Two questions about abortion

[Ben johnson]

And as for your quotes of Washington and Jefferson...I do appreciate those sentiments, but they were spoken from a Deists perspective, not a Christian one, where such inalienable rights were revealed through reason.

That George Washington, and many other Founding Fathers were DEISTS and not CHRISTIANS, is revisionist history --- simply not true. George's piety and faith leave me in awe --- if I was required to choose ONE FIGURE in all of history as a "hero", I suspect I would indeed choose GW. A cursory search on the internet of "prayers of George Washington" turns up many hits --- simply go to the following link and all doubts of Washington's "NON-CHRISTIANITY" will be removed forever: http://jagger.me.berkeley.edu/~lawton/gwprayer.html

NO AMOUNT OF RATIONALIZATION CAN REFUTE THIS FACT:

~ABORTION STOPS A BEATING HEART~

END OF STORY, NO EQUIVICATION, NO LATITUDE

ABORTION IS MURDER

This is true. However --- a certain amount of compassion is also required in dealing with the participants in abortion. I stand by the claim in that booklet on "Sex...", that the majority of women involved in promiscuity are desperately searching for emotional intimacy; thus, they only consider abortion because of PANIC and FEAR. Yes it is murder --- but, if their hearts repent, God will certainly forgive them and will receive them into His kind and loving arms. Frankly, I do not think standing around and screaming "MURDERERS!" impresses or wins any hearts; one who is in such shame-and-panic really needs sincere love and caring.

CHRISTIANS HAD BETTER WAKE UP TO THIS FACT BEFORE WE INCUR THE WRATH OF GOD FOR OUR SINS OF COMMISSION AND OMMISSION

America had better awaken to a WHOLE RANGE of sins. What modern sitcom does not present fornication as EXPECTED and the NORM? How are we to raise moral children with such influence? If promiscuity and homosexuality and abuse and murders and persecution and indifference (the opposite of LOVE is INDIFFERENCE) do not change, God will have to apologize to such peoples as Sodom and Gomorrah. I long for a time-machine; to go back to the late 19th Century, a time before terrorists, a time when the Bible was taught in every public school. But the "light at the end of the tunnel", is that the darker it gets NOW, the closer we are to Jesus coming back and SETTING THINGS STRAIGHT. I long also for Him to come back NOW, whenever I hear of a rape or a child being hurt; and I am conflicted in desiring for Him to delay, that more people can hear the Gospel...

And what wrath would you suffer for your sins if Jesus paid the price for our sins?

Jesus did not pay for ALL SINS. Jesus paid for only repented sins.

"I say to you, unless you REPENT, you WILL perish." Luke13:3

 

[panterapat]

A study was done of the 250 or so Founding Fathers of the US. Overwhelmingly, the most quoted source from their writings and speeches is the Bible.

BTW:
What is the difference between a deist and a Christian? What is a deist?

 

[panterapat]

"This is true. However --- a certain amount of compassion is also required in dealing with the participants in abortion. I stand by the claim in that booklet on "Sex...", that the majority of women involved in promiscuity are desperately searching for emotional intimacy; thus, they only consider abortion because of PANIC and FEAR. Yes it is murder --- but, if their hearts repent, God will certainly forgive them and will receive them into His kind and loving arms. Frankly, I do not think standing around and screaming "MURDERERS!" impresses or wins any hearts; one who is in such shame-and-panic really needs sincere love and caring."

Agreed, great compassion is needed.

Searching for intimacy? Agreed, but too bad they do not know the deep intimacy of the mother-child relationship.

Will God forgive them? Certainly if they turn to God in sorrow and repentance He will accept them into Heaven. (But that of course is not for me to judge)

Agreed, shouting "murderers" will not win their hearts.




"America had better awaken to a WHOLE RANGE of sins"

AGREED! But lets start somewhere. Lets start with the most horrific sins.

 

[Ben johnson]

What is the difference between a deist and a Christian? What is a deist?

A "Deist" does not believe the claims that Jesus made, that He was GOD. Deists largely believe that there IS a Creator, but He created a mechanistic universe and essentially no longer actively participates in its functioning... Click the link above (post #61) and read some of the prayers of GW --- he was undeniably a follower of Jesus Christ, Son of God and Savior; not a Deist. Jefferson was not hostile towards Christianity --- in his tenure as superintendant of schools, Washington D. C., he installed the Christian Bible as required curriculum.

Searching for intimacy? Agreed, but too bad they do not know the deep intimacy of the mother-child relationship.

Many teen-aged girls KEEP the child, their empty hearts longing for the unconditional love of an infant. But they find there is great RESPONSIBILITY --- the child must be fed every couple hours, diapers and food and medicine are EXPENSIVE; motherhood makes many demands of time and resources --- seriously challenging (or preventing) completion of schooling; she is often consigned to public assistance, low-income housing, a life of poverty; the child is deprived of the critical influence of a father, and must grow up a "latchkey kid" as she struggles to provide food and clothes. She spends time sorrowfully regretting her lost years of childhood; often this strains the "mother/child" relationship and festers resentment. The promiscuous mother often begets the promiscuous child, just as the alcoholic begets alcoholic, prostitute begets prostitute.

Placing the child for adoption is "WIN-WIN"; he or she grows up with BOTH parental role models, is attended properly, and enjoys "family structure". The adopted child is told that "everyone else must TAKE the child that they GET, pot-luck; but WE CHOSE YOU!" What is a MOM or a DAD? One who merely donates GENES? Or is it the one who hugs the child through each skinned knee or broken heart, who fixes chicken soup and ministers fevers and coughs, who sets boundaries of discipiline so that the child KNOWS he/she is loved? ANYONE can be a "father" or a "mother"; but it takes special commitment and tons of love to be a "mommy" or a "daddy" --- and some of the most successful ones are those who raise the child of another...

 

[onetruth]

if you are woman enough to have sex you should be woman enough to take the child, if you are raped, totally different story, not your choice, thats an itchy part of it all

 

[tcampen]

Ben, Not to get too far off topic here, but Washington's religious beliefs are still an enigma. Ben, your link was to Washington's prayers when he was 20 years old, however he had a long and distinguished life after that point, just to let you know. Here's another link, that has pretty good analysis, and lots of quotes:

http://www.infidels.org/library/historical/john_remsburg/six_historic_americans/chapter_3.html

And, Ben, it's funny you didn't seem to refer to other great Americans like Jefferson, Adams, Franklin or Paine. And it is likely that Washington was a deist as well, despite revisionist history attempts to declare otherwise.

So if reason was good enough for them, it seems we should be able to use it as well.

 

[tcampen]

if you are woman enough to have sex you should be woman enough to take the child, if you are raped, totally different story, not your choice, thats an itchy part of it all

More like a can of worms. If abortion is murder, then it shouldn't matter how the child was conceived, for it isn't the child's fault. Furthermore, females under a certain age (depending on the state) who get pregnant have been raped statutorily. So do we need to define particular kinds of rape as well?

Very sticky issue.

 

[Ben johnson]

If abortion is murder, then it shouldn't matter how the child was conceived, for it isn't the child's fault

This exact thinking reversed me on the position; it isn't the child's fault. And that's really the issue, isn't it? Time was when black people were NOT HUMAN, and not subject to consideration of "rights"; we have subsequently recognized (thankfully!) that they ARE citizens and entitled to all rights and privileges of that citizenry. So how shall we address an unborn child? What determins ITS rights? Shall it be "less-than-Human" merely because of a few-seconds-event called "BIRTH"? Shall technology rate its citizenry with words like "VIABILITY"? Shall we balance on floating logs with terms like "ability to thrive outside the womb" (ignoring that a Human spends a LIFETIME subject to varying demands of nourishment, oxygen temperature and humidity)?

Ben, it's funny you didn't seem to refer to other great Americans like Jefferson, Adams, Franklin or Paine.

JOHN ADAMS? Who wrote: (10/11/1798 address to military): "We have no government armed with power capable of controlling human passions unbridled by morality and religion; our Constitution was made ONLY for the government of a moral and religious people, and is WHOLLY inadequate for the governing of any other." "The highest glory of the American Revolution is that it connected in one indesoluable bond the principles of civil government with the principles of Christianity".

How about: Congressional Record September 20, 1789, Fisher Ames was the author of the 1st Ammendment. In article to National Magazine Jan 1801, "The Bible must always remain the #1 textbook in schools for children. The Bible is the primary source for sound morality and behavior in America and it must never be separated from the classroom.

Benjamin Rush, signer Declaration of Independence, served under John Adams, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. "There will be an explosion of crime; I lament that we waste so much time and money in punishing crime and take so little pains to prevent them" (education policy paper 1791, warnings of results of "removing the Bible from the classroom").

Noah Webster (revolutionary soldier, legistlator, judge, wrote Article 1 section 8 of US Constitution) also wrote: "All the miseries and evils which men suffer from vice, crime, ambition, injustice, oppression, slavery and war, proceed from their despising or neglecting the precepts contained within the Bible.

John Jay, 1st US Supreme Court Chief justice: "Providence has given us the choice of their rulers, and it is the duty as well as the priveledge and interest of our Christian Nation to select Christians as their rulers".

"This is not a nation of religionists, but a nation of CHRISTIANS; founded not upon the belief in religionism, but on Jesus Christ!" Patrik Henry

Robert Wintrop, early Speaker of the House: "Men must be controlled either by a power within them, or a power without them; either by Word of God, or by the strong arm of man; either by the Bible, or by the bayonette.

And of course the OFFICIAL GOVERNMENT positions:
1796 US Supreme Court, "By our form of government, the Christian religion is the established religion; but all sects and denominations of Christianity are placed on the same equal footing"...

House and Senate report 1853-4; House: "Had the people, during the Revolution, been suspicious of ANY ATTEMPT to war against Christianity, that revolution would have been strangled in its cradle; at the time of the adoption of the Constitution and its Ammendments, the universal sentiment was that Christianity should be encouraged, but not any one denomination; in this age there is NO SUBSTITUTE FOR CHRISTIANITY; that was the religion of the Founders of the Republic, and they expected it to remain the religion of their descendents. The great vital and conservative element of our system, the thing that holds our system together, is the belief of our people, and the pure doctrines and the Divine truths of the Gospel of Jesus Christ".

And these are only a FEW of those "right-wing-Christian-fanatic-conservative-fundamentalist ...FOUNDERS..."

 

[Annabel Lee]

Many teen-aged girls KEEP the child, their empty hearts longing for the unconditional love of an infant. But they find there is great RESPONSIBILITY --- the child must be fed every couple hours, diapers and food and medicine are EXPENSIVE; motherhood makes many demands of time and resources --- seriously challenging (or preventing) completion of schooling; she is often consigned to public assistance, low-income housing, a life of poverty; the child is deprived of the critical influence of a father, and must grow up a "latchkey kid" as she struggles to provide food and clothes. She spends time sorrowfully regretting her lost years of childhood; often this strains the "mother/child" relationship and festers resentment. The promiscuous mother often begets the promiscuous child, just as the alcoholic begets alcoholic, prostitute begets prostitute....

You paint an unfair portrait of the unwed teenage mother with very broad strokes, Ben.

 

[tcampen]

Ahh yes, a harken back the old "Myth of Separation" diatribe of partial quotes and half truths used to support a self-serving preconception.

John Adams and Benjamin Rush were both Unitarians (Rush shifted over from Calvinism). They both rejected the conceopt of the Trinity, the inerrancy of the bible, and claims of supernaturalism it describes. (Jefferson, too, aligned himself with Unitarianism, tho never formally declared his association with that church.) Unitarians are virtually indestinguishable from Deists, especially with regard to morality. They found God's morality as revealed though Natural Law, not the Bible. And such Natural Law was determined, or discovered, through reason and the natural world.

That is not to say their weren't also Christians in the traditional sense we think of today there as well. There certainly was. But you'd be hugely mistaken to misunderstand the impact of the Age of Reason on our nation's founders. This desire to re-write history, and view the Founders as all evangelical Christians who used a literal reading of the bible as the direct source for the Constitution is extremely damaging to not only understanding our past, but to our survival in the future.

Oh, and here are a few quotes for you...



The whole history of these books [the Gospels] is so defective and doubtful that it seems vain to attempt minute enquiry into it: and such tricks have been played with their text, and with the texts of other books relating to them, that we have a right, from that cause, to entertain much doubt what parts of them are genuine. In the New Testament there is internal evidence that parts of it have proceeded from an extraordinary man; and that other parts are of the fabric of very inferior minds. It is as easy to separate those parts, as to pick out diamonds from dunghills.

-Thomas Jefferson, letter to John Adams, January 24, 1814



Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law.

-Thomas Jefferson, letter to Dr. Thomas Cooper, February 10, 1814



In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own.

-Thomas Jefferson, letter to Horatio G. Spafford, March 17, 1814



If we did a good act merely from love of God and a belief that it is pleasing to Him, whence arises the morality of the Atheist? ...Their virtue, then, must have had some other foundation than the love of God. -Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Thomas Law, June 13, 1814
And the day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the supreme being as his father in the womb of a virgin will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerve in the brain of Jupiter. But may we hope that the dawn of reason and freedom of thought in these United States will do away with this artificial scaffolding, and restore to us the primitive and genuine doctrines of this most venerated reformer of human errors.
-Thomas Jefferson, Letter to John Adams, April 11, 1823

John Adams</FONT>The divinity of Jesus is made a convenient cover for absurdity. Nowhere in the Gospels do we find a precept for Creeds, Confessions, Oaths, Doctrines, and whole carloads of other foolish trumpery that we find in Christianity.

 

[Annabel Lee]

Ben, you can't just make these sweeping generalizations about teenage mothers. Every situation is different. As one of those teenage mothers you speak of, I take great offense to your post.

Many teen-aged girls KEEP the child, their empty hearts longing for the unconditional love of an infant.

My heart was neither empty or longing for unconditional love.

But they find there is great RESPONSIBILITY --- the child must be fed every couple hours, diapers and food and medicine are EXPENSIVE; motherhood makes many demands of time and resources --- seriously challenging (or preventing) completion of schooling; she is often consigned to public assistance, low-income housing, a life of poverty; the child is deprived of the critical influence of a father, and must grow up a "latchkey kid" as she struggles to provide food and clothes.

My child was not a 'latchkey' kid and we did not live in poverty. While her father wasn't much of a 'hands on' dad, he provided financial support.
Maybe we should start focusing our attention on the negligent teenage fathers who desert their offspring and leave them to a life of poverty?

She spends time sorrowfully regretting her lost years of childhood; often this strains the "mother/child" relationship and festers resentment. The promiscuous mother often begets the promiscuous child, just as the alcoholic begets alcoholic, prostitute begets prostitute.

I regret nothing I've done in my life and I was far from a promiscuous teenager.
God saw fit to give me this child and it was an honor to raise her, as it was all my other daughters.

 

[burrow_owl]

"if you are woman enough to have sex you should be woman enough to take the child"

why?

 

[DaQo'tah]

I will answer the questions from the post at the start of this topic...

1. Why has the rate of abortion increased in the past few decades?

answer:. Im not sure where you live, or where you are getting the numbers from,,,I can only speak for my area of America, and here the numbers say we are winning the war against abortion...

This is reflected in the number of births,,,,years ago we in my school district were talking about closeing down schools due to fewer children being born due to abortion.

But within the last 10 years the number of Abortions has dropped, and the number of kids entering the schools is always going up.

what we are seeing is that the very kids that 20 years ago would have ended up being tossed into the dumpster behind an abortion mill, are now going to school, passing notes to cute girls, and telling their moms what they did in school today...



2. Is it morally permissible?

Answer:....never.
The fact is that an abortion is never morally permissible,,,,we should never say that "It was for the best". for it is NEVER for the best.....

Being a Christian means we are to be pro-Life,,and this means that if there is a question as to who shall live and who shall die. then we MUST come down on this question on the side of the unborn child...

The right to life is no greater due to hight or age,,,the right to Life does not grow ,,,it is always here,,and so a child no matter if born or unborn has the same right to a life as I do,,,

the term "Mother" means 'she who would give up her life for her child"



3.would society be stabler if abortion were made illegal?


Answer:. yes, all societys grow better when they imporve the life of the very ones most overlooked...want to know if your country is a good place to live in?. go look at the jails....for when you make sure the people at the bottom of life are still protected by Law, then you can know all the othewr people are protected.

Abortion is a sin and when a country makes a sin into a 'right" this can only lead to more and more sin,,,,and sin is one of the reasons God turns away from a people...


4. And does each individual abortion lead to greater or lesser stability in human society?..

Answer:. Not only does an abortion kill a helpless child who never did anything evil,,,it causes a great evil to spread as more and more lives are ended, and futures are doomed to spend forever going over abortions of the past.

You can not keep a society togather if it is built on the idea that "children can be killed"...

 

[Lillithspeak]

A study was done of the 250 or so Founding Fathers of the US. Overwhelmingly, the most quoted source from their writings and speeches is the Bible.

BTW:
What is the difference between a deist and a Christian? What is a deist?

Someone who believes in a deity-or as you might have guessed-a God. As opposed to calling yourself a christian-which designates belief in a religion.

 

[Lillithspeak]

Every society has practiced abortion. Women have aborted and used infanticide throughout history. To somehow think that this is a new phenomena is to not know how women have functioned throughout the history of humankind. I am not surprised that most of the posters here that decry abortion know nothing of our history, of how are families t hat were already living were protected by abortion and infanticide and the hard choices that women have had to make about these issues. Until you know who we are and how we have contributed to humanity as a whole, you have no right to tell us we must bear any child. When men make it a shameful thing to not support their own children they can gain some small voice in this but as long as men make babies, desert mothers and their children and other men run societies that don't allow these women a level playing field, give it up.

 

[DaQo'tah]

Lillithspeak.....

Never once have I ever writen that the idea of killing an unborn child is a new idea of man...

The evil that is abortion is as old as the evil that is part of mankind...

Abortion has never changed in God's eyes,,,never been "imporved" never been safe...never been "needed"

It has been from the start an "EVIL",,it is an Evil now too,,,and it will always be an Evil...

The evil that is all abortuion will never change in the future,,,five days from now abortion will still be a sin,,

,five years?..still a sin...

..Five million years?...still sinfull....

Abortion does not "protect" anyone,,,it dooms a child,,,,the child does not "get-over" it.

God does not get over it...

And the mother and father never "get-over" it as well....the Abortion will walk with them forever....every day, there will be the "Shadow" of the child that was killed...

every time the mother and father seek the face of the Lord in their prayers, they find the Lord standing there, holding the lifeless body of a child in His arms...

a child tossed into a dumpster behind an abortion mill, that could have been running around the backyard,,,passing notes to that cute girl....telling dad about anthills,,,

The child dont care if the dad is married to the mother,,,the child dont ask for a big house to live in before it is born,,,the child is not seeking to be born only if there is a lot of money in mom's bank account first,,,,,,the child is not interested in Mom's job,,,,nor in a car that needs new tires...

All the child, all any child seeks from us is the Chance for life..

The chance to know mom and dad,,,the chance to hit a baseball...

the chance to know God

we adults cant give our word to an unborn child that only cool things will happen in the future, but then again, the child is not asking for that .....,

The child only seeks a chance

and thats all we can give the child too.....the chance....

 

[Pooty]

That was a nice monolouge but, God does say that all sins are equal. So, as I said in another post, it's no worse than stealing a candy bar. And pantera, I'd like to see some information on that 'study' of founding fathers.

 

[DaQo'tah]

sin is a falling away, a falling short from the way God has give us to do...

The Bible tells us that even the smallest sin is enough to send a person to a eternity in Hell...the smallest sin brings our death,,,,

so seen in this light, I agree, all sins is the same, all sin is "Lethal"

also, all our sins are able to be forgiven if we confess them to the Lord jesus Christ, repent of them, and accept the Salvation that comes with being Born-Again...

But as the bible tells us, that some suffer many stripes, and some few....

as this verse teaches us, the amount of suffering of the lost in damnation is dependant on the life lived here and now..

Thats why the Bible tells us that "Today is the day of Salvation", for it is also the day of our judgement....

One day, the books will be opened, and the record shown of our lives, each secret displayed before the Throne of Heaven...

 

[DaQo'tah]

Oh, and thanks for the kind words about my "monolouge", I was really trying to stretch my writing skills to their limit...and it is important for me to see that the ideas behind my many words are being communicated to others as I intended.

I also concentrate on how my words appear on your computer screens, I want them to be easy to read, and understand at a glance.