Abortion and Barak Obama
I know who I am going to vote for in November. One person I cannot vote for is Barak Obama. His record on abortion is abysmal, to put it nicely. Here is an open letter by Sherif Girgis to Barak Obama that is very good and gets to the heart of the issue of abortion.
Click here.
H/T: Denny Burk
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I wonder if it’s that straightforward though… Sure, if an unborn baby has a human right to life, if killing it is murder, then abortion would be hard to justify on pragmatic grounds; but if an unborn baby is just a developing human body, with biochemical life but no spiritual life, not until its Created soul enters into it, then it is surely the woman’s right to choose.
Re the latter, if God Created Adam by breathing life (possibly spiritual life) into a body fashioned (presumably by God’s Hands) from mud, then why would the soul not enter with the baby’s first intake of breath? The thing is, there is a continuous development of the baby’s body from a zygote, with the only obvious discontinuities being those, the zygote and the first breath. But a zygote is just a human cell, that divides into two cells; whereas there is some Biblical association of breath and life…
I don’t mean that to be a compelling argument, just to indicate that there is some reasonable doubt about the metaphysical facts; whence the issue is where the burden of proof lies, and what the probabilities are (by the former I mean whether such doubt means that the zygote should be protected unless it can be shown to have no right to life, or whether the woman’s liberty should be protected unless it can be shown that spiritual life begins with the zygote), which is surely complicated?
One thing that I cannot help but come is this: abortion is still a moral issue and abortion is morally wrong. Let us say that spiritual life doesn’t come until the first breath of the baby (though “spiritual life” is not a good term because all humans do not have “spiritual life” until they are regenerated), just as in the case of Adam. But if one goes back to Psalm 139:13-16
and it applies universally, namely that God makes and creates all human life, then we are presented a moral issue. This is what I mean. It is God’s purpose to create that human being, that person. But the one who aborts that fetus is saying that he or she does not feel that the person who would have been should be. He or she is at odds with the Creator. He or she is in opposition to the will of God, namely to create the baby with that zygote. He or she is in open rebellion against God and is saying that he or she is an equal with God because he or she is worthy to decide who should be allowed to live or not, who can become a living person. This is what comes to mind when I read your comments.
Also, abortion seems to me a pathway that will pave the way for an even grosser reality to occur. Could this just set the precedent for genocide to be justified, or racism at the least. Entire peoples being discriminated for a reason that is not up to them. They are weak and defenseless and are persecuted or killed because of it. I just see abortion as an evil that can lead to more evil. But please do not take these words as saying that abortion will do it, I’m just saying that it may do it.
The issues are complex, but given that the alternative could be absolutely self-destructive, should we venture down that path in the name of “a woman’s right to choose”? Why not preserve life?
Good point about “spiritual life,” thanks; how about “subjective life”? I’ll have to ignore the “pathway” argument though, as it could be made against anything, so far as I can see, and seems to beg the question: is abortion murder, and if it only might be, should we assume that it is?
Thanks for the Bible reference; of course, God can tell us to kill and then it is OK (I’m a bit of a divine command ethicist; as in my last blog-post), and God has not told us to allow abortions, or not to; so it seems to be a matter of what Jesus tells us when He’s in our hearts so to speak. Many Christians think that abortion is wrong, but not all do. And if it is God’s purpose to create a person when each zygote is created, why are there miscarriages? It cannot be that God’s will is frustrated, but could it be that it is not always God’s purpose to create a person, whenever a zygote has been created? Now, there is some appearance of free will involved, when two people choose to make a baby; and similarly, there is free will involved when a woman chooses to abort. So I don’t see that it is obviously a matter of implicitly claiming equality with God… (?)
As for deciding who should live or die, are you against capital punishment (I’m not by the way, although there is a “pathway” argument against me here too) and fighting in just wars? I guess that a pacifistic argument against abortion might work; but we don’t know for sure that foetuses are subjective people… so… how about vegetarianism - we don’t know for sure that meat is murder (and can hardly rely on the Bible to tell us if we eat pigs, can we?) so should we not risk it? I’m uncertain about most of this; but therefore I don’t think I know that abortion is wrong, not sufficiently to limit the freedom of others (cf. should I stop others from eating meat? Should I stop others fighting to defend me and mine from the godless enemy? Etc.).
I have always been attracted by the “Why not preserve life?” angle (even when I hung around with lefties, I used to tell them that we were saying that murder was OK if the murderer was relatively big enough! They thought that was only natural!!), but I wonder how important life is - not that life is unimportant, but when other things trump it; e.g. a just war, self-sacrifice… If the baby has a living soul when its body is just a few cells, then abortion just sends that soul to God for judgement. So the question for me is, how bad is that? If it is not too bad then we should not ignore either of my two possibilities when legistlating (or voting on such). Of course, another bad thing would be the mother choosing to kill her baby (the doctors could just do different work) but again, it might not be murder, and so the best thing might be to provide a lot of information, and to leave it to her to decide, and (since it might not be murder) to have something other than back-street abortions available, for one of her options… But that is probably enough waffle for one comment! Thanks again for your thoughts, they are somewhat challenging.