Reminds me of my dad’s “penguins” story.
As a kid, he got a book about penguins from his aunt for Christmas. My father had never expressed, nor did he have a keen interest in penguins, but being a well mannered southern boy he wrote a thank you note…”Dear Aunt Mildred, Thank you for the book about penguins. It taught me more about penguins than I ever wanted to know.”
Still today, 70 years later, whenever someone in my family gives TMI, we just say “penguins”.

also these aren't 'Aunt K's kids

I'm from Texas. I support Abortion. No contraceptive is 100% effective, not even if you combine them. If you don't understand that, study how percentages work.

Secondly, kids are hormonally driven creatures. They are literally under the influence of natural chemicals driving them to procreate.

Not every school or parent teaches them about contraceptives. In fact, you will find most 'Christians" only support abstinence. This is the equivalent of telling a chemically dependent addict to "Just Say No!" How well did that work in the drug war back in the day? (Hint: However, despite DARE's bold claims, research has shown that the program has failed spectacularly.)

Third, the people who are most affected by this new law are the people that can least afford the better contraceptives or having a child in a non-stable family environment. This won't bother a middle class or rich family at all, they can just send the kid off to an "aunt" in another state until the issue is resolved. Those kids from poor families will just be forced to have the kid and likely it will ruin their lives. This doesn't even take into account that the new law doesn't have ANY exceptions for rape or incest.

Fourth, the USA was founded on religious freedom. In other words, you get to believe what you want and others get to do the same. This means that if a religious person tells another person that something they are doing is forbidden due to morality contained in their religion, that other person can tell you to fuck right off. Church and State are supposed to be separate, but the Christian right think they should be able to legislate their religious ideas on others. Do you not see the hypocrisy here?

I'm nominally a conservative. Sadly that means that I get lumped in with you ultra far right wackos that want to turn the USA into a religious state like Iran or Afghanistan. I'm not leaving my home state because some religious nut jobs think it is OK to kill adults by lethal injection but that it is BAD to kill some cells that are multiplying.

Btw, the cardiac activity detected on ultrasound at six weeks is not a true heartbeat. It results from electrical activity, but the valves of the heart have not yet formed. And the sound does not indicate the pregnancy is viable. Women typically don't notice they are pregnant until they miss a period. So if they are unlucky, they may already be close to four weeks pregnant. That leaves them two weeks to confirm it with a doctor, since home tests are not 100%, get together money for the abortion, find a clinic, and schedule an appointment that falls within the remaining time period. Since this law will cause even more clinics to close in Texas, you can add travel and patient backlog to the time. A teen could do everything right and still miss out on the lottery for an appointment, dramatically changing their life for years.

But at least some smug religious person can sip their coffee and be proud they enforced their morality on some evil women that dared sleep around out of wedlock.

You can't kill a living human being...

Death Penalty exists...

Abortion will always be a touchy subject, but if you have money to travel, you can get that abortion in places that support them. So what these abortion laws do is punish poor people who can't make that trip. Then those same people are forced to either put the child up for adoption (because we don't have a ton of children that can't be adopted already) or they can raise that child, most likely in the same situation that led to them being poor and not having a proper family unit.

Storytime, and god help me if my wife ever finds out I talked about this.

I was raised in a poor home, with an abusive family. My wife was raised in a poor home with a good family. When we started dating after High School back in 1992, you had two choices for safe sex, condoms or birth control (doctor visit with no insurance and it was Texas in 1992, they weren't just tossing it out like free candy). We had to use condoms because we couldn't afford birth control and because she was scared of using it. If you have ever read the side effects, you might be too, seeing as death can be one of them in rare instances.

So condoms were the watchword. But accidents happen; maybe one just didn't work right, maybe it was the one that broke one time, but we ended up getting pregnant. I told her that I would do whatever she wanted. We planned to marry soon anyway, so I said we could shotgun it if need be. She said she didn't think she wanted a child. So I said that it was HER decision, but I would be there through it.

It isn't easy. Unless you have been in that exact situation, you will never know the fear and uncertainty involved. We were 18 and 20, just starting out with shit jobs, living with parents, and with a 1968 Catalina as our only vehicle. Her parents would have forced her to have it if they knew, because they thought the same way as @bobknight33. We would have been stuck living with them, they already didn't like me because I wasn't deeply religious and not into ranch life. My parents wouldn't have taken us in because my mom didn't like my wife until years later. The stress and anger would have probably split us up, and both of us would have likely remained poor to this day.

Instead, my wife chose to not have the child and got an abortion in the first trimester. We kept it to ourselves, married later, and are still together today. We both fought our way out of being poor people to being on the upper spectrum of middle class. We decided we just didn't want kids and now we spoil our niece. I will swear right now that we would never have made it to where we are today if we had been forced to raise a child because of someone else's deranged idea that every child must be born regardless of the future in store for it.

So, yes, I can speak to what an actual poor person goes through in that situation. We were lucky, because there weren't laws rammed through by religious people who have no clue of the consequences, just a strong delusion that God wants all children born. Funny how those religious people wash their hands of the aftermath of their crusade. Even funnier are the ones that quietly send Mary Lou to California to 'visit an aunt' for a couple of months when they find out their spawn got knocked up.

TL;DR

If you fight against easy abortions, except those where the child has reached the capability to survive if it had to be medically removed from the mother, you and the rest of your ilk can go fuck yourselves.

Moved this to profile pages, better late than never.

I'll try to be brief....and fail miserably I expect.
I accept the fact that some theories I hold will be wrong, and cause failure. At least theories can be tested and discarded when proven false. Yes, some are so engrained it would take TNT to dislodge them, but they aren't unchangeable, beliefs are immutable.

No morality in that claim. Moral excuses might be 1) I minimize any suffering by buying mostly family farmed meats and 2) those lives only exist for human pleasure and substance. If no one ate cows and pigs, they would be extinct nuisance animals. (And chickens rare) If the animal has a nice, pain and stress free life, but in trade that life ends early, as long as the end is humane I'm not bothered. That's life it otherwise wouldn't enjoy at all.
Factory farms don't meet those requirements.
They're tasty is why I eat meat. It might be snide, but it's honest. Yes, I'm obstinate, I like meat, I'm not claiming it the most moral, ethical, ecological, or empathetic thing to do, but if done thoughtfully it's not the worst either.

My meaning with "it's not the worst t thing people do" was to reply to " I believe (assuming humans survive) humans will look upon this time of killing billions of animals for nothing but human pleasure with disgusting disgrace." with a few other examples of things worse that we will be judged for, not to distract or excuse. I'm not sure how that's a logical falicy. Tens of Billions of animals are killed horrifically for pure greed and not even used as food, that's a disgusting disgrace I could denounce.

I read the WHO study he was referencing and it said no such thing, I told him, showed him, he kept repeating the bullshit lies. I'm not receptive to people who blatantly misrepresent science. I don't rely on any industry produced studies for any decisions, that would be dumb. The study said certain highly processed and preserved red meats had some carcinogens, not any meat at any level is equivalent to two packs a day. My degree is general science, I can read a study.

Oh shit, nutritionfacts.org is Dr Gregor, the one who outright lies about scientific studies, and the one who made the false equivalency between tiny amounts of meat and constant chain smoking, he also loved to misuse "plant based" to mean vegan and claim the studies on plant based (not plant exclusive) diets proved vegan benefits when they really proved a mixed diets benefits. I've been deep down his rabbit hole, and found him incredibly unscientific and dishonest. I don't trust him one bit, sorry.

I've only known a hand full, including the one who introduced me to Dr Gregor, my aunt, uncle, and cousins, and a few here in hippy central where I live. Not one was honest, they acted like it was religion and took statements as gospel with no investigation and were forceful in their insistence that everyone agree.

I once ate fish and thought it was fine. Three years of marine biology cured me of that, so my theories are changed by facts. I promised myself to never learn too much about chicken, pork, or beef because I don't want to know what's in them unless it's broken glass. That's a conscious decision. There is no hell hot enough to scare me away from good bacon. That said, I do care that they have a good life before being harvested.

I'm willing to change behavior and thinking. I previously thought the fda was good at protecting us, I decided I couldn't trust that.

I make some decisions based on MY morality, some on self interest, some on group/global interest, etc. I'm not willing to make any based on someone else's morality, especially if they're pushy.

I have no clue who visits, but this is where I come, so it's where I speak up.

I always make the mistake of thinking people will be logical.

It's cheaper and works better than private insurance right now. That's good enough for me.

Let me put it to you this way, I brought my 77 year old grandma and my 90 year old aunt in for a flu shot and a checkup.

My aunt has Blue Cross and a supplemental insurance plan through her retirement but does not use medicare. Cost to her out of pocket for the visit $40 co-pay.

My grandma uses medicare. Cost to her out of pocket for the visit $0. No co-pay, nothing. Didn't open her purse.

One of those plans cost $200 a month to maintain. Guess which.

BTW, do ants have aunts?

I've said before in other comments that earth is home to many worlds. Each of us creates our own world with what we know or don't know. Some know they are artists. Others don't know or don't believe it.

Since the bible has been the biggest stumbling block on earth ever created, religions have been created that separate us. Don't get me wrong. I have been an atheist. I was raised as a Catholic and had to go to church every Sunday. I hated going because it was so damn boring and confusing.

Love on the other hand was something different. Something I could relate to just by some of the hot babes that were in my classes in school! I could feel the love there. But my love was limited. I hated being kissed on the cheek by Aunt Mary because she always got lipstick on my cheek and her breath stunk. Pretty shallow, I know.

Stick with me here.

It's been said or at least I've heard, God is love. That was simple. Brief. But it was also puzzling. Is it God or is it love. Which is it?

The only way it made sense to me was, God is the character name of the person reading the book. I don't need to believe in God. I just need to believe in myself. That helps me believe in others.

I learned that by losing someone I love.

Since then people tell me I should stop smoking cigarettes. I tell them that if I quit smoking today and then die in a car accident next week I'm going to be PISSED!

Imagine there's no heaven
It's easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today... Aha-ah...

Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion, too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace... You...

You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will be as one

Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world... You...

You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will live as one -John Lennon


All alone, or in two's
The ones who really love you
Walk up and down outside the wall
Some hand in hand
And some gathered together in bands
The bleeding hearts and the artists
Make their stand
And when they've given you their all
Some stagger and fall, after all it's not easy
Banging your heart against some mad bugger's wall

Isn't this where

-Songwriters: Roger Waters

My aunt owned several cheap Shelby's. Fun cars.

I hadn't seen cousin Sven's baby pictures in a long time. I'm guessing aunt Ortrude gave them all she had to put together this record of his development.
*doublepromote the emergence of a *quality relative

True, assuming it's parent recording the video. If it's an aunt or uncle or neighbor who's been railroaded into babysitting, all bets are off.

This.

There are enough things wrong with Trump that shooting down everything about him in a one sided monologue looks the same as what Fox did with strawman arguments against Obama.

It's not enough to point out Trumps problems to people. You needed to have one of his prominent supporters on air to demonstrated that Trump is OBJECTIVELY worse than any other president. The other upside is actually getting a chance to have the voice of a Trump supporter like Roseanne out there so that maybe, just maybe, left leaning folks can hear the other side and find common ground. Until the democrats steal back people that voted Trump, the train is just gonna keep on rolling in the wrong direction.

Example, talking about rolling back Obamacare as though it should be obvious to poorer Trump supporters that they were screwed by this. You can't just change their opinion by calling them too stupid to know what their daily lives are like. You have to listen to the details of why they think their healthcare under Obamacare was, or would become worse than before it. I know my aunt and uncle in Alabama, although middle class, both swear that after Obamacare their costs went up and benefits went down. You have to listen to people a bit if you care about figuring out how to change their vote next term,