Posted on 07/27/2018 11:44:35 AM PDT by Morgana
Willie Parker is a well-known and prolific practitioner of abortion, including late-term abortion. He performs abortions in places (the South) where they aren’t always easily accessible. He says he left a comfortable job to do this work because he thought it was the right thing to do.
In a New York Times op-ed, “Why I Provide Abortions,” Parker, who identifies as a Christian, writes that he used to feel that abortion is “morally wrong.” But he decided to start performing them after thinking about the parable of the Good Samaritan:
The Samaritan reversed the question of concern, to care more about the well-being of the person needing help than about what might happen to him for stopping to give help. I realized that if I were to show compassion, I would have to act on behalf of those women. My concern about women who lacked access to abortion became more important to me than worrying about what might happen to me for providing the services.
“We who provide abortions do so because our patients need us,” Parker concludes. “It is the deepest level of love that you can have for another person, that you can have compassion for their suffering and you can act to relieve it.”
Or course, Parker would never agree to kill a two-year-old child in order to relieve the tough circumstances and anxieties experienced by the parents of that child. Indeed, that would be a perversion of the lesson of the Good Samaritan. It would be a complete failure to care for the child’s well-being, meet her needs, and show her love and compassion.
But if, like the two-year-old, a human embryo or fetus is an intrinsically valuable human being, someone who has rights and deserves our respect, then killing that child is also a perversion of the lesson of the Good Samaritan. We ought to have compassion for pregnant women who face difficult circumstances. We ought to help meet their needs. But compassion doesn’t include taking the life of an innocent person who also has needs and who also should receive love.
Parker recognizes that the status of the unborn is crucial. In an interview with the New York Times Magazine, he says, “If I thought I was killing a person, I wouldn’t do abortions. A fetus is not a person; it’s a human entity.” This, then, is the key question: Is the fetus a “person,” an individual who has a right not to be killed?
Parker is open about the nature of what he does.
A profile published in Esquire relates the aftermath of a first-trimester suction abortion performed by Parker:
[Parker] points out the scattered parts. “There’s the skull, what is going to be the fetal skull. And there are the eye sockets.”
Floating near the top of the dish are two tiny arms with two tiny hands.
Parker continues to examine the tissue. He points to a black spot the size of a pencil tip. “That’s an eye.”
“That black spot?”
“That black spot is an eye. And here’s the umbilical cord.” …
Very few outsiders are invited into this room, and rare is the doctor who would show this to a reporter. But today he made a conscious decision not to hide the truth. “At some point, we have to trust that people can deal with the reality of what this is,” he says.
Follow LifeNews.com on Instagram for pro-life pictures and the latest pro-life news.
That is, indeed, the reality. What reasons, though, does Parker have for thinking that the tiny humans whom he dismembers and kills don’t matter morally? Why aren’t they “persons”?
In the Esquire story, Parker offers his argument:
But here’s the vital question: Is it a person? Not by the standards of the law, [Parker] says. Is it viable outside the womb? It is not. So this piece of life—and remember, sperm is alive, eggs are alive, it’s all life—is still totally dependent on a woman. And that dependence puts it in the domain of her choice. “That’s what I embrace,” he says.
There are a few claims here, and they are remarkably weak. First, it’s true that the law doesn’t recognize the personhood or rights of the unborn.(In a speech at Princeton University, Parker said something similar when dismissing rival views: “The rights of personhood are conferred by the state.”)
But what the law currently happens to be is distinct from (1) what the law should be and (2) whether abortion is morally right or wrong. Parker, who likes to reference Martin Luther King Jr., must know that the legality of a practice doesn’t make it just, as Dr. King so powerfully taught.
Second, Parker compares the embryo and fetus to sperm and egg, which are also alive. (In the New York Times Magazine interview, he seems to make the same point: “Life is a process, not an event.”)
Gametes, however, are mere parts, not whole organisms. They are not individual members of the species. But embryos and fetuses—like infants, toddlers, and teenagers—are individual human organisms (human beings). That, of course, is why abortion is controversial, while the death of sperm is not. “Although life is a continuous process,” explains a major embryology textbook, “fertilization … is a critical landmark because, under ordinary circumstances, a new, genetically distinct human organism is formed.”
Third, and more substantially, Parker suggests (as he has also implied elsewhere) that “viability” is what makes the moral difference. Human beings who currently depend on their mother’s womb for care and protection (i.e., who are “non-viable”) are not persons and thus may be killed. The utter dependency of one human being on another, then, renders it permissible to take the life of the former. As a defense of abortion offered by someone who embraces the parable of the Good Samaritan, this is stunningly ironic.
The Good Samaritan parable comes from the book of Luke. Jesus affirmed that one of the greatest commandments is to “love your neighbor as yourself.” A lawyer then asked him, “Who is my neighbor?” And Jesus responded with the story of the Good Samaritan. The story makes clear that even a beaten, neglected, and totally helpless stranger lying on the side of the road is our neighbor—someone whom we should love.
Jesus then turned the lawyer’s question around by asking which of the parable’s three travelers (two of whom passed by the beaten man, and one of whom, the Samaritan, stopped to help) “proved to be a neighbor.” The real question isn’t the status of the dependent man as our neighbor. The real question is whether, like the Samaritan, we are acting neighborly toward those in need.
And here is the paradox of Willie Parker. His stated motivation for performing abortions is the parable of the Good Samaritan. But his stated justification for performing abortions entails a rejection of the lesson of the Good Samaritan.
Jesus taught that the neediness of the man on the side of the road meant that we ought to help him. Parker says that the neediness (“non-viability”) of the child in womb means that we may tear off her arms and legs and end her life.
If you’re going to kill dozens of human beings a day, as Parker reportedly does, you better have some firmer ground to stand on than this swamp of contradiction.
“Who is my neighbor?” The parable of the Good Samaritan opens our eyes to the needs of other human beings and widens the scope of our moral concern. It should open Willie Parker’s eyes—and all of our eyes—to the dignity and worth of our neighbors who have yet to be born.
Destroying them is not the act of a good neighbor.
*****VIDEO ON LINK*****
I'll starting with King Herod.
Maybe Ahab but really Jezebel were worse than he.
Freepers any other suggestions?
Because he was willing to cross the street to kill the innocent?
Horsefeathers. He's well paid for killing kids, very well paid, and he wouldn't do it if it weren't worth beaucoup bucks, and he absolutely knows it. What a shameless liar!
He’ll receive his due reward. “It is a terrible thing to fall into the hands of an angry God.”
Pharaoh ordering the murder of all Hebrew newborns.
Abortion is not very "loving" toward the unborn baby boy or girl. No compassion is shown to them.
That's a powerful image.
God hates “hands that shed innocent blood” (Proverbs 6:17), and God will judge this horrendous sin.
Matthew 25:41
“Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.”
One day this man will pay for his crimes. God knows who His children are. This butcher is not one of them (at this point in time - we don’t know if he will have a revelation.)
“Parker recognizes that the status of the unborn is crucial. In an interview with the New York Times Magazine, he says, ‘If I thought I was killing a person, I wouldn’t do abortions. A fetus is not a person; it’s a human entity.’”
Maybe Parker is just a “human entity” and not an actual person.
Maybe his life is worth less than the chemical ingredients of the meatsack his demons animate.
I imagine if I was on the jury for someone accused of doing Parker in, I would probably look at the matter as improper waste disposal deserving a dollar fine. But that’s just me.
(Not advocating. Just observing.)
No, because the Good Samaritan SAVED the guy’s life.
You are KILLING them.
That worked out real well for him in the end, didn't it?
Jesus said that on the Day of Judgment, He will evaluate our faith by how we have treated others, particularly “the least of these.”(Matthew 25:40). The defenseless child in the womb being dismembered by this murdering doctor certainly qualifies as “the least of these.” And Jesus says, “As you have done it to the least of these, you have done it unto Me.” And He will pronounce His punishment,”Depart from Me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.”(Matthew 25:41). There is no court to appeal this sentence to.
I think the baby murderers should perform a live uncensored abortion for all to see if they love them so much. Of course they would never do this.
Every legislator and Judge who voted for unrestricted abortion should be FORCED to kill, dismember,rip apart, pierce the skull and vacuum out the brains of a child for all the world to see. The executioner’s face has been. Dry well hidden and hidden too long. They are all implicit in these murders and they will reap what they have sown: Death. Every abortion is a seed; a seed of death. It will return on their heads a hundredfold. Move away from them lest you be destroyed with them. G-d is not mocked.
Antichrist?
This is set against the larger background of who believed unto salvation, and who refused to believe unto salvation. If one is lost, THEN all sins against His are taken as affronts to Him. If one is saved, THEN all righteous acts of love to His are taken as acts of love to Him.
This is not the unforgivable sin, which is why gospel pitches to agents of killing by abortion make sense.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.