Shedding 'Pro-Choice' and 'Pro-Life' Labels

Scientific FACT: A new and unique human life is created at conception. Abortion kills that human life.

I cannot begin to imagine the opinion one must have of one's self that would allow one to believe that he or she has the right to discuss a concept as demented as "common ground" where anything less than the immediate cessation of the slaughter of innocent, unborn humans could or even would be considered.

For one to be so ignorant in these modern times as to accept that a statement like "inherently moral content of the issues at hand" can be used in conjunction with a scientific matter like the beginning and ending of life, is incomprehensible.

Considering a concept like "common ground" reveals a deep-rooted insurgence of psychopathic tendencies into the general population. It should be a cause for alarm, not a cause for celebration.

Hammerud--I appreciate your dedication to righteousness. I do. But numerous times, Jesus suspends an insistence on absolute righteousness to address the needs of hurting people. If He had adheared to righteousness, the woman caught in adultery would have been stoned, and He would never have healed anyone on the Sabbath.

You say the solution is not with fallen mankind, but the thing is, God gave us the tools and expects us to use them. With God, all things are possible. You say "can't do much now." Are you saying evil has taken over the world so much that you don't think there is any point in trying to do anything about it? I don't think Jesus would agree. The Kingdom of God is here, and it is growing like a mustard seed.

I think the picture Jesus gives us time after time is that we do not write someone off because they don't line up with the righteousness the Pharisees and religious leaders demanded of people. The example He gave us is of one who deeply cares about each individual, and recognizes each of those people has a life story full of hopes, dreams, hurts, and disappointments.

Which is why I believe, although refusing to come to the table with those who are pro-choice may be the "righteous" thing to do, I don't believe it is what Jesus would do. Jesus would listen. Jesus would get to the heart of the matter. Isn't that what we should do?

You say you don't have a solution. That's an honest answer. But what I don't understand is why, when you have nothing to offer, and seem to have accepted there is nothing that can be done, why do you denegrate those who would seek to find solutions?

You don't have a solution because you fail to listen. What if you learned that one reason a person is pro-choice is because of the sense of unfairness to women who have to bear the majority of the responsibility while the man, oftentimes, can just walk away? Are there no solutions that can be offered to that? If there were, would that not have the effect of stopping some people from having abortion?

I really think that what Jesus wants for us is not to tell people what they should do. What He really wants us to do is listen in the way He would listen. Listen to people's hearts. If we insist on demonizing people and saying there is no way their hearts can turn, no way that we can even sit down and talk with them, well, Jesus didn't do that, so I don't think we should either.

Squeaky - Good point here and I do support ministries that help young
women who are pregnant:

You say the solution is not with fallen mankind, but the thing is,
God gave us the tools and expects us to use them. With God, all
things are possible. You say "can't do much now." Are you saying
evil has taken over the world so much that you don't think there is
any point in trying to do anything about it? I don't think Jesus
would agree.

There is no common ground with willful ignorance and rebellion against
light and God, but I do share the gospel and do listen to those
outside of Christ. Jesus would listen to people to an extent, but
there comes a point when God even "throws up his hands." Romans 1
says "God gave them over....." In other words, He realized that they
would not respond to His offer of forgiveness. Also, Jesus said to the
Scribes and Pharisees in John 5:40, "Ye will not come to me that ye
might have life." I think that is sort of what I perceive in much of
our culture, but you are right that God can do anything -- I do pray.
I agree that I cannot see hearts so I cannot pass judgment on any
given individual. Jesus did call Herod a derogatory term though when
He said, "Go and tell that 'fox." So, He was not always open and
loving to everyone. And John the Baptist confronted Herod to his face.

You have a compassionate heart and do make good points.

Thank you for this post. Bridging can be lonely work; it's good to hear from someone who has been doing it longer, with more wisdom and grace than I.
The next question would seem to be, How do we go about forming deep and trusting relationships with people with very different views?

By all means, let's all hold hands in civility and tolerance. At least we can smile at each other in friendship while we enforce an institutional framework to our society that systematically kills innocent children.

Prioritization is important. So-called civility is (or should be) on a lower rung than sacrificing basic moral principles.

Here's the short answer: At the institutional level, Roe needs to be overturned reasons both legal and moral. Abortion should perhaps be legal in very narrow circumstances, such as to save the physical (not mental, George Tiller) life of the mother.

Socially, Christians need to step it up and provide loving care and service for pregnant women of all kinds--single, married, poor, etc.; there needs to be not just education on the risks of premarital sex, but serious exhortation on prevention methods that actually make sense. Why is it that we enforce drinking laws and expect kids to follow them, but when it comes to sex it's "they're going to do it no matter what so give them a condom"? To me, that perspective reflects more on the adults arguing, and their insulting lack of respect for people, than the people themselves.

That's all for now...

Not that simple. To do that, to add to squeaky's post, relationships between men and women need to be repaired, for obvious reasons -- if people aren't sexually active outside of marriage the abortion rate will decrease.

If you read "God's Politics," you would have read his rant against the Super Bowl "wardrobe malfunction" -- he called that halftime show part of the "Super Bowl of sleaze" -- and such shows TV shows as "Temptation Island." But you see, that's such an easy target. (Oh, and BTW, those programs were on the Fox Network -- hardly Democratic territory.) Besides, that's not an issue of partisanship -- it's "all about the Benjamins." And don't forget it's adults who watch that stuff.

"Are you saying that it's good enough to reduce abortions from 1 million to say 500,000 a year? "

Are you saying that the 500,000 who could be saved aren't worth the compromise? Are we to sacrifice them for the sake of being right?

Babies continue to die not just because abortion is legal, but because we continually insist on an all-or-nothing strategy. How many abortions are we responsible for because we refuse to sit down with the other side? Compromise is a dirty word, and yet how many babies die because of a refusal to compromise? Are their lives worth it?

Part of the problem is this need to demonize the other side. As if they don't have valid concerns. How are they supposed to think we care about them if we refuse to even listen?

If compromise can never happen, what is your strategy for ending abortion?

Because it's on the issue of abortion that most progressive Christians depart from the "seamless garment of life" ethic. It's wise strategy. Instead of trying to defend the position of supporting abortion rights, which seems too callous, they seek to try to get those who criticize their position to quiet down and stop being such harsh critics.

This is one of the most reasonable posts I've ever seen about abortion.

How do you propose to end abortion?

The problem is, overturning Roe will not end abortion. It happened before Roe v. Wade, and it will happen after it as well. A law is a band-aid solution at best.

The second half of your solution makes far more sense and speaks to the heart of the issue--unwanted pregnancies. The question I asked on a previous thread is why are we pouring money into legal solutions, which aren't solutions at all? What would happen if we concentrated our efforts on the real solutions, including prevention, encouraging young men that being sexually active doesn't make them men, encouraging young women that they don't need to have sex to prove their love to their boyfriend, supporting those with unwanted pregnancies both during and after the pregnancy, holding young men accountable, cutting the red tape involved with adoption. Those solutions are effective, but the problem is, they lack funding, attention, and emphasis.

Meanwhile, how much money is spent paying lobbyists and supporting a candidate's campaign? How many women might have chosen not to abort their child if they had greater access to the supports you and I mention above? How many unwanted pregnancies could have been avoided had more attention been paid to preventing unwanted pregnancies in the first place?

The fact is, the best anyone can hope for is abortion reduction. Overturning Roe v. Wade will not end abortion. It may reduce it, but it will not end it. So, if the best we can hope for is abortion reduction, why can't we then work with pro-choice people who also, by and large, would at least agree that abortion reduction is a good thing?

My proposal is that we work as if Roe v. Wade will never be overturned. My proposal is that we concentrate our efforts into preventing abortion in the ways we suggested above. Any dollar spent on a politician is a dollar lost to helping a young single mother care for her child. Since when can politicians be trusted to do what they promised in their campaigns?

And I'm sorry--any prevention strategy that does not include birth control in addition to abstinence education denies reality. If anything we should have learned from Sarah Palin it is that no matter how carefully we train our children, they can still make mistakes--mistakes that will change their lives forever. If a condom could prevent that, or prevent an abortion, then I'm not sure what the problem is--if in fact, ending abortion is the goal.

It's troubling to me that you scoffed at efforts of finding common ground. What is wrong with engaging in dialogue with each other? What is wrong with trying to understand each other's perspective? If we can find even the slightest hint of a piece of common ground with the other side, why would you scoff at attempts to build on that?

I agree. Abortion is 100% wrong, period. There is no common ground on the issue when it comes to the shedding of innocent blood, an abomination to God. We can try to be courteous, but there is no common ground, and playing the "common ground" approach is to bow to evil. As it says in Proverbs, "the righteous bowing down before the wicked are like a troubled stream."

If you read "God's Politics," you would have read his rant against the Super Bowl "wardrobe malfunction" -- he called that halftime show part of the "Super Bowl of sleaze" -- and such shows TV shows as "Temptation Island." But you see, that's such an easy target. (Oh, and BTW, those programs were on the Fox Network -- hardly Democratic territory.) Besides, that's not an issue of partisanship -- it's "all about the Benjamins." And don't forget it's adults who watch that stuff.

Fifty five years and some-odd months ago, My Mom and Dad engaged in sexual congress with the express purpose of having a child. Within a few hours, one of my father's sperm managed to penetrate my mother's egg, and a very short time later, something truly miraculous happened.The egg divided, and all of the genetic information that made up my father, and all of the genetic information that made up my mother combined to make up all of the genetic information that is me, Timmyjohn. And ever since that moment, I have been on a spiritual journey to become me. I have never for a moment stopped becoming me. And I had as much of a God given, unalienable right to the process of becoming me when I was composed of two cells as I do now, when I am composed of way too many cells. (Especially around my middle!) This is because during gestation, regardless of which "trimester", (HA! what a human word!), I was becoming Tim Hansen. I wasn't becoming a blowfish, or a gazelle, or a pollywog, or a bristle cone pine tree, or a bacterium, or an African gray parrot. To be sure, I am not today the man I was yesterday, or that I was last year, or that I was at the age of twenty, or even the person I was at six weeks in the womb. But it is inarguable that every nano-second from conception to this moment has been spent in the ineluctable continuum of my creation, and no one man or nation of men or especially my mother has the right to interrupt that continuum. To do so would be murder. How could it not be so?

It seems the modern feminist movement has pinned its idea of liberation to the realization of complete reproductive freedom. The argument goes that each and every woman must have the sole responsibility for her own body. The problem with this logic of course is that the supposed "need" for an abortion arises out of an utter abdication of that responsibility in favor of short term sexual gratification. At least, I've never heard of an orgasm lasting fifty-five years and some odd months!

I don't know what to make of this. I only know that the argument belongs right here, at the beginning. It does on absolutely no good to start demanding "reproductive rights" after one has reproduced! It's like screaming "Gravity isn't fair!!!" after you've deliberately jumped off a cliff!

My, how I do go on!

Thanks for letting me share!

I agree with much of what you wrote, but not all. To me, the fact that we institutionally allow abortion on-demand is a greater moral horror and travesty than even slavery or our treatment of the Indians. Roe and all that it entails violate the basic fundamental rights that form much of the basis of Christian thought, as well as our Constitution (and yes, I definitely see those as separate). It's just too basic and too important to ever accept defeat on overturning (or mitigating) it.

I am not a hardcore partisan, but I find the high majority of the pro-abortion arguments to be utterly unnaceptable morally and philosophically, and I find it very difficult to express political support for someone so wrong on such an important and basic issue. (At least I'm not Catholic, or the struggle would add yet another dimension!)

(I had a similar comments discussion on my blog here: http://sds.tumblr.com/post/109643594)

I hope I've made it clear that I am supportive of many courses of action besides simply picketing abortion clinics, electing Republicans, and denouncing Planned Parenthood (none of which are necessarily productive). My scoffing at Obama and "finding common ground" is sourced in what I believe is his evasive and insulting rhetoric about the issue. I commented about that at the link below, and pasted the following links as well:

http://blog.sojo.net/2009/05/21/discovering-com...
http://www.albertmohler.com/blog_read.php?id=3824
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=NTYyMmYyYz...

A couple more random thoughts: Not that you necessarily argued it, but the back-alley abortion concept is a total myth. It didn't happen in any large numbers pre-Roe, and it won't post-Roe. Another myth is that most women would still get abortions even if it were illegal.

A greater catalogue of my thoughts on this issue can be found here:
http://sds.tumblr.com/tagged/abortion

I very much appreciate you and this discussion. This issue is so important!

Fifty five years and some-odd months ago, My Mom and Dad engaged in sexual congress with the express purpose of having a child. Within a few hours, one of my father's sperm managed to penetrate my mother's egg, and a very short time later, something truly miraculous happened.The egg divided, and all of the genetic information that made up my father, and all of the genetic information that made up my mother combined to make up all of the genetic information that is me, Timmyjohn. And ever since that moment, I have been on a spiritual journey to become me. I have never for a moment stopped becoming me. And I had as much of a God given, unalienable right to the process of becoming me when I was composed of two cells as I do now, when I am composed of way too many cells. (Especially around my middle!) This is because during gestation, regardless of which "trimester", (HA! what a human word!), I was becoming Tim Hansen. I wasn't becoming a blowfish, or a gazelle, or a pollywog, or a bristle cone pine tree, or a bacterium, or an African gray parrot. To be sure, I am not today the man I was yesterday, or that I was last year, or that I was at the age of twenty, or even the person I was at six weeks in the womb. But it is inarguable that every nano-second from conception to this moment has been spent in the ineluctable continuum of my creation, and no one man or nation of men or especially my mother has the right to interrupt that continuum. To do so would be murder. How could it not be so?

It seems the modern feminist movement has pinned its idea of liberation to the realization of complete reproductive freedom. The argument goes that each and every woman must have the sole responsibility for her own body. The problem with this logic of course is that the supposed "need" for an abortion arises out of an utter abdication of that responsibility in favor of short term sexual gratification. At least, I've never heard of an orgasm lasting fifty-five years and some odd months!

I don't know what to make of this. I only know that the argument belongs right here, at the beginning. It does on absolutely no good to start demanding "reproductive rights" after one has reproduced! It's like screaming "Gravity isn't fair!!!" after you've deliberately jumped off a cliff!

My, how I do go on!

Thanks for letting me share!

The trouble is that abortion isn't addressed directly in Scripture, so when you try to find a link you necessarily have to consider other segments of "life." For ideological reasons, many of the same people who oppose abortion today favored slavery and in fact opposed civil rights for racial minorities -- and, ironically, they are often the first today to complain about abortion in the black community. This is complete hypocrisy in my book.

Because it's on the issue of abortion that most progressive Christians depart from the "seamless garment of life" ethic. It's wise strategy. Instead of trying to defend the position of supporting abortion rights, which seems too callous, they seek to try to get those who criticize their position to quiet down and stop being such harsh critics.

Blue - It is addressed by inference -- "the shedding of innocent
blood" phrase in Scripture covers it. Also Exodus 21:22 and 23 and
Luke 1:44. It is interesting that those who rationalize abortion
already have been born. I am not saying we should not have compassion
for misguided people, particularly many of our young people, but I
don't have compassion for people who have capacity to know better.

I'm arguing because of the blatant hypocrisy. Do you think, for example, that the "pro-life" Republican Party is largely white for no reason? GOP candidates up and down the line, especially in the South (too many to mention) have at times run racist campaigns to get elected -- and almost all of them were "pro-life."

I agree with much of what you wrote, but not all. To me, the fact that we institutionally allow abortion on-demand is a greater moral horror and travesty than even slavery or our treatment of the Indians. Roe and all that it entails violate the basic fundamental rights that form much of the basis of Christian thought, as well as our Constitution (and yes, I definitely see those as separate). It's just too basic and too important to ever accept defeat on overturning (or mitigating) it.

I am not a hardcore partisan, but I find the high majority of the pro-abortion arguments to be utterly unnaceptable morally and philosophically, and I find it very difficult to express political support for someone so wrong on such an important and basic issue. (At least I'm not Catholic, or the struggle would add yet another dimension!)

(I had a similar comments discussion on my blog here: http://sds.tumblr.com/post/109643594)

I hope I've made it clear that I am supportive of many courses of action besides simply picketing abortion clinics, electing Republicans, and denouncing Planned Parenthood (none of which are necessarily productive). My scoffing at Obama and "finding common ground" is sourced in what I believe is his evasive and insulting rhetoric about the issue. I commented about that at the link below, and pasted the following links as well:

http://blog.sojo.net/2009/05/21/discovering-com...
http://www.albertmohler.com/blog_read.php?id=3824
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=NTYyMmYyYz...

A couple more random thoughts: Not that you necessarily argued it, but the back-alley abortion concept is a total myth. It didn't happen in any large numbers pre-Roe, and it won't post-Roe. Another myth is that most women would still get abortions even if it were illegal.

A greater catalogue of my thoughts on this issue can be found here:
http://sds.tumblr.com/tagged/abortion

I very much appreciate you and this discussion. This issue is so important!

Yes. I wouldn't say that any of mine are 'defined by our views on reproduction"; but often I've had the experience of working with someone, building mutual respect and trust, and then getting into conversations about war, sexual ethics or other sensitive issues. And it's much harder to totally dismiss someone's perspective once I know them as a whole person rather than knowing only their opposing views.
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