We've heard this refrain before. It ended badly ...
Posted on 01/06/2015 7:40:40 AM PST by wagglebee
If you’ve ever read a newspaper, or just stepped outside the safety of your home, you know there are many people in the world who suffer terribly. Many of these people are young, innocent children. Over the past couple months, I've had several people claim that by opposing abortion, I must not care about those children who are suffering. They are very much mistaken.
It isn’t that I don’t acknowledge the difficult circumstances in which someone might consider abortion in order to spare a child from enduring great pain and suffering. I do. I can even understand why someone might think abortion is best in their situation. Often, people are trying to be compassionate when they tell me that they don’t think abortion is very good, but it is better than the alternative - a child living a life of suffering. That does sound compassionate - but only if we don't consider what abortion really is. When we realize that abortion is the violent destruction of a tiny human child, then we can see that their sense of compassion is twisted and misguided.
Aborting the child is a band-aid solution that fixes nothing. The circumstances which would have caused the suffering have not disappeared - instead, the child has been discarded. If our approach to end suffering includes discarding the one who is suffering, then we haven't really solved our problem. Eliminating potential suffering in individual situations doesn't count towards ending child suffering in general if the means to end the suffering includes killing the child.
This may be obvious to pro-lifers, but it bears repeating because many people in our culture do not grasp this concept. They are repulsed by the idea of killing a toddler to end his suffering, but not by killing the embryo. Perhaps understandably, we might feel less bad about the death of a child in the embryonic stage, as compared to a toddler, but our emotional connection to people at certain stages of development isn't what determines whether or not we should kill them.
I believe what pro-lifers sometimes fail to articulate to our challengers is that abortion isn’t a solution to child suffering, and banning abortion isn’t a solution either. Abortion has nothing to do with ending or not ending child suffering. Before abortion was legal, children sometimes still suffered horribly. Now that abortion is legal, children still sometimes suffer horribly. When abortion is ended, children will probably still sometimes experience terrible things. Ending abortion isn't a proposition to end child suffering. The argument that banning abortion will lead to children's suffering has no weight when we realize that currently women do have access to abortion and child suffering hasn't ended. That isn't even taking into consideration the violence done to children by abortion itself.
A young man recently asked me what my solution was to end the suffering of children if abortion wasn’t an option (in my ideal world). I told him honestly that I didn’t have one. I have no five step plan to end the atrocities committed across the world. I admitted this might sound cheesy, but I believe these atrocities won’t end unless people really learn to love. Giving women the option to abort their children isn’t teaching anyone to love - in fact the very opposite. With abortion, we teach people how to dispose of problematic people. Not aborting a child in a difficult situation at least gives her parents, and others, a chance to to learn to love.
Reprinted with permission from CCBR.
But do that to, say, a dolphin. Then see how far you'd get with the freedom of choice folk.
The most extreme form of punishment, especially for very young humans, is the pain of death. Everything about a young child strives and struggles for birth and life. Killing a child is easily the most unspeakable torture possible. It is worse in the extreme than a lifetime of struggle and suffering. Even in struggle and suffering there can be nobility. Killing a child to protect it from suffering is the act of madmen.
This is what happens when people lose their belief in God.
We've heard this refrain before. It ended badly ...
It actually exacerbates more problems. 1) The potential risk for Breast cancer goes up dramatically.
2) The mental health issues the woman and the child's father *(assuming he knows) also increases.
For me it comes down to this: God put that child here with those parents for a reason. I am not even going to try and guess what that reason might be, but He is in charge and knows what he is doing. I trust in Him above all else.
This is the truest statement. I see more outrage over "animal abuse" (PETA) than they ever express over child abuse/ neglect/ murder.
Anyone who’s born will experience suffering sooner or later. Far from being compassionate, it’s yet another step along the slippery trail being blazed by Belgium.
In some/.most cases, but not all.
I am a firm agnostic and am 100% against abortion. Life begins at the moment of conception and should continue to it's natural end.
I am also against "mercy killing." I am not convinced that our rights are god given, but I do believe in natural rights and they include the right to life.
I maintain that were you to approach these people and offer to join them in their efforts to protect animals, if they’ll join you in trying to protect unborn human babies, they’d spit in your face.
As if suffering were always a bad thing.
I am glad to see there is a topic we are in complete agreement on. The murder of an innocent is always wrong.
Sure. Inflict unspeakable pain and suffering on a child to spare it suffering just makes all kinds of sense, doesn't it?
Animal rights activists go into orbit for the skinning alive of baby seals, (and I have to agree with them on that one) but think nothing of dismembering or chemically scalding to death a living human being.
The hypocrisy is beyond staggering.
There is where I become a fan of an eye for an eye.
For eternity......
My compassion for souls in hell has its limits. Jihadists and abortionists are past that point.
Absolutely correct. The terrifying thing is that they will give you a blank stare if you call them on their inconsistency.
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