I Know I Shouldn’t…
June 2nd, 2009 | 
Author: Warning: Religion, Politics, and/or Money to follow. There’s a reason these are the three things you aren’t supposed to talk about, hence the heads-up.
On Abortion: Specifically the murder of George Tiller, I condemn in the strongest possible manner the murder of this man. He should have been arrested and tried, and convicted and imprisoned for the remainder of his life. He should not have been murdered. His murderer should now get the same punishment Tiller would have gotten.
Most of you know I am absolutely opposed to infanticide, no matter what euphemism it gets wrapped up in. I have been for a long time a proponent of the death penalty, but I have recently decided that my distrust of the government should extend to the justice system as well, and I now support a Human Life Amendment to the Constitution that would make the taking of any life, except where there is imminent danger to the life of another person, a crime. I am willing to give up the death penalty in exchange for the lives of hundreds of thousands of innocent children. No executions, no abortion.
One More on Abortion: There’s a lot of chatter about how if we who deplore abortion and think of it as (at the very least) manslaughter are really upset, rather than get violent, we should lobby the legislature and get the law changed. I deplore violence. I am not a violent man. That has never been an avenue for me. But we on the pro-life side of this debate have a serious frustration, and that is that we CANNOT lobby. No legislature can change the abortion laws, because there are no abortion laws. There used to be, but then came Roe v. Wade, in which the Supreme Court struck down all the laws we had made regarding the legality of abortion.
Essentially, the Supreme Court – in an effort to SETTLE the debate, according to the decision – created a “right” out of thin air. There hasn’t been any real debate about abortion since. Every attempt to protect the unborn in any fashion is met with fierce, howling resistance from the left, because it infringes on a “woman’s right to choose” (to kill her child). If that is, indeed, a right, then they absolutely should howl about it, but the right most of us recognize as inviolate is not the right to “choose”, but the right to life (remember the Declaration of Independence?), which is absolutely violated every time a woman aborts her child.
The pro-life movement has had a terrible time even getting restrictions on a doctor’s being able to butcher a child that has already been born, let alone one that has been partially delivered (everything but the head is out of the birth canal). This difficulty, however, in no way excuses the violence perpetrated by anyone who is a part of this movement. You can’t win this way, people.
Posted in Blog & News
I’ll bite the forbidden fruit.
I’m actually a fan of abortion as an option (not the always proper choice) for those situations where the lines are blurred, like (and these are all just food for thought, not trying to pry anything) if either the baby or the mother is going to die, which do you kill? What about instances where the baby will have horrible disfigurement or mental handicaps if brought to term, and could very well become a life-long burden on the parents? What about rape victims?
Part of the problem here is I believe in a firm seperation of church and state. I believe we should take responsibility for our actions, so if a teen mother (or any mother, for that matter) gets pregnant because she had consented sex, she should at the very least bring that child into the world and take those consequences of her choices. Outside of that situation, I can’t really apply the “pro-life” side without bringing my religious views into the picture.
No woman has the right to choose, but no woman should have either choice forced upon her either. Anti-abortion laws should be structured around the choices the mother (and the father) have made already, or will have to before the “life” comes into undeniable being. Choices like whether or not to have unprotected sex, whether the father decided to have his way with the woman against her will, etc. Some understanding of the choices available should also be made freely available and accessible to everyone without ties to an organization in specific, like Planned Parenthood or something equally biased on the other side.
That’s just my opinion, though. I’d be more than happy if my daughters were legally obligated to live up to the responsibilities they choose, and not obligated to those they don’t. I can bring religion into the picture for them from there in my own counsel to them.
-Tod
Oh c’mon, sure you should. You do it so well.
I’m a fan of the choice being part of the equation, which is why I don’t agitate for the elimination of abortion altogether. I’d be thrilled with rape, incest, life of the mother exceptions. I can’t have them. I can’t have any restrictions at all, in most states.
Separation of church and state has nothing whatever to do with it. I can’t see the banning of abortion being in any possible particular a violation of the establishment of religion clause. What religion would be established? Islam?
And further, the problem I have with quibbling over this stuff is that we’re talking about killing innocent people. That’s what abortion is. I get the exception for rape, but I also wonder what the child did – and let’s be clear, we’re talking about less than .1% of all abortions here – to deserve to be killed. If a man rapes a woman, we don’t pick out one of her kids to kill. That’s ludicrous. Likewise with incest. Obviously (I mentioned this in my post), if you have to choose between one life and another life, that’s a different equation. But if the kid will be deformed, so what? That deprives him of the right to life? On what grounds?
Having sex is DANGEROUS. It causes the most common of all sexually transmitted diseases – pregnancy. If you cannot afford to take the risk that you might become pregnant, then you should not be having sex. If you do choose to have sex, and you become pregnant, you shouldn’t have the option to butcher the kid because she’s cramping your lifestyle.
If that’s “imposing my values” on other people, then so is my opposition to slavery and murder and theft, all views that are closely associated with religion. The basic principle of non-violence toward living things is pretty common out there, but somehow, it doesn’t seem to apply to HUMANS, except in certain cases. That’s just nonsensical to me.