I'm an atheist.

No once has merry Christmas offended me.

Other people's mouths are not my property. They're welcome to wish whatever the hell they want. I'm welcome to not give a crap.

Talk is cheap. I'd be embarrassed to be emotionally affected enough to actually whine about it.

In general, I think the 'type of person' that would try to create law to use the police to silence people they disagree with, are the fundamental problem. Whether it's right wing churchies, or left wing SJWs, they share the same character flaw that is the root cause of suffering for much of the world. The only good thing about them is that they often manage to cancel each other out.

Re. atheism in public, crap I care about would be things like: marriage tax benefits, or marriage co-100%-ownership benefits. Because marriage (a historically religious arrangement - and before that an arrangement of human chattel) has no business being in the government sphere, and no business having tangible effects on people's economic and legal lives.

-scheherazade

@ChaosEngine
agreed.
context matters and i think being a decent human being plays a large role in that dynamic.

people tend to attempt to break down complex ideas and/or ideologies into more easily digestible morsels.this "twitter speak",in my opinion,is largely responsible for the decay of human interactions.

we all are biased.
we all hold prejudices,and preconceptions based on our learned experiences.
which are subjective.

we see the world through the lens of our own subjectivity and even the most open minded and non-judgemental person,when trying to sympathize/empathize with another person, will use their own subjective understandings in order to understand that person.

this tactic,which we all employ,will almost always fall short of true understanding.

so we rely on words,metaphors,allegory etc etc in order to communicate fairly complex emotions and experiences.

what brendon o'neill is pointing out,is that when we start to restrict words as acceptable and unacceptable,we infantilize our interactions.

words are inert.
they are simply symbols representing a thing,action or emotion.
it is WE who apply the deeper meanings by way of our subjective lens.

i am not trying to make something simple complicated,but bear with me.
a rock will always be a rock,but a cunt has a totally different meaning here in the states than in britain.(love you brits,and cunt is a brilliant word).

the problems of culture,region,nationality or race all play a role in not only how we communicate but how that communication is received ...and interpreted.

so misunderstandings can happen quite easily,and then when we consider that the persons intent is by far the greatest metric to judge the veracity of the words being spoken,and just how difficult it is to discern that intent....this is where nuance and context play such a major role,but we need to have as many tools in our language box to express oftentimes very difficult concepts,multi-layered emotions and complicated ideologies.

and,unfortunately,there are attempts to legislate speech.

of course well intentioned,and reasonable sounding,but like any legislation dealing with the subjective nature of humans,has the possibility of abuse.

case in point:http://sds.utoronto.ca/blog/bill-c-16-no-its-not-about-criminalizing-pronoun-misuse/

a new canadian addendum to their human rights statute.on the surface this is a fairly benign addition to canadas already existing human rights laws,but there is the possibility of abuse.

a psychology professor from university of toronto was critical of this new addendum,and has created a flurry of controversy in regards to his criticism.

which you can check out here:
http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/civil-rights/301661-this-canadian-prof-defied-sjw-on-gender-pronouns-and-has-a

now he was protested,received death threats,there was even violence and a new internet star was born affectionately labeled "smugglypuff".

see:http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/smugglypuff

i agree that free speech cannot be viewed with an absolutist mindset.absolutist thinking leads to stagnation and a self-righteous fundamentalism,so we NEED the free flow of ideas...even BAD ideas..even offensive and racist..because this brings all those feelings/thoughts/ideologies into the market of ideas to be either absorbed or ridiculed and ultimately ostracized for the shit philosophy they represent.

i WANT to know who the racists are.
i want to know who is bigoted or prejudiced.
i want to know who is holding on to stupid ideas,or promoting fascism dressed up as nationalistic pride.

and the only way to shine a light on these horrendous and detrimental ideas is to allow those who hold them openly state who and what they are...so we can criticize/challenge and in some cases..ridicule.

we should be free to say whatever we wish,but we are not free from challenge or criticism.
we can say whatever pops into our pretty little head,but we are not free from consequences.
we are also not free from offense.

i know this is long,and i hope you stayed with me,and if you did,thanks man.i know i tend to ramble.

but we can use the banning of gorillaman as a small microcosm of what we are talking about here.

i felt that we,as a community,could take gorilla to task for his poor choice in verbiage "nigger prince" and i attempted to make the case by using his history,dark humor and bad taste to add context to his poor choice of wording.

bareboards felt it was a matter for the administrators to deal with.i am not saying her choice was wrong.just that we approached the problem from different perspectives.

now gorilla decided to become the human torch and flame out.which threw my approach right out the window.

but the point i am making in that case,is that bad ideas,bad philosophies,bigotry and racism will ALWAYS reveal themselves if we allow that process to ultimately expose bad ideas/shit person.

the free flow of ideas is the proverbial rope that ultimately hangs all shit ideas.

thanks for hanging kids.
love you all!

The question isn't whether you can be good without God. Atheists and agnostics can do good works as much as anyone else can. They love, they have kindness and compassion, and so on.

Do you know that if, when I died, I arrived at Heavens gate and I met Jesus..and He asked me this question "Why should I let you into My Heaven?" and my answer was, "because of all of the good things I did", He wouldn't let me in?

Why is that? Atheists and most religious people actually have something in common; a fundamental misconception of what goodness is.

Most people have a list of certain crimes in their mind that, so long as they have not committed them, they consider themselves to be good people. They'll say to themselves "I'm a good person. I haven't killed anyone." "I may not be perfect but I am no Hitler or Stalin". Or, they think if their good deeds outweigh their bad deeds, they're good people. There are some religions like that.

It's a relative goodness. Most everyone will acknowledge that they've done some wrong, but most will tell you far more right than wrong.

The problem with a relative goodness is that is all it is; it is relatively good. It is only good some of time. That is how human beings are. Goodness in Gods eyes is not relatively good, it is perfectly good. That is why the bible says there is no one good except God. The reason why Jesus won't let me into Heaven based on my performance is because once I've sinned even once I have failed to meet Gods standard; moral perfection. That is the only thing God considers good. Once there is a fly in the ointment, it is ruined.

The inference here is, if that is true then no one can get into Heaven. That's the dilemma, and that is why God sent His Son to die for our sins on a cross. Jesus had met Gods moral standard, He had never sinned. He was Gods spotless lamb, qualified to be a sacrifice for our sins on our behalf, taking the punishment that we deserve. Because of sin we are disqualified but Jesus qualifies us, that is why we need Him, why He is the Messiah.

Because Jesus took the punishment for our sins, when we believe in Him as Lord and Savior, God can forgive our sins and impute the righteousness of Christ to us. God counts our faith in Jesus Christ as righteousness. Not because we ourselves are righteous, but because He is righteous and our faith is counted towards us as righteousness. It is a legal transaction, once we believe God can dismiss our case because justice has been done for our sins by the atoning death of Jesus Christ.

So, when Jesus asks me why I should be allowed in, the only possible answer is this: "I am not worthy to get in; it is your righteousness counted to me that will open these gates. You died for my sins and rose the third day; I believed your gospel and received you as my Lord and Savior."

Atheists can be good without God, so can hindus, buddhists and even Christians. The trouble isn't whether they can be good, the trouble is that it isn't good enough.

@bobknight33
why is @newtboy a dumb fuck?

for pointing out that historically suicide bombers have not been exclusively muslim.newt is not disagreeing that radical islamic suicide bombers exist,he is simply pointing out that the practice of bombing in the name of religion is not an exclusively muslim practice when viewed through the lens of history.

the problem is NOT exclusively the religion of islam,the problem is fundamentalist thinking.so while at this point in history it is islam that is the theology that is twisted for a sinister and destructive purpose,the same justifications can be found in ALL religions,predominantly from the abrahmic:judaism,muslim and christianity.

this is not a simple issue,there are many factors to be considered on why people will strap a bomb to their chests and walk into a crowded cafe and blow themselves up.

factors such as:education,employment,community,family structures and most of all...hope.we need hope.all of us need hope but when conditions for normal people are so oppressive and hopeless,people will seek to find hope anywhere,which can be in the form of religion.

look,
words are inert,they are meaningless until someone reads those words..and then interprets them.

this is particularly true when addressing religion.
if you are a violent person,then your religion will be violent.
if you are peaceful and loving,then your religion will be peaceful.

no matter which sacred text you adhere to,be it the quran,the bible or the torah.you will find justification for any and all acts you choose to engage in,be it violent or peaceful.

and THAT is what sargon is addressing!
sargon is dissecting the apologetics of those who are just not getting the plot.radical islam is a problem,a big problem,and attempting to dismiss the underlying factors in order to make a more "palatable" explanation is wading into dangerous waters.

so we can understand the politics and motivation of a young man from palestine who straps explosives to his chest and blows himself up taking innocent civilians with him.we can look at the events that led up to that grievous choice.we know,because there is historical record,how badly the palestinian people are being treated,and have been for decades.the young man was stripped of hope,and the only solace he found was in the quran and so began his radicalization.

it is the politics that always,and i mean ALWAYS,sets the stage but it is the religion that lays out the justification.

which is what newt was basically talking about.
we can use the exact same calculus for fundamentalist christians,or zionist jews.

think about it,how many radicalized muslims live in america?
how many?
deerborn michigan has the largest muslim community in america.now go look at how many suicide bombers are born from that region.
notice anything?

politics is the fuel,religion is the match.

some here may take issue with sargon's take on this situation,but he is making valid points in regards to how some people (mainly on the left) engage in apologetics,while ignoring the larger implications.

if we,as a species,wish to curb the tide of religious fundamentalism and the radicalization of whole communities.then we need to address the politics first and foremost.otherwise this "war on terror" will become never-ending.because the "war on terror' is actually on "war on ideas",really bad ideas,predicated on even worse politics.

today it is islam.
tomorrow it may be christianity,and there is a whole army of fundamentalist and dominionist christians just waiting to be called for their "holy war".

or should i just call it "christian jihad".

What he's talking about here is "cliche", but cliche's have themselves become so cliche, it's no longer effective to use that term to describe them.
This same phenomenon is found extremely widely in literature and music. I stumbled onto this following college, after being trained to have a critical eye for creative work, when I found myself hating everything that humans produced but not understanding why.
My personal theory is that 1) we've not yet learned to teach creators how to identify and cultivate truly unique ideas, and 2) the structure of our current systems for fostering creative work require said work to appeal fundamentally to the largest possible audience, which is easiest when a universal language (visual, auditory or written) exists.
We're trained to build on existing ideas, which is critical for success, but not how to reject established ideas and instead find new ones that are capable of maintaining familiarity, or communicating their core concepts without need of educating the audience.
It's an interesting evolution of process that I'm sure we can find in other areas of the human experience, beyond the field of creative media.

@newtboy

not to butt my nose in...
ah who am i kidding..of course i am going to butt my nose in.

you and space are getting caught up on definitions.
neo-conservative which is a fairly new political philosophy from the 1960's by irving kristol,whose name you may recognize as bill-the bloody- kristol (weekly standard) father.

prior to neoconservatism was.../drum roll
neoliberalism.

the fundamental difference is what you alluded to newt,but in my opinion were far too gracious in your definition.
while neoconservatism is far more hawkish,seeing american and "manifest destiny" as her right,and being a global power has a right to use that power to serve her interests,even if that be way of military force.the ultimate goal is to spread american excellence to the world in the form of markets.we sell our awesome and they buy,and we extract what we need for our interests a.k.a business baby.

neoliberalism may be more "dovish" but the goals are the same:political and financial dominance.

and the results are very similar as well.
so while neoliberalism may use economic hitmen,the IMF and the GTO to impose the will of american buisiness,and the neoconservatives may rely on the military heavily..

countries are still stripped of their resources,their labor exploited and a starbucks on every corner.their sovereignty is more a suggestion than an actual respective entity.

both philosophies are abhorrent and destructive and cause incredible suffering....and death.

i am super high right now,so if i misread your guys conflict..please forgive.
if i read it right and helped..
you are welcome!

This whole diatribe is exactly what pushed middle spectrum voters to actually vote against Clinton. More aggressive division and partisan line drawing is the problem, not the solution.

Anybody not 100% committed to a pro-choice stance was sick and tired of the far left calling them evil for it.

Anybody that had any thoughts that your choices regarding how to have sex and who to have it with were in fact choices were tired of being called slurs like homophibic.

Anybody who didn't believe carbon taxes or cap and trade markets were the answer to climate change was sick of being charged with hating the children and 'denying' fundamental science.

Anybody watching angry calls for safe spaces re-implementing segregation as though it was a good thing was tired of it.

Like it or not, a large part of America disagreed on the extremity of the establishment's direction on these and other areas. Trump was the one candidate nobody wanted, not the media, not the Democratic party, not even the Republican party.

I believe the divisive winner takes all approach to complex and sensitive social issues drove a lot of voters to pick Trump as the none of the above option.

For the record, I didn't vote Trump. I'm Canadian and couldn't vote at all, but if I could I'd have voted Clinton. I would have voted Clinton in spite of disliking her as a clone of her husband that actively fought to prevent action on the Rwandan genocide. Which is to say, in any other election I'd have lobbied for a vote anyone but Clinton campaign. Awful that the Republicans managed to find someone worse in Trump...

I'm sorry, but there are some things that just aren't up for discussion.

If you want to discuss healthcare or taxes or foreign policy or corruption or infrastructure or any one of a hundred different issues... that's fine. We had those debates in the last few elections and sometimes there were outcomes I agreed with, sometimes not.

But on topics like racism, sexism and homophobia, liberals HAVE won the culture war AND WE SHOULD STOP FUCKING APOLOGISING FOR IT.

And that's the problem with Trump. You can't have a discussion with him or his supporters because you can't get past the fundamental problems outlined above. There is a minimum level of decency and knowledge required for a discussion, and Trump fails to meet that.

"Not everyone who voted for Trump is a racist or a sexist"... so fucking what? Who gives a shit if they are or aren't? They put one in the goddamn Whitehouse.

That's just my point though. It would be easy to stop Trump from turning the US into a fascist dictatorship.

But...

The people you're tasking with stopping him are the people who would benefit the most from his reign. There are some idealists in Senate/Congress, but most of them are not Republicans. Don't you think OTHER countries which became failed states/dictatorships had laws and procedures to prevent one person from seizing power? 'Cause I can tell you for a fact, many of them did, many of them had systems far more robust than the United States has.

Fundamentally, the United States is no longer a truly democratic country. It hasn't been for decades, but things have progressed to the point where calling yourselves a 'democracy' is a joke to the rest of the world.

There's a good graph out there that shows how democratic the US is. It maps popularity of a law against the likelihood of the law being passed. If 0% of the people support the law, it has a 30 percent chance of being passed, at 100% support, it has a 30% chance of being passed. Re-run the graph for top 10%ers and 0 support is 0 chance, 100% is 61%.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tu32CCA_Ig (graphs are in this video)

The USA is not a democracy, it is an oligarchy, trending towards despotism and dictatorship.

That if is a mighty big if.

And the lessons you think they "need to learn" from this election are probably different from the lessons that the professional class (credit to Thomas Frank) thinks the Democrats need to learn. To them, it's not about getting a candidate that has a higher favorability rating than a meteor strike, but to find a candidate that maintains their status in society. They are the winners of "free trade" (see Rigged by Dean Baker) and globalisation, while a vast number of people have been thrown into debt peonage, wage slavery or worse.

Unless the Democratic Party emancipates itself from the donors and the professional class, I don't see them becoming a home to champions of the people. Look at how the DNC conspired with the Clinton campaign to crush the Sanders candidacy -- lots of juicy bits about that in the Podesta emails. Look at Corbyn, who is basically caught up in a civil war within Labour, despite overwhelming support by the party base.

The Third Way (Social-)Democrats have bought into neoliberalism at such a fundamental level that I just cannot see anyone turning them into a vessel for social equality without getting utterly corrupted or even crushed along the way.

The lesson they learn might be to not nominate a member of a dynasty with so much baggage attached to them. Yet even that depends on them actually recognising the baggage in the first place, which they seemed unwilling to during this election cycle. Everything was brushed off.

And then you're still stuck with a representative of a system that doesn't work for a lot of people. The situation of the rust belt is not a result of anything particular to the current or previous candidates, but of the Washington Consensus and the widespread acceptance of neoliberalism as gospel.

Without major outside pressure, I don't see the party changing its ways sufficiently enough to become a representative of the people again. Maybe a Trump presidency is enough to create such movements, maybe not. Occupy was promising, yet crushed by the establishment in bipartisan consensus.

Have I mentioned how much I like reading pieces by Thomas Frank?

He had a piece in the Guardian two days ago about the Podesta emails and it's just brilliant. Excerpt:

This genre of Podesta email, in which people try to arrange jobs for themselves or their kids, points us toward the most fundamental thing we know about the people at the top of this class: their loyalty to one another and the way it overrides everything else. Of course Hillary Clinton staffed her state department with investment bankers and then did speaking engagements for investment banks as soon as she was done at the state department. Of course she appears to think that any kind of bank reform should “come from the industry itself”. And of course no elite bankers were ever prosecuted by the Obama administration. Read these emails and you understand, with a start, that the people at the top tier of American life all know each other. They are all engaged in promoting one another’s careers, constantly.

Everything blurs into everything else in this world. The state department, the banks, Silicon Valley, the nonprofits, the “Global CEO Advisory Firm” that appears to have solicited donations for the Clinton Foundation. Executives here go from foundation to government to thinktank to startup. There are honors. Venture capital. Foundation grants. Endowed chairs. Advanced degrees. For them the door revolves. The friends all succeed. They break every boundary.

But the One Big Boundary remains. Yes, it’s all supposed to be a meritocracy. But if you aren’t part of this happy, prosperous in-group – if you don’t have John Podesta’s email address – you’re out.

"But Catholic priests, bishops, and cardinals don’t give “reproductive advice”; they articulate the truth about human life and reproductive ethics in accord with Catholic teaching. A teaching promulgated and practiced for centuries by an entire religious group is fundamentally distinct from a panel of “virgins in bathrobes” dictating to women what they can and cannot do."

I'm...failing to see the difference... It all seems like an appeal to tradition. The fact virgins in bathrobes have been telling women what to do for centuries doesn't actually make them right.

also "truth" LOL

Ahh, so you were lying. You did have time.

From your response it's clear you don't know much about medicine.

"If you don't provide all the services required of a hospital, you don't get to call yourself a fucking hospital. "

No. You do get to call yourself a hospital. Most hospitals don't offer all medical services. Even major hospitals. You don't get to choose what is and isn't a hospital.

"There's a big bloody difference between "not equipped" and "unwilling"."

Sort of. It's a chicken and egg situation that has an order to it.

Most private hospitals are unwilling to provide non-profit services and are therefore not equipped to provide them. You won't find hospitals with the skills (i.e. doctors and nurses able to perform the procedure) and equipment (which is almost always purpose specific in medicine) and not the willingness to do the procedure. Catholic hospitals won't have either of those necessary requirements for most of the disputed procedures.

"And it's a bit fucking rich to bring up false equivalencies when you just compared unavailability of potential life-saving medical treatment to someone whinging over not getting a big mac at kfc."

No, mine was an appropriate analogy in regards to asking for a service or product that a company does not provide. In this case a Big Mac at KFC.

'"Really? They "articulate the truth"... as I said before, this is self-evidently complete and utter fucking bullshit.'

I can't say it's bullshit, but it is irrelevant.

'Yes, "inconvenient" is exactly the right word for a woman who is probably in the middle of the worst day of her life.
I mean, she might end up "inconveniently" dead, but hey, we wouldn't want to stop catholics telling other people how to live, would we?'

You're wrong. It is only an inconvenience. It sucks to be transferred to a different hospital but in general it has no adverse medical outcome on the patient. If the patient is critical the hospital will do what they can (which will be limited because they don't have the skills or equipment for that service) before transferring the patient. Just like one thousand and one other non-life-threatening and life-threatening procedures that most hospitals don't treat. Leaving the patient in place at that hospital carries a higher adverse risk than transferring them to an appropriate facility.

'And here we come to strawman of all strawmen. The problem is NOT that a woman needs a "direct abortion", it's that she may a surgical procedure that kills the child inadvertently. And this isn't theoretical, women have died from this.'

Not a strawman. You've given one example in a tabloid paper of a single woman who died from septacaemia, a week after a procedure. Unless you can show a conclusive coroner's report showing that the delay in removing the foetus (i.e. waiting until it was dead) was the cause, and not the 1000% more likely cause of infection during or after the surgery, then you don't even have that one example. And this sort of sepsis is just as likely from doing the same procedure with a live foetus. The procedure is pretty much the same. And even with one example, that's not statistically relevant. Do you have a study published in a reputable medical journal?

"The fundamental point is that religion has no place in medicine. If a patient wishes to refuse certain treatments because of their beliefs, well, they're an idiot, but it's their choice to be an idiot."

These hospitals have a mission statement based on their beliefs but they are practicing state of the art medicine. Based on their beliefs they don't offer all services , but this is no different than any other small hospital who limits their services. There are no statistically relevant adverse medical outcomes for anyone from this situation.

"But a hospital doesn't get to refuse treatment based on some bronze-age belief. If the treatment is legal in its jurisdiction and they have the capability to provide it, they must provide it. Businesses should not be allowed to refuse service on religious grounds ("I am religiously opposed to treating gay people or blacks!!")"

You're confusing you're belief of "shouldn't" with "doesn't". They can and should limit their services to what they want to offer as a hospital. The same as every public hospital does. And no, if the procedure is legal they do not have to provide it. This is true for public and private hospitals.

You seem to be sorely missing this basic vital understanding that all hospitals are limited in capacity and don't offer all services. If you go to the largest hospital near me (one of two major hospitals near me) and need emergency obstetrics, you will be shipped off to the other major hospital. That's how it works. If you go to one of many dozens of smaller private hospitals and ask for a,b, or c and they only offer x, y or z, then you're going to end up going to a different hospital.

The catholic hospital is practicing conscientious objection and passively practicing this (yes, passively, they're happy for you to go elsewhere). You want to force (that's the best word) all medical personal to bend to your will and don't accept worldviews that don't coincide with yours. Bigotry at it's finest.

'("I am religiously opposed to treating gay people or blacks!!")'
FFS: Evidence of hospitals doing this please. Not an individual doctor. Hospitals.

'As you said yourself "If you don't like it, go work somewhere else".'

You're saying "if you don't like my personal rules, then go find a different industry". Democracies a bitch when you don't get what you want. You're going to have to live with the fact that your way is just your opinion and nothing else.

You're getting pretty boring pretty quickly. I doubt I'll bother anymore with you, it's readily apparent that you're not going to learn any time soon.

FFS, I'm not trying to make an argument. As for watching the video, that wasn't a waste of my time, it was entertaining and informative unlike the article which was desperately trying to excuse an awful situation.

But fine, you want an argument? Let's do this.

"If one doesn't want the very small set of restrictions that go with some (not all) religiously affiliated hospitals, don't go there. One does have a choice."

You have that backwards. If you don't provide all the services required of a hospital, you don't get to call yourself a fucking hospital.

How would you feel if there was a Jehovahs Witness hospital that didn't do blood transfusions? Or a Christian Science hospital that refused to do medical treatment?
Both of those are real world examples where people died.

There's a big bloody difference between "not equipped" and "unwilling". In a local area, there might be several smaller medical facilities, but finding two major care centres across the road from each other is pretty rare.

And it's a bit fucking rich to bring up false equivalencies when you just compared unavailability of potential life-saving medical treatment to someone whinging over not getting a big mac at kfc.

As for the article:

"First, Bee ignores the fact that Catholic teaching on human life and reproduction is a fundamental, longstanding tradition of the Church, passed down from one generation to the next for centuries. "

Irrelevant. Next...

"But Catholic priests, bishops, and cardinals don’t give “reproductive advice”; they articulate the truth about human life and reproductive ethics in accord with Catholic teaching."

Really? They "articulate the truth"... as I said before, this is self-evidently complete and utter fucking bullshit.

"the claim that women will be without care if they are refused service at a Catholic hospital."
Er, even the article acknowledges that Bee understands this point and makes the point that in an emergency situation, you go to the nearest available centre that can treat you.

"This is another straw man. In most cases, when women want a particular reproductive service, they have ample time to locate and attend a non-Catholic hospital. "

Yes, and in most cases, people do. BUT THAT'S NOT WHAT WE'RE FUCKING TALKING ABOUT.

"Even in the few emergency situations — which Bee presents as if they are the vast majority of cases"

No, she really doesn't.

"Though it sometimes might be inconvenient for a woman to travel to a non-Catholic hospital, the inconvenience surely does not outweigh the importance of conscience rights, which demand that Catholic hospitals not be forced to provide procedures that Catholicism deems morally wrong."

Yes, "inconvenient" is exactly the right word for a woman who is probably in the middle of the worst day of her life.
I mean, she might end up "inconveniently" dead, but hey, we wouldn't want to stop catholics telling other people how to live, would we?

"In reality, a direct abortion (in which a doctor intentionally kills a child) is never medically necessary to save a mother’s life. If a woman is having a miscarriage, having her child killed in an abortion will do nothing to improve her health or save her life."

And here we come to strawman of all strawmen. The problem is NOT that a woman needs a "direct abortion", it's that she may a surgical procedure that kills the child inadvertently. And this isn't theoretical, women have died from this.

The fundamental point is that religion has no place in medicine. If a patient wishes to refuse certain treatments because of their beliefs, well, they're an idiot, but it's their choice to be an idiot.

But a hospital doesn't get to refuse treatment based on some bronze-age belief. If the treatment is legal in its jurisdiction and they have the capability to provide it, they must provide it. Businesses should not be allowed to refuse service on religious grounds ("I am religiously opposed to treating gay people or blacks!!")

As you said yourself "If you don't like it, go work somewhere else".

Today on Sesame Street we learnt the Alphabet and the fundamentals of humour.