US woman guilty of 'womb theft'

Just because she is, clearly mentaly ill, doesn't meen she did not have any knowledge of what she was doing. The problem is that we have removed any viable moral guide, so on what grounds shall we build an arguement that she had no right to do what she did?

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US woman guilty of 'womb theft'

Defence lawyers had argued Montgomery was mentally illJurors in the US state of Missouri have convicted a woman who strangled an expectant mother and cut the baby from her womb with a kitchen knife in 2004.
After four hours of deliberation, they rejected Lisa Montgomery's plea that she had been delusional when she killed Bobbie Jo Stinnett and stole the baby.
Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty for Montgomery, convicted of kidnapping resulting in death.
The baby, a girl, survived and was later returned to her father.
'Voodoo science'
Montgomery met the Stinnetts at a rat terrier dog show in Kansas in April 2004.
Having learnt of Bobbie Jo's pregnancy, in December 2004 she used a fake online profile to set up a meeting at the Stinnett family home saying that she wanted to buy a terrier puppy.

Victoria Jo Stinnett is now nearly three years oldOnce in the house she used a rope to strangle the young mother, before hacking the baby from her womb with a kitchen knife.
A doctor testifying in the trial said that Bobbi Jo was probably still alive when Montgomery started removing her child.
Montgomery's lawyers had sought to portray their client as a victim of severe mental illness whose delusion of being pregnant - pseudocyesis - was being threatened, causing her to enter a dreamlike state when the killing took place.
They also argued that she had post-traumatic stress disorder brought on by mental, physical and sexual abuse in her childhood.
Federal prosecutor Roseann Ketchmark called the claim of pseudocyesis "voodoo science".
Healthy child
Instead, the prosecutor argued that Montgomery had feared her ex-husband, Carl Boman, would expose that she was lying about being pregnant and use it against her as he sought custody of two of the couple's four children.
"It's not pseudocyesis or post-traumatic stress disorder," Ms Ketchmark said in closing arguments.

Mrs Stinnett thought her visitor was coming to buy a puppy
"And even if you wrap them up and put delusions around them, it's not insanity."
Mrs Stinnett, 23 and eight months pregnant when she was killed, fought for her life and that of her child, the trial heard.
Nodaway County Sheriff Ben Espey, who was the first law enforcement officer to arrive at the Stinnetts' home in Skidmore, Missouri, said in his testimony:
"You could see swirls in the floor in the blood, showing there was a struggle."
Her killer was arrested the day after the crime having spent the morning showing off the infant as her own in her hometown of Melvern, Kansas.
"The only good thing that comes from this tragedy is that little Victoria is a healthy baby and is reunited with her family," US Attorney John F Wood said.

Bias: Public 'backs easier abortions'

I want to know what they define as the public. If they mean a percentage more than one person that we can find any thing to be supported. I am sure I can find someone to argue that we should all be able to drive any speed we want, or that there child sexual abuse or murder in general should be encouraged. In fact going by the statistics of these events the number might be rather significant. Can you imagine "Public demand ' Amnesty for all Murders."
The Math less you missed it were
35%+17%= 52%(probably some said bot making it more like 50%)
52 percent is is not in any shape the Public. A large percentage of the public but the way it is written is to indicated most 75% - 90%. The theory goes that people don't like to stand out and so want to fit in so buy saying "the public" people will naturally want to join the majority. This article isn't about the news its about swaying peoples opinions, or social engineering. Its about what most reporters decry against the government. But then who said they were not biased.

*** I note with interest that there was no Author.
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Women should not have to gain the permission of two doctors to obtain an abortion in Britain, a slim majority of respondents to a survey have said.
Some 35% said one doctor was enough and 17% said permission should not needed at all, an independent poll carried out for the group Abortion Rights found.
A total of 83% of the 1,000 people polled saw abortion as a woman's right.
This month marks the 40th anniversary of the introduction of the 1967 Abortion Act.
Under the terms of the law, a woman must obtain the permission of two doctors before she is allowed a termination, which can be carried out up until 24 weeks.
The poll, which was carried out over the telephone by the market research group GfK NOP, is said to be the first to ask the public their thoughts on the "two doctor" rule.
The findings mirror those of a Marie Stopes International poll of GPs published earlier this month.
It is time for a law that trusts women to make the abortion decision
Anne Quesney
Over half of family doctors questioned said they thought the agreement of just one professional should be enough for an abortion in the first 14 weeks of pregnancy.
Both surveys follow a resolution at last summer's British Medical Association conference calling for abortions to be approved by just one doctor.
"The public clearly feels that the legislation is now out of date," said Anne Quesney, director of Abortion Rights.
"It is time for a law that trusts women to make the abortion decision and remove the need for two doctors' permission to access the procedure - a process that can lead to delays for women at a difficult time."
'Formality'
Broken down into age groups, the figures suggested that the youngest and the oldest have the most reservations about abortion, with 18% of 16 to 24-year-olds and 16% of the those aged 65 and over rejecting the right to a termination.
If there was more information and more discussion of the issues - a greater engagement with abortion - we would see attitudes change and numbers go down
Josephine Quintavalle
However, the majority in both groups supported abortion access.
Anti-abortion campaigner Josephine Quintavalle said the figures reflected the public's lack of understanding of what an abortion entailed.
"If there was more information and more discussion of the issues - a greater engagement with abortion - we would see attitudes change and numbers go down.
"The two doctors rule is frequently just a rubber-stamping exercise which no-one should support.
"We need to see doctors taking the time to talk through matters with the woman, not just signing off piles of forms before a patient's name is even written on the top."

Keeping the faith

I was not planning on commenting on this but I think it accurately portarays the situation of the decline in the world.
When we evaluate the comments posted that were used to support this article. There is really one that is at all supportive of organized religion. I posted a comment, it wasn't used. Journalism was supposed to be about reporting the facts as accurately as possible, but no longer. Clearly the BBC doesn't blieve in it and so I guess I welcome the loss of Jobs, maybe rather than trying to push a social agenda they will focus on the "news". Now wouldn't that be interesting.

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The US may be one of the most religious countries in the West but is it undergoing a period of doubt.
A few days ago, I attended a memorial service for a friend who died far too young, of throat cancer. The service was held at a history museum, and it was packed - standing room only.
What was curious, initially, was the lack of any reference to religion. My friend had left a final set of instructions: he wanted to be remembered first as a husband to his wife of more than 20 years, and second as a citizen of his city, and third as a lover of history.
During the tributes, there were many references to how the past can inform our decisions in the present. There were nods to reason and friendship and love.
The closest anyone came to mentioning God or spirituality was when someone told the widow, as an aside, that you often visit the deceased through dreams - when they can appear at no particular prompting.
America seems to be experiencing an atheist moment
Hear Radio 4's A Point of View Even if the formal religion was absent, the habit of expressing a hope for spiritual optimism remains. The secular funeral is still somewhat of a novelty, at least to me.
But it may be something that we see more and more of in the future - particularly on the West Coast, the most unchurched part of the United States.
It may be daring to say it but America seems to be experiencing an atheist moment. Although "In God We Trust" was declared the national motto by an act of Congress more than 50 years ago and has been stamped on the currency for longer than that, some considerable doubt has developed of late.
If you look at the bestseller list over the last year, you'll find a number of books on atheism - to the surprise of the publishing industry.
God has always moved in not-so-mysterious ways when it comes to the literary world. He can sell books, especially ones that foretell an apocalyptic ending just around the corner.
The so-called Left Behind books, a series of novels envisioning the Rapture, when the good are separated from the evil in a fiery judgment day, sell in the millions. They are not for the faint of faith.
Another genre, self-help books that invoke God for the sake of making money, losing weight or finding a date, have a permanent home on the bestseller list. God is kept very busy with this segment of the market.
But until this year, there was thought to be little support - or audience - for tomes by the anti-religious. Several books changed that.
Full-bore polemics
On the academic side, we have God: The Failed Hypothesis by Victor Stenger and Nothing: Something to Believe In by Nica Lalli.
The three most popular books are God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything by the newly-Americanized Christopher Hitchens, The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins and Letter to a Christian Nation by Sam Harris.

Hitchens, the pied piper of non-believersThese bestsellers are not cursory academic surveys; they are full-bore polemics against religion, challenging the very idea of God.
Hitchens, with his quick wit and his quiver of quotes from long-dead British luminaries which he carries over from his schoolboy days in England, seems to be having the most fun and the most effect.
You could call him the Pied Piper of non-believers. He makes it a point to debate with a cleric in every city he visits, and is a frequent guest on conservative and religious radio stations.
The premise of his book is that while religion may have served people well in the age of ignorance, now that science can explain the world there is no reason to attribute the sun, the moon and forces like gravity to higher beings.
As he says, the nine-year-old knows more about the natural world now than the leading scholars of a thousand years ago. What has rankled his critics most is his suggestion that religion is usually a force for bad.
More than anything, people without faith hate the description of them as empty or soulless Believers point out that people of faith have been at the forefront of significant improvements in human rights and in caring for fellow humans over centuries - everything from abolition of slavery to the civil rights movement in this country, to church-led efforts to reduce starvation and disease in less-developed countries.
I ran into Hitchens not long ago at a book festival where he was jousting away and getting rich in the process. He looked just as the New York Times Book Review had described him: "A village atheist standing in the square trying to pick arguments with the good citizens on their way to church."
I asked Hitchens why he thought his book had such a sudden rise to the top of the bestseller charts when polls show that - at most - barely one-half-of-one-percent of Americans call themselves atheists.
He said that the polls were misleading. There is a large and fast-growing segment of the population that is lapsed or well onto its way to atheism but is afraid to admit it.
"If you're a lapsed Catholic," Hitchens told me. "You're part of a very large and fast-growing group."
Many of those people, of course, might be agnostic rather than atheist?
Revulsion at zealots
More than anything, people without faith hate the description of them as empty or soulless. They have long been singled out for a special kind of hell.
The constitution of the state of Texas, for example, allows discrimination against atheists in employment or jury duty - provisions that have been nullified by federal laws.
And even my mother used to lower her voice in the kind of whisper reserved for people with terminal brain cancer when she described a neighbour as.... an atheist.
Non-believers say they have also been aided by the revulsion of fair-minded Americans to the religious zealotry behind the September 11 attacks and the subsequent violence on behalf of radical Islam.
The latest round of atheism books point to countless wars, slaughters and massacres done in the name of My God is Better than Your God. The 9/11 attacks got people thinking about what sort of God could be summoned for such awfulness.

Obama has talked about his faithSocial critics, dating to at least de Tocqueville and Dickens, have always marvelled at the pure number of passionately religious people in this country. Indeed, no Western democracy has so many devout churchgoers, by percentage, as the US.
On the face of it, the numbers do seem to indicate that the United States is a Christian nation, as politicians often say.
The latest surveys by the Pew Centre show that 76% of the population - upwards of 230 million people - call themselves Christians. Jews make up 1.3% and Muslims are under one per cent - though fast-growing.
Atheists are near the bottom. There are seven times as many atheists in Europe as the United States, by percentage. But the second largest group, categorized by belief, are those who call themselves secular or non-religious. They make up 13 percent of the population.
It is this group that has perhaps been afraid to call themselves atheists, for fear of shunning or other censure. They could be largely undecided or they could be searching or they could believe, as some friends say with a wink, in the Church of the Outdoors, or the Church of Baseball. They are also the people buying these books.
But while atheism may have made its way into the public discourse, it remains strictly verboten in our politics. Even though a majority of people say in surveys that a person can still be a good American without Christian values, to be an atheist and run for high office is to wear the scarlet A.
Among the presidential aspirants, half the Republican candidates do not believe in evolution, a view bounded in their religious faith and the imperatives of running in a primary heavily dominated by evangelicals.
Democrats 'more open'
One contender, Senator John McCain of Arizona, made headlines this month when he said the American founders meant to establish the United States as a Christian nation.
In truth, the constitution expressly prohibits establishment of a state religion. The founders were trying to avoid the entanglements of church with state. And perhaps the best known founder, Thomas Jefferson himself, may have been an atheist, in the view of many scholars.
No matter. The Democrats, scorned by a huge sector of the electorate for their perceived secularism, have become more open about faith this time around. Both Hillary Clinton, and Senator Barack Obama frequently mention God on the campaign trail.
But they also put some distance between themselves and the religious. Senator Clinton said last week that if she were president she would shield science and research into such things as stem cells from religion and politics.
The United States may never be as secular as Europe. If you sample even a small share of the reaction, on blogs or Christian talk radio, to these new atheist books, you sense how strongly people feel about their faith. It's not passive or abstract.
But, perhaps we have arrived at a moment where doubt is having its day - and for a time, atheists are coming out of hiding.
Below is a selection of your comments:
Hopefully this is the beginning of a world-wide movement where if a person has a religion he sees it as a personal approach to God/Goddess/Gods as opposed to a philosophy which much be imposed upon others. Paolo, St Albans
I have long admired Europeans for their relaxed approach to religion, which sometimes ranges from the laid-back to the completely apathetic. While I myself am a devout Episcopalian, I've always thought that faith has played far too important and unnecessary of a role in public American life. I would be grateful of a societal movement that casts faith aside as such a major criterion for determining whether someone is 'a good person' or not.Eric Campbell, Greensboro, NC, USA
Speaking as a lifelong (American) agnostic I find Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins the equivalent to how many Christians must view the likes of Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell - they may be nominally on my side but their rhetoric is so patronising and repellent I often wish they weren't.John R, London
I resent having to be pigeonholed into any kind of belief system - why should I have to choose between Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Atheism? I'm just me, I don't have a part of my being that needs to have a label to announce what I believe in, even if it's nothing. Come on you 'atheists', preaching to the faithful about how much better atheism is, is just making you as bad as them. Ignore the poor medieval moon woofers and get on with your own lives free from guilt, greedy evangelicals, suicidal fundamentalists, and then a bit more guilt.Richard, Staffordshire, England
Watch any BBC programme about geology or natural history, from Coast to The Living Planet, and sooner rather than later the presenter will mention events of millions of years ago, or even the last Ice Age of 10,000 years ago, as a given fact. There is no debate in the minds of presenters or viewers. Do they have such programmes in the US, or do they gloss over the timescale of geological events (it all happened in 4004BC)? I fondly imagine the average Republican politician or supporter watching (to UK eyes, completely uncontroversial) presenters like Nicholas Crane or Alan Titchmarsh and going "Lies!" "Untrue!" every couple of minutes.Ken Strong, Hornchurch, Essex
As always, "your mileage may vary..." I suppose it's just possible to have a look around America at the moment and at least suggest that this is a "period of doubt." But only in a very relative, hair-splitting, sense. Even in making this suggestion, the author can't get away from the fact that fervent and frequent references to faith in god abound in American politics as much now as ever. I'm pretty certain that most Americans would sooner vote for a Catholic, Muslim, Scientologist, Witch Doctor or even a Satanist than for an atheist. When (and if) that ever changes, then we can talk about a "moment of doubt."MJ Kuhns, Elyria, Ohio, U.S.A.
In a world where religion causes more hurt, division and war than any other cause, this gives me hope.Steve, London, UK
The vast majority of my friends that claim to be atheist, in my opinion, are not "true" atheists. As soon as we talk religion and they make their "view" known, they go into a discussion on why they don't believe in God or Jesus. Nine times out of ten the reasons are because of people who call themselves Christians. Basically their opinion on God is based upon his ambassadors. Therefore they say if God was real, "his" people would be representing God better. Therefore since Christians are not behaving in the manner their religious beliefs require them to, God does not exist. However very seldom do my non-religious friends ever explore, in an honest fashion, if God truly does exist. Their atheism is a surface religion. They haven't explored their belief in depth. Just like many of my religious friends. Paul, Peachtree City, Georgia USA

Proper Understanding of Evolution

I give credit to Dr. Watson for his integrity. He allows his faith in evolution to guide his thoughts. Now these other people are at least dishonest with themselves for if evolution is true than there can be not be anything that is driving a moral compass.

So when he is holding true to evolution when he says a women should have a right to Abbott a baby who will be homosexual, as that would naturally decrease the Gene pool. Like wise he is honest to evolution when he says that Africans are a lower inteligence, because they are earlier on the evolutionary scale, than northern Europeans.

Of course he is also wrong because evolution is wrong, but he at least has more integrity than those who criticise him for his stance on evolution.

The real question is why do they care, as there is no meaning to life if there is nothing beyond this life.

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Museum drops race row scientist

Dr Watson was due to arrive in Britain to promote his new bookThe Science Museum has cancelled a talk by American DNA pioneer Dr James Watson after he claimed black people were less intelligent than white people.

Dr Watson, who won a Nobel Prize in 1962 for his part in discovering the structure of DNA, was due to speak at the venue on Friday. But the museum has cancelled the event, saying his views went "beyond the point of acceptable debate".

Skills Minister David Lammy said Dr Watson's views "were deeply offensive". He added: "They will succeed only in providing oxygen for the BNP. "It is a shame that a man with a record of scientific distinction should see his work overshadowed by his own irrational prejudices." We feel Dr Watson has gone beyond the point of acceptable debate.

Dr Watson, currently director of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) in New York, has arrived in Britain to promote his latest book.
In an interview with The Sunday Times, the 79-year-old said he was "inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa" because "all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours - whereas all the testing says not really".

He went on to say he hoped everyone was equal but that "people
who have to deal with black employees find this is not true".
A spokesman for the Science Museum said: "We know that eminent scientists can sometimes say things that cause controversy and the Science Museum does not shy away from debating controversial topics.
"However, we feel Dr Watson has gone beyond the point of acceptable debate and we are, as a result, cancelling his talk."
'Robust questioning'

The scientist has courted controversy in the past,
saying that a woman should have the right to abort her unborn child if tests could determine it would be homosexual.
Dr Watson is also due to speak in Bristol at the annual Festival of Ideas which will be hosted by Eric Thomas, Bristol University's vice-chancellor.
A spokesman for the university said it respected "freedom of speech and the right of people to express their views".
But it expected "some robust questioning of Dr Watson on his ideas".

Austria holds first divorce fair

Austria is to host the world's first "divorce fair" this month, aimed at helping couples untie the knot as painlessly as possible.
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So once addressing the issue rather than trying to resolve the issue they just cut and run. The problem is that for over a hundred years European philosophers have said its all about the individual. Even though Divorce can destroy children that is secondary to the happiness of the parent or parents.