Posted on 06/20/2007 8:14:05 PM PDT by psycho3lf
Today in Kansas City Missouri, National Right to Life's board of directors voted to disenfranchise a state chapter, Colorado Right To Life, from the umbrella organization. Two days ago, Dr. James Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family, admitted in a mass email that, "Ending partial-birth abortion... does not save a single human life."
[snip]
"We will tell the truth that National Right To Life doesn't want told," said Brian Rohrbough, president of Colorado Right To Life, "that NRTL advocates a strategy of child-killing regulations that undermine personhood and distract from the real battle." And Leslie Hanks, V.P. of Colorado Right To Life added, "As a fundraiser, partial-birth abortion has brought in hundreds of millions of dollars, but as a way to save lives, it has no authority to save a single child."
Welcome to FR
What?
NTRL has not had much success in the 33 years since Roe v Wade. My husband and I have been active in the pro-life movement for the last 30 years, and we had never heard of the partial-birth procedure until a few years ago when NRTL started sending out fundraising letters describing the procedure. It seems at that time, they ceased trying to stop all the millions of abortions that were going on in this country in favor of promoting the elimination of the PBA procedure. Now all a politician has to do is to say he is against that one procedure, which I do not believe actually happens, and they can call themselves pro-life. That is what Mary Landrieu in Louisiana tries to do. NRTL also has feverishly pushed for exceptions in legislation for rape and incest, which is promoting the killing of babies because of the way they were conceived. I sometimes wonder if they aren’t working for the other side. I haven’t seen any progress in 33 years, if anything, there’s been a downward slide in public opinion over the years, and they are supposed to be in the forefront of stopping baby-killing.
The result is that, after decades without an effective public relations campaign, NRTL has influenced neither the public nor the politicians, and therefore NRTL has failed to reduce significantly the frequency of abortions. Thus, a donation to them is pointless if one's goal is anything other than providing them with steady employment.
and what did they say that wasnt true?
Bob Enyart explains his whole strategy and Biblical basis for doing so on his web site
Ive been active in hosting GAP (the Genocide Awareness Project) at my college. Ever hear of it?
The pro-lifers have been fighting with failing tactics for 30 years. CBR and CRTL are just about the only ones that get it.
If Dobson is your big enemy, you are not the team I want to be on.
I have a question: What do you want to happen in regard to the abortion LAWS? I assume you want to see a country and world in which abortion doesn’t happen at all, but how do you propose to work toward that ideal?
I believe the government and its laws should not intrude upon a woman’s body until the fetus is viable (the last trimester). That does not mean I think abortion is good or desirable. But I do not want the government telling women who are two, three or four months pregnant that they must, under penalty of prison, carry a pregnancy to term.
For example, if a 45-year old learns she is carrying a fetus with chromosal deformities, it is no business of the state or federal government if she decides to terminate the pregnancy.
The government should stay out of this issue unless there is another viable life at stake.
“Well said. I was a longtime NRTL member until I realized finally they focus exclusively on the legislative/judicial arena without attempting to influence public opinion in any meaningful way. In other words, they make no effort to provide politicians with any elective reason to vote prolife. “
I couldn’t agree with you more. I have been tremendously disapointed by RTL in Texas, which seems now entirely focused on the legislative process and election endorsements, as if they can simply short-circuit the public part of the deal.
Lots of face-time with politicians, no persuasion/education of the public.
It’s the abortionist who would be imprisoned, not the woman. The idea that women would be imprisoned is a leftist fairy tale.
Also, viability is determined by technology and even social factors, not an inherent biological status. Is a newborn viable? After all, he/she can’t take care of him/herself. Within the womb, viability today is earlier in pregnancy than it once was. Babies haven’t changed, but technology has.
Viability is the point at which the baby can survive outside the womb, not the point at which the baby comes to life. The baby is alive and a unique individual from conception. There once was a concept called “quickening”, which meant enlivenment by a spirit. It was believed that the unborn baby wasn’t alive until a ghost entered into him/her. This occurred when the mother felt the baby’s first kick. The quickening idea was just superstition from an earlier era where people were ignorant of pre-natal life, DNA, and so forth, but this superstition survives to this day when people act as if viability is the point at which the unborn come to life. It’s really nothing of the sort. Life cannot spring from its absence. A new human life is created when live genetic material from two pre-existing humans merge at conception.
"Dr. Dobson, you and these other leaders needed to warn Christians of all this, but instead you joined together in calling evil good. Please stop foisting onto the church the falsehood that this gruesome ruling will "protect children." This decision, to use your word, is more "Naziesque" than the PBA it regulates."
I respect your belief, but I do not share it. I believe that human life is much more than just physical, it is also spiritual. The human being gains his/her eternal spiritual life at the moment he/she takes his first breath outside the womb. Before that moment, it is a life in potential. That is my personal religious belief.
If a society really accepted that ALL fertilized eggs were FULLY realized human beings, then why do not the churches baptize all stillborns, all miscarriages, since Baptism is required for “eternal life”? Why did not early, staunchly Christian Americans give names to and record stillbirths in their Bibles?
I do not scorn your beliefs at all. I do respect them. But I do not share them. And, furthermore, your beliefs (and mine) about the beginning of human life are at core theological. Thus state and federal governments should keep their clumsy paws off this personal, ultimately religious issue. It must be resolved in the court of public opinion.
I also believe human life is spiritual as well as physical. For example, check out the description in the Book of Luke about Elizabeth’s baby leaping in her womb.
It isn’t whether or not we breath air that determines our status as living human beings. Nothing in nature changes species, even when outward physical appearance changes radically. Tadpoles become frogs, and caterpillars become butterflies, but they remain the same species. No one would argue that a butterfly is literally a different entity than it was when it was a caterpillar earlier in its life. Likewise, our birth is a change of location, not of species, and involves adaptation to a new environment. IOW, an entity which existed already moves to a new locale (outside the womb as opposed to within) and must adapt to the new surroundings by, as an example, breathing air.
There is no such thing as a POTENTIAL life, as inanimate material does not come to life. Human life (and indeed all life) is a continuum. Within that continuum are individual lives, billions of them, countless zillions if you factor in all the animals, plants, micro-organisms, etc.
But we’re talking here about human life. Two existing humans, with their own unique genetic codes, come together to form a new human. That’s accomplished when living genetic material, sperm and ovum, combine. Each contain half of a DNA strand. When they combine, a new full strand is created and a new, specific human life begins. Your life began that way and so did mine. We didn’t just pop into existence at birth. We existed for nine months in the womb before that.
Various religions may have different ways of treating stillbirths, for example, but that’s not based on any scientific reality. Much of it is a holdover from years past, when reproduction wasn’t fully understood. It was widely believed until the 19th century that the unborn weren’t alive until a spirit enlivened them, for example.
I appreciate the polite manner in which you are handling this debate!
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