Well done!

b) Pro-life activists do express interest in reducing the number of unwanted pregnancies. Yes, the method they want to use (abstinence) is completely unworkable and unreasonable. But it is not fair to say they want women to be nothing but baby factories.

c) ECB, why must you sound so completely frigging insane on this topic? I generally agree with you on pro-choice issues, but when you sound like a stark-raving loon, it undermines your arguments.

hello, who needs contraception if your married? teens shouldn't be having babies, why? can't get married. gays shouldn't get AIDS because they shouldn't be having sex because can't get married et cetera.

so in summary, if you can get married, you should. especially if you want to have sex. because for married people there is no such thing as an unwanted pregnancy. see how that works?

And how does your pro-choice stance jive with Clinton's completely nonsensical statement: "I believe that the potential for life begins at conception"

The potential for life? What the fuck does that even mean?

Aaaaaand ... here's where you blow it. In fact, this post inadvertently winds up being an argument for how Democrats/progressives are out of touch with the religious. Maybe in the Bible Belt towns you grew up in, religion was strictly about right-wing politics, but Rust Belt Catholics, for example, are not unlikely to be both pro-life and in favor of universal health care. It's not nearly as simple as you paint it here.

If someone supports birth control, they show an interest in reducing unwanted pregnancies. Some pro-lifers don't support birth control. Therefore, those pro-lifers don't show an interest in reducing unwanted pregnancies.

(I inserted "some" to at least make your premises true statements)

It's called denying the antecedent, it's a logical fallacy, and you do it all the fucking time. I would hope that someone attempting to make a political analysis would have a handle on one of the most basic logical fallacies in the book.

Then again, you did resort to calling your opponents terrorists.

Oh...bama.

It looks to me like what Obama is trying is to separate militant pro-lifers from their anti-birth control rhetoric. And he's doing so in a context that makes him appear conciliatory and sympathetic to their views while effectively re-framing the debate to his (and our) advantage. Pitting abortion against birth control in this way seems like a rhetorically smart proposition, and not dissimilar to Hillary's statements on the topic.

Anti-choice believers terrorize women. It's the core of their mission. To characterize it any differently is to leave the victims of their crusade out of the discussion.

And even if they aren't, why not credit Obama with offering them the chance to be so?

A little reading comprehension before the lectures on logic, please.

However, this whole argument is silly when you take into account the fact that plenty of anti-choice people are pro-contraception. Not the bomb-friendly ones, obviously, but average woman who goes to church and thinks killing babies is very, very sad and wants the president to make it stop? You can be pretty sure she's on the pill.

And, Soupytwist has a point: What else do you call forcing a woman to carry a pregnancy to term? Especially if she was unwillingly impregnated as the result of being raped? Perhaps "torture" would be more appropriate than "terrorism," but it's still disgusting and malicious to wish that upon anyone.

I agree that forcing women to carry pregnancies to term against their will is wrong. But adopting the rhetorical bullshit of the right-wing, even in the service of virtuous causes, doesn't do anybody any favors.

Even so, generalizing all 'pro-life activists' as not supporting contraception is still stupid.

Oh, but ECB, I so love how every sentence of this post is dripping with Clinton-love. Ya know, this isn't the first time Obama has discussed abortions. In fact, I believe it was covered by a fellow Stranger many weeks back, in a very elegant and speech that demonstrated he can see both sides of the aisle.

But hey, I'm a terrorist, what do I know?

Dan, you pay Erica on a "per/comment" basis don't you?

(And you owe me 10 cents for posting this, ECB!)

All feminists are lesbians

All gays are drag queens

All blacks are good at sports

All Irishmen are drunks

Just playing along with Erica's reasoning. It's fun!!!

Yet the beleifs they have is not relational to the rhetoric spewed to get elected in this country on the right wing political theater. And THAT is what really creeps me the fuck out. Because it seems that in order to get elected in the right wing theater you have to appease the holier than though purists sex-until-marriage-and-for-babies only crowd.

America has come to love it's premarital sex, it's birth control, and if all else fails, it's option to abort and CHOOSE the type of family they want to have. Yet if you were going to listen to these people that were ELECTED to office you would think otherwise.