Conservative Men and Abortion

Blackhawk

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Originally posted by seebs
While I might agree, the "silent scream" thing was debunked long ago. Note that all the stuff you're describing is pretty far out on the spectrum of things that are normally part of an abortion.

I think the real point Seebs is that no one has the right to take another innocent human beings life.  Captial punishment (whether right or wrong) is different because the person is not innocent.  In abortion the child has done nothing except be in the wrong place at the wrong time.   
 
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seebs

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Originally posted by Blackhawk
I think the real point Seebs is that no one has the right to take another innocent human beings life.  Captial punishment (whether right or wrong) is different because the person is not innocent.  In abortion the child has done nothing except be in the wrong place at the wrong time.   

Ahh, but see, I'm not sure of the universality of that rule. Capital punishment often affects innocent people. Are we allowed to take a 5% risk of killing an innocent person? 10%? 30%?

"Alive" is not an either-or thing for humans. A person who is brain-dead but has a heartbeat... Is this person "a human life"? I don't know. How about comas? How about someone who's been in a coma for 8 years?

In practice, we are obliged to guess, approximate, and do our best. Confronted with a pregnant woman who has been injured probably-fatally, the "best" option may be to do a C-section, hoping to save the baby, even though you are almost certainly killing the mother in the process. Or maybe it isn't.

I think that the same questionable status that applies to people who are brain-dead applies to an embryo. At Day 1 of a pregnancy, with the best possible medical care, the chance of getting a living baby is nowhere *near* 100%; I seem to recall that about a third of pregnancies spontaneously abort; the exact number is hard to get, because if the pregnancy spontaneously aborts on Day 2, you may never know the mother was pregnant.

How about ectopic pregnancies? No known way to get a baby out of it - but if you don't terminate it, the mother is very likely to die a horrible death. The only way she won't is if it spontaneously aborts.

My personal guess is that the cut-off for "personhood" is around the point at which there are brain waves. However, that's a personal opinion.

I think that aborting even on Day 1 of a pregnancy is ending a *potential* person, but I don't think a *person* was killed, just a potential person... This is still something to be avoided, IMHO. By 8-9 months, I think we're talking about a "person", probably. But I still don't know.

I guess, what frustrates me here is that this *IS* a very unusual case. There is no other moral or ethical case to compare with which has the same qualities. The Bible does address this, partially - we can compare the penalty for killing a person to the penalty for causing a pregnancy to abort. They're handled differently.

If the Bible says "the penalty for killing a baby is X, and the penalty for ending a pregnancy is Y", we can derive from these some rules about the relative severities of the actions.

Furthermore, I seem to recall that there's stillborn babies in the Bible. Are they mourned the same way dead children are mourned? If not, this once again argues for a different standard.

I think the Biblical standard is pretty close to the "extreme" pro-choice position: If it isn't born yet, it's not a "person". I suspect this may be partially an error rooted in lack of understanding; keep in mind, the people involved thought the "seed" had all the person-bits, and the mother only provided a place for the "seed" to grow.

So... I think it's probably generally a bad idea to abort a fetus, but before there's brain waves, I don't think it's "murder", and even after that, I'm not sure it ought to count the same as killing a "full person". The additional complications due to the baby's dependancy on a specific person make it much harder to answer this; in no other case of alleged "murder" are we dealing with a conflict between the rights of two people.

I also think it's quite clear that non-elective abortions (ectopic pregnancies and the like) should not be worried about - but this makes it even harder for me to call it "murder" to electively end a pregnancy at the same stage.

In the end, most of human morality is emotional response; this has been demonstrated at length by researchers. If you phrase a moral quandry differently, but the actual facts are identical, peoples' answers change dramatically; the "reasoning" part of the process only comes in when you ask them to justify their answers.

With all of this... It's complicated enough that I do not feel human wisdom is sufficient to judge it, and as a result, I would rather each person face it on their own, with guidance, than have a firm policy. I believe that individuals are wiser than groups.
 
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Clay

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Originally posted by seebs
This is why, in the Bible, when you injure a pregnant woman causing her to lose the baby, it's treated just like any other murder.

Oh, wait, it isn't.

I'm sorry, but God has made it pretty clear that, while terminating a pregnancy can be considered injury to the parents, it's *not* the same as murder. It's right there in the book.

where?
 
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seebs

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Originally posted by Clay
where?

Oh, boy. I hate groveling through the Law.

There's a penalty for injuring a woman such that she loses her child. It's a special penalty. It's not just "this is a kind of murder"; it's a different penalty, and you owe her.

So far as I can tell, biblically, if you injure a woman such that she miscarries, you have injured her, not sinned. It's like the difference between criminal and civil law nowadays.
 
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vegan

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Originally posted by seebs
I'm sorry, but God has made it pretty clear that, while terminating a pregnancy can be considered injury to the parents, it's *not* the same as murder. It's right there in the book.

I am sure someone else could find a better quote, but I offer this:

Jeremiah 1:15: Before I formed thee in the belly, I knew thee.

 
 
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seebs

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Originally posted by vegan
I am sure someone else could find a better quote, but I offer this:

Jeremiah 1:15: Before I formed thee in the belly, I knew thee.


Yup. So, life apparently begins a *long* time before conception - meaning we're dealing with foreknowledge, which means this is more about God's eternal nature than any specific question of when "life" begins.
 
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vegan

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Some more stuff I found.

Psalms 22:10
I was cast upon thee from the womb; thou art my God from my mother's belly.

Isaiah 44:2
THus say the lord that made thee, and formed thee from thy mother's womb.

Isaiah 44:24 repeats something similar.

Isaiah 49:5 And now, saith the Lord that formed me in the womb.
 
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vegan

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Originally posted by seebs
Yup. So, life apparently begins a *long* time before conception - meaning we're dealing with foreknowledge, which means this is more about God's eternal nature than any specific question of when "life" begins.

Or, it means you can not take away what is not yours.  God KNEW you before you were born and THOUGHT ENOUGH about you to send you to earth.  Abortion is basiclly saying to God, "Sorry, take this one back.  I know more than you."

That is worse than murder.

Moderators: I thought you get blessings for participating in posts.  Lay some on me already.
 
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IslandBreeze

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Originally posted by vegan
Or, it means you can not take away what is not yours.  God KNEW you before you were born and THOUGHT ENOUGH about you to send you to earth.  Abortion is basiclly saying to God, "Sorry, take this one back.  I know more than you."

That is worse than murder.

Moderators: I thought you get blessings for participating in posts.  Lay some on me already.

I'm not a mod, but here ya go!
 
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seebs

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Originally posted by vegan
Or, it means you can not take away what is not yours.  God KNEW you before you were born and THOUGHT ENOUGH about you to send you to earth.  Abortion is basiclly saying to God, "Sorry, take this one back.  I know more than you."

That is worse than murder.

In which case, a woman who doesn't have sex when she's fertile is *also* doing something much worse than murder, because she's not even getting the life *started*.

I think you're doing this entirely backwards; God, I would guess, knows who does and doesn't get formed.

Do you think the 30% or so of pregnancies that spontaneously fail are "worse than murder"?
 
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MatthewDiscipleofGod

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Christians shouldn't be defending abortion. I'm sorry but that makes me physically sick. It's murder. Can't take a person rights away? You sure can! You can't go and murder your own teenagers. That's taking a right away. So that makes that argument null and void. Should be an end of dicussion on that part. Funny thing is kids can murder their kids without even telling their parents. You can do partial birth abortions which means the baby just isn't completly out of the mom yet but could be seconds away from it. Might as well just shoot the kid in the head after it's completly out and save money and trouble. Sorry about the gross picture but this is what abortion is people. Also instead of calling it pro-choice and anti-abortion lets be more accurate. It's Pro-Death and Pro- Life. If you want to read a lot on the subject visit this link:

http://www.str.org/free/commentaries/abortion/index.htm
 
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i think girls need to be taught that it is acceptable and cool to say no, and that boys need to be taught the exact same thing. people seem to think that girls are still the innocent ones that should give in and that guys should pressure or else they are sissies or gay. so everyone ends up having sex. in school i hear people say 'add one to my list' and stuff like that after a date, from both boys and girls. if both boys and girls were able to back off and think about what they were considering they would make better choices.
i do agree that mtv and a lot of media portray unmarried, casual sex as very normal and good. my mom won't watch tvbecause she saw ally mc beal, where the main character decided to have sex with a total stranger. people need to be informed that having casual sex is dangerous and demeaning, not cool. on tv you see that having an abortion is a quick way to get rid of a child. there needs to be more education about abortion and it's aftermath, and all other options as well.
i believe that better sex education would help a lot. a lot of people believe dumb myths like you can't get pregnant your first time, etc and if they had actual education they would know the truth. also, i guess they would be more comfortable bringing up issues like birth control if they decided to have sex. i don't think sex education is unrealistic, even if it covers extreme practices. people have a right to know. i do think parents should know beforehand what the curriculum is regarding controversial or extreme topics like homosexual sex or sadomachicism (sp?) so they can opt their kids out of it, but all h.s. students should be taught heterosexual basics and about birth control so that they can make informed choices, not based on myths or guess but truth. and abstinence can be presented as a ideal and 100% safe option. *my fav*
about abortion and men...i think it takes two to make a baby and that both partners should be committed before they decide to have sex, because that is what it's for. you should not have sex if you aren't willing to face the consequences, all of them, not just pregnancy. i think once the woman is pregnant if they are married the husband should have equal say about whether the child is carried or aborted, adopted, etc. but if the woman is single, then it is her choice. the man has no committed to a relationship with her and has no say over what she does with her life, unless they;ve signed a contract or done something like that before hand.
 
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i'm against partial birth abortions and late term abortions except in medical emergencies. i know i could never have an abortion and luckily i don't put myself in that type of situation where i'll have to make that choice. but i can't make everyone do as i say. i am pro-choice, because if you were raped or traumatized then carrying this baby will jeopardize your health, and you did not put yourself in that situation.
ideally, people who don't want kids won't have sex, but of course that's not realistic for the whole world. my idea of pro-choice means you can choose not to have sex as well as what to do if you're pregnant. and i think it's better not to have the child if you can't care for it financially, emotionally or physically. why bring more people, unwanted, into an unhappy situation?
.god knows who each person is and what will happen in their lives. i don't think abortion is destroying gods plan, because we aren't that powerful. obviously, the abortion would be part of his plan for whatever reason, just like early or painful death, disease, other problems. maybe a woman who has had an abortion will someday give birth and be able to counsel pre-abortion women or make a difference like that
:angel:
 
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cammie...if the couple is married then they are committed and share in the responsibility. but if the man does not commit to the relationship he should not have any say over how the woman makes choices. marriage is a partnership, singleness isn't. i think it's the same if a unmarried woman helps her boyfriend through college. she can't expect to reap the benefits of his degree because the two are seperate individuals, not a couple who make choices together. if a woman becomes pregnant and she whats her boyfriend or whatever to share in the choice, i'm not stopping it. but i don't think a boyfriend should be able to force his girlfriend to have an abortion OR to keep the baby.
if a man has sex with a woman for pleasure he does not have a right to make choices about what she does regarding the consequences, whether the be pregnancy, disease, heartache, etc. if he wants a family or to share in the choice, he can wait to have sex until the two are in a partnership. that's the admirable thing to do.
 
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Blackhawk

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Okay I wrote a long reply but it got lost so this one will be more brief. 

Originally posted by seebs
Ahh, but see, I'm not sure of the universality of that rule. Capital punishment often affects innocent people. Are we allowed to take a 5% risk of killing an innocent person? 10%? 30%?

capital punishment like you say later is a totally different thing.  But the goal of capital punishment is to not kill any innocent people so I do not see your point here.  Personally I am for capital pnishment in theory but against it as practiced in the U.S. today.  I jsut think that we are too corrupt to be judging so severly.  I think that all the people going free now says that.  But anyways abortion would be more like having capital punishment only for innocent people.  In aborition we know the child is innocent with capital punishement we believed he/she was guilty.  Big difference. 

"Alive" is not an either-or thing for humans. A person who is brain-dead but has a heartbeat... Is this person "a human life"? I don't know. How about comas? How about someone who's been in a coma for 8 years?  [/B]


I am not an expert about the two questions you gave me but it is a pretty well regarded scientific fact that the fetus is alive.  There is not much debate on that.  The real question is if the fetus is a "person" or not. 

In practice, we are obliged to guess, approximate, and do our best. Confronted with a pregnant woman who has been injured probably-fatally, the "best" option may be to do a C-section, hoping to save the baby, even though you are almost certainly killing the mother in the process. Or maybe it isn't. [/B]


I do not see the point here but if we think that we can't save one human but are pretty sure we can save another I think that we should try and save at least one human life.  Again I do not really see your point here.

I think that the same questionable status that applies to people who are brain-dead applies to an embryo. At Day 1 of a pregnancy, with the best possible medical care, the chance of getting a living baby is nowhere *near* 100%; I seem to recall that about a third of pregnancies spontaneously abort; the exact number is hard to get, because if the pregnancy spontaneously aborts on Day 2, you may never know the mother was pregnant. [/B]


I am okay with letting God decide.  He is in the position ot do that. We are not. 

How about ectopic pregnancies? No known way to get a baby out of it - but if you don't terminate it, the mother is very likely to die a horrible death. The only way she won't is if it spontaneously aborts. [/B]


I do not know about this. However I thought we were speaking of the vast majority of abortions not ones like this.

My personal guess is that the cut-off for "personhood" is around the point at which there are brain waves. However, that's a personal opinion. [/B]
 

And my personal opinion is that it begins at conception.  If god wants to end one's life the day after conception then so be it but I have to have very good reasons to do it myself.  

I think that aborting even on Day 1 of a pregnancy is ending a *potential* person, but I don't think a *person* was killed, just a potential person... This is still something to be avoided, IMHO. By 8-9 months, I think we're talking about a "person", probably. But I still don't know. [/B]
 

You do not know if a child of a woman who is 9 moths pregnant is a person or not?  Wow! Not many pro abortion supporters agree with abortions at this late stage.  Literally the difference between the baby outside of the womb and inside is more about location than anythign else.  One can have the baby and be fine at this point. 

I guess, what frustrates me here is that this *IS* a very unusual case. There is no other moral or ethical case to compare with which has the same qualities. The Bible does address this, partially - we can compare the penalty for killing a person to the penalty for causing a pregnancy to abort. They're handled differently. [/B]


So is other killing in the Bible.  not all killing inside or outside of the womb gets the same penalty.   

If the Bible says "the penalty for killing a baby is X, and the penalty for ending a pregnancy is Y", we can derive from these some rules about the relative severities of the actions.[/B]


I think you are assuming here which is not a good thing to judge your biblical ethics upon.   

Furthermore, I seem to recall that there's stillborn babies in the Bible. Are they mourned the same way dead children are mourned? If not, this once again argues for a different standard. .[/B]


Humans naturally will mourn differently for a baby they have experienced outside of the womb than one they have not.  I do not see the pont here.

I think the Biblical standard is pretty close to the "extreme" pro-choice position: If it isn't born yet, it's not a "person". I suspect this may be partially an error rooted in lack of understanding; keep in mind, the people involved thought the "seed" had all the person-bits, and the mother only provided a place for the "seed" to grow. [/B]


Huh?  You have not shown this at all.  how do you come to this fact?  Where in the Bible does it support the pro-chocie position? 

So... I think it's probably generally a bad idea to abort a fetus, but before there's brain waves, I don't think it's "murder", and even after that, I'm not sure it ought to count the same as killing a "full person". The additional complications due to the baby's dependancy on a specific person make it much harder to answer this; in no other case of alleged "murder" are we dealing with a conflict between the rights of two people. [/B]


a baby inside or outside of the womb is dependent.  One is dependent like you said on one person alone but is that such a huge difference that killing that person is okay?  Also murder is always about the rights of one individual over another.  we just do not think that the murderer had justified reasons to take the right of life from another. That is whywe call it murder. 

I also think it's quite clear that non-elective abortions (ectopic pregnancies and the like) should not be worried about - but this makes it even harder for me to call it "murder" to electively end a pregnancy at the same stage.

In the end, most of human morality is emotional response; this has been demonstrated at length by researchers. If you phrase a moral quandry differently, but the actual facts are identical, peoples' answers change dramatically; the "reasoning" part of the process only comes in when you ask them to justify their answers. [/B]


So what?  One can trick another to think differently about the same facts.  I do not see the point here.  The "actual facts" although in reality the same seem diffferent in the two cases.  But I guess I am reasoning when I say that I can't see how one can justify the pro-choice argument. 

With all of this... It's complicated enough that I do not feel human wisdom is sufficient to judge it, and as a result, I would rather each person face it on their own, with guidance, than have a firm policy. I believe that individuals are wiser than groups. [/B]


If humans can't judge it and the Bible is not clear on it then who can make a decision about it?  The woman can't because she is not wise enough.  So you are left with no one. But I do not think that groups are less wise than individuals.  I am not saying that they are wiser though.  however one of the prinicples that  our country was founded on was that a group of people can make a better decision than a minority or one person can.   
 
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vegan

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Originally posted by seebs
In which case, a woman who doesn't have sex when she's fertile is *also* doing something much worse than murder, because she's not even getting the life *started*.

When God sends a suitable mate and it doesnt end in marriage, yes, that is bad.  It is a commandment to be fruitful and multiply. 
Originally posted by seebs

Do you think the 30% or so of pregnancies that spontaneously fail are "worse than murder"?



No, I do not.  Don't you see the difference between a 70 y.o. dying of a heart attack and a 70 y.o. dying during a carjacking?  Of course you do.  Same is true for abortion.  There is a world of difference between abortion and stillborn.  You know it too.
 
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seebs

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Originally posted by vegan
When God sends a suitable mate and it doesnt end in marriage, yes, that is bad.  It is a commandment to be fruitful and multiply. 

But "worse than murder"?


No, I do not.  Don't you see the difference between a 70 y.o. dying of a heart attack and a 70 y.o. dying during a carjacking?  Of course you do.  Same is true for abortion.  There is a world of difference between abortion and stillborn.  You know it too.

In both of those cases, we agree that we are mourning the death of a person. The Bible does not seem to advocate mourning stillbirths as "people".
 
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seebs

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Originally posted by Blackhawk

capital punishment like you say later is a totally different thing.  But the goal of capital punishment is to not kill any innocent people so I do not see your point here.  Personally I am for capital pnishment in theory but against it as practiced in the U.S. today.  I jsut think that we are too corrupt to be judging so severly.  I think that all the people going free now says that.  But anyways abortion would be more like having capital punishment only for innocent people.  In aborition we know the child is innocent with capital punishement we believed he/she was guilty.  Big difference. 

Oh, I agree it's very different - but it's "the same" in that people can honestly disagree, and I don't think anyone but God can answer the question so that everyone should accept the answer given.


I am not an expert about the two questions you gave me but it is a pretty well regarded scientific fact that the fetus is alive.  There is not much debate on that.  The real question is if the fetus is a "person" or not. 

Oh, sure. And a brain-dead human is a living human body - but I'm not sure it's a "person" anymore.


I do not see the point here but if we think that we can't save one human but are pretty sure we can save another I think that we should try and save at least one human life.  Again I do not really see your point here.

The point is to show that it can be morally consistent for us to, while opposed to loss of life, choose to end one life that *might* have made it to do our best to save another.


I am okay with letting God decide.  He is in the position ot do that. We are not. 

Unfortunately, we have to make a lot of judgement calls that we aren't qualified for.


I do not know about this. However I thought we were speaking of the vast majority of abortions not ones like this.

I guess, my thinking is this: The only way I can be for a ban on abortions is if I am convinced that *NO* abortion is acceptable, not ever. And I'm not, because there are cases of danger to the mother, and other borderline cases, where I think it's a hard question.


And my personal opinion is that it begins at conception.  If god wants to end one's life the day after conception then so be it but I have to have very good reasons to do it myself.

Hmm. I don't think "personhood" begins at conception, simply because then I can't figure out which of a pair of twins is the "person". It seems clear to me that souls come in later.



You do not know if a child of a woman who is 9 moths pregnant is a person or not?  Wow!

Nope. I don't even know if a 6-month-old baby is a "person". My understanding of "person" is based on my experience of communicating to someone; I'm not sure there's a "someone" in an infant.

Not many pro abortion supporters agree with abortions at this late stage.

I certainly don't; I think it's a very bad thing, for the same reason infanticide is wrong - at this point, it is quite practical for us to say "well, if you don't want this baby, someone else does".


So is other killing in the Bible.  not all killing inside or outside of the womb gets the same penalty.

True - but I think there's a difference between harming people and harming property of people, and I think that unborn babies are generally treated more like property of people than like separate people in the Bible.


I think you are assuming here which is not a good thing to judge your biblical ethics upon.

Well, we have to; the Bible doesn't directly address the question of "what if the mother doesn't want to bear the child, and it's possible to kill it without harming her?". So we're all guessing a little.


Humans naturally will mourn differently for a baby they have experienced outside of the womb than one they have not.  I do not see the pont here.

My thinking is that the difference looks a lot like the difference I would associate with "personhood".


Huh?  You have not shown this at all.  how do you come to this fact?  Where in the Bible does it support the pro-chocie position?

A baby is not treated as a "person" in terms of the Law until it's born. If unborn babies were "people", you wouldn't need a separate law about them, it'd just be "killing people". Instead, they're seen as an injury to the mother.


a baby inside or outside of the womb is dependent.  One is dependent like you said on one person alone but is that such a huge difference that killing that person is okay?

I don't know. I tend to think it *probably* shouldn't be, but I'm not the one whose body is playing host to something for nine months.


So what?  One can trick another to think differently about the same facts.  I do not see the point here.  The "actual facts" although in reality the same seem diffferent in the two cases.  But I guess I am reasoning when I say that I can't see how one can justify the pro-choice argument. 

Yup. Basically, I can see both arguments, and I think they're both good arguments. Because I think both sides are reasonably consistent, I can't just dismiss one of them as "obviously wrong".


If humans can't judge it and the Bible is not clear on it then who can make a decision about it?  The woman can't because she is not wise enough.  So you are left with no one. But I do not think that groups are less wise than individuals.  I am not saying that they are wiser though.  however one of the prinicples that  our country was founded on was that a group of people can make a better decision than a minority or one person can.   

I think it's rather that we think every person's opinion is important to get a vote - we still leave the individual to make as many decisions as possible.

Basically, what it comes down to is, when I don't think we have enough information or wisdom to judge with certainty, I think we should let people face that uncertainty individually, with guidance. I think this is the closest we can come to simultaneously protecting everyone; furthermore, it leaves the moral culpability squarely on an individual basis, where it belongs.
 
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