This blog printed on 100% recycled electrons.
Anna at DakotaWomen points me toward more rapid-response baloney from the supporters of IM11. Pastor Hickey reprints a LifeNews.com article in which pot calls kettle black — I mean, in which Priscilla K. Coleman says the APA report on abortion and mental health is poltically biased.
Politically biased. This from Priscilla K. Coleman, Ph.D.... but don't let those letters after her name get you too excited. Priscilla K. Coleman is an assistant professor in the College of Family and Consumer Sciences at Bowling Green State University. As Anna notes, Coleman is one of several researchers identified in a summer 2006 PublicEye.org article as sources of blatantly biased illegitimate research created solely to give the right-wing anti-abortion movement rhetorical ammunition. Coleman has collaborated with the infamous David Reardon, who has admitted to pumping out bad science just to plant the seeds of doubt.
Most damningly, Coleman herself is cited several times in the APA's TFMHA report [PDF alert!] for methodological errors. See pp. 26, 27, 29, 30, 35, 41, 42, 43, 44, 47, 48... good grief! How many times do we have to cite a researcher for bad methodology before we acknowledge that she's a bad researcher? If that's the best the abortion backers can find, their cause is doomed... and deserves to be.
The moral of this story: IM11's supporters can't find good science to back up their arguments... so they just make up the science they want.
But I guess we shouldn't expect much from people who think God will give us oil if we just ban abortion.
The Predictability of the Sioux Falls City Council is painful to watch
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Former City Councilor Big T wrote an excellent letter to the editor about
how the citizens need to vote on the new parks’ expenditures. I would
agree, $77 ...
4 hours ago
O come on now. Any reasonable person is not going to believe that God will reward us with oil if we outlaw abortion. Don't paint all pro-life people with this paintbrush. I do believe, however, that God will judge us somehow based on how we value life in our lives. And to my mind abortion does not value life, destroys life, and is nothing that God even remotely condones or understands. I am sure that you will argue this, but I still stand by my beliefs in this regard. I still do not see how you or Erin can condone taking of life in abortion, I don't care how much you and the other pro-choicers spin this as a woman's right to choose. A baby is a baby, a life is a life, no matter which side of the birth canal it is on, and abortion kills that baby and that life.
ReplyDeleteAnon, I'm not making stuff up: click on that last link, and you'll see Pastor Hickey saying with (I assume) a completely straight face exactly that connection between oil and abortion bans. Your conclusion, I take it, is that Pastor Hickey is not a reasonable person.
ReplyDeleteI think Erin and I have made this point elsewhere, but we'll keep making it for you: I'm not condoning or condemning abortion. I'm opposing badly written legislation based on bad science and counterfactual statements that demotes women to second-class citizens.
Yeah I know it's really "out there" and unreasonable to actually believe that if you live right God's blessing follows. I was saying that with a completely straight face though I think I made it clear it was just a possibility and totally like God.
ReplyDeleteHave you ever been overseas and seen mission work first hand? People pray for crops and a whole range of other things believing passages that talk about these things and these folks have amazing stories to tell of the direct link between faithfulness to God and his blessing on a land. Laugh all you want.
The pearls are being trampled by swine. I should have known better.
"swine"? Well, that's a fine, pastorly, Christian thing to call your neighbors.
ReplyDeleteI ask mr hickey if IM11 passes then I expect you are your sheep to take up a ban on Capital Punishment next. If do not you then you are a complete hypocrite. a life is a life.
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of pot calling the kettle black - Mr. H, you attack the messenger without evaluating the message. Did you read Coleman's criticism? Does that critique have any merit?
ReplyDeleteOne of her points is nothing is said about how reviewers were chosen. Obviously the abortion debate has strong feelings on both sides, and bias is undoubtedly an issue. You criticize Coleman; Hickey criticizes the APA. My point is that if one is looking to undertake a comprehensive review and come up with these sort of conclusions, she had best dot her Is and cross her Ts if she wants to be something other than the subject of a puff piece.
Um, is North Dakota trying to ban abortion? That's where most of the oil is....
ReplyDeleteIn terms of valuing/destroying life--sometimes a woman who unintentionally becomes pregnant makes a decision to abort because she does not want to decrease her already-limited resources for the rest of her family.
Most women don't operate under the dangerous fallacy that "God will provide." They are working hard to provide and portion out what they earn to ensure the health and safety of their family.
FlyingTomato: but if we ban abortion, Pastor Hickey thinks God will inject a bunch of oil into our prairie. But why addressing 800 abortions a year would win us God's favor while thousands of cases of men beating their wives and children continue is something only Pastor Hickey can explain.
ReplyDeleteAnon, you make exactly my (and the APA's) point: Coleman doesn't do her best to dot her methodological I's and cross her T's; she just spews sloppy research that gives the anti-abortion crusaders a gloss of science. Coleman can't be trusted.
It's pastors like Hickey that have destroyed my desire to go to church.
ReplyDeleteAnonymous 10:09AM Do you really not see the difference between the shedding of judicially guilty blood and the shedding of judicially innocent blood? Every law code in every civilized society for the last 4000 years clearly distinguishes the two with the latter being unjustifiable and the former being justifiable.
ReplyDeleteAnonymous 9:50PM Go ahead and blame me for destroying your desire to go to church, but I'm pretty confident there are other factors. For every time someone tries that line on me there are ten others who come telling me they stopped going to churches until they found ours where the Bible is taught and I'm thanked for strong moral leadership. People today are looking at the moral free fall we are in and they are coming back to church. Our church is full of people 45+ who came out of the generation that rebelled and they tell me they never found what they were looking for until now. And they encourage me to trumpet the message from the rooftops before we really lose the next generation.
Check the denominational stats for each of the Pastors for IMMoral Choices church bodies and you'll see their numbers are dropping toward extinction and that decline is dateable to the points in which they embraced the notion that Truth is relative. It is documented that people are leaving, in droves, liberal churches that cave on Biblical Truth and that conservative churches like ours are growing nicely.
Had another thought as I was hitting send. Maybe you are sick of me. In any case...
ReplyDeleteAgain to Anonymous 9:50PM - Islam is undeniably deeply entrenching itself in America. And Shari'ah law is what they seek. That is theocracy. I do not seek theocracy, I'm fully committed to the democratic process. I get frustrated when the other side tries to mute my voice from the discussion but, in part, my motives are that I don't want an Islam America for my kids. And so I'll fight to keep Christianity at our nations foundation for my kids. Believe me, as one who has traveled the globe, you think I'm a religious zealot, hah, have you been paying attention to the Imams?