Abortion Debate and Stupidity

One of the most controversial issues today is that of abortion. To make any headway, we need to break down the barriers that exist on both sides of the issue and have a sincere mind when addressing the arguments for and against our own beliefs or desires. We need to be consistent, and we need to base our convictions on an absolute morality.

What the Argument Should NOT Be

Most of the discussion arond the issue of abortion centers on the idea of life or humanity. That is, the debates generally boil down to how you answer the question, "When does life start?" Or even, "When do we consider it human?"

The problem with this is simple: Each side defines "life" or "humanity" according to what suits its own purposes, whether this is done intentionally or not. Each side gives its own set of scientific facts to support its view. However, while facts are unbiased, the people who discover, believe, and rely on them are not.

Pro-Lifer: Abortion is murder! The unborn child has a hearbeat at 22 days after conception! Abortion stops a beating heart, and thus it is wrong!

Pro-Choicer: But brain waves can't be measured until 6 weeks into the pregnancy, so the thing has blood pumping through it, but is has no brain, so it's not conscious! That means it's ok to abort the baby before 6 weeks!

How do you define life? The scientific community doesn't even agree on what is considered "alive" and what is not. However, you might find something like this listed in a biology textbook:

1. Organization - Living things are composed of one or more cells, which are the basic units of life.

2. Metabolism - Metabolism produces energy by converting nonliving material into cellular components (synthesis) and decomposing organic matter (catalysis). Living things require energy to maintain internal organization (homeostasis) and to produce the other phenomena associated with life.

3. Growth - Growth results from a higher rate of synthesis than catalysis. A growing organism increases in size in all of its parts, rather than simply accumulating matter. The particular species begins to multiply and expand as the evolution continues to flourish.

4. Adaptation - Adaptation is the accommodation of a living organism to its environment. It is fundamental to the process of evolution and is determined by the organism's heredity as well as the composition of metabolized substances, and external factors present.

5. Response to stimuli - A response can take many forms, from the contraction of a unicellular organism when touched to complex reactions involving all the senses of higher animals. A response is often expressed by motion: the leaves of a plant turning toward the sun or an animal chasing its prey.

6. Reproduction - The division of one cell to form two new cells is reproduction. Usually the term is applied to the production of a new individual (either asexually, from a single parent organism, or sexually, from at least two differing parent organisms), although strictly speaking it also describes the production of new cells in the process of growth.

Quoted from Wikipedia: Life

So, conservatives, is it ok to kill a tree? A tree is consider alive by scientific standards, isn't it? And what about those bacteria living in your mouth?

When people try to come up with other defintions of life, they tend to be either too broad or too narrow. For instance, a pro-lifer may describe life as "something that has the ability to think and to reproduce when it is found to be without defect". This definition works well in that it includes even those people who are at the present time unable to think normally because of a physical condition, yet it also includes lower life forms such as ants, fish, etc, whom most conservatives believe it is ok to kill.

The pro-choicers might say that life is anything that is independent and has the ability to reproduce. That works well for them in that it excludes babies (who are dependent upon their mothers' bodies for survival), but it also excludes parasites and the like. It may also exlude teenagers and house pets, as well.

Regardless, the abortion debate cannot focus around the defintion of words. Words only have the meaning we give them, and when we argue about words, we give them the meanings we want them to have. The exact definition of what a "life" or "human" is becomes entirely irrelevant.

The Absurdity of the Conservative Strategy

There's a big problem with the way conservatives have been dealing with the issue. Generally, they've simply concerned themselves with showing that unborn children are alive. But what happens when we finally agree on a conservative defintion of "life" (ha...like that'll happen) and then we have people who want to get abortions within the first week of pregnancy? Is it ok to abort a baby when its physical body consists only of a few hundred cells? When about right at the moment of conception? Can we abort it before the fertilized egg splits?

Whether or not abortion is wrong doesn't necessarily depend on whether or not it's murder. Is it wrong to rape a woman? Is it wrong to steal? Is it wrong to punch someone in the face? Is it wrong to look at someone with lust, or to covet something that belongs to your neighbor?

Which of these sins is murder?

The pro-life chant has consistently been, "Abortion is murder." The pro-choice reponse has consistently been, "No, it isn't." There is simply no way to argue against abortion when you cannot begin on common ground.

Feminist Bull

The Famous Violinist

There is a famous analogy given by feminists to justify abortion. It goes something like this:

A woman wakes up in a hospital bed with some strange apparatus attached to her liver. To the other end of the apparatus is attached a famous violinist. The woman looks around and asks what's going on. Some in the room respond, "This man was in dire need of a liver. He's a famous violinist. We didn't want him to die, so we attached him to yours." The woman responds, "But it's MY liver! No one asked me if I would like to share it with anyone."

"Yes, but this man may contribute very much to the world and to humanity. You should keep him attached, because ."

"It's MY liver, and regardless of what he might contribute, I'm under no obligation to share a part of my body with him."

"But, ma'am, it's only for 9 months until he gets a new liver and is able to survive on his own."

"9 months?! I'm not sitting here, nursing him off my liver for 9 months! Disconnect him, now!"

"Ma'am, disconnecting him would be murder. Since we cannot murder people, you must allow him to remain connected to your liver for 9 months. I'm sorry."

This scenario bypasses the whole "life" argument gracefully by suggesting an analogy which is wholly unacceptable to all but a few. Why should this woman be obligated to keep the man alive, when she never agreed to have him dependent on her to begin with?

There are a number of issues here. First, while we may not like the situation the woman is in, isn't it possible that her moral obligation, like it or not, is to allow the violinist to stay attached to her? If someone is falls on a climb up a mountain, and grabs hold of my backpack so they don't fall to their death, would it be ok to disconnect my backpack and let the moocher fall to his doom because, hey, I never offered it to them to begin with? Of course not!

A second issue arises from the shortcomings of the analogy. Namely, the womb has the express purpose of housing an unborn child. The analogy makes it seem as though the woman's body is being abused. However, in the case of a pregnancy, the woman's body is fulfilling its God-given purpose in housing and nurishing the unborn child.

The third issue also stems from the inherent shortcomings of the analogy. The woman having a violinist attached to her is in no way comparable to a mother having a child living inside of her. What kind of heartless, selfish woman would honestly treat her child with such disdain? No one so selfish and heartless should be allowed to mother any child. If you are not willing to give up your life for the life of your child, then you are not willing to love your child as a parent should, and thus are unfit for motherhood.

The "It's My Body" Crap

The womb was designed by God with the purpose of housing and nourishing the unborn child. The woman's entire body was built with that function in mind. That is not to say that women have no purpose in life besides popping out babies every now and then, but it is to remind you that women have been given the responsibility of having children, and their bodies were given not just for them, but for their unborn children as well. If that were not the case, the uterus, mammaries, ovaries, etc, would all be without use or purpose. Oh, and no comments on the mammaries having use outside of child-rearing, k?thx. And what about the fact that the baby is physically attached to the woman? Where does the baby's body end and the woman's body start?

Not only is the womb not strictly the female's body, but the baby itself has a body! I would love to see little unborn children protesting abortion with signs reading, "No, it's MY body, woman!" Unfortunately, they're quite unable to do that at the age at which they're still found in their mother's body.

The point here is that the feminist bullcrap about the woman having a choice over her own body is completely irrelevant. If you wanna get a tattoo, go right ahead. It's your body. If you wanna stab scissors into a baby's skull, scrape him off your uterus, pull him out piece by piece, or poison his food supply with iodine, that's NOT ok, and that's NO LONGER YOUR BODY WE'RE TALKING ABOUT. The child has just as much right to that womb as you do, and it CERTAINLY has more right to its own body than you do.

"Woman's Choice" Crap

OK, so you're having an abortion. What about the father? Does he have a choice? You see, fathers have to pay child support. What if us men don't want the child? We have NO CHOICE but to pay child support until the child becomes legally independent. That goes on for MUCH longer than the 9 months you mothers have to carry the thing around in your stomach for. Where's the MAN's choice?

And what if you get an abortion, and the man doesn't want you to? What, now the father--who would be otherwise legally obligated to take responsibility for the child--has absolutely no authority or input on the matter? Now the child is beyond his responsibility simply because the irresponsible, whimsical, emotional, unloving mother says so?

BULL.

I'm not at all advocating the idea that abortion should be ok, I'm simply pointing out the feminist bullcrap that plagues the abortion debate. It's inconsistent, illogical, immoral, and irresponsible.

Why Abort?

Roe, from the infamous court case Roe v Wade, has now turned her back on the legal abortion she once embraced. She argues that there are so many things in place to help mothers take care of their children or give the responsibility to someone else that abortion is no longer good for either the mother or the child. You can, for instance, simply drop off a baby at a hospital--no questions asked--and the hospital will care for the child and find a suitable home for it. This frees the mother from any further emotional, physical, or economic responsibility, and gives the child a chance for a great life. There's no reason for a mother not to carry her child to term.

Is Abortion Wrong?

The abortion debate has gone on long enough, and it's time for a change. Is abortion wrong? Just as homosexuality, infidelity, lying, stealing, manipulating, pride, greed, and paganism are all sins, so could be abortion. We don't need to justify it by defining life or humanity in a certain way, and we don't need to fear women's rights or the safety and security of the child's mother.

Christians won't be able to convince non-Christians that abortion is wrong, because non-Christians don't believe in the authority that is the true basis for morality. It's the same reason homosexuality will never be a sin in the world's eyes--they don't believe in the One who judges sin, the One who is able to declare them righteous and washed of their sins before the God of creation.

You wanna end abortion? It won't happen. But just as any other moral crime our society embraces, the only way to make a difference is to change the people. The only way to change the people is by the power of the Holy Spirit. When people come to Christ, they will have a natural desire to do good. They'll embrace the God of creation and accept Him as their absolute authority on morality and all other issues. They'll struggle, and they might even sin every now and then (Oh, no! Christians, sin? No wai!). But they'll be convicted. And once their foundation is the same as ours--the Rock that is Jesus Christ--then they'll be able to build their own moral beliefs upon that foundation.

When it comes to prohibiting sexual harassment or sexual discrimination in the marketplace, feminists do not complain that the proposed legislation attempts to enshrine morality in the civil or penal code, even though it most certainly does. No serious feminist has ever sought to undo or to oppose such legistlation because it was based on a system of morals. Feminists complain about legislating morality only when it comes to outlawing abortion. They object to legislating morality only when the morality in question is one from which they dissent. When the law in question encodes a morality they support, their objection to morals-driven law disappears.Michael Bauman, Legislating Morality (in To Everyone an Answer), 257