{News} Is God ‘pro-life’ or ‘pro-choice’

[Hazumu]

Friday, December 28, 2007 {News article}

The Observer
Dunkirk New York 14048-0391

"Legislated morality is incapable of changing hearts (such laws just give us permission to be too lazy to love). In fact, Scripture indicates that when something is labeled as "forbidden," it makes us want to do it all the more. Intellectual arguments will not shut up a die-hard evolutionist or atheist. An old-fashioned shaming will not quell the driving lusts of the hetero and homosexual population. Shouting down a young woman going to have an abortion, is not going to increase her desire to bring the baby to term.

Unconditional love, the stuff that Jesus taught and lived, is the soil from which "life" and "choice" spring up. "

====

Now THAT's the kind of Christianity I can support, beause it supports us ALL.

Karen

[lisagurl]

Quality of life is rarely thought of in the heat of passion. About 4 billion people living the thoughtless mistakes of their parents will never enjoy the full fruits of life because they out strip the resources of the garden earth.

[Princess_Jasmine]

Well abortion is wrong because it is literally killing a baby. I used to think about that question and now I realize just how wrong it is. The whole problem is that people this day in age abuse what God made sex to be and now when one gets pregnant, she kills the baby? You probably shouldn't have had sex in the first place! That's why God says wait until marriage to avoid all of these struggles. Of course, if a girl has an abortion, that doesn't mean she's going to hell or what not because it is no one's place to judge except for God. Therefore, a true christian will still love this person no matter what, for if a person has God, they have love, and if they have love, they have God because God is love. He just wants to love us and when we suffer, it hurts Him.

[Kaitlyn]

God is apparently pro-God.

[pennyjane]

hi jasi.  i agree with you about how all this stuff would be moot if we would just agree with God that sex isn't a plaything.  the problem i have with the abortion thing is that i have no conviction about when the "biological material" becomes a baby.  i mean...we could go back to saying that a woman who does not fertilize each and every egg she produces is killing a baby.  or each time a man masterbates to ejaculation he's doing the same.

i guess it's the conviction thing.  i can't argue very well with any point of view, so...i guess that makes me pro-choice...though personally way to uncomfortable with abortion myself to participate.  if asked, i think i'd advise against it in most cases, but...not enough conviction to judge others who may have conviction.

i used to believe that any sex without the intention of procreation was nothing more then what i dubbed "cosmic masterbation."  sure, it was easy for me to hold that opinion...i had no libido demanding i get out there and cosmically masterbate.  today, older and wiser...i'm far more unsure about all this.  one thing i can agree with you with much conviction...when it comes to judging...God said Jesus was to do that.  <whew>  as ignorant and unsure of things as i am...i'd hate like heck to have that responsibility!

[cindianna_jones]

Personally, I feel that all life is sacred.  Even down to the cow that donated its life for my Sunday dinner.  I don't relegate human life to the level of a cow, rather I am raisig my awareness of how valuable all life is.

I would think that an all powerful god could and would have controls on the soul dispenser so that all would have a chance at life. 

I hate to do this... but.... I really resent the movement to push this to the forefront of all that is important in our government.  Those who have been in power, controlling all branches of the government these past years, have pandered to those with faith and conviction and what have they done?  Nothing.  They have had complete control and have done nothing.  I do hope that those who have voted based on this issue can see how they have been used.  Government will not ever change the current laws unless we progress to a church run state.... like those terrorists we fight on the other side of the world.

Abortion has to be the most profound decision a woman must ever face.  Sometimes it is an easy choice.... and sometimes it must be agonizing.  I truly have sympathy for women in this situation. Even though I could never consider abortion for myself, I do realize that my feelings have nothing to do with other people in other situation.  I can not dictate to them how to live their lives.

Cindi

[Aurelius]

Quality of life is rarely thought of in the heat of passion. About 4 billion people living the thoughtless mistakes of their parents will never enjoy the full fruits of life because they out strip the resources of the garden earth.

Just skimming old posts as I lay awake at night. I hope this wasn't an argument for abortion, which would be rather silly; legal or not, most people do not opt for abortion for any number of reasons. It isn't practical as a solution and doesn't fit into the overpopulation issue, unless it is forced; which I forsee as a pretty terrifying scenerio. If for birth control, which I think you are suggesting; I offer the following perspective in relation to the above claim:

Who are the four billion people you are referring to? Who is included in the lucky other two billion? I agree in outstripping resources but think those four billion will disagree about what constitutes the "full fruits". They have the fruit of life, everything else is subjective. I doubt they regret being born, wrecking the place for us lucky westerners in their squalor. When talking of overpopulation, it is important to remember we are individuals, not just masses; and ALL of us are part of the problem, and individuals with equal value, whether we are walking mistakes or not.

I have never once heard a good solution to overpopulation, only moral platitudes from those of us who live in the privileged west. Educate birth control? Sure. Does it work? No. Enforced birth control?...Like China? Don't be concieved a girl, you won't ever be born. My point is, mistakes of the parents or not, the problem persists; but the problems still remain human beings worthy of living here every bit as much as you do.

[pennyjane]

hi aurelius.  thank you for the thoughtful and provocative comments.  some real food for thought in your post...so i'll go eat some.  God bless with...

[lady amarant]

It boils down to education and opportunity. Less educated people are poorer but have more children. Poorer, less educated families are also more likely to be dysfunctional, their kids out on the streets without proper role-models to learn from. If the fundamentalist religious right wing really wants to cut the number of abortions taking place, protect the family and generally repair society, they should stop bashing their bibles, going after gay and tg people and that sorta crap, and instead of getting their government to spend so much money on weapons, warfare and all the rest of it, invest that money in universally better education, universally better healthcare and more social infrastructure to give kids the opportunities they need to build better lives for themselves. Kids get pregnant out of boredom and desperation, out of ignorance and through violence. Take those factors away and it wouldn't happen nearly as often.

But of course, it's NOT really about doing any of those things. It's about forcing their idea of "right and wrong" on everybody else. They don't really want to fix things for everybody so much as keep things the same so they can feel safe and secure.

Sorry if I offended anybody, but this is what I truly believe.

~Simone.

[Aurelius]

Whoa Simone! You snuck up right behind me!

No offense taken. I don't really care for the abortion thing, but for me it isn't an emotional or judgemental issue...and it is the law and I respect the law. And the religious right is a small minority with big mouths...we should do well to not pay attention to them, most of us who do believe do NOT feel that way but don't speak up enough.
I really don't have any solutions myselt to overpopulation, but I do understand its complexities. I was just raising the banner that these are people we are referring to, not hungry masses that we can judge out of hand. We are all part of the hungry masses who are all valued the same.

Chris

Oh, and thank you Peggy...and you're welcome

[RebeccaFog]

If god weren't PRO life there wouldn't be any (life).
Nearly every living being, given the choice of death or life for themselves would choose life. So, God is PRO choice.

Therefore God is both PRO life and PRO choice.



I understand that people play around too much, but that is how it's always been. ALSO, people have used abortion since someone first thought of it.

I saw a Discovery show that said it is thought that early humans killed their babies when times were lean. The females could not afford to use the calories.

The point of those 2 statements is that nothing is perfect. All a person can do in this life is make the effort to help someone who needs it in order to prevent such tragedies.


     Energy is a precious thing. We can use our energies to make things better for others, or worse, or do nothing at all. The one thing we all need to learn is to not turn our energies inward and into ourselves because we see others performing actions that we personally find atrocious or else just wrong.
     What I mean by that, and this is something I struggle with, is that there really is only so much you can do about anything. If you outlaw a certain act or behavior, you don't stop it; you only send it underground.

    In the case of abortion, I can't see how anyone could believe they brought it all to an end with a law. It will still happen and the people who put all that energy into making the law, will have achieved next to nothing.

   I read recently that Barry Goldwater allowed his pregnant daughter to get an abortion back when it was illegal. That is an example of a law doing nothing to prevent the death of an unborn. Being a rich guy, he could afford a good doctor and even knew what doctor to go to.

   I'm not sure how I ended up serious here because it was my intention to make a joke.  I won't do that, however, I will say that I don't believe in following laws. Some laws are pointless and just meaningless to me. You may ask where do I get off making a decision like that? All I can say is that I am an individual with the God given right to make my own decisions. Yes. I believe in God, though in the Jungian way.


   Arguing Pro-choice vs PRO-life is pointless. You can outlaw it and it will happen. there will be some women whose health is destroyed because they didn't have the cash of Barry Goldwater. Women who may be made sterile, or sick, or dead.
   Using God as a reason to stop abortions is pointless too. Many people couldn't care less what God's opinion is.


My head hurts.


I say, Good day,


Rebis

[lady amarant]

Whoa Simone! You snuck up right behind me!

Hey Chris. Sorry hon. I get really emotional and, well frankly angry, and I tend to see black and white (or pure raging red maybe ) when confronted by anything pertaining to ... them. I suppose one too many campus ambush-debate where one of the little angels told me with a straight, honestly believing face that poor countries are poor because god is punishing them for whatever reason. That kinda logic gets my blood boiling.

I actually agreed with your post - overpopulation is a complex issue. I believe though that the root cause is poverty and ignorance. In South Africa the very poorest people are typically the ones with 13 kids. Why? Because aside from the obvious that men take what they want from women there is a traditional belief in this country that your wealth lies in your children - every girl you have is money in the bank, because when she marries, the groom has to pay you lobola. Additionally, the tradition is that adult children care for their parents, so obviously, the more kids you have, the better your retirement plan.

It takes education and opportunity to make people realise that the world has moved on, and that the paradigm they still follow is no longer practical. But yeah, on a global scale, uplifting 4 or 5 billion people is daunting no matter how you look at it. Scrapping all the military budgets of the world and making all armies local defense forces like in Japan might be a good place to start though.

~Simone.

[Hazumu]

Regarding the comment about the four billion people.

I caught this right away.

There are right now more than 6 billion people alive today.

They are sustained by oil production, which gives us the raw stock to manufacture fertilizers, and the energy to farm and to transport water and harvested crops.

If you take away the oil input to the food cycle,

the earth will only be able to sustain 2 billion people.

Here's what I came up with on a cursory google, from Eating Fossil Fuels ;

And, for sustainability, global population will have to be reduced from the current 6.32 billion people to 2 billion-a reduction of 68% or over two-thirds. The end of this decade could see spiraling food prices without relief. And the coming decade could see massive starvation on a global level such as never experienced before by the human race.

(Sorry to be such a downer...)

Karen

[pennyjane]

hi karen.  i think the apocolypse you cite assumes removing oil from the mix without replacing it with anything.  that can happen, if we keep our heads buried in the sand and don't face reality.  we need to stop the moot arguement about just how desperate is the energy crisis and focus on the fact that it is a crisis. 

oil producing and refining ventures around the world are a black hole sucking in all the other resources we have.  whether we are standing on the edge of the event horizon or spiraling headlong towards it is not the question, the question is will we break free and head in a new direction.

it just dawned on me how out of place is this discussion.  i'll shut up and be glad to move forward with this, what has to potential for being such a lucrative intercourse, over in general discussions.

thank you for making us think.  God bless with...

[Aurelius]

"take away the oil input to the food cycle,

the earth will only be able to sustain 2 billion people."

Absolutley Karen. And, unfortunately, and issue many people fail to understand when it comes to fixing the environment. Oil is more than about money for big oil companies; for most people in the world, it is about survival.

[RebeccaFog]

It just occurred to me that if God were PRO-life; why create death?

[pennyjane]

hi rebis....death is a creation of man, not God.

[RebeccaFog]

But if there weren't people around, animals and plants would still be dying.  Why can't everything live forever unless killed by an accident?

[Aurelius]

Simone:

Sorry, I have yet to figure out how to break up quotes. That's my Achilles heel, too...I try to detach myself and my own beliefs and learn something, and hopefully cause people like that to learn something too. People don't listen to emotion, but they will listen to reason if you are patient. I was once told by a young lady going to college that I was immoral for being in the military. It did not bother me because she did not know any better...but when an old man came up to me and told me "your war" is a mistake, that did, because he did know better.

"...I believe though that the root cause is poverty and ignorance. In South Africa the very poorest people are typically the ones with 13 kids. Why? Because aside from the obvious that men take what they want from women there is a traditional belief in this country that your wealth lies in your children..."

Yes, and I think it has alot to do with unchanged social and cultural conditions...remember the West was like that until doctors started washing their hands (child mortality rate). For their attitude to change, time (and exposure) is the only real answer...but how much time do we have? I don't have an answer to that.

"It takes education and opportunity to make people realise that the world has moved on, and that the paradigm they still follow is no longer practical. But yeah, on a global scale, uplifting 4 or 5 billion people is daunting no matter how you look at it. Scrapping all the military budgets of the world and making all armies local defense forces like in Japan might be a good place to start though. "

100% agree with you. But not how things really are, only what we should strive to do: which is why I've spent so long in the military...my goal is for this to one day happen, which I believe will; and my own miniscule efforts and sacrifice contribute to this, and if there is a remote chance it could take my life in this part of the drama of human history, then it is for something good.

But with that said, "there is no other place I want to be, watching the world wake up from history"-->I want to be a part of that.

Chris

PS...I think we got way off the original subject, what was it...oh yeah, abortion. Sorry.

[Hazumu]

PS...I think we got way off the original subject, what was it...oh yeah, abortion. Sorry.

The other thing I got from that initial comment:

Quality of life is rarely thought of in the heat of passion. About 4 billion people living the thoughtless mistakes of their parents will never enjoy the full fruits of life because they out strip the resources of the garden earth.

...was the part about 'living thoughtless mistakes'.  I could have easily 'fathered' a child.  And in fact, the macho, snarky comment, "I have no children -- that I know of..." could apply to me.  There's a slim chance that somewhere out there is a 30-year-old person, half of whose genes came from me.

I could have been a parent, but no way did I nor do I have the traditionalist qualities of a FATHER.  Dammit, I always wanted to be the mother, but I was too smart and understood that it could never be.

But for most people babies happen too automatically.  You can conceive them when you didn't mean to.

But there's some sort of drive to procreate, come what may and damn the torpedoes.  I think that drive is as much a juggernaut as the drive some of us have, or have had, to transition.  It's not rational, but you're driven anyway.

And those who place so much credence in traditional families and raising your children properly so they turn out as successful, unspoiled adults - mythologize family/parenting to cover up the fact that producing a baby is really easy to do, and beyond the genetic material you provide, the next big thing you can do to influence how they will turn out boils down to location, location, location, and what goes on under your roof accounts for less than ten percent of their finished, adult personalities.

It's really a lot like a craps player who, when winning, believes it to be his/her skill as a shooter, and when losing, blames the dice/the table/the other players/the casino.

And so we go along 'making the world a better place' by taking the privilege of a legally-sanctioned marriage away from same-sex couples "because they can't procreate" (among other lame excuses, but this one's germane to the argument at hand), whilst the fuse on the no-more-oil bomb burns brighter and hotter and faster towards its' inevitable end because, y'know, people can't help but procreate.

Simone, on the 13 children you mentioned, primitive societies needed that strategy because maybe 3 or 4 would live to reproduce.  And post-natal depression allows a mother to make a detached determination if this child is worth the expenditure of her resources (production of breast milk, tethered to a totally dependent infant, temporary loss of fertility whilst breast feeding,) or if the child is too sickly, kill it and return quickly to fertility for another, perhaps more successful go.

Modern sanitation and medicine have reduced the need for bearing many children, but we conversely haven't reduced the drive to procreate, and we are fast becoming the victims of the unintended consequences of our skill at healthcare and extracting and using the finite oil here on earth.

Karen