Even More Religious Q&A

 

Now that I have had an abortion, I feel miserable. What should I do?

Although a well-meaning friend or counselor might tell us to learn to forgive ourselves, what we ultimately need is to receive the forgiveness of God. Through abortion, a precious life created by God was taken; therefore, it is God whose forgiveness we must rightfully seek.

 

Abortion is murder. However, every one of us is destined for eternal punishment because of ALL of our sins, not just abortion. But no matter what we may have done in our lives, God still loves us and wants to save us, if we are willing to trust in God's mercy instead of ourselves.

 

The Bible is full of ordinary people, just like the rest of us, and who committed a multitude of sins, even murder. Moses the prophet, King David, and Paul the apostle - all committed acts of murder, but God saved them and used them in powerful ways for His glory.

 

Here are some points on God's salvation plan for each of us, regardless of what we may have done in our lives:

 

1) Prior to being saved, we are spiritually dead.

Ephesians 2:1: "In the past you were spiritually dead because of your sins and the things you did against God."

 

2) Contrary to all other religions, the Bible says we cannot earn our salvation.

Ephesians 2:8-9: "For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast."

 

3) Because we are spiritually dead, we must be born again to be saved.

John 3:3: "Jesus replied, 'I tell you the truth, unless you are born again, you cannot see the Kingdom of God.'"

 

4) We must humbly confess our sins to God.

James 4:6: "God opposes the proud but shows favor to the humble."

 

1 John 1:9: "If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness."

 

5) We must repent (to repent means to turn away from our sinful ways).

Mark 6:12: So the disciples went out, telling everyone they met to repent of their sins and turn to God.

6) Jesus is the only way to salvation.

John 14:6: "Jesus answered, 'I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.'"

 

Acts 4:12: "Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to mankind by which we must be saved."

 

7) Our sins earn us the death penalty, but Jesus gives us eternal life as an unmerited gift.

Romans 6:23: "For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord."

 

8) God loved us and sent His one and only Son to pay our penalty.

Romans 5:8: "But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us."

Our sins make us deserving of death: eternal punishment in hell. So in God's love, he sent his Son Jesus - the pure and sinless sacrifice - to pay that death penalty for us. We broke God's Law, but Jesus paid our fine - a legal transaction made by God on our behalf over 2000 years ago.

 

9) The ONLY thing God requires of us is to believe in his Son.

John 6:28-29: "Then they asked him, 'What must we do to do the works God requires?”

Jesus answered, “The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent.'"

 

10) If by faith, we believe Jesus was put to death in our place to pay our penalty, we will be saved!

Acts 16:31: "Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved..."

 

On Judgment Day, God can legally dismiss our case because our fine has been paid. God's love for guilty sinners AND justice compelled Jesus to go to the Cross. He then rose from the grave on the third day, bringing immortality to us! To be saved from the terrible consequences of violating His Law, we must confess our sins against God, humbly repent, and believe in Jesus Christ's finished payment on the Cross.

 

God loves us and wants us to come to Him to be forgiven of our sins, including the sin of abortion. He wants to bring healing and restoration into our lives.

 

There are many excellent non-profit organizations which offer resources and references for post-abortive women who are seeking help. Here are a few:

 

www.AfterAbortion.org offers one of the largest internet resources for post abortion victims, both women and men. Simply click on "Resources", then "Hope and Healing", then "Finding the Right Help is Just a Phone Call Away". Select from many organizations to find the right one for you.

 

www.AbortionRecovery.org, a branch of AbortionRecoveryInternational.org (ARIN), also offers many resources. Simply click on "Abortion Recovery", then "CARE Directory". Search for a help center near you by entering your zip code.

 

Do abortionists have a conscience?

Here are quotes by abortionists which show that some do have a remnant of their conscience intact:

 

"I got to where I couldn’t stand to look at the little bodies anymore." (Dr. Beverly McMillan, former abortionist)

 

"If I see a case…after twenty weeks, where it frankly is a child to me, I really agonize over it because the potential is so imminently there…On the other hand, I have another position, which I think is superior in the hierarchy of questions, and that is “who owns this child?” It’s got to be the mother." (Dr. James MacMahon, abortionist)

"We know that it’s killing, but the state permits killing under certain circumstances." (Dr. Neville Sender, abortionist)

"Even now I feel a little peculiar about it, because as a physician I was trained to conserve life, and here I am destroying it." (Dr. Benjamin Kalish, abortionist)

(Ref: '10 Very Surprising Quotes From Abortion Doctors', Lauren Enriquez, LifeNews.com, 1/7/13)

 

Judith Jarvis Thomson and her article, "A Defense of Abortion":

This philosopher's popular pro-abortion article uses various imaginary scenarios as analogies to a pregnancy. Unfortunately, each analogy fails in similar fashion as those of most pro-abortion philosophers in that the analogy shows little to no resemblance to an actual pregnancy:

 

1) The Violinist: "You wake up in the morning and find yourself back to back in bed with an unconscious violinist. A famous unconscious violinist. He has been found to have a fatal kidney ailment, and the Society of Music Lovers has canvassed all the available medical records and found that you alone have the right blood type to help. They have therefore kidnapped you, and last night the violinist's circulatory system was plugged into yours, so that your kidneys can be used to extract poisons from his blood as well as your own. The director of the hospital now tells you, "Look, we're sorry the Society of Music Lovers did this to you--we would never have permitted it if we had known. But still, they did it, and the violinist is now plugged into you. To unplug you would be to kill him. But never mind, it's only for nine months. By then he will have recovered from his ailment, and can safely be unplugged from you." Is it morally incumbent on you to accede to this situation?"

 

This analogy is dishonest and fails on several points:

 

1a) A kidnapping is absolutely nothing like a pregnancy. Since 99% of all abortions are performed on women who had consensual intercourse, who knew the sexual activity could result in a pregnancy, and who knew that contraceptives can and do fail, it is dishonest to claim a pregnancy is analogous to a completely involuntary kidnapping. The use of a kidnapping scenario also falsely associates a pregnancy with a criminal activity.

 

If this analogy is meant to parallel a pregnancy as a result of rape, doing so is a very misleading and questionable ethic in itself, as it blatantly ignores the remaining 99% of pregnancies due to consensual sex. This reveals the author's motive - to dishonestly resort to a mischaracterization of a pregnancy - or it shows her inability to find a fitting pro-choice analogy for those 99% of pregnancies resulting from consensual sex. This is a big problem for this analogy, either way.

 

1b) To be 'attached' to a total stranger is also nothing like a pregnancy. There is nothing more intimate than the relationship between a mother and her child. It is utterly false and dishonest to claim that mothers naturally speak of or consider their unborn children to be "total strangers", either in our society or anywhere else in the world.

 

1c) An unconscious human being is nothing like an unborn child, who is very conscious. Science shows an unborn child is very conscious - of the mother, her voice, the external environment, etc... The unborn child is also very active - with purposeful movements, thumb sucking, blinking, and rapid eye movements which indicate active dreaming. Given their restricted space and environment in the womb, unborn children display a significant level of self-motivated activity, awareness, and communication to their mothers carrying them and to others as well. To claim an unborn child is "unconscious" is not only dishonest, but unscientific.

 

1d)  Equating a normal pregnancy with someone forcibly confined to a bed for 9 months, is also misleading. In normal pregnancies, women can and do perform normal daily routines and hold regular work schedules right up to the time of delivery. Once again, to use such misleading analogies when discussing the ethics of any subject is ironic in itself.

 

1e)  Having a stranger's "circulatory system plugged into yours" using specialized medical equipment is hardly analogous to a pregnancy. A pregnancy is a natural process of reproduction - something that most all living things on this planet take part in. To have a stranger's "circulatory system plugged into yours" using hi-tech equipment is simply not seen in living things on this planet except in very rare circumstances, at best. Where is the analogy?

 

1f)  Allowing someone to die from a disease is simply not analogous to the intentional act of killing. Dying from a disease is a natural, expected outcome whereas killing is anything but natural. Also, we must question whether Jarvis knew, at the time of her writing, that dismemberment was and still is the most common method of abortion. Dying from disease vs. killing by dismemberment - is there any moral parallel to be drawn here?

 

2) The Expanding Child: "Suppose you find yourself trapped in a tiny house with a growing child. I mean a very tiny house, and a rapidly growing child—you are already up against the wall of the house and in a few minutes you’ll be crushed to death. The child on the other hand won’t be crushed to death; if nothing is done to stop him from growing he’ll be hurt, but in the end he’ll simply burst open the house and walk out a free man. Now I could well understand it if a bystander were to say. "There's nothing we can do for you. We cannot choose between your life and his, we cannot be the ones to decide who is to live, we cannot intervene." But it cannot be concluded that you too can do nothing, that you cannot attack it to save your life. However innocent the child may be, you do not have to wait passively while it crushes you to death."

 

This analogy also fails on the same points as her previous analogy:

 

2a) To imply a normal routine pregnancy is deadly to the mother, is false. If it were deadly, none of us would be here to discuss Jarvis' dishonest analogies in the first place. Over 99% of abortions are on healthy mothers wanting to have their healthy children killed. The mother's life or health is not in jeopardy. If this analogy is meant to parallel a pregnancy where the mother's life is in danger, doing so is a very misleading and questionable ethic in itself, as it blatantly ignores the remaining 99% of abortions performed on healthy mothers.

 

This again, reveals the author's motive - to dishonestly resort to a mischaracterization of a pregnancy - or it shows her inability to find an honest pro-choice analogy for those 99% of abortions on healthy mothers and babies.

 

This analogy is also unnecessary as pro-life advocates already make an exception for abortion in the case of a pregnancy which threatens the life of the mother. The pro-life position advocates for both the life of the unborn child AND the mother.

 

2b) This analogy is nonsensical in that it portrays a pregnancy as a condition which kills the mother but leaves the child healthy and alive ("he’ll simply burst open the house and walk out a free man"). Conditions which kill a mother while pregnant also kills the child except in cases where emergency intervention and C -sections are performed. What's good for the mother is good for the child, and what's bad for the mother is bad for the child. The mother and child are not at odds with each other, but in unison and harmony.

 

2c) Like many other philosophers before and after Jarvis, this analogy constructs an artificial mother-child dichotomy. The mother and child, as individuals, are neither mutually exclusive nor contradictory to each other. The mother and her unborn child together make a natural biological pair during the natural biological course of reproduction, just like many other species in this world.

 

Quite the contrary, the healthy norm from the perspective of the scientific community, is a mother who cares for their unborn child and anticipates their birth with a positive outlook. A mother who imagines their unborn child to be a threat is not the norm, but a sign of emotional instability.

 

3) People Seeds: "Again, suppose it were like this: people-seeds drift about in the air like pollen, and if you open your windows, one may drift in and take root in your carpets or upholstery. You don't want children, so you fix up your windows with fine mesh screens, the very best you can buy. As can happen, however, and on very, very rare occasions does happen, one of the screens is defective, and a seed drifts in and takes root. Does the person-plant who now develops have a right to the use of your house?"

 

3a) A pregnancy is not like pollen, randomly drifting in the air. Consensual sex is not a random act. Philosophers who wish to deny personal accountability for their actions use this ruse to no end. If this analogy is meant to parallel a pregnancy as a result of contraception failure, doing so is a very misleading and questionable ethic in itself, as it blatantly ignores the remaining 99% of pregnancies that are a result of consensual sex in which both the man and woman were well aware of the possibility of pregnancy - even with contraception. Our public schools have all but guaranteed that our children have this information through sex education classes at an early age - that sexual intercourse can result in a pregnancy - even when using contraceptives - and that contraception failure and teen pregnancies are extremely common. By having consensual sex, both the man and woman knowingly and willingly took an active part in causing an unborn child to stand in need of the woman's body. They willingly involved themselves in becoming a part of a new child's life.

 

3b) "Does the person-plant who now develops have a right to the use of your house?" Our laws already reflect personal accountability for unintentional results or damages. If we speed and unintentionally cause an accident, we are liable to pay for those damages, even if the accident was unintentional. Why? Because we are responsible for our actions which we know will raise the possibility of an accident. The other party who incurred the damages caused by us has a definite right to our money. Similarly, anyone who engages in consensual sex, even with contraception, knows they are raising the possibility of conceiving an unborn human being who will need the woman's body. This analogy is demeaning to women in that it treats women as naive children and gives no credit to her understanding of how sex and pregnancy are clearly and explicitly related.

 

In conclusion, all of Jarvis' false analogies require us to completely discard a societal norm: parental responsibility. One must wonder how Jarvis concluded her analogies were genuine.

 

Her biographies show having no children of her own, which might explain why her examples lack any understanding of the concept of parental obligations. If any adult has any doubts about parental responsibility, a personal experience with parenthood ought to immediately vaporize any remnant of those self-serving doubts. Also, Jarvis' own mother died when she was six - an undoubtedly very impactful event in her life and another possible factor in the forming of her views. The early years of childhood are specifically referred to as the "formative years" for a reason.

 

In any case, we can be thankful for our laws which reflect the values of our society, and which are full of parental obligations: laws on child endangerment, child neglect, child abandonment, child support, etc... without which we would have no societal order.

 

For an in-depth criticism of Jarvis' "A Defense of Abortion", see Stand to Reason: "Unstringing the Violinist", http://www.str.org/articles/unstringing-the-violinist