Sarah Palin’s abortion moment
During a pro-life fundraising banquet in Indiana last night, Sarah Palin got real about abortion. Very real and very personal. Early in her pregnancy with her youngest child, Trig, she considered having an abortion. AOL News reports:
The governor’s 30-minute speech was folksy and full of digressions, but also surprisingly confessional, and she went into some detail about initially panicking after learning, 13 weeks into her pregnancy, that her son would be born with Down syndrome: “That blew me away, it rocked my world… It was a time I asked myself, was I going to walk the walk.She was on a trip out of state at the time, she said, and “just for a fleeting moment I thought, ‘No one knows me here; no one would ever know.’ … My amniocentesis came back and then I understood why some people would think they could change their circumstances, just take care of it. Todd didn’t even know” the results of the prenatal testing yet, so “no one would know.”“Plus, I was old,” she continued. “And I thought, ‘Very funny, God. My name’s Sarah, but my husband’s not Abraham, he’s Todd.’” At 44, she said, she had a hard time imagining changing diapers again, not to mention “putting down the BlackBerry and picking up the breast pump.”Though it was unclear from her remarks how seriously she considered terminating the pregnancy, she assured the audience that “we went through some things a year ago that’s helped me understand a woman and a girl’s temptation to make this go away.”














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back to top138 Comments to “Sarah Palin’s abortion moment”
I think Sarah likes drawing attention to herself. Certain things should only be confessed to family and close friends. She did herself and the country she covets to lead no favors by giving out this kind of information.
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She did herself and the country she covets to lead no favors by giving out this kind of information.
I disagree completely, Bianca. Here is an influential pro-life woman who is confessing a moment of weakness, a moment that helped her understand why so many women/girls choose abortion.
Then she chose the tough road, not the easy one. That makes her more than a demogogue on abortion. It makes her a person other women facing the same choice can look to for encouragement and hope.
I predict Palin will become an important voice for the unborn and that her son, Trig, will become a poster-child in the best sense of the term.
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And the only reason she confessed this is to get the wymyn vote in 2012.
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2 – You may disagree, Lynn, but this sort of thing is to be discussed in intimate circles, not before the country and the world. It was a political move. It was to get the liberal female vote. And everyone knows it. Christian women have discretion, and this was an example of a lack of discretion.
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Wow Bianca must be a mind reader to know Governor Palin’s thinking @ 2012! Bianca, just how is discussing this a lack of discretion?
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5 – No, I’m not a mind reader. It’s been in the news that she’s thinking of running in 2012. And if you can’t see how it’s a lack of discretion, then well, then I don’t know what to say.
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I tend to like the confession, but with some hesitation. The problem for public figures is that the confession once given sincerely becomes a story one tells over and over. A set piece. And so the real truth of it ebbs out, and it becomes a Sign of the Authentic. Big whoop, then.
Still, when you can see the public figure being human, that can be powerful. Disagree as I may, with Palin’s policies, I find the moment reasonably authentic; it deepens my understanding of her. Still, pretty soon, the old public relations shield will go back up and this will end up as a story — so with Bianca I think the best path is to resist the temptation to repeat telling this story. Once is enough.
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Bianca obviously thinks he/she is omniscient (should I have cpaitalized the ‘O’?).
I once saw a “Twilight Zone” episode about a guy who could read other people’s minds and motives. As I vaguely recall, it gave him amazing advantages at first but it also eventually alienated him from those of us mere mortals who actually have to live with our fellow humans on trust and faith sometimes.
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Was it a lack of discretion for the Lord Jesus to let His most intimate prayer of agony in the garden be recorded for everyone to see?
One of the most prominent traits of human nature seems to be the way we criticize each other so easily.
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I think it is important for people in public life to lead — and Sarah Palin did just that with her confession. The truth is never harmful.
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If indeed Sarah palin holds open the possibility of running for another high office in 2012, maybe it’s because she loves this country with all her heart and wants to serve her.
In any case, she can only becaome President if the people vote her in. Do some people fear her potential candidacy so much because they think she has a good chance? I’m not so sure.
I don’t even know if I would vote for her in a primary and I respect anyone’s right NOT to vote for her if they so wish. But I do know that those who criticize her unduly, prejudge her harshly, hate her profusely, or ridicule her unmercifully at this stage of the game are too mindlessly cynical and partisan for their own good–or for our country’s good.
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I usually hesitate to ascribe grasping motives to a difficult personal confession. Perhaps this makes me easy to fool, but in some cases I’d rather be gullible than a cynic.
I think Palin would have made a terrible VP, and she would make a disastrous President, but I admire this admission.
…
Glenn Beck is the exception that proves this rule. Every time he blubbers I feel an overwhelming urge to punch him.
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Lynn: There are no pro-abortion people.
Continuing to use this canard does nothing to advance your cause.
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I see no reason why this would make any better case for Sara Palin to win an election. Those on each side of the aisle can find all kinds of things to twist it and turn it. There are times to confess before only God, or family, friends and on and on. Unless we see evidence of some sinister motive, I guess I will take her at her word. I had a similar thing happen to me and that may make me believe her more.
Christians do a disservice to themselves when they try to sweep things under the rug. Often more people know than they think, anyway, and it makes them look like hypocrites. I have seen it destroy churches.
Confession can also have it ramifications and we don’t blab everything about our lives to everyone, but I see nothing wrong here with Sara Palin being transparent. It is sometimes just part of living in the light.
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I don’t believe there are no pro-abortion people. I’ve met people very cold and callous. The judge could be very matter of fact about abortion. His answer: “get rid of it.” So, let’s not tell that lie that everyone believes that abortion should be safe legal and rare. There are people who think it’s just the cost of doing business.
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“I think Sarah likes drawing attention to herself.”
Yes, why she can’t she be shy and retiring like other politicians?
Our President, for example?
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What?
Make that, “Why can’t she be shy and retiring like other politicians?”
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There is a value of leading through one’s weakness. I have no idea of Ms Palan’s motive since I can’t read her mind but it sounds as if she was able to connect with those who where there and struggled in similar ways.
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Them words is music to my ears: retiring politician. It just gives you a warm fuzzy now, don’t it?
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Looks like anyday now Palin’s ex almost-son-in-law will be guest speaker at a NARAL banquet. The true face of the pro-aborts: men who impregnate and then want to vacate!
So odd to see such a weasely fellow feted on Oprah and other shows
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A pro-abortion person is one who insists that ALL states should be absolutely forced to allow abortion and make it legal regardless of what the people in that state think or prefer. A pro-abortion person insists that no state whatsoever should ever be allowed to decide for themselves whether to support abortion or not–they want legalized abortion forced down all of our throats no matter what the citizens think or prefer.
That’s what Roe V Wade mandates.
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“Certain things should only be confessed to family and close friends.”
Yes, of course, how indiscreet. She opened her mouth and now people outside her family and close friends also know that she gave birth to a Down’s syndrome baby. The media had kept all that such a secret till now.
Arcadia: Ever hear of Dr. George Tiller, who can afford to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in political support? Child killing is a profitable enterprise.
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#14 “Confession can also have it ramifications and we don’t blab everything about our lives to everyone, but I see nothing wrong here with Sara Palin being transparent. It is sometimes just part of living in the light.”
I agree.
But I also tried to think why Bianca might see it as inappropriate to have confessed in public. If abortion is murder of one’s child (which is generally how the pro-life side sees it), she was confessing to having considered murdering her child and not telling her husband. Would we feel the same way about her public confession if she said she had thought of murdering her daughter because of how difficult her daughter’s pregnancy would make her life? I don’t know about you, but hearing that kind of confession from her would make me very uncomfortable. So I have to ask myself, why is that? Do I really think that it would have been murder if she had had an abortion? If not, then is it wrong? And if it is, why would one confession bother me more than the other?
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I don’t intend to become a politician, but…
During my first pregnancy, day after day, sitting in front of, and holding the toilet, it was easy to see how a pregnant woman, without the knowledge of a family behind her and a commitment to God and to the child, would think the easy way would be to abort. It is easy to forget what comes in the light of the immediate.
I think what Sarah Palin has done is simply verbalize a common feeling that never gets acted upon.
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One advantage to Palin in bringing a Down syndrome baby into the world is that she won’t have to get the child through high school.
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Bianca
I don’t know why you feel the way you do, even though you have given several reasons –
Sarah Palin has poured out her heart – those who have similar experiences having to face a pregnancy which would result in bringing up a child with many difficulties has given other women someone to bond with. She has opened herself up for ridicule, but she has also opened herself up to showing us her real heart, the heart of a woman who could have sinned, kept it from her husband but chose to honor GOD – she reminds me of King David the man who sinned, who could have taken another path but didn’t, he was punished for his sins.
Sarah Palin stands as a symbol – honoring GOD and HIS Word, and also being honest with her own husband – we don’t have a lot of people today like Gov. Palin, who will bare their soul in spite of what others might say –
Let’s not take her good intentions and try to make them evil, as in future elections she might be involved – instead, let us be thankful that this lady in all her good may have influenced countless others to follow her honorable choice.
I would also remind everyone the Bible is full of mans individual sins and how GOD treated their sin, the punishments for doing evil, it wasn’t hidden.
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#25 That has to be the cruelest nastiest thing, I have heard in a long time.
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Scroop, #25, that is just a cold and rude comment.
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Pauline, that is the reality of hardening ourselves to the truth of what abortion really is. It is that slippery slope that was warned about. We can study the same progression in Nazi Germany or we can see it individual lives.
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Sarah Palin’s talk was to a pro-life group only. It was designed to encourage them in their commitment to the cause and I’m sure it did just that in all the ways Lynn has mentioned. I do not believe it had any motivation directed towards her own political advancement. If anything, it will tend to do just the opposite. If she has any ambitions on a national scale for 2012, the smart thing politically would be to steer clear of controversy, appeal to all sides, take the middle road, talk out of both sides of your mouth, etc. If she was like that, she would do just like politician Obama did in the IL Senate, just vote “present” at every opportunity and avoid controversy.
But Sarah Palin is not like him. Courage, honesty, and the determination to do what is right, no matter what, are her hallmarks. Of course the cynics and the pro-death enemies who abound in this culture will do everything possible to twist, denigrate, and distort her speech, her life, and her motives. That is a shame upon their own deformed character, not Sarah Palin’s.
But they do this because they fear her effectiveness and how she so clearly shows the dark side of pro-death thinking and the bright side of pro-life thinking. That is why she told her personal story that so many people can relate to. When people listen to her there is real persuasion going on. Pro-lifers are encouraged and energized, while some in the pro-death camp actually begin to think and change their minds. The pro-death camp fears this and responds accordingly.
She knew that the hyenas from the left would be at her heels immediately, but she is to be commended for her selfless courage. Regardless of what happens between now and 2012, Sarah Palin is doing her best TODAY for a good and righteous cause. We should do the same.
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“. . . putting down the BlackBerry and picking up the breast pump.”
There’s the whole reason for Palin to flee Alaska budget politics and appear before her Indiana base.
When Sarah bares her breast, it’s to offer maternal milk to hungry voters.
Has anyone done a word search for how many times she said “hungry”?
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While I didn’t particularly care for Palin when she was running for VP, and really can’t picture voting for her in 2012, I have to agree with Victoria in #26, and others here who commend her for speaking up.
It seems to me that it would take a significant amount of courage for her to do so, and speaks well to her integrity, that she “walks the talk” as has been stated.
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Thomas – Of course it’s rude and cold. Palin invites us to evaluate her mothering as a measure of her political ambitions.
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I find it admirable / desirable / commendable for Mrs. Palin to go out in public and report on her decision-making process and advocate for her particular morality system.
There is part of her morality system, though, which I cannot figure out. In what sense could it be considered moral or defensible for me to seek to use the power of the government and the legal system to impose the tenants of my choice of religion on everyone else? What is it which could possibly make this kind of behavior “moral”? I’ve done a lot of searching, but I have not yet been able to uncover any comment by Mrs. Palin to enlighten me on this question … and it is only through addressing this question that I can determine what do to as a voter about “abortion rights”.
As noted in the summary above, Mrs. Palin spoke at length about her process of considering an abortion during her presentation at the Vanderburgh County Right to Life dinner; the decision was a difficult one for a host of reasons. I cannot find, however, any description of how Mrs. Palin justifies wanting to deny other women the opportunity to make their own evaluation and make their own decision for themselves precisely as she describes herself as doing. Why, I wonder, does she suppose that what was determined to be right for her must necessarily be what is right for everyone else forevermore? What, precisely, compels people to take the leap from making their own difficult decisions to wanting to make them for everyone else?
Beyond the dubious morality of using coercion on others, I also fail to grasp the logic involved. Where is the logic in suggesting, “We deem each fetus to be a human being endowed with rights … and if we have our way, every female fetus will be brought to term so that she can grow up to be a woman without rights.”
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JJF #12 “I think Palin would have made a terrible VP, and she would make a disastrous President, but I admire this admission.”
Take the blinders off, man! Are you saying that you’re empressed with Joe Biden?! Wow. Not to mention the lacluster job of Obama. I’m sure you voted for him too.
I know that I shouldn’t be surprised by comments like these. Sarah can do nothing but earn caustic comments by such hateful people. I know, look what I just said about the current Administration. Truth is, I’m hoping for the best, but preparing for the worst. Obama has done nothing but disapoint, at every turn. I pray this nation survives him if he doesn’t start at least governning towards the middle left instead of the far wacky left.
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Brother Dan:
I don’t know what I said that makes you think I hate Sarah Palin. Not so. She seems like the kind of lady I wouldn’t mind having in leadership at my church, but I don’t think she’s competent to lead the country. Or even to lead a state or a city. But I don’t hate her. I don’t even dislike her.
No, I never said I was impressed with Joe Biden. I said nothing at all about Joe Biden. Don’t know that I ever have. The only remarkable thing about him so far is how much he stays out of the picture — an especially stark contrast next to Dick Cheney. But the thread isn’t about our feelings about Obama or Biden.
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Okay, sorry about that then.
I believe she would have been a great VP, just not under McCain. Her record of running Alaska is what I base that on. But between McCain’s compaign over handling her and the vitriolic treatment she got from the MSM, she wasn’t herself. I do believe that if she doesn’t learn to just be herself, she wont go far in national politics.
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Mark7Sys (#34):
I believe that there are at least two things you fail to see in Palin’s morality system:
First, it is not her morality system. It is God’s—the sovereign God—and she is obligated to live by it regardless of her own convenience or inconvenience. We all face difficult decisions in the process of living and many times it involves self-sacrifice. This is what Sarah Palin has done, in obedience to God.
Second, in regard to other women and their choices. There are aspects of the Judeo-Christian morality code that are so important and fundamental that they are absolutely vital to the maintenance of civilized culture. In those cases, it is in society’s best interests to use the force of law to maintain those standards. That is why we have laws to prevent and punish murder, theft, various forms of sexual immorality, etc. Individual choice must sometimes take a back seat to the greater interests of society.
That is what the current debate over abortion is all about. Since our founding as a nation we have considered abortion to be murder and had laws against it. You could not murder a child in the womb because he/she was rightly considered to be a separate person. You could not choose to murder him/her any more than you could choose to murder your next door neighbor.
Modern feminism is an inherently selfish movement that goes against all of this. They have sought to redefine personhood contrary to medicine, science, religion, and commonsense, in order to change the law to their own selfish advantage. In this way, they can just kill the inconvenient consequences of their own sexual acts. Another human being dies on the altar of their pleasure and convenience. The consequences of this for our culture have been horrendous, but the full consequences are yet to be realized.
Your closing statement alluding to women without rights is just feminist hyperbole. Their sexual “rights” in recent years have been expanded to the level of virtual license. To contend that they would have no rights at all without abortion is just plain hogwash. Civilized people don’t want to see those “rights” extended to the level of murder. No civilization can long survive morally or physically when it systematically murders its children as we do. To be perfectly frank, it doesn’t deserve to survive.
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Since our founding as a nation we have considered abortion to be murder and had laws against it.
Making things up again, MICHAEL MARTIN? How many executions, if any, can you document for abortion? How many sentences of life in prison? We are rather severe with murderers in the US, but we’ve rarely prosecuted abortion, and I’d be surprised if we ever punished it as murder. The citizens of Michigan voted to make abortion legal in the early 70’s.
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Wow! #38
Very nice job. I was going to comment, but you did it so much better.
Bottom line? Murder is not a right.
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I don’t agree with Bianca. I think that Christian women (and Christians in general) need to be more open with their sin struggles.
When we try to present this “perfect” image, we end up seeming like hypocrites when we fail.
We all struggle with sin. Showing that reality to others, and the victory we can have through Christ Jesus, gives them hope that they too might make the right decision, even though they may (secretly) have been tempted not to.
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#25 Scroop Moth:”One advantage to Palin in bringing a Down syndrome baby into the world is that she won’t have to get the child through high school.”
I don’t know what happens when a comment is “reported the to moderator” so I didn’t do it.
Your comment about Downs Syndrome people is ignorant, and callous beyond description with civil words. It reveals both a small mind and a cold heart.
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31 – When Sarah bares her breast, it’s to offer maternal milk to hungry voters.
I agree. I just wish Christians could see it.
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BIANCA, thanks.
FISHERMAN, What happens when you report a comment is that you can get in trouble yourself, if the post you complain about doesn’t break the blog’s rules.
To my knowledge, I’ve never broken the rules or been warned by an email. I’ve made two formal complaints against other posters; one resulted in an apology and another was ignored. My ignored complaint was based on an argument, the merits of which would be as hard for this blog to deal with as Bush’s war crimes are hard for Obama.
I don’t make personal attacks. For example, I wouldn’t tell you that you have a small mind and a cold heart. That’s something that crosses the rules. But I won’t report you for it. I’m proud of my record of taking responsibility for what I write by correcting or amending, providing sources and evidence when questioned.
I try to be accurate and substantive. In my value system, carrying a fetus to term doesn’t turn you into a model mother when your teen gets pregnant and fails to graduate from high school. Was I not nice to Palin? She doesn’t want me to be — she’s a smart politician, and writes me thank you notes.
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As a volunteer at a pregnancy counseling center, I appreciated her candor. As a woman who had a crisis pregnancy–a lump in my breast while pregnant–I never considered aborting but I did ask God, excuse me, screamed at God, “Do you want me to be a pro-life martyr? Is that your will?”
The fact I, and Sarah Palin, understand the difficulties of a crisis pregnancy make us understand far better why women feel they need to abort. Frankly, it makes me a better counselor.
A lot of women need to be told the truth–that it’s not easy–but joy can come from not terminating an innocent life. I don’t understand why anyone would complain about that message.
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Scoop Moth, you are blind to your own sophistry.
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Pauline, #23, wrote; “Would we feel the same way about her public confession if she said she had thought of murdering her daughter because of how difficult her daughter’s pregnancy would make her life?”
Pauline, love is willing to endure difficulty for the sake of the loved one ( know you know that). But what people think or feel is really hard to control (even in ourselves) or condemn (especially in others). But those who are willing to come clean about it and deal with such thoughts honestly are the healthiest people of all, in my view.
Pauline continued, “I don’t know about you, but hearing that kind of confession from her would make me very uncomfortable.”
Actions are what matter, Pauline, not your comfort or mine. The great thing is that while Palin did think the unthinkable, she did NOT carry it out. That puts her on the same moral level with some of the greatest moral giants around. Morality is not a means of controling what tempts us or goes across our minds, but what we do with those temptations and thoughts.
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Moth (#39):
No, Moth I’m not making things up. That’s your area of expertise, not mine.
Since our founding as a nation, we (meaning the majority) have considered abortion to be a form of murder. There were some who did not consider it to be so. But the greater weight of opinion, by far, leaned in that direction in the earlier years of our country. As time went on, sympathy for the mother began to override that for the child. Judges and juries became more reluctant to consider the practice as murder in the same manner as for human beings killing each other outside the womb. Regardless of the objective evidence and the moral grounds, a tearful woman on the witness stand obviously makes a far greater impact on a jury than her never seen and discarded child. Nevertheless, it cannot be denied that the primary grounds for opposing abortion, throughout our history, has been the moral basis of the 6th Commandment: “You shall not murder.”
The following sources support my point:
The fact that there have been few convictions is accounted for by the considerations mentioned above. But if you mean that as a justification for the practice, it means very little in a country where we have increasing difficulty convicting and punishing even the most heinous of criminals. Criminals often get away with murder or are punished very lightly here in the U.S., especially so in recent years.
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Mark7sys wrote; “I cannot find, however, any description of how Mrs. Palin justifies wanting to deny other women the opportunity to make their own evaluation and make their own decision for themselves precisely as she describes herself as doing.”
Keep in mind that Roe V Wade literally denies all American people and every state in the Union the right to make their own evaluation or decide for themselves on what policies should be in place on abortion. It enforces its legality on us all no matter what any of us think or decide! To over-rule RoeV Wade is to give the choice back to the states. It would not criminalize or legalize abortion to overturn Roe V Wade. It would simply give the choice back to the American people.
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Mark7sys,
We all have a right to seek to use the power of the government and the legal system to advocate for what we think is best or right. But we have a Constitution that sets the terms for how this is done. You also have the right to advocate against what I advocate. Either way, both of us are trying to use the force of gov’t to impose a principle or influence the process. So what? Just do it gracefully and follow due process.
Those who seek to impose the tenants of secularism do not hesitate to advocate for their will or views. I think the “nothing-is-sacred” principle is being imposed on us through government and the judiciary all the time. How is that moral, Mark?
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MM: First, it is not her morality system. It is God’s—the sovereign God.
What the heck gives you the right to claim you know and have the right to enforce the will of an invisible being whom nobody has ever seen?
That is the ultimate arrogance. It is just as arrogant as those jihadists who take literally some parts of the Koran.
It is especially galling when the purported word of your god is conspicuously devoid of any clear statements on the subject, while being very specific on relatively minor matters.
And it derogates the rights of women everywhere.
But if you mean that as a justification for the practice, it means very little in a country where we have increasing difficulty convicting and punishing even the most heinous of criminals.
Yeah, right, that’s why we have by far the highest incarceration rate of ANY western country and one of the very highest in the entire world.
It’s a brilliant self-serving fantasy, Michael, but it simply aint so.
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FISHERMAN, you keep constructing sentences consisting of the second person singular subjective pronoun, a form of the verb to be, and a pejorative. That’s a personal attack and it’s against the rules. Don’t get me wrong, though, I don’t mind, so long as you eventually substantiate your indictment. I want to give you a chance. But just calling a poster names and disparaging his character (its character, in my case), without any information and analysis, is . . . weak.
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Scroopy, there is no excuse for your comment about Palin’s son. You insult all those with mental disabilities, not Palin. But as you noted, your comment is based on: “In my value system….” In my value system, you don’t have a value system.
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Arcadia (#51):
Sarah Palin has made it abundantly clear that her decision to live by God’s moral law is her decision and it is a decision of moral obligation on her part because she is a Christian and Christ is her Lord and Master.
You and others obviously do not feel that way. You are free to make your own moral decisions based on whatever code, if any, that you have.
The difference between Christians and Jihadists, which you ignore, is that they would never allow you the latitude of my last sentence. They would take off your head rather than allow you that freedom.
Save your false indignation for when your go to live in Saudi Arabia.
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How many executions and lifetime imprisonments, MICHAEL MARTIN? You have provided evidence that abortion used to be a crime, and was occasionally prosecuted, but that doesn’t substantiate your claim that America has always considered it to be murder.
The greater weight of opinion about murder doesn’t “lean” in one direction or another; it’s pretty close to universal, decisive, and perpetual. Society shows what it thinks of murder and treats the perpetrators accordingly, with remarkable consistency. Juries aren’t reluctant to convict murderers. We don’t have dissent about the right to murder.
Abortion is different. When was abortion a capital crime? When so enforced? I think your answer would be, “long ago, and never”. Is that not right?
Today, your problem in getting abortion re-criminalized is something like the hopeless challenge of playing tic tac toe. In order to win, you have to go first, and you have to put your X on a space that says “abortion is murder”. If you put your X on a square that says “abortion is some other crime”, you will never win a law to criminalize it. My point is, if abortion really was murder, people never would have legalized it, and they would outlaw it again, but they don’t consider it to be murder, so they won’t. We do what we do about murder that’s not what we do (or ever did?) about abortion.
Your historical claim needs data. For example, come back and report that, based on executions, America historically considered sodomy to be worse than abortion.
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Michael Martin:
You and others obviously do not feel that way. You are free to make your own moral decisions based on whatever code, if any, that you have.
So you support the right to choose? And defend the right of physicians to perform abortions?
If you do, I apologize.
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The people didn’t legalize abortion. It was done by judicial fiat against the will of a number of state legislatures which already had passed laws against abortion.
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I find abortion a difficult issue.
I have been criticized for “psychoanalyzing” people by other posters. This thread is full of speculations (both positive and negative) about other people’s motives (whatever you want to call it).
I am more bothered by genocide, killing of adults, and widespread throughout today’s world, than than by abortion.
I favor encouraging alternatives to abortion, such as adoption, and more emphasis on positive solutions than negative prohibitions. I am sentimental in this regard.
I am not convinced in obsessing about birth control as a form of abortion aids your cause. I am not sure applying criminal penalties to practitioners of abortion aids your cause. I think the fact that a large percentage of pregnancies spontaneously miscarriage should make abortion opponents as uneasy as casual acceptance of abortion as a solution should make anti-abortion people.
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Moth (#55) writes:
“My point is, if abortion really was murder, people never would have legalized it, and they would outlaw it again, but they don’t consider it to be murder, so they won’t.”
Your point ignores the proven depravity of human nature and their oft demonstrated willingness to excuse any conduct so long as it contributes to their comfort, personal prejudices, and convenience. People will do this if they do not have a strong and enduring moral code, outside of themselves, to restrain their selfish impulses. The majority of Americans once had such a moral code before they rejected Christianity. Now they have no moral anchor. They are like sheep with their concept of right and wrong manipulated by whoever has the dominance of political power.
The dominance of political power has, in the last half of the 20th Century, shifted increasingly to the left. They now have the right to go first in your hypothetical tic-tac-toe game. You are correct in that. But you are basically arguing that “might makes right” and you are one of the sheep who has bought that immoral line. It may be that we will never get Roe v. Wade reversed, but that have nothing whatsoever to do with abortion’s immoral nature as murder in the womb. That is not determined by today’s misguided public sentiment any more than the real moral stature of 1940 Germany was determined by the sentiments of its citizens.
You claim that we have no ambivalence about murder, that we treat it with “remarkable consistency.” If America were still a predominantly Christian nation I would agree with you. But, as I mentioned earlier, with our rejection of Christianity we have lost the moral consistency we once had. Abortion is an early indicator of the murderous depths to which we are descending. Today, abortion is to America what Kristallnacht was to 1938 Germany.
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Arcadia (#56) asks:
“So you support the right to choose? And defend the right of physicians to perform abortions?”
I think you already know the answer to that question Arcadia. Your problem is that you seem incapable of drawing a proper balance between individual freedoms and the needs of society as a whole. Furthermore, you don’t seem capable of understanding that individual freedoms, when carried too far, can actually become crimes destructive to society and other individuals. Oliver Wendelll Holmes once said, “”The right to swing my fist ends where the other man’s nose begins.”
The feminist fist that stabs the abortionist knife—as her supposed right—doesn’t just stop at someone’s nose, it goes straight to the heart of an innocent child.
For further clarification on my view of the balance between individual freedoms and societal needs, go back and read my arguments at #38.
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Arcadia wrote; “What the heck gives you the right… That is the ultimate arrogance.. just as arrogant as those jihadists… It is especially galling… And it derogates the rights of women everywhere…” (See the full post at #51).
Arcadia, calm down. As things stand now, your right to have people exterminate unborn human babies has NOT been overturned. You can still legally have it done, so why are you so uset? Your side has won on that issue.
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I have read most of the above comments regarding Sarah Palin. So far, the only person that makes sense and has any coherency is Michael Martin; the rest you are mindless contradictorians. If you had half the integrity and honesty of Governor Sarah Palin, you’d be mocked, too. You are all living travesties for mocking this good and decent person. She does not need your approval and you not worthy to have a person like her serving you.
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“Was it a lack of discretion for the Lord Jesus to let His most intimate prayer of agony in the garden be recorded for everyone to see?”
Yes. Obviously it was a political move….
[/sarcasm off]
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My mother was very pro-life; in her seventies after years of insomnia she was willing to take the CPC hotline overnight once or twice a month. But she once told me that she understood how easy it would be for a young unsupported girl with morning sickness to make the wrong decision; in the early weeks she doesn’t feel “pregnant”; she just feels sick. That rather surprised me, but it showed reality.
Mom bore seven children over 17 years (plus a couple of miscarriages). In her forties, she had three of us in three years and two months. My sister (the middle of those three) is a mere 15 1/2 months younger than me, which means Mom was pregnant at age 43 with an infant and four older children (ages eight to fifteen by the time the baby was born). . . and a husband in his fifties who worked nights and didn’t change diapers. And did I mention that my teen brothers were in high school at the time (taking it at home, by correspondence) and working part-time jobs? I doubt Mom ever considered abortion, but certainly she had a “crisis” pregnancy. Even a mother of seven without any abortions could volunteer in her later years to identify with hurting teen girls.
A public recognition of a moment of thinking how much easier the wrong choice would be doesn’t make a person a greater sinner. As many as 90 percent of Down’s syndrome babies are aborted, and doctors pressure for that choice. Admitting that the possibility entered one’s mind is facing reality. And honestly, since we don’t even know how much she pondered it, remember that temptation is not in itself a sin; even Jesus was tempted, but didn’t sin. I think this admission will help other women in the same boat–they’ll realize it’s not really that the governor is much stronger than they are (and thus better able to handle such a crisis), but that it’s a hard choice for anyone, and they still have the responsibility to make the right choice.
Let those without temptation cast the first stone.
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Since I am a man, I talked to my wife to get her view as a woman. We agree.
We find it hard to believe that Sarah Palin had not already settled such issues for herself many years earlier. Both my wife and I had siblings with genetic abnormalities. My wife’s sister had Down syndrome. My sister had an extra chromosome, but not the one that causes Down’s. She died as an infant.
When my wife first got pregnant we declined all tests for fetal abnormalities, except for the routine sonograms. We loved our unborn child and it made absolutely no difference to us if it were to have mental or physical handicaps. It’s not the end of the world–for the child or the parents. In fact raising such a child can be a tremendous opportunity to grow in grace. Since my wife and I both knew, absolutely, that it would be wrong to abort the baby, it simply would not have entered our minds, even for a fleeting instant.
(In fact, my wife had trouble with her first two pregnancies, and it made her all the more flabbergasted that a woman would destroy something precious that we weren’t sure we would ever have ourselves.)
In other words, I find Palin’s confession a bit disheartening. She’s not the woman that I thought she was. How any woman with her experience and her professed beliefs could consider aborting a baby because it would be “difficult” for her to raise it is simply outside the realm of understanding for me.
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Kyle – 65
YOU WRITE: “In other words, I find Palin’s confession a bit disheartening. She’s not the woman that I thought she was. How any woman with her experience and her professed beliefs could consider aborting a baby because it would be “difficult” for her to raise it is simply outside the realm of understanding for me.”
Kyle, she didn’t do what crossed her mind for just a short time. Her experience and professed beliefs were tempted for a few moments, but she turned from those thoughts and made the choice for life.
There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man: but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it.
1 Corinthians 10:14
Kyle we are all tempted, it’s how we handle the temptation that makes the difference. Sarah Palin was tempted, but she turned away from that temptation. She has chosen to share the temptation she had, that shows character, and a willingness to share her heart.
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Well put, Victoria.
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@ Michael Martin (#38):
Does your religion tell you that a fetus is a “person” with “rights”? (Do you have chapter and verse on that?) Does your religion tell you that termination of fetus is “murder”? (Do you have chapter and verse on that?) Does your religion tell you that it is proper and godly behavior to use political power and the legal system to coerce others into abiding by the dictates of your personal religion? (Do you have chapter and verse on that?)
If you have chapter and verse on ANY of these things, I will be shocked. But whatever might be the case, I’m glad to think that you find yourself in a country in which you are free to choose a religion for yourself and free to comport yourself according to its dictates (and I agree that you should comport yourself according to its dictates: I wouldn’t have it any other way). What I want to know is this: Why shouldn’t other people have the same privilege?
It could scarcely be clearer: the Founding Fathers did not intend the U.S. to be a Theocracy; indeed, they provided that there should be separation of church and state.
It is astonishing, then, that at a time when we are at war with religious extremists we have so many advocates of Taliban-style governance right here at home. The message seems to be, “It is right and proper that we should all be fighting over the reins of power so that we can try to impose the dictates of our own religion on everyone else: for everyone everywhere to be perpetually at each others throats will make for an ideal world.” Seems like a terribly odd message to be coming from America, from a group of immigrants originally here in search of religious freedom.
The world is being terrorized by people who know with perfect certainty what God wants and who have no moral issue with using force to impose God’s will on others. Is this really the model we want to adopt here as well?
<>
If everyone’s rights are up for grabs and are contingent upon which group has the most political clout at any given time then, yes, I’d say that’s pretty much equivalent to not having rights to begin with. (It’s only “hyperbole” when YOUR rights are not involved.)
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@ Michael Martin (#38):
“It is not her morality system. It is God’s.”
If, perchance, God has invested SP with free will, then she has chosen a religion for herself and didn’t have one imposed on her … it follows, then, that her morality system is in verity her own.
Moreover, most of us do not understand God’s will perfectly. If SP is normal in this respect, then, again, her morality system is hers alone, just as mine is unique to me.
“It is not her morality system. It is God’s. . . . This is what Sarah Palin has done, in obedience to God.”
You make my point for me (thank you). This crusade—as you have indicated—is a religious one; that is precisely why I asked the question, “In what sense could it be considered moral or defensible for me to seek to use the power of the government and the legal system to impose the tenets of my choice of religion on everyone else?”
“There are aspects of the Judeo-Christian morality code …”
Perhaps you would have me say to myself, “Well, of course, MY religion is the TRUE one; that is all the justification I need for demanding that the government impose the dictates of MY religion on everyone else.”
But before I actually vote based on this outlook, it might be worth taking a look at what has come of such an attitude in the past. . . .
The world has been suffering for years now with the devastation caused by a war we Americans started with a country which did not attack us and which was not threatening us. Do our actions bespeak some kind of special regard for the sanctity of life? Hardly.
Jesus was sent to His crucifixion by a simple majority vote of the rabble [Mt. 27:15-26]; this vote was a periodic event (the text calls it “the governor’s custom at the Feast …”). The people who campaigned for this particular outcome of the vote were none other than the religious leaders of the society [Mt. 27:20]. In so doing, did organized religion demonstrate some special regard for the sanctity of human life? Hardly.
On the 6th of October, 1536, William Tyndale was burned at the stake by the religious leaders of his day. [ http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/encyc12/Page_47.html ] What was his “crime”? Tyndale translated the New Testament from the Greek and much of the Old Testament from the Hebrew into English. (Tyndale’s work was foundational for later editions, including the KJV.) Tyndale wanted the common people – even the plowboy – to have access to the scriptures. In carrying out this murder, did the leaders of the Christian Church teach by example that the church holds some kind of special regard for the sanctity of life? Hardly.
The same Bible which proclaims “thou shalt not kill” also contains directives like this one:
Is this a mechanism for teaching the sanctity of human life? Hardly. Does this demonstrate that the Decalogue is a list of absolutes, a description of God’s own character? Hardly.
Countless people have been tortured and killed at the hands of the Inquisition.
[ http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/Inquisition.html | http://www.sundayschoolcourses.com/inq/inquisition.htm |
http://www.pbs.org/inquisition ]
Do good things tend to happen when churches are invested with political power? Hardly.
In short, the world would have been a far different place if those of us in the Judeo-Christian heritage had taken the admonition “thou shalt not kill” seriously, but history testifies that we have not.
History shows clearly how, generally speaking, Christians and churches feel about the sanctity of human life … and (given this background) now I am expected to believe that ‘every fetus is sacred’ because ‘God says so’ and this is (or should be) OBVIOUS to everyone? Oh, please.
“There are aspects of the Judeo-Christian morality code that are so important and fundamental that they are absolutely vital to the maintenance of civilized culture.”
You would describe the outcomes I have mentioned as being representative of “civilized culture”? { If so, then God spare us from “civilized culture”! } Perhaps Theocracy is your ideal of “civilized culture”, and America isn’t really your cup of tea.
Even if I, by some special grace, have THE TRUTH in hand (as compared with anyone else), I still am not aware of the justification for electing myself spokesperson for God or for using coercion to impose the dictates of my choice of religion on others. I lost count long ago of how many times I have read the New Testament, but I have never been able to find any evidence that Christ or any apostle ever MODELED appropriating the power of the government or the legal system to impose religious dictates on anyone, neither can I find that Christ or any apostle ever ADVOCATED any such thing. Where, then, does this inspiration come from?
If any of you have located what I have missed, please enlighten me.
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Kyle,
“How any woman with her experience and her professed beliefs could consider aborting a baby because it would be “difficult” for her to raise it is simply outside the realm of understanding for me.”
Me, too.
I actually think this could backfire (for the pro-life cause). It’s NOT ok to think about killing your child. (Matthew 5:21-22) Sin is what’s in our hearts, whether it’s acted upon or not.
Stubob? Where are you? Could you please type in all caps that genetic testing, e.g. amniocentesis, should be avoided for the mental health of the mother and the physical health of the baby? If an amnio is avoided, the mother would not spend months despising her unborn child (who may or may not be what she thinks the child will be). Once a baby is born, it is much much harder to contemplate killing the baby. At least, I would hope so.
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@ Joel Mark (#50):
“Those who seek to impose the tenants of secularism do not hesitate to advocate for their will or views.”
Isn’t this just as it should be? I myself (in Post #34) praised Mrs. Palin for her advocacy, even though I don’t agree with (or even understand) her position.
“I think the “nothing-is-sacred” principle is being imposed on us through government and the judiciary all the time. How is that moral, Mark?”
As far as I know, there is no question of morality involved: the government isn’t supposed to be taking sides in religious matters in the first place.
Churches are free and you are free to impress people and change minds by your vision of what is sacred. Why do churches feel compelled to use political power to impose their will?
Should we really suppose that “good” behavior which is done under compulsion will score points with God? It is difficult for me to conceive that God could be that shallow … but I am willing to admit that I might be wrong.
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Bianca,
I think it’s your style that bothers people.
I, too, think talking about her experience was indiscreet. Having the baby was a good statement in itself and had already been overpraised. Even if everyone kills their unborn Downs baby doesn’t make having one exceptional. One is supposed to give birth to one’s child.
NJL,
I beg to differ on truth never being harmful.
I would never ever want my child to know that I once, even for a fraction of a second, wanted him to be killed. And if my child had not the capacity to understand it, his siblings would and my husband would and it would affect them. If they thought me courageous for not going through with the killing, I would feel even worse. I would want their forgiveness, not their praise.
But that’s just me. (For my nit-picky grammar son, I will say, That’s just I.) As much as I like being told the truth, I would rather that certain weaknesses, a.k.a. sins, be kept from me. If you had been thinking awful thoughts of me, please don’t let me know. Just pray for me.
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Keeping the hate alive …
CNN did a whole segment bashing Palin. She is still a constant source of ridicule in the main stream media. Why? Because she is an influential conservative woman who opposes abortion and even (gasp) chose not to abort a “defective” child. Bashing Palin’s family will provide hate filled entertainment to the left for years to come.
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72 – Yes, you’re right, Theselittleones. My style leaves much to be desired. But I get sick and fed up with the way people think, especially Christians who should know better. Thank you for your post on the MLK thread also. I really appreciated it.
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Notice that Sara Palin said, the thought crossed her mind–for a second. Honestly, we have thoughts cross our mind all the time. Martin Luther tells us that it is one thing to have a bird fly over our head and another to allow it to build a nest in our hair. Christians should stop acting like they never, ever have a temptation come to them. They never have a thought of doing anything wrong. We wonder some people think we are hypocrites?
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Kyle @ #65, wrote; “She’s not the woman that I thought she was.”
Much of your post, Kyle, was commendable. But your need to disparage and judge Gov. Palin simply did not follow. You and you wife are you and your wife. Sarah Palin is a distinct human being (I shouldn/t have to be explaining this to you) and has her own temptations, feelings and thoughts. What she does is what matters and I admire her highly for that, in spite of her feelings.
BBesides, who you thought Sarah Palin was (good or bad) has NOTHING to do with who she actually is. That was your creation of her in your mind. She is a human being and she was honest about that.
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#71, Theselittleones wrote; “I actually think this could backfire (for the pro-life cause).”
She is a straight shooter. If it backfires, on some agenda level, so what? She said what she felt and meant and naysayers can quibble all they want on the possible fall out. Palin may not have ssid it for some strategic reason and I admire her all the more for her honesty.
Don’t be so cynical, Theselittleones. Or so harshly judgmental.
It may not be human perfection to think about killing an unborn child, but it is thoroughly Christian to CONFESS it honestly.
Sheeesh.
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Mark7sys, “Why do churches feel compelled to use political power to impose their will?”
Because they are free to do so in America. So are non-churches. Abortionists have used political power to force the legality of abortion on people who believe it is immoral. Those people have no recourse politically to resist. The Supreme Court shut them out.
Secularists should have no more right to impose their tenants on the rest of us than Christians or Jews.
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Mark7sys, As long as we do not get violent ourselves and we respect the process, Christians have every right to advocate for laws against things we consider to be horrific and immoral, like the murderous extermination of innocent humans babies. And you have a right to try to stifle or smother the freedom of believers to participate equally in politics. I just don’t have to buy in.
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Joel, Of course you must realize that there’s a huge difference between “forcing the legality of abortion on people” and forcing people to have abortions. Nobody is being forced to have an abortion. On the other hand, making abortion illegal would force women to have unwanted children. Legal abortion allows the individual to make the choice.
As for Sarah Palin, she said “It was a time I asked myself, was I going to walk the walk?”. It sounds to me like she decided to have Trig out of fear of looking like a hypocrite.
The continued support of Sarah Palin by the Christian Right is symptomatic of the deep problems the Republican party has with their socially conservative base. As long as it’s necessary for Republican candidates to pass a evangelical litmus test it will be almost impossible for Republicans to regain power on the national level. Any moderation of the Republican party designed to appeal to swing voters will cause the alienation of the religious conservatives, and continued kowtowing to the religious right will do nothing to enlarge the Republican tent.
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I see no reason to assume that was Sarah Palin’s reason for having her child. She had the child, because she realized that it was wrong and would be hypocritical to what she truly believed. She makes a point of stating that no one would have known. How would she have a fear of looking like a hypocrite if no one would have known?
No one would be forced to have unwanted children. They would have to deliver those children. We have had adoption for quite awhile in this country. It seem preferable to death to most people.
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#76
Amen!
The attempt to act perfect, and to expect it out of others, is a blight on the Church.
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When I found out I was pregnant with my daughter, I was NOT in a place where I wanted to be pregnant, and I honestly hoped (for awhile) that I would have a miscarriage. And, even after that looked unlikely, I did not have a wonderful pregnancy, but rather a pretty miserable one, especially the first 3 months. I really, really didn’t want another baby, and worried that I wouldn’t love her when she came.
That’s truth. It puts me in a place to understand someone who doesn’t want a baby right now. It is reality.
I love my daughter with all my heart, and I’m glad that GOD knew she was right for our family. I had only had sons before her, and I praise God all the time that I have her.
But, I didn’t want her at one point. I *really* didn’t want her.
I don’t think that’s evil to say. I think that’s human.
Through God’s grace, I got what I didn’t want, and I am more than blessed for it.
For those of you who — in your “holier than thou” moments think it is wrong to have had those thoughts — tough. I know the truth, and I know we ALL have horrible thoughts and temptations at times. Those who admit it and overcome it through God’s help are far more “real” than those of you who’d like everyone to think you’re above all that.
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@ Michael Martin (#38):
“No civilization can long survive morally or physically when it systematically murders its children as we do. To be perfectly frank, it doesn’t deserve to survive.”
“…systematically”? And you want to suggest that I am somehow prone to “hyperbole”? Wow.
I am all astonishment.
… Well, the book I’m currently reading weighs a ton … so I guess you must be right.
Events in Iraq indicate that Muslims are willing (if not eager) to indiscriminately kill other Muslims. According to your formulation, I suppose that civilization does not deserve to survive.
On the other hand, Christians have been murdering Christians for as long as there have been Christians. I guess you would say that Christian civilization scarcely deserves to survive … and who’s to argue?
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Kyle we are all tempted, it’s how we handle the temptation that makes the difference. Sarah Palin was tempted, but she turned away from that temptation. She has chosen to share the temptation she had, that shows character, and a willingness to share her heart.
******Amen! Exactly!
I think that those who are saying otherwise are like the Pharisee who went into the temple and prayed to God telling Him how grateful he was not to be like that icky tax collector over there, and how grateful he was to be such a righteous Pharisee.
The tax collector, on the other hand, admitted to being a terrible sinner and prayed God to forgive him.
And Jesus asked who left the temple fully forgiven? The tax collector or the “righteous” Pharisee?
Naturally, it was the tax collector who went home justified and forgiven before God.
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Most Christians (by far the majority) have not been murdering other Christians “for as long as there have been Christians.”
What a completely ridiculous statement.
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#64
Very beautifully written, Cheryl.
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theselittleones – 71
Kyle WROTE: “How any woman with her experience and her professed beliefs could consider aborting a baby because it would be “difficult” for her to raise it is simply outside the realm of understanding for me.”
YOU WRITE: “Me, too. I actually think this could backfire (for the pro-life cause). It’s NOT ok to think about killing your child. (Matthew 5:21-22) Sin is what’s in our hearts, whether it’s acted upon or not.”
The Bible says:
There is none righteous, no, not one -
I haven’t met a Believer yet who doesn’t continue to be tempted or has sinned in thoughts, or deed -
Think about it, when is the last time you had an unkind thought about another person? Became cranky and angry over something your kids or another person said – I could go on, but I think you get the idea –
When Christians put on the “goody two shoes” act as though they never think a bad thought, the world doesn’t believe them – I don’t either.
I disagree strongly – her admitting she thought for a moment to sin, and then chose to follow Christ, PROVED that she was a true Believer – Sarah Palin has done more to show GOD’s power in her life regarding abortion then most any other woman I know.
To bad there aren’t more Christians who are willing to admit their sins, it might help the rest of the body of Christ, not to mention the un-Believers who watch us constantly.
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@ TRS (#87): Most Muslims (by far the majority) have not been murdering other Muslims for as long as there have been Muslims, but then, I never suggested otherwise.
Christian history is (sadly) not a subject of interest to most people, but there is an abundance of data available for anyone who troubles themselves to look. Most Christian martyrs were killed by other Christians: seriously, is this news to you?
Abel & Cain were the first brothers ever to exist, and one killed the other; nothing much has changed since then. I am pretty surprised to find that someone might think otherwise.
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@ Joel Mark (#79)
“Abortionists have used political power to force the legality of abortion on people who believe it is immoral.”
While there have been forced abortions in China, I have never heard of a forced abortion in America. So you are distressed that freedom has been forced on you. Here we are in America, “the land of the free”, and instead of counting our blessings, we bemoan the fact that freedom has been forced on us! Pauvre, pauvre nous!
“… on people who believe it is immoral.”
My dilemma as a voter is what to do about all those people out there that don’t believe like I do.
–I might believe that divorce is immoral.
–I might believe that eating animals or dressing in furs or using leather products is immoral.
–I might believe that inter-racial marriage is immoral.
–I might believe that allowing alcoholics and drug addicts to have children is immoral. [We have to take classes and get tested and submit to constant scrutiny in order to obtain and keep a driver’s license, but anyone can have children with no training or oversight at all.]
–I might believe that the use of fossil fuels (or of nuclear power) is immoral … and so on, and on, and on …
So: you would advise me to dedicate myself to appropriating governmental power and the legal system to forbid and prevent everyone else from doing anything I myself wouldn’t do, and this will make the world a better place: do I understand you correctly?
I guess you would say that it is wrong, wrong, wrong that America should be a “free country”: the sooner we fix that, the better.
“Why do churches feel compelled to use political power to impose their will? Because they are free to do so in America.”
You, apparently, are free to drink to excess, even to drink yourself to death. Even though you are free to do it, I seriously doubt that you feel compelled to do it. (Correct me if I’m wrong about that.)
Outside of a Theocracy, I am unaware of any religious justification for using political power to enforce the dictates of a particular religion, so I would like to find out where the COMPULSION comes from. If this is genuinely proper behavior, then the Taliban must (at least in principle) be on the right track.
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Most Christian martyrs were killed by other Christians: seriously, is this news to you?
******Facts please?
And, again, you did not qualify your statement above with “martyrs” although I still think you’d have some proving to do when you threw in the Romans, the Chinese, and the USSR.
However, again, most Christians have not been murdering other Christians. That is fact.
That you choose to see the negative is unfortunate.
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So you are distressed that freedom has been forced on you.
******Apparently, you believe that murder should be legal. After all, we wouldn’t want to *force* our morality on you.
What about stealing? What about rape? What about incest? What about sex with minors?
Hmmm…laws against all those things. But what if I don’t believe they’re wrong? I guess I should be allowed to do those things so long as you aren’t forced to do them.
I need a new couch. I think I’ll take yours.
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RE: post #8
“I disagree strongly – her admitting she thought for a moment to sin, and then chose to follow Christ, PROVED that she was a true Believer – Sarah Palin has done more to show GOD’s power in her life regarding abortion then most any other woman I know.”
SHOULD READ:
I disagree strongly – Sarah admitting she thought for a moment to sin, and then chose to follow Christ, PROVED that she was a true Believer – Sarah Palin has done more to show GOD’s power in her life regarding abortion, then most any other woman I know.
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#81, KWatson wrote; “Nobody is being forced to have an abortion.”
Ahhh, but real human babies are being forced to actually die (be aborted) on the selfish “religious” altars of comfort and convenience. That’s much worse. What if a Supreme Court forced the legality of all murder on to us, instead of this one particular form of exterminating human life?
KwATSON continued, “making abortion illegal would force women to have unwanted children.”
No one forced them to begin making babies! If they did, it was rape. Have you ever heard of taking personal responsibility? Let the baby live! Adopt it out if it is so unwanted.
_____________
* “I always say one thing. If a mother can kill her own child, then what is left of the West to be destroyed?” (A reply to a question about Western lifestyles). Mother Teresa; Calcutta, India.
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KWatson wrote; “The continued support of Sarah Palin by the Christian Right is symptomatic of the deep problems the Republican party has with their socially conservative base.”
This is about human life itself, Kwatson, not politics.
The continued support of Sarah Palin by the Christian right is simply evidence that decency remains in this culture, even if rare.
If returning to power means Republicans must support slaughtering human babies, then the power is not worth it. The Democrats can have it and answer for it on judgment day. There is more to life and humanity than political power.
______________
* “The poorest countries in the world are those with legalized abortion.” Mother Teresa; Calcutta, India
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MARK7SYS asked; “So: you would advise me to dedicate myself to appropriating governmental power and the legal system to forbid and prevent everyone else from doing anything I myself wouldn’t do, and this will make the world a better place: do I understand you correctly?”
Absolutely not. Not even close. That’s a ridiculously silly question, Mark7sys. You are not the standard and what you would do isn’t either, even if you think it is. No one even remotely suggested what you are asking about.
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“Abortionists have used political power to force the legality of abortion on people who believe it is immoral.”
I am asking what you choose to do about all the people out there who do things which you consider immoral. If you set a good example, I may choose to follow it. What, then, is your practice?
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Actually there are women who are forced to have abortions in this country. There are parents who insist on it and the fathers who insist on it. There are many women who feel pressured to have abortions for various reasons. To believe this is not true is naive at best.
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That’s a different question entirely, Mark. When people do things that I consider immoral, I seek wisdom from God as to how to respond. In other words, I pray. Sometimes I wait for a good door to open up for a response. Sometimes a response is needed whether the door opens up or not. Sometimes, all I can do is pray for them. I also consider the possibility that my view may need reassessment. But in all cases, I do believe in moral courage, flowing from whatever wisdom I can muster. I may deep it unwise to respond in certain ways, but I don’t let imtimidation stop me from responding in love.
If an entire culture is doing something immoral, I do pretty much all the same things. Wisdom (as best as I can find it) may, in some cases call for some political advocacy. I should be free to consider that option. In other cases, it may not. But Christians are called to engage the culture (but not conform to it). We are to be a light to the world.
As a pastor, very little of what I do to oppose abortion is political. But when a fellow Christian does go that route, I cheer them on, and sometimes pitch in for the best results we can hope for.
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Kyle (#65) and Theseslittleones (#71),
Both of yor posts show you are good and decent. My hope is that when a fellow believer or even just a fellow American honestly confesses a weakness or a temptation, Christians will not be quick to disparage them for even thinking that way or being tempted that way. Even Jesus was tempted. But he did not fall for it. Let’s not criticize others for confessing a temptation.
Don’t vote for Sarah Palin if you don’t want to when or if she is an opion on your ballot. But the fact still remains that she is a mom & wife who loves her family (which may actually be a flawed family in some ways), loves her baby boy, lives by some very decent principles, loves her country, loves God (most importantly), attends her church regularly and is attractive to boot.
Okay, we can leave out the “boot” part.
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“This is about human life itself, Kwatson, not politics”
But Joel, politics is how change is brought about, and when you put your faith in politicians of Palin’s caliber because of her street cred on abortion, then you’re ensuring nothing will change. There are allot of decent people, who like Sarah Palin, aren’t smart enough to be President.
KI #82 “How would she have a fear of looking like a hypocrite if no one would have known?” Excellent point. Abortion is a private matter that’s no-ones business except for the woman making the decision. Although I suspect that in Sarah Palin’s case, she probably wouldn’t have been tapped as McCain’s running mate but for her downs syndrome baby.
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KWatson, politics is one way to bring about change. It’s often not even a very effective way. And it is usually mere surface or structural change.
Kwatson, what I meant to say is; “This is about human life itself, not merely politics.”
Sarah Palin’s intelligence seems just fine to me. Those who presume to assess it as low are, in my view, showing a rather unintelligent and prejudicial side of themselves. Still, moral courage is better than intelligence. Being good is better than being smart.
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@ TRS (#93)
“Facts please? And, again, you did not qualify your statement above with ‘martyrs’ although I still think you’d have some proving to do when you threw in the Romans, the Chinese, and the USSR.”
Sorry TRS: you were right to question this, I have not been sufficiently precise.
You make an excellent observation: Russia had a substantial Orthodox & Catholic population when taken over by the Communists. Trouble is, the Communists would kill anyone they deemed to be a threat to their state. Thus it is impossible to say who is killed for their religion and who is killed merely for political reasons. (I recently read that “According to Bruce Lincoln, Red Victory, ‘a commission appointed by [anti-Communist] General Denikin to look into Bolshevik atrocities indicated that more than five times as many teachers and professors, and more than seven times as many physicians, died at the hands of the Bolsheviks than did priests.’”) In any case, the numbers are very large, probably in the millions. Point well taken.
As to documentation, I have already provided several references along with URL links re. the Inquisition in Post #70 above. To add to these … the vast Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge is a reference work which would be available in virtually any seminary [ http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/?show=worksBy ], as would Fox’s Book of Martyrs [http://www.reformed.org/master/index.html?mainframe=/books/fox/fox_martyrs.html ] or [ http://www.ccel.org/f/foxe/martyrs/home.html ]. Happily, these expensive works are now available to everyone via the internet (sadly, not the case back when I studied theology).
And, to clarify, by “martyrs” I mean, simply, people who were killed on account of their religion, Protestants and Catholics alike.
Of course there were Christian martyrs at the hands of the Pagans in early centuries, but there were also very few Christians around in the first place; thus the numbers of martyrs in that context cannot be very great in any case. And however murderous the Chinese might have been, they cannot have had access to great numbers of Christians, either.
In contrast, in Christianized Europe (apart from small Jewish and Muslim minorities) there were countless potential victims.
While we are at it, we might recall that Christians have been martyred in Japan as well [ e.g., see http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/articles/a0000428.shtml ].
So … I will try to be more precise now, and thanks for asking. It doesn’t actually pay to try to be too precise; estimates of martyrdoms vary, it depends on which sources one consults, and on the criteria one uses to categorize.
From the studying I have managed to do thus far, it appears to me that (not counting the inscrutable USSR muddle) most of the Christians which have been killed on account of their religion may have been dispatched at the hands of other Christians (it is impossible to say definitively because of the ambiguities of estimation & classification). Additionally, many more have been killed in wars between Christian nations.
Millions of Christians have also been killed in wars with Muslim nations.
To add one more historical reference, Christians as well as Jews were swept up into Nazi extermination camps. But the perpetrators here were Christians; indeed, death camp commandants would return to Berlin in December to celebrate Christmas with their families … which brings me to the point of all this for this thread: historically, I find no evidence that the Christian religion has ever demonstrated any special respect for the sanctity of human life. Indeed, I find the ferocity with which Christians have persecuted other Christians absolutely breath-taking.
In spite of this, some Christians promote the idea that a fetus is a ‘person’ with ‘rights’, and terminating a fetus is ‘murder’ because ‘God says so’. Now, if I may, I would like to take a turn at asking for the facts: 1) Where is the chapter and verse on any of this? 2) If human life is so sacred to Christians, where is the historical evidence of it?
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@ TRS (#94)
“What about incest?”
If we are all descended from Adam and Eve, then none of us would be here were it not for incest. Too bad the incest taboo wasn’t taken seriously from the very beginning; all the horrors of world history would have been spared. If only.
“Apparently, you believe that murder should be legal.”
“Apparent”? Is it really? I do not have the pleasure of understanding you. I doubt that anyone of any religious persuasion, or atheists either, want to be murdered. Being opposed to murder is not exclusively a religious conviction (by my observation, it is not any kind of religious conviction … except, that is, among the Jains).
If, however, it is my religious conviction that a fetus is a ‘person’ and termination of a fetus is ‘murder’, then the question arises as to whether everyone else ought to be obligated to abide by the dictates of my personal choice of religion. If – in fact – they should, then I ask, Why? Based on what?
“What about sex with minors?”
What about divorce? What about drinking alcohol? What about eating animals? What should I try to do about all those people who do things which I consider immoral? What would you advise me to do?
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What should I try to do about all those people who do things which I consider immoral?
******They’re already done in the case of the worst ones. They are illegal.
You are saying that we cannot make abortion illegal, because it is stepping on the rights of the woman.
I am saying that we make lots of heinous things illegal, and they step all over the rights of those who do not think they are bad.
That is the definition of society. We band together and make laws for the good of the majority and for the society.
We ban murder, thievery, sex with minors, rape, and many, many other things.
However, you would force a good half of society to live with something they consider equally as heinous (killing millions of children a year) because that is just our morality.
But, you fail to look at the consequences. It isn’t like wearing a dress too short or with a bodice too revealing. (My morality says that is wrong.) I don’t go around trying to make that illegal.
In abortion, millions of the most innocent, who have no say, are being brutally tortured and killed.
Why? All because someone doesn’t want to take the consequences of her actions.
For all that the raped woman, or the woman who is ill is brought up, the VAST majority of abortions are elective procedures to cover up the consequences of having sex illicitly and without protection.
However, despite the heinous consequences of abortion, amazingly most Christians are still simply trying to change people’s minds by encouraging them to see what they are really doing. We actually aren’t working very actively to make it illegal, although we might hope for that outcome someday.
When all we ask is that a girl need see (with ultrasound) what she is really doing…the “pro-choice” crowd goes nuts! Apparently, it is much better for people to go around thinking the baby is just a “group of cells” or a “bundle of tissue.” They don’t want the women to see that it is a baby very, very early.
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@ TRS (#108)
“You would force a good half of society to live with something they consider equally as heinous (killing millions of children a year) because that is just our morality.”
You have given this a lot of thought and figured out how you would comport yourself. This suggests that your beliefs have come to you of your own volition and were not forced on you. What I am actually inclined to do (silly me) is protect for others the same opportunity to decide for themselves that you have.
Given that your case is compelling, there is good reason to expect that you will convince people when you make it. Seems like a pretty good system to me.
Oddly enough, I used to think that that’s what churches were for, too.
“They’re already done in the case of the worst ones. They are illegal.”
That helps me out precisely none at all. As a voter I must decide how to vote. Should I vote to ban divorce? Should I vote to ban gay marriage? Etc. What are the principles involved?
Perhaps I shall just have to admit defeat and conclude that I am incapable of understanding. We Christians have a long, gruesome history of torturing and killing other Christians … burning them alive, no less. There is no apparent history of demonstrating some special regard for human life. Moreover, there is not, as far as I can determine, any uniquely Christian hand-wringing over the killing of actual, literal, viable, breathing human beings.
Where is the “Christian” outrage over starting wars with countries which have not attacked us and which do not threaten us? Where are the “Christian” campaigns to pressure the community of nations into stopping the slaughter of real, honest-to-goodness people in Darfur? Genocide does not seem to give organized religion any pause, and yet there seems to be no end of hand-wringing over the fetus which outside of the womb could not survive … there seems to be no end of hand-wringing over the fetus which is deemed to be a ‘person’ with all the rights of anybody else with no biblical support for any such notion that anyone can be bothered to tell me about. When it comes to the fetus, human life is considered sacred; when it comes to actual people, not so much. Am I the only one who sees all this as bizarrely contradictory?
If a woman has rights, it is because (we are told) some “activist judge” somewhere has invented them for her … and yet a non-viable fetus is deemed by the same people to be a ‘person’ and to have ‘rights’ inherently. A fetus has rights, but once a fetus becomes a woman, she no longer has control over her own body. (If a person doesn’t even have control over her own body, what can she be said to be in control of?) Am I the only one who sees all this as bizarrely contradictory?
Truly, I just don’t get it. Guess I never will.
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Do you want to compare the number of people killed in battle (who chose to be there for a large majority) and the number of babies killed in the womb? The difference is HUGE. We’re talking vast (and I do mean vast) number of babies compared to much, much smaller numbers of people killed in your “unjust war.” I’m not saying that all death isn’t a sad thing, but I am saying that I find it hard to sympathize as you wring your hands over hundreds, while I wring my hands over millions.
In addition, you don’t seem to understand that a vast number of babies killed in the womb ARE viable. The point of viability keeps getting lower and lower.
And, you still want me to believe that murder is somehow a CHOICE. If I can choose to commit murder in the womb, or just coming out of the womb, then why can’t I choose it (should it be more convenient for me, or if I don’t think it is wrong) for someone outside of the womb? What difference does the few inches of birth canal make and why?
Gay marriage, divorce and other things that you bring up may be wrong, but they do not kill a living infant or anyone else for that matter. That’s throwing in things that are not comparable and have different arguments.
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@ TRS (#108)
“You would force a good half of society to live with something they consider equally as heinous (killing millions of children a year) because that is just our morality.”
My sins are far worse than what you have described. Similarly, I support the protection of free speech; in doing so, I “force” society to put up with many things which they will necessarily consider to be heinous.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but based on the “no free lunch” principle, there is a cost to allowing other people to enjoy free speech. Other people are going to (and do!) say things …
– which I would not say myself,
– which I disagree with,
– which I don’t like,
– which I don’t want to hear,
– which I consider to be unpatriotic / rude / crude / malicious / demagogic / mean / nasty / vicious and/or wicked.
But if I want free speech to be preserved for myself, then this is a price which I have to be willing to pay. So: would you say that I have accurately grasped the nature of the situation, or have I misunderstood something?
As a further expression of my sinfulness, I support the protection of freedom of religion. Consequently, I have no more excuse for seeking to impose my faith-based conviction (my CHOICE to believe) that a fetus is a ‘person’ with ‘rights’ and that terminating a fetus is ‘murder’ than I do for seeking to impose any of my other faith-based convictions on other people. If I want the freedom to choose my own religion and to comport myself according to its dictates, then the price I have to be willing to pay for that freedom is allowing others to do likewise, even though I can and will disagree with the choices others will make.
What, I wonder, is the alternative? How could I conceivably get away with saying, “I want to carry a gun, but no one else should be allowed to do so. I want to choose my own religion, but others should not be allowed to do so. I want free speech, but others should not have that right, and so on.” As a practical matter, how could that POSSIBLY ever work?
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Since my appeals have gone unanswered thus far, I am making a simple post with one simple request:
If any of you knows what the biblical justification is for considering a fetus to be a ‘person’ endowed with ‘rights’, and which shows that terminating a fetus amounts to ‘murder’, then please reply with references.
I have numerous translations along with Greek and Hebrew tools ready to go just as soon as I can find out what, precisely, I should be studying. It’s high time I got up to speed and found out what people are talking about.
Please help. Thanks.
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God’s Word says that if a man assaults a woman and the woman miscarries, that man is to be put to death. Did the woman die? No, but the baby in the womb did, and the fact that the man is to be put to death indicates that God counts the child in the womb as one made in His Image and likeness – human. Causing the woman to miscarry is counted as a murder, for which death is to be the punishment. That is the only restitution for the taking of a life – to pay with one’s own. The child has no rights in and of himself – nor does the mother. What we have is God’s Law-Word, which defines morality.
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@ TRS (#108)
“You would force a good half of society to live with something they consider equally as heinous (killing millions of children a year) because that is just our morality.”
“… millions of children a year …”? The last report I am aware of – Centers for Disease Control, Abortion Surveillance, United States, 2005 [57(SS13);1-32, 28Nov08] – gives a figure of 820,151 for 2005 (Table 1, line 1). Where, then, does the phrase “… millions of children a year …” come from?
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“Where is the ‘Christian’ outrage over starting wars with countries which have not attacked us and which do not threaten us?”
This is far too simplistic a question and it fails to consider the real life dynamics of statecraft and international relationships. Christianss know how to think outside simplistic “black & white” constructs or straw moral constructions.
Japan attacked us in 1942 and we declared war on Germany too. Hmm. Korea never attacked us around 1950, but if we had not gone into that conflict, there would be no free South Korea today and that would be horrible. Saddam brutally invaded Kuwait and an international coalition of nations including many who Saddam had not attacked acted to drive him out of Kuwait. Then Saddam failed to keep any of the terms of his surrender, actually used weapons of mass destruction (WMD) on the Kurds, regularly attacked US planes in the legal fly zone, refused to cooperate genuinely with weapons inspectors, brutalized his own people, tolerated terrorist training camps in his land and so another coalition of nations united to depose Saddam and then stayed to help rebuild the country that Saddam had raped and ravaged.
All these examples are ethically debatable (I think the deposing of Saddam was a just war), but the original question is far too simplistic.
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Mark7sys,
I’m told the term “fetus” comes from a Latin word that simply means baby. We came to use it functionally to refer to a baby still developing in the womb, but it’s still a human baby.
As for some biblical references, this is a quickie but…
The creative hand of God was at work when you were formed in your mother’s womb. He was creating your inner being, not just your body. Listen to the Psalmist;
“For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.” (Psalm 139:13-14).
This is more than a proof-text against abortion. It is a deeply personal declaration of the wonder of creation itself; your creation!
So, the Creator actually knew us before our formation in the womb. The prophet Jeremiah, speaking for God, wrote; “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you.” (Jeremiah 1:5). According to Paul, God didn’t just “know” us, He actually “chose” us in Christ before the world itself was created (Ephesians 1:4). That makes God “pro-choice” in the most life-affirming sense possible and it means we are not accidents of nature.
The value of human life in the womb (equal to life out of the womb) is also affirmed in Exodus where the rule is set forth that if a fighting man hits a pregnant woman and the baby is harmed, “…you are to take life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise.” (Exodus 21:22-24).
We are told in Proverbs 6:17 that God literally “hates” hands that shed innocent blood. The blood of a baby in the womb is as innocent as humanly possible.
When Elizabeth met Mary, Luke tells us that John the Baptist leapt within her womb. Luke adds that John the Baptist was “filled with the Holy Spirit, even from his mother’s womb.” (Luke 1:15).
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The worth and sanctity of human life is a Christian priority. Whatever humanitarian, economic, legal or foreign policy good a politician may do, it will eventually be obliterated in a culture where it is legal to destroy innocent human life at will (barring rare medial emergencies endangering the life of the mother, which is also sacred and worth preserving). Until we rise to protect the most vulnerable of all human beings (babies being knitted together by God in the mother’s womb), all other efforts pertaining to human dignity and social progress are in peril.
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@ Bianca (#113)
Thank you so much for your reply, Bianca. Very much appreciated.
Unfortunately, I am not aware of any biblical descriptions of miscarriage. I am familiar with this, however:
Over here there is no specific reference to the death of the fetus, although that is conceivably one type of “serious injury”. In the passage you refer to, the mother does not die, but in this particular passage there is nothing to exclude the death of the mother as one of the innumerable possible outcomes.
This is as close as I can come to something related to what you have described. If you could post the citation for the passage you refer to, I’d love to look at it. I am reluctant to speculate over a passage I can not examine myself.
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If it’s not a person, Mark, what is it? A dog? A fish? A cat?
It looks like a person starting at about 8 weeks, and fully like one by 12 weeks. It moves. It sucks its thumb. It tries to get away from the pincers that come after it in an abortion. It tries to live when aborted, but when it comes out early.
It has a brain, hands, fingers, toes, a nose, lungs, a heart, and future…until someone takes it away.
If it is not a person, what is it?
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Okay, Mark, in two years, we have over a million killed (in the US only, of course. I think I was thinking world-wide.)
And, you are playing your sad song for hundreds, and fail to even feel anything over a million plus ever two years?
You just can’t compare it to free speech or many of the other things you keep bringing up. Its apples to oranges.
One thing KILLS. The rest do not. They are separate issues.
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@ Bianca (#113)
Since Ex. 21:22-25 is as close as I can get to something like what you have mentioned, I’m going to ponder over that for a while. Let me see if I understand you correctly.
Back when I was studying theology, I was supposed to be doing “exegesis”, but I was all too often reprimanded for doing “isogesis” instead. I was supposed to be illuminating what was in the text, not bringing my preconceptions and presuppositions and imposing them on the text.
Now I doubt anyone would have faulted me for adopting the personal conviction that, as you say, “the fact that the man is to be put to death indicates that God counts the child in the womb as one made in His Image and likeness – human”, but I also doubt that I could have gotten away with trying to claim that the text itself says anything like this. Things would have been worse for me still had I extrapolated even further and tried to claim that the text shows that human life – and even pre-human life – is considered to be specially sacred somehow and that (therefore) abortion must be ‘murder’.
Even so, just as an experiment, I am going to pretend that I could have gotten away with this, and see how congruent this interpretation is with everything else going on in the OT. In other words, suppose that (looking at this passage) we remark that a dead fetus = the life in exchange of adult male. What can we conclude from that? Does this tell us something UNIVERSAL and ABSOLUTE about the value of ALL human (and pre-human) life everywhere?
Well, not really.
If one kills a slave, there is to be some sort of punishment, but not a death sentence. Here, the life of a viable, living, breathing human is not worth another human life in exchange, so the experiment of suggesting that 1 fetus = 1 adult human is some kind of ABSOLUTE and UNIVERSAL with respect to all human life according to OT morality fails.
But …
The death penalty does not tell us anything about absolutes or universals: in cases of killings, it depends on who is killed; in cases of adultery, it depends on who the woman is.
I can’t imagine how I could claim that a death sentence establishes how God regards the status of a fetus in some universal sense given that the death sentence is given for dozens of reasons (I’ve tried to count them all but always give up from exhaustion), some of which have no relation to physical harm of any kind and (as noted above) there can also be no death sentence at all even in the case of killings. It just doesn’t work.
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@ Bianca (#113)
“What we have is God’s Law-Word, which defines morality.”
You seem to be suggesting that the Old Testament morality system is ideal or desirable or viable for us today; consequently, I want to ponder over that proposal for a bit and see what the logical consequences might be.
Back in 1999, a group of my friends all read and discussed a book by Philip Yancy, “The Bible Jesus Read” [ http://www.amazon.com/Bible-Jesus-Read-Philip-Yancey/dp/0310245664/ref=ed_oe_p ]. It is, of course, about the Old Testament, and we took the opportunity to examine passages similar to the one you’ve mentioned quite carefully.
To begin with, instructions for the Israelites tended to be just that: instructions for the Israelites. (Jesus and most of the apostles make it clear that their message is for the world, not just for the tribe.)
In the dog-eat-dog world of the Israelites, numbers (i.e., population) were everything. If you have the numbers, you can invade other territories, evict or slaughter the inhabitants and take over their towns and vineyards, take slaves, etc., etc. [E.g., Deut. 20:13-15; 21:10-14] Without sufficient numbers, your group cannot protect itself and is mere prey instead. (It is a no-brainer which group I’d rather be in!)
Had I been a leader of the Israelites, I might well have supported the kind of rule you refer to, and the ban of coitus interruptus as well, for the very same reason. In modern parlance, the Israelites frowned on birth control methods, for the same reason. Why? To emphasize the critical importance of protecting and encouraging successful reproduction.
We need babies: as many as possible as quickly as possible. (Not a screaming need in the USA!) In the situation in which they found themselves, it is arguable that every sperm was sacred … not inherently so, but on account of their particular (and dire) circumstances.
I think it is fairly apparent to anyone who has the stomach to read the OT through that the Israelites made a “quasi-moral issue” out of almost everything. The message seems to be, “If you don’t behave like we are telling you to behave, you aren’t just a bad citizen: you’re a bad person.” I’m not sure if the Jewish people invented guilting, but, at any rate, when you are constantly in the middle of life-or-death dramas, leaders do what they deem to be expedient.
“ … the fact that the man is to be put to death indicates that God counts the child in the womb as one made in His Image and likeness – human … That is the only restitution for the taking of a life – to pay with one’s own.”
I can see how you might possibly think that; that is one interpretation … but it involves quite a bit of extrapolation. I have no objection to your concluding any of this, even if the text does not say anything like this. It seems much more plausible to me, however, that the punishments invoked 1) reflect the importance of the life-or-death struggle of the tribe as a whole, and 2) reflect the propensity for the Israelites to hand out draconian punishments for a whole host of things.
There is nothing at all in the Israelite experience which inclines me to think that I am obligated to avoid contraception in order to please God (much less vote to have the government ban contraception).
Similarly, there is, so far in this examination, nothing found in the kind of directive which you have pointed out that suggests that the meaning involved is that the fetus is to be universally regarded as sacred, or that this rule is a foundational principle which indicates a special status for the sanctity of human life per se (however much I might wish that were the case). If it does, then we will be sure to see that reverence for the sanctity of life reflected in a host of ways nearly everywhere we turn in the OT.
But do we? Let’s inquire.
If we are obliged to abide by the Old Testament morality system, then a host of troubled teen will need to be murdered. Where, I wonder, is the respect for the sanctity of human life in that?
Where, I wonder, is the respect for the sanctity of human life in that?
According to OT morality, there is no freedom of religion; even worse, I must appoint myself the judge of the religious values of my wife, my brother, my sons and daughters and murder them with my own hands if they come up short in my estimation. Where, I wonder, is the respect for the sanctity of human life in that?
How could it possibly be the case that every fetus is sacred and terminating a fetus is unjustifiable while at the same time the lives of actual people do not seem to be sacred at all and terminating them is (somehow) easily justified? How could that possibly be the case? What kind of sense does that make?
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@ Bianca (#113)
“What we have is God’s Law-Word, which defines morality.”
If we are going to use the Old Testament as the basis for governmental intervention into private lives in our world [and if we are going to ignore the separation of church and state], then there are far more difficulties which we will encounter beyond the ones already mentioned. It stands to reason that the Decalogue [Ex. 20] might be the logical core basis for such an OT-style intervention. The Fourth Commandment [Ex. 20:8-11] specifies that the seventh day of the week (i.e., Saturday, as any Jewish person near-to-hand can remind us) is the Sabbath; no work is to be done on that day.
If I understand you correctly, we should insist that our government ban the operation of all workplaces on Saturday just as we should ban all abortions and all contraception for precisely the same reason: this is the moral system which God has handed down to us; it is universal in its scope, it is non-optional for the individual and non-optional for the government.
Is that correct?
Please check my logic: if we are going to abandon the separation of church and state and adopt an Old Testament morality system for the USA because we feel it is our duty and obligation to God, then according to your interpretation we must (among other things) ban abortion, institute a death penalty for adultery, for Sabbath-breaking and for a host of other things, and legalize slavery and bigamy.
Is this really your position? You advocate that such changes would be positive ones? You want to return to the way things were done in the good old days?
“What we have is God’s Law-Word, which defines morality.”
We know what is moral because the Old Testament defines it for us: therefore we support a ban on abortion because every human life (in whatever latent or evanescent form it might be found) is sacred, and for the same reason we support the death penalty for the cursing of parents, for adultery, for Sabbath-breaking, etc.
Seriously: is this your position? (I sure hope not, because I can scarcely imagine what could be more self-contradictory than this.)
Similarly, I hope you aren’t suggesting that we should adopt PARTS of the OT morality system because (somehow) God requires it of us while at the same time ignoring parts of it for some unspecified reason, because that would be equally bewildering.
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#120
Which says absolutely nothing.
It still doesn’t answer WHAT the fetus is if not a person. It still doesn’t answer WHY it is okay to kill it in the womb, but not 5 seconds after it is out. It does not answer why it is okay, when there is ANY doubt whatsoever (and there certainly is), to kill a living baby simply because it is not yet outside of the womb.
Of course, if you’re Peter Sanger, it IS okay to kill the baby once it is outside the womb if it is more convenient to do so.
Once you follow this slippery slope, that is the logical conclusion, since there is no particular difference between a 9 month old just before birth and a newborn just out of the womb.
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. . in a culture where it is legal to destroy innocent human life at will . . . all other efforts pertaining to human dignity and social progress are in peril.
Whatever the law said, ours was a culture where it was virtually legal to destroy Negroes and Indians at will. Virginia gave land to one of my ancestors for the scalps of several injuns. Nevertheless, my family, Virginia, and the US, have made progress since the long days of our imperial and racist darkness.
History contradicts JOEL MARK’s thesis. The evil that men do doesn’t stop others from doing better.
Besides, JOEL is playing with words. Law punishes all forms of murder. Even some forms of abortion are illegal in some jurisdictions (though not as homicide). If people want to declare abortion to be murder at law, all they have to do is convince voters that abortion is murder, and the laws will follow, because nobody much likes murder, especially at will. Despite JOEL’s slander, our history shows that we are capable of protecting human life against our predatory impulses. The difference with abortion is, a fetus isn’t a person.
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Personally, I have no objection to allowing newborns to expire as a result of abnormalities, but it must be done secretly, out of the knowledge of law, as such things have always been done. I’ve also no objection to the prosecution of infanticide, when it’s obvious, but the police should try to keep out of the delivery room.
As TRS points out, the primary difference between the fetus and the newborn is location. From that perspective, neither are persons. But the fetus is in a private, personal sphere, while the newborn is in a public, legal sphere. Parted from its mother, the newborn is a member of society and rightly protected as a person. Abortion is private, but Infanticide offends society.
The newborn’s arrival evokes impulses of nurture and protection, which society needs and wants to reinforce. The newborn, a legal person, actualizes its personhood through the process of being treated as a person.
If I thought that abortion compromised society’s capacity to nurture, I could imagine some practical reason to restrict it. But abortion probably enhances the quality of childcare in society, by allowing mothers a choice. Most people see no problem with declaring birth to be the beginning of legal personhood.
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Scroop Moth wrote; “Whatever the law said, ours was a culture where it was virtually legal to destroy Negroes and Indians at will.”
Because of the underlying Christian character of our country, we have (after much conflict) have largely rejected such things and are better now for it, except for the fact that we are still actually willing to exterminate innocent human babies of all human races just because we feel like it. Christians are still standing up (despite conflict with abortion advocates) for what is decent and still getting criticized for it.
We still have a long long way to go, ethically, as a culture.
SM wrote; “History contradicts JOEL MARK’s thesis. The evil that men do doesn’t stop others from doing better.”
Huh? When did I question that. How does that relate to what I have said?
Scroop Moth wrote; “If people want to declare abortion to be murder at law, all they have to do is convince voters that abortion is murder, and the laws will follow, because nobody much likes murder, especially at will.”
That’s simply wrong. Have you not heard of Roe V Wade? That took it out of the hands of American voters. Only Supreme Court Justices have any say.
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Well, what have we learned today? This is what I see. There are 3 topics that get most of everyones attention. Those being, Sodomy, evolution, and pro-death. On each topic both sides give their best agruments pro and con and when all is said and done, not one single mind has been changed. So it has been with this Sarah P. pro death version of this topic. All completely predictable. That is why when ever I see one of these 3 topics my mind goes right to a verse in the Bible that will cover the whole argument from the start. ” It is extremely hard to push against the goads”. Well what does that mean? It means this: there are certain presuppositional pillars(goads) that the Christian faith are built upon. And when anyone of those are are attacted it is fitting that a response will be given.
Pillar #1 God is. No where in the Bible does God try to prove His own existance, because it is automatically assumed
pillar #2 God has revealed Himself through creation and also through the written Word
Pillar# 3 We are created in God’s image
You can add more, but you get the idea.
So when people come here to argue against any one of these foundational pillars, they must realise some where in there being that they simply are not going to change any Christians mind.
So I ask myself this very important question. Knowing this, why do non-christians come to this site to argue against the goads? I liken it to a person who feels perfectly justified in going to a NASCAR race and standing up and argueing that it is too loud and the cars are going too fast. It seems to make no sense.
Here’s my take. Truth is Truth, there is no getting around it. If it is true, it is true. It is true for me speaking it and it is also true for those hearing it. Every mother knows that what is growing inside of her is a new life, there is no way around it. The life cycle starts when we are but a speck. There is no way around it. So all the argueing to the contrary I feel is just mans attempt to convince themselves that they are right and Truth is not Truth. Again, very hard to push against the goads isn’t it.
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JOEL, I was trying to make a simple, historical argument.
a) For centuries, and until recent times, American society killed Negroes and Indians at will.
b) America progressed.
c) Therefore, our history doesn’t support your thesis that “in a culture where it is legal to destroy innocent human life at will . . . all other efforts pertaining to human dignity and social progress are in peril” or will be “obliterated.”
Besides, if we really believe that “the evil that men do doesn’t stop others from doing better,” we would have to resist the pessimistic prediction of your thesis.
Fortunately, I don’t think abortion is murder or I’d probably be as pessimistic as you are when discussing this subject.
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If people believed abortion were murder, they’d amend the Constitution to take away the right of privacy in pregnancy. The court probably would not have issued Roe v. Wade in the first place, because, if people believed abortion were murder, then the government would have a compelling interest in interfering with privacy rights.
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I love your analogy!
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@ TRS (#119)
“If it’s not a person, Mark, what is it? A dog? A fish? A cat?”
Good question. Well, for what it’s worth, my college physiology says and illustrates that it does have a tail … but I will resist speculating about that.
What is an embryo? It is just that, and embryo: I know of no compelling reason to make it be more than that.
While I am knowledgeable about a few biological subjects (heart disease, for instance), reproduction is not an interest area of mine; I know little about it. It is my vague and tentative understanding that …
–fertilization takes place in a Fallopian tube near an ovary;
–the journey to the uterus takes several days;
–once there, the embryo may or may not become implanted in the endometrium;
–in cases when implantation does take place, it is roughly in the range of 6 to 10 days after the embryo is created;
–a high percentage of embryos are lost before implantation;
–a high percentage of embryos are lost after implantation;
–there appears to be a mechanism for the rejection of late-arriving embryos;
–etc.
Anyone interested in further details and percentages can consult the medical literature, including the New England Journal of Medicine:
“Time of implantation of the conceptus and loss of pregnancy.” N Engl J Med. 1999 Jun 10;340(23):1796-9.
“Incidence of early loss of pregnancy.” N Engl J Med. 1988 Jul 28;319(4):189-94.
Embryos are lost all the time … with high frequency … both before implantation and after implantation. Spontaneous abortions happen all the time … with high frequency. This is not a crime against nature: it IS nature.
Do all of these embryos represent ‘little people’ with ‘rights’ and ‘souls’? Is there wailing and gnashing of teeth and memorial services in heaven for each of these lost ‘souls’? Maybe. I highly doubt it, but it is possible. Pretty hard for me to tell when I have no evidence available on the subject. I have no inspiration to try to convince others one way or the other.
[Not so fast Mark: you may have a fragment of evidence. “The Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.” (Gen. 2:7) Where there is ‘breath’, there is ‘a soul’: otherwise, apparently not. Take that as evidence if you care to.]
Indeed, I have no objection to anyone believing that an embryo is a ‘little person’ with ‘rights’ or that terminating one amounts to ‘murder’; consequently, I have no reason to dispute the merits of the case.
However, there are some things I am very concerned about.
1) I want to live in a country in which YOU are free, when you have strong convictions, to persuade others to believe as you do and comport yourself as you do.
2) I want to live in a country in which YOU are free to choose your own religion and in which the government does not arbitrate (or otherwise involve itself in) religious disputes.
3) If someone, somewhere claims that Christians are under some special obligation to believe some particular thing about embryos, then I am quite keen to try to understand any such argument. I particularly would like to understand why Christians will march in the streets out of concern for embryos even though I don’t see any marching in the streets out of concern for the slaughter of real, breathing, fully-developed people. Above all I would like to understand how there can be so much hand-wringing over embryos and yet apparently so little concern for the fate of the unwanted child after birth.
If certain people believe that, generally speaking, women who seek abortions [and the associated men, for that matter] are being flagrantly irresponsible, then that suggests an equal failure of parents, schools and churches to teach responsibility. It seems like a far wiser idea to address those failures directly rather than to adopt the heavy-handed approach of seeking to make the government the parent-of-last-resort.
Since I find, for the most part, that America was a pretty good idea, it makes sense to me that a constitutional solution would be far superior to an unconstitutional one.
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If people believed abortion were murder, they’d amend the Constitution to take away the right of privacy in pregnancy.
******Would you please show me where in the Constitution we got the “right of privacy?”
I think it was made up out of whole cloth in order to pass Roe vs. Wade.
And, if you can do that (and I don’t think you can), then please tell me how killing a child in any way resembles the “right to privacy?”
I mean, if I kill my grandmother in private, then do I have a “right to privacy” so long as society doesn’t see it?
Can I bump off my children so long as I did it up in the mountains in a private place?
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Croop Moth wrote; “For centuries, and until recent times, American society killed Negroes and Indians at will.”
For centuries, Negroes and Indians also killed whites at will, sometimes quite brutally. What else is new? Are you just now learning that some humans in history (of all races and ethnicies) kill others unjustly?
Let it remain legal to kill innocent human beings at will and other less significant political policy advances will not help much, at least not for long. It’s simply a statement of the importance of having moral priorities and not relying on politicfal policies to resuce us from a moral coma.
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Children and adults are lost all the time due to disease and accidents, too. That doesn’t mean that we might as well just kill whomever, indiscriminately, because “nature” doesn’t seem to discriminate.
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TRS – I’ll answer your question, if you tell me you’ve never heard the reasoning behind the majority interpretations of the right to privacy and how and why that right is embedded in the Constitution. Just don’t pretend you’ve been kidnapped into terra incognita. The Right to Privacy may be contrary-to-talk-radio, or the Bible, but it isn’t contrary the Constitution, according to the manner in which our democracy has agreed to interpret its meaning.
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@ REE (#135)
I would love to be able to help reduce senseless killings. But whenever I try to stir up interest in stopping idiotic wars or interest in genocide in Darfur, all I hear is deafening silence. If I don’t care about the fate of real, breathing, fully-developed people, why should anyone believe that I have some special regard for the sacredness of an embryo?
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There’s room for dispute over whether or not a given war is “idiotic,” but I don’t think anyone has disputed you over the evil of the genocide in Darfur. But abortion is the state-sanctioned murder of millions of innocents in our country that’s going on under our noses.
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