I Am Against Abortion

“[i]'If the state fails to protect the child in the womb,'[/i] said Pope Pius XI, [i]'let them remember that God is the Avenger of innocent blood that cries from earth to heaven.'[/i] Pro-lifers often voice the same fear: that our society will suffer severe punishment for allowing abortion to become commonplace.

To which I reply: will suffer? Look around you! We’re suffering the condign punishment already. Look at the broken homes, the dysfunctional families, the lonely latchkey children. Notice the cities where the homeless cluster around heating grates and teenage gangs rule the ghettos. Or the rural areas, once bastions of Christian morality, where today bastardy and divorce and rampant unemployment go hand in hand with chronic opioid use and alcoholism.

For those of us who live in comfortable communities, these social ills are not so much in evidence. But have you noticed how many of your neighbors are suffering from depression, how many old people are lonely? Don’t you realize that when teenagers pierce their bodies and dye their hair bizarre colors, they are quietly screaming in protest?

There may not be a simple causal link between abortion and these problems. But can there be any doubt that, since America accepted abortion-on-demand, our society has become markedly less congenial, less healthy, more divided, more violent? That the 'misery index' has soared?

Nor do I want to suggest that an angry God imposed these penalties on us. No, we brought them on ourselves. In accepting abortion we made a deal with the devil, and all these problems— check the small print!— were part of the deal.”

[b]~ Phil Lawler[/b] (April 8, 2019) [c=#BF0000]https://bit.ly/2VCjKLX[/c]

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Theseus · 46-50, M

In His unfathomable genius, I believe God built reciprocity into the very fabric of the physical universe. X behavior will always yield Y result. We choose the result at the same time we choose a given behavior.

Or, to put it in more scriptural terms: Galatians 6:7

As for abortion, do you know what you get after a four-decade argument between pro-lifers and pro-choicers? Right. You get nothing. Americans have been wrestling with this moral dilemma for at least forty years, and nobody has managed to win a single mind to their side. One either holds human life sacrosanct in all its forms...or one does not.

ArthurP · 80-89, M

@Theseus Happened to see your thoughtful comment, but you are wrong at least by one! In my youth and to early middle age, I would be described as pro choice in the hypocritical Clintonian sort of way. But as the years have gone by, and I have contemplated it from a more moral and philosophical view, and read more extensively, I have become more pro life, and see abortion as inherently evil , but not quite in the black and white terms you suggest - life is always sacrosanct or never. Fortunately, as a non-Christian, I can find a place for a necessary evil. The fact that a woman is born with around one million photo eggs, and a man ejaculates around a quarter of a billion sperm during intercourse suggests a lack of sanctity in the reproduction process!

When does life begin? The only easy answer is when the children leave home and the dog dies.

Theseus · 46-50, M

@ArthurP In reality, then, your transition between pro-choice and pro-life only serves to prove my point. You didn't arrive upon your current position on the basis of debate, but upon introspection and study. (FWIW, your experience mirrors my own even if I am a Christian.)

As for necessary evils, I do agree that there are times when homicide may be justified, say, such as when the...ahem..."product of conception" is the result of rape, incest or endangers the mother's life. (The latter being an extremely rare occurrence given current medical technology.)

Oh, and the mechanisms of reproduction in no way remove or diminish the sanctity of life. If anything, the dizzying complexities of the requisite process only add to it.

ArthurP · 80-89, M

As we are largely in agreement, there is little point in exploring the subject further, but I certainly gave the wrong impression by suggesting my change of view was absent debate! As a father of three intelligent and articulate daughters, two of whom were virulent socialist feminist in their university days, (they eventually grew up!!) I had many ding-dongs with them. Indeed their absolutism on a woman's absolute right about what she does with her own body moved me further and more rapidly to my present position. The idea that anyone, including their own father, could think that a foetus inside their body actually WAS another body with its own inalienable rights had them flouncing out of the room in tears of exasperation as they were unable to mount any effective contradiction. Gosh, how I miss those conflagrations: they are now all middle aged ladies with centre-right views. Maybe I should radicalise in my last years.

(One of them built a fairly high-power legal career in corporation law, but became so disillusioned she gave it all up, funded herself through a three year degree in midwifery, and is now the senior midwife at a leading hospital, bringing safely into the world the 'products of conception' that 25 years ago she would have thought had no rights until that moment of birth. And such is progress that they have successfully brought to heathy maturity a premature birth at just 21 weeks. )

Theseus · 46-50, M

@ArthurP Wow! I am awed by your anecdote! Here's hoping we chance to encounter each other again on disparate topics/positions.

And although this may not mean much to you now, I praise God for the fine women your daughters have become--largely due, I'm sure, to your own faithful efforts at tutelage.