The difference between born and unborn children

English: Newborn infant, 4 hours after birth Deutsch: Neugeborenes, 4 Stunden nach der Geburt (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Anyone who’s a regular reader of this blog will know that I’m not a fan of abortion. The argument from pro-abortionists is often along the lines of ‘let’s decide a date upon which the unborn becomes human’, which strikes me as a little ridiculous.

But look no further than the Journal of Medical Ethics, some very important and intelligent people have put some proper thought into it, and concluded (as I would), that there’s literally no difference between newborns and the unborn outside of criteria which would make no difference to someone’s personhood in other circumstances:

• location (in the womb) – you’d never say someone was ‘less human’ for being in a different location
• size (very small) – little people are not ‘less human’ than tall people
• development (still undergoing physical development) – aren’t we all?
• dependency on the mother – let’s kill disabled people while we’re at it, shall we?

There’s clearly no difference in personhood (and therefore human rights) between the unborn and the born. So go over to the Journal of Medical Ethics and check out what they’re proposing (and I quote, because I almost don’t believe this):

By showing that (1) both fetuses and newborns do not have the same moral status as actual persons, (2) the fact that both are potential persons is morally irrelevant and (3) adoption is not always in the best interest of actual people, the authors argue that what we call ‘after-birth abortion’ (killing a newborn) should be permissible in all the cases where abortion is, including cases where the newborn is not disabled.

Ignoring the point about where newborns/babies in the womb are disabled (what difference does that make?) do you see how this argument is absolutely ridiculous? They demonstrate clearly that newborns and the unborn are no different (go and read it, it’s pretty obvious), but conclude that therefore newborn babies are not ‘actual persons’.

Wow.

God help us.

The full paper’s available here.

Related articles

• Court rules unborn is ‘child’ (wnd.com)
• Abortionist Turned Pro-Life Apostle: True Story of Dr. Stojan Adasevic (catholicglasses.com)
• If life doesn’t begin at conception, then where do we draw the line? (liveactionnews.org)
• We know they are killing children – All of us know (revivalandreformation.wordpress.com)

Gravity proves sin

Morality (Photo credit: dietmut)

CS Lewis’ Mere Christianity is one of those must-reads for both Christians and non-Christians. He does this way better than I will so go and read that first, but allow me to plagiarise in an amateur way here.

Laws exist in nature, for example the Law of Gravity. Humans have given names and descriptions to Laws, but the Laws didn’t come into existence with the discovery of their human name.

So the Law of Gravity made things stay on the floor for thousands of years before Newton first said, ‘ow.’

The square root of 144 was 12 before that squiggly symbol was invented.

But there is one Law that’s different: the Law of Morality.

Every single human being operates within some Law of Morality (whether that morality is objective or subjective is a different argument so sit that to one side for the moment). We all know that some things are right and some things are wrong. We get frustrated, upset and/or angry when others do ‘bad’ things, and are inspired when others do ‘good’ things.

But…

We all do things contrary to the Law of Morality all the time. We know what’s right but we still do what’s wrong. Not a single child enters adulthood having done everything right all the time. And sometimes (quite a lot of the time if we’re honest) we go ahead and choose to do things that we know are wrong.

So there are many Laws, but only one that we are able to break (we can’t just tell gravity to switch off). And the one we’re able to break, we’ve all broken.

Summary: every single human being is fundamentally flawed. No animal on the planet demonstrates the hypocrisy that we do, they just live by their instincts and have no concept of right and wrong.

So we’re the only ones who know what’s right, and we all do what’s wrong. That’s called righteousness, and sin.

And we need a righteous one to get us out of our sin.

And his name is Jesus.

How many bridges are there in the Bible?

English: “The Deluge”, Frontispiece to Doré’s illustrated edition of the Bible. Based on the story of Noah’s Ark, this shows humans and a tiger doomed by the flood futilely attempting to save their children and cubs. Français : “Le Déluge”, Frontispice de l’édition illustrée par Gustave Doré de la Bible. Basé sur l’histoire de l’Arche de Noé, la gravure montre des humains et un tigre tentant en vain de sauver leur progéniture. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Have you ever noticed that humans just plain old like bridges? You can do so many things on them: play Pooh Sticks, walk over them, drive over them, look upriver, look downriver, cross from one side of a river to the other…we like bridges.

Christians also like bridges. As a university student I was told in no uncertain terms that the person and work of Jesus is a bridge that takes sinful man over the chasm of hell to the perfect and holy God. Lovely. So how many times does the word ‘bridge’ appear in the Bible?

None.

But there’s plenty of water.

So what does the Bible do when it comes to water if there are no bridges? Well, God sometimes parts the water to help his people out of a tough situation. Sometimes he walks on water while his people are in a tough situation. Sometimes he’s asleep in the boat while his people are in a tough situation.

In fact, it seems that the concept of creating a bridge to help yourself out of a tough situation is entirely alien to the Bible. Instead, God seems to say one of two things: (1) I will give you a miracle and release you from this tough situation, or (2) I will be right there with you, but you’re going to have to ride out this tough situation.

This really addresses the ‘problem’ of suffering! At times, God miraculously intervenes to break people out of suffering, and how much do we love to hear about that?! But at other times, God says: Don’t be afraid. I’m right here, and I’m going nowhere. Ride out your storm, and I’ll still be with you when it’s over.

Thinking about it now, that’s quite comforting.

‘Tis better to have loved and lost?

20050624_a_fathers_grief (Photo credit: ThisandFamily)

Losing a child has to be one of the worst experiences. Carrying my little man recently has helped me to properly start getting a handle on the value of human life, but the fact that he’s my son adds extra weight to it.

What if I did something, or something just randomly happened, that ended up with him losing his life?

I can tell you right now that I don’t think I’d ever get over it.

It got me thinking about Shakespeare’s line though; is it actually better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all? Of course, without having loved there isn’t the chance to experience the highs that go with it, but do they make up for the potential lows if that loved one is lost?

A lady called Miriam Neff seems to have written about dealing with loss, and she definitely doesn’t paint over the grief:

What took me by surprise was the power, the all-consuming grip, the sudden shock of an emotion rolling over me, literally rendering me unable to function for a moment or sometimes longer.

Imagine a single event dramatically changing your calendar, your checkbook, your friendship network, the contents of your refrigerator, the temperature you set your thermostat, your outlook on your future and your connection with your children.

She offers eight steps through grief:

1. Be kind to yourself
2. Give yourself permission to forget the task at hand.
3. Write in a journal
4. Surround yourself with positive people
5. Be wary of people who want to direct your life
6. Give yourself permission to try new things
7. Attend to your health, since grief can weaken the immune system
8. When it feels right, change the furniture layout in a room

I haven’t read the book but it looks pretty powerful; if you’d like to check it out go to widowconnection.com.

HT: Bev Hislop

Just a clump of cells

human-shield-gaza (Photo credit: ` ³ok_qa³ `)

Well, a few weeks ago I became a Daddy, and it’s wonderful. And my son is healthy, which I’m so grateful for.

At our first ultrasound scan, the doctor asked if we’d like to see if the kid was going to be born with Down’s Syndrome, and then explained that the primary reason for the test was to determine whether killing the unborn child would be the right thing to do. That is, the purpose of finding out is not to prepare the parents.

He obviously thought it would be fine to kill an unborn baby, and I reckon it would be for one of the following reasons:

Not a human being

Well, that’s ridiculous. I saw the ultrasound; he certainly looked like a human, and he has human parents…how is he not a human?

The baby’s too small to be a human

At the 12-week scan the baby’s unimaginably small so this seems an obvious argument, but is just downright silly. My newborn’s way smaller than me but does that mean he’s somehow less human? Is Peter Crouch more human? What a joke.

He’s not developed enough to be a human

Again, how ridiculous. A human’s physical peak is in the early twenties, and the intellectual peak is in the 50s. I’ve no idea where the emotional peak is, but I’m pretty certain I’ve not reached there yet. Is there somehow a scale of how human I am based on my age? Or do people become less human once they get through being middle-aged? The answer’s no, by the way.

His environment is not the natural enviroment for a human

In other words, being in the womb stops you being a human. A US senator (I think) once defended stem cell research because ‘human beings aren’t made in a petri dish,’ but this simply doesn’t make sense. This morning I woke up and got out of bed, but I didn’t suddenly stop being me because my environment changed. Similarly, nothing happens physioligically to suddenly make a newborn baby a human where a few minutes earlier they were a few inches higher up the birth canal. Your environment doesn’t define you.

He’s too dependent to be a human

He needs the umbilical cord and everything else to stay alive, and therefore isn’t a human…are you kidding me? Imagine an elderly man who’s smoked his entire life so needs a respirator – is he really less of a human? Of course not.

Conclusion

My son wasn’t just a clump of cells in the womb, and magically a human now. He was a human throughout pregnancy, and still is now. Abortion should be approached the same way that anyone would approach killing any other human being, regardless of their size, level of development, environment, or dependency.

Why logic is important

Image via Wikipedia

So two stories came out over the last few weeks which for me highlighted the importance of what I’ll call ‘logical trajectory’. The first is around the legalisation of gay marriage (i.e. not civil partnership but actual marriage), and the second is around ‘after-birth abortions’.

Gay marriage

So the standard definition of marriage is something along the lines of ‘a lifelong covenant between one man and one woman’, but some in power would like this to be updated because of ‘equality’. It all sounds absolutely lovely, caring and tolerant until you apply a logical trajectory to this. If two men or two women can marry each other then the line has been moved, but what should therefore stop the line being moved to allow a man to marry two women and call that ‘marriage’? How about if a guy wanted to marry his dog? Or his television? Or his sister? Or his Dad?

Logically speaking, if the definition of marriage can be changed for the sake of equality to allow same-sex marriage then it should easily allow polygamy, and most likely incest and bestiality among other things.

After-birth abortions

Now this is so ridiculous it would be laughable if it wasn’t actually true. A bunch of so-called ‘experts’ have concluded that parents should be allowed to abort newborn babies because ultimately there’s no difference between a baby and a foetus. Funnily enough, I agree with their logic – here’s how it works:

Pro-life groups have always said that abortion’s wrong because it’s ending a human life, therefore is murder. Pro-abortion groups said no, foetuses aren’t actually human…but then changed their mind and said well ok, they’re human, but they’re not people. A person is self-aware whereas a foetus isn’t, so doesn’t have human rights. Sounds a bit like Nazi Germany but apparently we have to stick with it.

But newborn babies apparently aren’t self-aware either, so logically speaking these experts are now recommending we abort newborn babies too. Let’s just call that infanticide, ok?

Again, logically speaking, if newborn babies are officially recognised as not being people then the end result could end up with a baby trapped in a burning building and the fire service being told not to rescue them because ‘there are no people in there’. Or someone could kill a child because they considered the situation dangerous but that wouldn’t be murder because no person was killed. Or a baby could become sick so the parents could take him to the hospital to be put down.

For both of these situations I think I’m just going to stick with the Bible. When murder becomes morally acceptable (and, let’s face it, it already has) we need to question where we’re laying our society’s foundations.

Related articles

• Anti-abortion fanatics are threatening free speech, warns academic (guardian.co.uk)
• Infanticide is repellent. Feeling that way doesn’t make you Glenn Beck | Andrew Brown (guardian.co.uk)
• Slaughter newborn kids, say academics (thesun.co.uk)
• ‘After-birth abortion’ is logically sound: that’s why it will boost the pro-life movement (blogs.telegraph.co.uk)

Whole-body worship

At my church we believe in ‘whole-body’ worship. That means that every member of the church body (see Romans 12 and 1 Corinthians 12) is equally involved in corporate worship. There’s not one leader and many followers, there’s one facilitator enabling every individual to engage.

But worship is way bigger than we perceive it. I follow The Resurgence, who recently posted about the importance of the human body in worship. We worship with our body through daily living, baptism, and the Lord’s Supper, but when we join in corporate worship it’s important we worship with our whole body too:

Scripture, however, presents an active, physical involvement in worship: the raising of hands, indicative of both blessing God (Psa. 134:1) and pleading for his help and mercy (Psa. 28:1-2; 88:8-10); kneeling, bowing, and falling down, exhibiting humility and abject shame before the Lord (Rev. 4:9-11; 5:8-14; Ezra 9:5-6; 2 Chron. 6:12-14; Psa. 35:13-14; Neh. 8:5-6); dancing or leaping, manifesting intense joy (Psa. 149:3-4; Ex. 15:20-21; 2 Sam. 6:14-17); and clapping and shouting praise to God (Psa. 47:1-2; 66:1). Certainly, many cultural—including generational, ethnic, geographical, socio-economic, and denominational—realities must be considered in this discussion, but embodied human beings qualified to worship God “in spirit and truth” (John 4:23-24) are to engage in this activity with the entirety of their being—and that includes their body.

The pro-choice argument

Denny Burk wrote about a conversation he had with a pro-choice lady – here’s the climax:

I pressed still further, “What if the baby has been delivered completely, is still connected to the mother by the umbilical cord, and remains outside the womb for an hour while still connected? Should a woman have a right to kill the baby then?”

She replied, “Yes. If it’s still connected to the mother, it’s still a part of her body, and she has a right to abort it.”

I was astonished and informed her, “That’s infanticide, and that’s illegal.”

It was at that point that I realized that this conversation wasn’t about logic. It wasn’t about what was reasonable or right. This was just blind passion, and this woman had no ears to hear the cold inhumanity of her own position.

Have a read of the whole thing to see the rest of the conversation and his (correct) conclusion.

How doctrine’s like sex

Put ‘sex’ in a blog post title and increase traffic by 39%.  Fact.

I started reading a book the other day.  One of the things it said is that doctrine has become like a demigod to some branches of Christianity, and like a curse word for others.

The author very cleverly compares doctrine to sex. Satan has no creative ability, so the only way he can be mean is to take something good, and twist it until it’s so deformed it’s difficult to see past it to the original beautiful thing it was created to be. The perfect example of this is sex, and here are his own words:

What could be more life-affirming, life-enhancing, life-producing, more fun, joyful, freeing, and exciting? Now think of how the enemy has bent it into a grotesque caricature in the sex shows, peep shows, and prostitution markets – how it perverts and debases the pornography-bound, the sadomasochist, and the child abuser. Life bent into death. The same can be said for any aspect of reality, and that includes the intellectual, the philosophical, the biblical, the theological. What God intended for blessing as been – but need not continue to be – a curse. Sex is still really good, despite its ugly distortions.

So is theology.

I encourage you to try it. You’ll like it.

Good theology, like good sex, is not optional for the survival of the human race. It is not just for the religious/philosophical Geek Squad. It is essential.

Spot on, I think.

Animals: morally good?

I bit the inside of my cheek on Saturday. That really hurts, doesn’t it? It happened, and I caught myself thinking: why the heck haven’t we evolved enough not to bite our own body by mistake?

That led to the thought: I’ve never seen a monkey, or any other animal for that matter, biting the inside of its own cheek by mistake. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever seen any animal do anything ‘by mistake’.

Here’s where I ended up: I have never seen any animal doing anything which is morally wrong. I think that animals actually have no ability to do something ‘bad’, but every single human does something ‘bad’ in their life if given the chance.

So, Monday morning thought: humans are somewhat different to animals. Discuss.