Posted on 08/02/2018 3:08:45 PM PDT by Morgana
There is a dominant belief that Christianity and Christians are againt abortion. In point of fact, many Christian communities recognize several circumstances in which abortion is accepted. The fact that abortion is acceptable in some cases means that the real social question is not whether women can have abortions, but which women and for what reasons?
Prenatal health, Rape, Incest, and health of the Mother – PRIM. Evidence indicates widespread consensus and acceptance among many Christian denominations that abortion for PRIM reasons is justifiable.
Of the 11 Christian statements included in a 2013 Pew Research Center study, only Roman Catholics state that they oppose abortion in all circumstances. All the other denominations, even the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE), the Southern Baptist Convention, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (LDS), and the Missouri Synod Lutherans concede that abortion is justifiable when a woman’s life is in danger. The LDS, the NAE, and the Episcopalians also specifically mention that rape and incest are considered justifiable reasons to terminate a pregnancy.
Exceptions to the idea that “abortion is wrong” are regularly made for PRIM reasons. In fact, since 1972, some 77 percent of the U.S. public has consistently approved of abortion in cases of serious prenatal health issues, 78 percent approved of abortion in circumstances of rape and incest, and 87 percent when a woman’s health is endangered. On the face of it, public acceptance of PRIM reasons indicates a broad public consensus that abortion is sometimes necessary.
By focusing on the acceptability of PRIM abortions, Christians have shaped the dominant public discourse about abortion into a debate about justification. By requiring women to justify their reasons for ending a pregnancy, this framework divides women who have abortions into two categories – the tragic and the damned.
Women who have PRIM abortions are portrayed as tragic, not only deserving of access to abortion services but also equally deserving of public sympathy. Women who have abortions for other reasons are stigmatized as morally unfit and labeled as selfish, cruel, and irresponsible. In short, they are the damned.
Only 1 percent of abortions are a result of rape and less than 0.5 percent the result of incest. About 12 percent are sought to protect a woman’s health, and 13 percent for prenatal health issues. That means that what legal scholar Kate Watson calls “ordinary abortions” make up nearly three-quarters of abortions in the United States.
These ordinary abortions stand outside acceptability in the justification paradigm that conservative Christian voices have established for our public conversation about abortion. This justification framework supports a view of abortion that holds that when women get pregnant, we expect them to have babies.
It is time for Christians to challenge the inadequacy, intolerance and misogyny of this paradigm of abortion. As my deeply Christian mother taught me, “You shouldn’t have a baby because you are pregnant. You should have a baby because you want to be a mother, because you want to have a family.”
The moral wisdom of this Christian perspective recognizes that parenting is a profoundly moral act. To choose to have a child is to make a significant moral commitment to that child to raise it or to place it for adoption. Given the fact that only 1 percent of women place their children for adoption, the overwhelming majority of women who continue unplanned pregnancies are making the choice to mother that child.
Creating healthy families requires more than ensuring that babies are born. It recognizes that creating healthy families and raising children is a deeply spiritual and moral task requiring commitment, desire, and love on the part of the parent(s).
Limiting our cultural approval of women’s reproductive decisions about the size, shape, and timing of their families to a narrow list of PRIM reasons flies in the face of Jesus’ teaching that he came to bring abundant life. A Christian vision of abundant life requires that we recognize and support the development of healthy and robust families. It requires that we respect women and the moral decisions that they make about their families. A Christian approach to supporting healthy families recognizes that only individual women and their partners are able to determine their ability to parent a child.
There is nothing Christian about requiring women to “justify” their reasons for abortion. And there is certainly nothing Christian about forcing women to continue pregnancies against their will.
If we truly value women and healthy families, we must accept that “I do not want to have a baby” is an imminently appropriate reason to end a pregnancy. And we must trust that pregnant women are the only ones who are capable of making these decisions.
FReepers I have posted about her on FR before!
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/3635310/posts
“Evidence indicates widespread consensus and acceptance among many Christian denominations....”
I don’t think God is going to care much when you try to explain to Him about your “evidence”, “consensus” and “acceptance among the denominations”.
***Women who have abortions for other reasons are stigmatized as morally unfit and labeled as selfish, cruel, and irresponsible. In short, they are the damned.***
Let them be damned (as they should be)
The ongoing murders of the most innocent.
Did your deeply Christian mother tell you to keep your legs closed first?
Probably not.
I’m pretty sure all the denomiations and religions don’t oppose abortion when the mother’s life is in the balance. At that point, you need to make a decision about a life that might not make it anyway, and a life that already exists.
On the other hand, abortion for rape makes no theological sense. If you think that abortion is murder, we don’t murder innocent people because of the criminal behavior of others. If on the other hand you think it IS ok to murder some people because of the circumstances of another person, you no longer have moral grounds to oppose abortion at all, because what makes “being raped” worse than other traumatic things that happen to a person that might make them want to not have a child?
Incest on the other hand goes into the idea of murder because of potential defects. If you don’t think children should be murdered if they are handicapped, you probably shouldn’t allow them to be murdered if they happen to be the product of an incestuous relationship.
I would note that most of the time, people here “incest” and they actually think “rape by a family member” — I doubt they are saying that if consenting 2nd cousins get pregnant, they should be allowed to abort their child.
Nor do I.
But my saintly mother, and her mother, agreed with the writer of this article. And they were both life-long Presbyterians. My mom was the "matriarch" of the family; leader, philosopher, kindly grandmother to a whole generation of exceptional young women.
She almost lost one of them to a botched, illegal abortion. I was there. It forever changed our family.
Insane. Completely insane.
On Christian Marriage
Pope Pius XI - 31 December 1930:
67. Those who hold the reins of government should not forget that it is the duty of public authority by appropriate laws and sanctions to defend the lives of the innocent, and this all the more so since those whose lives are endangered and assailed cannot defend themselves. Among whom we must mention in the first place infants hidden in the mother’s womb. And if the public magistrates not only do not defend them, but by their laws and ordinances betray them to death at the hands of doctors or of others, let them remember that God is the Judge and Avenger of innocent blood which cried from earth to Heaven.
I would guess that if the US held a national referendum on abortion...and only women could vote on it...it would fail.
Trust men, legalize rape.
“concede that abortion is justifiable when a woman’s life is in danger”
In that rare case, one is forced to choose WHICH life to save. Has nothing to do with saying it is OK to kill.
What was so wrong with Hitler then?
‘What was so wrong with Hitler then?’
he wasn’t a woman...
“If we truly value women and healthy families, we must accept that “I do not want to have a baby” is an imminently appropriate reason to end a pregnancy.”
I wonder if God agrees with that.
‘I don’t think God is going to care much when you try to explain to Him’
explain what...? after 45 years and over 60 million abortions and counting, I’m sure He is quite aware of what’s going on...
Satan is speaking when this man moves his lips. God’s straight-forward command, “You shall not kill,” is met with Satan’s age old question, “Hath God said?,” followed by excuses for disobeying God. This man is not a spokesman for God.
Oh, I’m sure that won’t stop people from trying to justify themselves when they get to meet their maker.
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