Posted on 02/26/2003 1:04:55 PM PST by Remedy
I belong to an on-line support group (me, in a sup-port group, there’s a picture) composed of adult children born of rape or incest. There are more of us in the former category than the latter. Jennifer is our webmistress, organizer, facilitator, coach, head nanny, chief nag (though very nice about it), and the child of a violent rape. Mostly, I lurk. But for some in the group, I am a kind of unofficial chaplain and sometime pastoral advisor. There are children born before Roe v. Wade as well as children born after Roe v. Wade. The handles adopted by some in the group are evocative: "former fetus," "unawares angel," names like that.
We tell stories about how we found out about our birth circumstances, what that knowledge has meant. For every one of us, it was a discovery. No one was raised knowing the circumstances of his birth, but all of us are adoptees who simply wanted to know our origins for medical reasons or just to gain a more complete personal sense of identity. Finding we were children of rape was an incidental outcome, but always a fundamental shock. The biographical fact of adoption, frequently problematic in its own way, can become impossibly complicated with that extra layer of detail squatting on top of it. My conception and birth were the product of stepsibling incest.
If you want a genuine encounter with Angst 101–all the old "why am I here?" questions with none of the sophomoric abstractions attached–our chat room positively wallows in it, and for understandable reasons. These are ordinary people, after all, fairly attuned to the ordinary pulses of good and evil in this world, trying to come to grips with how their life can be the result of something that was so horrifically bad for someone else. Still, as I always ask when that question arises, cannot a child born of rape be an instance of God working good from evil, a lesson that Joseph learned and then taught to his brothers?
We get into discussions about our discussions with pro-choice advocates. There isn’t one of us who hasn’t been told by a pro-choice supporter that support for abortion, especially in those hard cases like rape, is, of course, "nothing personal." I’m sure the delegates at the Presbyterian Church (USA) meeting in Columbus, Ohio, late last June would say the same thing. The PCUSA general assembly voted 394 to 112 in support of an unrestricted right to abortion, at least until such time as the fetus can survive outside the womb. Thereafter, abortion should be done only to preserve the life of the mother, to "avoid fetal suffering," or in cases of rape and incest.
The Presbyterians have adopted a position similar to that of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, and like the ELCA, PCUSA’s medical benefits plan for clergy and church workers regards an elective abortion as a reimbursable medical expense. There is no reimbursement for an elective nose job, even if your nose is big enough to qualify as a county in Rhode Island, but that’s just policy, nothing personal. (I am a pastor in the ELCA, but I dropped out of the health plan years ago over its support for abortion.)
Back to Angst 101. Everyone deals with issues of birth and origin–well, they do if they are conscious and sentient. The perilous biologic journey of sperm and egg from conception to zygote to blastocyst to embryo to fetus is just so much random chance that particular questions about the particularity that you represent are inevitable. If somebody had a headache that night, you wouldn’t be here. If the 64-some cells that formed the blastocyst had failed to travel the fallopian tubes, you wouldn’t be here. If the blastocyst had failed to implant itself on the uterine wall, you wouldn’t be here. There are a thousand natural reasons why you should not be here, and the chances of your being here at all are unutterably impossible.
The chances of pregnancy from rape are even chancier. Actual pregnancies resulting from reported rapes are ridiculously miniscule, point-oh-oh-oh-something per thousand. But it is always somebody’s bad luck when they do happen and the "ifs" roll on. If she had stayed out of the parking lot that night; if she had been more aware of her surroundings; if the guy she met hadn’t been a twisted creep; if her stepbrother hadn’t forced her on the sofa. If.
Absent a creator–absent God, the Father almighty, maker of heaven and earth–your conception and birth are exactly that, dumb blind chance. Yet we say that God, the Father almighty, maker of heaven and earth, made you. And me. And a very talented, warm-hearted woman named Jennifer, with two sweet kids of her own. Her body itself, and my body, aging though it is, carries a living and breathing rebuke to those who regard human life as a matter of convenience. Against all appearances to the contrary, imagine this: God, the Father almighty, maker of heaven and earth, made her, made me, made you. It is more personal than the Presbyterians or the Lutherans will admit.
Russell E. Saltzman is pastor of Ruskin Heights Lutheran Church, Kansas City, Missouri, and editor of the independent Lutheran publication Forum Letter. This is reprinted with permission from the August 2002 Forum Letter, and is copyright 2002 by the American Lutheran Publicity Bureau.
Would you consider it a mistake when Peter denied Christ 3 times? Well, so much for your opinion... What a looser.
If you are going to call someone a loser it might help your case if you learn to spell it.
The apostles made many mistakes. But if you believe any of them were made while transcribing scripture you undermine the new testament and make God out to be a liar.
Eugenics raises its ugly head again. People are not like animals. Genes are not destiny. You display a profound ignorance not only of genetics, but children as well.
Look into it, and you will see that the average "life" sentence is nowhere near life. In Texas, it means 30 years and many don't even do that. There is nothing to stop a liberal scumbag judge from letting a murderer go anytime the judge wishes. It happens all the time.
Second, as good as our justice system is, there is enough corruption that we can't be sure someone is really guilty. In case after case, people who are facing death are released because of DNA evidence and such.
All that really tells you is that the death sentence is far more thorough in determining innocence than the initial trial, and that is exactly why it takes 10+ years to execute anyone. Lawyers, scientists, and investigators go over every death penalty case exhaustively.
In the last 100 years, no one has found a single case of an innocent person being executed, and if they did you can bet we would hear about it.
Others on this thread have tried to correct you and yet you continue to drift without a moral compass.
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I would never reward the reproductive strategy of rape by bearing the child of a rapist.<<<<You would reveal that your genes are that of a murderer.
The Moral Question of Abortion Whatever the status of the doctor's motives, and the woman's motives and circumstances, the action of abortion, as the deliberate killing of a small child, is murder.
Second, as good as our justice system is, there is enough corruption that we can't be sure someone is really guilty. In case after case, people who are facing death are released because of DNA evidence and such. Once the person is dead, this person can't be released. I've been on several juries, and the jury foreman on one. Believe me when I say, juries are a pathetic lot. Keep it in mind that 50% of the people in this country are below average intelligence - and that's pretty stupid. Most of them can't understand complex sentences. Condemning an alive, individual human being over their location and innocence in arriving at that location would appear to be as arbitrary a reason for a death sentence as I've ever encountered (aside from the obvious arbitrariness of assigning 'defect'--as SarahW would-- to an individual human beiong merely because of how that individual came to exist). It certainly sweeps away any notion of reasonable doubt (as to what kind of person the preborn will be, or of what value an individual life could be).
If you are going to pot someone to death, they should be found guilty beyond ANY doubt. Not beyond reasonable doubt. In the interest of your own consistency, please apply the same reasoning to the preborn, alive, individual human being. Abortion is designed to 'put someone to death'. If you can utilize mercy, apply mercy because of reasonable doubt or human compassion or effort to not make a mistake in taking another's life, wouldn't the absolutely innocent unborn be entitled to the same reasonable application of mercy? To apply such everywhere else except to the unborn is arbitrary, whether you're ready to admit it or not, whether you're Bill Gates or not. [I suspect Bill Gates is not nearly so closed-minded.]
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a life sentence is seldom now 'for the rest of their natural life'; additionally, 'acts of nature' or willful criminality may cause an incarcerated individual to be 'out in the public' again<<<Freeper Help Needed: My Child's Killer Is Up For A 6th Parole Hearing On April 11, 1989, 16 year old Jeremy Peter Flachbart a learning disabled student was brutally beaten to death by Terry Joe Windham (who was on probation for burglary and vandalism), who decided he wanted to commit murder to see what it felt like to kill. Jeremy, was on his way home from school when he was ambushed and beat to death with a 2 foot section of 4x4 fence post by Windham. After hitting Jeremy once from behind, Jeremy went down and Windham hit him 10 more times, after the 10th blow Jeremy groaned and Windham hit him 5 more times for a total of 16 blows.
Windham, went to a local game room to brag about his vicious act of murder, to his younger brother and some friends; he then took them to view Jeremy's body. While the police were investigating the scene he was on the sidelines watching, bragging, laughing, and making threats that if anyone told on him he'd kill them too. He was arrested on the scene, confessed, and was charged with 1st degree Murder; plea bargained down to 2nd degree Murder; was sentenced to 20 years. While he was in jail awaiting trial he made threatening phone calls to students. He will have served a little over 11 years of his sentence, he will have a 6th parole hearing on March 12, 2003 He was sentenced 20 years on 4/11/89. He became eligible for a first parole 3/16/91. (The murder happened on 4/11/89 but because of the way sentencing is figured in Tennessee he was sentenced on the day the crime happened).
First, imprisonment does not exact just retribution for particularly horrible crimes. Death penalty cases involve crimes of almost unbelievable savagery and brutality. Richard Speck, who butchered eight student nurses in their apartment, enjoyed narcotics parties with other inmates. Charles Manson, being bisexual, has found prison no great ordeal. He and his disciples murdered the pregnant Sharon Tate and four others in her home. I argued a case for the government in which the defendant had told friends that he wanted sex with a young girl, went to a public swimming pool, seized a ten-year-old girl, threw her in the back of his pickup truck, drove her through town while she screamed futilely for help, took her to a river, raped her, drowned her, and then bought beer to drink while sharing his happy recollection with friends. If ever a man deserved the death sentence, he did, and he got it.
Life imprisonment does not, in any event, fully protect society. Imprisoned murderers have killed guards and other prisoners. They have been paroled or escaped and killed again. Just two years ago, seven hardened criminals, one of whom was serving eighteen life sentences, escaped from a maximum-security Texas prison. A few weeks later, while robbing a sporting goods store, they killed a police officer, shooting him thirteen times and then driving over his body. The blood of the murderers’ new victims is at least partially on the hands of those who make the execution of such killers impossible.
Robert H. Bork
American Enterprise Institute
Washington, D.C
Which argument? How is it weak? Dribble or drivel?
Today just isn't your day, is it? I don't like pointing out mispellings or bad grammar, but it is hard to pass up in a personal attack.
I would never reward the reproductive strategy of rape by bearing the child of a rapist.
Good grief. Like I've already posted to you, you have genes from one of the innumerable rapists in your family tree. If even one of your foremothers had thwarted the "reproductive strategy of rape" and aborted her poor innocent child, you wouldn't be here.
The next time you feel the urge to insist that you'd kill off a "product of rape" I suggest you take a good look in the mirror and decide if you have the right to live.
And hopespringseternal, kudos for your #82.
Discussion forum for those in this situation
http://www.stigmatized.org/
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