[Vision2020] Fwd: Christians and abortion: The Other View

Wed Mar 21 14:29:57 PDT 2012

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Art Deco <art.deco.studios at gmail.com>
Date: Wed, Mar 21, 2012 at 2:29 PM
Subject: Re: [Vision2020] Christians and abortion: The Other View
To: Nicholas Gier <ngier006 at gmail.com>

What the Bible inerrantists, who use the Bible to oppose abortion,
hypocritically fail to mention is that the Bible recommends using a
technique to induce abortion as a test when a husband thinks a wife is
carrying another man's child.

w.
____________________________

*Numbers 5:11** – 5:22*

*Young's Literal Translation of the Bible*

11    And Jehovah speaketh unto Moses, saying,

12    ‘Speak unto the sons of Israel, and thou hast said unto them, When
any man’s wife turneth aside, and hath committed against him a trespass,

13    and a man hath lain with her with the seed of copulation, and it hath
been hid from the eyes of her husband, and concealed, and she hath been
defiled, and there is no witness against her, and she hath not been caught,

14    and a spirit of jealousy hath passed over him, and he hath been
jealous of his wife, and she hath been defiled;—or, a spirit of jealousy
hath passed over him, and he hath been jealous of his wife, and she hath
not been defiled—

15    ‘Then hath the man brought in his wife unto the priest, and he hath
brought in her offering for her, a tenth of the ephah of barley meal, he
doth not pour on it oil, nor doth he put on it frankincense, for it is a
present of jealousy, a present of memorial, causing remembrance of iniquity.

16    And the priest hath brought her near, and hath caused her to stand
before Jehovah,

17    and the priest hath taken holy water in an earthen vessel, and of the
dust which is on the floor of the tabernacle doth the priest take, and hath
put it into the water,

18    and the priest hath caused the woman to stand before Jehovah, and
hath uncovered the woman’s head, and hath given into her hands the present
of the memorial, it is a present of jealousy, and in the hand of the priest
are the bitter waters which cause the curse.

19    ‘And the priest hath caused her to swear, and hath said unto the
woman, If no man hath lain with thee, and if thou hast not turned aside to
uncleanness under thy husband, be free from these bitter waters which cause
the curse;

20    and thou, if thou hast turned aside under thy husband, and if thou
hast been defiled, and any man doth give his copulation to thee besides thy
husband—

21    (then the priest hath caused the woman to swear with an oath of
execration, and the priest hath said to the woman)—Jehovah doth give thee
for an execration, and for a curse, in the midst of thy people, in
Jehovah’s giving thy thigh to fall, and thy belly to swell,

22    and these waters which cause the curse have gone into thy bowels, to
cause the belly to swell, and the thigh to fall; and the woman hath said,
Amen, Amen.

On Wed, Mar 21, 2012 at 1:59 PM, Nicholas Gier <ngier006 at gmail.com> wrote:

> Just noticed an error in my post.  Of course I mean that Jay's thesis (not
> their) with regard to birth rates compared to abortion rates.  Those three
> European countries have experienced economic difficulties and their
> abortion rates have not gone up as Jay thought they would.
>
> Nick
>
>
> On Wed, Mar 21, 2012 at 12:00 PM, Nicholas Gier <ngier006 at gmail.com>wrote:
>
>> Good Morning Visionaries:
>>
>>
>>  After a break to get on top of my taxes, I want to return to the
>> abortion debate.  I thank Keely for her article.  I've only read a couple
>> of pages, but the author is making some of the same points that I made 30
>> years ago in my article at www.class.uidaho.edu/ngier/abortion.htm.  I
>> will comment on it after I give it a good read.
>>
>>
>> Paul: the scenarios you lay out (fetus with a fatal disease; threat to
>> the life of the mother) have been discussed for years and they have been
>> used to argue the pro-choice position.  I have always criticized the
>> position “It’s my body so butt out,” because in most cases these women have
>> not addressed the personhood of the fetus.  I’m convinced, however, that
>> established law (even Canon Law before 1917), science, and moral philosophy
>> can survive the incoherent and mostly uninformed arguments of the
>> anti-abortionists.  I’m sure that these discussions, as they have been for
>> centuries, will not be mere bantering as Jay so sarcastically suggested.
>>
>>
>> Jay: I’ll try to make my points without using FULL CAPS, which I think
>> distract and therefore weaken the force of your arguments.
>>
>> I want to stress that my position, unlike most anti-abortionists, is
>> consistently pro-life. After rain storms I frantically pick up worms on the
>> side walk and place them on the grass or ground. I have come to the
>> conclusion that all living beings that can experience pain should not be
>> harmed or killed. We need to respect even those such as worms, which
>> probably do not feel pain.
>>
>>
>> I have yet to see an argument that establishes a moral and therefore
>> legal difference between their lives and ours. We already have laws on the
>> books that prosecute people who cause animals unnecessary harm, so we can’t
>> say that they don’t have any rights.
>>
>>
>> That is the main point of my using the chimp fetus image.  You claim that
>> it is somehow a trap and you avoid it by saying that you would not protect
>> the life of this being.  Yet it looks just like a human fetus (most people
>> don’t notice the bigger hands), it feels pain, it has a heartbeat, and it
>> has brain waves equivalent to a second trimester human fetus.  Of course it
>> is an animal; that’s what we are too!
>>
>>
>> What is your reason for not protecting its life?  If you don’t have any,
>> then you are committing the fallacy of specieism—a moral mistake as wrong
>> as racism and sexism.
>>
>>
>> The hundreds of people who tell me that they would protect the chimp
>> fetus’s life have made the emotional connection of which you speak, so I’m
>> not persuaded (even with all the caps) by your long paragraph attempting to
>> make this point.
>>
>>
>> You seem to say that it is important for the state to force women to make
>> the “connection” between their fetuses and their feelings about them.  Here
>> there is a gigantic disconnect in the conservative principle of personal
>> responsibility.  When it comes to people or companies acting in the
>> financial markets and the environment, we hear cries of “leave them alone,
>> let them take care of their own business.”
>>
>>
>> Bush II was notorious for voluntary controls on businesses, but the
>> economist who was appointed by Bush I to sort out the S&L crisis has said
>> that there were at least a million cases of financial fraud that Bush II
>> failed to prosecute.  The effects of the Great Recession could have been
>> mitigated by vigorous prosecution by the Justice Department.
>>
>>
>> But when it comes to reproductive rights, conservative male legislators
>> do not trust women to make their own decisions.  There is no laissez-faire
>> here.  To the contrary there are attempts to invade women’s wombs to make
>> sure that they agree with the views of their attackers.  It is not
>> certainly unreasonable to call this a war and a frontal assault on the
>> personal autonomy of women in the most fragile moments of their lives.
>>
>>
>> I can’t believe that you continue to beat around the bush about low rates
>> of abortion in Western Europe.  Your argument about low birth rates simply
>> does not wash, because, according to date from Index Mundi, out of 20
>> Western European countries there are actually two with higher rates and the
>> rest are with range of 2 percent of the U.S. rate of 11.4 births per 1,000
>> in 2009.
>>
>>
>> You “wonder” about abortion rates in Greece, Portugal, and Spain, and
>> their thesis is not supported.  They are 12.1 percent, 10.2 percent, and
>> 11.5 percent respectively.  The U.S. rate was 19.6 in 2008.  Let me stress
>> that teen pregnancy rates, even among white girls, is two to three times
>> higher than Western
>> Europe and 4 to 5 times higher than Japan and Korea. Christian America
>> has failed its young women miserably.
>>
>>
>> The comparison between protesting against killing people in war (or the
>> death penalty for that matter) and abortion is wrong-headed for a simple
>> reason: there is no question in anyone’s mind that Afghanis or Iraqis are
>> moral and legal persons, but there is no consensus at all that the early
>> fetus is.  In fact, established law going back many centuries and the
>> science of fetal development leads us to conclude that it is not a person.
>>  Yes, it is obviously a human life, but I've argued ad nauseum why that is
>> not morally relevant.
>>
>>
>> Thanks for the dialogue,
>>
>>
>> Nick
>>
>>
>>
>> On Wed, Mar 21, 2012 at 8:30 AM, keely emerinemix <kjajmix1 at msn.com>wrote:
>>
>>>  Good morning, Visionaires,
>>>
>>> For those who are convinced that their Christian faith, or the faith of
>>> others, requires a militant "no-abortion-under-any-circumstances" view on
>>> reproductive rights, I'd like to recommend the following article from the
>>> Religious Coalition on Reproductive Choice:
>>>
>>> http://rcrc.org/pdf/RCRC_EdSeries_Personhood.pdf
>>>
>>> This explains better than anything I've ever read what I mean, for
>>> example, when I say that while abortion is the ending of a human life, it
>>> is not the "murder" of a PERSON -- and the decision should not be the
>>> provenance of government to make.  It's a long one, but well worth the
>>> effort, and evangelicals will recognize some names -- Stott, Criswell,
>>> Waltke -- who held to views of abortion that might surprise them.
>>>
>>> Good stuff that results in a profound reverence for life -- something
>>> lacking in the "pro-life" camp that's come to define evangelicalism.
>>>
>>> Keely
>>> www.keely-prevailingwinds.com
>>>
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>>
>>
>
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-- 
Art Deco (Wayne A. Fox)
art.deco.studios at gmail.com

-- 
Art Deco (Wayne A. Fox)
art.deco.studios at gmail.com
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