A conscience? A soul? Dignity?

God I hate petting zoos! Hate them!

Well, technically abortion is a form of birth control.

Wait, are you confounding fertility rate with population rate? While their population rate has grown (and then steadied off), their fertility rate has been steadily declining, with a recent small uptick. But the overall trend in fertility rate has been one of decline since at least the 1970s. This is using data from…

Religion?

Even that (supposedly hilarious) picture makes me want to cry.

My family is Eastern Orthodoxy, ethnically Lebanese, and I had no idea about any of this. My knowledge of Orthodoxy and politics is limited to...nothing, so I appreciate the information in this thread.

While I really appreciate your reply and how informative it is, BCSWowbagger3 said life begins "...when a cell or collection of cells achieves independent metabolism, organization, growth, and homeostasis, it's a new life." Which is different from saying it begins at fertilization, no? I may be wrong, I'm way out of…

Incredible that Russia has already forgotten the nightmarish consequences that happened in Romania when they outlawed birth control and abortion.

I wondered that too. If the population decline played any role in this, at least at the political level, but couched in terms of religion.

Approve my comment!

Whoa whoa whoa, hold up. Can someone explain to me how people think that Plan B and IUDs are abortifacients? My understanding is that they work by preventing fertilization. And I don't know what Ella is, so I can't ask about that.

I'm really against the exploitation of miniature centaurs. How about tiny robots?

It is nice, actually. Given your hostility I think you may be an especially imperfect human.

I think that's a perfectly acceptable response when its ambiguous. But I don't think its hard to distinguish between a happy "I'm pregnant!" with a hysterical "I'm pregnant". You just rely on tone of voice, body language, and other non verbal social cues.

Yeah, I'm sure you've seen plenty of women do this. Totally believable, and not just as a story line from the original Melrose Place.

Well yeah, context obviously matters. I would assume most people would be able to read the situation to know if it were good or bad/ambivalent news. But then I wouldn't really consider that like a "pregnancy announcement" so much as someone confiding in a friend about a difficult issue. I think people are smart…

How do people not understand that the appropriate response to a pregnancy announcement is "congratulations"? If it was unwanted, or they were planning on terminating they wouldn't be announcing it. Just say "congratulations" and keep your opinions to yourself.

I wish you the best of luck in everything. We ended up going the surrogacy route (terrified to even say that here...can only imagine the frothy outrage), but I sincerely hope it works out for you.

It wasn't what I meant. I was expressing surprise and then confirming the seriousness of your observation. No worries.