Christians CANNOT vote for Obama

Hard to believe that I am going here, but what the hell.

I am Catholic. I am personally against abortion and when asked for advice (which has been rare) I have counseled people to explore all options.

Having said that, there are a couple of points to be made for the true Christian. First, abortions have occured as far back as women were getting pregnant and not wanting to go to term -- certainly it was practiced in the days that Jesus walked the earth.

Second, there are only a handful of references to killing a fetus in the bible and those are basically addressing assault against someone who wants their baby.

I could post a laundry list of articles to "prove" my point here, but I think it is more instructive to go the other way.

http://www.priestsforlife.org/preaching/script1.html

This is a short article to assist priests with scriptural references they can use to make the case against abortion. Yes, it is possible to piece together an argument but one must wonder -- if this were indeed the huge moral dilemma of our planet, why did God not address it in no uncertain terms. Why did his Son not take the issue on directly. Surely Jesus was aware of the practice of purposely ending a pregancy. Surely, he was aware of the direction we would go and the controversies that would follow -- often in his name.

This is not intended to advance an argument that abortion is okee-dokey, but Christians should at least weigh the teachings of Jesus and the emphasis he placed on how we treat our fellow man after they have exited the womb.

So, what do we know. We know that us humans like to screw like bunnies. For many that temptation is reigned in by what we believe to be right and wrong. Nevertheless, even in a nation with a high percentage of people that believe in God and a high percentage that identify themselves as Christian, the overwhelming majority of us DO have sex before we are married. Even in those days gone by that we associate with innocence, 9 out of 10 were doing the business before they got married:

The vast majority of Americans have sex before marriage, including those who abstained from sex during their teenage years, according to “Trends in Premarital Sex in the United States, 1954–2003,” by Lawrence B. Finer, published in the January/February 2007 issue of Public Health Reports. Further, contrary to the public perception that premarital sex is much more common now than in the past, the study shows that even among women who were born in the 1940s, nearly nine in 10 had sex before marriage.

The new study uses data from several rounds of the federal National Survey of Family Growth to examine sexual behavior before marriage, and how it has changed over time. According to the analysis, by age 44, 99% of respondents had had sex, and 95% had done so before marriage. Even among those who abstained from sex until age 20 or older, 81% had had premarital sex by age 44.

“This is reality-check research. Premarital sex is normal behavior for the vast majority of Americans, and has been for decades,” says study author Lawrence Finer, director of domestic research at the Guttmacher Institute. “The data clearly show that the majority of older teens and adults have already had sex before marriage, which calls into question the federal government’s funding of abstinence-only-until-marriage programs for 12–29-year-olds. It would be more effective to provide young people with the skills and information they need to be safe once they become sexually active—which nearly everyone eventually will.”



http://www.guttmacher.org/media/nr/2006/12/19/index.html

What is crystal clear for anyone open-minded enough to take a look is that people have sex. Almost all people have sex before marriage. The great majority of those do not want that sex to result in pregnancy. So, I would submit that the real moral imperative is doing something to stop these pregnancies.

If this were something that had just come on over the past decade or so because of a perceived loosening of morals, I could understand the arguments for abstinence-only education. Kind of a "let's get back to where we were" argument. I think it is pretty clear that we were never there.

I am always told that we hate the sin but love the sinner. So, if people are going to have sex, and people are going to get pregnant and some of them are going to be looking to terminate their pregnancies regardless of whether it is legal or not, shouldn't our focus and our strategy and our resources be focused at stopping those unwanted pregnancies?

My understanding is that those numbers have increased under the Bush administration. Here is one good example of this trend:

I, Glen, am a Christian ethicist, and trained in statistical analysis. I am consistently pro-life. My son David is one witness. For my family, "pro-life" is personal. My wife caught rubella in the 8th week of her pregnancy. We decided not to terminate, to love and raise our baby. David is legally blind and severely handicapped; he also is a blessing to us and to the world. Gary Krane is an investigative journalist.

We look at the fruits of political policies more than words. We analyzed the data on abortion during the Bush presidency. There is no single source for this information - federal reports go only to the year 2000, and many states do not report - but we found enough data to identify trends. Our findings are disturbing.

Abortion was decreasing. When President Bush took office, the nation's abortion rates were at a 24-year low, after a 17.4 percent decline during the 1990s. This was a steady decrease averaging 1.7 percent per year. (The data come from Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life using the Guttmacher Institute's studies.)

Enter George W. Bush in 2001. One would expect the abortion rate to continue its consistent course downward, if not plunge. Instead, the opposite happened.

We found four states that have posted 3-year statistics: Kentucky's increased by 3.2% from 2000 to 2003. Michigan's increased by 11.3% from 2000 to 2003. Pennsylvania's increased by 1.9% from 1999 to 2002. Colorado's rates skyrocketed 111%. We found 12 additional states that reported statistics for 2001 and 2002. Eight states saw an increase in abortion rates (14.6% average increase), and four saw a decrease (4.3% average).

Under Bush, the decade-long trend of declining abortion rates appears to have reversed. Given the trends of the 1990s, 52,000 more abortions occurred in the United States in 2002 than would have been expected before this change of direction.


http://www.e-thepeople.org/article/35976/view

The policy of simply screaming about Roe v. Wade and decrying anything beyond abstinence has been a failure and at least appears to have resulted in more abortions, not less.

For anyone actually interested in reducing abortions, now is the time for a sober and realistic discussion. The hatred from the extreme points of view on both sides is not helping.

 

I've seen this brought up a few times. But lets think about it. If one was born in the 40's, that means that they were in their teens and 20's when?
take the 2...
round to the...
divide by....
mumblemumblemumbe...
ahh, got it. The 60's.


Oh gosh, people who grew up in the 60s were promiscuous. Gee thanks for the update. I hope that study was really expensive to find that out.

 

Well, I suppose you could try to shift our moral center back to the victorian age and good luck with that. Although my guess is that people were still doin the humpty hump, they were just more discrete about it.

The overarching question is "do you want to decrease the number of abortions?" If the answer is yes, then we need to drop the vitriol on all sides of the argument and start working towards that goal. We have had the most pro-life president in history with 75% of his term working with a republican congress and unwanted pregnancies appear to have increased in that period.

What we are doing is not working. Simply outlawing abortions will not provide you with an answer either. Some women will go to Canada or Mexico. Women who are doing better my go to the French Riviera. Women who are not so lucky will go to someone less than qualified, pay more and put themselves at a significant risk.

I know that it was most likely just a good sound bite, but Clinton had it right when he said that abortion needs to be safe, legal and rare.

No one likes abortion. So, why not work towards reducing it in a way that everyone should be able to get behind.

 

lets see 60's... victorian era. Yep nothing in between those two time periods. hyperbole much?

That's not to say everyone waited for marriage in the 20's, but using kids who came of age in the 60's as being "the past" and using that as the basis as to whether or not more people are waiting now vs. the past just doesn't cut it.


And honestly, whether or not people are having sex doesn't matter here. If you want to make abortions rare, how do you propose to go about it? By teaching kids about sex in 1st grade? By keeping infanticide legal by allowing the murder of babies who are born alive despite attempts to abort them?

Look if you're just fine and dandy about lots of people aborting their babies, thus denying them their right to life, then that's fine. Make the argument that it's just a lump of cells or it's just a leech living off it's host. I'd have more respect for that argument.

Don't come and say well people are going to have sex, and that's going to result in babies so you have to allow for abortions. People are also going to lie and cheat and steal no matter what rules and regulations we have. Difference with those is we make people take responsibility for their actions. Ohh there's a thought. Instead of worrying about who is and isn't waiting for marriage, worry that they take responsibility for themselves when they think they're old enough and mature enough to handle what may come from their actions.

 

The only way "rare" belongs in that cliche you libs always use is in the sense that the fetuses not "well done"

NARAL and NOW and alot of the libs not only like abortion, they love it. It is their no. 1 priority policy, and they fight tooth and claw to protect it. They'll reach to the bottom of the barrel to defeat any threat to unrestricted abortion, especially any possibility of Roe vs. Wade being overturned.

I'm pro-abortion just for practical reasons, but I despise the way this policy was forced by the supreme court and the unscrupulous tactics the pro-abortion forces use to protect it.

 

Isn't it responsible for those who have decided to have sex to take precautions that lessen the chance they will become pregnant by about 95%? Isn't it responsible for us as parents to insist on education on the full range of possibilities to prevent unwanted pregnancies?

Drop the first grade nonsense. You know that is not what Obama was advocating and if you think he was all for teaching kindergartners how to administer oral sex than we might as well lop off this discussion because its got no chance.

And while you are at it, you should drop the blob of cells or MURDER! arguments. You and I may have different moral opinions about abortions than others but there is no doubt that abortion is legal and is not defined as murder under our laws. You do subscribe to our laws don't you?

So, while I fully understand and appreciate those who believe that abortion is morally wrong and needs to be stopped AND believe that our laws should reflect that, I'm trying to start a discussion in the world of the here and now.

You will never eliminate legal abortion in this country. At best, you will overturn Roe v. Wade which will have the same affect I mentioned earlier. Women with money will travel for them. Women without will beg, borrow and steal to get themselves a dangerous and illegal abortion in more conservative states.

So, my point is that you should feel free to promote any advocacy groups you would like that try to educate women who have a choice to make the one you think is the better choice. You should also SUPPORT efforts to educate women on ways to prevent pregnancy. Abstinence? Absolutely, but that should be presented as the best but not only means of birth control.

While you think abortion is murder, I think you would benefit your own position by accepting that there are people who do not believe the same thing. Find common ground to reduce the numbers of unwanted pregnancy. In that common ground, you will probably get some things you like and have to live with things that you aren't crazy about -- like education as far back as sixth or seventh grade on how to prevent disease transmission and pregnancy.

 

This is helpful.

No one loves abortion. The groups you mention are certainly on the far left and will support policy that perhaps they don't even agree with personally because they don't want any chipping away at rights. They are not unlike the staunch NRA supporters who would fight like hell to protect the right to own ridiculously powerful weapons.

Despite what you think, there is a HUGE group of us "libs" who do not like the idea of abortion at all but are uncomfortable limiting personal choices of women. This thread, like most of the debate in this country, is being waged by white men. Hmmmmmm. I wonder why NOW and NARAL are so protective of their rights even when they seem unreasonable.

Do you not think that we can reduce unwanted pregnancies through education and birth control?

 

I believe it was a vote for having teachers give straightforward answers if their kids, as young as kindergarten, asked where babies came from. While it seems reasonable, it's not their place to tell kids about the birds and bees at such an early age if their parents don't want it. Obama was for it.

I didn't really make those arguments. I said it was a more debatable opinion than "gosh people are going to have sex, and even if it is murder, it should be legal." I don't know the answer as to whether it's a moral wrong or not.

This may sound cold. But not my problem. Again, personally responsibility

Never argued otherwise.

I believe I allowed for the possibility that some don't think that a fetus is a person.


Nice straw men though.

 

Sure, nothing wrong with that.

What I object to is the "emanations and penumbras" amendment to the constitution, not voted on except by some appointed judges. And the unscrupulous tactics used by those forces who attack any potential judge (or politician who might appoint those judges) who may not believe that you can amend the constitution so whimsically. At least the NRA has an actual amendment to base their arguments on.

The NARAL-types aren't sheepish in their defense of abortion rights. They're fanatical. Saying that they disapprove of abortion is less credible than saying that the NRA disapproves of guns.

 

I will probably surprise you by saying that I agree with much of this. I don't necessarily agree that a court can't find a right of privacy in the bill of rights. It is important to understand that that concept developed over a long period of time and was not just created out of thin air by Douglas. Indeed, there are aspects of privacy sprinkled throughout the bill of rights and thank God for that. Soldiers can't come and live in your home, your home, your car, your person are protected from unreasonable search by the government without due process etc.

Still, I understand the anti-Roe argument against the penumbra. Roe was the result of choice activists really pushing to extablish this constitutional right. I have always been a big believer that courts should practice small law. Don't go for those big sweeping constitutional principles when its not warranted. The system works best in tiny bites. Small decisions build into solid law. Small decisions also yield small mistakes that can be easily corrected.

If you look at where we were in this country with women's rights in the late sixties and early seventies, abortion laws were left to the states and, although not consistent, women were GAINING in their choice rights year by year.

Enter Roe. Now we have this big constitutional right, and what have we seen since then? First, we have seen a politically charged nightmare. Pre-Roe, there was not this incredibly divided and hostile battle. Sure there were people on both sides, but Roe galvanized the two sides in a debate fuelled by hatred (on both sides). As a result, the pro-choice crowd "won" this right that has then been chipped away at for the past 30 years. Waiting periods, parental consent and many others, have all been tools to limit the right.

I honestly think that in the cooler debate that existed when this was left to states, that had they continued down the road of small law confined to the states, that the pro-choice crowd may very well be better off today than they are under Roe.

 

This is troubling. We can't agree too much or Archer will call me a liberal again.

How about the "wall of separation?" I think that's another area where the court established a new principle that was ungrounded in the constitution and has created nothing but headaches. The supreme court judges complain about their workload and then invite an unending stream of trivial lawsuits, and then they waste their time sharpening an impossible distinction.

Don't like prayer in school? Tough, get in line and complain to the school board like the ones annoyed by sex education have to do.

 

I don't want to agree too much either, but I do think that they have set up a system of the trivial. I'm not the only one . . .

Finally, any reconciliation between faith and democratic pluralism requires some sense of proportion.

This goes for both sides.

Even those who claim the Bible's inerrancy make distinctions between Scriptural edicts, sensing that some passages - the Ten Commandments, say, or a belief in Christ's divinity - are central to Christian faith, while others are more culturally specific and may be modified to accommodate modern life.

The American people intuitively understand this, which is why the majority of Catholics practice birth control and some of those opposed to gay marriage nevertheless are opposed to a Constitutional amendment to ban it. Religious leadership need not accept such wisdom in counseling their flocks, but they should recognize this wisdom in their politics.

But a sense of proportion should also guide those who police the boundaries between church and state. Not every mention of God in public is a breach to the wall of separation - context matters. It is doubtful that children reciting the Pledge of Allegiance feel oppressed or brainwashed as a consequence of muttering the phrase "under God." I didn't. Having voluntary student prayer groups use school property to meet should not be a threat, any more than its use by the High School Republicans should threaten Democrats. And one can envision certain faith-based programs - targeting ex-offenders or substance abusers - that offer a uniquely powerful way of solving problems.

So we all have some work to do here. But I am hopeful that we can bridge the gaps that exist and overcome the prejudices each of us bring to this debate. And I have faith that millions of believing Americans want that to happen. No matter how religious they may or may not be, people are tired of seeing faith used as a tool of attack. They don't want faith used to belittle or to divide. They're tired of hearing folks deliver more screed than sermon. Because in the end, that's not how they think about faith in their own lives.


Name that presidential candidate.

 

Let's see.....Lyndon LaRouche? Or Obama? It's gotta be one of those 2-hour infomercial guys.