Chelsea Clinton Says It’s ‘Unchristian’ To End Legal Abortion. Claims She’s Deeply Pious

[ShadBo]

The goal of what? Opposition to abortion? I'd guess most groups opposed to abortion would like to see abortion prohibited in most cases. I'd guess they have interim goals like limiting how far into a pregnancy an abortion may be performed.

What exactly are you struggling with here?

My struggle is with people wanting legislation based upon bronze age mythology.

 

[ultramanhyata]

It would have been scandalous for Jesus to just come out and say "my Father never ordered the Midianite and Amalekite slaughters".

Jesus was the definition of "scandalous" and proved such a great offense to the Jewish religious tradition that the Jews ended up shouting "Crucify him!" and then made sure that the Romans did just that.

Even if you take the implausible position that Jesus was for some reason holding back this "revelation" about God's direction of the Israelite armies during his earthly ministry, shouldn't we expect to eventually see Paul or the apostles correcting the record at some point following Pentecost? Yet there is not a word about it in any of the NT writings.

At the end of the day, if these men were really God's prophets and messengers, wouldn't GOD HIMSELF have wanted to use their voices to clear up such a profound potential misunderstanding of his Nature and Character?

 

[Jorge Luis Borges]

My struggle is with people wanting legislation based upon bronze age mythology.

1. Please try to put together a more coherent and developed argument. Why pester me over several days about why this and why that if your only point is that you think Christianity is primitive?
2. Isn't it a bit disingenuous to present initiate a conversation saying "Please help me understand" and then concluding with an attitude like this?

 

[ShadBo]

1. Please try to put together a more coherent and developed argument. Why pester me over several days about why this and why that if your only point is that you think Christianity is primitive?
2. Isn't it a bit disingenuous to present initiate a conversation saying "Please help me understand" and then concluding with an attitude like this?

Sorry, you are right. I should not post from work because I don't get much time and I end up hammering out quick replies.

I'll try to find some time tonight to post something a little more substantial.

 

[Higus]

@IngaVovchanchyn

You made a good argument that abortion is against Christian doctrine. But in defense of Chelsea Clinton here, do you think its fair to make a distinction between the personal choice to have an abortion and the political question of whether or not to allow it legally? That is, may it be unChristian to have an abortion on a personal level but also unChristian at the level of policy to deny a woman the legal ability to have an abortion if the sum total effect of doing so leads to increased suffering for women?

This is very close to the Christian Pro-Choice argument laid out by Dr. Willie Parker. I've been recommending his book to anyone interested in abortion rights from either side.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/32333197-life-s-work

In Life’s Work, an outspoken, Christian reproductive justice advocate and abortion provider (one of the few doctors to provide such services to women in Mississippi and Alabama) pulls from his personal and professional journeys as well as the scientific training he received as a doctor to reveal how he came to believe, unequivocally, that helping women in need, without judgment, is precisely the Christian thing to do.

Dr. Willie Parker grew up in the Deep South, lived in a Christian household, and converted to an even more fundamentalist form of Christianity as a young man. But upon reading an interpretation of the Good Samaritan in a sermon by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., he realized that in order to be a true Christian, he must show compassion for all women regardless of their needs. In 2009, he stopped practicing obstetrics to focus entirely on providing safe abortions for the women who need help the most—often women in poverty and women of color—and in the hot bed of the pro-choice debate: the South. He soon thereafter traded in his private practice and his penthouse apartment in Hawaii for the life of an itinerant abortion provider, focusing most recently on women in the Deep South.

In Life’s Work, Dr. Willie Parker tells a deeply personal and thought-provoking narrative that illuminates the complex societal, political, religious, and personal realities of abortion in the United States from the unique perspective of someone who performs them and defends the right to do so every day. He also looks at how a new wave of anti-abortion activism, aimed at making incremental changes in laws and regulations state by state, are slowly chipping away at the rights of women to control their own lives. In revealing his daily battle against mandatory waiting periods and bogus rules governing the width of hallways, Dr. Parker uncovers the growing number of strings attached to the right to choose and makes a powerful Christian case for championing reproductive rights.

 

[Islam Imamate]

As a Christian who believes life begins at conception I immediately interpret your question as...would you consider it unChristian to prevent one person from murdering another? The answer to that is of course no.

I think this is a good question.

I think something for which Christians do not get enough credit is their ability to distinguish between what people ought to do and what people should be allowed to do. Freedom is a core tenet of the Christian faith. (Religious freedom more than political freedom. The Bible doesn't say altogether much about politics.) So from this angle, you could possibly craft a Christian argument for tolerating legal abortion at least in limited cases.

In terms of the sum total of suffering being greater for women if abortion is illegal, that kind of utilitarian argument isn't particularly Christian. The Christian view may view a course of action as wise or foolish based on its outcome, but issues like good and evil are considered intrinsic qualities that are not dependent on perceived outcomes. If something is sinful in the Christian view, then it is still sinful even if pursuing that course of action prospers.

Also, I am not making the argument that a Christian must actively and politically oppose abortion. Somewhere in this meandering thread I stated that opposition to abortion is not a major emphasis of mine. But the argument that to oppose abortion is anti-Christian still doesn't hold up well. A Christian who dedicates their time and energy to opposing what they see a moral evil is not being untrue to their religion.

Fair enough.