If you're a Christian and pro-choice, you're on the wrong side of the issue.

PapaZoom · Aug 29, 2015

Jesus was an advocate for the "least of these." We are to protect and love those that God has blessed us with (our offspring). We are made in the Image of God.

Consider these quotes by the early church fathers:

The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles
The Didache
(1st Century AD)

The Lord's Teaching to the Heathen by the Twelve Apostles:

1 There are two ways, one of life and one of death; and between the two ways there is a great difference.

2 Now, this is the way of life:…

The second commandment of the Teaching: "Do not murder; do not commit adultery"; do not corrupt boys; do not fornicate; "do not steal"; do not practice magic; do not go in for sorcery; do not murder a child by abortion or kill a newborn infant. "Do not covet your neighbor's property; do not commit perjury; do not bear false witness"; do not slander; do not bear grudges. Do not be double-minded or double-tongued, for a double tongue is "a deadly snare." Your words shall not be dishonest or hollow, but substantiated by action. Do not be greedy or extortionate or hypocritical or malicious or arrogant. Do not plot against your neighbor. Do not hate anybody; but reprove some, pray for others, and still others love more than your own life.

Tertullian (c.160-240)

That the unborn child is alive:

How are they dead unless they were first alive? But still in the womb an infant by necessary cruelty is killed when lying twisted at the womb's mouth he prevents birth and is a matricide unless he dies. Therefore there is among the arms of physicians an instrument by which with a rotary movement the genital parts are first opened, then with a cervical instrument the interior members are slaughtered with careful judgment by a blunt barb, so that the whole criminal deed is extracted with a violent delivery. There is also the bronze needle by which the throat - cutting is carried out by a robbery in the dark; this instrument is called and embryo knife from its function of infanticide, as it is deadly for the living infant.

This Hippocrates taught, and Asclepiades, and Erasistratus and Herophilus, the dissector of adults, and the milder Soranos himself, - all of them certain that a living being had been conceived and so deploring the most unhappy infancy of one of this kind who had first to be killed lest a live woman be rent apart. Of this necessity of crime, Hicesius, I believe did not doubt, as he added souls to those being born from blows of cold air, because the word itself for "soul" among the Greek relates to such a cooling.

- De Anima 25.5 - 6

And lest we forget:

They [John and Jesus] were both alive while still in the womb. Elizabeth rejoiced as the infant leaped in her womb; Mary glorifies the Lord because Christ within inspired her. Each mother recognizes her child and each is known by her child who is alive, being not merely souls but also spirits.

- De Anima 26.4

You can read more here: http://www.priestsforlife.org/magisterium/earlychurchfathers/fatherscover.html

Belk · Aug 29, 2015

PapaZoom said:
Jesus was an advocate for the "least of these." We are to protect and love those that God has blessed us with (our offspring). We are made in the Image of God.

Consider these quotes by the early church fathers:

Tertullian (c.160-240)

And lest we forget:

You can read more here: http://www.priestsforlife.org/magisterium/earlychurchfathers/fatherscover.html

Subscribing to see what response you get from Christians.

PapaZoom · Aug 29, 2015

Belk said:
Subscribing to see what response you get from Christians.

Good. I'm interested as well. Frankly I was surprised to see so many Christians on this forum who were pro-choice. I was particularly surprised to see several of the Catholic faith considering the Church's view on the matter.

Cearbhall · Aug 29, 2015

Well, one can believe that Jesus is divine and still think that the divine messages in the Bible were tweaked by the human authors according to their culture, so I'm going to say that Christianity and being pro-choice are not mutually exclusive.

Belk · Aug 29, 2015

PapaZoom said:
Good. I'm interested as well. Frankly I was surprised to see so many Christians on this forum who were pro-choice. I was particularly surprised to see several of the Catholic faith considering the Church's view on the matter.

I would guess American Catholics? From what I have heard they seem less likely to feel compelled to follow the churches teaching.

SteveB28 · Aug 29, 2015

How fortunate we no longer live according to the dictates of those living in the first few centuries of the last millennium.

PapaZoom · Aug 29, 2015

SteveB28 said:
How fortunate we no longer live according to the dictates of those living in the first few centuries of the last millennium.

Yes because now our society can kill the unborn and it's legal.

PapaZoom · Aug 29, 2015

Belk said:
I would guess American Catholics? From what I have heard they seem less likely to feel compelled to follow the churches teaching.

I hadn't thought of that.

PapaZoom · Aug 29, 2015

Cearbhall said:
Well, one can believe that Jesus is divine and still think that the divine messages in the Bible were tweaked by the human authors according to their culture, so I'm going to say that Christianity and being pro-choice are not mutually exclusive.

Based on your assumption for which you have no evidence.

SteveB28 · Aug 29, 2015

PapaZoom said:
Yes because now our society can kill the unborn and it's legal.

You should check your history. Abortion has been a practice regularly employed in human communities since antiquity. And its legality is not only confined to the present world.

No, my thanks was directed to the realisation that we no longer dictate to women as to what they may or may not do with their own bodies.

PapaZoom · Aug 29, 2015

SteveB28 said:
You should check your history. Abortion has been a practice regularly employed in human communities since antiquity. And its legality is not only confined to the present world.

No, my thanks was directed to the realisation that we no longer dictate to women as to what they may or may not do with their own bodies.

Can you direct me to sources that show that the Christian communities practiced abortion?

Women can't do whatever they want with their bodies. Neither can men.

Cearbhall · Aug 29, 2015

PapaZoom said:
Based on your assumption for which you have no evidence.

I know full well that there are Christians who believe that the Bible is erroneous on many levels. I also know that there are pro-choice Christians. Do you deny either of these things?

SteveB28 · Aug 29, 2015

PapaZoom said:
Can you direct me to sources that show that the Christian communities practiced abortion?

Women can't do whatever they want with their bodies. Neither can men.

"Christianity and abortion has a long and complex history as there is no explicit prohibition of abortion in either the Old Testament or New Testament books of the Christian Bible, and additionally, as that Jewish law is most often interpreted as that an unborn child has the status of "potential human life" until the majority of the body has emerged from the mother and that life begins at birth with breath through the nostrils, based on Genesis 2:7.[1][2] While some writers say that early Christians held different beliefs at different times about abortion,[3][4][5] others say that, in spite of the silence of the New Testament on the issue, they condemned abortion at any point of pregnancy as a grave sin,[6] a condemnation that they maintained even when some of them did not qualify as homicide the elimination of a fetus not yet "formed" and animated by a human soul.[7] The Didache, a Christian writing usually dated to sometime in the mid to late 1st century, prohibits abortion in Ch 2. [8]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christianity_and_abortion

There is no clear stance within Christian tradition.

PapaZoom · Aug 29, 2015

Cearbhall said:
I know full well that there are Christians who believe that the Bible is erroneous on many levels. I also know that there are pro-choice Christians. Do you deny either of these things?

Of course I don't deny it. I'm saying that those Christians are wrong.

PapaZoom · Aug 29, 2015

SteveB28 said:
"Christianity and abortion has a long and complex history as there is no explicit prohibition of abortion in either the Old Testament or New Testament books of the Christian Bible, and additionally, as that Jewish law is most often interpreted as that an unborn child has the status of "potential human life" until the majority of the body has emerged from the mother and that life begins at birth with breath through the nostrils, based on Genesis 2:7.[1][2] While some writers say that early Christians held different beliefs at different times about abortion,[3][4][5] others say that, in spite of the silence of the New Testament on the issue, they condemned abortion at any point of pregnancy as a grave sin,[6] a condemnation that they maintained even when some of them did not qualify as homicide the elimination of a fetus not yet "formed" and animated by a human soul.[7] The Didache, a Christian writing usually dated to sometime in the mid to late 1st century, prohibits abortion in Ch 2. [8]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christianity_and_abortion

There is no clear stance within Christian tradition.

Thanks for the good post. A thoughtful response. I'll see what I can put together. I like the challenge you have offered here.

Cearbhall · Aug 29, 2015

PapaZoom said:
Of course I don't deny it. I'm saying that those Christians are wrong.

Then what was the assumption for which I supposedly have no evidence?

PapaZoom said:
Thanks for the good post. A thoughtful response. I'll see what I can put together. I like the challenge you have offered here.

Also:

St. Thomas Aquinas, Pope Innocent III, and Pope Gregory XIV also believed that a fetus does not have a soul until "quickening," or when the fetus begins to kick and move, and therefore early abortion was not murder, though later abortion was.

(x)

Cearbhall · Aug 29, 2015

PapaZoom · Aug 29, 2015

Cearbhall said:
Well, one can believe that Jesus is divine and still think that the divine messages in the Bible were tweaked by the human authors according to their culture, so I'm going to say that Christianity and being pro-choice are not mutually exclusive.

Because you are not proving the Bible was "tweaked" and I've seen nothing from you trying to prove this statement.

Cearbhall · Aug 29, 2015

PapaZoom said:
Because you are not proving the Bible was "tweaked" and I've seen nothing from you trying to prove this statement.

I didn't claim that the Bible was tweaked.

PapaZoom · Aug 29, 2015

Cearbhall said:
I didn't claim that the Bible was tweaked.

What did you mean by this: Well, one can believe that Jesus is divine and still think that the divine messages in the Bible were tweaked by the human authors according to their culture, so I'm going to say that Christianity and being pro-choice are not mutually exclusive.

If you're a Christian and pro-choice, you're on the wrong side of the issue.

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