This week’s sign once again highlights how little Christians use their critical thinking skills.

For example, if God really wanted to make a human form of himself, why did he go the baby route at all, and waste 33 years before his son began teaching?

And why did Jesus need to be born from a woman? Wouldn’t it have been far more impressive and demonstrative, if God just beamed an adult, walking, talking Jesus down to earth in front of some large public gathering? That surely would have gotten people’s attention.

No, God chose some random woman, got her pregnant, and then stuck her in a barn somewhere out in the boonies to deliver his chosen one. But he was kind enough to put a star in the sky to pinpoint this sacred location.

Now think about that for just a moment. It is true that you can navigate your way around the globe by using the stars. Sailors have been doing that for centuries. But do you really think you could pinpoint the exact location of something because of a single star in the sky. Down to GPS coordinates? No. That’s why GPS was invented.

If Jesus’ birth really did happen (doubtful), Mary has to be congratulated for coming up with the best lie ever told for explaining away her bastard child.

But there is a far more important message that needs to be rebutted in this week’s sign. Tyrel Bramwell wants to ban abortion.

Now what happens when you ban abortions? Women die.I’m guessing that Bramwell doesn’t know what an ectopic pregnancy is. For those of you who don’t know, it’s when the egg attaches outside of the uterus. The fetus starts growing in a space that was never designed for that task, and at some point it becomes very painful for the mother. If not taken care of, the mother will most likely die.

It’s just one of the many complications that can result from pregnancy. It’s a complicated process going from a single cell to a functioning human baby that can live on it’s own, and a lot of things can go awry in the process.

In fact, it’s so complicated, God aborts more babies than humans do, only we call them miscarriages. But if Bramwell wants to stop all abortions, he better have a talk with the big guy he prays to everyday.

Aside from the issue of abortions being a medical necessity to protect the mother’s life (something the pro-lifers never consider, because, hey, it’s just one less woman in the world, and women are expendable), anyone with an ounce of logic and compassion in their brain would also recognize that a woman should have control over their own bodies.

Just because it’s my religious belief that men of the church shouldn’t marry and have children, I have no right to force men like Bramwell to be castrated.

If Bramwell doesn’t like abortion, he’s entitled to never, ever have one. But he doesn’t even have the right to dictate what his wife would want to do, or his daughter would want to do, if some Christian rapist decided to have his way with them.

In states that have banned abortion, pregnant women are dying when their lives could have been saved. It’s now getting so bad, that states aren’t even tracking women’s deaths from pregnancy, because the numbers tell a truth they don’t want to hear.

Right here in Humboldt County, we have a hospital run by Catholics that recently put a mother’s life in jeopardy when they refused to perform an emergency abortion. They callously sent Anna Nusslock on her way with a bucket of towels. Fortunately, the State of California does a pretty good job of seperating church and religion, and St. Joe’s Hospital found themselves being sued by the state.

How uncaring do you have to be to sacrifice the mother’s life so that you don’t have to terminate a fetus that’s going to die anyway? It takes a healthy dose of Christian misogony to get yourself to that point.