Discussing Abortion
From a recent discussion on abortion:
Syte:
You should stop calling abortion a woman’s “right.”
Half of all women disagree with you. Half of all women are pro-life, and half of all women believe that abortion is morally wrong – Gallup Poll 2011.
www.faithmouse.com
Women have no more “right” to kill an inconvenient child than they have to kill an inconvenient husband, an inconvenient elder parent, or an inconvenient neighbor.
Abortion also hurts women physically, emotionally and psychologically — abortion facts.
As a woman, I have a right not to have my taxes spent on the killing of human beings and the damaging of women’s lives.
There is a new, much improved feminism which is superior to the old outdated feminism which demanded the destruction of what a woman values the most—her family.
Alan (name changed):
And the half that don’t agree with you Syte? Their voices matter less than yours? Abortion is legal whether or not you agree with it. You might want to revise your BS line about it being the same as killing a husband. Or was that “not intended to be a factual statement”? By your logic I have a right not to have my tax dollars go towards illegal foreign wars and gas subsidies. In a democracy you don’t always get what you want.
Syte:
Alan —
If you want democracy, the Gallup poll shows that 51% of Americans consider abortion to be morally wrong, while 39% find it morally acceptable. Not that public opinion can alter morality, but even on your terms, you lose.
BTW, despite your attempts to call pro-life opinions “BS”, morally, the “wrongness” of the killing of a pre-born child is not less than the killing of a husband. A human is a human, no matter how small.
Alan:
From the the exact same poll you keep posting 49% are Pro-Choice while a measly 46% are Pro-Life (or anti-choice as I like to call it). A human is a human sure but a fetus is a fetus and a zygote is a zygote and abortion is legal. Tell me again why Republicans did NOTHING while they controlled ALL of the federal government from 2001-2006? Keep fighting the good fight though if it makes you feel morally superior. It’s a fight you’ll never win. As soon as Republicans take action they lose this as a wedge issue. And that’s all this is. Republicans manipulating Christians.
Syte:
Alan –
No need to get so emotional. Perhaps YOU like to feel morally superior, but you have no grounds for throwing that accusation at me. It is possible to disagree with people and to debate the facts without feeling morally superior or turning it into a fight.
You might like to call pro-lifers “anti-choice,” but I refrain from calling you guys “pro-murder,” and I also point out that the only reason that you are debating with me today, and the only reason other readers are reading this, is that nobody killed US when we were zygotes, fetuses, pre-borns, or whatever terminology pleases you.
So what about the “choice” of the unborn child? The Constitution guarantees the right to “life, liberty and property.” Abortion takes away the first, fundamental right, life, without which there can be no further rights.
Just trying to put the facts out there. BTW, you misquoted the poll. You might concede that within the error margin of the Gallup poll, Americans have been pretty much 50/50 on pro-life and pro-choice for the last several years. Which, incidentally, is quite a change from the 33/56 ratio we had in 1996, fifteen years ago. Like it or not, Americans are rapidly turning pro-life, as they find out more about abortion and its effects on women, on children and on society.
In addition, on other related questions, pro-life is actually winning today in 2011 :
- 51% say abortion is morally wrong, while 39% say it’s morally permissible.
- 27% say abortion should be legal under any circumstances.
- 37% say abortion should be legal under most circumstances
- 61% say that abortion should be legal under no or few circumstances.
Regarding majorities and abortion and why the Republicans have not reversed abortion, you should know better, unless you have not been following this issue. There has never been a vote on the legality of abortion in the United States, either by the people, or by the legislature. Abortion decisions, starting with Roe v. Wade, have been made by APPOINTED judges who were not elected, and who do not represent the will of the American people in any way. When a liberal president appoints a liberal judge, we are stuck with that liberal judge’s decisions for the tenure, regardless of the will of the people or of the legislature. Liberals have found a loophole in the Constitution, by which the will of the people can be circumvented. Glad to have the opportunity to point that out.
Alan:
Yeah that damned Liberal court we have now sure is making decisions based on the will of the people. Is that thier job? Their job is to interpret the law, or in Clarence thomas’ case sleep through the process while others interpret the law. I only pointed out the near 50/50 tie becasue you decided 51% in a poll on morality was enough to support your argument. Stating that a pre-born child is a life is also not a certainty. It’s not according to the US Constituiton or the bible so where do you get the idea that life starts at conception? What I want is for conservatives to stick to thier supposed values. Keep the government out of the uterus.
Syte:
Alan, you wrote: “Stating that a pre-born child is a life is also not a certainty….. not according to …..the bible.”
No? Not a certainty, unless you consult moral experts—including most major religions, the Dalai Lama, the
Eastern Orthodox Church, the Hindus, Islamic leaders, the Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod, Oriental Orthodoxy, Orthodox Judaism, Protestant Churches (all Fundamentalist, Pentecostal, Charismatic and other Evangelical denominations), the Southern Baptist Convention, the Roman Catholic Church, and thousands of other moral experts including over 1,000 pro-life groups that are not affiliated with religious denominations, who all oppose abortion on demand. These moral experts are not in vehement opposition to the surgical removal of a mole, but to the termination of a human life.
Also, your claim that a pre-born child may not be a “life” IS addressed in the Bible:
“And it came to pass, that when Elizabeth heard the salutation of Mary, the INFANT leaped in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Ghost”- Luke 1:41
John the Baptist was a second-trimester baby at the time that he is described in the Bible as an “infant.” Christ, to whom John the Baptist was responding, was an embryo, probably a few weeks old. Surely, the Bible’s use of the term “infant,” and the ability of persons to recognize and respond to each other, indicates the existence of “life”?
Throughout our society our laws and language acknowledge the “life” of a pre-born child:
- Murderers get charged with TWO counts of murder when they murder pregnant women.
- The Mayo clinic uses the word “baby” throughout their online description of “fetal” development.
- Even YOU used the phrase “pre-born CHILD.”
A child only seems to lose human life status when he or she becomes “inconvenient,” and comes under consideration for abortion. Then the language of dehumanization kicks in, to whitewash what is really going on, and to make it more palatable.
Steven (name changed):
Out of more than 600 laws of Moses, none comments on abortion. One Mosaic law about miscarriage
- Michaelangelo’s Moses
specifically contradicts the claim that the bible is antiabortion, clearly stating that miscarriage does not involve the death of a human being. If a woman has a miscarriage as the result of a fight, the man who caused it should be fined. If the woman dies, however, the culprit must be killed:
“If men strive, and hurt a woman with child, so that her fruit depart from her, and yet no mischief follow: he shall be surely punished according as the woman’s husband will lay upon him; and he shall pay as the judges determine.”
—Ex. 21:22-25
The bible orders the death penalty for murder of a human being, but not for the expulsion of a fetus.
Syte:
Steven—
Your quotation actually shows that under Mosaic Law a pregnant woman was acknowledged to be carrying a CHILD, and that causing the loss of that child “will surely be punished.”
HOW do you contort that into claiming that Mosaic Law approved abortion? Your quotation actually does the opposite of approving abortion. It acknowledges the human life existing in the woman and specifies punishment for the destruction of that life.
You are really grasping at straws.
Steven:
You fail to investigate the bible’s definition of life (breath) or its deafening silence on abortion. Moreover, the Mosaic law in Exodus 21:22-25, directly following the Ten Commandments, makes it clear that an embryo or fetus is not a human being.
Steven:
If you are an American christian, you may want to check out these groups:
American Baptist Churches-USA, American Ethical Union, American Friends (Quaker) Service Committee, Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), Episcopal Church, utheran Women’s Caucus, Moravian Church in America-Northern Province, Presbyterian Church (USA), Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, Unitarian Universalist Association, United Church of Christ, United Methodist Church, United Synagogue of America, Women’s Caucus Church of the Brethren, YWCA, Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice, Catholics for Free Choice, Evangelicals for Choice
Syte:
Steven –
Of course, the fact that we are having this discussion is because you were not aborted as a child. This unequivocally proves that the developing fetus is a human being, unless I am now debating with just a huge mass of cells.
It is dangerous to interpret a “deafening silence” in your own favor. For example, before Sept 11th, there was a “deafening silence” in the U.S. and in our homeland security policies regarding flying airplanes into buildings. It cannot be inferred from that silence that the U.S. approved of flying airplanes into buildings. It is more reasonable to infer that such a heinous act was never imagined to be possible before Sept 11th.
So it is equally possible, and even more probable, that the relative silence of the Bible ( don’t dismiss my Luke 1:41 example above, which the vast majority of religions interpret as evidence that a preborn child is as human as the rest of us!), that the relative silence of the Bible on abortion was due to:
- The violent and destructive nature of abortion, which rendered it an unthinkable act previously –something no one in their right mind would consider, akin to flying airplanes into buildings.
- The tremendous medical risks associated with abortion without the assistance of modern technology, which was not available at the time.
Regarding your listing of some Christian Churches which allow abortion– the reason for the historical proliferation of Christian Churches in recent times is the fact that people who wished to justify what was previously considered to be morally wrong split off from the first Church – starting with divorce, now including abortion. Finding a church which approves your favorite transgression of previously accepted morality is not the best way to go, for anyone interested in what is REALLY right or really wrong.
We don’t usually make our own unprofessional conclusions before seeking a doctor, engineer, lawyer, or home inspection expert who agrees with us. We call in the experts, and ask THEM for guidance. So, too, with a church—if you decide for yourself whether abortion is morally right or wrong, then choose a marginal church according to your own conclusion, then you are wasting your time. You might as well call yourself Church and be done with it.
You are ignoring the fact that the vast majority of mainstream religions do not approve abortion. You misquote the policies of some churches – for example, the United Methodist Church does NOT condone abortion – “The United Methodist Church upholds the sanctity of human life and is reluctant to affirm abortion as an acceptable practice” – Wikipedia on Christianity and Abortion . Similarly, not all Presbyterian Churches allow abortion. Catholics for a Free Choice are not a church, but a miniscule minority group of dissidents within the Catholic Church, who have been excommunicated. Their membership comprises 0.001 of 1% of Catholics. I have not checked the rest of your list, but you might be wrong on quite a few of them.
Doug Erickson of the Wisconsin State Journal has published another reasonably balanced article on the Catholic Church in Madison (click here for 1st reasonably balanced article), and the Diocese position in the Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery’s embryonic stem cell research. Appropriate, since the Catholic Church represents the largest religious denomination in Madison and in the United States, and 25% of Madisonians and Wisconsinites are Catholic. The article raises an important question on the morality of embryonic stem cell research, which should be evaluated and discussed by our intellectual university town of Madison.
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Syte Reitz grew up in Queens, New York, in a family of Lithuanian immigrants who fled Nazi and Soviet domination during World War II. Her education includes a Ph.D. in Biochemistry, and post-doctoral work at Princeton University. Syte left her job as an Assistant Professor at Oakland University, Michigan, to devote herself to raising her children, and ultimately homeschooled them through the end of high school. She is a member of Madison's Cathedral Parish.
