Abortion....
I'll keep my morality to just 4 points. And try to do so in a way non-religious people can also understand.
FIRST: SCIENCE. There is MUCH talk about "follow the science" (perhaps the secular religion?). “I just say what Science does,” they insist. Well, as once was said, "To claim that a fetus is a human IF the mother wants it but not if the mother doesn't isn't science." IF that "whatever" the day before birth is NOT a human being, a homo sapiens, then what is it?" A cockroach? A butterfly? I want to know, what does SCIENCE say the species is? But I'm a layman....my doctorate is not in biology … and when I see the ultrasound of a cute little baby sucking her thumb, it just seems to me there's a baby there. And when mother has a baby shower, a gender reveal, when she tells us the name, when she shares pictures of the ultrasound, it seems to me SHE thinks so, too. To ME, defining species by whether such is "wanted" is not science. To me, to agree that that one I’m looking at in the ultrasound sucking her thumb is not a Homo Sapiens, not human, but rather is a butterfly (or whatever) well, they should show the science that proves that if they insist that’s what science says. Frankly, I think science is more on the pro-life side.
SECOND: PROPERTY. We have this philosophy, this morality deep in the American soul that humans can be property. We saw this in full bloom 150 plus years ago as many claimed that the African is a human (impossible to claim otherwise) BUT in some cases, just PROPERTY. There's an owner and owners can do with their PROPERTY as they please, even "terminate" such. I hope even non-Christians agree this is immoral. And we (as a society and nation) dealt with that 150 years ago (although it took a literal war) and declared, loud and clear, NO human is property, NO ONE owns another human. But here we are again.... The slogans are just regurgitations of the pro-slavery ones. "MY this... MY that..." Until it's proven to me that an unborn I see in the ultrasound sucking her thumb is just a lifeless THING (like a coffee mug) or a living non-human (perhaps a bunny rabbit), then it seems to me we likely have a human... and thus she's not property! And there is no owner! Now, acknowledging this, some have a variant; they insist, "Yes, she's human and not property - but she's a DEVELOPING human and it's moral to "terminate" a human who is still developing." Ah. But a 12 year-old girl is still developing too so the morality they embrace applies just as much after birth as before.
THIRD: WRONG DOESN'T CORRECT WRONG. Proponents of abortions dwell on a sad, tragic reality that we MUST not evade: There are horrible situations! We live in a fallen, sinful, broken world where ____ happens. Bad happens to women and men, girls and boys, Blacks and Whites, religious and non-religious - perhaps through NO fault of their own. There are horrible, sad, tragic and very REAL stories. No one argues otherwise. But some seem to hold that the proper response is to look for the most innocent party in this and kill them. I'd argue that two wrongs don't make a right, it just makes a bigger wrong. Instead of punishing the child, we need to help the mother. I reject the sharp either/or of the pro-abortion side, the sharp division they make. We need to "be there" for BOTH mother and child, for ALL victims, for ALL threatened and abused. Those tragic stories about mothers suggest help for the mother, not killing a child.
FOURTH: HUMAN RIGHTS. Much talk is made of "rights" these days. Even ones in the Constitution that aren't in the Constitution. There is a basic American view that there are inalienable rights granted by the Creator. We'd agree on some: Freedom of speech, for example. But NONE OF THEM matters at all if there is no right to life. If my LIFE is taken away, what difference does it make if I have freedom of speech? All rights depend on one right: the right to be, the right to exist, the right to life. Again, I know the response: “But some humans are just property, and property has no rights.” But we know from history that any can reduce humans to just property: Hitler and the Jews, A lot of Americans and African slaves, many have been victims of this "human but property" morality. We need to embrace human rights....and that they all completely, fully, entirely depend on one right: the right to life, to exist, to be. It's a human right they have simply by virtue of being human rather than snakes.
I do hope we (as a society) can get past the politics and slogans and DEAL with a huge issue, one that kills more people than cancer in America, twice as many every year as died in the entire Second World War. This is an enormous moral issue… and with or without faith, it must be addressed.
Thank you for hearing me out.
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