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!

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.

Pro-abortion protesters protest in protest against protesting…what?

Protest sign: "Scientology Forces Abortions" (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I read a little article the other day. In summary, a bunch of pro-abortion supporters have planned a protest to protest against a protest in protest against abortions.

Maybe read it a couple of times.

Anyway, this made me think.

Firstly, it doesn’t need me to make up a silly sentence to show that the protest seems a bit daft – they’re literally protesting against a protest. That’s like unions striking in protest against the unions who are striking. Pro-life campaigners protest because they disagree that abortions should happen so easily, whereas these guys seem to be protesting because they disagree with the pro-lifers’ opinion…if that’s a sensible course of action we might as well all spend every day protesting!

Secondly, what they’re protesting against seems silly. At the top of the article there’s a picture, and the caption quotes someone they clearly disagree with; MP Nadine Dorris has proposed that 13-16 year-olds should be taught the:

benefits of abstinence from sexual activity.

Now, please feel free to accuse me of being a prood, but what’s wrong with that? At the age of 13-16 sex is illegal, so teaching the benefits of not breaking the law would seem to me to be a sensible idea! It’s like teaching under-18s that not drinking alcohol has benefits. Yes, drinking alcohol can be an enjoyable activity, as can sex, and neither MP Dorris nor me is suggesting that alcohol or sex should be banned from society, but that doesn’t seem to be that controversial to me.

Well, anyway, if you fancy protesting against a protest, or against teaching people that keeping the law can be a good idea, then be my guest.

I won’t be joining you.

Foetal humans, or human foetuses?

I read a blog post over here which made me physically nod my head in agreement.

I’ve been reading a book recently about being a parent to a newborn baby (because once you’ve read a book on that you’re fully prepared, surely), and it constantly refers to the child in the womb as a foetus. This particular book then continues to call the child a foetus even after birth, which clearly draws out the question: Where do you draw the line? When a child can talk/walk/vote?

The solution proposed here, I think, is far better. Perhaps it’s just semantics, or perhaps it’s deeper than that. The whole thing’s worth reading so I’m just going to quote it all:

I’ve been thinking of how unhelpful the term “human fetus” is. It reverses our usual grammatical way of speaking about a stage of development, so it perpetuates fuzzy ideas about the identity of the unborn.

We say “adult human,” not “human adult,” because that is the clearest way to speak. Saying “human adult,” “dog adult,” “horse adult,” etc. would make it sound as if an “adult” is a type of creature in and of itself, with the qualifier telling us if it happens to have human qualities, or dog qualities, etc. No, the type of being is “human,” and the qualifier is “adult.”

We ought to also say “fetal human.” It puts the emphasis in the right place and makes it clear to the listener that “fetal” is a stage of development, not a kind of being.

The word “fetus” has been used to obfuscate the identity of the unborn for too long, and even we pro-lifers can’t help but be affected by it. Just think of both terms and you’ll see what I mean. Don’t you feel more of an immediate kinship with a “fetal human” than a “human fetus”? Don’t you feel more protective of a fetal human? This is not a language trick, it’s a more consistent use of grammar and a long-overdue clarification.

Giving birth to a disabled child is inconsiderate

Challies commented on his friend’s experience with abortion and children with special needs:

Is my son an accident? A faltering of the progressive cycle of evolution? A drain on society and its money? A thing not as valuable as a fully-functioning “normal” person?

He makes good observations about society and how the attitude has changed from ‘do you really want to give a disabled child life?’ to ‘how could you do this to your family?’ to ‘how could you do this to society?’ Conclusion: all ‘imperfect’ kids should be killed.

I’d encourage you to read the whole post here.

Like an electric current

The following post is taken from here.

“Mugged by Ultrasound: Why So Many Abortion Workers Have Turned Pro-Life”,by David Daleiden and Jon Shields, is a gut-wrenching, disturbing, graphic account of the emotional trauma abortion wrecks on those who perform them. For example, in 2008, Dr. Lisa Harris explained what happened while she, 18-weeks pregnant at the time, performed an abortion on an 18-week-old fetus. She felt her own baby kick at the same time she ripped off a fetal leg with her forceps. This prompted a visceral response.

Instantly, tears were streaming from my eyes—without me—meaning my conscious brain—even being aware of what was going on. I felt as if my response had come entirely from my body, bypassing my usual cognitive processing completely. A message seemed to travel from my hand and my uterus to my tear ducts. It was an overwhelming feeling—a brutally visceral response—heartfelt and unmediated by my training or my feminist pro-choice politics. It was one of the more raw moments in my life.

Tragically, Dr. Harris is still in the abortion business.

Paul Jarret is not. He quit after 23 abortions. “As I brought out the rib cage, I looked and saw a tiny, beating heart,” he would recall, reflecting on aborting a 14-week-old fetus. “And when I found the head of the baby, I looked squarely in the face of another human being—a human being that I just killed.” Judith Fetrow and Kathy Spark, both former abortion workers, converted to the pro-life cause after seeing the disposal of fetal remains as medical waste. Daleiden and Shields explain:

Handling fetal remains can be especially difficult in late-term clinics. Until George Tiller was assassinated by a pro-life radical last summer, his clinic in Wichita specialized in third-trimester abortions. To handle the large volume of biological waste Tiller had a crematorium on the premises. One day when hauling a heavy container of fetal waste, Tiller asked his secretary, Luhra Tivis, to assist him. She found the experience devastating. The “most horrible thing,” Tivis later recounted, was that she “could smell those babies burning.” Tivis, a former NOW activist, soon left her secretarial position at the clinic to volunteer for Operation Rescue, a radical pro-life organization.

Many abortion providers have been converted by ultrasound technology. The most famous example is Bernard Nathanson, cofounder of the National Association for the Repeal of Abortion Laws, the original NARAL. By his own reckoning Nathanson performed more than 60,000 abortions, including one on his own child. But over time he began to fear he was involved in a great evil. Ultrasound images pushed him over the edge. “When he finally left his profession for pro-life activism, he produced The Silent Scream (1984), a documentary of an ultrasound abortion that showed the fetus scrambling vainly to escape dismemberment.”

Sadly, countless abortion workers keep on perpetuating the great evil, even if it means suppressing the truth they literally feel in their bones.

Pro-choice advocates like to point out that abortion has existed in all times and places. Yet that observation tends to obscure the radicalism of the present abortion regime in the United States. Until very recently, no one in the history of the world has had the routine job of killing well-developed fetuses quite so up close and personal. It is an experiment that was bound to stir pro-life sentiments even in the hearts of those staunchly devoted to abortion rights.  Ultrasound and D&E [dilation and evacuation] bring workers closer to the beings they destroy. Hern and Corrigan concluded their study by noting that D&E leaves “no possibility of denying an act of destruction.” As they wrote, “It is before one’s eyes. The sensations of dismemberment run through the forceps like an electric current.”

Read the whole thing and pray for abortion workers.

Abortion leader watches ultrasound of abortion and resigns

http://ow.ly/z0os – I’m just sayin’

Two articles today

I’m reading the paper – here are two unconnected articles:
A boy born 16 weeks early – ‘could have been legally aborted but defied doctors to survive’…good job the mum knew better than the doctors on this one: ‘Jack smiles and is a happy little boy.’
More babies with Down’s syndrome – in the last 20 years there’s been a 71% rise in babies diagnosed with Down’s, but ‘the number of babies born with Down’s has remained fairly static over the same period owing to improved screening and subsequent abortions’. Well, that’s nice: ‘Oh, you have Down’s, how tragic. Here, I’ll help by killing you.’

Arguments for abortion

Here are a few reasons why people may choose to have an abortion – 1 in 5 pregnancies nowadays end in abortion so this is important…the most dangerous place for a baby to be? The mother’s womb.
Reason 1: the mother doesn’t want the inconvenience. If a Mum killed her 6-month old baby because she didn’t have the time for her job/friends/etc any more, she would be branded an awful person. Not a good enough reason to commit murder.
Reason 2: the baby will be born with a significant disability. If you met a child who was physically disfigured, had learning difficulties and was deaf, for example, and you killed them ‘out of pity for them’, you would be a murderer. Not a good enough reason to commit murder.
Reason 3: the pregnancy came about because the woman was raped. While an absolutely awful thing to happen, imagine that a woman saw a child whose face reminded her of her rapist, so she killed the kid. Sorry, the issue of rape is horrible and not one to discuss right now but not a good enough one to commit murder.
Reason 4: the birth of the child will endanger the life of the mother. So imagine a child runs at a woman brandishing a knife, and it is very clear that he/she intends to kill her. The woman kills the child in self-defence. Now we’re starting to have genuine reasons, although this is clearly the vast, vast minority of abortion cases.

SO…I’m sure we all agree that murder, at least in the first 3 cases, is unacceptable. The question of abortion, therefore, is whether or not the baby in the womb is a human being, or a different animal. The child in the womb is alive. He or she moves, breathes, eats, excretes, grows, feels, hears – if you are pro- murder of children in the womb I am genuinely interested: what animal do you think they are, if not human?