Should abortion be illegal?

[MoreCoffee]

This is a moral question as well as a legal one and it has theological roots as well as civil liberties roots so do not be hasty in answering the question.

The holy scriptures teach that taking a human life by murder is a sin. One of the commandments given by God is you shall not kill - some prefer to translate that as you shall do no murder. There is a passage about men fighting and a woman being hit and loosing an unborn infant as a result but what that means is hotly disputed. So the decision - if made on the basis of what holy scripture says - will need to be based on general principles rather than on specific and precise legal direction from God.

My own view is Catholic, I oppose the use of abortion as a means of pregnancy control and as a means of dealing with undesirable and unwanted pregnancies.

 

[atpollard]

Ironically, in a perfect world abortion should not be illegal. It should be a valid medical procedure about as common as brain surgery ... something not done lightly, but something done when an absolute medical necessity.

Unfortunately, we do not live in a perfect world. In the world that we have been given, we must choose between loosing a dozen women who might have been saved if abortions are illegal and a Holocaust of hundreds of thousands of babies killed if abortion is legal. I cannot support continuing the Holocaust of abortion on demand. We have joined Molech in sacrificing our children to a false god of convenience and sin.

 

[MoreCoffee]

Ironically, in a perfect world abortion should not be illegal. It should be a valid medical procedure about as common as brain surgery ... something not done lightly, but something done when an absolute medical necessity.

Unfortunately, we do not live in a perfect world. In the world that we have been given, we must choose between loosing a dozen women who might have been saved if abortions are illegal and a Holocaust of hundreds of thousands of babies killed if abortion is legal. I cannot support continuing the Holocaust of abortion on demand. We have joined Molech in sacrificing our children to a false god of convenience and sin.

If I have read your reply correctly you've said "yes, abortion ought to be illegal".

 

[psalms 91]

Yes, it should be illegal except in very narrow circumstances.

 

[MoreCoffee]

If it were illegal what penalties ought there to be for the doctor (or other person) performing an abortion?

 

[psalms 91]

For the doctor loss of license and jail time, for the person getting it, depends on the circumstances

 

[tango]

The crucial question underpinning the abortion issue is whether that little bundle of cells counts as a human or not and, more specifically, at what point it counts as a human.

If the fetus does count as a human then killing it is murder, plain and simple. If it does not count as human then removing it is no more morally significant than having an appendix or a tumor removed. If the fetus does count as a human being then killing it needs to be treated as murder unless there are extenuating circumstances - it seems bizarre to talk of justified homicide where a little bundle of cells that hasn't even been born yet is concerned but, just like it's legal (in some areas, at least) to use deadly force against another human to protect against specific immediate risks, so it should be legal to do the same against a fetus. Of course a fetus is never going to carjack, rape, burgle etc but if the ongong growth of the fetus represents a clear danger to the mother's life it provides a justification to remove it. Existing laws about justified homicide seem like a lot of legal gymnastics, but I think it should be easy enough to make a case for abortion in extreme cases.

The trouble is that the definition of immediate danger to the mother will invariably get muddied over the years, as indeed it has done already. It's absurd to demand that a woman be denied an abortion even at the cost of her own life yet, if it is believed that the fetus is a human, it is equally absurd to allow her to kill a human for the sake of mere convenience.

Waters get muddied further depending on exactly when the unborn counts as human. If one accepts the premise that life begins at conception then, by definition, an abortifacient drug or an IUD must be considered a murder weapon. If life begins at implantation some seemingly strange issues are cleared up but logically there must be some punishment for the woman committing grievous harm against her unborn child by drinking heavily, even if she didn't know she was pregnant. Such a situation is also clearly absurd.

Personally I find many of the appeals to Scripture to prohibit abortion to be unconvincing:

Some appeal to the introduction to Jeremiah - "before I formed you in the womb I ordained you..." which is all well and good but says nothing about whether that bundle of cells is a human or just a bundle of cells.

Others appeal to the psalmist (I think 139 off the top of my head) talking about how God formed them in the secret place, knit them together in their mother's womb. That doesn't mean the thing in the womb is living - Adam was formed by God and for a time was man-sized, man-shaped and made by God, but not alive. Then God put breath in him and he lived. If anything that supports the case that the unborn is not alive until it draws its own first breath.

Instinctively I am drawn to the view that the unborn is a human at some point prior to birth and struggle with the idea that abortion, other than in extreme cases, is morally acceptable. That said, aside from the verse in Exodus used in the OP, I don't find it easy to explicitly support the stance using Scripture.

 

[Josiah]

http://christianityhaven.com/showthread.php?2256-Why-I-m-Pro-Life[/B]

 

[Lamb]

If we can consider life on other planets to be merely small organisms that contain a nucleus then we should surely be considering life in the womb from conception. I think abortion should be illegal because a woman does not have the right to kill her unborn child just because it's in her body.

 

[Josiah]

If we can consider life on other planets to be merely small organisms that contain a nucleus then we should surely be considering life in the womb from conception. I think abortion should be illegal because a woman does not have the right to kill her unborn child just because it's in her body.

It's a ploy the pro-choice people learned from the pro-slavery movement in the USA. Everyone knew that the African was ALIVE - had life. They could not deny that, biologically. And of course today, we can prove via DNA that the unborn is HOMO SAPIENS. The question thus was changed to "is this a PERSON?" "Person" is NOT a science term, not a biological term, it's a legal term. The pro-slavery folks argued the African was 100% alive but not fully a PERSON - and thus could be the personal property of one who IS fully a person. When our US Constitution was drawn, it specifically stated that the African was 2/3's a PERSON..... this make it legal to own him as private property and to do with such however one chooses to do with their own property (although in the USA it was technically illegal to murder a slave). The modern "pro-choice" crowd is simply parroting the same absurd point: OBVIOUSLY, the unborn is alive.... and obviously is 100% homo sapiens. But is he or she a PERSON (thus with rights) or PROPERTY (to which the owner can do as they please - even murder)? That's the way the pro-abortion crowd frames this - albeit in clouded language. It's just another twist on the POWER issue we hunmans struggle with: does the one with power have the right to abuse the one with less?


In this thread here, I give me stance on this issue (and there is a lively discussion): http://christianityhaven.com/showthread.php?2256-Why-I-m-Pro-Life



"Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves" (God)
"I'm pro-choice, I just think the choice happens in the bedroom" (my mom, lol)



- Josiah




.

 

[psalms 91]

Seems to me that like so many other moral issues, this one keeps getting muddied. Fact is you prevent a human from being born and you terminate a life no matter how you consider the fetus. Murder is murder pure and simple,and I dont care how you care to present it that is the bottom line

 

[MoreCoffee]

Seems to me that like so many other moral issues, this one keeps getting muddied. Fact is you prevent a human from being born and you terminate a life no matter how you consider the fetus. Murder is murder pure and simple,and I dont care how you care to present it that is the bottom line

What is the penalty for murder when it is planned and carried out systematically?

 

[psalms 91]

What is the penalty for murder when it is planned and carried out systematically?

I guess the United States will find out or maybe is in the process of finding out when God says enough of this. I do not think as a country we can escape judgement for this act alone although there are many other things that I am sure we will be judged for as well.

 

[Andrew]

If someone kills a pregnant woman then he or she is charged with double homicide.
Let that sink in

 

[Arsenios]

Hypostatic human life begins at conception...
That fact needs to be legally recognized...
We need to do much more to facilitate adoptions...

Abortions should not be mere elective surgery...

A child in the womb is a child...

YOU were once in the womb...

God bless the right to life folks...

No one has a smaller voice than the not yet born...


Arsenios

 

[ImaginaryDay2]

...It's just another twist on the POWER issue we hunmans struggle with: does the one with power have the right to abuse the one with less?

- Josiah

I couldn't help but notice the irony in the statement above. "does the one with the power have the right to abuse the one with less"? This question goes far beyond a simple "it's my body and I'll do what I want with it" discussion where on one side is mom, and the other side baby. Power also resides with those who legislate what mom can or cannot do - what choices she has under the law. Mom always has a choice, the question is whether her choice is under the law or not?

Those that legislated previously made a decision (Roe V. Wade) that they believed 'empowers' women. And it was (in a way) a supposed affirmation to women that their body was theirs (I'm not advocating the truth of this, just stating a conclusion). On the "other side" are those who would "disempower" women by having Roe V. Wade overturned and abortion criminalized.


So there's a whole other nuance to the idea of a "power issue" and those with power "abusing" those that have less. There may be some on the moral or legislative 'Right' who would seek to disempower women by abuse under supposed altruistic motives - e.g. "helping" women who abort to recognize their sin by bringing to their mind the fact they are "murdering" their babies. How does this help? Well, it helps trauma counsellors. We get to work with the woman who has aborted deal with the loss of a child and the back-lash from folks who assisted her in recognizing her sin in murdering the child as well.


So... should it be illegal? My opinion is "yes" except in cases of rape, incest, or risk to the life of the mother. However, is God merciful to those who have lost a child through abortion? Yes, as we should be as well

 

[Krissy Cakes]

YES! I believe if the woman gets pregnant she needs to have it UNLESS it is going to hurt her and the baby.

 

[tango]

Seems to me that like so many other moral issues, this one keeps getting muddied. Fact is you prevent a human from being born and you terminate a life no matter how you consider the fetus. Murder is murder pure and simple,and I dont care how you care to present it that is the bottom line

The trouble is that so many moral issues do come in shades of gray.

Is it lawful to intentionally kill another human being? On the face of it the answer is no but the whole legal concept of justified homicide shows the shades of gray that exist.

Would you walk up to a stranger and kill them for no reason? I'd certainly hope not. What about if you come home and find a group of men who broke into your home abusing your teenage daughter? Would you kill them? The law sees the two situations very differently.

 

[tango]

YES! I believe if the woman gets pregnant she needs to have it UNLESS it is going to hurt her and the baby.

That unless is the start of the slippery slope, which is part of the problem.

I think only the most hardcore opponents of abortion would demand that a woman continue a pregnancy even when medical advice says that it will kill her. In a situation like that you'd really struggle to justify telling her she has to have the baby.

A good friend of mine had an abortion under circumstances much like that. She was about 7 months pregnant and learned that the baby was badly malformed, had a near-zero chance of surviving more than a few days after birth and was unlikely to even make it that long because continuing the pregnancy would put the mother's life in serious danger. She and her husband desperately wanted that baby but concluded that the only sensible option was to abort it. It's easy to regard abortion as a black and white issue if you haven't been through something like that. (Thankfully my friends now have two healthy children - that issue was a one-off)

The problem comes when trying to determine at what point "harm to the mother" or "harm to the baby" becomes an acceptable reason to terminate a pregnancy. In a case where the mother's life is literally on the line if she continues the pregnancy it's pretty straightforward. But what about where mental health is concerned? Who makes the call whether a mother will be harmed? If abortion were outlawed entirely my friend would have had the choice between gambling with her life or going to an illegal backstreet abortion clinic. But as soon as you allow abortion to protect the mother from harm you open the doors to a pregnant woman finding a sympathetic doctor who is willing to state that having a baby would be detrimental to her mental health and you're right back to where we are now.

Other complications exist in cases like rape. I think you'd have to be pretty unsympathetic to a rape victim to tell her that she wasn't allowed to abort the child, that she had to carry it to term and give it up for adoption if she didn't want to keep it. But if you allow a rape victim to terminate her pregnancy you just create a perverse incentive for women to claim they were raped as a means to qualify for an abortion.

 

[MoreCoffee]

If abortion is made illegal what ought to be the penalty for the doctor and for the mother - if it is murder to abort what ought to happen to the murderers?