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I have a friend who does alot with the Right To Life organizations. She said that while they were praying across the street from the main abortion mill in Houston a woman brought in her teenage daughter for an abortion. The mother came back out to scream at the protesters that she was saved and God has already forgiven her for getting her daughter's abortion.

Realizing that this is an extreme example (only in degree, not in kind), this is the main reason I could never be a Protestant. Once saved, always saved makes no sense, especially because it exists in the subjective theological context framed by Protestantism. Who's to say this woman is any different than the conservative Born Again who says that his recurring minor sins (white lies, watching a little porno, using contraceptives, having pre-marital sex, getting a little drunk once in awhile) are already forgiven by Jesus when He died on the Cross? And I mean "Who's to say" literally. Without any sort of final, central authority who *is* to say?

And the whole retroactive removal of the person from "the elect" ("Well, he was never really truly saved in the first place") always seemed like a theological cop-out to me.

Realizing that this is an extreme example (only in degree, not in kind), this is the main reason I could never be a Protestant. Once saved, always saved makes no sense, especially because it exists in the subjective theological context framed by Protestantism

well, actually, not all Protestants believe in this -- read this extremely detailed post on About Luther, Erasmus: Pre-destination and the Apostolic Church point of view versus the Calvinistic

As I've said in other posts, the term protestant is such an umbrella term: some protestants agree with Calvin (the concept of an "elect" -- people chosen from before time to be God's people and who will be saved at the end of time and others who will go to hell) and some (Arminians AFAIK) don't believe in this, they have views similar to the Orthodox-Catholic view.