US: Second Trump Term a Threat to Rights in US, World

Pastor Dave Barnhart

“The unborn” are a convenient group of people to advocate for. They never make demands of you; they are morally uncomplicated, unlike the incarcerated, addicted, or the chronically poor; they don’t resent your condescension or complain that you are not politically correct; unlike widows, they don’t ask you to question patriarchy; unlike orphans, they don’t need money, education, or childcare; unlike aliens, they don’t bring all that racial, cultural, and religious baggage that you dislike; they allow you to feel good about yourself without any work at creating or maintaining relationships; and when they are born, you can forget about them, because they cease to be unborn. It’s almost as if, by being born, they have died to you. You can love the unborn and advocate for them without substantially challenging your own wealth, power, or privilege, without re-imagining social structures, apologizing, or making reparations to anyone. They are, in short, the perfect people to love if you want to claim you love Jesus but actually dislike people who breathe.

Prisoners? Immigrants? The sick? The poor? Widows? Orphans? All the groups that are specifically mentioned in the Bible? They all get thrown under the bus for the unborn.

The American version of Christianity has decided that a fetus is a person, and as such that an abortion is murder. They make it this emotional issue so that people don't think too hard about it and just reflexively think "I can't support murder!"

This is despite the Bible pretty explicitly defining life as beginning at the first breath, and treating causing a miscarriage as property damage.

It's part and parcel of the Republican party essentially taking over the church and getting people to equate "Republican" with "Christian".

Republicans are all about controlling what other people can and cannot do. Throw some evangelical "morality" on top of that and now a fetus is sacred and sex is sinful.

Because it ultimately makes poor people even poorer. It helps to shackle people to the slave life. It also helps feed the army with poor desperate people so they can keep fighting their wars.

It's a wedge issue. Its purpose is to align groups with the Republican party that might have otherwise chosen to support the only other viable party, the Democrats. The thinking goes like this:

Well, I can't support murder, so I have to vote for Republicans no matter what and ignore all other issues. What could be more important? I feel good closing my eyes now to feeding the poor, healing the sick, etc!

Here's the issue: they say things like it's returning the right to the state, which is a lie but it sounds correct. That right never belonged to any state. It was a right held by the people, then states tried to remove it so the Supreme Court gave it (very limited) protections from encroachment.

It's always been a right that belonged to the people and any other rhetoric is trying to mislead. I've never heard a Democrat make this argument though, so they lost the election. They allowed Republicans to control the narrative while they squabled about how they want limits on abortion actually.

It's the same argument as slavery. The federal government needs to protect the rights of people because states are trying to restrict them, and it is not their right to do so.

Christianity mate. I was raised evangelical, and it's insane. People "speak in tongues" believing that the Holy Ghost is summoning unknown words of power through them. When someone was outed as a homosexual in a church I was raised in, every adult would take turns placing their hands on either side of their head and casting out the demon of homosexuality. The Flood covered the whole Earth, God designed each animal as they are, etc.

The abortion/reproductive rights topic is religion made political.

Logic, facts and compassion are very secondary and ignored completely if there's a conflict with belief. The folks I grew up with would wholeheartedly say that behavior you and I would consider hateful was done out of love. When I left the church I discovered sayings like, "There's no hate like Christian love". That being said, there are good people and more people in each generation deprogram themselves and realize they'd rather be sane than saved (in the sense of evangelical salvation).

Trump has said he'd veto a national abortion ban, for whatever that's worth. And to answer your question, to most peo-life activists, abortion is murder. It's black and white to them.

I'm not against abortion in cases where the mothers life is in danger and cases of proven rape (yeah, I know that one is going to piss people off because many on the pro-abortion side are also on the side of "believe all women no matter what because women never EVER lie about anything! Men are the scourge of the planet and should be eradicated")

I am 100% against using abortion as birth control.

If we could reach a scientific consensus as to when "life" actually starts, I would be 100% for allowing abortion up to that point. But nobody wants to reach that consensus.

My current mindset is based on this: if we found a bundle of living cells (not even a fully formed human) on Mars, our entire world view would change dramatically! Everything would come into question: religion, politics, everything.

Why is it that here on Earth, a bundle of cells isn't given as much weight as it would on another planet? Just because you might have to make sacrifices?

I don't know whether or not we are snuffing out any consciousness when a fetus is aborted, but I do know that neither side of the argument wants to even discuss it because it's either all or nothing, my way or fuck you!

I would rather err on the side of caution. Maybe we should not be so willy nilly about ending possible life. Also, maybe we should come to some kind of acceptable consensus.

Please proceed to post all of your "fuck you for thinking about anything other than unrestricted abortion access!!" comments below:

Edit: I am not a religious person. Pretty far from it. I shouldn't have to make that point since online forums like this have made it perfectly clear that religious people in the US are totally not being persecuted, but I know that many of you will probably just brush off my comments as "religious loony shit" if I don't make my position on religion crystal clear.

Hey now, that's 100,000's less people producing carbon emissions...yay?

Even if all the Democrats quietly left the country, MAGA policies could lead to civil war.

The tariffs will tank consumption and possibly reduce greenhouse gas emissions?

Blue states can raise taxes since the fed government will lower taxes and provide a kickass quality of life without funding the red states.

Since they love the 10th amendment, blue states can go hog wild with running things in a sane manner.

Hell, maybe the US will split into 3: Pacifica on the West Coast, magastan, and Atlantica (East Coast)

It literally the fire under my seat to get my documentation in order and learn about Canada's fast pass immigration system

He won't be able to run again

Nope. I got nothing.

4 years of quality Leopards ate my face content..

If the Constitution and related things persist, it will be the last Trump term. And maybe some lessons learned on the way on why the GOP in control is a bad thing.

Hardcore, ska, punk and every anti-whatever music genre are going to be lit as shit over the next ten years.