#weaponized religion

[ground-zoro]

Do you think we could wipe out Generative AI if we, and by we I mean the Americans, created a Satanic Panic around it?

Creation is the realm of God.

Humans can create because we contain a spark of his divinity.

Generative AI, replacing human creators and "creating" while lacking that spark of divinity could only be an insult to god.

[clatterbane]

Further to some tag commentary a little while ago.

Thanks to Tumblr's great search function (and more recently blocking Google from most content), I couldn't find an older post or two of my own touching on similar issues.

But, I did run across a short post from someone else that pretty well sums it up:

If

you have been watching politics

for the past 40 years and yet

you do not get why it matters

if people believe

fundamentalist Christianity

to be the only genuine Christianity

then

i do not even

know

what to say.

(Not trying to avoid giving credit where it's due, at all. I just did not want to directly reblog someone else's old personal post with a handful of notes.)

That also very specifically applies to Christianity and Christian cultural influences within the US, in the context of US politics.

The freaking Religious Right have been trying to grab power and influence for decades, and have made most of their inroads within my lifetime. I am not so keen on the idea of assigning them more power and making it easier on them.

I am personally not Christian. But, I grew up around the kinds of mainline Protestantism which Evangelicals insist aren't really Christianity. Again, not about to concede that point.

(Mainline Protestants were a majority of Protestants in the United States until the mid-20th century....

These churches played a leading role in the Social Gospel movement and were active in social causes such as the civil rights movement and women's movement.[14] As a group, the mainline churches have maintained religious doctrine that stresses social justice and personal salvation.)

I'm also not about to concede any monopoly over longer-term cultural influence within the US, just because the a particular strain of White Evangelical Chistianity has been so loud and grabby over the past few decades.

They didn't have nearly this much influence within my own lifetime. And I am only in my 40s.

Very little personal experience with Catholicism, but it also seems pretty weird to pretty much write off its longer-term influence.

There's plenty else to be said about religious cultural influences. But, it's distressing how well certain strains of Evangelical Protestantism have apparently succeeded at hijacking shit in a the popular imagination. And that's kinda what they want.

[clatterbane]

I know the Religious Right had been pushing hard to get more power for a while, having watched it. But, I am still kind of amazed at how relatively quickly that "if you ever have sex without a condom, you're gonna die in gruesome ways!" message got backlash-flipped over into "condoms don't even work!" abstinence garbage.

Both approaches leaning pretty heavily on the scare tactics, of course. But at least they were trying for some scientific accuracy before the religious nuts gained as much influence. Come back less than 10 years later, though 😵

[clatterbane]

Further on the point about that level of legally mandated gatekeeping always leaving room for things to go wrong, I finally managed to track down one thing from Guttmacher that I remembered seeing referenced in some report from a few years back (which of course I couldn’t locate again right now).

British General Practitioners’ Attitudes Toward Abortion (PDF)

That was a bit older than I remembered, from 2000. I have no idea how/if the responses would differ now. (Though, I suspect not that much.)

Some worrying bits:

General practitioners are allowed to provide women younger than 16 with birth control and abortion advice. However, eligible women sometimes are refused care. In a study of teenage mothers, some young women who had been refused birth control returned to their doctor pregnant shortly afterward. A doctor opposed to termination may put obstacles in the way, and calls to the British Family Planning Association’s helpline indicate that such problems occur. For example, some doctors refuse to refer women to hospitals for terminations and may not tell them that they have the right to ask for another opinion…

Issues of Choice

The first question we asked was whether doctors consider themselves “broadly pro choice” or “broadly antiabortion.” In all, 82% of the 663 respondents who answered the question characterized themselves as prochoice, while 18% said they were basically opposed to abortion. Eighty-five percent of general practitioners agreed that “if a general practitioner conscientiously objects to abortion, he/she should be required to declare this to a woman seeking access to abortion services.” How ever, 10% disagreed, including 27% of antiabortion doctors and 8% of those who were prochoice…

Given the current law requiring that two doctors be involved in the abortion decision, we asked respondents who they thought should take responsibility for the decision. Furthermore, as general practitioners were likely to have different views according to the pregnancy’s gestation, we asked separately about pregnancies up to 12 weeks’ gestation and those at a later stage. Within the first 12 weeks, 46% thought that the woman alone should make the decision; a further 7% thought it should be the woman and one doctor, and another 17% said that the woman should decide in conjunction with two physicians (Table 1). Only one in five doctors did not want women to be involved in the decision; these were largely doctors who were broadly antiabortion. After 12 weeks of pregnancy, doctors took a more restrictive line. Only 21% thought that the woman should make the decision on her own. Nevertheless, half still thought that the decision should be made by the woman alone or with up to two doctors. Forty percent felt that doctors alone should make the decision.

Let’s rephrase that. Even in the earliest stages of pregnancy, “one in five doctors did not want women to be involved in the decision”. Later on, “[f]orty percent felt that doctors alone should make the decision”.

Yes, a disturbing percentage of even the ones who said they were “broadly prochoice” were saying that it should be their decision only. Not the patient’s. Less than half of the self-described prochoice ones would say that “the woman alone should make the decision” about early abortions.

18% of responding GPs said that they were “basically opposed to abortion”, and 27% of those felt like they shouldn’t have to let patients know about these personal views. Very likely affecting their medical decisions, and which options are even being presented–before we even get to the outright refusals to refer.

With GPs gatekeeping access to pretty much all NHS services, and its sometimes being very difficult to find another one if you get hold of an obstructive asshole. Much less with the time pressure people needing abortions are up against. (Yes, you can go private if you know that’s an option and can afford it. This really should not be necessary in order to get appropriate medical care.)

Throw in all the “only” you want, this info really does not make me more confident in the current legal situation here.

[plumjuicerivulet]

[lenbryant]

Religion poisons everything.

[gothiccats06]

I just remembered the lady who came over one time when I was in the middle of one of my month long migraines to "pray for me."

I showed her some art I'd done that was kinda about the pain.

She then started going on and on about me being attacked by demons lol.

[clatterbane]

When I thought I might be pregnant a few years back, with my health in absolutely no shape to handle it, I actually looked into going private because it looked like that might be enough of an easier and less stressful option under the circumstances. Turned out that not having a GP at the time wouldn’t have been as big a hurdle as I assumed, though. And the whole thig turned out not to be an issue after all.

Going private should rarely be necessary here. It’s not only covered as the necessary medical service that it is, it’s usually free. Like contraceptive and other reproductive health services under the NHS, for that matter. And the 24 week time limit does have the kind of medical exceptions the Religious Right have kept working to do away with back in the US. You also shouldn’t need to travel to find a provider, go through mandatory waiting limits beyond waiting for an appointment, mandated counseling, etc. (More on the legal space.)

I mean, that’s pretty much always going to be a stressful situation. But the added legal hurdles and “how am I going to pay for this, much less within the time limit?!” factor very deliberately make things so much worse on people who are usually already under more than enough strain from whatever circumstances are making having a baby a terrible option right then.

Just reminded again by yet another fundraising post from the US, for someone who is already dealing with expensive medical issues that make pregnancy dangerous. And thinking again about some of the struggles people I have known have gone through–even before the fresh onslaught of restrictive legislation and loss of clinics in too many states within the past 10 years or so. It’s just so overwhelming sometimes, and that is definitely one benefit to living here.