“There are no unwanted children, just unfound families.” –The National Adoption Center
In honor of Sanctity of Human Life Sunday my pastor gave an amazing sermon about the millions of innocent children, made in the image of God, who have been aborted in America. During this sermon my pastor made a point that I had never heard in relation to abortion that I wanted to share.
Artists take great pride in their work. They call their finished pieces a masterpiece! But what if someone decided, while the artist was working, to ruin the artwork? It would be an outrage! People would ask, “How dare someone disrupt the making of a masterpiece?”
We should feel this outrage… 3,500 times a day.
God knit each of us together in our mother’s womb. We are fearfully and wonderfully made. Human life is God’s masterpiece. Why are we not asking, “How dare someone try to disrupt His beautiful work?” There is nothing more precious or more perfect or more beautiful than an innocent child, whether in the womb or not.
Following the sermon today my pastor had all of the children (from nursery and children’s church) join the congregation in singing, “Jesus Loves Me.” It was so beautiful and so perfect and so appropriate.
“I ask you to stand up for those who cannot stand for themselves. If not us, then who?” – Sarah Palin
Baby Bottle Boomerang is a great way to start fighting for life, find out more information here. Also, here are some abortion statistics that will break your heart and compel you to take action.
How Many Abortions in America?
Per Year: 1.37 Million Abortions
Per Day: 3,700 Abortions
Who?
52% of Women, who get abortions, are under the age of 25.
64% of Women, who get abortions, are unmarried.
Why?
1% of all abortions are due to Rape and Incest.
6% of all abortions are due to Health Problems.
93% of all abortions are due to Social Issues.
When?
52% of all abortions occur around 9 weeks into a woman’s pregnancy. (At 9 weeks a baby has the following: Heart Beat, developing Brain, Fingers, Eyelids, Ear Lobes, and growing Muscles)
How Common?
43% of ALL women will have an abortion by the time they are 45 years old.
Regret?
78% of all women, who have had an abortion, regret it.
SOURCES: Abortion Statistics and Fast Facts: U.S. Abortion Statistics.
Good thoughtful words. I have often challenged pro-abortion detractors with the following. A fertilized human egg is a human life at it’s first stage of human development. At what stage of human development do you believe it is no longer acceptable to terminate a human life? Birth? Infancy? Childhood? Adolescence? This is the question, at what stage?, and there is NO acceptable answer. Keep up the good work Madeleine!
People who are for reproductive freedom aren’t considered “pro-abortion” in any sense of the term. Call yourself “pro-life” as much as you want, as you champion outmoded concepts as the death penalty and the right to shoot schoolchildren by making the tools necessary to carry out such a horrific act available to all.
The Supreme Court has been very clear on the matter over the last 40 years and has never overturned the settled case law in Roe v. Wade. Please get more educated before embarrassing yourself like that again.
Anthony,
No one is against anyone’s freedom to reproduce. But, once a woman is pregnant she has already made a free choice to reproduce. By having sex she made a free choice to have the possibility of becoming with child. So, since no one is ever even intimating with anyone’s freedom to chose whether or not to reproduce, your claim is moot.
The issue is what happens AFTER the woman has chosen to reproduce. Does she have the right to kill the living human just because she has decided it will be inconvenient? That is nothing less than murder.
“Pro-life” has a context in reference to abortion and only abortion. Just as “pro-choice” has a context in reference to abortion and only abortion. So quit playing word games.
The death penalty was established by God, and is the only real deterrent against premeditated murder. Our prisons are full of people who commit heinous crimes because they know they will not suffer death themselves.
You told a bald-faced lie when you claimed that we “champion…the right to shoot school children…” You and your ilk have a real problem by blaming a tool for its misuse by deranged people who would find other ways to do what they want to do even if you banned all the guns in the world. Timothy McVeigh killed 76 people with a home-made bomb.
The Supreme Court also said slavery was legal. The Supreme Court is not the ultimate arbiter of what is moral and just.
So how about YOU get more educated before posting such foolish comments and bullying a young lady.
Anthony…
The dictionary definition of Idiot is:
(1) utterly foolish or senseless person;
(2) having a mental age if less than three years old & an IQ under 25.
Which better defines you, (1), (2) or all the above?
Please get a brain before embarrassing yourself like that again.
“The Supreme Court has been very clear on the matter over the last 40 years “.
Are you for real? I am sure that you can go to a Supreme Court ruling that validated slavery also, but if not it was the law of the land. Just being supported by a LAW does not make it moral, ethical or prudent. It just makes it legal. In the same way that women in the early US were nothing more than chattel.
Don’t worry–every thinking mother knows what they are carrying in the uterus. No one says “I am going to have a fetus”.
But since you think we are “so uneducated” explain to me what life is. Is it the absence of breathing? And if so, am I dead when I hold my breath? Is it the absence of thinking? And if so, are you dead because you can’t think well enough to conclude what life really is? Can you name one item that was inanimate and which later became animate? And by animate, I mean living. Is life the absence of a heartbeat? But a baby has a heartbeat from just weeks in the womb, so that could not be the meaning of life. Is it not being conscious? If so, then am I dead when I am unconscious? Is there ever a time when one person has the right to determine that someone else’s life is not worth living? Be careful with how you answer that one because it can be used against you.
You may think I am being foolish here but I don’t think you want to know when life begins. You don’t care if that is a real individual in God’s eyes. If you were forced to recognize that, you would have to see the blood dripping off your hands. Oh, not because you did it, but because you advocate for it.
Maybe your enlightened definition sheds some light on your willingness to kill over 1,000,000 babies a year. How much sense does it make for a court to rule that someone terminating a woman’s pregnancy intentionally can be found guilty of murder when a doctor doing the same thing is not?
The problem is that it is possible to be both pro-choice and not agree with abortion. Do I think that abortion because of social conditions is wrong? Of course I do! Your standard of living does not have to shape your children’s. Do I believe that abortion should be legal still? ABSOLUTELY! There are many instances were there have been problems during pregnancies where carrying the child to full term will almost certainly lead to both the death of the mother AND the child. Surely it is wiser to terminate the child in order to save one life than to stand back and lose two.
In the case of rape, I tend to take a “Einai Kalytero Anthropo Apo Ton Patera Toy” apporach (Be a better man than your father) so I feel that abortion in the case of rape is not usually right. However, I do appreciate Philippa Foot’s analogy of the Violinist:
Imagine that you wake up one morning and have been strapped to a machine, and on the other side of the machine is a world famous violin player. His music is much loved and he is known throughout the world for his brilliance. However, in order to survive some illness that has befallen him, he has to share someone else’s blood supply, immune system, etc. He will remained strapped to you for 9 months at least, but it may be for a far more considerable length of time. If you choose to stay attached to the violinist, you are doing the morally right thing. However, if you choose to unhook yourself, since you never volunteered for this and you have your own life to live, then you are morally neutral. You are not doing anything bad because the situation has been forced upon you.
This story is used to demonstrate the lack of moral responsibility that is left on the shoulders of raped women. It is bad enough that they had to go through the ordeal of being forced to have intercourse with someone, but to be constantly reminded of that by the child growing inside her may be too much. I think that while I would never suggest abortion would be the way to go, I think that to outlaw it altogether is cruel and a restriction of freedom.
Not one of those cases involved partial birth abortion. Period.
And while I do support abortion ONLY IN THE CASE OF AN ECTOPIC PREGNANCY because of the hazard to both the mother and the child, I find little reason to expand support for any other abortion procedure.
If there is another that WILL result in the death of the mother, then I would probably add that also.
Having said that, over 97% of abortions are not justified.
Once you conclude that God is the author of life, then only He can decide when to end it. That decision is certainly not one that an agency can use to increase its funding.
And what happens if one doesn’t conclude that God is the author of life? What if I conclude that the author of life is actually natural selection and not God? Considering that current estimates place the number of babies that die due to miscarriage is somewhere between 1/4 and 1/5, how can you come to the conclusion that an omni-benevolent God is the author of human life?
Okay communist,
Let’s say there is no God and you are just the result of random chance. Then we can say your life is only worth something to you, and if I don’t like you I can just kill you to get rid of you. Perhaps I’m the communist government and have decided you are a burden on society, and then I can just kill you. Who are you to say we can’t? After all, if you are nothing but rearranged pond scum, you are intrinsically worthless.
In our worldview, miscarriages are a result of defects in the human body due to the Fall, where the whole world was corrupted from its pristine original design. They are indeed a result of natural consequences of the Fall.
But, and even most Christians get this wrong, God only created two humans and the rest were procreated by the natural process God designed. God does not create every human being individually. But because God did create the first, He is indeed the author of life. And God said killing an innocent human being is wrong, but it is not wrong for a person to die a natural death – that’s just a consequence of the Fall. So abortion, the premeditated killing of an innocent human being, is wrong – and it is called murder.
Christians value life, while communists never have.
First point: You are clearly misinformed about what communism really is. I do not ally myself with Leninists and Stalinists, I perfer to keep the company of true communism (a conept that Jesus appeared to quite like, I might add).
Second point: Does life have intrinsic worth? I believe that it does. While I may not be a Christian, I am a Cartesian Theist and that means that I do believe in God. I’m not foolish enough to take the bible at face-value and not to question it, but I do believe that life (ALL life) has an intrisic value and worth. Some may argue that worth is only gained through contirbution to the world community, but I disagree. I think that one can squander their intrinsic worth and eventually makre themselves worthless, but all people are born with value.
This is mostly due to my belief in the policy of Cartesian Dualism (the view that people are made up of both a physical body and an etheral soul), so I do believe in a soul (but I don’t believe that it is given at conception).
Third point: As regards the defects in the human body due to the Fall, I assume you are talking about the fall of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden? If that’s the case, then there are certain things in the “design” of human beings that must be addressed. The concept that miscarriages and stillbirths are based on the Fall is also based around the fact that the Fall brought about death in the world (a concept that apparently had no place in the Garden of Eden). However, when we look at the human digestive system, we can see that the “design” of the stomach and intestinal tracts are designed to be able to digest meat as well as having elements in there to kill off foodborne microbes. Then there’s the human immune system, the adrenal Fight or Flight response, the existence of the liver, anti-bacterial substances in the mucus of the nose and in the tear ducts, all of which must have been “designed” to prevent humans from dying. The basic “design” of human beings is centred around death. It’s almost as if God WANTED the fall to happen. Either that or the Fall never really happened and humans developed these characteristics through evolution in order to be able to survive more easily. The Irinnean theodicy that uses the Fall as the explain away reason for the existence of natural evils in the world is a highly flawed argument.
Fourth point: God created two humans? In that case, every single human being on the planet has come about through a series of inbreeding partnerships, which means that everyone’s genetic sequences would be almost exactly the same as each other. With only Adam and Eve as the blue prints for human creation, there should be very little characteristic variation in humans. The existence of recessive alleles in the human genome have completely disproved the theory that all humans are descended from just two people. In order to create a stable biosystem, there needs to be a minimum of fifty different familial groups in order to provide the necesarry genetic variation to avoid various inbreeding issues (such as limited apoptosis, susceptibility to disease, etc.) If all human beings on the planet are descended from just two original people and evolution is a lie, then every single human being should be susceptible to the same diseases, because the antibodies from Adam and Eve would have been passed on to every one of the their children who in turn would have passed them on again and again and again, with no variation. Essentially, this should mean that every human being on the planet should be immune to, as an example only, Rubella but every human being on the planet should also be highly susceptible to, again as an example, Measles. However, there are people with natural immunity to both of those diseases and there are people who are susceptible to both of those diseases. For this reason, we cannot accept that the entire human race is descended from two original people AND that evolution is false. The argument is self destroying: we all share the same genes because of Adam and Eve, but if evolutuion isn’t happening then we would never have differences in natural immunity.
Taken literally, the story of the Fall is completely unreliable, as are most of the early stories of Genesis. Don’t misappropriate the Mythos and Logos of Christianity.
And incidentally, God said Thou shalt not kill, but that didn’t stop him from allowing Joshua to wipe out the entire armed forces of Ai, and it didn’t stop God from destroying the entire population of the towns of Sodom and Gomorra, and it didn’t stop Moses from slaughtering the Isrealites after the first Decalogue, and it didn’t stop Moses from slaughtering the worshippers of Baal after they repented, and it didn’t stop Joshuia and his army from butchering babies after the fall of Ai, and it didn’t stop the execution of John Proctor, Giles Correy and several other innocent men and women in the Salem witch trials, and it didn’t stop the Templars and Crusaders from wiping out entire communities in the name of God, and it didn’t stop God from wiping out the entire population of the planet earth except for Noah and his family. Count up the number of heinous and downright evil acts that God himself has supposedly committed throughout history, or those of his followers, and then tell me who doesn’t truly value life.
Communism at its heart is ALL about preserving and valuing life, more so than religion is at any rate. True communism is based around making sure that everyone’s life is considered as equally important, rather than having an elite few who matter more than everyone else. The whole point of Communism is to preserve human life and human dignity, something that the pro-life movement doesn’t do. Do you value the life of the mother? Do you value her as a person who wants to survive? Because abortion is hardly ever a black and white subject and there are always problems and complications. It comes down to the lesser of two evils a lot of the time and in that instance, I take the Situation Ethicist approach “the lesser of two evils.” I value the mother as well as the child, something that the pro-life argument seems to ignore. And up until 14 days, it is uncertain as to whether the foetus will become twins or not, there is no brain development, synapses between nerves have not even begun to form until 28 days have passed and the brain isn’t fully functioning and displaying signs of conscious until around 24-28 weeks, so I fail to see how the rights of a child that is TOTALLY UNAWARE of itself and is completely incapable of physically feeling anything outweigh the rights of the mother.
“And what happens if one doesn’t conclude that God is the author of life?”
I conclude that it is impossible to come to that conclusion after you realize how complex life is. There is no way that this is all the result of simple random chance.
What I will admit is that there are a lot of people out there who are hoping that there is not a God. They are betting their entire existence on a fool’s bet that they are right.
First, thank you to Madeleine for this blog.
Second, I agree completely that abortion needs to exist for medical emergencies and as a possibility in the case of rape. There are places in Latin America where the prohibition on abortion is complete and total, and so woman’s lives are put in peril when they could be saved.
Fourth, women in some third world countries around the world are forced to marry and/or essentially raped by their husbands. If they have no choice in the reproductive process, then we need to work on reproductive rights in those cases. That might include abortion where the need is dire and as a stopgap measure until the real problem is solved. But the real root of the problem is true reproductive rights: the right to choose to conceive or to not conceive. If we care so much about rights, lets scream and yell about women who are forced into marriage or have no civil rights in the home or society. Who can disagree with this need? That is not usually the case in America or the Western World.
Fifth, this is not the same thing as declaring that abortion is a reproductive right. Talking about it as a reproductive right is at the least very confusing, and at worst, just flat out wrong. When it comes to choosing to engage in sexual activity, we can talk about reproductive rights. People should certainly be able to choose when and with whom to reproduce, of course respecting certain restrictions on age, etc. But once a woman has become pregnant through consensual means, she now has to deal with the fact that she is not alone and that any further choices will impact another human being. Hence the need to be very careful and selective about deciding to (do what it takes to) become pregnant.
Bottom line, abortion needs to exist, but its use needs to be limited to medical/social justification, and should not be a protected free-for-all. Otherwise, its just plain infanticide (i.e., murder).
Great article, Ms. Mcauley. Last year, the PepsiCo company was working with Senomyx (flavorings) Corporation in order to enhance their newest drink “Next”, I believe it was called. The flavorings that were to be used were made from aborted fetus’ kidney cells. In order to get the cells the flesh is involved. So, to stop America from becoming cannibals, I reported what the two companies were doing to a major newspaper and the story went Nationwide. And a nationwide outcry was heard and PepsiCo reported that it would not feed us baby flesh just to sell their product. At this point, researchers are working to use the cells from aborted fetus’ brain tissues to insert into individual’s eyes who are afflicted with cataracts and Obama gave his approval recently. That is still a sin and an abomination. No one would want their brain or body used, and have to die or live out what little days they have until they are destroyed for lack of organs or brain matter, just so another can see or anything else. The children must be saved and I am thankful for you, Ms. M and anyone who is in on this trying fight to stop euthanasia. Sweden and Belgium euthanize the very, very sick but, if I remember correctly, Belgium kills around 50% of the “supposedly” mentally ill (insane). Insanity, mental illness, whatever you want to call it, has never been proven to exist. Anyone that knows about Sigmund Freud and that he had a suspicious and accusatory mind from his 12-year cocaine use and that some of his baseless and unfounded ideas were absolutely sick would see that he was promoting something. Additionally, the American Nazi Party, in all it’s glory over at it’s site, is chomping at the bit to put Hitler’s Action T4 Programme, a program involving drugs and euthanasia, into gear. This is a society of death and the love of money and power fuels it.
Of course, that Pepsi Next story was false, as it is with so many memes from the radical religious right. Notice Kim doesn’t cite a source for her information, just the thing “went Nationwide.” Maybe it was Alex Jones with his anti-Obama conspiracy theories, but we will never know, since the graffiti artists who pass along such falsehoods merely post and move along to the next site.
Biotech’s Fear Factor 1/27/2012 @ 11:15AM
So did you hear the one about the fetal tissue in your soda?
Oklahoma State Senator Ralph Shortey is being widely mocked for a bill to ban the use of human embryonic tissue in the production or research of food. Or, in the language of the bill:
No person or entity shall manufacture or knowingly sell food or any other product intended for human consumption which contains aborted human fetuses in the ingredients or which used aborted human fetuses in the research or development of any of the ingredients.
I think this bill is anti-medicine, anti-biotech, and anti-business, but I also think that Shortey has a point, and that his effort highlights a deep divide in the way people understand and feel about science that no amount of mocking on Twitter or Andy-Kaufman-esque stunt articles on Gawker will change. So let’s take a look at what Shortey is actually talking about.
No person or entity is manufacturing food or other products intended for human consumption that contain aborted human fetuses. But some food companies are using cell lines that were originally derived from human fetuses in order to develop new food products. Moreover, many medicines and vaccines, which I suppose could be seen as “meant for human consumption.” The Children of God For Life, which according to press reports inspired Shortey’s bill, also opposes standard vaccines for chickenpox, rubella and hepatitis A and drugs such as Roche’s Pulmozyme for cystic fibrosis and Amgen‘s Enbrel for rheumatoid arthritis. (See a list of products Children of God For Life say are unethical.)
The fetus-derived cell line we’re talking about was also created around the time I was born. This is 35-year-old technology. And it is widely used in cell biology. And there is no way you’ll consume them or that the cells would cause any health problems.
The cells, called HEK 293 cells (that stands for human embryonic kidney) were taken from an aborted fetus in the 1970s in the Netherlands. Bits of chopped up DNA from the adenovirus, a virus that causes a pretty severe cold. The kidney cells were forced to take up bits of DNA using a technique invented in 1973 that used a calcium solution. The resulting cells don’t act much like human cells at all, but they are very easy to work with and have become workhorses of cellular biology. That’s why they’re used in the development of drugs and vaccines. (Here’s the original paper on the creation of the HEK cells. ) No new fetal tissue has been used to keep the cell culture going; the use of this cell line isn’t leading to new abortions.
A tiny company called Senomyx, whose stock is trading near its 52-week low, has been working to use this new technology to create food additives. Senomyx has isolated receptors found on cells that detect taste, and added them to the HEK cells. This allows them to test thousands of potential taste additives to see whether they might taste sweet or savory with a speed that would be impossible with human taste testers. (You can find a scientific paper on the Senomyx sweetener work here. ) Synomyx has announced collaborations with Pepsi, Nestle, and Coca-Cola. The stock market values the company at $140 million, which is not much by the standards of biotech.
You give yourself away in the first paragraph by referring to the religious right as radical. In your twisted view of the world, they are radical because, if they have their way, it will have a big influence on you. But just so we know the concept of radical, let’s examine a few things and decide on our own whom the real radical is.
The radical conservative movement says that a woman’s sexual practices can cause her great problems and that she should abstain from sexual activity until she is married. THe leftist movement says that women and young men are nothing more than animals (When there is no God, we are just animals) and that they cannot control themselves. Free love. Hook up with anyone.
Which movement is radical, hhhmmmm? The leftists ideas of sex is radical, of course.
Conservatives say that we should not spend more than we take in and leftists are content to spend the total earnings of the next 3 generations in order to create a dependency of takers. Conservatives say that there are consequences to your actions and leftists say if it feels good, then do it. Conservatives say you should work hard and be responsible and then you should be rewarded for your efforts, and leftists say that what you have, you don’t deserve when there are people that don’t have as much as you.
Again, the leftists are the real radicals.
You know it yourself because you go by the rule that if you repeat a charge often enough, some people will believe it. That is radical in itself because it creates division between classes of people.
So go use your idiotic references to conservatives to a crowd that actually believes it. Because I don’t.
And finally, what is more radical. To conserve life or to kill over 1 million babies a year in a death for profit scheme?
Commie,
There is no such thing as GOOD communism, and, NO, Jesus was not a communists in any sense of the word. Don’t make the word mean what it doesn’t mean.
God didn’t WANT the Fall, but He knew it would happen. God knows the end from the beginning because He is outside of time – and in fact created it.
Adam’s & Eve’s children did indeed interbreed, since they were the only humans in existence. However, we don’t know how many children they had, but since Adam live to be 930 years old and was told to multiply and fill the earth, I’d suspect there were plenty. In that case, as population increased, brothers marrying sisters would be only one part of the population, because over the years there would be cousins, nephews, nieces, etc, to marry. But remember, only Noah and his three sons and their wives came through the Flood, and all the world is now descended from those pairs. Your assertions and assumptions are based on data not available, since there is no forensic evidence of original genetics.
You obviously believe the lie of evolutionism, and therefore pick and choose what to believe from the Bible. Why even believe in a god at all?
God did not say, “Thou shalt not kill” – that is KJV 1611 English. What He said is “You shall not MURDER” Big difference. The rest of your diatribe about killing is typical atheist talking points which have been addressed ad nauseum by Christians for at least a century, and the information is easily available if you care to research. But then you’d have your bubble burst.
So a person who is unaware of himself or incapable of feeling anything have no rights? People in coma’s are no longer human with rights? So you have determine what makes a human valuable? By what right do you make such a determination? What if someone decides YOU aren’t valuable!!!
There is no right of a mother to murder her children, so there are no rights to outweigh.
You argue very vehemently for things which you either have no understanding of or can’t possibly know. I’m not twisting words to mean what I want them to mean, communism is a political belief that all human beings are at their core, equal. Call it hyper-socialism if you will, but don’t pretend to understand something that you clearly don’t.
God is supposedly omnipotent, omniscient and omni-benevolent, so why would he allow for such a thing to happen? It appears moronic to assert that a perfectly good, perfectly loving and perfectly knowing God would ever allow such a thing to happen. If he created time and space (insinuating a belief in eternalism here?) then he could have done it in such a way that freedom of actions still existed but at the same time the Fall is unnecessary. As I said before, reliance on the Irinean Theodicy is fraught with issues.
It doesn’t matter how many children Adam and Eve or Noah and his family had. The fact remains that if either story is true (which there is very little evidence for by the way) then there is only one familial group we are descended from. That means that only one families set of genes got passed on to the next generation. If evolution doesn’t happen, then those genes will NEVER CHANGE. If the genes don’t change, then we don’t develop new immunities to diseases as well as other things such as basic physical appearance. You missed the point completely. For a biosystem to develop with the necessary genetic variation to allow for continued existence and differences in immuno-defence systems (which are clearly present, ask any doctor. Hell, ask any biology student and they can tell you how obvious it is).
I put my faith in what appears to be the most intelligent and well informed information of the day, so yes I do believe in the probable truth of evolution. As a theory, it makes an awful lot of sense and it has been backed up by the discovery of DNA which has been proven to alter and change slightly with each new generation. As for picking and choosing elements of the Bible, yes I do do that. You know why? Because as a Cartesian Theist, I don’t believe in the same God you do. I’m not an atheist simply because I don’t believe in the Abrahamic God. So I do use certain parts of the Bible in moral decision making and since I value the teachings in Aristotle’s Virtue Ethics along with J. S. Mill’s work on Utilitarianism, I use the elements of the Bible that make sense to me on a moral level. So I do believe in a God/Gods, but not your one.
And I think you’ll find that the original text written on the parchment that would have been used to transcribe the original version of the Bible would have:
(1) Been written in Aramaic
(2) Been destroyed along with the temple in Jerusalem
So you can’t actually back up your point at all with any real evidence. Incidentally, after Moses broke the tablets and God gave him a new Decalogue, he conveniently left off any mention of killing anywhere. And I don’t think I have ever counted the annihilation of entire races of people, the controlled massacre of children and the barbaric way in which God appears to deal with those who don’t believe in him as anything BUT murder. God is a murderer if the Bible is to be taken literally. And I have seen many debates over the acts of evil that God has enacted in the Bible and I can honestly say that I am yet to see one fundamentalist Christian come up with a good defence that doesn’t negate the traditional attributes of God (which you clearly cling to, despite the fact that a belief in a timeless/spaceless God totally eliminates any form of omni-benevolence or free will).
Coma patients do have partial awareness of themselves. Their neurones are still functioning in the vast majority of cases, hence they can still feel, and the neurons in the brain are still firing, so they haven’t reached a state of total brain death. They are still alive. Brain dead people however cannot feel, cannot think, cannot demonstrate awareness and as such they are generally counted as dead. So comatose people do still have value as human beings, brain dead people do not as they have left this mortal coil. Understand?
And an abortion when preformed under the proper circumstances in the right time frame with the right reasons is not murder. It is an assisted miscarriage if nothing else. Sometimes an abortion is the only way to deny that would cost a woman her life for no good reason. You treat me like a monster for defending a womans right to save her own life? A friend of mine had to go through with an abortion because her health was at risk (the foetus had implanted and started to develop inside her fallopian tube). If the baby had gone full term it would have killed her, so she did what she could to save herself. She now has two daughters and loves them very much. If you got your way, those children would not exist because my friend would be dead. Think on that in future as you argue against the rights of real women in the real world.
Commie,
So many assertions, no evidence and lots of speculations. You prefer see science as your god, no matter how often “science” has to be changed to fit the latest theories.
There is a vast difference in make a decision as to which of two lives is to be left to die vs the deliberate killing of a child for convenience. The numbers of situations you describe are so minuscule as to be no factor in the debate about “abortion.” (and I wouldn’t call that type of procedure an “abortion” simply because it is indeed about choosing which life to allow to die).
There is no RIGHT for any woman to kill their child simply because they don’t want it. And that, after all, is what the debate is about.
Do I put my faith in science more than religion? Yes, of course I do. Any sane person would. Science does change to fit the latest theories, because the new theories are updated versions of the old ones with more evidence. Chemiosmotic theory is one example. For decades, people believed that the generation of ATP within cells was caused simply by the movement of electrons within the matrix of the mitochondria, catalysed by an unknown chemical compound. However, a newer theory suggests that it is through carrier proteins in the membranes of the mitochondria that permit the electron flow, thereby generating an electrical charge that causes rotation of ATP synthase, which allows us to move, breathe and basically do any energy related thing in the body. Why did science change to support the new claim? Because there was more evidence for it. It filled in the blanks left by the previous theory. The changing nature of science is what makes it more reliable than the unchanging way of biblical literalism. Science changes because of new arguments that are better supported by evidence, nothing else.
Check your statistics again. You will find that in a lot of circumstances there are a lot of reasons why a woman has an abortion. This isn’t a black and white issue (something you seem to miss completely) but there are so many grey areas that to have any form of absolutist stance on it is either impossible or just foolish.
And I stand by my point. If there is no CHILD there, merely a collection of cells that may or may not BECOME a child, then there is no killing involved. Until the synapses between the neurones form and proper cognitive brain activity is there, I don’t see a person.
Science proves you wrong. It is a child from conception.
I’ll take faith in God any day over faith in changing “science”.
Faith in God over science is your right, as faith in science is mine. Science has proved nothing about a zygote being a person from conception, that is all the work of theologians and philosophers. I assume that you are referring to the Christian policy of ensoulment? Well, Aristotle (whom the Church gleaned many teachings to bolster the Bible) didn’t know when a soul began to exist and he did also allow abortion.
Thomas Aquinas (another person from whom the Chruch gets many of it’s teachings including the Conscience, Just War theory, Natural Law and Divine Command ethics) believed that the soul came at different times for males and females, 40 days and 80 days respectively.
The truth is, the Church has never known when a soul became present in a person, conception is just the latest theory. So the Church, you could argue, is just as changing as science is. The only difference is, science changes with evidence, religion changes on a whim.
Commie
NO one is talking about when the “soul” begins – the issue is when LIFE begins. Human life begins at conception, and THAT is proven by medical and biological science. Your problem is that you want to make the false dichotomy of human vs person. That is the common dodge of pro-aborts.
I’m not trying to establish a false dichotomy because the dichotomy is not false. There is a very clear distinction between what is “human” and what is “person.” Human is a species, a form of categorising what sets our species apart from the other apes. Person-hood is where what was once simply human is now a person. Many people believe that to be when the Soul first interacts with the body.
For instance, a corpse may be a human by species, but it is not a person. Not any more. In the same way, a zygote may well have the genetic coding for a human, but that does not make it human.
The sooner it is realised that the difference between human and person is real, the better.
Your word-play is exactly the problem with liberals. They seek to give “person-hood” to animals and deny it to human beings just because the human’s stage of like is determined to be without value.
There never used to be such a division – a human was always known as a person – even as a corpse it is a dead person.
You and your ilk are part of the problem with this society which no longer has gives life any value. You sophistry is just that – sophistry.
Glenn,
Me and my ilk are the reason why medical science has advanced as far as it has. Without people like me who don’t question the value of science and choose to let it grow and develop we wouldn’t have a fraction of the technology we have today. You fail to understand that meanings of words change. Do you support the death penalty? Since you’re an apologetic Christian I assume that you do. So how can you allow the killing of a fully grown person, but not the elimination of a potential one?
Am I arguing that abortion-on-demand should be allowed. Of course not. That would be self-defeating and moronic. However, am I saying that abortion in cases where there really is no hope should be allowed? Of course I am, and you’re barbaric if you try to argue otherwise. Can you honestly tell me that if your wife was going in for an operation that you wouldn’t tell the surgeon to save your wife first and worry about the child later? I highly doubt it, because that would make you a monster, and I don’t think you’re a monster.
Abortion is not a black and white issue. An absolute approach cannot work. A more relative approach to the ethics surrounding abortion is needed, so you can’t defend an “all or nothing” doctrine in this instance.
And for the record, there is no sophistry in what I’m saying. There is a very clear distinction between a person and a human. As a Christian, you should be able to understand that.
Commie,
Good equivocation there of the word “science.” Previously you were using that term in relation experimental science and now you use it for factual medical science. Actually, it was Christians or began the scientific method now used. I question so-called science such as evolutionism, man-caused global warming, and every other junk science used to support ideology.
Medical science has demonstrated that life begins at conception. You want to deny it is a “person” because of its particular stage in life. THAT is not science – it is sophistry. It is a philosophical bias used to support the murder of the unborn.
The death penalty was ordained by God and is used for punishing a person guilty of pre-meditated murder. It is a punishment for a crime, and when properly used has shown to be a deterrent to others contemplating such a crime. Abortion is the murder of an innocent person guilty of no crime whatsoever except being an inconvenience.
Abortion certainly is a black and white issue. The trumped up claims and wailing for the need for abortion to save the life of the mother is nothing more than obfuscation. Those events are extremely rare and have never really been a part of the debate from the anti-abortionist side.
While there is a certain distinction between a person and a human (since God is three persons), every human IS a person. And that is where you make the false dichotomy when claiming a human isn’t always a person.
Evolution is not “so called” science. It is far more likely than any pseudo-scientific argument brought up to defend Creation, or the Flood, or Geocentricism or God stopping the Sun in the sky (a logical impossibility). Experimental science is still science and is just as worthy as the Medical sciences, just like theoretical sciences.
And as for the scientific method, it was Francis Bacon who started it, the Christians were still clinging to a belief in Aristotelian methods which no one uses any more.
Medical science, if you want to argue down this road, has argued that a form of life exists at conception, the same amount of life that you find in any collection of Stem Cells. It isn’t cognitive human life and certainly is not a person, but you are correct there are signs of life. However, the same degree of life can also be found in bone marrow or in the umbilical chord, because all the zygote is at this stage is a group of unspecialised cells.
You cannot logically criticise philosophical bias and call it sophistry (a word you seem to keep misusing by the way) and then rely on a man-made philosophical construct like the Bible to determine your beliefs on certain issues. The death penalty acting as a deterrent is not only barbaric, but it also doesn’t work. Numbers of crimes committed in states like Texas where the death penalty is enforced are no different to the number of crimes committed elsewhere in the United States. It doesn’t work. By all means, employ the death penalty, but you can’t logically argue from the deterrent argument because it is a lie. Plain and simple.
How dare you call abortion a black and white issue. I had thought that you weren’t a monster, that you were a real person and not some abhorrent creature, but if you honestly believe that an absolute statement on abortion can and should be the end all solution then may your God have pity on you. Do the women who suffer and die during child birth not have a right to live because something has gone wrong? Do the underage children whose bodies aren’t ready for childbirth deserve to die in such a humiliating way for their mistake? Would you honestly tell a surgeon to let your wife and child die if there was a complication? I sincerely hope that you edit your previous response on this issue because it makes you appear totally inhuman.
And once again, since I have already given you my argument I will tell you this alone: you are wrong. There is no FALSE dichotomy because there is a REAL distinction between a human and a person. Whether you believe that God is three persons (highly illogical in my opinion) or not doesn’t really matter, the fact remains that a human is not always a person.
Commie,
Evolutionism is a virtual religion with absolutely no evidence to support it. All it is, is suppositions, assertions, speculations, and assumptions. It takes much more faith to believe in it than it does to believe in God.
Francis Bacon WAS a Christian. I win.
The death penalty is NOT enforced as it should be. It takes years and years to get to that point, and often the killer gets a reprieve and a life sentence instead. Number of crimes isn’t the issue – numbers of murders is. And deterrent is only one reason – the primary reason for the death penalty is PUNISHMENT. Guess what, they’ll never kill again.
Yes, your philosophical ramblings are indeed sophistry, especially when regarding evolution, let alone the argument for abortion. And my use of the word is 100% accurate – by the way.
You are the monster who would kill a child for the crimes of the father. And you again have gone back to the red herring of a woman’s life being in danger, regardless of how often you have been told that is not this issue and that it is a rare occurrence, and that the discussion about outlawing abortion is not about that.
YOU are the one who is wrong. A human is always a person. Your ilk only attempt to make a distinction so you can justify abortion and euthanasia.
You can have the last word if you like – I’m done throwing my pearls to a fool.
I will only address one point that you made in your last argument because it is the only one worth challenging (the rest is officious rubbish). You refer to me as a fool, yet I have proven that I have a greater understanding of science, philosophy and theology than you do. Your childish assertion of “I win” is enough to defeat your entire argument. You feel the need to “defeat” me since I have a different view to you, but you fail to realise that you understand absolutely nothing of my position. You understand nothing outside of your Apologetic Christian ideology and such a narrow view of the world is not a good life to live.
I will leave you with three of my favourite quotes that should hopefully open your eyes to the real world:
“A Conservative is a man with two perfectly good feet who is yet to learn to walk forward.”
~Abraham Lincoln
“When a nations young men are conservative, its funeral bell has already rung.”
~Henry beecher
“Conservativism is based on a flawed system. The only way that conservativism can be logical is if the current system is absolutely perfect. Since such a country does not exist, conservativism has no place in this world yet.”
~Brendan Kearney
Commie,
The “I win” comment was humor. I said Christians began the scientific method and you picked a Christian, supposedly to prove me wrong. I was amused. I had not felt need to “defeat” you.
I called you a fool because of this: “The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God.’” That’s from Scripture.
And, no, you don’t “have a greater understanding of science, philosophy and theology” than do I. You just think you do, but you don’t know anything about me.
My “narrow view” of the world is reality – truth. Your view of the world is what you want it to be.
Your quotes prove nothing except that you are good at quote-mining
On of your “sources” is from 2003, using information from 1995. That’s 18 years ago. Facts about abortion are published every year and have steadily shown a decrease in abortion rates. The most recent report released from the CDC used data from 2009 which showed 780,000 abortions that year. Much, much less than the 1,370,000 you stated. In addition, its actually 92% of abortions that occur before 9 weeks of pregnancy. Despite the fact you failed to do proper research on your topic I do have a few points I’d like to make.
The truth is- rape and incest occur and they do result in pregnancies. Are you supportive of women in these situations? Another truth is that some pregnancies do result in health concerns for women. What do you consider an acceptable health concern that should allow a woman the option of abortion? Does the woman have to have a 100% chance of dying? What about 80%? How about 50/50 chance? Do you really feel like you can make a judgement? Did you also know that pregnancy puts a woman at an increased risk for domestic violence? Thats a “social reason” that quickly becomes a health concern.
Or how about the cases of women whos unborn babies have been diagnosed with severe medical conditions. Osteogenesis imperfecta type 2 results in a baby’s bones to shatter prenatally. The most typical description on autopsy is “crumpled.” Why would you judge a women who chooses not to put their unborn child through the pain of delivery followed by a quick death?
The truth is- when abortion is not safe and legal women die. How about being pro-life for them? You can not possibily grasp someones decisions until you walk a mile in their shoes. God is the only one who is in a position to judge. Let everyone answer to their own God, and do not force your beliefs on others.
Here are some more facts:
94.6% of legal, induced abortions take place at a stage in pregnancy in which the unborn cannot feel physical discomfort. In addition, between 98.5% and 100% of legal, induced abortions take place at a stage in pregnancy in which the unborn cannot feel physical pain. I don’t see the point of objecting to an action that does not cause anyone to suffer. Sure, complications can arise during the procedure that may threaten the mother’s safety as well. But this can happen with any procedure. Besides, you seem to emphasize the child first and foremost. If you’re concerned with the child’s quality of life, then you shouldn’t object to abortions; the procedure does not cause the child to suffer.
I cover this in more detail in a paper I wrote called “Introducing Reason to the Abortion Debate,” which you can find by searching the title in Google. I posted it on Volconvo forums, which should show up at the top of the search results. My sources for these statistics were the CDC and medical journals, which I listed at the bottom of my paper. I strongly urge you to read it.
Madeline,
Great post and words. It’s inspiring to see people of your generation thinking of matters like this. May God grow you with strength and vision!
Question: what from your perspective can be done? From your social location, as a teenager, how do you see raising the awareness of other teens?
In peace,
Fr. Jabriel
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