A small coalition of pro-lifers has accused James Dobson of abandoning principle in favor of legal positivism and moral relativism.
I'm still on vacation, so I'll make this brief. The charge is baseless.
As I have said previously, pro-lifers who make short-term, tactical moves to save some lives now until they can save more later are not choosing evil (as some critics of incrementalism maintain), but are pursuing the greatest moral good possible given current political realities. If I cannot advance the good, I'll move to limit the evil done. This position is not relativistic. It is not grounded in legal positivism. It is not utilitarian. It does not concede the legitimacy of any elective abortion. Rather, it's deontological in its foundation: It recognizes there are objective moral standards and does what it can to implement them insofar as possible. In reply, critics of Dobson insist they are standing on principle, but what moral principle justifies letting 1.3 million children die annually when we could have saved some of them? Their position amounts to this: Until we can legally protect all unborn humans we shouldn't protect any of them. Absurd.
As for Dobson being guilty of relativism and legal positivism, let's begin by defining terms. Relativism is the belief morals are either up to me or up to society to define. According to this view, there are no objective standards of right and wrong, only what we prefer according to our socially conditioned tastes and preferences. Meanwhile, legal positivsm, originating with enlightenment thinkers and later magnified by Hans Kelsen, states that the law itself is its own final authority. That is, there are no underlying moral principles that 1) give the law it's legitimacy, or 2) hold it accountable when it fails to uphold justice.
Please show me where Dobson has ever advocated either of those two views, properly defined.
Perhaps Dobson's critics think his moral reasoning is mistaken. (I don't.) Fair enough. But a relativist and a positivist he is not.
Tuesday, June 5, 2007
Monday, June 4, 2007
No Civility for the Heroic Abortionist [Jay]
This piece by abortionist William Harrison at Daily Kos (which I found through JivinJehoshaphat) upsets me so much, that I am dropping my normal habit of seriously addressing points. I am lowering myself to the level of undisguised contempt for this celebration of abortion and bad arguments in favor of performing abortions. The plagiarism of Isaiah 6:8, where the prophet Isaiah is commissioned by God to go tell the people of Israel about God’s judgment upon them, is especially troubling to me. Here it is:
Was that the morality that I wanted to demonstrate to my children? To parade in front of my wife, my family and friends?
Not me, coach!
Why do I provide abortions?
Here is the short answer.
Like multitudes before me and, I trust, multitudes to come, I eventually heard (Try as I might to avoid hearing it!) in that mother's grief-filled declaration, "Oh God, Doctor, I was hoping it was cancer", a still, small voice asking, "Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?" to which I was at last compelled to reply, "here am I, send me."
This is yet another example of the heroism of abortion I discussed here as well. Here is my admittedly prejudiced and obnoxious summary of Dr. Harrison's entry that you can read in full if you wish:
(Warning: all that follows is Jay's interpretation that Jay considers valid, which given the weight pro-aborts place on what we think about things and the resulting value bestowed based on those feelings, this next piece is valuable)
People are afraid to do the right thing, so our hero, me, screws up his courage and answers God’s call to lay waste to helpless and defenseless innocent human beings who are worse than cancer and a plague upon our poor. Unless of course the mother wants the child, in which case it is a precious cherub. And of course if the baby can somehow manage to survive until it is viable and can be born alive it doesn’t matter what the mom thinks. But until then it is cancer that I have the courage to eradicate.
Furthermore, though I know it is life, heroic people like me and I assert we have no moral obligation to protect that life. Nor do we have any obligation to stop ourselves from brutally and heroically destroying that life, because this is a tough call. And if it is a close call then that thing has to die. Believe me, I understand your pro-life position because I once was pro-life until I wasn’t because this one lady I met REALLY did NOT want to have a baby. That changed my mind forever. That and all of the botched backroom abortions that I treated which convinced me that abortion should be safe and legal. I also went to church a lot growing up. That is why I am aware enough of God’s commissioning Isaiah to steal it, put it in a context that implies that killing unborn children for the sake of all of the women who do not want to give birth is what God made me for, and celebrate my heroism by writing in celebration of myself and this heroic journey. I am William Harrison, abortionist, hero.
That about sums it up. I apologize that I am fresh out of civility on this one.
HT: JivinJehoshaphat
Was that the morality that I wanted to demonstrate to my children? To parade in front of my wife, my family and friends?
Not me, coach!
Why do I provide abortions?
Here is the short answer.
Like multitudes before me and, I trust, multitudes to come, I eventually heard (Try as I might to avoid hearing it!) in that mother's grief-filled declaration, "Oh God, Doctor, I was hoping it was cancer", a still, small voice asking, "Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?" to which I was at last compelled to reply, "here am I, send me."
This is yet another example of the heroism of abortion I discussed here as well. Here is my admittedly prejudiced and obnoxious summary of Dr. Harrison's entry that you can read in full if you wish:
(Warning: all that follows is Jay's interpretation that Jay considers valid, which given the weight pro-aborts place on what we think about things and the resulting value bestowed based on those feelings, this next piece is valuable)
People are afraid to do the right thing, so our hero, me, screws up his courage and answers God’s call to lay waste to helpless and defenseless innocent human beings who are worse than cancer and a plague upon our poor. Unless of course the mother wants the child, in which case it is a precious cherub. And of course if the baby can somehow manage to survive until it is viable and can be born alive it doesn’t matter what the mom thinks. But until then it is cancer that I have the courage to eradicate.
Furthermore, though I know it is life, heroic people like me and I assert we have no moral obligation to protect that life. Nor do we have any obligation to stop ourselves from brutally and heroically destroying that life, because this is a tough call. And if it is a close call then that thing has to die. Believe me, I understand your pro-life position because I once was pro-life until I wasn’t because this one lady I met REALLY did NOT want to have a baby. That changed my mind forever. That and all of the botched backroom abortions that I treated which convinced me that abortion should be safe and legal. I also went to church a lot growing up. That is why I am aware enough of God’s commissioning Isaiah to steal it, put it in a context that implies that killing unborn children for the sake of all of the women who do not want to give birth is what God made me for, and celebrate my heroism by writing in celebration of myself and this heroic journey. I am William Harrison, abortionist, hero.
That about sums it up. I apologize that I am fresh out of civility on this one.
HT: JivinJehoshaphat
Friday, June 1, 2007
The Inventor of the Pill Sees the Future [Jay]
Make what you want of this story at the Daily Mail On-line and the future Carl Djerassi, the inventor of oral contraceptives, sees of children being born without the necessity of sex. I think it further demonstrates the changing attitudes some have about procreation as an industry and children as a purchasable product. The strangest part, and the part that interested me most because it goes entirely unchallenged by the reporter, is the portion of the article in which Djerassi discusses the impact “the pill” had on culture. Oddly, an increase in STI’s is never even mentioned, but abortion does come up. Here is the highlight:
The Pill gave women freedom from the fear of pregnancy and the horror of backstreet abortion, but many see it as a cursed invention that is almost single-handedly to blame for the sexual revolution which brought about — as its critics see it — a wholesale collapse of moral values across the Western world.
Djerassi does not concur with this damning verdict on the legacy of his invention. He argues that society was changing anyway; the Pill just smoothed the way.
"The sexual revolution of the Sixties coincided with the introduction of the Pill — the Pill did not bring it about," he says bluntly. "The Pill came along at the right time, in the same period as hippy culture, the drug culture and rock ’n’ roll culture.
"That the Pill facilitated that direction is absolutely true, but I believe it would have happened anyway. Not as explosively, but more gradually. It would have happened in exactly the same way."
And he says it is a myth that everyone started having a lot more sex with multiple partners — that his invention effectively allowed the risk-free one-night stand to flourish as it never could before.
"Women were having sex before the Pill, but they were getting pregnant and having abortions. The Pill helped to stop that," he says. (HUH?!!) Emphasis and interjection mine.
I am sure am glad that the pill put a stop to women getting pregnant and having abortions! Great follow up question there by the reporter as well! I guess we can shut down the blog and call Scott home. The pill ended abortion. Good news! Deluded, perhaps?
HT: The Drudge Report
The Pill gave women freedom from the fear of pregnancy and the horror of backstreet abortion, but many see it as a cursed invention that is almost single-handedly to blame for the sexual revolution which brought about — as its critics see it — a wholesale collapse of moral values across the Western world.
Djerassi does not concur with this damning verdict on the legacy of his invention. He argues that society was changing anyway; the Pill just smoothed the way.
"The sexual revolution of the Sixties coincided with the introduction of the Pill — the Pill did not bring it about," he says bluntly. "The Pill came along at the right time, in the same period as hippy culture, the drug culture and rock ’n’ roll culture.
"That the Pill facilitated that direction is absolutely true, but I believe it would have happened anyway. Not as explosively, but more gradually. It would have happened in exactly the same way."
And he says it is a myth that everyone started having a lot more sex with multiple partners — that his invention effectively allowed the risk-free one-night stand to flourish as it never could before.
"Women were having sex before the Pill, but they were getting pregnant and having abortions. The Pill helped to stop that," he says. (HUH?!!) Emphasis and interjection mine.
I am sure am glad that the pill put a stop to women getting pregnant and having abortions! Great follow up question there by the reporter as well! I guess we can shut down the blog and call Scott home. The pill ended abortion. Good news! Deluded, perhaps?
HT: The Drudge Report
Kevorkian Released into the Waiting Arms of Mike Wallace [Jay]
Kevorkian is released and the always journalistically neutral Mike Wallace is there to give him a hug. If you are not familiar with some of the grim details of Dr. Jack Kevorkian's efforts I encourage you to read the posts at Second Hand Smoke here and here.
You ought to read both posts to get some idea of who and what Mike Wallace is embracing, but here are a couple of highlights:
In 1990, when Kevorkian began conducting post-mortem press conferences, he assured the nation his "patients" had to be terminally ill, and his attorney maintained that Kevorkian required proof of a terminal condition...Because assisted suicide is illegal in Michigan, however, authorities couldn't take Kevorkian's word for it, and had autopsies performed revealing that more than half of Kevorkian's 130 known victims were not terminally ill. Most were disabled with conditions such as multiple sclerosis. In fact, several had no serious physical illnesses that could be determined upon autopsy.
And this is equally as damaging to Dr. Kevorkian's claims of the sacred doctor patient relationship:
Kevorkian also raised eyebrows in some quarters for having extremely brief relationships with his "patients" before helping them commit suicides. For example, Good Morning America noted that many of the people over whose deaths Kevorkian presided died within 24 hours of meeting him for the first Similar all-but-nonexistent doctor-patient relationships have been reported in Oregon. Although a patient's requests for assisted suicide purportedly must span a 15-day period, official Oregon reports indicate that, over the last seven years, some patients have died by suicide having known their assisting doctors for a week or less...
Quite a guy! Give him a hug for me, Mike.
HT: Drudge Report, Second Hand Smoke
Thursday, May 31, 2007
Not Religious, Moral [Jay]
More and more I hear arguments like the following:
1 – IVF is expensive so for most families it is necessary to create many embryos initially to guard against the known rate of implantation failure. Would you tell these people that they can not produce the appropriate number of embryos and risk their resources without any protection because of your religious beliefs?
2- Women want to have babies and IVF and fertility drugs give them a chance to do so when biology and age are conspiring against them. Would you deny a woman the right to have her child? Would you force her to carry and deliver multiples at great risk to herself and her unborn children rather than have a reduction performed because more embryos than expected survived based on your religious beliefs?
Here is the problem with these arguments and others like them. As per usual, these arguments only hold water if the unborn are not innocent human beings. If the unborn are fully human then we have to ask ourselves some tough questions about how we live. Let me see if I can construct a good model to understand this:
Behavior “B” often leads to Consequence “C.” Consequence “C” necessitates procedure “P.”
This seems to be what they are arguing. Sex, fertility treatments, IVF, and whatever else you want to plug in often produce unwanted consequences and those consequences necessitate certain procedures. But is this accurate? Let’s tweak it a bit. Is “P” necessary? I think that is obviously wrong to say that abortion and reductions are necessary (meaning there are alternative options that make it not "the only possible option") but even if “P” was not necessary and merely the easiest option there is still a problem. If the unborn are innocent human beings, then to terminate that life for elective reasons is objectively immoral.
“B” often leads to “C.” “C” is most easily dealt with by immoral procedure “IP.”
I am not appealing to the Bible to establish the immorality of “IP.” I have not said it is unchristian to perform reductions and abortions. I have made the claim that terminating innocent human life for elective reasons is objectively immoral. You can make a case why it is not objectively immoral to terminate the lives of innocent human beings if you wish, but I warn you that you lose the moral force to condemn every act of barbarism in the history of the world as objectively wrong. The Holocaust, Soviet Gulags, Pol Pot’s Killing Fields, and Rwandan Genocide are all ultimately reduced to alternative methods of population control if taking innocent lives is not immoral. You can also try to make the case that the unborn are not innocent human beings. This, of course, leads us back to the central question, “What are the unborn?” (Look here for more on that argument)
Also notice I am not saying that “B” is necessarily immoral. The act of taking fertility drugs or pursuing IVF does not have to be inherently immoral, but the conditions these actions create are the issue. If we know that “B” often leads to “C” which strongly leads to “IP,” then we need to think about “B.” If the “IP” in question is the killing of innocent life for elective reasons, then the more strongly “C” is associated with “IP” the more it becomes imperative to address not “IP” but “B.” If a morally neutral act is consistently leading to a later immoral procedure, especially something as serious as the elective destruction of innocent life, then it is not religious to conclude that the best way to avoid “IP” is by reducing “B.”
Clear as mud, right? Let me dress it up a bit. We know that doing something like a morally neutral act of taking fertility drugs produces a high risk of multiples. Further we are told that multiples are dangerous to the mother and her babies, and reductions make it possible for the mother to carry a safe number of children to term. Reductions as a practice are the intentional destruction of innocent human lives for an elective reason. Further, the possible need to perform a reduction is foreknown prior to the use of the fertility drugs which eliminates the idea that it is an unintended or unforseen consequence. Then it is not only the practice of reductions that must be questioned. We have to ask if we ought to be using fertility drugs so liberally as well. Not because I would force people to not have their own children through religious rule, but because even an understandable and emotionally valid desire can cause situations that too often lead to immoral practices. You can not balance the families desire to have children against the situational need to kill some of their children created by that heartfelt and understandable desire. It is important that we do not unnecessarily and repeatedly create situations where we feel compelled to kill life as a result of elective behaviors. The more strongly the need for reductions is argued the more it calls into question the morality of fertility treatment. If the need for reductions is overstated then stop killing innocent babies for less than necessary reasons.
Fertility drugs and IVF provide an opportunity for people to have families that would not exist without these options. With that comes the awesome responsibility to police ourselves. People are becoming a commodity. Easily bought and easily disposed of. It is not religious to ask that we look at what we are doing and consider if we can not be more careful in our zeal to create more children. It is common sense and solid moral judgement.
HT: Serge
1 – IVF is expensive so for most families it is necessary to create many embryos initially to guard against the known rate of implantation failure. Would you tell these people that they can not produce the appropriate number of embryos and risk their resources without any protection because of your religious beliefs?
2- Women want to have babies and IVF and fertility drugs give them a chance to do so when biology and age are conspiring against them. Would you deny a woman the right to have her child? Would you force her to carry and deliver multiples at great risk to herself and her unborn children rather than have a reduction performed because more embryos than expected survived based on your religious beliefs?
Here is the problem with these arguments and others like them. As per usual, these arguments only hold water if the unborn are not innocent human beings. If the unborn are fully human then we have to ask ourselves some tough questions about how we live. Let me see if I can construct a good model to understand this:
Behavior “B” often leads to Consequence “C.” Consequence “C” necessitates procedure “P.”
This seems to be what they are arguing. Sex, fertility treatments, IVF, and whatever else you want to plug in often produce unwanted consequences and those consequences necessitate certain procedures. But is this accurate? Let’s tweak it a bit. Is “P” necessary? I think that is obviously wrong to say that abortion and reductions are necessary (meaning there are alternative options that make it not "the only possible option") but even if “P” was not necessary and merely the easiest option there is still a problem. If the unborn are innocent human beings, then to terminate that life for elective reasons is objectively immoral.
“B” often leads to “C.” “C” is most easily dealt with by immoral procedure “IP.”
I am not appealing to the Bible to establish the immorality of “IP.” I have not said it is unchristian to perform reductions and abortions. I have made the claim that terminating innocent human life for elective reasons is objectively immoral. You can make a case why it is not objectively immoral to terminate the lives of innocent human beings if you wish, but I warn you that you lose the moral force to condemn every act of barbarism in the history of the world as objectively wrong. The Holocaust, Soviet Gulags, Pol Pot’s Killing Fields, and Rwandan Genocide are all ultimately reduced to alternative methods of population control if taking innocent lives is not immoral. You can also try to make the case that the unborn are not innocent human beings. This, of course, leads us back to the central question, “What are the unborn?” (Look here for more on that argument)
Also notice I am not saying that “B” is necessarily immoral. The act of taking fertility drugs or pursuing IVF does not have to be inherently immoral, but the conditions these actions create are the issue. If we know that “B” often leads to “C” which strongly leads to “IP,” then we need to think about “B.” If the “IP” in question is the killing of innocent life for elective reasons, then the more strongly “C” is associated with “IP” the more it becomes imperative to address not “IP” but “B.” If a morally neutral act is consistently leading to a later immoral procedure, especially something as serious as the elective destruction of innocent life, then it is not religious to conclude that the best way to avoid “IP” is by reducing “B.”
Clear as mud, right? Let me dress it up a bit. We know that doing something like a morally neutral act of taking fertility drugs produces a high risk of multiples. Further we are told that multiples are dangerous to the mother and her babies, and reductions make it possible for the mother to carry a safe number of children to term. Reductions as a practice are the intentional destruction of innocent human lives for an elective reason. Further, the possible need to perform a reduction is foreknown prior to the use of the fertility drugs which eliminates the idea that it is an unintended or unforseen consequence. Then it is not only the practice of reductions that must be questioned. We have to ask if we ought to be using fertility drugs so liberally as well. Not because I would force people to not have their own children through religious rule, but because even an understandable and emotionally valid desire can cause situations that too often lead to immoral practices. You can not balance the families desire to have children against the situational need to kill some of their children created by that heartfelt and understandable desire. It is important that we do not unnecessarily and repeatedly create situations where we feel compelled to kill life as a result of elective behaviors. The more strongly the need for reductions is argued the more it calls into question the morality of fertility treatment. If the need for reductions is overstated then stop killing innocent babies for less than necessary reasons.
Fertility drugs and IVF provide an opportunity for people to have families that would not exist without these options. With that comes the awesome responsibility to police ourselves. People are becoming a commodity. Easily bought and easily disposed of. It is not religious to ask that we look at what we are doing and consider if we can not be more careful in our zeal to create more children. It is common sense and solid moral judgement.
HT: Serge
Tuesday, May 29, 2007
Cannes Top Award [Jay]
The Cannes Film Festival has awarded the Palm d’Or to “4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days.” The film is described in this CNN article as “a harrowing portrait of an illegal abortion in communist-era Romania.”
I am including a link to a review of the movie, which encompasses all that I know about the content of this film. The entertainment industry loves abortion films. The strange thing is why they love it. I have seen the TV shows House and Everwood both take their shot at the issue, as well as movies like Cider House Rules and there always seems to be an element of heroism involved in being able to perform abortions. It is an ugly job, but someone has to be able to step up and perform this grim task. The language describing the choice of abortion for women seems so confusing to me. It is so hard to make this decision. Gut wrenching, soul searching, and painful. In the movie and entertainment industry getting an abortion seems like a matter of courage and even the ultimate source of conflict in this newest offering. Recently my wife and I were watching a certain blockbuster film (unrelated to abortion) and she leaned over and asked me, “Who am I supposed to be rooting for?” This question is magnified for me with this film in question. Do I go to this movie and root for the young girls to fulfill their quest for an abortion? Is it just the same old story? Abortions are terrible, but they have to be done and you have no right to interject yourself into this decision. In fact, see what happens when you make it hard for women to get abortions? Is this the message I am supposed to receive here? Is this the "harrowing" award winning and emotionally powerful point?
I will in all likelihood never see this film. Time is too precious to watch a film where the ultimate payoff is that “She finally got her abortion.” I am getting more and more curious about the fascination with the “heroic” elements of abortion, though. Why so much emotion from those who see this as the destruction of soulless valueless tissue? Would Jane Fonda ever award the Palm d’Or to a film about the heroic journey of a Romanian college student to have her tooth illegally extracted? If not, then why is this different for them? If they think that the unborn are human beings and so the decision is very hard, how can they possibly think that killing innocent human beings is heroic? Curious.
I would worry less if I thought that movies and entertainment were not incredibly more effective at conveying information, false or not, to people in our culture than reasoned argument. Look at the hysteria over Farenheit 9-11, The DaVinci Code, and An Inconvenient Truth. No amount of after the fact debunking of bad science and history ever fully stems the tide of the initial emotional responses. Pro-lifers need to be more keenly aware of how cleverly abortion is framed through these programs. The message is strong. It is hard, difficult, terrible, and a personal choice. I am certain our arguments are better than theirs. I am terribly afraid that their movies and TV shows are better than ours. I know they are more widely seen and awarded. It is hard to measure how much this effects the whole terrain of the debate, but it must not be dismissed as irrelevent.
I am including a link to a review of the movie, which encompasses all that I know about the content of this film. The entertainment industry loves abortion films. The strange thing is why they love it. I have seen the TV shows House and Everwood both take their shot at the issue, as well as movies like Cider House Rules and there always seems to be an element of heroism involved in being able to perform abortions. It is an ugly job, but someone has to be able to step up and perform this grim task. The language describing the choice of abortion for women seems so confusing to me. It is so hard to make this decision. Gut wrenching, soul searching, and painful. In the movie and entertainment industry getting an abortion seems like a matter of courage and even the ultimate source of conflict in this newest offering. Recently my wife and I were watching a certain blockbuster film (unrelated to abortion) and she leaned over and asked me, “Who am I supposed to be rooting for?” This question is magnified for me with this film in question. Do I go to this movie and root for the young girls to fulfill their quest for an abortion? Is it just the same old story? Abortions are terrible, but they have to be done and you have no right to interject yourself into this decision. In fact, see what happens when you make it hard for women to get abortions? Is this the message I am supposed to receive here? Is this the "harrowing" award winning and emotionally powerful point?
I will in all likelihood never see this film. Time is too precious to watch a film where the ultimate payoff is that “She finally got her abortion.” I am getting more and more curious about the fascination with the “heroic” elements of abortion, though. Why so much emotion from those who see this as the destruction of soulless valueless tissue? Would Jane Fonda ever award the Palm d’Or to a film about the heroic journey of a Romanian college student to have her tooth illegally extracted? If not, then why is this different for them? If they think that the unborn are human beings and so the decision is very hard, how can they possibly think that killing innocent human beings is heroic? Curious.
I would worry less if I thought that movies and entertainment were not incredibly more effective at conveying information, false or not, to people in our culture than reasoned argument. Look at the hysteria over Farenheit 9-11, The DaVinci Code, and An Inconvenient Truth. No amount of after the fact debunking of bad science and history ever fully stems the tide of the initial emotional responses. Pro-lifers need to be more keenly aware of how cleverly abortion is framed through these programs. The message is strong. It is hard, difficult, terrible, and a personal choice. I am certain our arguments are better than theirs. I am terribly afraid that their movies and TV shows are better than ours. I know they are more widely seen and awarded. It is hard to measure how much this effects the whole terrain of the debate, but it must not be dismissed as irrelevent.
Wednesday, May 23, 2007
Abortion and the Black Community [Jay]
Last night I had the opportunity to teach a break out session in our CPC’s Prenatal Parenting Class. It was a tough audience of roughly 10 men that came to the class with the mothers of their children. Our Director decided we should try to do a “Dad Session” with them. It may strike some of you as hard to believe that my public speaking is often characterized as passionate and a bit confrontational. (I will wait a moment while you all recover from the shock of hearing that) I tried to stay on focus and leave the men with a few basic ideas. They will have a tremendous impact, positive or negative, on their children whether they want to or not. Loving our children and participating in their lives is the best way to equip them to deal with the challenges of life. God loves them and their children. (Of course of all of the info I gave them the God part made them the most uncomfortable)
What the heck does any of this have to do with bio-ethics and life issues you ask? Well after I finished, one of the men came over to talk to me. He was a black man, about 40ish, in normal casual wear and very articulate. He told me he was a counselor and worked in a ministry trying to help the black community in our area break some of the destructive life patterns that persistently passed from generation to generation. As he ran through statistics he started to talk about the number of abortions in the black community of the United States and asked me why the black church leaders will not speak out. I told him that they were not the only Christian leaders afraid to say something on Sunday or in public about the issue of abortion, but he would have none of that. The thing that struck me the most was a moment while we were discussing figures. I knew of or was familiar with every statistic that he shared, but there was something about the look in his eyes as he relayed them. “Black women are three times more likely to get an abortion and represent 1/3 of all surgical abortions in the United States though we are around 13% of the population. I have read that 47% of black pregnancies end in abortion, so that is half of our children we have killed right there.” The last sentence absolutely stopped the conversation. He looked at the floor for a moment overwhelmed with emotion. His eyes were all at once pained and enraged.
I often appeal for passion and outrage on the issue of abortion, and this conversation reminds me why it is so important. I will supply links on this post to sites that give statistics for you to sort through if you wish, and if any of the other guys have other resources I invite them to put them down as well. This should give you the chance to evaluate the numbers yourself as much as possible. Any way you evaluate them, the statistics as it pertains to the black community are heartbreaking. The numbers were just numbers before last night, though. A man who loves the black community and is fighting to save and transform this culture changed that. I am haunted by that moment and the look in this man's eyes. “So that is half our children we have killed right there.” His people are being killed from within, and he can not understand why the leaders of his community refuse to say something. I had no answer that satisfied him.
Links: Abort.73 on minority statistics, Black Genocide.org, an article in 2003 from NRO’s Anne Hendershott asking the same question of black leaders, Georgia Right to Life on the numbers locally here in GA for 2005.
What the heck does any of this have to do with bio-ethics and life issues you ask? Well after I finished, one of the men came over to talk to me. He was a black man, about 40ish, in normal casual wear and very articulate. He told me he was a counselor and worked in a ministry trying to help the black community in our area break some of the destructive life patterns that persistently passed from generation to generation. As he ran through statistics he started to talk about the number of abortions in the black community of the United States and asked me why the black church leaders will not speak out. I told him that they were not the only Christian leaders afraid to say something on Sunday or in public about the issue of abortion, but he would have none of that. The thing that struck me the most was a moment while we were discussing figures. I knew of or was familiar with every statistic that he shared, but there was something about the look in his eyes as he relayed them. “Black women are three times more likely to get an abortion and represent 1/3 of all surgical abortions in the United States though we are around 13% of the population. I have read that 47% of black pregnancies end in abortion, so that is half of our children we have killed right there.” The last sentence absolutely stopped the conversation. He looked at the floor for a moment overwhelmed with emotion. His eyes were all at once pained and enraged.
I often appeal for passion and outrage on the issue of abortion, and this conversation reminds me why it is so important. I will supply links on this post to sites that give statistics for you to sort through if you wish, and if any of the other guys have other resources I invite them to put them down as well. This should give you the chance to evaluate the numbers yourself as much as possible. Any way you evaluate them, the statistics as it pertains to the black community are heartbreaking. The numbers were just numbers before last night, though. A man who loves the black community and is fighting to save and transform this culture changed that. I am haunted by that moment and the look in this man's eyes. “So that is half our children we have killed right there.” His people are being killed from within, and he can not understand why the leaders of his community refuse to say something. I had no answer that satisfied him.
Links: Abort.73 on minority statistics, Black Genocide.org, an article in 2003 from NRO’s Anne Hendershott asking the same question of black leaders, Georgia Right to Life on the numbers locally here in GA for 2005.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)