Tag Archives: Choice

Polemics

MUST-READ: Only personally opposed to abortion?

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Unborn baby scheming about International Life Chain Sunday
Unborn baby scheming about International Life Chain Sunday

The following is a guest post from commenter Mary to commemorate International Life Chain Sunday. Mary urges all of my readers to take this opportunity to stand up for the pre-born.

In my discussions with people on the topic of abortion, I frequently come across people (including many Christians) who claim to be “personally opposed” to abortion (or words to that effect), but who don’t think that it should be illegal. They believe in “a woman’s right to choose”. This all sounds very fine and magnanimous, couched as it is in the language of generosity, but an analysis of the reasoning behind it shows it to be seriously flawed.

Abortion should be illegal for the following reasons:

  1. Taking of innocent human life without morally sufficient reason should be illegal. Where the rationale comes from for believing this basic premise is another topic, but it is agreed on by all reasonable people – theists and atheists alike. (A morally sufficient reason would be something that saves another innocent human life.)
  2. The pre-born child is human. This is a scientific fact.
  3. The pre-born child is alive. This is a scientific fact.
  4. The pre-born child has committed no crime and can therefore be considered legally innocent.
  5. Taking the life of the pre-born child is to take an innocent, human life.
  6. Taking the life of a pre-born child should be illegal.

Abortion should be illegal for the same reason that murdering a newborn or a 2 year old is illegal. We don’t give women the “right to choose” to kill their newborns and for the same reason we should not give them the “right to choose” to kill their pre-born children either. The only case where we would consider it acceptable to take the life of a newborn would be where it was absolutely necessary to save the life of another innocent human being. The same should be true in the case of a pre-born child. We should give equal value to human lives and value life above the right to comfort and convenience.

Our entire legal system is based on the fact that there are certain limits to choice. If the right to choose were applied across the board we’d have to scrap every law in the books. Laws exist to limit choices that are damaging to others.

Legalized abortion is unfair discrimination of the worst kind on the basis of age and location. The right to life of the pre-born is a human right that should be fought for with passion and integrity. If we do not fight for this right we will be remembered in the same way as those who have failed to stand up for the rights of the oppressed in other areas.

Will we be like German citizens during the Nazi regime who failed to stand up for the rights of Jews, despite being “personally opposed” to Nazism? Will we be like those who failed to stand up for the right to freedom of those oppressed by slavery and Apartheid, despite being “personally opposed” to the same? Or will we be like Dietrich Bonheoffer and William Wilberforce who went beyond personal aversion, even though they weren’t members of the oppressed group, who spoke against oppression and who stood up for what was right, in the face of opposition.

I would like to end with two very apt quotes from Dr. Martin Luther King:

It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can stop him from lynching me, and I think that’s pretty important.

Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter

Commentary

Why do some women tolerate jerks as boyfriends?

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What causes Christian women to pass on strong, capable Christian men and to choose weaker non-Christian men instead?

Fears of rejection

On the one hand, most women want men to provide them with good things, to love them, to treat them honorably and to lead them. But on the other hand, they fear abandonment and rejection. Sometimes this fear of abandonment and rejection is so strong that it causes them to pass on men who they think are “too good for them”. A good man may seem unattainable to a woman who has not put in the same amount of effort to prepare for him.

Fear of moral obligations

Sometimes a really good man places moral and spiritual obligations on a Christian woman that require her to improve and grow, in order to help him with his life plan. Also, men flourish when a woman encourages him, recognizes him, supports him in his male roles. A good man who has definite ideas on what counts as good behavior may expect more from a woman, and those moral obligations can get in the way of her selfish pursuit of happiness.

Strong, good men are avoided

So it turns out that the fear of rejection or abandonment can be STRONGER when the man is good at his Biblical roles, because she feels like she doesn’t measure up and will have to work hard to keep him. And the expectation to fulfill moral obligations can be STRONGER when the man has a well-developed sense of morality, because he actually knows how women are supposed to act and he may hold the woman accountable.

Weak men are easier to blame and control

Let me explain some other reasons why a Christian woman might prefer to have a weaker, non-Christian man:

  1. A woman may prefer to blame a man in order to rationalize her selfish actions, and an immoral man is easier to blame.
  2. A woman may prefer to blame a man in order to punish him for some real or imagined crime, and an immoral man is easier to blame.
  3. A woman may want to avoid moral obligations to a man, and a weaker man is easier for her to control. (e.g. – using pre-marital sex in order to avoid having to love a man self-sacrificially)
  4. A woman may need to avoid being judged or led morally by a man, so she prefers a man who is weak at morality and moral reasoning.
  5. A woman may need to avoid being judged or led spiritually by a man, so she prefers a man who is weak at theology and apologetics.

So, it’s not that the poor, sweet, innocent women are helpless victims of nasty, evil, brutish man-beasts, at all. Far from it. Some of them DELIBERATELY CHOOSE to pass up the best Biblical Christian men, because they fear rejection or moral judgment or loss of control, and/or they want to avoid moral obligations to men that may interfere with their selfishness.

Disclaimer

I just want to reiterate before anyone freaks out that I know a LOT of Christian women who are heroic at letting Christianity influence their choice of romantic partners. Actually, I know women who are MORE courageous than I am in resisting bad partners. And it’s harder for a woman to do because women have concerns about the future, and so on. The choice to be faithful to God, to be chaste and to choose a godly man is nothing less than an act of incredible heroism. I wish more women did that. It is really amazing and admirable when women hold out for a good man, then answer his call to step up into the role that he needs her to play to help him with his plan to serve God effectively.

I actually know more of the good kind than the bad kind, especially since I started writing and the good ones just showed up! Pow! There you all are! Where had you all been hiding?

Commentary

Thomas Sowell explains the concept of “moral hazard”

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Young Thomas Sowell

From Real Clear Politics. (H/T Jojo)

Excerpt:

One of the things that makes it tough to figure out how much has to be charged for insurance is that people behave differently when they are insured from the way they behave when they are not insured.

In other words, if one person out of 10,000 has his car set on fire, and it costs an average of $10,000 to restore the car to its previous condition, then it might seem as if charging one dollar to all 10,000 people would be enough to cover the cost of paying $10,000 to the one person whose car that will need to be repaired. But the joker in this deal is that people whose cars are insured may not be as cautious as other people are about what kinds of neighborhoods they park their car in.

[…]Although “moral hazard” is an insurance term, it applies to other government policies besides insurance. International studies show that people in countries with more generous and long-lasting unemployment compensation spend less time looking for jobs. In the United States, where unemployment compensation is less generous than in Western Europe, unemployed Americans spend more hours looking for work than do unemployed Europeans in countries with more generous unemployment compensation.

People change their behavior in other ways when the government pays with the taxpayers’ money. After welfare became more readily available in the 1960s, unwed motherhood skyrocketed. The country is still paying the price for that– of which the money is the least of it. Children raised by single mothers on welfare have far higher rates of crime, welfare and other social pathology.

San Francisco has been one of the most generous cities in the country when it comes to subsidizing the homeless. Should we be surprised that homelessness is a big problem in San Francisco?

[…]We also hear a lot of talk about “the uninsured,” for whose benefit we are to drastically change the whole medical-care system. But income data show that many of those uninsured people have incomes from which they could easily afford insurance. But they can live it up instead, because the government has mandated that hospital emergency rooms treat everyone.

And here’s another Tom Sowell column making a related point.

Excerpt:

Much has been made of the fact that families making less than $250,000 a year will not see their taxes raised. Of course they won’t see it, because what they see could affect how they vote.

But when huge tax increases are put on electric utility companies, the public will see their electricity bills go up. When huge taxes are put on other businesses as well, they will see the prices of the things those businesses sell go up.

If you are not in that “rich” category, you will not see your own taxes go up. But you will be paying someone else’s higher taxes, unless of course you can do without electricity and other products of heavily taxed businesses. If you don’t see this, so much the better for the Obama administration politically.

This country has been changed in a more profound way by corrupting its fundamental values. The Obama administration has begun bribing people with the promise of getting their medical care and other benefits paid for by other people, so long as those other people can be called “the rich.” Incidentally, most of those who are called “the rich” are nowhere close to being rich.

[…]There was a time when most Americans would have resented the suggestion that they wanted someone else to pay their bills. But now, envy and resentment have been cultivated to the point where even people who contribute nothing to society feel that they have a right to a “fair share” of what others have produced.

The most dangerous corruption is a corruption of a nation’s soul. That is what this administration is doing.

Republicans prefer private voluntary charity as the best way to provide a safety net. Just because people on the left give less to charity than people on the right, it doesn’t mean that no one one gives to charity. Europe has the highest taxes, and they give the least in charity. Why not LOWER taxes for people who want to give MORE in charity? When government hands out money, it encourages people to be more dependent. But when a person in trouble has to go to a neighbor or a charity in their own community, it sends the right message – “this should be temporary – don’t let this become a habit”. It’s not GOOD for someone to depend on the government. People need to work in order to be happy.

Having the government take over the role of provider in the home is an insult to men. It’s not government’s job to replace men. They ought to stay right out of it. Leave money in the pockets of the working man so he can save for a rainy day himself. If you subsidize a behavior, you get more of it. If you tax a behavior, you get less of it. It makes no sense to subsidize irresponsible lifestyle choices and tax productive and moral lifestyle choices. You don’t want to make the rescue from bad decisions an anonymous and automatic affair. You want people to worry, so that they won’t want to make risky and irresponsible choices. Everybody goes through though times, but we shouldn’t make it normal. People ought to know that it’s not normal.

You may want to read about how government dependence makes people less happy than having a job. Don’t make people depend on government by taxing businesses and investment. We need more companies hiring – not less. And that means letting the profit motive provide an incentive for entrepreneurs to engage in more risk-taking and enterprise.