I'm going to comment on this:
AHA opposes the “Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act (HR36).
And during this time, we’ve passed over 200 so-called “pro-life” laws, but they all discriminate in one way or the other, against our neighbors who are still in the womb. As Christians, we have absolutely no business abandoning any of our neighbors. Think about what we’ve done and how ridiculous we’ve been. Although we know that ALL are created in God’s own image, we’ve passed laws saying that if you are in certain areas, and as long as the mother has seen an ultrasound, then she can murder her baby. But, if the mother travels to another location, she may not need to see an ultrasound, but might have to wait 24-72 hours before murdering her child.
Take a comparison: During WWII, Raoul Wallenberg made heroic efforts to save as many Hungarian Jews as he could. And he succeeded in saving upwards of 100,000 Jews from the gas chambers.
But by AHA logic, Wallenberg had blood on his hands. His efforts were "discriminatory." He only tried to save Hungarian Jews. And even then, he was only able to save a fraction of the Hungarian Jewish population.
By AHA logic, he "abandoned" other European Jews. By AHA logic, unless he had a strategy to save every European Jews, he ought to refrain from saving any European Jews. Let the Nazis kill them all.
By AHA logic, Wallenberg should have made hoodies, beenies, lapel pins, and T-shirts with inspirational slogans instead of issuing protective passes to Jews and creating safe houses for Jews.
Although we know that ALL are created in God’s image, we’ve written laws saying that the person’s rights can be violated, as long as their mother murders them under certain conditions. How can we, as Christians, consider this a step in the right direction? We cannot. We know that ALL are created in God’s image. In creating these acts, laws and restrictions, we are in effect telling the culture that, as long as certain conditions are met, it is OK to go ahead and murder your child. As we continue doing this, doing the same thing over and over and over again, we are pouring more and more blood on our hands. We are all guilty.
AHA has a groupthink quality. It creates in-house narratives which it imputes to prolifers. It invents fictional stories about pro-lifers. These in-house narratives assume acreedal status in AHA.
Take the assertion that "we are in effect telling the culture that, as long as certain conditions are met, it is OK to go ahead and murder your child." What actual evidence do they have that that's how the general public forms its views on the morality of abortion?
It is very simple. God told us not to murder. “Thou shall not murder.” He didn’t say that you could murder, as long as you counseled the mother about breast cancer. He never said that you could murder, as long as you have your parents' consent. He said “Thou shall not murder.” That’s it.
HR36 doesn't mandate abortion. Abortion already exists. It's legally protected. HR36 chips away at preexisting laws. The point of HR36 is not to authorize abortion, but to prevent abortion. It falls short because prolifers are not omnipotent.
One of AHA's chronic moral confusions is its failure to distinguish between process and principle, methodology and ideology. A law restricting abortion is a means to an end. A process is a means to an end, not in end in itself. The law itself is not the principle, but a method of achieving a desired result. It is not a moral compromise to do less good when that's the most good you can do at the moment.
The best I can tell AHA is guilty of laboring to abolish abortion only in the United States, yet human abortion is a global evil.
ReplyDeleteIf AHA can't stop abortion globally, then they are clearly guilty of the same sort of incrementalism as their ideological foils in the pro-life camp.
You might want to take that up with the Abolitionist Societies in Australia, Sweden, Ghana, Canada, and the United Kingdom. Please don't attempt contacting the Abolitionist Society in China, they are in a pretty precarious situation.
DeleteWhat about all the other countries in the world that allow abortion? It should be all or nothing, right? Anything less is sending a message that murdering babies is okay in some nations.
DeleteNo. Not all or nothing. That is a mischaracterization. Abolitionists will do nothing that violates our moral duties, but we will do all that we can so long as it is in accord with those duties.
DeleteSo why does AHA regularly malign pro-life efforts for doing what they can to chip away at existing abortion legislation, through tightening restrictions for example, when given the current political climate they can't immediately abolish/bring about the end of human abortion?
DeleteDid Raul save these Jews by legislative acts, or did he save these Jews by daily acts like those being taken by Abolitionists all across the country?
ReplyDeleteThere is a very serious error in your thinking.
i) Does your response mean you think it's okay for opponents of abortion to "discriminate in one way or another against our neighbors" so long as it's not discriminatory legislation?
Deleteii) Are you saying AHA repudiates legislative acts in favor of daily acts? If you oppose legislation, why do you wrap yourselves in the mantle of Wilberforce, Garrison, and MLK? Didn't they lobby for legal remedies to slavery or Jim Crow?
iii) Likewise, does this mean you don't believe in outlawing abortion? What does "abolition" mean if not the legal abolition of abortion?
iv) If by "daily acts" you mean actions like street evangelism, campus evangelism, and picketing abortion clinics, that's something that Christians have been engaged in long before AHA came on the scene.
Nobody has said the we oppose legislative acts.
ReplyDeleteOr well… no abolitionist has said this. Please don't believe your own straw men or buy into your own false testimony.
We believe that abortion is murder and ought to be re-criminalized. See the "Declaration of Sentiments" for our position on this:
"Every human being, regardless of age, size, ability, or location is created in the image of God. To deprive an innocent human being of life is the prerogative of God alone. The Lord gives and the Lord takes away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.
God has established government among men to punish those who do evil and praise those who do good, for rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad, and ought to secure the God- ordained rights and liberties of their people. Any government that legalizes and institutionalizes the murder of those residing within its jurisdiction commits an unspeakable travesty of justice — and a most egregious abomination in the eyes of Almighty God.
Therefore, we believe and affirm that:
Any action designed or undertaken for the intended purpose of killing a pre-born human being is an act of murder;
The institutionalized practice of human abortion is nothing less than child-sacrifice, legally sanctioned genocide, a high crime against humanity, and a blasphemous attack upon the image of God.
Abortion is not just a social, political, or intellectual debate to be carried out by philosophers, pastors, and politicians.
Abortion is not about health care, reproductive justice, or women’s rights.
Any person who knowingly procures or performs an abortion is guilty of murder in the eyes of God and ought to be tried and found guilty of murder in a court of law;
Any person who knowingly aids or abets a person in the procurement or performance of an abortion is guilty of being an accessory to murder in the eyes of God and ought to be tried and found guilty of being an accessory to murder in a court of law;
We do not advocate the retroactive punishment of those who have committed this heinous crime. But abortion is murder and whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for God made man in His own image. So reads the Word of God and by it, everyone complicit in the shedding of innocent blood is convicted of a capital crime. As for us, we endeavor to expose their guilt, beseech them to repent and to “go and sin no more.”
And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God."
As for the daily acts… yes that is what I am referring to. And no abolitionist claims that we are the first to do any of those things. If you actually read our material you see that we trace such things all the way back through church history to the first Christians.
This isn't about pride or credit or anything like that. We are just trying to be zealous for good works and exhort our brothers and sisters to join us in the cause of Christ. AHA can be boiled down to this: Love God, Love your neighbor, call everyone to repent and believe the Gospel because the Kingdom of God is at hand.
You need to learn how to keep track of your own argument. You were one who cast the issue in these contrasting terms:
Delete"Did Raul save these Jews by legislative acts, or did he save these Jews by daily acts like those being taken by Abolitionists all across the country? There is a very serious error in your thinking."
I'm merely responding to you on your own grounds.
One of the problems with AHA is the way you folks have a hair-trigger reaction to any breath of criticism. Instead of considering the logic of the objection, you just lash out.
Since you concede that AHA doesn't oppose legislative acts, then we're back to the analogy. Was Wallenberg's "discriminatory" policy immoral? If not, why is it wrong of prolife lawmakers to save as many babies as they can?
HR36 is not "designed or undertaken for the intended purpose of killing" of babies. Just the opposite. It doesn't institutionalize or legalize abortion. Rather, that's the legal status quo which bills like HR36 attempt to erode.