Can we reach a compromise regarding abortion?

[Belk]

You support abortion. You favor murder of infants. Therefore, you are an adversary - a supporter of killers - and I don't care about politesse when dealing with foes.

Then given that the nature of the conflict is being able to debate effictvly it seems likely you will lose.

 

[ecco]

Ecco,
They labeled Africans slaves as 3/5ths a person and considered it ok to hang them from a tree for no good reason at all. Now all the sudden we frown on this!

Slavery in American was justified by the permission given by god in Exodus.
Slavery in America was abolished by people who took a secular view over a religious view.

Likewise for all who consider that life within a human woman's womb to be less than a person. In the end this will change but how many humans must "hang" via abortion before it does?

Religious views are supposedly based on inerrant scripture. Recent religious views proclaim that life begins at conception. Historically, religious views proclaimed life began at quickening or at first breath. Why do your inerrant views change?

Religions have fought against contraception. If there was more acceptance of contraception, there would be fewer abortions. The hypocrisy is there for all to see.

People have always had and will always get abortions. There are two ways: legal abortions in good facilities and illegal abortions done by a coat hanger in an alley. Reasonable people have discarded the view held by some religious people people that that abortions should be illegal. They came to realize that secular laws are better than religious laws just as when they abolished slavery.

You've chosen a position that is inconsistent with what the founders of this country thought when they listed those inalienable rights of life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. In doing so you undermine the value of your own life when in turn affects your liberties and happiness. If a government official can simply declare a person to not be a person, thereby denying them their protection of life, then they become the same kind of dictator the founders were setting up the American form of government against.

Not surprisingly, you have that backwards. For our founding fathers it was clear that a person was someone who was alive outside of the womb. If you have anything that shows otherwise, please present it.

You are the want who wants Government officials to dictate that a zygote is a person. The court's, after much investigation, came to the conclusion that there were no historical secular or religious reasons to support that view.

Read Roe v Wade!

Vicomte need not invoke any scripture to make this point and the reason he does is precisely because this country was founded on Christian principles whether you like it or not. This is not to claim the founders were all Christians... not even that some were... but that they gave us a foundation based upon Christian thinking that saw all human life as infinitely valuable.

Including the Cristian thinking that permitted the owning of slaves.

On top of this you argue within a Christian forum claiming you cannot be affected by such thinking.

If you don't like that I present my views, don't respond to them. If you don't respond, I'll have nothing to say back to you.

So you haven't a leg to stand on when it comes to the protection of your own life and liberties. To take for granted the basis of these protection is to dismiss them altogether.

I don't take them for granted which is why I will speak out, and take other action, when I see people trying to erode my or other's civil liberties.

Likewise your compassion for an adult woman is nil since that woman must come through not just the birth canal but all the stages of life prior to it.

After she came out of the birth canal she was a person.

It's interesting how your lack of recognition of life after death spills over into a lack of respect for life prior to death.

I am not the one who has a lack of respect for life. By forcing women to carry to term a pregnancy initiated by rape, you show your disrespect for the woman. By alternatively forcing a woman to have a back alley abortion, you show your disrespect for the woman. By wanting to impose your views on all Americans you show your lack of respect for most other people.

The association is there yet you are blind by your anti-religious sentiment.

My anti-religious sentiment really comes out when religious people arrogantly proclaim "My way is the only Right way".

Never-the-less you possess the same protection on your life as preborn persons should have and if the drift in American continues against life it will eventually effect more and more of us adults you so jealously guard. This movement toward the disorder of homosexuality as being equivelent to heterosexuality is not just short sighted but dangerous. In the future those who disagee with calling that disorder normal will be compelled to do so on pain of death. We already see the beginnings of this with the bakery owner who has been denied his livelihood because he would not make a wedding cake for a "same-sex couple."

What has been going on my whole life is a flipping around of normal and abnormal, an exchange of good and evil, and the consequent confusion such mindset brings. None of us live in a vacuum and eventually these ideas will affect all of us because as has been wisely said: ideas have cosequences. We carry out what we think mostly about and this sex-saturated culture we live in wants even more than what Nazi's had... their own kind of sexual perversion in concentration camps eventually morphed into a lack of respect for human life (and vice-versa). Americans were instrumental in stopping the Jewish holocaust only to find years later their children's children without memory of or stigma against these same kind of atrocities... just under different terms.

If you want to start on thread on the evils of homosexuality or the evils of fair treatment to all people or the evils of our sex-saturated culture, then do so, let me know, and I'll be glad to respond.

 

[ecco]

... The only times it can be justified (in my opinion) is in the case of rape (especially of children), or if the woman could lose her life if she bears the baby to term.

I find it interesting that when atheists suggest that some abortions be legal, a few would-be religious dictators jump all over them. But when a "Grandpa" wearing a "I love Jesus" tee shirt says the same thing, none of the would-be religious dictators even bother to respond to his post.

 

[Vicomte13]

Vicomte13 said: ↑
When we prefer our own law over God's, we practice idolatry

ecco said: ↑
Outlawing slavery is committing idolatry?​

Wrong. It was OUR OWN LAWS that abolished slavery in opposition obeying god's laws which encouraged, permitted and gave rules on how to acquire and treat them. (Exodus 21). You defined this a committing idolatry.




So Christians buying heathen African slaves right off the boat was OK since they were not yet Christians. The abolishment of slavery was done in accordance with the Constitution of the US, not in obedience to a god that permitted and encouraged slavery.


Approximately 30% of pregnancies abort spontaneously. God's will.

 

[Vicomte13]

Slavery in American was justified by the permission given by god in Exodus.

But that "justification" does not, and did not, stand up to actual Scriptural scrutiny.

God did not establish slavery in Exodus. Slavery already existed. He very dramatically limited it, and provided a legal means of escape from the condition for every slave, and provided a mandatory termination date for slavery.

And that law in Exodus was for Israelites living in God's Israel. It was not a law given to the Gentiles. (The law given to the Gentiles was given by Jesus: "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you", and by Paul "The Christian slave is your brother", which cuts the very marrow out of slavery.

American slavery as practiced had nothing to do with Jesus or Paul, or with the rules given in Exodus. It was a race-based, eternally oppressive, monstrous and satanic practice that risks Hell for most of its practitioners.

Had the law of God in Exodus been followed in America, every Christian slave would have had to be liberated at once, for God forbade the enslavement of believers.

AND ALSO the slavemasters who had sex with their slaves were automatically married to them - giving the women property rights and rights to children, etc.

And all slaves would have had to be liberated at the Jubilee, even if not Christian.

American slavery had nothing to do with God. It was American idolatry, of money, leading Americans to brutalize massive numbers of fellow Christians in order to get rich, in this life, and earn themselves the fire of damnation in the next.

 

[Loudmouth]

I'd say that you're trying to reason with pro-abortion people . . .

No one here is pro-abortion. All of us wish that we lived in a world where not one elective abortion would occur. What we keep explaining is that it isn't our decision. It isn't our bodies.

If you think abortion is bad, then don't get one. That simple. If you want to limit abortions, then the best way to do that is remove the cause of abortions which is based mainly in economics. Unfortunately, we are witnessing a conservative movement that feels it necessary to vilify single mothers who dare to seek assistance in raising their children. They also push for the removal of sex education from public schools.

 

[Dave-W]

No one here is pro-abortion. All of us wish that we lived in a world where not one elective abortion would occur.

Maybe not here on this board but they do exist elsewhere.

 

[Loudmouth]

Maybe not here on this board but they do exist elsewhere.

Does anyone think that women go to get abortions because they are fun?

 

[Dave-W]

Does anyone think that women go to get abortions because they are fun?

No but one woman (who apparently has been lauded by many) got one because she was carrying a male child and could not bear to bring one more monster into the world.

 

[patricius79]

No one here is pro-abortion. All of us wish that we lived in a world where not one elective abortion would occur. .

Why would we want such a world unless a human being in the womb is as much a person as anyone else?

 

[Loudmouth]

No but one woman (who apparently has been lauded by many) got one because she was carrying a male child and could not bear to bring one more monster into the world.

As unfortunate as that is, I don't see how it is relevant to what we have been discussing.

 

[Loudmouth]

Why would we want such a world unless a human being in the womb is as much a person as anyone else?

What we would want is a world where women are not disadvantaged by having a child, and a world where women are not vilified by conservatives for seeking assistance to support her family.

 

[KCfromNC]

Why would we want such a world unless a human being in the womb is as much a person as anyone else?

Because there are more effective ways to prevent unwanted children? Because preventing medical procedures is a good thing?

 

[Dave-W]

What we would want is a world where women are not disadvantaged by having a child, and a world where women are not vilified by conservatives for seeking assistance to support her family.

And that is what some of these radical feminists want too. A world with no men. (or maybe a few as "donors" until they figure out how to reproduce with out males)

 

[Ratjaws]

As a Buddhist, I happen to be blessed with other declarations of moral reality as found in the Tipitaka, in no way means you, or anyone else, don't have to live by the same rules.

I'm not advocating for lawlessness. Anyone who can demonstrate measurable harm received from another is entitled to restoration through the power of law.

Ananda,
There is a difference between moral and civil law. In fact as Vicomte has been trying to get across in this thread there is a law called divine positive law upon which all other law rests. I think the simplist definition of it is God's absolute will. Then comes the moral law which has to do with human behavior (more accurately the acts we make). Moral laws is unchangeable like positive law. Moral law resides outside us and is summed up in the Christian Ten Commandments. It can be discovered by us... not made up at our whim.Then civil law which is moral law codified by human beings. We must make distinctions or we talk past each other here.

Now you say you have your own code of behavior or law but if it in any way violates moral law (or divine positive) then it is not valid. This is where our difference is in how you see that moral law outside you. Your Buddhist version may be an attempt to codify (clearify) moral law or not... you tell me. Never-the-less it is dependent on that immutable law imposed on us by our nature (by God creating us) or it is not good law. Likewise for civil law any society lives under which is precisely why any law that supports abortion, the deliberate killing of a living person, is a bad law and we are not bound by it. There need not be a civil law against abortion, or any other form of murder, unless in a particular society that sort of behavior becomes a problem. Since in our society abortion is a serious problem we need to legislate against it.

In a nutshell, we cannot kill an innocent helpless person with impuniity, just because of where they are living.

 

[ToddNotTodd]

And that is what some of these radical feminists want too. A world with no men. (or maybe a few as "donors" until they figure out how to reproduce with out males)

Pssst...

Fringe groups don't represent the norm. You know that whole bell-curve thingy...

 

[KitKatMatt]

I am saying that I have the right to intervene to save lives.

The right to swing your arm ends where another person's uterus begins.

 

[ToddNotTodd]

Ananda,
There is a difference between moral and civil law. In fact as Vicomte has been trying to get across in this thread there is a law called divine positive law upon which all other law rests. I think the simplist definition of it is God's absolute will. Then comes the moral law which has to do with human behavior (more accurately the acts we make). Moral laws is unchangeable like positive law. Moral law resides outside us and is summed up in the Christian Ten Commandments. It can be discovered by us... not made up at our whim.Then civil law which is moral law codified by human beings. We must make distinctions or we talk past each other here.

Now you say you have your own code of behavior or law but if it in any way violates moral law (or divine positive) then it is not valid. This is where our difference is in how you see that moral law outside you. Your Buddhist version may be an attempt to codify (clearify) moral law or not... you tell me. Never-the-less it is dependent on that immutable law imposed on us by our nature (by God creating us) or it is not good law. Likewise for civil law any society lives under which is precisely why any law that supports abortion, the deliberate killing of a living person, is a bad law and we are not bound by it. There need not be a civil law against abortion, or any other form of murder, unless in a particular society that sort of behavior becomes a problem. Since in our society abortion is a serious problem we need to legislate against it.

In a nutshell, we cannot kill an innocent helpless person with impuniity, just because of where they are living.

You forgot to end all of that with "in my opinion"...

 

[Ratjaws]

Because there are more effective ways to prevent unwanted children? Because preventing medical procedures is a good thing?

KC,
Simply put there is only one morally permissable way to prevent a child from coming into this world and that is refrain from sexual intercourse. This is the crux of the discussion here that rarely gets mentioned. It is the elephant in the room that our sex-saturated culture avoids. No one can force us to engage in sex... if they do it is a sin called rape and we have civil laws against it... as we should! If you don't want children then don't engage in the act that causes them... period. Our society is so far adrift they have disconnected human sexuality from children in order to endulge in the pleasure that remains. They have been taught to use technology and drugs to make this separation without understanding how immoral it is. We cannot separate life from the context of a loving man and woman and be right. Even in context of marriage there is a way to space children for serious reason, but it is never a good moral act to prevent them altogether apart from not engaging in cotius. We've been wrongly taught to like sex without children but it is not only wrong it goes against a couple's love for each other. Children in a marriage support it by giving more reason than just romance or taking care of each other for it. Later in life children take care of the dying parents if they are raised successfully to be unselfish adults. While these are secondary benefits for why we must not separate children from sex they need to be looked at in accessing the issue of abortion. The moral aspect is the bottom line but it is immoral not just because "God says" rather because it goes against our nature and harms us in some way. Then too we will take nothing else with us into the next life except other persons and who else would you more so desire than your own children. Again, simply put "unwanted" children need be addressed prior to sexual intimacy and not after as our hell bent society encourages!

 

[Ratjaws]

You forgot to end all of that with "in my opinion"...

No ananda, I'm not a moral relavitist!