“These little pain-capable unborn children of God” was just one of the phrases uttered during the U.S. House of Representatives’ recent floor vote to further restrict access to abortion.
The term “unborn children” is an oxymoron; the phrase has no more meaning than does the phrase “vegetarian carnivore.”
…as any reasonable Christian might have done post Sandy Hook.
The Bible is a translated story book written by men for men . It has nothing to do with God .
Republicans have aborted compassion and adopted the mean spirit in its place.
If you think about it, church and state are supposed to be separated so the religion angle that the Repubs use to fool the religious into voting for them is something religion-like but as this article proves, not from the bible.
If the Republicans actually quoted the bible verbatim and based their policies on that, they wouldn’t be Republicans and would have to campaign as the religious Party, which isn’t allowed. So we have the small government, family values conservatives that just happen to be an invasive, sexually obsessed, religious fanatic Party that also love the death and destruction parts of war.
Republicans are freaks!
“…support so she can be at peace with whatever decision she makes…”
Well said.
The point is not just tolerating little hovels that try to eek out enough profit to stay in business as clinics easily surrounded by a small group of Sunday church ladies. I’ve seen their demonstrations, and they are disturbed people I wouldn’t trust a living child with.
The clever political gimmick of requiring clinics to build up to hospital-equivalent facilities is unnecessary, impractical, and poor management of national resources, evidenced by the mass-closings of these facilities. Is this cause for government concern? No, government boasts about it.
Abortion services should be provided by every hospital. Clinics need only the operating standards of any other clinic that sticks things in people. Clinic patients should be transferable to hospitals without question in an emergency.
There is no respect for any life here by conservatives. None at all. Or for our national principles. Their tactic satisfies only the self-consciousness of one religious sect, which the Constitution clearly says government shall not do.
it depends on what you mean by ‘the Bible.’ The Bible (actually, it’s not a ‘the,’ it’s an anthology of many writings), the Bible we have today is not the Scripture used by the early church - not one single book of it. But the early, first century church regarded as scripture writings that carried an explicit prohibition against abortion. That a church (Roman Catholic, most Orthodox) with roots in antiquity is still adhering to this tenet should come as a surprise to no one familiar with such history… I think there are maybe 100 of us. : D
just as a point of reference - I’m not making a case for or against.
Compassion is a dirty word to Republicans.
Just curious here. What “writings” “used by the early church” that contain this are you referring to? Not to mention that it is not like we have an agreed upon definition of “early church” to which this could be applied. I mean what? Nestorian or Arian or Pelagian or what are you trying to refer to here. Or maybe the Church as understood and run by “James Brother of the Lord” in Jerusalem. Since I am not on of the “maybe 100” or you familiar with this can you provide a pointer? Preferably not one drawn from a Dan Brown book? Do a Prime Brother a solid?
Catholic scholars believed the same thing until the 20th century. Ensoulment was believed to take place at birth. The reasoning was that a merciful God wouldn’t risk miscarriage of a soul… and miscarriages were much more common.
Funny how they switched gears when abortion became associated with a woman’s ability to take charge of her life.
More detail. It follows the very passage citing “an eye for an eye, a life for a life etc.” Then it describes how if a fight between two men causes a miscarriage in a pregnant bystander, the penalty is a fine. By simple logic (in an argument form called “modus tollens” and known since the ancient Greeks), if the miscarried fetus were a “life” (i.e. a human life) the penalty should be death. But since the penalty is not death, the entity lost was not a life.
what “trial by ordeal” passage really means is open to debate & saying it is “about abortion” is therefore a bit much.
No doubt. US-born Catholics have the same birth rate as US-born Protestants. Most US Catholics use birth control, despite the edict from above.
Many years ago I read that abortion rate was high in Boston in the 70s because of the large Catholic population. The women rationalized things this way: using birth control every time they had sex was a sin, whereas getting an abortion now and then when they got pregnant was fewer total sins. Say some prayers to atone and you are good to go.
Nah, just extend the logic a bit. They are pre-cadaverous bodies.
Actually, the Bible explicitly discusses induced miscarriages in Exodus 21. Generally, a miscarriage that results from the accidental striking of a pregnant woman by men who are fighting, is not treated as a death, which would be a capital offense. Thus, we can discern that the Bible does not treat a foetus as a human being. Further, cases of rape induced pregnancy can be conceived of as an intruder whom the Bible directs us to kill, without blame.
Christians – particularly American evangelical Protestants – were relatively ambivalent about abortion until it became a culture war lithmus test in the 1980s and it had nothing to do with protecting unborn life, but rather with attempting to turn back the sexual revolution and attack second-wave feminism as promoting a culture of permissiveness and moral chaos. Hell, the Southern Baptist Convention in 1971 affirmed that abortion should be legal and available if necessary to preserve the life, or emotional or physical health of the mother. That would cause their heads to explode today. That said, this article is poorly argued and any serious pro-lifer that read this would simply laugh at it rather than being persuaded to reexamine their theological and ethical preconceptions. Their response would be twofold: 1. Sure, the Bible doesn’t explicitly mention the medical termination of a pregnancy, but there are plenty of verses that acknowledge the personhood of an unborn child and 2. others that clearly establish an ethical framework for considering the implications of abortion (and that necessarily forbid it). Ergo, Christian compassion would require us to consider the unborn child’s right to life as at least on par with that of the mother, and that rescuing her from making this horrible decision is, in fact, the most humane, “Christian” thing to do. Dr. Knox’s call to compassion for women facing an unplanned pregnancy is heartfelt, but doesn’t really address any of the arguments conservative Christians use to justify their rigid anti-abortion politics.
Also, in a situation wherein giving birth was clearly a threat to the mother’s life, Talmudic law permitted the child to be killed in order to save the woman. (In ancient times, this would have usually happened in labor – commenters debated how much of the child actually had to have emerged from the birth canal for it to have been considered “born”, and thus no longer able to be killed, even if the mother were in distress)
Not quite – Aristotle taught, and medieval theologians like Aquinas followed, that ensoulment was evident via “quickening”, or when a mother could first detect the movement of the fetus inside her, around the 40-day mark. But he also insisted that intentionally terminating a pregnancy at any time was a mortal sin because it was analogous to contraception – using sex just to have fun rather than produce offspring.
Quickening usually occurs about half-way through a pregnancy in the 20 week range. That feels like little bird wings. Movement close to the end of pregnancy is closer to an irate weasel in a sack.
The only first-century Christian writings of any kind that we know of are the synoptic Gospels and the letters of Paul and none of these mention abortion. What are you referring to?
That’s right – Aristotle wasn’t a modern gynecologist, so he put it at about six weeks for some reason, based on what I’m not sure.