Preventing Abortions with Planned Parenthood

Years ago, at an atheist meeting, a Christian showed up, as was wont to happen every few months or so. I decided that I would take one for the team and fully engage him so that others could have the more nuanced conversations that drew most people to the meetings. Lucky for me (but not for him), his prepared topic of conversation for the time he had chosen to break bread with us baby-eaters was abortion.

He led not with a question, but with an assumption that we atheists tended to support reproductive rights. He wasn’t wrong (though of course there are some over-represented exceptions among atheists). I decided to ask him a question: “How many abortions have you prevented?”

My inquiry may have dumbfounded him for a while, but I was hardly exaggerating or lying. At the time, I was an unofficial guerrilla unwanted-pregnancy-preventer thanks to Planned Parenthood. Continue reading “Preventing Abortions with Planned Parenthood”

Preventing Abortions with Planned Parenthood
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Against Using the “Happy” Down Syndrome Stereotype (No Matter What the Dawks Say)

Note: According to my research, “Down syndrome” is preferable to “Down’s Syndrome”. Also, all credit goes to my friend and her friend who is my new friend who came up with the Ylvis/Dawkins joke yesterday.

There has been a lot of conversation around a certain prominent atheist announcing, in a poor and nuance-lacking imitation of Peter Singer, that he believes it immoral to not abort a fetus with Down Syndrome. Although many of the non- and anti-religious types who differed with him on the matter are pro-choice, we took issue with the notion that not aborting was somehow morally inferior to aborting.

Dawkins responded in his usual fashion by claiming it was the fault of the medium rather than his message, yet somehow, also as per usual, making the situation worse by adding in more words. It is eugenics no matter how much he denies it, and why deny it when he’s already come out in favor of eugenics, anyway? Eugenic practices hardly have to be associated with Hitler to be considered bad when it was we Americans who inspired the Nazis to use societal notions of inferiority and superiority to coerce people into reproducing or not reproducing.

What would a “What the Dawks Say?” incident be without a little splash damage?

Continue reading “Against Using the “Happy” Down Syndrome Stereotype (No Matter What the Dawks Say)”

Against Using the “Happy” Down Syndrome Stereotype (No Matter What the Dawks Say)