After hearing about the pro-life vs pro-choice debate, here are my thoughts. What are yours?
Pro-life is a better title than 'anti-abortion' (a double negative)
Pro-choice sounds good but it depends what the choice is.
Rights
Women have a right to decide how many children they want to have and when. They have a right to say no to sex. Pro-choice is assuming women have a right to have sex without going through with the consequences. It is assuming women or girls who get pregnant unintentionally have a right to choose to end it. But whose choice was it to get pregnant? If they chose to have sex it's their responsibility to deal with the consequences and get training for the tough challenges of birth and baby-caring and child-rearing or consider adoption. If they were forced in rape their choice has already been violated.
The rapist should be the one guilty of murder of the unborn because they made the baby in the first place only for it to be destroyed.
Pro-life
The best way for individuals and for society is to plan families sensibly: some people choosing celibate lives and others choosing faithful marriage and a reasonable number of children (0-3 or 4) and abstaining from sex before or outside marriage and after they have decided they have enough children. But unfortunately ideals are broken by non-marriage relationships and rape and society has to find ways of restoring individuals affected by unwanted pregnancies or unintentional sex: contraception, abortion and adoption.
adoption is the best for the baby, obviously, but better still for a caring family to adopt the mother as well as the baby.
contraception is an avoidance tactic encouraging sex-without-consequences
abortion is the worst option. It's not just a harmless operation like having a tooth extracted. Both can be torturous but abortion leaves much more traumatic consequences with the guilt of murder scarring the soul.
I thought it was the only option for some girls (to remove the shame of guilt from having underage/extramarital sex and to prevent the dreaded birth and motherhood responsibility) but since I heard about how horrendously excruciating it is, even worse than giving birth if that were possible, I'm convinced it's completely wrong, not only because it is murder of an innocent baby but because it wrecks a girl's life.
euthanasia
Who is to choose when someone else dies?
Who is to say which live and which die when treatment is in short supply?
I think it's better to let the very ill elderly to die naturally than to speed up the process with drugs. But never without giving God a chance to heal and save them!
Don't we all use euthanasia on our pets to put them out of their misery when their lives seem unbearably painful and we cannot cope with the inconvenience and mess of caring for incapacitated or incontinent pets?
murder
If it is murder to kill any life-form we're all mass murderers of mosquitoes, ants, slugs, worms, other bugs, vermin, livestock and bacteria!
We slaughter animals fish and birds so we can eat meat, which we need for a strong healthy active life, but that is considered a sacrifice not a murder.
Is God a murderer because he allowed death into the world, he destroyed all but 8 humans with the flood and countless biblical accounts of God putting to death those who would not repent of their wickedness? Or is he being a just judge executing his judgments on criminals?
I think God was being pro-life all along, but that sometimes meant destroying some life to allow other life to flourish. Does that make God mean?
He does not willingly punish the wicked but would prefer them to repent.
Abortion is chosing the girls' plans for independence over the baby's right to exist. She decides it's too difficult and inconvenient to be a mother.
Thanks be to God he did not abort the human race with the flood but gave us a second chance. He could have scrapped humanity and created a new race that would please him better and care for the Earth and for each other properly. Perhaps that's what he's doing now by re-creating a new humanity by changing individuals into people after his heart who work for justice, restoration and compassion.
The abortion and euthanasia debates are more about personal emotional and pshycological issues of individual situations than sweeping statements of philosophers arguing the issue from a difference with only the perspective of population control and scientific understanding of the effects.
And of course religious convictions play a big part - as do selfish motives.
Pro-life is a better title than 'anti-abortion' (a double negative)
Pro-choice sounds good but it depends what the choice is.
Rights
Women have a right to decide how many children they want to have and when. They have a right to say no to sex. Pro-choice is assuming women have a right to have sex without going through with the consequences. It is assuming women or girls who get pregnant unintentionally have a right to choose to end it. But whose choice was it to get pregnant? If they chose to have sex it's their responsibility to deal with the consequences and get training for the tough challenges of birth and baby-caring and child-rearing or consider adoption. If they were forced in rape their choice has already been violated.
The rapist should be the one guilty of murder of the unborn because they made the baby in the first place only for it to be destroyed.
Pro-life
The best way for individuals and for society is to plan families sensibly: some people choosing celibate lives and others choosing faithful marriage and a reasonable number of children (0-3 or 4) and abstaining from sex before or outside marriage and after they have decided they have enough children. But unfortunately ideals are broken by non-marriage relationships and rape and society has to find ways of restoring individuals affected by unwanted pregnancies or unintentional sex: contraception, abortion and adoption.
adoption is the best for the baby, obviously, but better still for a caring family to adopt the mother as well as the baby.
contraception is an avoidance tactic encouraging sex-without-consequences
abortion is the worst option. It's not just a harmless operation like having a tooth extracted. Both can be torturous but abortion leaves much more traumatic consequences with the guilt of murder scarring the soul.
I thought it was the only option for some girls (to remove the shame of guilt from having underage/extramarital sex and to prevent the dreaded birth and motherhood responsibility) but since I heard about how horrendously excruciating it is, even worse than giving birth if that were possible, I'm convinced it's completely wrong, not only because it is murder of an innocent baby but because it wrecks a girl's life.
euthanasia
Who is to choose when someone else dies?
Who is to say which live and which die when treatment is in short supply?
I think it's better to let the very ill elderly to die naturally than to speed up the process with drugs. But never without giving God a chance to heal and save them!
Don't we all use euthanasia on our pets to put them out of their misery when their lives seem unbearably painful and we cannot cope with the inconvenience and mess of caring for incapacitated or incontinent pets?
murder
If it is murder to kill any life-form we're all mass murderers of mosquitoes, ants, slugs, worms, other bugs, vermin, livestock and bacteria!
We slaughter animals fish and birds so we can eat meat, which we need for a strong healthy active life, but that is considered a sacrifice not a murder.
Is God a murderer because he allowed death into the world, he destroyed all but 8 humans with the flood and countless biblical accounts of God putting to death those who would not repent of their wickedness? Or is he being a just judge executing his judgments on criminals?
I think God was being pro-life all along, but that sometimes meant destroying some life to allow other life to flourish. Does that make God mean?
He does not willingly punish the wicked but would prefer them to repent.
Abortion is chosing the girls' plans for independence over the baby's right to exist. She decides it's too difficult and inconvenient to be a mother.
Thanks be to God he did not abort the human race with the flood but gave us a second chance. He could have scrapped humanity and created a new race that would please him better and care for the Earth and for each other properly. Perhaps that's what he's doing now by re-creating a new humanity by changing individuals into people after his heart who work for justice, restoration and compassion.
The abortion and euthanasia debates are more about personal emotional and pshycological issues of individual situations than sweeping statements of philosophers arguing the issue from a difference with only the perspective of population control and scientific understanding of the effects.
And of course religious convictions play a big part - as do selfish motives.
