Posted on 02/12/2011 12:50:08 PM PST by topcat54
“It’s awfully hard to actually suggest abortion,” said Smith. “But, you know, I’m sure that, uh, in a case like this where the life expectancy is just, you know, is so bleak, and all, that I’m sure that the Lord would not condemn her if she went ahead and had an abortion at this early stage of the development of the fetus.”
I used to attend Calvary Chapel in Costa Mesa. This was back in the late 80’s when Dr. Walter Martin was teaching there. This is kind of unbelievable.
Wow! I’m stunned.
From the origins of human history and probably predating that by millenia, women have either killed or allowed to die those infants who were perceived to be not viable over the long term.
It's universal to human history and I'll not fault them for it.
It's one thing to make that choice for yourself to carry and nurture a child that has no chance physically and/or mentally. It's a whole 'nuter program if you seek to compel every woman and family to carry that weight.
It's awfully hard to actually suggest abortion, but, you know, I'm sure that, uh, in a case like this where the life expectancy is just, you know, is so bleak, and all, that I'm sure that the Lord would not condemn her if she went ahead and had an abortion at this early stage of the development of the fetus.Good to know if you're a crank-yanker Demwit caller to evangelical broadcasts. Thanks topcat54.
Pastor?
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Time to step down, Chuck Smith. Your days of teaching/preaching the Word of God are over.
If I were a woman I figure I'd have a vote on this.
Thank you for not resorting to the ad hominem.
He has fallen into the hands of the mystics and emergent church folks a while ago .....
Poor woman. She was crying out for help and this is what she received? This is very sad. I hope that she sees from some of these articles that God has given us a life that offers many options, and that with life there is always hope.
Another left tactic to divide.
I attended Calvary Chapel just to be in Walter Martin’s classes. I first attended his classes in the Anaheim circle theater near Disneyland. After Mr. Martin started teaching at Calvary Chapel I went there. I attended for about two years driving the 220 mile round trip from Santa Barbara every Sunday. Dr. Martin would sometimes come up to SB to CC’s seed church. I don’t remember Pastor Smith very much.
OK, this sounds like this might be a case of extreme horror for the pregnant woman knowing her child/ren will be grossly deformed and not accepted by society. She and the doctors might be suggesting abortion to protect the family from giving birth to someone(s) “freakish.” That deserves some kind compassion and lots of therapy. Exposure to the other families who have gone through this - like the teenagers with one body and two heads in the article. If that is the true issue here, she needs a lot of careful psychological help to deal with what the world calls “gross” and “wrong.”
But sometimes a pregnant woman is told that her baby has no brain or other organs, meaning that the baby will have only hours to live once born. That is truly incompatible with life. (Perhaps these unborn conjoined twins are too, I don’t know.) I think people think that by aborting their baby who will not be able to live by anyone’s diagnosis is somehow a merciful thing.
NOTHING COULD BE FURTHER FROM THE TRUTH. Every family who has allowed their very very damaged baby to be born, given them all the love, showered them with tears, prayed over them, and then let them go naturally home to G-d, has been BLESSED a million times over.
I admit that I would not like to be carrying a baby with such severe problems and I’d be devastated and probably unfunctioning for the entire pregnancy out of sorrow. But after hearing people describe what it was like to give their baby life, to trust the Almighty, and let Him take the child, those precious, tender hours meant the world to them. Baby knew he was adored just as he was. His short life had MEANING.
A baby who must leave us so young, the rabbis say, had only a SMALL job to do on this earth, because he was so close to perfection, unlike the rest of us who stay, and have so much more work to do down here.
“I think that Chuck was speaking out of compassion to this woman (whether right or wrong) as a father and grandfather given her predicament. Pastor Chuck is not perfect (nor is any pastor) and if you look for perfection in any teacher then there is no one left to listen to but yourself.”
You win the moral relativism award for the day. What a pass you just gave this guy. Lemme guess....you were ok with starving Terri Schiavo to death, too, right? After all, it was the “compassionate” thing. */ sarc
“A baby who must leave us so young, the rabbis say, had only a SMALL job to do on this earth, because he was so close to perfection, unlike the rest of us who stay, and have so much more work to do down here.”
Yeah, there’s not too many people born that it can be said of that the time they were alive, others considered them to just be pure joy.
Personally, I used to be “absolutely pro-life.” Now I’m not quite so certain that ALL abortions are wrong.
I suppose I may have changed my mind a bit when a very conservative pastor friend and his wife made the decision to end a pregnancy in which they were carrying a baby that had no brain. If they had continued the pregnancy, they may have had a birth, but they would not have had a child in any real sense of the word.
I also know what it’s like to be in excruciating pain. In a case where a dog or cat has no hope for any normal life and a prospect of only horrible pain for as long as it lives, I have no problem with putting it out of its misery. I would think it reasonable to be as “humane” to a human being... and as Christian.
Having said that, I find it very difficult and disturbing to end the life even of a bird that has no prospect of living for more than a few hours. So in human beings, maybe the best thing is to medicate to eliminate pain, and wait.
In this particular case, I would certainly question the doctors a whole lot more thoroughly about the babies’ prospects. Just because you have a case of this kind does not necessarily mean a really short life (although I think it usually does). In the case of Abby and Britty Hensel, though, such twins have turned out apparently happy, reasonably healthy, and surprisingly “normal.”
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