Posted on 06/10/2024 3:22:58 PM PDT by Morgana
So, Chris tells Jamie, “I just couldn’t cast a vote for someone who supports abortion.” And Jamie says, “You know, Chris, abortion’s not the only voting issue. Other things matter to elections and politics too. Seems kind of narrow-minded for you to fixate on just that one.”
Have you ever heard a conversation like this? Have you ever had a conversation like this?
Have you ever met someone like Chris or Jamie? Have you ever felt like Chris? Like Jamie?
Is abortion an election issue? No and Yes.
No, abortion is never just an election issue. But yes, abortion is always at least an election issue. Here are ten reasons why:
1. Abortion isn’t just a political issue. Abortion has to do with facts and truth about the science of human life—embryos and fetuses are living human beings as much as you and me. Abortion deals with the physical and psychological welfare of the most vulnerable among us—it kills children and makes mothers suffer. Abortion executes the injustice of discriminating against one another—unborn babies face deprivation and dying based only on their age, appearance, experiences, environment, or abilities. And abortion involves moral assessments and enforcements—who has the right to life, who has the authority to take life, when may we limit one’s lifestyle because it infringes upon somebody else’s survival?
2. Abortion isn’t just a single issue. Abortion is a conclusion that comes from a whole set of principles. It relates to economics, medicine and health care, justice and civil rights. It shows how one understands the roles of government and law—shouldn’t we protect the weakest? It affects one’s sense of the community’s commitments to our underprivileged and endangered—wouldn’t we want to make up for what they lack rather than take even the little they have? It informs how one feels about our relationships to each other as citizens in a society—can’t we care instead of discarding? And abortion has long-term consequences and global implications for both individual bodies and entire populations.
3. Abortion isn’t simply a popular-opinion issue. Surveys cannot establish rights and wrongs. Polls cannot determine parental duties. Ballots cannot define a human life’s worth and purpose. And even majorities cannot undo death. Of course, people have different perspectives and emotional disputes about abortion access. But none of these alters the logical, biological, social, and ethical realities of the matter. Abortion shapes the very nature of our nation and the makeup of our culture, not to mention the very lives of its victims.
4. Abortion isn’t simply a personal issue. Abortion connects directly to the common good, especially to that of the least of these. It occurs at the juncture between the desires of the one and the requirements of another and the rest. It puts a thumb on the scales that balance corporate priorities with private ones; individual actions with civic impacts; and our limited, shared resources with our legitimate specific needs. As much as we might like to keep the reality of abortion behind closed doors, it infiltrates into our public consciousness, conversation, and collaborating. And given its significant stakes and manifold casualties, this is where it belongs.
5. Abortion isn’t only a women’s issue. Abortion puts an offspring to death—that makes abortion a children’s issue. Every offspring descends from both a mother and a father—that makes abortion a man’s issue. It also affects the employers and clients, neighbors and acquaintances of mother, father, and child. And it involves physicians and assistants, pharmacists and manufacturers, journalists and ethicists, students and researchers, officials and citizens in similar situations. In fact, abortion demands reckoning from us all, because these are our neighbors, and this is our nation.
6. Abortion isn’t only a religious issue. Opposing abortion doesn’t impose a doctrine. It acknowledges scientific data—that fertilization brings into being a distinct human life. Opposing abortion doesn’t compel a certain faith. It accepts particular facts—that killing judicially innocent human lives makes civilization impossible and renders governments irrelevant. Outlawing abortion doesn’t favor a church—it favors safety, freedom, and fairness for all. Outlawing abortion doesn’t prefer one tradition over others—it defends every member of the human race.
7. Abortion isn’t merely a Gospel issue. The Scriptures have much to say about the sanctity of human life. The Gospel of Jesus Christ declares and demonstrates that God creates, redeems, and calls each one as His own precious treasure forever. Christianity explores what this means for how we treat them. But even apart from this, the biological laws of nature lay on us the duty to look after our little ones. Prohibiting abortion is a fact of life and a function of humanity. It’s a matter of right versus wrong and life versus death. And that’s the proper realm of government and regulation.
8. Abortion isn’t merely a Law issue. Pregnancy means we have responsibilities as a community. This holds true even when we have no hereditary relationship to mother or baby. God the Almighty Maker has made parents and child our neighbors. But it also gives us privileges. We get to speak a truth that changes hearts and shows a love that saves lives. Pregnancy’s responsibilities come with wonderful opportunities. It invites us to receive every child (and his or her family!) as a gift from our Heavenly Father with whom we can share all the blessings He promises.
9. Abortion isn’t one issue among others. In fact, abortion itself isn’t the issue. Rather, what makes one human and what makes human life worthwhile are fundamental. All of our deliberations, discussions, and decisions about absolutely anything else follow from it. Though we can debate the best “how,” we have neither room to negotiate nor right to compromise about “whether” we protect the threatened among us. The inalienable and heaven-given right to life is primary. Liberty and the pursuit of happiness remain greatly important, but secondary.
10. Abortion isn’t somebody else’s issue. It’s your business, it’s my business, and it’s our business. It’s our issue as Christians, it’s our issue as citizens, and it’s our issue as human beings. Abortion and the sanctity of every human life matter very much for elections—more so than anything else. And it matters for much more than elections. It’s a whole life issue!
LifeNews Note: Pastor Micheal Salemink is the Executive Director of Lutherans for Life
**Grabs my heart** You hear that Elizabeth, A Lutheran that is Pro Life~~ I'm coming to join you !!
Who has the Lutheran ping?
Must be the Missouri Synod? There is a branch of Lutherans who are quite conservative. I hope I. have the right name for them.
I really agree with this Pastor, and have added this to my reading list so I can share it if and ever someone really wants to think about the horror.
Yes. I am a converted Catholic, best decision we ever made.
And as for being a concern of the States, only when it's not in conflict with the Constitution.
And again like slavery, abortion violates the child's Constitutional right to due process.
That argument isn’t going to work on judgment day.
I’m not saying that abortion is ‘moral’, at least not in every case. (I don’t believe that capital punishment is moral, either - but that’s legal in some states, too, and many here who despise abortion see no problem with capital punishment and would never stand praying outside of a penitentiary.)
And I don’t see an equivalency between abortion, slavery and capital punishment. They are completely different moral issues.
But people have the ability to lobby their States on abortion now - or they can ‘vote with their feet’ and move to a state where their lobbying is more likely to result in an entire prohibition.
(Or are you suggesting blocking the doors to abortion clinics, accosting women as they go to their appointments, or civil war to resolve the abortion issue?)
That will be between the individual and his God.
PENAL CODE
TITLE 5. OFFENSES AGAINST THE PERSON
CHAPTER 19. CRIMINAL HOMICIDE
Sec. 19.01. TYPES OF CRIMINAL HOMICIDE.
(a) A person commits criminal homicide if he intentionally, knowingly, recklessly, or with criminal negligence causes the death of an individual
....
Sec. 19.06. APPLICABILITY TO CERTAIN CONDUCT. This chapter does not apply to the death of an unborn child if the conduct charged is:
(1) conduct committed by the mother of the unborn child;
(2) a lawful medical procedure performed by a physician or other licensed health care provider with the requisite consent, if the death of the unborn child was the intended result of the procedure;
(3) a lawful medical procedure performed by a physician or other licensed health care provider with the requisite consent as part of an assisted reproduction as defined by Section 160.102, Family Code; or
(4) the dispensation of a drug in accordance with law or administration of a drug prescribed in accordance with law.
https://statutes.capitol.texas.gov/Docs/PE/htm/PE.19.htm
“No state shall...deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the law.”
Amendment XIV, Section 1
“The appellee and certain amici argue that the fetus is a “person” within the language and meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment. In support of this, they outline at length and in detail the well known facts of fetal development. If this suggestion of personhood is established, the appellant’s case, of course, collapses, for the fetus’ right to life would then be guaranteed specifically by the Amendment.”
Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973)
A good argument can be made for being opposed to both capital punishment and and abortion, so while I don't agree with you on capital punishment, I can definitely respect your position, it's the most morally consistent.
But at least the accused must stand trial and be convicted, the condemned was afforded the Constitutional guarantee of due process before their liberty and life was forfeited after deliberations by their peers.
An aborted child is not afforded those Constitutional protections, since it was legally considered to be the exclusive personal property of the mother until born from Roe until Dobbs.
Roe was the20th century redux of Dread Scott, substituting African Slaves for the preborn, but both claiming one human is the solely disposable property of another.
If abortion is allowed to fester, it will kill our Nation as slavery almost did, because human beings will then become the property of the State, and not children of their parents and The Creator.
I don’t see the logic in your last statement. It’s the *parent(s)* who decide to kill their children - not the State. (As far as I’m aware, we still don’t have anything like the Chinese ‘one child’ policy.)
Rightly or wrongly, women have aborted their children from time immemorial. That won’t stop even if we legally prohibit abortion nationwide.
I will ask you what I asked another poster: What is your solution? How would you end abortion?
For Roe it was the just the mother do could decide per its legally twisted abuse of the "right to privacy" clause of the 14th amendment.
As for laws in the various States I believe virtually all current and proposed laws also make it the exclusive decision of the mother.
And now back to slavery, the very same amendment meant to protect newly emancipated Americans has been twisted to make them the property of their mother.
As for jumping to the conclusion about making people property of the State, just look to Europe, socialized medicine, and Obama's comment about granny being better off with a pain pill.
The vast majority of abortions are for economic or social reasons, i.e. purely lifestyle choices of the mother, not due to incest, rape or medical emergency.
So the elderly will be encouraged and then forced to die for lifestyle reasons at first, followed by the chronically sick, etc as is happening in Canada right now.
Again: your solution?
Fair question, so I here is my current take on one.
Keep in mind this is very much a "work in progress" since not so long ago I thought abortion was strictly a "States Rights" issue as well, or that is how I tried to rationalize it to myself.
The problem is of course what did the unborn child do to die, and how are it's rights protected ?
What makes the United States remarkable in world politics is the emphasis of the right of individual over the collective.
The Constitution had to be amended to undue the evils of slavery, and so I believe a similar amendment is required to protect the unborn against abortion.
I do think the amendment needs to be carefully crafted to allow for most forms of contraception which do not harm a baby after it has begun gestation, and would exclude epotopic (sp ?) pregnancies which are not viable.
Well, I think your first hurdle is to convince everyone that a fetus is a ‘person’ possessing rights, or at what point it becomes one. What may seem clear to you is not necessarily clear to everyone else.
Let us know how it goes.
I would like to get your opinion on this.
What do you think about an unborn child being a person after the first trimester for an initial standard ?
I think this was used in "Roe v Wade" as well.
I have beliefs and feelings about life and abortion.
So do many other people.
Beliefs and feelings are not scientific or legal arguments - which latter you will need for your project.
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