"It’s dehumanizing"

[NorrinRadd]

Excuse me?

What about all that "collateral damage"? Do those all deserve their fates?

I addressed the "collateral damage" aspect in my post.

As for the "deserve," no, those collateral casualties of war do not "deserve" it, but neither are they "fully" innocent (and defenseless) in the way that the unborn are.

[Hypatia_Alexandria]

I addressed the "collateral damage" aspect in my post.

My remark was not addressed to you.

As for the "deserve," no, those collateral casualties of war do not "deserve" it

Thank you.

, but neither are they "fully" innocent (and defenseless) in the way that the unborn are.

That is a matter of opinion.

[Sparko]

Purely as a matter of interest, for how many years after the child has been born does that provision last? And on average per annum how many abortions across the entire USA do these Centers prevent?

Since it is a church community the support lasts as long as they need it to. And I don't have numbers on how many abortions are prevented. Not enough though.

[mossrose]

I asked a perfectly reasonable question.

Would you be happy to see your taxes rise if you knew that your tax dollars were going to provide those babies that you want to save from the abortionist, and their mothers, with a decent standard of living [healthcare, education, housing etc]?

Or does your concern for the child and its welfare cease once it has gone through nine months gestation and been delivered?

Our taxes already go toward providing abortions. We have no "choice" in the matter. That money could be used to support the children that are not aborted. However, there are so many people unable to have children of their own on waiting lists to adopt that a great many babies would be taken care of without taxpayers help.

Perhaps, also, when a woman who actually gives birth instead of killing it before it's born holds her child in her arms she might actually feel love for it. Your so-called choice to abort removes that from her. And that is simply cruelty to the woman as well as horrendous for the child.

[oxmixmudd]

Because so much of the conversation with me here focusses on the issue of an exception for rape and incest, I'm pretty sure it would be easy to assume that I somehow support abortion as birth control in some cases outside that exception.

I do not. My arguments concerning the Exodus verse do not extend to the point the early stages of life reduce to some trivial thing subject to arbitrary whim. This is still a human life in formation with the potential to be a new person - therefore it has great value. It is not something to be discarded casually or without being under truly great distress. Many of the other Christians on this site and I disagree only as to whether or not rape or incest constitute such great distress. We agree (I think) in that the life of the mother in jeopardy constitutes such great distress. And we also agree that wanting to be free to have sex anytime anywhere does NOT constitute such great distress.

Our societies focus on pleasure and hedonistic indulgence diminishes sexuality and objectifies women. It makes it an object of pleasure and seeks to remove all responsibility or true commitment from the act. But sexual relations are primarily - from both a religious and an evolutionary perspective - about producing and raising children. The pleasure and intimacy it produces are (from an evolutionary perspective) characteristics evolved to cause us to reproduce despite the difficulty and of it and to help create an environment where our exceptionally long maturation time can work its way out and be supported. As Christians it is Gods gift of intimacy between two people for life and likewise an aid to lifelong intimacy and love. Either way, it is about creating family and members of society that contribute to its good. And that requires a long term commitment and self-control be part of that relationship. The secular approach to abortion as a remedy for irresponsible or hedonistic behavior undermines that necessary core element of civilization.

[Mountain Man]

I asked a perfectly reasonable question.

Would you be happy to see your taxes rise if you knew that your tax dollars were going to provide those babies that you want to save from the abortionist, and their mothers, with a decent standard of living [healthcare, education, housing etc]?

Or does your concern for the child and its welfare cease once it has gone through nine months gestation and been delivered?

As pointed out, this is nothing more than an ad hominem tu quoque fallacy. Whether or not someone would agree to have their taxes raised in this manner has nothing whatsoever to do with the fact that abortion is immoral.

[Mountain Man]

Yes you are making up things - you are literally saying I said things I did not say. You are taking what you believe are the implications of my words, and casting them as my words when they are in fact your words.

The correct and honest thing to do, If you believe my words have specific implications beyond the meaning of the words themselves, is to quote my words and then explain how they imply what you think they imply. But you can't with moral impunity say I said words I never said. And there are two reasons for that:

1) I never actually said those words
2) You may have reached a flawed conclusion about what my words mean.




That is a twisted way of casting what I actually said MM. Again, quote my words, then explain what you think is the consequence of them and why. The verse in Exodus shows us that the penalty for killing an unborn/unformed fetus is LESS than the penalty for killing the mother. It is a fine. But if harm comes to the mother, then lex talionis applies (eye - for -eye, life-for-life)



Another twist, another exaggeration. The verse in exodus is not ambiguous in the sense you here imply. The setting of verse 22 is in describing the consequence of of violence from one person to another and is part of a list of consequences from verse 18 through verse 27. In every case, the consequences related to the harm to the person struck. In verse 22, the person struck is a pregnant woman. And the consequences are to the person that struck her. But the verse is not pedantincally specific.

Source: Exodus 21:22 Hebrew parallel

And if men strive together, and hurt a woman with child, so that her fruit depart, and yet no harm follow, he shall be surely fined, according as the woman's husband shall lay upon him; and he shall pay as the judges determine. But if any harm follow, then thou shalt give life for life,

© Copyright Original Source

The 'ambiguity' is that if one squints real hard and ignores the surrounding context, one 'could' say that 'any yet no harm follow' somehow applies to the 'fruit' that has departed, and not the woman that was struck. Yet that would be out of the surrounding context, where in every case (in the Masoretic text) the penalty is assessed based on the harm to the person struck. The WOMAN is struck, and the blow causes HER to miscarry. so contextually, NO FURTHER HARM (the miscarriage is the antecedent to 'further') applies to the pregnant woman, not the lost fruit. Secondarily, the survival of the fetus in such a circumstance would be exceedingly rare in the time the verse was written. Finally, fruit here is plural, referring to the separate parts of the still birth (some translations try to make that children - but that is close to absurd historically, culturally) So again, the primary and only consistent rendering contextually is that which is the historical rendering, that the child dies by miscarriage, but the mother is otherwise unharmed. Then it adds to it - if there any other harm to follow (to the woman, other than the loss of the baby) THEN lex talionis applies.

So, while I conceded a theoretical, out of context, possibility one could pretend it might mean what the most modern evangelical translations allow fpr, I do not concede that is any sort of contextually sound rendering.

Consider the vulgate - a very early Latin translation of the Hebrew:

[CITE=vulgate Ex 21:22,23]

22	si rixati fuerint viri et percusserit quis mulierem praegnantem et abortivum quidem fecerit sed ipsa vixerit subiacebit damno quantum expetierit maritus mulieris et arbitri iudicarint If men quarrel, and one strike a woman with child and she miscarry indeed, but live herself: he shall be answerable for so much damage as the woman's husband shall require, and as arbiters shall award.
23	sin autem mors eius fuerit subsecuta reddet animam pro anima But if her death ensue thereupon, he shall render life for life,

The child clearly has died, and the fine is levied in compensation, but only of there is no further harm to the woman, the person struck is lex talionis applied.
The septuagint discounts the woman entirely and shifts the focus from the woman to JUST the child, but then makes explicit the implied difference between the unformed child (early fetus) and the fully formed child (late term miscarriage)

The very clear implication in the full context and in the Hebrew is that if only the unborn child dies and no harm comes the the mother, only a fine is levied. This means clearly that the unborn fetus is NOT regarded as a fully established human life. And indeed, Jewish tradition is quite clear that the unborn child only becomes a human soul when it takes it's first breath.




The clear implication of the text is that the unborn fetus lacks some degree of value as human life. There can be no other logical conclusion as to that being a consequence of the fact a fine is levied and not lex talionis.

The problem for you is that the Bible is in fact contradicting what you believe to be true, and you just can't quite handle that. The only solution then, it appears, is to condemn me for pointing that out to you





I have made clear exactly why that is the case, several times over - the reasons for the rape or incest exception is directly related to the violence and trauma of the crime, and the fact that the pregnancy was imposed AGAINST the woman's will - they had no willful participation in the act. In this Texas law, a woman who is forced to have sex will then without the exception also be forced to bear a child against her will even though we can detect and safely end the pregnancy before there is any sentience in the forming child. Her circumstances give her that right over a person that chose the engage in sex and chose to take the risk of a conception. The person choosing to have sex has personal responsibility for the outcome. The raped woman does not.



And again, that is not what I said MM. THIS is what I said:







How Ironic. I'm the one accepting what the scripture says as it says it, even though it doesn't quite align with current religious dogma, and you are the one refusing to allow your views to align with scripture when it conflicts with your religious dogma!

As has been discussed elsewhere, Exodus offers no safe harbor for your arguments, but briefly:

Exodus 21:22 reads,

"When men strive together and hit a pregnant woman, so that her children come out, but there is no harm, the one who hit her shall surely be fined, as the woman’s husband shall impose on him, and he shall pay as the judges determine."

The phrase translated as "her children come out, but there is no harm" in the original Hebrew reads as follows: "". Yeleḏ is only ever used in scripture to refer to human offspring. The word yāṣā' is used more broadly to mean "coming out" which can refer to exiting a structure, or leaving a geographical locality, but in this context is clearly referring to the act of giving birth, literally "offspring comes out". Finally, means to harm or hurt. Therefore, Exodus 21:22 unambiguously describes a situation where a woman is accidentally struck such that she goes into labor and her "offspring comes out". If there is no harm (to woman or child) then the husband will name his price, and the perpetrator will pay it, "But if there is harm then you shall pay life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, stripe for stripe."

Add to this other passages in the Bible that show God's high regard for unborn human life, and it is only by imposing your own politically liberal views on scripture that you're able to reach the distorted conclusion that God in anyway condones abortion.

Now to the situation where a woman is raped and becomes pregnant. The circumstance was forced on her, she didn't ask for it, she is emotionally distressed... but how does that make it right to then kill an innocent human life who has done nothing deserving of death? What a perverse thought. Even more persevere is your insistence that refusing to condone the taking of unborn human life in this instance is like condemning Jesus for healing on the sabbath. Do you really think Jesus, who showed compassion to children while his disciples tried to shoo them away, would have given his approval to a woman who wanted an abortion after being raped? Sorry, but that doesn't jive with scripture.

And now you say that a woman who had consensual sex should be denied an abortion because she made a choice, but what if she was on birth control and it failed, or the condom broke at an inopportune moment, and that it was never her intent to become pregnant? If she is experiencing the same mental and emotional anguish as a rape victim because of the impending birth then why should she be denied the chance to remedy the situation with an abortion? Which woman you are willing to show compassion to seems arbitrary.

You either need to accept the logical implications of your expressed position, or you need to change your position. Which will it be?

[Hypatia_Alexandria]

Our taxes already go toward providing abortions. We have no "choice" in the matter. That money could be used to support the children that are not aborted. However, there are so many people unable to have children of their own on waiting lists to adopt that a great many babies would be taken care of without taxpayers help.

Perhaps, also, when a woman who actually gives birth instead of killing it before it's born holds her child in her arms she might actually feel love for it. Your so-called choice to abort removes that from her. And that is simply cruelty to the woman as well as horrendous for the child.

What about the Hyde Amendment?

I would also suggest you are in danger of over-emotionalism. Not every woman upon holding her new born child automatically bonds with it. Some women experience blind panic.

And then of course there is infanticide, often the result of PND, or because of social pressures that lead to the new born child being left to die.

[Hypatia_Alexandria]

As pointed out, this is nothing more than an ad hominem tu quoque fallacy. Whether or not someone would agree to have their taxes raised in this manner has nothing whatsoever to do with the fact that abortion is immoral.

Your views on the morality of abortion are entirely subjective. And I note that you have avoided addressing the question.

As I suspected you are pro-birth and not pro-life.

[Hypatia_Alexandria]

Since it is a church community the support lasts as long as they need it to. And I don't have numbers on how many abortions are prevented. Not enough though.

Does that include financial [and welfare] support until the child reaches the age of maturity?

[mossrose]

What about the Hyde Amendment?

I would also suggest you are in danger of over-emotionalism. Not every woman upon holding her new born child automatically bonds with it. Some women experience blind panic.

And then of course there is infanticide, often the result of PND, or because of social pressures that lead to the new born child being left to die.

The Hyde Amendment has no bearing on Canada. So much for you knowing everything about everything.

And the rest of your post is blather. We are talking about abortion. So far killing born children is still against the law.

[Mountain Man]

Your views on the morality of abortion are entirely subjective. And I note that you have avoided addressing the question.

As I suspected you are pro-birth and not pro-life.

Appealing to subjective morality is the same as appealing to no morality at all. Anything goes. If you decide your ten year old is too much of financial burden then put a bullet in his head. It's all subjective.

[Hypatia_Alexandria]

The Hyde Amendment has no bearing on Canada.

I forgot you were Canadian.

So much for you knowing everything about everything.

Please do not ascribe to me things I have not written. You risk being considered mendacious.

And the rest of your post is blather. We are talking about abortion. So far killing born children is still against the law.

That does not prevent infanticide occurring.

[Gondwanaland]

Please do not ascribe to me things I have not written. You risk being considered mendacious.

Oh, you decided to start using that term again? Did you actually learn from the last time and discover its actual definition after you embarrassed yourself and spent pages of a thread tyring to invent your own meaning of that word?

[mossrose]

Please do not ascribe to me things I have not written. You risk being considered mendacious.

You risk calling someone a liar who is not, but merely gives opinion on your posting style, which is obvious to everyone but you.