The Bible is great

English: Pregnant woman at a WIC clinic in Virginia (vertically mirrored image). (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I was reading Exodus the other day. Right in the middle of a bunch of rules about what should happen to people who beat up other people there’s this little passage:

When men strive together and hit a pregnant woman, so that her children come out, but there is no harm, the one who hit her shall surely be fined, as the woman’s husband shall impose on him, and he shall pay as the judges determine. But if there is harm, then you shall pay life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, stripe for stripe. (Exodus 21:22-25)

Observation one – this is a pretty standard go-to verse to demonstrate that the Bible is pro-life. The whole idea of ‘eye for eye, tooth for tooth’ is within the context of harming the unborn. Interesting.

Observation two – this is the only bit in the passage which involves men ‘striving together’ – each other one is just ‘if someone…’, which is interesting, isn’t it?

Observation three – if the unborn child is not harmed, the one who chooses the punishment is the woman’s husband, the child’s father. In other words, the punishment will be chosen by an angry man.

Observation four – this is all about Jesus. The Son of God came to earth, and men strove (is that a word?) together to kill him; humanity killed him – guilty as charged – but although we should pay life for life, what we receive by faith in him is new life for old life!

That’s the Great Exchange – that’s amazing grace!

Abortion is involuntary euthanasia (i.e. wrong)

Abortion Memorial (Photo credit: DrGBB)

I don’t think it’ll take anyone by surprise when I say that I dislike abortion. Killing unborn children is something which, I think, should be avoided at all costs. Yes, exceptions, blah blah blah, but for 99.9%+ of cases, it’s wrong.

I’m not the only one who thinks this way. Take Peter Kreeft for example, who takes an opening statement (‘we know what an apple is’) and draws it to its logical conclusion (‘abortion is wrong’). Here’s the climax paragraph:

Perhaps pro-choicers perceive that they have no choice but to [deny that murder is morally wrong], for they have no other recourse if they are to argue at all. Scientific facts are just too clear to deny, and it makes no legal sense to deny the legal principle, for if the law is not supposed to defend the right to life, what is it supposed to do? [...] I think most people refuse to think or argue about abortion because they see that the only way to remain pro-choice is to abort their reason first. Or, since many pro-choicers insist that abortion is about sex, not about babies, the only way to justify their scorn of virginity is a scorn of intellectual virginity. The only way to justify their loss of moral innocence is to lose their intellectual innocence.

So there you go. According to this well-constructed argument, pro-choicers willingly stop their brains from working for the sake of abortion. If that offends you (or if you’re just interested in seeing the argument in full), you can read the whole thing here.

HT: Justin Taylor

The false logic of abortion

Pro-life memorial in Bytom, Poland. Translation from an edit summary on Abortion debate: “‘Dedicated in memory of unborn children – victims of abortion.’ The poem says: ‘You will not hear my voice and my heart beat. The heart, that wanted to love you. Why didn’t you want me mommy, why didn’t you want me papa?’” (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

A couple of weeks ago Maria Miller, the new minister for women and equalities, stated that she wanted to reduce the abortion upper limit from 24 to 20 weeks.

As far as I’m concerned, this is good news. Not quite the ban that we have on murder, but any restriction is better than what we have now.

Here’s her reasoning, as stated in The Telegraph:

Maria Miller told the Telegraph it was “common sense” to lower the legal limit at which a pregnancy can be terminated in order to “reflect the way science has moved on”.

Thanks to advances in care for children born very prematurely, it is now possible for doctors in some cases to save the lives of babies born before 24 weeks.

The medical advance raises the moral dilemma of whether it is right to end pregnancies which could result in a healthy child, or to lower the window and rob some women of the right to make their own choice.

Sounds very plausible until you analyse what’s being said. Let’s work through the logic as stated in this story:

…the moral dilemma of whether it is right to end pregnancies which could result in a healthy child…

Wait a minute. ‘Pregnancies which could result in a healthy child’? Do you mean: almost all pregnancies? Every year something like 250,000 babies are recorded as being killed in the womb – the number of those that would definitely be born as an ‘unhealthy child’ is incredibly small anyway, and are you really suggesting that we should kill unhealthy babies? I think not!

The real moral dilemma is surely whether or not it’s right to end pregnancies which could result in any child whatsoever! No-one said, ‘Ah, but at least Hitler killed some disabled people too so the Holocaust wasn’t all bad.’ The moral dilemma is surely whether ending pregnancy is right or wrong, not whether ending the pregnancy of a potentially healthy child only is right or wrong.

…reflect the way science has moved on…

This is the real issue. The above paragraph is a bit of a waste of space – that’s the entire pro-life vs pro-abortion argument, isn’t it? But if science has moved on and therefore the chances of an unhealthy baby remaining alive outside the womb is increased, then the moral dilemma increases. Now we’re onto something.

But the logic simply falls apart. There’s science to keep babies alive outside the womb, therefore we should keep them in the womb? No. Surely the options available to expectant mothers should simply change from:

• (a) have a baby or (b) kill him/her now; to
• (a) have a baby or (b) give birth prematurely so that the hospital can use money used to fund abortions to keep him/her alive.

Seems to make more logical sense to me.