Posted on 11/04/2007 4:58:54 AM PST by shrinkermd
Evangelicals are adamant, but religion really has nothing to say about the issue
What makes opposition to abortion the issue it is for each of the GOP presidential candidates is the fact that it is the ultimate "wedge issue" -- it is nonnegotiable. The right-to-life people hold that it is as strong a point of religion as any can be. It is religious because the Sixth Commandment (or the Fifth by Catholic count) says, "Thou shalt not kill." For evangelical Christians, in general, abortion is murder. That is why what others think, what polls say, what looks practical does not matter for them. One must oppose murder, however much rancor or controversy may ensue.
But is abortion murder? Most people think not. Evangelicals may argue that most people in Germany thought it was all right to kill Jews. But the parallel is not valid. Killing Jews was killing persons. It is not demonstrable that killing fetuses is killing persons. Not even evangelicals act as if it were. If so, a woman seeking an abortion would be the most culpable person. She is killing her own child. But the evangelical community does not call for her execution.
About 10% of evangelicals, according to polls, allow for abortion in the case of rape or incest. But the circumstances of conception should not change the nature of the thing conceived. If it is a human person, killing it is punishing it for something it had nothing to do with. We do not kill people because they had a criminal parent.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
The real reason the law never, or seldom, prosecutes women is easy to ascertain. The problem is the unborn child is an “abstract” human being in a psychological sense. Regardless of all the flames directed at this assertion, it is nonetheless true. Pregnant women often see their developing child as “part of their body” and not as a person.
This is why fetal sonograms are not required as a form of informed consent prior to abortions. The reason being a woman who views such a sonogram and sees the child as a child, will often (but not always)avoid the abortion.
Deeper down we have the problem of the fatal dualism of human beings. That is, we are a combination of a biological body and what seems to be a divine sense of being that includes a sense of perpetuity. Without evidence of this divine aspect of humanity, the woman seeking an abortion thinks only in biological terms—this is not a person but a biological developing organism.
Those who want to hate and punish abortion perpetrators, including women, besides having to punish what seems to be an secular abstraction also must explain why in the present day US that over a million women (14,000 alone in Minnesota)do obtain abortions. A wildly popular procedure based on seeing a developing child as an abstraction and not as a person. Very hard to find secular laws to enforce what seems to be an abstract crime.
Soren Kierkegaard was certainly not a Roman Catholic; however, he pointed out the fundamental clash in human nature was between our biological nature and the seeming Godlike “I” or person we experience. One destined to deteriorate and die and the other ? In Kierkegaard’s thinking, avoiding the “dread of death” was the primary conflict man faced. His solution was theological even though his approach was psychological. It did include “natural law.”
The entire article is CRAP. Who is he to decide what is a theological issue ane what is not?
What about murderers & rapists - do you want to see them restored on the principle of forgiveness? Should we abolish all punishment and open the jails? That is a quite unbelievable position.
It is not demonstrable that killing fetuses is killing persons. Not even evangelicals act as if it were. If so, a woman seeking an abortion would be the most culpable person. She is killing her own child. But the evangelical community does not call for her execution.
The above point from the article, earlier stated by Michael Medved, is a brick wall that people will keep running into, until they take a consistent, logical position on this.
Murder is murder, or it is not. Murder can't happen without a culpable murderer.
What would you say if a mother intentionally gave their 2-year old child a fatal dose of pills so that her child died in his sleep that night?
Would you preach forgiveness, not vengeance?
It is said by some that abortion should be as egregious a crime or worse. Why the inconsistency in dealing with the would-be criminal?
Isn’t this guy one of those “religious left” people recruited by the Demodrat party?
Religious people won’t agree.
Natural law says that life begins at conception. It’s also what science says. The liberals say that they determine when a person is created. That, however, is metaphysics. So let’s stick with science, not the liberals religious beliefs
I bet he likes to hold hands in church.
Not only do all deserve life, but I would argue the Constitution supports the right to life via the Bill of Rights and the 13th and 14th Amendments; that Roe v. Wade is a very bad “case law” since it adds things (rights) to the Constitution that plainly are not there..THEY’RE MADE UP: Its incompatable to claim to stand for the Constitutional rights of All Americans, and then say there is a RIGHT to Abortion!!..
Nor is anyone that posts such drivel and that has been pimping Rudy.
Hasn’t RG slowly been moving right since he was a Democrat in the 1970s. We will punish him for coming our way, must not fast enough? I don’t know if he’s pro-life, but he’s pro-choice: Doesn’t want to force abortion on tax payers, or medical students, or the courts. That’s a start.
#8 nails it with:
“The fact is that black slavery and the holocaust were both justified on the same principal that this writer is making, that the victims are NOT FULLY HUMAN.”
on a separate note:
“The universal mandate to preserve “human life” makes no sense.”
the next time a leftist or a prochoice animal rights activist tells you that the unborn aren’t human. remind them that it is animals that aren’t. & most importantly, the lie against the unborn “they’re not human” is what the nazis said about the Jews & what slave traders said about Black people. which puts them in bed with some very strange fellows indeed.
also, is arguing against preserving life, even wahabist life, applicable to the wot !!!!?? hmmmmm ????
this is another point the left hangs themselves on without noticing.
specifically, arguing for convenience killing of the innocent human unborn [fetus is latin for young one] also mutes or makes moot arguments against killing terrorists.
the Ten Commandment’s prohibition of murder does not prohibit self defense or killing in war. killing the innocent however, is murder. killing terrorists is personal defense on an international scale imo.
the gov.t bears the power of the sword to punish the evil doer.
“For rulers are not a cause of fear for good behavior, but for evil. Do you want to have no fear of authority? Do what is good and you will have praise from the same;
4 for it is a minister of God to you for good. But if you do what is evil, be afraid; for it does not bear the sword for nothing; for it is a minister of God, an avenger who brings wrath on the one who practices evil.”
NAS Rom 13:3
now if only all our rulers knew GOD, & the difference between good & evil.
What articles like this demonstrate is the corruption, the putrefaction, that sets in once a person decides that his intellect exists in order to serve his appetites. Wills decided quite a long time ago to be a bad Catholic, and to make money out of being a bad Catholic. His intellect now lies in ruin, a steaming heap of rotting sludge.
Rudy has already said he would be for taxpayer funded abortion. He said this last spring.
Where have you been?
EXODUS 20:6.
PSALM 139:13.
Abortion is a MORAL issue.
“Religion” backs that up.
Even an ATHEIST can see and understand that killing a TINY HUMAN BEING IS WORNG.
Don’t blame “religion” while trying to justify EVIL.
No, he governed as a liberal in New York and merely says whatever he has to get elected, just as Bill Clinton did.
“Rudy was first a Democrat who became a Republican just to get a job in a Republican administration, and he’s not done yet. There is no philosophical underpinning to him. There is one of a total amoral philosophy.” -- Alfonse D'Amato
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