NetNews Usenet Archive 1993 #1/NN_1993_1.iso/spool/talk/abortion/54871

Internet Message Format | 1993-01-09 | 10.0 KB

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From: "James F. Tims" <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: Christian Pro-Choicers
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Date: Sat, 9 Jan 1993 16:01:10 GMT
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>DATE:   9 Jan 93 00:49:00 GMT
>FROM:   Doug Holtsinger <[e-mail]>
>
>In article <[e-mail]>
>"James F. Tims" <[e-mail]> writes:
>>>Doug Holtsinger <[e-mail]> writes:
>>>[e-mail] (Paul Hudson Jr) writes:
>
>>>> I personally find it repugnant to carry dead unborn babies around in a jar.
>
>>> I remember reading about a public opinion poll conducted during the
>>> early 1960s which showed that 60% of the public disagreed with the
>>> protest tactics of people who sought civil rights reforms.
>
>> 1962:   "My god, Martha, I think there's a nigger in here ordering lunch!"
>> Disapproval rate: 60%
>>
>> 1992:  "My god, Martha, that priest is carrying a dead fetus in his hands!"
>> Estimated disapproval rate: 80%.
>
>I'm not certain what your point is here, but I'll make mine
>clear.  Many of the more controversial protest tactics of
>the Civil Rights era, such as sitting at a "whites-only"
>lunch counter, met with a lot of disapproval during that era,
>including disapproval coming from people who supported Civil
>Rights.
>
>Today, we see that same kind of disapproval directed at people
>who carry around "dead unborn babies" in a jar.  I believe we
>should allow history to pass judgement on this practice, much
>in the same way that we allowed history to judge the practice
>of sitting at a "whites-only" lunch counter.
>
>>jim tims
>
>Doug Holtsinger

Nice work, you dishonest little weasel. Trim your own quote to remove the
idiotic implication without even indicating deletions, then cut the part
of my response that points it out.  Intellectual slime-ball.

You had added that the Civil Rights Act passed 8 months later.  I
extrapolated from your implied prediction that abortion would be
outlawed within 6 months, tongue in cheek.  Of course, my point was that
your analogy sucks rocks.  Let me be more explicit in expanding the imaginary
example:

1962: "Let's leave, Martha."

1992: "I think I'm going to vomit, Martha -- oh -- you alread have, I see."

The methods of the Civil Rights Movevment were not, in and of themselves,
repellent. Marching, singing "We Shall Overcome" (well, that one almost made
me puke -- just hate the song 8^), and riding in the front
of the bus did not cause people to faint from horror. The vile insensitivity
of fetus hoisting reflects the pitiless hatred and moral bankruptcy
of those holding your opinion.  The Civil Rights Movement was
non-violent by design, and when it turned into nasty riots, as when they
burned down U Street in DC after M.L. King was murdered, the actions
were condemned by the leadership.  Fire-bombing the clinics is part of
the organized strategy of anti-abortion groups.  Pro-lifers are, collectively,
little more than sick, ignorant, violent, lawless vigilante gangs.

The entry of religion into anti-abortion causes is quite new.  I add
this from "Perspective: Anti-abortion and Religion", Betty McCollister,
_Free Inquiry_, Winter '86, and hope that they don't sue for copyright
infringement. I'm going to type REAL fast, so there might be a lot of
typos.  My apologies, but my time is limited.

+Begin Quoted Article+

As the abortion battle waxes more glandular and violent, it is easy to forget
what a new battle it is, especially in its religious aspects.

Although conservative Catholics and fundamentalist Protestants now claim
to speak for God on the matter -- while Jews and mainstream Christians
tend to support pro-choice -- America's abortion laws were put on the books
by doctors, not clergy.  And, although the church did condemn abortion
from time to time, it usually recognized the "quickening: doctrine, proposed
by Aristotle and accepted by Augustine and Thoman Aquinas, which stated that
ensoulment took place at forty days if the fetus was male, at eighty days if
female.  Dispatch before ensoulment was not considered a crime until the
Vatican Council promulgated the idea that the fetus is human at
conception.  The same council defined papal infallibility and the
primacy of Rome.  It was led by Pope Pius IX, who had earlier proclaimed
as dogma the Immaculate Conception of the Bessed Virgin (not to be
confused with the Virgin Birth).

Anti-abortionists argue that modern science has confirmed the full
humanity of the zygote, or fertilized egg.  They conveniently overlook
other discoveries of modern science, e.g. that about a third of all
conceptions are spontaneously aborted, usually without the pregnant
woman's awareness; that the fetus is wholly dependent o the mother _in
utero_ and very much so after birth; and that babies deprived of good
care, either pre- or post-natally, are seriously at risk physically and
emotionally.

Combatants on both sides believe in the sanctity of human life.  the
standoff is over what constitutes it.  Pro-choice advocates emphasize
quality over quantity.  The understand that the zygote is genetically
coded but view as "potential" that which must be nurtured by parents and
communitiy for fifteen to twenty years if it is to flower.  They don't
overlook the father's part in conception or his responsibility to his
child, which anti-abortionists often do, especially those who combine
their crusade with the misogynist, anti-sexual bias that has
characterized much of Xianity since St. Paul so powerfully shaped the
new faith. Typically, the fanatically religious anti-abortionists
display the same intolerance and callous indifference to human suffering
that God's bullies always have.  The insist on the right of the fetus to
be born but are indifferent to its fate after birth.

And yet medical men got the laws passed with no help from the churches.
The best account of abortion history in this country is in James Mohr's
_Abortion in America: The Origins and Evolution of National Policy_. It
is short, clear, lively, fascinating and well illustrated, as well as
being scholarly.  Mohr writes that abortion was taken fro granted in
America, as it had been or millenia everywhere (especially when it was
between a woman and her midwife) until about 1850, when members of the
newly organized American Medical Association became concerned over the
number being performed dangerously by medical quacks.  Motivated at
first by a laudable desire to protect women's healthe, they later
included in their propaganda arsenal the anti-feminist argument that God
cretaed woment to bear children adn the racist argument that racially
inferior and undesirable Catholic women -- "the ignorant, the low-lived,
and the alien" -- were outbreeding "our own population as WASP women
aborted, and that "America is fast losing her national characteristics."
As an example of how things change, this argument, which is not used at
all nowadays, was very effective with state legislatures when there
lobbied by doctors fighting against abortion.

The doctors leveled more than one broadside at churches and clergy.
Medical journals acidly suggested that the churches placed revenue for
abortifacient ads above righteousness and called the clerics of the time
cowards and hypocrites, as in this blast from the Missouri State Medical
Association in 1863:
    Fearful as are the numbers of criminal abortions...we have yet
    to find the subject entertained by any one of the numberous conclaves
    of the religious men of our country who sit in high authority all over
    the land, and who pronounce upon topics political, religious, and
    governmental.
A short excursion into American history won;t end the war, but it should
defuse the religious argument to an extent.  Whether or not abortion is
permissible, it has rarely been a religious issue until the past decade.
As a reviewer in the _Christian Century_ wrpte: "Mohr makes it
abundantly clear that the Supreme Court decisions of the 1970s were not
a modern meakening of moral statndards but a return to what Americans
believed and practiced a hundred years ago."

Nor does Scripture give authority to the anti-abortionists.  The word
_abortion_ itself is not to be found in any of the Bible's 1200 pages.
There are only two references to the matter, neither suggesting that the
conceptus in fully human.  In Exodus 21, a person who causes a woman to
lose her fetus against her will must pay a fine; if she dies as well, he
must pay with his life.  The woman is fully human; the fetus is not.  In
Numbers 5, a woman accused of adultery is required to drink a potion; if
she aborts, she is found guilty.  This hardly implies a fully human
fetus.  Religious citizens have every right, it should go without
saying, to believe for sectarian reasons that abortion is murder.  But
religious history isn't behind them on this one.  Nither is the First
Amendment which requires us to respect the religoius beliefs of others.


-End Quoted Article-

The quoted article is for others on the thread, since I doubt you
will even take the time to read it.  Not that I think you would get the
point in any case -- probably way beyond your reading level.

If I have failed to offend you, I at least gave it my best shot.  It's
hard to match fetus hoisting for grossing everybody out, however.
If your hide is thick enough to accept fetus hoisting without fliching,
nothing should bother you too much.

  ,...,.,,
 /666;    ',    jim tims
////;    _~ -   [e-mail]
(/@/----0-~-0
 ;'  . `` ~ \'
  , `    ' , >    Quote for a parallel thread, from _Abortion_, by M. Potts:
;;|\..((   -C---->"...ideals demand that the practice of abortion shall be
;;| >-  `.__),;   exterminated with a strong hand." -- Adolf Hitler.