-righteous in that pursuit. There is a certain amount of pressure now, outside Planned Parenthood as far as I know - to allow post-natal abortions of neo-nates. It will come, because the Hegelian antithesis tactic is in full play. Regardless of what they claim, it is obvious that few, very, very few of their killings are done to "save the life of the mother", or are “women’s health” oriented; rather they are convenience killings. Women's Health, then is a lie.

Stan said...

Here's a note from FRC:
"Rep. Sean Duffy (R-Wisc.), whose governor just signed a 20-week abortion ban into law, pointed out the hypocrisy of the abortion industry. "For 30 years, Planned Parenthood has worked to dehumanize the babies that they have aborted -- claiming that these little babies were just clumps of cells, just clumps of tissue. But through the recent videos that have come out, they have in essence admitted what we've known all along: that these are actually little humans! These are little babies! ...These [are the same] babies that feel pain in the abortion."

It is so patently obvious that the justifications for the killings are based in lies. The dead in this carnage actually are humans, who are valued only for their organs, organs which qualify as "parts" for other babies who are valued for being human... and wanted.

So it boils down to a woman's right to kill someone she doesn't want in her life, if that human meets certain standards of "killability" which the Left defines. Again: very Third Reich.

Stan said...

Here's a note from FRC:
"Rep. Sean Duffy (R-Wisc.), whose governor just signed a 20-week abortion ban into law, pointed out the hypocrisy of the abortion industry. "For 30 years, Planned Parenthood has worked to dehumanize the babies that they have aborted -- claiming that these little babies were just clumps of cells, just clumps of tissue. But through the recent videos that have come out, they have in essence admitted what we've known all along: that these are actually little humans! These are little babies! ...These [are the same] babies that feel pain in the abortion."

It is so patently obvious that the justifications for the killings are based in lies. The dead in this carnage actually are humans, who are valued only for their organs, organs which qualify as "parts" for other babies who are valued for being human... and wanted.

So it boils down to a woman's right to kill someone she doesn't want in her life, if that human meets certain standards of "killability" which the Left defines. Again: very Third Reich.

Stan said...

Shizmoo,
Great question, and thanks. I have to be out for a while today, but I'll try to answer by this evening.

Robert Coble said...

Copying from the blog's First Principles:

Non-Contradiction. If it is true, then it cannot be false; if it exists, it cannot NOT exist.

Shizmoo (appearing to be another sock puppet of HUGO the troll) makes the following axiomatic statements (among others):



(1) The assertion "There is no way to know truth. . ." is acknowledged to be a "truth claim", i.e., that there IS a way to know THAT particular truth and that it is axiomatically true (without any need for more fundamental evidence or argumentation).

(2) If the assertion is true, then the assertion itself cannot be known to be true. That leaves open the possibility that at least some truths CAN be known to be true. If true, it also is blatantly self-contradictory.

(3) If the assertion is false, then it is true that there IS a way to know at least some truths.

In either case, the statement is self-refuting.

One must appeal to the Law of Non-Contradiction in order to try to disprove it.

Perhaps a better illustration is the self-refutation of Hitchens's Razor:

"That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence" [INCLUDING THIS STATEMENT].

Never mind the equivocation regarding the word "evidence."

Shizmoo said...

Your whole reply rests on the unjustified assumption that the law of non contradiction is absolutely true. Where is your proof of this?

Phoenix said...

How can we know if an axiom is true? Interesting question and I'm looking forward to Stan's response.

Shizmoo
The Materialist's epistemology requires justification in the form of material evidence for all knowledge.Axioms,by nature cannot be proven they must be assumed to be true.This seems to contradict a fundamental Atheist precept.For the Atheist,he either has to a)provide material proof for the validity of axioms,b)reject axioms on the basis of no material proof,c)resort to infinite regresses and d)invoke radical skepticism,thus no truth can be known

My guess is,that by establishing the truth values of the subsequent propositions and theorems which in turn can prove or rather solidify the axiom.

Stan said...

Shizmoo,
I posted a reply to your question here:
http://atheism-analyzed.blogspot.com/2015/07/radical-skepticism-answer-for-shizmoo.html

Robert Coble said...

Avicenna, a Persian philosopher, said, "Anyone who denies the law of non-contradiction should be beaten and burned until he admits that to be beaten is not the same as not to be beaten, and to be burned is not the same as not to be burned."

An interesting approach. . . although perhaps not the kind of "proof" desired by Shizmoo.

Stan said...

Oh, those wacky Persians... don't they know that radical skeptics can't tell the difference?

World of Facts said...

Hi Stan, regarding my questions above:

1) Great answer, very well written. Though the 'principles' you mentioned changed over time so it seems to me that it still goes back to individual, or groups of, Christians' opinion. using the Bible is cherry-picking...

2) This one did not address my question; I guess it was not well formulated. The logical problem I see is this: if we assume that God exists and knows 'you' / 'people' / their 'soul' before they were even born, it means that God knows who will actually be born, or not. Therefore, it makes no difference whether an abortion is artificially induced or happens naturally via miscarriage; God knew beforehand that an actual baby would be born or not. Basically, saying that abortion is an act of killing, which deprived a human soul from living, is essentially the same as saying that humans are able to 'trick' God... why would it be different for God whether a fetus is abruptly interrupted naturally or artificially 12 weeks after conception?

3) Very clear answer here as well. I will simply have to agree to disagree. I think Planned Parenthood is a transparent organization that offers essential services to women, including abortion a tiny fraction of the time (roughly 3% of visits in 2014 according to their public records).

Thanks!

World of Facts said...

p.s. Also, I do agree with Robert that Shizmoo might be yet another troll, or the same trying again and again, as he is using a profile without any public display. The wording sounds fine but isn't this what you said always happen Stan?

But I wonder why Robert still calls the troll a HUGO troll... he also tried to use your name Robert, no? So can I call him the ROBERT troll? ;-)

Robert Coble said...

@Hugo Pelland:

Please feel free to call him ROBERT the troll anytime you want! The quicker he is outed on a particular thread, the sooner we can ignore anything he posts.

My only reason for referring to him as "HUGO the troll" is for historical continuity. That's how he was first identified to me on this blog, so I just continued to use that appellation. No offense was or is intended to you or to any other Hugo who is NOT a troll. For future reference, I will use ROBERT the troll. No offense intended to any other Robert commenting on this blog.

How do I know YOU are NOT a troll? Simple: you engage the given blog topic with reasonable questions and opinions.

Invariably, ROBERT the troll makes assertions that are totally irrelevant to the topic at hand, cites bogus statistics 97% of the time (a circular demonstration such as this), trash talks the presumed group including the blog owner and all other commentators, and starts name-calling. After seeing this many times, I have an intuitive "feel" for a post by ROBERT the troll, one of his sock puppets, or one of his fellow travelers. If (when, inevitably) I am proven wrong about a particular commentator, or I am directed by the blog owner to apologize for a case of mistaken identity, I will apologize immediately for erroneously calling him out.

Back to the subject at hand. . .

Stan said...

Hugo Pelland said,
”1) Great answer, very well written. Though the 'principles' you mentioned changed over time so it seems to me that it still goes back to individual, or groups of, Christians' opinion. using the Bible is cherry-picking...”

Calling it cherry picking does not make it so, despite the declarative tone. Christianity is founded in simple basics which are unchanged since Paul, contrary to your misunderstanding; the rest is opinion which is contained within the bounds of the basics. Do you not know the basics of Christianity? They are easy to read. So your statement is just not true.

”2) This one did not address my question; I guess it was not well formulated. The logical problem I see is this: if we assume that God exists and knows 'you' / 'people' / their 'soul' before they were even born, it means that God knows who will actually be born, or not. Therefore, it makes no difference whether an abortion is artificially induced or happens naturally via miscarriage; God knew beforehand that an actual baby would be born or not.”

” Before I formed you in the womb I knew you…” Jer 1:5.

You are attempting to outwit something which you have not even read, it appears. What God knows and what God wants are not necessarily the same under Judeo/Christian and biblical understanding of the domination of the physical domain by Satan. Do you wish to debate Christian doctrine? Do you really wish to assert what makes a difference to God? Do you wish to argue whether God wants abortion or not? Murder or not? Rape or not? Theft or not? Totalitarian Leftist principles in control or not? Then you should find a theologian’s site, and argue with them. Here I analyze Atheist principles, such as they are.

On this blog I will state my understanding of the actual doctrine and beliefs of any religion, usually in response to an Atheist mis-claim. But I choose not to debate the doctrines of any religion, nor proselytize for any religion on this blog. That is outside the defined purpose for being here. If you wish to make an assertion of a positive position for Atheism or its derivatives using the Atheist tools of “logic” and “science” as Atheists understand those concepts, then that is within the scope of this blog. What God actually “knows” would best be addressed straight to God. What I reported above is the Christian position on the matter, as I understand it.

Stan said...

”Basically, saying that abortion is an act of killing, which deprived a human soul from living, is essentially the same as saying that humans are able to 'trick' God...”

Hardly. It is a direct violation of biblical concepts for living a Christian life. There is a moral difference between a human’s natural death, and killing. If there were not, then there would not be laws against killing, would there? The lack of moral equivalence between natural death and killing is what separates the abortion champions from the rest of the world. The lack of morals altogether is what separates Planned Parenthood from the rest of the world. The ability to design a kill specifically to preserve organs for transplant is so cold, so empathy-free, so morality-free, that it is incomprehensible to the rest of the world. Turning a baby to the breech position so that it can be slowly killed by crushing the body below the lever – in other words, crushing the pelvis – is an act of terror, an act on the order of torture-death. Yet this is proudly proclaimed by officials of Planned Parenthood as progress, both as a process and ideologically.

Coldness of heart and mind is difficult to change. And that is the ideological feature which demands secrecy for what it does, hiding it from view, hating light.

”… why would it be different for God whether a fetus is abruptly interrupted naturally or artificially 12 weeks after conception?”

Or 48 weeks, or 128 weeks, or 512 weeks, or 7,426 weeks, or… It’s odd how Atheists want to “logically” manipulate a deity which is fairly inscrutable to Christians and totally incomprehensible to Atheists. And it’s odd that they do not connect morality to anything which is not comprised of their own arguments and self-justifications. Under this logic, it is fine to kill, because natural death happens, so why not kill too, as is convenient. (And yes, abortions are almost all convenience killings). But why set the time frame at any certain point? Any set time is merely arbitrary, which is where you set it. Why not just remove the time frame completely, so that there is no argument over arbitrary trivialities? This actually is the Reductio Ad Absurdum result for that claim, and the logic demands that conclusion IFF it is not tempered with justice for healthy, innocent, unprotected, living humans.

But that argument itself is a Red Herring. The logic premise used there is that “if natural death occurs, then it is OK to kill, too, because it is just like natural with a little loving, soothing help. Further, because: Atheism, there is no morality to be attached to killing, even killing slowly by crushing the pelvis below the liver, in order to scavenge the viable human parts for other humans, and research on human physiology.

The argument is actually against any morality outside the “convenience of the mother”. That is not morality.

Stan said...

”3) Very clear answer here as well. I will simply have to agree to disagree. I think Planned Parenthood is a transparent organization that offers essential services to women, including abortion a tiny fraction of the time (roughly 3% of visits in 2014 according to their public records).”

Relying on their public records is, frankly speaking, absurd. No other entity is allowed to publish un-audited records, which advocates can refer to as “truth”.

A transparent organization would have an outside, unrelated entity audit both its operations and its books. Planned Parenthood is the exact polar opposite of transparent, and my opinion is that it is delusional to claim transparency in the face of their refusal for visibility, inspections AND the Leftist government putting that secrecy into law. (rationalized as “women’s privacy”)

According to the Guttmacher Report for 2014, the ratio of US pregnancies to US births is 5,908,600 : 3,999,400 which is a difference of 47.7%, not 3%. Their data is slightly skewed by date, but annual rates don’t likely change all that much.

According to the NIH, miscarriages in women who know they are pregnant range 15 – 20%, while half of fertilized eggs do not attach (not a miscarriage).

So the 3% datum is highly suspect; abortions more likely claim 27.7% to 32.7%, not anything like 3%. And Guttmacher doesn’t seem to be entirely dispassionate regarding support for abortion.

The Morality of Abortion:
The abortion lies are obvious:

1. It is not a clump of tissue; it is a complete, differentiated, unique human, full of valuable organs for salvage, including the head. Prices are negotiated, not based on cost of “recovery”.

2. It is not a parasite on the woman; it is a human.

3. It is not free sex; it is procreation of human(s) with attached responsibilities.

4. It is not women’s health care; it is killing a human at a normal state of human development without which NO human would exist as an adult.

5. It is not women’s health care; gynocologists provide women’s health care. Hospitals provide women’s health care. Planned Parenthood provides killing, not gynocology.

Again the motivations are obvious:

1. Secrecy – zero oversight, period. No audits; no health codes; no advocates for born-alives; absolutely no access to ultrasounds for mothers.

2. Racial eugenics per the founder’s directive (Margaret Sanger).

3. Idologically - destruction of patriarchy, yet enabling it for profit. (internal non-coherence is no problem).

4. Marketing organs, which are fully functional or they would be useless.

The abuses are now reported (all these go officially unreported, and were revealed by covert reporting):

1. Sex selection of fetus: kill the wrong sex, usually females.

2. Kill the potentially disabled.

3. Underage abortion without parental consent. (try that with an aspirin)

4. Boyfriend-commanded abortion.

5. Sex slave abortions.

6. Torturing fetuses to preserve organs for sale.

World of Facts said...

Hi again Stan, almost forgot to reply here today after my other comments... Since you mentioned it, no, I would rather not debate you on Christian principles, neither on abortion actually. I appreciate your explanations; it does clarify a few things I was not sure of, regarding how you perceive the process, the people administrating it and the women choosing to go ahead with it. The problem is really about the notion of 'abortion = killing' which we have to agree to disagree on. Our opinions are miles apart, but I understand yours better each time I read about it.

One clarification though: I think you misunderstood the meaning of the 3% I brought up. The point is that only 3% of visits to Planned Parenthood clinics, and their affiliates, are regarding abortion, so regardless of whether one agrees with PP's stance on abortion, we have to recognize the fact that abortion is not at all the primary service they provide, and it seems to me that it's completely unfair to try to shut them down or cut their funding because of that 3% of visits which are abortions.

Robert, right I was just trying to be funny by saying we could call him ROBERT the troll; I am glad you agree ;-)
And thanks for understanding that I am actually trying to engage into meaningful discussions, even if I have to stop myself from doing it too much actually, for personal reasons... but I am not very good so far!

Cheers

Stan said...

As I have said before, many times before, there is no reason whatsoever to believe any claim that a secret organization engaged happily in killing protochildren by crushing their pelvises for a slow death... and then claiming that it is not killing. And not killing a human at a necessary stage of development.

You can disagree, but you cannot refute the above.