> if she felt that women with unwanted pregnancies should be "punished" by being refused abortions.

> She said yes. It's a consequence for having sex. If you didn't want to be pregnant, you shouldn't have had sex.

Your aunt, like many anti-choice zealots, seems to believe that the only women who seek abortions are "loose" single women who have casual sex with multiple men. I wish someone would bonk these people over the head with the FACT that a very large percentage of women seeking pregnancy termination are in long term monogamous relationships, many in fact married, and most have children at home. Do these people really believe that married couples should stop having sex after the two (or whatever) children that they can afford are born???

Sorry, I am talking about the Hebrew Bible. I am not too familiar with the Christian Bible. The poster to whom I was replying was painting with a broad brush "all" religions and specifically included Judaism. My point is that religions are not one monolith.

> All the western religions (Christianity, Islam, Judaism) say the woman is a helper to man, the man is the leader.

To be fair, in the Hebrew Bible, Deborah was a judge, who made rulings that men as well as women had to follow. There is nothing Biblical about saying women can't have authority or should be subservient to men.

Reform Judaism has been completely egalitarian for decades, with Conservative gradually coming around.

> Do you think our society will ever regain its respect for real science at some point? I don't expect to live to see it, but I hope it happens

One manifestation of the "civil war" that folks allude to is a huge divide between critical thinkers and science-educated vs. magical thinking, "I saw it on YouTube so it must be true" types. Unfortunately the science deniers can do far more damage to the critical thinkers than vice versa.

> I think people were a little smarter about vaccines when polio vaccine became available.

The important thing is that everyone at that time knew someone who had complications from polio, some mild, some severe. This made them eager to line up for the vaccine when it became available. My uncle had a lifelong limp from polio, and considered himself lucky that it was just a limp and he lived a pretty much normal life. Same with Mitch McConnell, and forgetting whatever you think of his politics, is a polio survivor with some lifelong consequences (frequently falls on stairs, e.g.) and has never been an anti-vaxxer.

People today often don't know anyone who has had serious aftereffects from preventable diseases. Measles is a case in point. I am in my 60's and had measles as a young child way before there was a vaccine. Almost every child had measles at some point. I can still remember the high fever and I remember my eyes hurting a lot (might have had swelling or something) and my mom putting cold wet cloths over my eyes. As an adult I realized how lucky I was that that was the worst of it. My mom told me that one child in the neighborhood died from encephalitis caused by the measles.

The anti-vaxxers are giddy in their ignorance, and actually believe measles is a nothingburger that every child sails through in a few days. They bizarrely believe that the vaccine is more dangerous than the disease. I wish they would stop reading nonsense from weird woo sources and read some facts, such as measles having been a major cause of deafness in my day.

Measles doesn't float through the air between houses magically infecting people. It requires a carrier who sneezes on or touches people who are unvaccinated. Unvaccinated children who ARE old enough to be vaccinated contract measles and spread it to infants and other unvaccinated persons.

People who refuse to vaccinate their children who then cause severe infection in those who can't be vaccinated should be held responsible and face consequences.

> Kids under 12 months can't get the vaccine, so...

... so that's why it is the civic and moral duty for all humans aged 15 months and older to be vaccinated. The fewer carriers, the fewer babies contracting measles and facing deafness, encephalitis, and other complications including DEATH.

You must be fun at parties

You are seriously claiming it's impossible for hair, clothing, other items to become unintentionally ensnared in the moving parts (doors) of a train car?? I know someone it happened to. He was not attempting suicide. The man died. It can definitely happen.

> infers the trains fault

It does nothing of the kind. What a loony thing to argue. I recall a tragedy a number of years ago on an escalator where someone's shoe got caught on the edge of one of the steps as it started folding in, and the person lost most of his foot. It was hardly his fault, unless you would claim he shouldn't have been wearing shoes or should have worn protective thick workboots. And it wasn't the escalator's "fault" in the sense of any consciousness of right and wrong. But there was clearly a design flaw in the escalator. Most of us would call it a freak accident, but would still want the escalator's safety stop to be revamped. Same with train draggings. No one deliberately attaches themself to a moving train. And it's beyond cruel to the loved ones of the deceased to blather about the "culpability" of the victim.

What an odd thing to argue. If some item that is attached to a person (like clothes or a metal handle of some kind) gets stuck on any external part of a train and the train starts moving, the person is dragged. If they are unable to detach themselves from the object that is stuck to the train, the dragging will become fatal when the train reaches the end of the station and the person attached to it slams into the end wall. It's happened many times and is very tragic.

What other meaning would you ascribe to the word "dragged"??

It (and other gruesome fatalities) happens on occasion to people that work in the tunnels, but that doesn't make the news.