Posted on 11/04/2007 4:58:54 AM PST by shrinkermd
Evangelicals are adamant, but religion really has nothing to say about the issue
What makes opposition to abortion the issue it is for each of the GOP presidential candidates is the fact that it is the ultimate "wedge issue" -- it is nonnegotiable. The right-to-life people hold that it is as strong a point of religion as any can be. It is religious because the Sixth Commandment (or the Fifth by Catholic count) says, "Thou shalt not kill." For evangelical Christians, in general, abortion is murder. That is why what others think, what polls say, what looks practical does not matter for them. One must oppose murder, however much rancor or controversy may ensue.
But is abortion murder? Most people think not. Evangelicals may argue that most people in Germany thought it was all right to kill Jews. But the parallel is not valid. Killing Jews was killing persons. It is not demonstrable that killing fetuses is killing persons. Not even evangelicals act as if it were. If so, a woman seeking an abortion would be the most culpable person. She is killing her own child. But the evangelical community does not call for her execution.
About 10% of evangelicals, according to polls, allow for abortion in the case of rape or incest. But the circumstances of conception should not change the nature of the thing conceived. If it is a human person, killing it is punishing it for something it had nothing to do with. We do not kill people because they had a criminal parent.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
“Thou shall not kill seems rather straight forward to me.”
It certainly is straight forward.
And so are these quotes:
Jeremiah 1:5 - Before I formed you in the womb I knew you; Before you were born I sanctified you; I ordained you a prophet to the nations.
This should speak to pro-aborts who try to call abortion a good thing:
Isaiah 5:20-23 - Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil; who put darkness for light, and light for darkness; who put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter! Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes, and prudent in their own sight! Woe to men . . . who justify the wicked for a bribe, and take away justice from the righteous man!
No prescriptive religious dogma is involved. Any rational person with an average IQ should be able to understand this. Pardon the pun, but it isn't rocket science ;)
It’s only a baby if the parents want it. If they don’t want it it’s NOT a baby.
Not according to the people who did the killing. They referred to their victims as "undesirables" and compared them to disease organisms.
It is not demonstrable that killing fetuses is killing persons.
Even if this were true, that would not suffice to permit killing them. If there is doubt that killing something is killing a person, it is morally impermissable.
To make killing such an entity morally permissible, it would be necessary, not merely to deny that one can demonstrate that they are persons, but to positively demonstrate that they are not persons. That Wills does not attempt to do.
Not even evangelicals act as if it were. If so, a woman seeking an abortion would be the most culpable person. She is killing her own child. But the evangelical community does not call for her execution.
This is a magnificent example of the absence of logical thought. Someone's personhood is not derivable from the penalty associated with killing them. By that logic, if we abolish capital punishment, everyone just became a little less human, since we've lessened the penalty for killing them.
And we can double this foolishness right back on Wills' Nazi example. The "penalty" for gassing Jews in Nazi Germany was to receive medals, promotions, and commendations. If one's personhood depends on the penalty exacted by society against his killer, then clearly the Jews under Nazi rule were not anything remotely like persons.
"According to the Gospel of Luke, Elizabeth was a descendant of Aaron the priest (Luke 1:5). She and her husband Zechariah were "righteous before God, living blamelessly" (1:6), but childless. Zechariah was visited by the angel Gabriel, who told him his wife would have a son who "will be great in the sight of the Lord" (1:15).
The pregnant Elizabeth was visited by her relative (1:36), who was pregnant with Jesus:
And it came to pass, that when Elizabeth heard the salutation of Mary, the infant leaped in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Ghost and she cried out with a loud voice: "Blessed are thou amongst women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb." (Luke 1:41-42) "
Apparently Dr. Wills did not study theology very carefully. If he is unhappy about this he can take it up with St. Luke, Jesus, and John the Baptist.
They say when Satan conquers a fortress, he never bothers to change the flag.
That’s how it is with Garry Will. He was once Cathilic, he’s gone over to the other side, but he still clings to the label as if that gives him a rag of credibility.
Ah yes, the old "there is no objective truth, truth is determined by a show of hands" argument.
But, that still does not change the principle - the logical test of consistency. Many here have been willing to be consistent and call for the death penalty for both the mother and the accomplice doctor. Others simply ignore or dodge the issue.
Law is not required, nor can it be required, to perfectly express justice in an unexceptionable way. It can only restrain the most publicly objectionable practices, and then only in most cases.
I agree that human justice is imperfect, but we should still strive to write just laws, especially concerning such clear wrongs as murder, no matter how hard they are to prove in court.
This is not an entire fiction. Most abortionists are flagrantly guilty of not providing adequate information for tthe woman to make an informed consent, and therefore young and ignorant women often do not possess a criminal mens rea, a sufficent awareness that she is killing a baby.
This proves the point made earlier - it is NOT clear at all that abortion is the murder of an innocent person. On the other hand, in a society where abortion were banned, mothers could not use ignorance of the law as an excuse, just like serial-murderers can't claim immunity because they didn't know serial-killing was against the law. All of this proves the moral ambiguity of the issue.
Forgiveness and compassion are totally irrelevent - we should have those for 100% of humanity.
So, life begins even before conception? Is contraception the murder of innocents?
In this particular verse, formed refers to the ancient idea that the human offspring begins as "unformed" and at some point progresses to "formed." This was before the processes of genetics and embryology were understood, and it was thought that the baby was gradually molded from clots of the mother's blood coagulated or organized by the influence of the semen.
Thus the point is that even before the baby is "formed" --- while it is as yet still in a shapeless clot of material --- it is still a person known by a personal God.
The implication that this might apply to contraception was not broached at that time; but even when it was, many, many years later, the sacrilege of contraception was distinguished from the homicide of abortion.
All Christian churches taught that contraception was a sacrilege --- an interference with God's creative intentions --- until the 1930 Lambeth Conference of th Anglican Church, which was the first, and at that time the only, Christian Church which approved marital contraception, and then only under grave conditions such as dire poverty or illness.
Nor is anyone that posts such drivel and that has been pimping Rudy.
Not quite sure why you are attacking me?? Listen I can take it, I have a pretty thick skin,just not sure why you would say I was pimping for Rudy??
I am sick about Rudy, completely demoralized by him and those that are supporting him.
When you say I am “pimping Rudy” you are bearing false witness. Just in case you have a relationship with God, you might want to examine that.
Peace and out :)
You are on to something the left has yet to discover.
We objectify human life when it suits our purposes. When at war, Japs are Japs, and are something other than human, because we have a need to win the war.
Women objectify the fetus when it suits them, or, the objectify the fetus when pregnancy becomes inconvenient. They see it as unjust. A disease, sexually transmitted and curable. It’s unjust because pregancy does not harm men and women alike.
The most amazing thing is how all that is forgotten when women go into ‘mother mode’. For many women, it seems as if kids aren’t much more than pets. I just wish more would show a fetus the same decency that they show a stray - put it up for adoption.
It’s unjust to ask, however, since dropping a stray off takes an hour, while pregnancy takes 9 months.
Not if it is a pro abort defining “person.”
Oddly -— very oddly -— Wills has written a book on the Rosary, three of whose Mysteries center upon a figure presumably classified by Wills as a “subperson”:
The Annunication (which involves Jesus the Zygote)
The Annunciation (Jesus the Embryo, called “my Lord” by Elizabeth, pregnant with John the Fetus)
The Nativity (Jesus the Neonate)
Wills evidently not only doesn’t know what he’s talking about, he also doesn’t know what he’s praying about.
I’d say he represents the Catholic Faith about as well as the Rev. Fred Phelps represents the Baptist Faith -— except the comparison might be unfairly insulting to Phelps.
Oddly -— very oddly -— Wills has written a book on the Rosary, three of whose Mysteries center upon a figure presumably classified by Wills as a “subperson”:
The Annunication (which involves Jesus the Zygote)
The Visitation (Jesus the Embryo, called “my Lord” by Elizabeth, pregnant with John the Fetus)
The Nativity (Jesus the Neonate)
Wills evidently not only doesn’t know what he’s talking about, he also doesn’t know what he’s praying about.
I’d say he represents the Catholic Faith about as well as the Rev. Fred Phelps represents the Baptist Faith -— except the comparison might be unfairly insulting to Phelps.
Yes, I realize a crucial difference because in abortion, the doctor and the pregnant mother are killing a third party, the child.
However, if the purpose of the law is to improve the security and well-being of infants before birth, the only practical way to do that is by eliciting the support of the mother, since it is impossible to protect an unborn child unless his mother has both the will and the means to protect him. The child's security cannot be produced by pressure on the woman, but it can be significantly helped by the extirpation of the abortion operator and the abortion industry.
On the other, hand, if the purpose of the law is to exact strict penal retribution --- well, that has a certain abstract logic. But it couldn't be done, politically, in the USA, because the prolife movement is vastly Christian-dominated, and the Christians wouldn't support it.
You'd be more successful advocating this in, say, the Islamic community. They don't have to contend with the example of a Savior who shamed and turned away the stone-wielding men, and then said to the woman, "Go now, and sin no more."
It was like reading 20-year-old blatherings from Mario Cuomo—talking about “ensoulment,” Aristotle, and Aquinas and other total irrelevancies. I don’t think Wills made a single point that wasn’t refuted definitively in the Declaration on Procured Abortion (1974) from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
What have the unborn ever done to people like Wills, Cuomo, McBrien, et al., that they so often, spontaneously, unasked, put out this kind of hate screed?
Oh, it's clear that they're human. But if the method of abortion does not involve dismemberment but produces a whole dead baby (e.g. via OC pills or methotrexate or quinine or even prostaglandin suppositories) it's not clear that they're not natural miscarriages.
How would you prove it? Conduct forensic testing on all miscarriages? Plus, the vast majority of aborted babies' remains are small enough to flush.
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