It starts off rather nobly with him appealing to and supporting the "Safe Haven" law in the state of IL. This law says that if a mother wants to abandon her child she has 30 days to do it, no questions asked, at a place like a fire station or hospital. I would fully support this law and would add my church to the list. Better to have these babies given up into safe hands than found in a dumpster somewhere.
But then the author senses the inconsistency in his argumentation because of his pro-abortion stance. He writes:
The clattering sound you hear is dozens of anti-abortion activists pounding away at their keyboards. "Dear Stinkberg," they write, "how can you even pretend to care about babies when you approve of women murdering their children in the uterus?? Please see the attached 12 color photographs of aforementioned diced children . . . ."I am glad to add to the "clattering sound".
And the answer -- not that they are interested in an answer, but let's pretend -- is that I, like most Americans, differentiate between actual, born-and-alive-in-the-real-world-now babies and the fertilized egg the size of the period at the end of this sentence that typically gets aborted.
First of all, it is important to note that it is faulty to assume that most aborted babies are the size of "the period at the end of this sentence". Notice that he doesn't give any sort of evidence to back up this claim. He simply asserts it. Click here to see the stages of fetal development and what a baby might look like at six, eight, or twelve weeks which is a common stage for abortion.
But then it must be asked, "Is size a means by which we determine value?" He appeals to size when he says "...the size of the period at the end of this sentence." Shouldn't the greater question be, "Is it human?" If the answer is yes, it is human, then size does not matter does it? My daughter Mya is much smaller than me at the age of 18 months. Should this mean that I have greater value than her?
Again, we see here and in many conversations with abortion advocates that one could have, that almost every reason given for the support of legalized abortion assumes that the baby in the womb is not human. But then we have a problem. What are the reasons that they give for assuming it is not human? This author lists size as a reason but we all know that is a horrible way to try and determine true humanity.
He continues:
Caring for actual babies is hard, and the state struggles to find enough foster homes to park them in. That's another reason why people gin up this outsized concern for other people's non-babies: It's easy. You can stand in the street holding a 5-foot photo of a tiny bloody foot, call it a day, tell yourself you've saved a lot of babies, when in reality you haven't changed one diaper. Merely professed your undying concern for proto babies, which hardly exist, and ignored a bunch of baby babies, who most certainly do exist and could use your help. And you felt morally superior to boot. Congrats.I would like to ask Neil for the criteria he uses to diffentiate between real and uh... "non-real" babies. If they are "non-real" what are they? What does "non-real" mean? He has not given us anything other than size as a basis for this reasoning.
Since the "state struggles to find enough foster homes" does that mean we should murder some babies in the womb to make it easier on the state? Just because our infrastructure is lacking does that mean we should jump to the slick and easy solution of killing to deal with the problem. The logic doesn't add up. Who else are we going to bump off because they are a drain on society? Why stop with those who are in the womb? Again, if he were to admit that these were humans in the womb then he would never advocate for this position.
His final comment:
Respect for life means respecting those who are actually alive, even if they make decisions that go contrary to your personal religious scruples. It's a tough-to-grasp concept, I know, particularly if you don't even try to understand.Why does he assume babies in the womb are not "actually alive"? Again he gives no reasons and should be challenged here. In my mind this is a bit of a no brainer. The baby is clearly growing in the womb. Things that grow are alive. This is biology 101.
This is not an argument about "religion". Religion has nothing to do with it and it just a way to try and brush off those who would disagree with him. This is about defining the boundaries of murder. We don't claim that murdering a toddler has anything to do with religion. It is against the law and for good reason. What is the difference between a toddler and the unborn?
Neil's argument is easy to engage in order to flesh out the faulty reasoning behind the pro-abortion stance. I pray this short interaction will help you in conversations you may have in the future concerning these matters.
2 comments:
Thank you Zach, your replies are solid. He doesn’t explain what makes a born baby more real, alive and actual than an unborn baby. But, of course, that’s exactly where authors like this never go. If you were to pin him on it, he would then most certainly turn to the “well, it’s alive, it’s human, but who cares, it is not a PERSON” argument. …and, then we use our tactics to discuss personhood!
good thoughts. i enjoyed reading this. i did find, surprisingly, that i agreed with the author one one point:
"You can stand in the street holding a 5-foot photo of a tiny bloody foot, call it a day, tell yourself you've saved a lot of babies, when in reality you haven't changed one diaper."
i think we ought to complain a little less with our words, and do a little more with our hands. if more churches (as you offered yours) were willing to take in babies left on their doorstep, if more Christians were willing to adopt unwanted children, if we acted as if we have all the concern we suggest we do... i believe our world would be a very different place.
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