For years, "pro-life" and "pro-choice" advocates have been accusing each other of being in the wrong on the abortion issue. Pro-lifers say abortion advocates are legalizing murder. Pro-choicers say abortion detractors are attempting to restrict a woman's fundamental "right to choose," a.k.a. her "reproductive rights," or "right to prevent the birth of her child by violent means." For those of you who like plain English, her license to kill. It is probably quite clear from those words that I firmly believe the assessment of the pro-lifers is correct, and the presence of abortion one of the most devilish monstrosities ever to slip into American society wearing a "society-accepted" stamp.However, I do not intend to retrace here the arguments made that abortion is simply one form--and a particularly heinous form since it cuts off little humans almost at the very starting-place of their lives--of murder. Anyone can at least agree that abortion prevents the birth of a very live human being, a being that according to pro-abortion advocates somehow miraculously comes alive the moment it passes completely out of the birth canal (and is apparently not sufficiently alive to qualify as human until it's all the way out--sticking a needle through its skull and injecting it with poison as it is still coming out is apparently fine and dandy according to those who advocate partial-birth abortion).
What I do intend to do is talk a little about what kind of attitude one needs to have to support such a practice. One needs an attitude that is so crushingly selfish as to almost qualify as solipsism. These advocates of abortion, primarily feminist activists (see my previous post), but also a good deal of others, are so obsessed with the idea of sex without consequences that nothing, in their view, can or should stand in its way. But, of course, the issues runs deeper than sex--it really centers on self-determination, pleasure, and the Cult of Me.
The central tenet of selfishness is this: I am more important than everyone else simply because I happen to be me. That is, I want to enjoy everything there is to enjoy in life, and since I cannot vicariously enjoy it through the enjoyment of others, I want it for myself. Selfishness of the Cult of Me, where the particular individual matters most. Selfishness is a religion where the individual is God. Sinful man is always striving toward this goal in some way, and even Christians still have to contend, perhaps more than with any other particular sin, with selfishness and its Siamese twin, pride. After all, a person who wants everything for himself must think he is the most important person on the planet, consciously or unconsciously, and that, if you ask me, is rather prideful.
In short, and to put things in plainer light, selfishness is the core of rebellion against God. We are created to serve God, and the human rebellion is to serve ourselves, to be our own masters.
To bring things back to the topic at hand, selfishness is a powerful force in modern American society. Teenage culture is rank with it. Consumerism in many cases depends on it. And it has wreaked havoc with our marriages and our birth-rates. Pro-abortion logic states that sex is pleasurable. They use this as license for promiscuity, their first turn from the teaching of the Bible, and a big cave in to selfishness. (After all, if it pleases the individual, why wait until marriage? Maybe you the individual don't want to be tied down to one person your whole life.) With this kind of promiscuity comes the inevitable consequences one gets when violating the laws of God: disease, though not the subject under consideration, is one; more to the point is frequent and often teenage pregnancy. Teenagers, at least the kind we have around today, are too young to care for children, and most welfare mothers and posh yuppie women are "too busy" for more than, say, two kids. Either Uncle Sam hasn't given them enough money, or they just want to "live their own life" and not be "bothered" by children.
For the most part, in the majority of societies, mothers either put up with these unwanted children or, in an age where an illicit pregnancy actually brought social ostracization, simply abandoned, which is bad enough. In the 19th, and increasingly in the 20th century, our obliging scientific minds came up with relatively reliable methods of birth control. This, at least, just prevents conception; it doesn't kill anything. Whether it is acceptable for the Christian or not I am not absolutely sure, and not having studied the issue much, and being unmarried, it is probably not a province in which I can speak with much confidence.
But, birth control doesn't always work. That's a problem for our solipsists. Here they've been having so much fun, and then a child comes along. A child means responsibility, sacrificial love, time, patience, perhaps a few amenities given up to feed the extra mouth: all things many (though, in all fairness, fortunately by no means all) of our solipsists recoil from like death. In fact, they recoil from it in such horror that they are willing to kill to keep their precious status quo. And they are willing to scream, browbeat, lobby, protest, and cover all their actions under such dubious and opaque terms as "reproductive rights," "the right to choose," "the right of a woman over her body," and such like--all to keep the butcher's bill rising higher and higher.
I don't know about you, but I find it pretty darn interesting that activists in America spit in rage at George W. Bush for "killing" 3,387 soldiers in Iraq since 2003, when they and those like them have been responsible for the murder of about 1,287,000 babies in 2003 alone.
I think that was the first time I really made myself angry over the process of writing a post. I may have even lost track of my ultimate point. And I am angry, full of wrath that so many smiling, adorable little babies like the one in the picture above have been snuffed out, not only before they had a chance to live out their lives, but before they even had a chance to see the light of day. America is guilty of more murders than Hitler ever committed. May God have mercy on her.
~Connor
6 comments:
Good post. Two bones to pick with you though. :-)
First, I don’t think this country has a problem with teenage parents. The problem is with children conceived out of wedlock, not that their parents are teenagers. I think you’ll probably agree with me, it just rubs me the wrong way when people talk about teenage pregnancy like it’s a bad thing. One of the men I respect the most was married when he was 18 and had his first (of many) kids within a week of turning 19, and is now a pastor of a church and still married to his wife of some 30 years.
Secondly, there’s one thing missing from your conclusion:
Let’s fight this.
--Kristoff
P.S. Here's a great Boundless article about teenage pregnancy: http://www.boundless.org/2000/features/a0000422.html
I love Boundless. Anyway, I hope I'm not giving you a hard time about this, because I'm sure we agree about this anyway. :-P
Well, I'd say I have to agree with Kristoff that a child outside of marriage is always a problematic thing (even if you had no moral complaints with it).
I think, however, Kristoff, that teen pregnancy in our society where we raise children to be children and not to be adults is a good deal more damaging than it was in the days when a fourteen-year-old would already have gotten started upon his career, and a woman who was not married by sixteen was unusual. The concept of "the teenager" in our society has, I think, been damaging in many, many ways, not least of all the production of 30-year-old men who have not the maturity that a boy less than half their age would have been expected to have 200 years ago.
I really must get back to posting!
Kristoff--Thanks for calling me on that. :-) I should have made the distinction that I wasn't talking about teenagers being happily married at say, 18 or 19 (like Jonathan and Chelsea will be). What I mean is that any out-of-wedlock pregnancy is a bad thing, and the unfortunate prevalence of ill-advised, immature, highschool and early college out-of-wedlock pregnancies may be the worst. In other words, legitimate teenage pregnancy was once the product of greater maturity levels. Illegitimate teenage pregnancy is now (as David points out) the result of enormously lower maturity levels.
Aye, let's fight it!
And good article. Yes, I think we completely agree! :-)
David--Yes, you're right-on there. That is the kind of teenage pregnancy I was talking about. Some of our modern teenagers, I think, aren't even ready to get married, although that's far preferable to them sleeping around.
Really, people should just be considered adults when they prove themselves adults, not when they reach a certain age.
Amen. Amen, amen. "Heinous" is not even close to adequate to express the situation. America's hands are bloodstained with millons of precious lives, and it is literally sickening to think of. You really went straight to the crux of the matter: The Cult of Me. That truly does sum up the core of man's rebellion against God-- it is serving the creature rather than the Creator, and it's a sin we've all been guilty of. As I'm thinking about this, John Bradford's words come to mind: "There, but for the grace of God, go I." Yes, may God have mercy!
That was an amazing post, and I totally understand the anger you felt towards the end of writing it. Abortion is a horrible thing, as it takes the lives of thousands of helpless individuals. I personally have walked in Walks for Life, written about it myself and even spoken about it at one time. Yet, forgive me for doing so, but I do want to point one thing out to you Connor.
I agree that the majority of abortions are a direct results of having unguarded sex for pleasure and – oops – I’m pregnant, oh no! But my mother had a terrible experience during her third pregnancy and was faced with a life and death situation. At some point in her pregnancy, her health – which before wasn’t perfect – took a turn for the worse. She got an infection in her uterus and the doctors told my parents to “terminate the pregnancy and save your own life”. There wasn’t much choice.
Praise be to God, I have a wonderful brother named Isaac, who is the result of that pregnancy. My mother was horrified at the thought of killing her child and while faced with her own life, she believed God had a purpose in choosing her to bare my brother (which He had). It was “freaky” according to some of the nurses, the turn that my mother, and brother, took and was obviously a result of the prayers being offered by so many people for my family. However, what my parents witnessed, and what my mother and brother were put through in the end, was no less than a miracle and, had the tables been turned, this situation could have easily left me motherless. But because of her choice to risk her own life, I now have Isaac and three other siblings to all come after him, as well as an older brother.
My point in this comment is, not all abortion – though a great majority – is solely because of “ease”. Some women find themselves in a grim situation, with two very unappealing choices: their life or their child’s life. I pray I never find myself in that situation and I pray for the grace of God that if I do, and can choose as my mother chose. However, not all women really care to risk their life and not all women choose this choice.
Jordan,
You are quite right, and I hope you did not take from my post that I included women in situations like your mother in my scorn, because I certainly do not. That must have been a terrible situation to be in! If it had really come down to a life-or-death choice, I cannot say for certain that I would consider an abortion out of the question. I certainly applaud your mother for her courage and I think that, ultimately, her choice was the right thing to do. But it's terribly hard, and certainly worlds away from the casual abortions that were the subject of my post.
Thanks for the bringing that facet of the discussion up.
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