Kristen responded again and I wanted to give my response more visibility. As always, her comments are in quote marks and my responses are bolded...
Kristen,
Once again, thank you for your thoughts. As before, they are well articulated arguments, without attacking the people that disagree with you. I appreciate that about you. On the matter of contraception, I've already responded to that, so I'll move on to your other arguments.
"I think pro-choice people get a bad rap in the pro-life community for being pro-abortion. Who is pro-abortion? You have to be (in my opinion) a total whacko to think that having to come to an abortion clinic and terminate a fetus is one of life's little pleasures."
On "pro-choice" versus "pro-abortion," I don't know of any pro-lifers that actually think women walk into abortion clinics whistling "Dixie." The issue that divides us is not that you are pro-choice and I am anti-choice. Truth is, I am vigorously "pro-choice" when it comes to women choosing a number of moral goods. I support a woman’s right to choose her own health care provider, to choose her own school, to choose her own husband, to choose her own job, to choose her own religion, and to choose her own career, to name a few. These are among the many choices that I fully support for the women of our country. But some choices are wrong, like killing innocent human beings simply because they are in the way and cannot defend themselves. No, we shouldn’t be allowed to choose that.
"The thing is, it's a terrible hardship to have to decide. That's the basis of being pro-choice-- to have the FREEDOM (yeah, I live in America and I want to express every freedom I have)and peace of mind to make the right choice for myself if I'm considering an abortion."
On the issue of freedom, I disagree with your premise. We simply do not have the freedom to do whatever we want in America. Obvious things like mass murder, rape, grand theft auto, etc. are things we can decide to do but we have to be willing to pay the consequences. Yes, abortion is legal right now, thus there are no criminal penalties for it, but that hasn't always been the way. This isn't the first time in history that America has legalized something wrong. (Slavery would be an obvious example.)
"These women go through hell to make the decisions they make. Why not trust them?"
Every single law we make is intended to take decision making ability from someone. The truth is that all human beings are capable of making immoral decisions, particularly in a time of crisis. Laws are needed to protect other innocent human beings from having those decisions inflicted upon them. If I am right, and abortion is the killing of an innocent person, then women should not have the right to make that decision. If I'm wrong, and the unborn are just "blobs of non-human tissue," then the woman's lifestyle preferences should take precedence. The burden of proof rests on you to prove that the unborn are not human persons. You can't say that we don't know if the unborn are persons or not because if we can't know for sure, then the benefit of the doubt should go to life. (For example, what would we think of a structural engineer that decided to blow up a building without making absolutely sure there wasn't anybody inside?) That's why the entire abortion debate comes down to personhood.
"Also, I've been browsing the site and saw something that shocked me. There's a link for "church resources." OK, I realize that this is JUST a website, but that's kind of a tip-off to me that religious beliefs are weighing in on these decisions. Whether I'm a Christian or not doesn't matter-- I don't want someone else imposing their religious beliefs in my healthcare!"
I think it would help if you took a look at the articles on the website. The question of personhood can be decided with science and philosophy, not just Bible verse quotations. I don't just think abortion is wrong because the Bible says so. I'm also not solely pro-life because abortion pictures are ugly. I’m pro-life because I know that the unborn is alive, because the baby is growing; I know that the unborn is human because the baby has two human parents, and I think that innocent human persons should be protected. Period. Georgia Right to Life is a faith-based non-sectarian organization. Of course our faith has something to do with our beliefs. The church resources on the Human Life Amendment website will be for pro-life activists
that want to also activate people in their church. Planned Parenthood is involved with a group called the "Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice" and they have a page on their website with resources to organize their pro-choice activism in their churches. Is that wrong? If not, then why is it only wrong for pro-lifers to activate those in their church that care enough about the issue to be involved?
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This is in response to Kristen's comments:
Oh, the pitfalls of holding double standards. You speak of "freedom," but it seems you have overlooked one major and basic fact. America is so great because we as a nation are not completely free. We are protected by a fantastic system of government with checks and balances, laws and guidelines that protect us from each other as well as ourselves. The laws of the land keep us all from doing whatever we want because, in short, humans have proven themselves completely incapable of being left to our own devices and living in a lawless society. I can't rob a bank because I'm short on cash and I just had to have this gorgeous pair of Manolo Blahniks. Neither can a person kill a pregnant woman and her child without being punished for both deaths. The narrow minded thing about all of this is that a child's mother can kill it in utero and go unpunished by society, but someone else cannot. If it’s not a person when the mother wants to kill it, why does it become a person, and therefore, prosecutable when someone else ends the child’s life? Why the double standard? It seems as though some people want to have their proverbial cake and eat it, too. "Why not trust them?" you ask...because the government doesn't trust me to be responsible and make a wise decision on my speed while I'm driving; because our government doesn't just trust everyone to make wise decisions about using narcotics. We aren't completely free because we can't be completely trusted. If we could, there wouldn't be laws or prisons. Please forgive the seemingly pessimistic view on human nature. History has shown us the barbaric things we are all capable of, and I just believe that we need laws to defend the defenseless.
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