Abortion: what is really the issue?
Myth has it that Eve tempted Adam. It's always the womans fault.
If we were to accept that in the broader sense of evolution, unfettered rutting only leads to unconrolled population growth, to the extent that the environment will not be able to sustain it.
Religious folk go out of their way to separate us from animals; animals are to be used, eaten, become beasts of burden. Then they claim the 'divine spark' that sets humankind apart from animals. Quite simply, they can't have it both ways.
We are either animals that jointly inhabit the planet with a host of other animals, fish, insects and fungi or we are a 'special' category of living beings to which the laws of nature are not applicable.
This is the contradiction of fundamentalist thought on abortion. Do we reproduce unconrollably or do we apply scientific principles to the number of humans that our planet can sustain.
= new reply since forum marked as read
quite a way to go but I'm truly surprised by the high number of women who are still voting that way though since it's not at all reflective of my own past and current experience. Is that a US or global figure?
I'm truly very curious about the studies the 45% numbers come from. I'd especially like to know how recent and regionally diverse they were. Would you please point me to the sources or textbook/book used? TIA. 
Well said. 
Control is the issue for sure!
No women. No people of color.
Cuz patriarchy has done such a great job, right? Assholes have managed to nearly destroy the planet. 
And the source of all the division? In your words, Right-wing religious wackadoodles. An extremely accurate, I might add, depiction of those in question.
The offending word in that phrase is not "wackadoodles". It is "religious". 
Religions are nothing more than fairy tales created to explain which is, at the time, un-explainable. And even fairy tales have an agenda.
Science and logic should be the deciding factors. Scientifically, the only agenda is "out of chaos comes order". The universe, in its infinite age, seems to follow that path. Logically is where religion steps in and takes us down the rabbit hole. Apparently humankind is susceptible to gross manipulation of science, based on a totally agenda oriented logic, at which point it actually becomes mostly devoid of logic, and is based almost exclusively on agenda.
Our problem is we can't grasp infinity (of time, or distance). So we resort to fairy tales. One of twentieth centuries greatest philosophers, Marilyn Manson 
, said, "God is a number we can not count to..."
The bible itself says it is nothing more than a fairy tale.
IN THE BEGINNING... was creation. Time never began, therefore there could never have been a "creation".
AT THE END OF TIME... we will all be judged according to the guidelines of the fairy tale. Time will never end, so there will never be a "judgment".
For the believers? All for naught. 
Tots and pears... 
The whole idea of control over women's bodies is based on a religious tenet that is false, illogical, and certainly NOT scientific.
The female body is responsible for (once an accidental sperm has been utilized) the gestation of the egg/embryo, nurturing it to birth, then responsible for feeding the child so it doesn't die. The male is relevant ONLY as an accidental occurrence. And more than likely, the LAST thing on said male's mind was to impregnate an egg.
RELIGIOUS MEN of the "right-wing religious wackadoodles" persuasion can't handle the downgrade to accidental occurrence. So there MUST be an agenda that gives control back to THEM. Biblical marriage, where the women gives up her family (a form of isolation) and cleaves to his (as his property), gives up her last name to take his, takes a subservient position in the relationship which allows HIM to make all the decisions, does just that. It was originally a business arrangement. In recent years that justification was adjusted (in most religious cultures) to account for "love".
Sadly, RELIGIOUS WOMEN of the "right-wing religious wackadoodles" persuasion, succumbed to this twisted agenda, becoming willful and voluntary slaves to their earthly masters (husbands), who were acting on the commands of THE heavenly master, who ALSO had a penis (GAWD). Not to digress, but if humans are made in God's own image, and humans consist of male and female, then God is a hermaphrodite. I'm just sayin'... 
I believe the REAL purpose for marriage was access to sex on demand. The wife is to do her wifely duties and submit. Either agreeably, or not...
Modern women have rejected being controlled, and to do so ultimately is to control their OWN timeline of when to, or when to NOT, have a child. That is a threat to everything the religious right has manipulated into being acceptable societal behavior.
If we can't eliminate the source of the agendas, in their entirety, we must at least give the individual woman the right to control their own body.
It is both scientific and logical. Society would, in my not so humble opinion, be much the better for it.
What I calll "legalistic" is for want of a more precise label: Being that Choice, by its innateness, cannot be *IMPOSED* on others.
Social justice: 
Thankfully 90%+ of married Catholic Couples practice birth control. Of course, this just separates them from the church by not feeling welcomed. 
July 2018 marked the 50th anniversary of the landmark “Humanae Vitae,” Pope Paul VI’s strict prohibition against artificial contraception, issued in the aftermath of the development of the birth control pill, writes Lisa McClain
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At the time, the decision shocked many Catholic priests and laypeople. Conservative Catholics, however, praised the pope for what they saw as a confirmation of traditional teachings. As a scholar specializing in both the history of the Catholic Church and gender studies, I can attest that for almost 2,000 years, the Catholic Church’s stance on contraception has been one of constant change and development. And although Catholic moral theology has consistently condemned contraception, it has not always been the church battleground that it is today.Early church practice. The first Christians knew about contraception and likely practiced it. Egyptian, Hebrew, Greek and Roman texts, for example, discuss well-known contraceptive practices, ranging from the withdrawal method to the use of crocodile dung, dates and honey to block or kill semen. Indeed, while Judeo-Christian scripture encourages humans to “be fruitful and multiply,” nothing in Scripture explicitly prohibits contraception.
When the first Christian theologians condemned contraception, they did so not on the basis of religion but in a give-and-take with cultural practices and social pressures. Early opposition to contraception was often a reaction to the threat of heretic groups, such as the Gnostics and Manichees. And before the 20th century, theologians assumed that those who practiced contraception were “fornicators” and “prostitutes.”
The purpose of marriage, they believed, was producing offspring. While sex within marriage was not itself considered a sin, pleasure in sex was. The fourth-century Christian theologian Augustine characterized the sexual act between spouses as immoral self-indulgence if the couple tried to prevent conception.
Not a church priority
The church, however, had little to say about contraception for many centuries. For example, after the decline of the Roman Empire, the church did little to explicitly prohibit contraception, teach against it, or stop it, though people undoubtedly practiced it. Most penitence manuals from the Middle Ages, which directed priests what types of sins to ask parishioners about, did not even mention contraception. It was only in 1588 that Pope Sixtus V took the strongest conservative stance against contraception in Catholic history. With his papal bull “Effraenatam,” he ordered all church and civil penalties for homicide to be brought against those who practiced contraception.
However, both church and civil authorities refused to enforce his orders, and laypeople virtually ignored them. In fact, three years after Sixtus’s death, the next pope repealed most of the sanctions and told Christians to treat “Effraenatam” “as if it had never been issued.” By the mid-17th century, some church leaders even admitted couples might have legitimate reasons to limit family size to better provide for the children they already had.
Birth control becomes more visible
By the 19th century, scientific knowledge about the human reproductive system advanced, and contraceptive technologies improved. New discussions were needed. Victorian-era sensibilities, however, deterred most Catholic clergy from preaching on issues of sex and contraception. When an 1886 penitential manual instructed confessors to ask parishioners explicitly whether they practiced contraception and to refuse absolution for sins unless they stopped, “the order was virtually ignored.”
More of this article at
https://amp.breakingnews.ie/specialreports/how-the-catholic-church-came-to-oppose-birth-control-859522.html
