rusmeister
A Russified American Orthodox Chestertonian
- Dec 9, 2005
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- Eastern Orthodox
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I hate to rain on the proverbial parade here, but I don't think this is necessarily the cause for celebration it should be.
Abortions will never go away. Period. The missed lesson from Prohibition, gun control, the War on Drugs, and many other well-meaning endeavors is that that making something illegal will only make it worse. Making abortion illegal will not make it go away any more than banning guns in major cities has made them safer (the American cities with the most restrictive gun control measures have the worst gun violence).
This will only galvanize and embolden the Radical Left. It will galvanize the Radical Right as well. It will also further divide the American people. It will invite more violence, hatred, and malintent from the Left against any who are remotely conservative and/or religious.
Instead, the best ways to prevent abortions from happening will be to do our job as the Church: help those in need. We should be supporting the womens shelters where some of those who are kicked out of their homes for being pregnant go for what little support they can get. I wish more Orthodox parishes, at the parish level, would "adopt" a single mother and provide her material support until at least a year past delivery. Providing proper sex education to teenager would help as well.
More importantly, repairing and strengthening the nuclear family while returning to Christ would fix everything.
El Salvador, one of few countries that has outright illegalized all abortions and the home of my ex-fiancee, has experienced some very funky side effects. Women who have babies that need surgeries while in the womb often can not get those procedures because if something goes wrong than the surgeon can be imprisoned under a false "performing and abortion" charge. Likewise, there's at least a hundred or so women who are serving prison sentences there for supposedly having an abortion when in fact they gave birth to stillborn babies and were accused of taking abortion pills or "willing" abortions.
Hi, E.C.!
I certainly agree with you that abortions will never go away. An intelligent man will understand that "if guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns", and that banning guns for the general citizenry will not change the fact that people will buy and use them illegally. Law is about what OUGHT to be in the state (nation). It is given that outlawing a thing does not make it magically go away, AND that illegal practice will increase, if only because what was already being done legally is now being done illegally. But what SHOULD a civilized society tolerate? Do we as Christians have any influence in that? If we don't, then we shut up and suck up whatever the state dishes out to us, and accept persecution when they outlaw the practice of our Faith.
But when you say making the practice illegal will "embolden the radical Left", I have to differ. If you mean, "It will require more boldness from them to do illegally what they did legally, then of course, I agree. But when it comes to "inviting more violence, hatred, and malintent" on us adult believers, then I say that drawing their fire away from the murder of little babies onto us adults is a good and noble thing, and is our duty, as long as we can. When we can't, if and when we have no political power, when voting truly holds only the value of Monopoly money, then as I said, we must accept suffering. But if we have power in the state, it is our duty to use that power for good and to defend the helpless among us from evildoers.
And none of this means that we must stop what we have already been doing, as you say, helping those in need. We have been, and are doing that. We do support, fund, and otherwise help programs assisting women in need. I support kicking the behinds of irresponsible men and pushing to hold sex as a thing to be found only in marriage, and marriage as a holy state not to be put asunder by men, starting with us in the Church (though even here, I find defenders of 'Orthodox divorce'). All of these things, including our own sins, play into abortion. But at least we ought to admit that our sins are sins, and repent of them, that is, outlaw them among ourselves. Murder should always be illegal, no matter how furious some people may become that they are forbidden to murder, and must do it illegally, in dark alleys, rather than openly and shamelessly in the light of day. This is one other good and necessary step that we must take, even if we are only fighting Tolkien's "Long defeat", and suffer a setback once again, several years down the road. In the meantime we will have saved hundreds of thousands of lives. Ask Rebecca Kiessling, whose mother wanted to abort her in 1969 after rape, but couldn't, because a more civilized America had laws against abortion. Now Rebecca, a lawyer, fights for the lives of children of rape, like herself.
And "proper sex education" to teenagers? There is only one kind. Don't do it till you get married, don't kill babies, don't pretend that sex is for pleasure and NOT for baby-making (the whole idea behind contraception). If you mean anything else, then the world has left its baggage in your mind and heart. THAT is what we ought to fight and push for in this Fallen world, insofar as we have any influence to do so, IN ADDITION to helping people in need, which many of us already do. If we have no influence, then we watch the world go to hell in a handbasket. I'm fighting so that my own kids will know what's right, even if they choose to do what is wrong. I've got divisions in my own family, my Orthodox BIL thinks PP is a benevolent organization, my older daughter thinks abortion "a right" despite my best efforts. We must start by acknowledging that evil is evil, and should never be legal.
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