Abortion

But your finger has no chance of ever developing into something else; of breathing, of reproducing. A fetus does.

The same type of argument has been used before to compare the fetus to the appendix. It is an invalid argument.

 

But your finger has no chance of ever developing into something else; of breathing, of reproducing. A fetus does.

The same type of argument has been used before to compare the fetus to the appendix. It is an invalid argument.</font>[/QUOTE]Don, you just gave us the best argument to allow Cloning. Yes, my finger's DNA could grow to become another human that looks very similar to me but maybe less argumentative. So, yes my argument stands as valid.

If you removed my finger from my body it would die. If you remove a fetus from its host, it will die. If you place my finger into a cloning program host which is the same function of that of a mother, then it will continue to develop into a living breathing human, just as a fetus does. What's the difference, one system is man made and the other is God made. Since anything man-made is God-made then we have an equal situation.

There is no difference between my finger and a fetus.

 

Perhaps I'm not up on cloning as I should be. It was my understanding that there is still a zygote involved. Your DNA would be implanted into the egg and then subsequently grown.

So it still makes your argument invalid. Neither your finger, nor your appendix, nor your DNA would grow into anything by themselves, nor do they have the potential--by themselves--to become anything else.

A fertilized egg, which then becomes a zygote, which then becomes an embryo, and then finally a fetus, however, has the potential to grow, survive, etc. all by itself. Granted, it needs the mother for the first four months.

And science has progressed to the point where fetuses are viable at 20-24 weeks, not just six months. They may still need some assistance with respirators and incubators, but there are recorded cases of fetuses surviving outside the womb earlier than six months.

Scripture also shows a recognition of the child in the womb, not just when it draws its first breath.

So you and I may have to part ways on this one. I believe that abortion is never a viable alternative.

 

Pretty much the same way a fetus would have to be implanted in a mother in order for it to grow.

Pretty much the same way a fetus can't grow by itself either.

Are you sure it can grow all by itself? At that point, my DNA/turned fetus could also grow but certainly not by itself. And yes both have the "potential" to grow by itself at about 4 months.

This is not a viable argument for a fetus being a living being as much as it says that God Fore-knew a certain fetus would be someone special. But again, that is no different than God fore-knowing all things and the many prophecies that have been given us.

[ August 04, 2002, 07:00 PM: Message edited by: post-it ]

 

Very big difference. Once again your position enthrones man and demotes God. The second phrase is simply false. Sin is man made not God made... at least the God of the Bible.

If you genuinely don't know the difference between your finger and an unborn child then your problems with logic go much deeper than not understanding why abortion is wrong ....but just in case your serious, the nature of an unborn child is to develop until mature enough to survive outside the womb. It has a nerve structure separate from the mothers to include the brain. This along with the several attributes already mentioned make it quite clear that an unborn child is quite different from your finger.

 

Are you sure it can grow all by itself? At that point, my DNA/turned fetus could also grow but certainly not by itself. And yes both have the "potential" to grow by itself at about 4 months. </font>[/QUOTE] This is no more valid than to say that you are not a living individual since you require a certain environment and certain resources to survive.

This is not a viable argument for a fetus being a living being as much as it says that God Fore-knew a certain fetus would be someone special. But again, that is no different than God fore-knowing all things and the many prophecies that have been given us.</font>[/QUOTE]Are you in the leaps of logic olympics? God's foreknowledge is no more a disqualifier of an unborn child's life than it is your own. The very same argument you use here, if valid, could be used by someone who walked up and shot you.

The killer might say, "It's OK that I shot him, God foreknew it." ...Doesn't wash does it?

[ August 05, 2002, 02:11 AM: Message edited by: Scott J ]

 

Dear post-it,

I think Helen explained that passage well. I get the impression that this is mostly an academic discussion for you. It is not for me. While you were posting this weekend, I was at the cemetery.
It was my son's birthday. He was stillborn at 6 months. By your proposed standards, not a human being with a soul yet. Blessedly, they are only your proposed standards. I will see my son again.
Millions of parents who have had a child die before birth look forward to this.

If you have been around a crisis pregnancy center as I have, the eager expectation of many women recovering from the harm of abortion is seeing that child someday.

The verses you presented on breath are not conclusive. Adam and Eve were not created as babies. IF life does not begin at conception, two weeks after conception is worthy of reflection. Read Leviticus 17, which emphasizes that life is in the blood. A baby's blood supply starts showing up about two weeks along.

In my pro-life work, I have come across a LOT of different theories about when life does or should begin, not just the first molecule of air in the lungs. Here are some: implantation, beginning to "look" human enough, someone else loving and wanting the baby, quickening or movement, starting of labor, viability (which is becoming younger and younger), awareness, and ability to care for oneself. By some of these standards, some 5-year-olds are not human yet! But they are.

Peter Singer and others would like to examine newborns to see if they should be considered human or not and worth keeping.
I would note that the Bible does not have one verse that specifically says that infanticide is wrong. But there are many Biblical principles that show that it is wrong.

Also in my pro-life work, it has always surprised me how strongly many people feel about abortion when they know very little about unborn development. We are fearfully and wonderfully made. I believe that life begins at conception or VERY soon thereafter.

Here is some of the development:
(google will pull up tons of sites)
2 weeks: development of brain cells, blood

3 weeks: beating heart, three segments of brain

4 weeks: circulation of blood (note often a completely different blood type from mother's)
most internal organs developing, eyes and retinas, genitals

5 weeks: more differentiation of cerebrum and other brain parts, brain waves detectable,
body movements

6 weeks: sensitive to touch

9 to 10 weeks: smell, sucks thumb

11 to 13 weeks: sense of taste

14 weeks: hearing

This is VERY brief overview of some highlights.

The Bible speaks truly, and I appreciate your efforts to examine it, but I think that you have misapplied the concept of breath and have overlooked the Biblical themes of the sanctity of life.

Karen

 

Thanks Karen, I think many of us have had some very close connection into the abortion issue. You are grieving and I have grieved so lets leave emotion out of it since it only skews God's word. Which is what this discussion has been about. When I lost my child, I could not address the real issues either. Nor do I let that get in the way of what Scripture is saying.

Whenever I go to scripture, I found that we all take the interpretation of man i.e. what the church and centuries of man-made interpretation has placed in our minds. So the first thing I do is to try to block out all that knowledge and pretend I'm reading it for the first time. I then relearn the Bible from that stand. It is sad to report that many of the views of the Church doesn't hold up when the Scripture is approached without presuppositions that aren't supported in the Word.

As I have said before, I don't always agree with what the Bible says in one part because their are other parts that would be in contradiction with itself. For those reasons, I start by creating a hypothesis and start testing it against scripture until it is proved false. The problem is that there are many cases, just as the Abortion case, that it hasn't been proven false by scripture. It doesn't matter that I or you believe that a fetus has a soul and that abortion should be outlawed, If we Christians make a claim that says it is wrong because the Bible tells us it is wrong or God says it is wrong etc, then there must be proof in the Bible. Otherwise we are lying. On the other hand if we say it is wrong for any other reason, then the Bible stays out of the argument and we make laws and beliefs based on common sense and rights of individuals etc.

The bottom line it that the Bible does not address the abortion issue. I have presented as strong a support for the allowance of abortion as others have against it. So it is a wash. Meaning that neither side may reference the Bible on this issue without being a liar.

All I'm saying is stop making mothers that decide to abort feel like they are murderers. That isn't supported in the Bible, nor in our Laws. So why are we giving them a guilt trip that only hurt them for the rest of their lives.
It is Christian opinion that abortion is wrong, not scriptural. Just as you hurt mothers that have aborted with claims from the Bible, I hurt you when I claim it isn’t human and must not have a soul based on the Bible.

The problem with us Christians is we develop an opinion that is right and good (we think) then further compound the problem by claiming the Bible and God supports it. Can we say Osama? Well, I say Abortion!

[ August 05, 2002, 12:39 PM: Message edited by: post-it ]

 

And you don't? You may honestly believe this but the method you describe has your personal presuppositions as its foundation. You have in mind a level of proof that will change your opinion then resist the evidence contrary to your view.

In this case you have started with the "hypothesis" that abortion is moral and permitted by God. This is a presupposition.

By every definition, an unborn child is alive and human. It is biblically wrong to take a human life without just cause.

No individual has the right to end someone else's life simply because they are inconvenienced.

No, it addresses murder however. The unjust taking of another life is murder. A "fetus" as you call it meets all legal, moral, scriptural requirements for being considered a life.

This is laughable. You have made unsubstantiated, illogical, inconsistent claims...you have twisted and mis-applied scripture... and when proven wrong, have ignored the proof and held tenaciously to your presuppositions that you deny ever having.

You are simply wrong. The unborn child by every proof is a living individual that deserves support. A mother ought to feel guilty (interesting that you chose the term "mother").

 

Dear post-it,
Thanks for your response. Although I do think you have misunderstood. I explained my personal connection. But then I gave you an outline of Biblical and other reasons. I think that I was addressing the "real issues". You have failed to address the response of several people to the Biblical passage about premature birth.

Based on your second quoted paragraph above, I think that you misunderstand what crisis pregnancy centers and other pro-life efforts do.
I have seen people with new hope in Jesus. MANY of the strongest pro-life workers you will ever see are women who have had abortions and are offering alternatives to others.

I do think that one of the directions that society is going is that many of the criteria of personhood that I posted and other criteria are going to be applied more strongly to newborns, young children, people with disabilities,the terminally ill,the elderly, and others. I would suggest that the presence of air in the lungs of these people will not affect supporters of infanticide and euthanasia. The Bible has a lot to say, it is just not all in a couple of prooftexts.

Karen

 

I thought I did, but I will recap my position on that passage. The passage only addressed a premature birth in which the baby is born alive and could later die. That leaves out most of the term. If this event can only occur at the end of the term, then why wasn't the majority of the term addressed in the law? It can be said that it would be because there was no issue that the fetus was considered a life yet since it couldn't be born and remain alive. Otherwise, they would have addressed this issue. It is only because we come in with preconceived notions of what life is that we try to patch up the Bible in this regard. While I used the Amplified Bible translation, I accepted Helen's other version for the point of a possible interpretation problem. When reading in that light it still left the problem above. If the author had believed that a premature birth resulting in death without life first, he only had to write it like that. In other words he should have written it like this.

If a man strikes a pregnant woman and she gives birth to a dead baby or it dies shortly after the birth, then that man should be killed.

By limiting it to only a child born alive, it qualified the death sentence and the meaning of life/human status of a fetus not yet able to sustain life outside the womb.

How a person deals with guilt others or the church have place on them is not what I am addressing here. I too have done my share of this type of help on a suicide line for over 5 years, and I also got all types of calls. That has nothing to do with what scripture says on this subject.

Actually, the Bible says nothing on the subject. Its as if it an aborted pregnancy didn't really matter.

[ August 05, 2002, 04:40 PM: Message edited by: post-it ]

 

Post-It, What makes something alive? If the unborn child is alive then it is murder to take its life from it. You proposed breathing. But that proposal was demonstrated to be faulty both by natural science and the Bible.

You also make a big deal of the environment in which the child must stay in order to live. But the very same logic works against all of us since we all depend our environment for physical survival.

If a person is in a hospital, on a ventilator, with erratic brain activity, but has every likelihood of making a full recovery, are they alive?

What if they were an inconvenience or burden to their family which would face financial and personal costs? Would it be a sin to deny this "thing" (we have to keep it impersonal like "fetus") life support?

Neither environment nor dependence determine "personhood."

 

While you have been making some excellent points, you have strayed from scripture and that is all I am putting up for examination here. The fact that the Bible has many verses that deal with murder and killing and the right or wrongness of it, it says nothing that can clear up this issue.

Further you are claiming that the taking of a life is murder. When in fact that is not true. A Self defense killing is not murder, a soldier killing is not a murderer, the State conducting an execution is not murder.

Since nobody can seem to prove when life begins, and the Bible is silent on the issue, then how can it murder or even a death? Somehow it must be proven that a fetus is a person and alive instead of living tissue on its way to becoming a person and alive.

[ August 05, 2002, 06:47 PM: Message edited by: post-it ]

 

It says everything necessary to clear up this issue.

Here is the pertinent definition for "alive":

Alive (a.) a.
1. Having life, in opposition to dead; living; being in a state in which the organs perform their functions; as, an animal or a plant which is alive.

An unborn child by definition is alive. As I said before, being alive is not determined by environment nor dependence. An unborn child is not dead. Its organs are performing their functions and developing in their natural progression. These facts demand that you change your premise. Instead of assuming that abortion is scripturally allowed then demanding that scriptural disproof be presented, start with the premise that the unborn child is alive then prove by scripture that it is not. If your methodology works then it should work uniformly. It should work in the positive or negative. Otherwise, you are simply masking willful ignorance with a facade of pointless methodology.

I tried to be careful in making this distinction. My apologies if I failed. There are certainly instances in which the taking of life is warranted. But those are very specific and limited instances. An unborn child is an innocent.

They are not attacking anyone...certainly not by their own choice even if you were to argue that the mother's body is 'attacked'. They are not an enemy soldier. They are not guilty of a capital crime. Truth is, they are the most innocent people in existence. We rightly judge other societies throughout history based on how they treat their helpless, weak innocents. It is time we stop playing semantics and judge ourselves.

...but we can. See the definition above and also consider our rationales concerning the termination of life support. As long as there is legitimate prospects for recovery, a person's life support cannot be cut off. Almost all abortions end pregnancies that would have resulted in a healthy child.

The witness of God's natural laws prove that the child is alive by every reasonable criterion... this brings the Bible's teachings on murder very much into play. To prove the unborn child is not alive, you must prove that it is in fact, dead- without life. It isn't.

You are making a distinction that does not exist. Personhood does not depend on level of maturity nor dependence nor environment.

By definition, the child is alive. At conception, it ceases to be part of the mother. She becomes the host but the baby is an individual human being. It is maturing according to its pattern of life. Its organs work as they are supposed to when they are supposed to. It posssesses its own systems separate from the mother. It is not functionally a part of the mother but it is very much alive.