Newsgroups: bit.listserv.christia
Date:         Mon, 6 Apr 1992 06:27:28 EST
From:         Kerry Stephenson <KSTE@PURCCVM.BITNET>
Subject:      ABORTION: Legal/moral reasoning

Interested Parties:
I trust that the subject heading has eliminated those readers who may
not wish to engage in or observe a discussion of abortion.  If you have
not yet caught on, let me warn you now.  This posting deals with the
topic of abortion.  If you feel that you do not wish to hear any more
about it, or if such discussion offends you, please bail out now.  If you
do not, remember you were warned.  Beware:  Hyere There Bee Dragons.

In reply to the dichotomy posed as to the difference between what is moral
and what is legal.  I am a Christian.  I live on the planet Earth and in a
democratic republic called the United States of America.  My allegience is
to God and His law, but I respect the laws of the land in which I am a guest
to the extent that I am able to do so.  However, all law is rooted in morality,
no positive (fancy political science term for "man-made") law that is in
opposition to the law of God engenders in the Christian any duty to obey.
Until the 1960, the United States was a Christian nation (the Supreme
Court even said so; look it up.)  It was settled by Christians with the
explicit aim of creating a new Israel.  The Revolutionary war was known in
England as the "Presbyterian Rebellion."  The Founders were Christians,
and the government they invented was self-consciously Christian in its
operating principles.  The United States Constitution is rooted in the
notion of original sin and liberty of conscience.  Because human beings
are essentially fallen, they require the control of a government that
holds the law of God higher than the whim of man.  Liberty of conscience
is the freedom to be left alone to live IN OBEDIENCE TO THE WILL OF GOD.
The Founders by and large believed in a knowable, discoverable, personal
God, who was Savior of the world and who had a special mission for the new
nation of the United States.  But that is history.  This is about morality.
Using the Constitution to justify ungodly behavior perverts its original
intent and dishonors the memory of the Founders and the God they served.

Next, I must vociferously object to the notion that it would be all right to
kill someone who had taken your food if the _only_ way you can get back "what
is rightfully yours" is to kill that person.  As a citizen of the
kingdom of God, nothing on this earth is "rightfully mine."  Christians,
I submit, have no rights, only obligations to serve God and to respect
the essential dignity of others.  If you are a Christian, and you
must kill another human being in order to survive, die.  As a Christian,
your eternal destiny is secured; others may not have such certainty, and
their souls may yet be saved.  God determines when we live and when we
die, not us and not others--and certainly not the state.  Which leads to
the next point...
  You speak of the baby in the womb and the right of the woman to not be
forced to sacrifice nine months of her life (Nine MONTHS?  I've been in
graduate school for almost ten YEARS!) for another human being.  Yet you
fail to take into account that the woman in question (and, of course, the
man who participated) has RESPONSIBILITY  for the very existence of that
life within her womb.  The baby did not ask to be created; it has no choice
about its existence.  And your argument that we do not ask anyone to make
such a sacrifice falls apart if we consider the laws concerning child abuse,
neglect, and abandonment.  Not to mention the responsibility of paternity.
If a woman "chooses" not to participate in the raising of her child and fails
to provide an alternative means of care after it is born, she will be
subject to prosecution by the state.  If she throws her child out of
the house to fend for itself, she will be sent to prison.  If she
terminates the life of the child, even to make that life less painful,
she will be prosecuted for a willful act of murder.  She might even
be electrocuted, hung, or shot for such a crime.

The term "unwanted child" chills me to the bone.  There are plenty of
people in this world I would prefer were not around, but I have no moral
grounds to reject their very existence.  Human beings cannot create life.
We can fertilize eggs in dishes until we are blue in the face, but we
cannot get 100% creation rate when we do so.  The beginning of life
requires an act of GOD.  Because God chooses to act at the point of
conception, He has demonstrated His interest in the outcome of the
pregnancy.  Have we the right to challenge Him?  IMHO, no.

You state that, "hopefully someday science will make it possible to
transplant a fetus...from a woman who does not want to be pregnant to
one who does..."  I seriously hope it does not.  The idea that we should
have children when we "want" them, when it is convenient, when we are
financially at ease, when we have room, when we please, and so forth,
spits in the face of the God that loves us.  Children are a gift from
the Lord, not toys to be played with, status symbols to be shown off,
appointments to be scheduled, or pets to train.  They are human beings
with their very own unique destiny and their very own unique opportunity
to love God and walk with Him.  You say that "the sad truth of the
matter [until that day] is that women who end their pregnancies will
have to take a life to do so."  The truth of the matter is that to
willfully end a pregnancy is to take a life.  I suppose it is sad that so
many have to feel so badly about it, what with science being so slow to
figure out a better way and all, but I guess that's just all there is to
it.  I'm sorry, but this same argument can be used to justify ANY form
of killing.  Until the day comes that people willingly give other people
everything they own and allow themselves to be beaten and brutalized, I
guess some people will just be forced to shoot other people in order to
get what they feel they need.  (You see the point?  Neither case scenario
attributes any humanity to the victim nor much compassion to the perpetrator.)
Jesus did not die to make life "convenient."  He died that we might be cleansed
of our sins.  His sacrifice of His life for ours should be a model to us;
let us give up those nine months (or those eighteen years) that another
human being might live to know and love our glorious Savior.

Next, I would advise you to check your sources on the number of illegal
abortions that were performed pre-Roe.  Your estimates are coming, I think,
from the Alan Guttmacher Institute, the research arm of Planned Parenthood,
which, in turn, is the single largest abortion provider in the United States.
Please read "Aborting America," by Bernard Nathanson, who founded the National
Abortion Rights Action League for an eye-opening look at how such statistics
are derived.  Furthermore, the legalization argument works on just about
every other unChristian practice--well, people will always do drugs, why
not make them legal?  (and, of course, "safe"--another thing that abortions
currently are emphatically not).  Well, people will always molest children,
after all it has a long history, didn't the Greeks do it?  We might as well
legalize it, then.  Christians are called to set an example for the world, even
when that may seem difficult.  Even when it may seem unloving.  People who
violate the will of God, whether by committing abortion or by having extra-
marital sex or by lying, cheating, stealing, and going into politics (joke)
suffer consequences for it.  That does not mean we should affirm their de-
cision to do so.

I issue a challenge to every prochoice Christian--open your home and your
heart to a woman in a crisis pregnancy.  Make birth possible, rather than
spending your energy fighting to keep death a legal option.

Lastly, Kurt, I would assure you not to worry.  I do not think of you as
a liberal.  (In fact, these days, I hardly think of any living person as
a real liberal.  I think they all died due to lack of interest)  But even if
you were, didn't Jesus eat with the publicans and the tax collectors? (joke)

I realize this has been a very long piece, but I hope you will consider
what I have to say carefully.  I look forward to hearing more.
                                                              Love INC,
                                                                  ---Kerry
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