Abortion: To Protest or Not to Protest

Chronicles Magazine ^ | 12/5/2002 | Thomas Fleming

[Diamond]

possibility might exist that the people you support are criminals

By that logic, the Hebrew midwives, and Moses' mother and Pharoh's daughter who saved Moses were also criminals.

"¹⁵ The king of Egypt said to the Hebrew midwives, whose names were Shiphrah and Puah, ¹⁶ "When you help the Hebrew women in childbirth and observe them on the delivery stool, if it is a boy, kill him; but if it is a girl, let her live." ¹⁷ The midwives, however, feared God and did not do what the king of Egypt had told them to do; they let the boys live. ¹⁸ Then the king of Egypt summoned the midwives and asked them, "Why have you done this? Why have you let the boys live?"
¹⁹ The midwives answered Pharaoh, "Hebrew women are not like Egyptian women; they are vigorous and give birth before the midwives arrive."
²⁰ So God was kind to the midwives and the people increased and became even more numerous. ²¹ And because the midwives feared God, he gave them families of their own. ²² Then Pharaoh gave this order to all his people: "Every boy that is born ^[2] you must throw into the Nile, but let every girl live."

¹ Now a man of the house of Levi married a Levite woman, ² and she became pregnant and gave birth to a son. When she saw that he was a fine child, she hid him for three months. ³ But when she could hide him no longer, she got a papyrus basket for him and coated it with tar and pitch. Then she placed the child in it and put it among the reeds along the bank of the Nile. ⁴ His sister stood at a distance to see what would happen to him.
⁵ Then Pharaoh's daughter went down to the Nile to bathe, and her attendants were walking along the river bank. She saw the basket among the reeds and sent her slave girl to get it. ⁶ She opened it and saw the baby. He was crying, and she felt sorry for him. "This is one of the Hebrew babies," she said.
⁷ Then his sister asked Pharaoh's daughter, "Shall I go and get one of the Hebrew women to nurse the baby for you?"
⁸ "Yes, go," she answered. And the girl went and got the baby's mother. ⁹ Pharaoh's daughter said to her, "Take this baby and nurse him for me, and I will pay you." So the woman took the baby and nursed him. ¹⁰ When the child grew older, she took him to Pharaoh's daughter and he became her son. She named him Moses, ^[1] saying, "I drew him out of the water."

Cordially,

[JohnGalt]

Using scripture to make an intellectual case is anathema.

Do you pay taxes?

Aren't you thereby 'supporting' the things done with your tax dollars?

[JohnGalt]

750,000 vs. 30+ Million.

Are you suggesting that because of the 'high' number (30 million versus 750k to stop slavery) Christians should be willing to offer 20 million lives to do away with the evil of abortion?

How about China: They have put 115 million babies to death not including abortion since the 1950s; how many Americans should Christians be willing to lose in order to end that evil? Or are Chinese babies not worth as much as American babies?

[Diamond]

If your conclusion is that Fleming would probably support Ashcroft, than you have missed the article completely in my mind. Fleming, I would judge from this article, would say better no Christians in government than so-called Christians up-holding un-Christian laws.

You may be right that Fleming would prefer no Christians in government than so-called Christians up-holding un-Christian laws. I was looking at it as Ashcroft saying at his confirmation hearings that he would "enforce" Roe v Wade. Apparently, Fleming agrees that Roe v Wade is legitimate law. I would bet that Fleming would agree with Ashcroft that people who save babies by civil disobedience should be prosecuted.

He is challenging the belief that a greater good can come from ignoring property law."

Suppose you are walking in your neighborhood and you see your neighbor house on fire, and behind the screen door you see a child being overcome by smoke. As you start toward the door, your neighbor tells you to stay off his property. Which takes precedence, your neighbor's right to his property, or his child's right to life? Do you think the imperiled child would agree that her father's property right trumps her own life?

The right to life is the sine qua non of all other rights, including the right to property. This neccesary condition is not an irrational, emotional argument, it is an argument from reason.

Cordially,

[Diamond]

Using scripture to make an intellectual case is anathema

In your opinion, maybe. But pretend for a moment that it's not Scripture. Were the midwives, Moses' mother, and the Pharoh's daughter criminals for rescuing Moses from Pharoh's decree of death?

Cordially,

[Diamond]

Are you suggesting that because of the 'high' number (30 million versus 750k to stop slavery) Christians should be willing to offer 20 million lives to do away with the evil of abortion

If you are talking about use of force in warfare to end the warfare of abortion, then that's a different subject that the subject of this article. I would think that the principles of a just war theory would have to applied to the appropriate fact situation.

I'm curious to know if you think the Civil War was unjustified in regard to its effects upon slavery.

Cordially,

[JohnGalt]

Fleming agrees that Roe v Wade is legitimate law

I think this article was over your head.

[JohnGalt]

By writing, 750,000 vs 30 million, you chose the battleground for this debate not me.

Economics was in the process of ending slavery and the culture was changing too as the English and French cosmopolitan aristocracies began to look down on the Southern Agrarian Aristocracy.

That some people in the North hated Southern culture with such a passion, and yet, the stubborn South could have claimed the moral high ground by refusing to cease an obviously immoral institution in slavery so as to claim the moral high ground put a pox on both houses. 750,000 died for their arrogance and hatred for each other.

Had the South ended slavery, and the Union disolved, there is no doubt in my mind that there would have been no American involvement in World War One and thus no World War II, and certainly we would be privy to more individual freedoms than we are today.

[Diamond]

I think this article was over your head.

None of the arguments in this article would have the slightest persuasive effect upon any person who has ever been rescued from the abortionist's knife.

Cordially,

[JohnGalt]

You use the same logic about property rights that agrieved minorities have used to impose racial quotas and the homosexual agenda.

[JohnGalt]

That is an emotionally charged defense; I already conceded that ground and agree with you.

[Diamond]

750,000 died for their arrogance and hatred for each other.

Which is worse, 750,000 or 30,000,000?

Cordially,

[Campion]

The good old English right of petition is, in fact, contained within the Constitution, but protesting grievances is in the tradition of mob violence, labor agitation, illegal sit-ins, and anti-Christian groups like PETA, whose celebrity spokesman, Martin Sheen, is supporting Scheidler's right to protest.

It's also in the tradition of Thomas Paine, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson ...

You know the world is turned upside down when a self-proclaimed "libertarian" is writing what amounts to an elaborate apologia for the denial of First Amendment rights to a group because that group espouses a political opinion he finds problematical. His argument amounts to saying, "It's the law, and enough people like it that way, so shut up and obey!" ... a sentiment which would have made Heinrich Himmler swell up with pride.

[JohnGalt]

Which is worse 115 million infanticides in China or 30 million abortions or 750 Civil War dead?

I fail to see any logic behind your line of thinking.

[JohnGalt]

Fleming is not a 'libertarian,' and in fact a libertarian critic. The rest of your reply, and evem the Himmler rant tells me that this editorial was over your head.

He was challenging 'libertarian' thinkers to square the violation of property law with the movement which he sees as being denigrated as just another civil rights protest movement by taking their case to the Supreme Court.

I wonder if you would be so vocal for the PETA crowd...

[Diamond]

While I'm glad that we can agree on one point, #49 is not just an emotionally charged defense. It is based on the logical premise that the right to life is the sine qua non of every other right, including the right of property.

I still have not seen any presentation of an argument of how an abrogation of the right to life can be lawful, and why according to the dictates of Fleming's logic, Moses's mother, et al should not be considered criminals for protecting him from Pharoh's law, or why you should be prosecuting for trespassing when you save the child from behind the screen door of your neighbor's burning home.

Just out of curiosity, do you think that the North's war against the Southern States was legal, and in accordance with proper constitutional jurisprudence?

Cordially, ,

[Campion]

There was no "violation of property law," unless you argue that unborn children are the property of their mothers, which is a silly idea.

And, yes, if PETA were being silenced by the argument that "some animal rights protesters are violent, therefore the non-violent ones are racketeers and must be sued into submissive silence," you can bet your sweet bippie I'd be up in arms over it. The First Amendment is for everyone, or it's for no one.

[Diamond]

And by the way, #49 is not just a rational defense, it is also an indisputable ontological reality, simply because of the fact of the existence of those who have been literally rescued by the Scheidler crowd.

Cordially,

[Campion]

And, BTW, if you want to claim the editorial was "over my head," I'd suggest that NOW v. Scheidler is way, way over Fleming's head, because he doesn't even understand that Joe Scheidler is not, and never has been, "the head of Operation Rescue".

[JohnGalt]

You are rather big on legalisms but as Hobbes noted, if we are not ruled by laws, we are ruled by men. And men indeed have ruled since the country was founded.

The forefathers clearly believed in a right to secession, that I know. Lincoln's gross usurptions of Consitutional rights and the impostion of an income tax were clearly contrary to the intent of the Constition, and demonstrates a clear lack of regard for such things as jurisprudence. But Lincoln did have an ends justifies the means belief, and frequently cited the whole situtation as being in Gods Hands.

There was no good side in the Civil War; it was a terrible tragedy based on a split in the culture and a President whose Industrialist backers feared losing the tarrif revenue from the South.