Pro-life Discussion

You can’t regulate morality.  The only laws on abortion should be those regulating any medical procedure, to keep it safe.  When you try to regulate morality, you get the same sort of mess we got wtih prohibition. Making abortion illegal would backfire, just as Prohibition did.

We regulate morality all the time.  Laws against insider trading are essentially laws about morality.  Laws against bigamy are about morality.  Since the unborn child is inarguably human, this is idea of ‘regulating’ the practice of killing the child to keep the practice clean and tidy is about as reasonable as any other attempt to regulate murder to keep it clean and tidy for the killers.

Killing a baby is not the moral equivalent of having a glass of wine. Simply drinking a glass of wine or even Scotch hurts nobody but perhaps yourself, depending on your views of alcohol. Killing a baby is murder.  The burden of proof here is on those who say the unborn child isn’t a human being to prove their point, but this has turned out to be such an illogical position that those on the forefront of the pro-abortion movement have long since given it up and freely admit it’s a human being, just not one worthy of all the rights of any other human being.

ABortion was illegal before, and it did not backfire. There were far fewer abortions then than there were after it was legalized. There were not nearly as many deaths as you’ve been led to believe- not much different than there are now. The inflated numbers were completely made up by pro-abortionists, as we learned later when some of them left the pro-abort ranks and became pro-lifers.

Prohibition banned ALL drinking, including a glass of wine with dinner, which never killed anybody. Drunk driving is not an issue about drinking, it’s drinking too much. It’s still not the equivalent of abortion. Abortion kills somebody just about 100 percent of the time- that’s the GOAL. When it fails, there are some candidates who want that child killed anyway.

By this reasoning, we should have no laws against anything.

Strawmen:
pro-life people believe women who have abortions are cold and unfeeling; when a mother dies in a back alley abortion it satisfies the sense of justice in those who disagree with you and does not horrify their sense of compassion; back alley deaths occurred in significant amounts before Roe V. Wade but don’t now.

I am terribly sorry when anybody dies, including a woman who is having an abortion, and in fact, the Pro-life community (those who do not vote for people who are in favor of partial birth abortion and against the Infants Born Alive act) have a long and vigorous history of being there to support and help women, including those who have fornicated. And some of their most passionate members are those who have had abortions themselves and know what a horrible thing was done to them.
But it’s murder. And I have no obligation before God or anybody else to make sure somebody has a safe and risk free place to commit murder. When a woman dies in an abortion it is NOT compassionate to say, “Oh, dear, we must make abortion safer and regulate it.”
Compassion would be to do what the pro-life community does- seek to educate people about the risks and dangers in ANY abortion (it’s not possible to meke it a ‘safe’ procedure), about the very real humanity of that unborn child, and to continue to offer support, nurture, housing, food, job training, medical care, counseling, clothing, and more (all of which the pro-life community does, in spades, to women to alleviate the conditions that made some of them think an abortion was their only option.

From everything I’ve heard, the reason for the failure of the bans on second and third trimester is because exception clauses are not added for “medical necessity.” If such an exception were given, the legislation would easily pass.

Not true. Pro-life legislators have been more than willing to make exceptions for ‘medical necessity,’ even for rape and incest simply to be pragmatic (that would account for approximately 2 percent of all abortions). The failure of the bans on second and third trimester abortions are because pro-life people don’t want exceptions made for the ‘health’ of the mother- a weasel word term that doesn’t have to have anything to do with medical necessity at all. It can (and has been) used to justify abortions for any reason at all.

Partial birth abortions, for another example, are not EVER medically necessary, and a number of Democrats have been willing to ban them. Some couldn’t even bring themselves to vote against them. Fortunately, those who recognized it for what it is, infanticide, finally prevailed and it is now illegal.
And the Infant Born Alive Act, of course, wouldn’t in any way harm a woman’s health since the baby is already born, yet Obama could not bring himself to vote for even that modicum of protection for babies who have already been born.

It’s foolish to be a single issue voter.  You should look at other issues besides abortion and vote based on other policies.

Honestly, this to me is like arguing that if we lived in Nazi Germany it would be acceptable to vote for a Goebbel or a Hitler because we agree with their other policies, just not their genocidal goals, or to vote for pro-slavery factions in the antebellum era because outside of seeking to enslave people based on race, a politician might just on the same side as you on otherissues.

The HG points out: – that is rather what happened with Germany… My WWII professor was a grad student in the 1960s. He spent some time studying in Germany and asked some of his friends’ parents why they had supported Hitler. “People had jobs,” was one woman’s response. What is abortion? The intentional killing of an unborn child – the circumstances leading up to it do not change what it IS. What is intentional killing? Murder. It is a fundamental part of your basic social contract for murder to be illegal.

Making abortion illegal is incompatible with preferring small government, so you’re a hypocrite:
Making abortion illegal is not remotely incompatible with small government. I want murder to be illegal.
Why this one particular issue? People drink and drive and kill people. But good luck getting Prohibition back.

Illogical. People don’t drive and kill somebody because they had a sip of wine or a swallow of beer. They kill people when they have drunk to excess. And killing people? It’s illegal- unless they are babies.
Abortion is ‘this one issue’ because it’s murder, and drinking is an irrelevant issue because it’s not.

“I just don’t see how trying to provide a political fix really solves the problem. You’re still going to have women in precarious positions”

Who is arguing that making murder of the unborn illegal is the ONLY TOOL to address the problem? It is one important tool in a wide assortment of approaches.

These are all strawmen:
“You’re still going to have women in precarious positions.

And who is going to be there for them then, especially if the legislation gets passed and the issue is nationally forgotten?

Or do we just thrust them out on their own to try to figure it all out?

Yes, people need to be held accountable for their mistakes…but just leaving people to multiply in squalor in poverty does not satisfy the other aspects of Jesus’ purposes for us. “

The ugly and hostile assumptions you make here about the pro-life community simply do not reflect reality. The same people will be there for them then who are there for them now and who were there for them before- Crisis pregnancy centers, homes for unwed mothers, private citizens who reach out to help, adoption agencies,  all these were available before, they’re available now, and I have no doubt that they are not going to go away.
And none of this alters the reality of what abortion IS- the murder of a child. It is also harmful to women- women who have had abortions have higher rates of infertility and breast cancer later, as well as higher risks of complications in later pregnancies, and mental health problems associated with the anguished regrets when a woman who chose abortion because she believed it was just a ‘blob of tissue’ learns that it was, in fact, a baby. In no way does the current legal situation help women.

I don’t know of anybody who advocates ‘just thrusting them out on their own to figure it out’ except abortion advocates who object to full disclosure requirements.

Nor is this about ‘holding people accountable for their actions.’ Fornication is a sin, not pregnancy. Some people fornicate and never get pregnant- they are separate issues. This is about protecting innocent human beings from being murdered. And that does not equate to ‘leaving people to multiply in squalor and poverty.’
The Equuschick:  I have heard this argument before, and on the one hand I see where it is coming from. I sincerely agree that the best way to reduce abortions is to change hearts before legislation, but to argue from that to say it is unnecessary (or even detrimental) to change legislation is seriously flawed logic. If people want abortions, I agree they’re going to get them whether they’re legal or not. But if someone wants to murder their spouse, they’ll do it. Would you also argue that there’s no point in having laws against spouse-killing? The point of a law, in the end, is not prevention. The point of the law is force and retribution. It isn’t pretty. But it is the way the world works, and frankly the way God set it up. We as individuals have an oblgiation to be compassionate to every one in need, and I wouldn’t care two cents if she was a pregnant prostitue I would still have a God-given obligation to be compassionate, loving, caring and supportive. But collectively, I do believe Christians have a responsibility to see to it that in this case principle becomes law. Will the law eliminate abortions? No one is naieve enough to suggest that, but again you’re missing the point of the Rule of Law itself.

Me: I actually don’t agree that if people want abortions they are going to get them anyway.  Some people will, but if abortion were illegal the number of abortion related deaths would be drastically reduced (because I count the babies in abortion related deaths).  A useful tool in the hands of abusers, one used to hide their crimes, would be taken away from them, and young women would be protected from those who coerce them into getting an abortion.  There’s a reason why large numbers of young men are pro-choice and it’s not because they want to protect women.