From: chrisl@stpaul.gov (Chris A Lyman)
Subject: Re: Christian Pro-Choicers (was Re: An Abortion Argument that has nothing to do with OT and NT)
Organization: City of Saint Paul Public Works
Date: Mon, 11 Jan 1993 15:38:45 GMT

hudson@athena.cs.uga.edu (Paul Hudson Jr) writes:
> chrisl@stpaul.gov (Chris A Lyman) writes:

>> Really?  _Why_ would they do that?  [send pictures of aborted fetuses 
>> to members of a pro-choice church]  Is it perhaps because their arguments
>> are so bankrupt they have resort to shock tactics?

> If there is nothing wrong with abortion, why is that a shock tactic?

Really, Paul, it is a shock tactic because that is the expected outcome.  It
has nothing to do with the rightness or wrongness of abortion; imo, it is an
admission from the sender that he/she cannot make a rational argument against
abortion.  Do you honestly believe that if you were to send me a Christmas
card accompanied by a picture of a fetus (aborted or not, they're not very
attractive) that I would be convinced that, yes, z/e/fs are really persons
and that abortion is murder?

[--deletions--]

> Is showing the footage of dead Jews from the concetration camps
> not a valid debating technique.  Maybe those who think the holocoast
> was wrong would show these films because they lack strong arguments?

You're kidding, right?  Let's get one thing straight, Paul.  The Holocaust
doesn't work very well as an analogy to the abortion issue.  I would suggest
backpedalling at flank speed to avoid being flamed to a crisp.  The Holocaust,
the systematic and deliberately cruel extermination of Jews, Slavs, gypsies,
assorted other "undesirable" ethnic minorities and disabled people by a
totalitarian government, is not an analogy to anything.  All my Jewish
friends lost relatives to the Holocaust.  Do not trivialize the horror
of that event by trying to make it an 'analogy' to anything else.

>> Is defacing church property a valid debating technique?

> I didnt say it was right to deface church property.  I have problems with
> the idea of bombing abortion clinics, too.  Or even blockading clinics.  I
> think I would have to hear from God to practice civil disobedience except
> in regard to practicing the Christian faith.  But I can't condemn others
> who do.  They may be obeying God.

Not too long ago, there was an attempted firebombing of a women's clinic
in my area.  The perpetrator(s) drilled a hole in the roof, poured ten
gallons of gasoline into the clinic, lit a candle and high-tailed it out
of there.  The candle went out, fortunately.  If it had ignited the gasoline,
the force of the explosion would have been equivalent to seven sticks of
dynamite.  There is a nursing home adjoining the clinic, so many, many
innocent people would have died.  As it was, the nursing home had to be
evacuated because of the gasoline fumes.  Do you really think that God is
so desperate for results that He would sanction the killing of innocent
people to save a few fetuses?

[--deletions--]

>> What forms of killing are murder? 

> It is murder for us to kill the innocent.

Those firebombers would definitely have been murderers then.  I'm curious,
Paul, where does God tell us that two wrongs make a right?

-- 
Chris Lyman    /   email: chrisl@pwcs.stpaul.gov   /    my thoughts, my words
     "Dignity.  Always dignity." -- Gene Kelly in "Singin' in the Rain"
Newsgroups: talk.abortion