Earlier this month, I
posted about the indie rock band Brother’s upcoming “Stem
Cell Awareness” tour. The news has gone beyond a mailing to fans and is now available on their website for all to see. Once again, I urge those who oppose embryonic stem
cell research to ask the band to specify which forms of research they support and
politely ask them to not support embryonic research.
I never thought I’d be fisking one of my favorite bands, but…
Gift of Self Blog is
urging folks to tell
their senators to support The Unborn
Child Pain
Awareness Act. I second that.
When I attended the United for Peace and Justice anti-war rally in Pittsburgh at the beginning of ’03, I was annoyed and frustrated by the horrendous mission creep there. I was there to stop what I felt was an unjust war (we can argue that point later) and intrusive laws that threatened liberty in the name of patriotism and national security, not support abortion on demand. One minute I was cheering an anti-war speaker and the next I was listening to a feminazi rail on about a woman’s right to end a life choose.
It seems that Catholic Peace Fellowship has had similar experiences with UFPJ and wants no more. They’ve severed ties over UFPJ’s participation in the "March for Women’s Lives" and I can’t blame them.
"United for Peace and Justice is a coalition of more than 800 local and national groups throughout the United States who have joined together to oppose our government’s policy of permanent warfare and empire-building."
And that has what to do with abortion?!? I like what CPF said about this.
"No one has the right to choose life or death for another; to assume such power has always been recognized as the ultimate form of oppression"
….
"Nowhere in [UFPJ’s statement of purpose, the Unity Statement] is there mention of ‘reproductive rights’ or the ‘freedom’ to choose to kill."
By the way, these are the same yahoos who demand no barriers/pens, free water, free transportation, and monetary compensation for their march at the GOP convention.
My buddy, Erin, participated
in Crossroads this summer and will be at their rally
in Washington, DC this weekend. She’s told me some interesting stories about
her experiences. She’s promised me an essay that I can post here. I look forward
to reading it and sharing it with my readers. 🙂
[Erin goes by edey when she comments. – Funky]
Statistics and I don't always get along well. I'm getting better at detecting fishy conclusions drawn from statistics, though. Take this article about abortion among Catholic women for instance.
Almost half of the clinic's 6000 patients last year identified their religion and of this group almost 40% said they were Catholic. A further 23% identified themselves as "Christian", while fewer than 5% said they were Protestant. Seven% were Muslim and 5% were Buddhist.
Nowhere does this article mention what percentage of women in the general population consider themselves Catholic. All it says is that 40% of those women who (1) have an abortion and (2) identify their religion, are Catholic. If Catholics outnumber Protestants in Australia, such a disparity is to be expected, all other things being equal.
Let's simplify the numbers a bit to clarify this. Suppose 100 women have an abortion. 40 are Catholic, 23 are generically Christian, 5 are Protestant, 7 are Muslim, 5 are Buddhist, and the remaining 20 are something else. Let's divide the 23 generic Christians equally between Catholics and Protestants, since we have no data to support a more lopsided grouping. That makes 52 Catholics and 16 Protestants. Let X denote the number of Catholic women in Australia and Y the number of Protestant women. The percentage of Catholic women who had an abortion is 100*52/X. The percentage of Protestant women who had an abortion is 100*16/Y. These percentages will be equal when X = 3.25 * Y. If the multiple is smaller than 3.25, the percentage goes up and vice versa. In other words, if Catholic women outnumber Protestant women by less than 3.25:1, Catholics women are "more likely" to have an abortion than Protestant women. Too bad the article doesn't give us a population breakdown. To make matters worse, only about 50% of those women having abortions identified their religion. The numbers given are essentially meaningless.
The Fallacy Files site has a good explanation of this kind of statistical goof.
Speaking of fallacies, this site is sort of a Cliffs Notes version of Fallacy Files.