Posted on 03/20/2006 2:23:32 PM PST by madprof98
Those who seek to outlaw abortion often use the rhetoric of "protecting the most vulnerable and helpless" in our communities. Many of them are Christians who see their opposition to abortion rights as inextricably linked with their faith and their understanding of Christian ethics. After all, wouldn't a God of love and life want us to protect life wherever we found it?
If only it were that simple.
In practice, there are other questions we must ask. Does a God of love and life ever support war? Does such a God understand that some innocent civilians will die when we fight to protect our freedoms? In other words, does God approve when we make the decision to kill other people to protect our quality of life? What about when we kill to prevent genocide? Does God have a holy balancing scale that weighs intangibles like "intent" and "the greater good" or one that compares the number of innocent lives lost against the number of innocent lives saved?
We do not know. For every Christian with a "God Bless Our Troops" sticker on their bumper there is another with "Who Would Jesus Bomb?" on their rear windshield.
If my experience as a pastor is any indication, it is unlikely that the driver of either car would be making their point from the kind of complex theological arguments I learned in seminary. In practice, our upbringings, our biases and our circumstances have much more to do with what we believe God thinks; and we are often inconsistent.
How else could we spend millions of dollars to oppose abortion --- despite no clear biblical argument for or against it --- and ignore the overwhelming number of biblical texts that explicitly command us to care for the poor?
For the vast majority of Christians, it is not about consistency --- it is about convenience. Even those of us who speak passionately about protecting the weak often forget that our willingness to purchase cheap goods produced by exploited workers sentences children to poverty, disease, violence and death. The cars that we drive, the food that we allow to be marketed to children, the tax breaks we support or oppose, they all have a life-or-death impact on the most vulnerable among us. It is not only in war that we make decisions to value one life over another. Consciously or not, we do it every time we go to the supermarket.
The issue of abortion is not about whether life starts at conception. There are convincing arguments either way. The issue is which carries more weight: the life that may be in the embryo, or the life and needs of the woman in whose body that embryo was conceived?
After spending time in women's health clinics, I have come to realize that the "most vulnerable and helpless" who need our active protection are the women and couples who are faced with the agonizingly difficult decision to terminate a pregnancy. As a Christian pastor, I strongly support protecting the right of women to make this decision. Other Christian pastors have chosen otherwise, and our division on this issue is proof that there is no Christian consensus here.
The far right, however, has been able to set the issue of abortion apart from all of the other controversial, life-or-death decisions we make every day. Abortion is not a special case; and I pray that the guardians of our Constitution will continue to protect our freedom to choose our own priorities in all of these weighty matters.
The beliefs or prejudices of some, regardless of who has a majority, should not be used to take the choice out of the hands of the woman who will be the main bearer, perhaps the only bearer, of the consequences of her decision.
The Rev. C. Joshua Villines of Decatur is a regional spokesman for the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice. An ordained United Church of Christ pastor, he is completing a doctorate degree at Vanderbilt University.
What an idiot. The Bible clearly says that man shall not kill innocent life. It also reveals that God is the author of life. Abortion is rebellion against God and murder.
Part of the indifference to the abortion issue stems from our disregard of human life before birth in general.
This person is VERY confused.
Really? Life begins at birth, nine months after conception?
Absolute double talk and deceit from a spokesman for the multi-billion dollar baby-murder industry.
How much you wanna bet his organization is funded with abortion money.
"Does a God of love and life ever support war? Does such a God understand that some innocent civilians will die when we fight to protect our freedoms? In other words, does God approve when we make the decision to kill other people to protect our quality of life?"
If this guy ever picked up an Bible and read it, he would know the answer to these questions!
Is this freak drawing a parallel between the atrocities of the Saddam regime and the lifestyle change that a woman who can't get an abortion (and, for some reason, can't or won't put her kid up for adoption) would be subject to?
Let me see if I get this highly advanced, academically certified theological thinking straight. It's OK to murder a baby in the womb because it might threaten my lifestyle. But it's not OK to kill an enemy running at me and my neighbors with a sword, threatening to cut off our heads, because we should give peace a chance.
Oooooookay.
"The issue of abortion is not about whether life starts at conception. There are convincing arguments either way."
Absoloute nonesense, like the rest of the article. Replace "Christians" with "Muslims" and no paper in America would have printed this.
Oh, really? So that "Thou shalt not murder" thing in the Bible doesn't include babies?
Stunning. Yet another liberal who can't see any difference between killing an absolutely innocent baby for the convenience of its would-not-be mother, and fighting a war to protect ourselves and others from murderous tyrants.
A Doctoral student in what, might I ask? Who would award this man a degree?
As I ask the question, I realize, my naivete just blares, doesn't it.
If God exists, yes, I think he does. So does pretty much any agnostic person. Most people are pretty utilitarian, but they recognize there is a moral difference between intentionally killing someone who harms others for the greater good and intentionally killing an innocent for the greater good. It looks like this guy needs an injection of Kantian morality: view all people as ends in themselves, not means to one's own ends.
Umm that kind of attitude went out with the reformation..
No, there's not.
I didn't think so.
You don't say??
:0)
I suspect he does. Unless you believe that accidentally killing German civilians while trying to stop Hitler is the moral equivalent of intentionally putting children into ovens.
William F. Buckley points out that this argument says pushing an old lady under a bus is no worse than pushing her out of the path of a bus. In both cases, you're pushing old ladies around, which is wrong.
Figure this joker realizes there are some of us non-Christians out here that oppose abortion too? How does he explain us away?
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