‘Abortion is a blessing’ says divinity school dean
flockwoodAs a youngster, I remember my congregation singing a corny-little ditty called “Count Your Blessings.” I’m guessing this isn’t precisely the kind of blessing they had in mind.
The Boston Phoenix has an interesting write-up about the newly selected head of the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, Mass.
June 4th, 2009 at 3:32 pm
Well. . . .my county has something like 600 kids in foster care. That means no one in their family wants to take care of them. Given the stats about what happens to a lot of these kids when they grow up and while they are growing up, I’m guessing not being born at all would be a blessing to some (not all of course.)
I really don’t care to hear naysayers unless they are current foster parents. Unless you are willing to harbor the unwanted life, you can’t really call yourself “pro life” in my opinion.
June 4th, 2009 at 3:51 pm
This article is pretty good, as are most articles in the Phoenix. The article quotes her as saying that the tragedy is not the abortion itself, but the circumstances that lead to the abortion. And that’s right. As Madge says, if we truly were concerned about children — born and unborn — we wouldn’t be running the only westernized democracy without health care for poor families, or a foster care system that’s more like Dickens than The Waltons.
One of my best friends is a foster parent, and if I experienced for one day what he goes through every day, I’d go crazy. But he and a few other dedicated foster parents are trying to make a difference with children, nearly all of whom have been sexually abused (usually by family members) and most of whom will end up in prison or in dead end jobs.
There’s also the whole crime issue. Studies, popularized in part by the Freakonomics book, show that the decline in crime rates over the last 30 years or so correspond exactly to the availability of abortion as a safe and legal procedure. If the right wingers are successful in outlawing abortion, the next thirty years will see a horrible crime wave, and I wonder what plans the right wing has to deal with this, other than locking up everything that moves the way they do now. Of course, if the right wing had any plans to deal with unwanted pregnancies, ignorance about birth control, or poverty, we wouldn’t be in this mess.
But hey, maybe Rush Limbaugh and rich people really are right. We’ll see.
June 4th, 2009 at 5:08 pm
I voted for Obama, am not (even close to being) a fan of Rush Limbaugh or of the High Priestess of Abortions. A pro-choice leader with the courage to come out as a pro-abortion leader. So much for the “no one is really pro-abortion” argument. It was just a matter of time. Hey, maybe we can work towards blessing abortion on demand for gender selection, as the high courts in Sweden just allowed. We’re already blessed with down-selecting Down Syndrome beings — oh oh, wait a minute. Does that mean we might be blessed with eliminating those inconvenient gay fetuses, too, down the road, or would that be politically incorrect? That’s a hard one. I know, let’s figure out what kinds of people have the highest crime rates and allow tremendous blessings among that bunch, for sure! Abort inconvenience and be blessed. We’re gonna need a lot more ethics majors to tell us what to do, if it’s not too inconvenient.
God help us.
June 4th, 2009 at 6:35 pm
Its not just about abortion, its about a host different elements that we somehow twist away from 10 basic rules of life and then justify our actions. As I read that article, I could tell that woman had never had experienced the pure love given by a child. She doesn’t know the other side of a life. Citing her justification for abortion would equate into maybe 3 percent of the abortions annually, thats the high end.
The world is mean place, but killing babies isn’t the solution.
How’s war been working for us? We have seen many of them, many a parent has had to face their child coming home in a box. Whats the difference in war casualty and a social casualty. Their both dead, one was able to experience life and love, the other never got to see daylight.
You know, as a whole, society has failed again. Our most prominent achievement over the course of history is and has been the ability to kill each other.
Its kinda funny how mental illness wasn’t brought up in Tillers murder, a good shot was given to the “left wingers”.
Who’s kidding who, people want the choice to do as they please with no consequence, seems to work as long as you really don’t beleive you’ll have to answer to God.
Me, I think I’ll stay on the cautious side of religion and not push my luck, telling God how his rules should be.
June 8th, 2009 at 11:48 am
It’s not a blessing but a tragedy to answer tragedy with tragedy. That’s not Christlike, it’s demonic, and Ragsdale knows it but is surpressing the truth in her unrighteousness. She needs to repent and throw herself on the mercy of the Lord Jesus Christ for leading the blind into the moral ditch.
June 8th, 2009 at 8:48 pm
Man, it’s nice to know that, as an adoptive father of children who were in crisis-pregnancy situations, I have street cred with Madge… But I digress.
Abortion is the killing of a child. It is always wrong, and never right, regardless of circumstances. This is hardly an ethical quagmire, and you’d think this would be easier for people to grasp, black-and-white as it is, but there are always those who want to write off their sins as mere choices.
This “blessing” nonsense alone illustrates Ragsdale’s gaping lack of qualification to set herself up as being any sort of theologian, much less a member of the clergy. Granted, she has done so in what used to be a Christian denomination but no longer is, so perhaps we should not be surprised. Yet even though she owns a high position in the faux-faith of Episcopalianism (being as it is the home of V. Gene Robinson and others who condone a host of sins as “choices”), it would be unwise to ignore Ragsdale’s nonsense completely.
Some folks just might think she knows what she’s talking about; remember, there are those who actually think Barack Obama is a good President (or a Christian, for that matter, just as they might think it of Ragsdale), so anything’s possible.
Pardon my bluntness, but anyone who insists killing children is a “blessing” is evil, just as evil as anyone who insists killing abortionists is a worthy enterprise. Just as with President Obama, I pray that Ragsdale will repent, be saved, and actually become a follower of the Christ Who is now merely used as a prop.
–Mike
June 9th, 2009 at 9:49 am
Mike, maybe we should just shoot the people who commit these horrible sins? That would stop it in its tracks.
June 9th, 2009 at 11:26 am
Sarcasm aside, Mike,adopting a baby is lovely but it’s not the same as being a good foster home to a kid that no body wants, who probably has real problems and isn’t a cute little baby anymore. Your baby, for at least most of her life, was wanted–what a gift to her. Many kids born unwanted never have that feeling, and the damage it does to them (even if they are otherwise treated decently) in in many cases insurmountable.
Your hyperbole in the last paragraph is a bit much, and could easily be used by some as a slippery slope to justifying very bad acts.
June 9th, 2009 at 2:12 pm
madgebaby,
Having a crappy childhood doesn’t negate the preciousness of the gift that life is. What’s more, for Christians, including members of Ragsdale’s denomination, we recognize that the damage done to unwanted children IS surmountable by the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
Embracing the saving love of Jesus Christ is to embrace perfect love. The perfect love of God that casts out fear and brings reconciliation with God.
June 9th, 2009 at 2:25 pm
If that’s the case, Tertius, then why don’t anti-choicers do something about the problems created by unwanted children rather than attacking women for having abortions? I’ve seen a lot of anti-choice protests, but I’ve never seen an anti-choicer do anything useful to help the children or the mothers.
June 9th, 2009 at 7:25 pm
Wow. I’m stunned:
“we recognize that the damage done to unwanted children IS surmountable by the Gospel of Jesus Christ.” I’ve seen my share of miracles, but I’ve never seen anyone pray their way out of an attachment disorder (it would be the emotional equivalent of praying a long lost limb reattached).
Jesus delegates the legwork on this one to us. And we really suck at it. Until we do better, the humane thing to do is to allow women access to medically safe and legal abortion, at least in the first trimester. And teach boys and girls to be responsible procreators. We clearly suck at that one too.
June 9th, 2009 at 7:32 pm
“Given the stats about what happens to a lot of these kids when they grow up and while they are growing up, I’m guessing not being born at all would be a blessing to some (not all of course.)”
Talk about a slippery slope! Who makes the decision about which life is going to be so terrible that it shouldn’t be given a change to be lived? That is just a ridiculous statement in the extreme. Having lived in a third world country, there are very few people in this nation who truly know what it is to live in poverty.
Since this is a religious blog, I’ll ask this question: How “far” do each of you think when discussing a topic like this? Is this life all there is? Sometimes I read responses on this blog and feel like the “answers” given do not take into account that this life is not the end, but very much the beginning of an eternal existence. Every terrible thing we can live through here will be taken into consideration by a loving God when we meet Him. Or don’t you believe that?
Madge, you say that the lack of love in some childrens’ lives is “insurmountable.” Really? I am not saying that there are not kids whose lives are very difficult and sad, but nothing is insurmountable. It will take effort and help from those who have in helping the “have nots” but killing them before birth is not the answer.
I am not a strict “pro-lifer” if you use the Catholic or Evangelical definition, but abortion as a means of birth control is just plain wrong. My wife and I have discussed this topic at length; what would we do in case of rape? What about a deformed or handicapped child? Ultimately, yes it is her body that is carrying the child, but the argument of “it’s my body…” does not hold water at all because the woman is not killing “her body” but the baby’s body.
And no, Madge, my wife and I are not foster parents at this time, but we did spend several years as house parents in a half way house for kids between detention and home, whose parents either could not or would not care for them. I was a foster brother in my parents home to close to a dozen kids.
And really, Caleb, poverty and our full jails are really the result of too little abortion in this country? That’s really what you’re saying. Dang, why don’t we just kill 20% of our unborn children and solve those problems? Oh, right….we already do.
“In 2004, the abortion ratio was 238 per 1,000 in 49 reporting areas…” –Abortion Surveillance — United States, 2004, Division of Reproductive Health
National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion
June 10th, 2009 at 7:29 am
I used to work as a therapist, and from what I saw in that work not being wanted by anyone early in life very often created a hole psychologically that noting could fill. Even the most resillient suffered mightily from the understanding that there were not wanted by the people who raised them. Sure, some amazingly strong individuals manage to really recover, and others manage just fine as walking wounded, but I truly feel that this–bringing a child into the world, not loving him, not giving him to someone else to love in good enough shape so that he can benefit from the situation–is sin much more than the act of abortion. It’s a long time to wait for Heaven if you twelve and mom’s most recent boyfriend is beating the crap out of you.
Of course adoption is the best alternative, but if a person has the combination of altruism, forethought, and self-sacrifice required to go through with putting a child up for adoption they are probably much less likely to end up in that situation in the first place.
And the tired old “abortion as birth control” argument is just not true. Lots of women are forced into sex and are kept from using birth control, and abortion is their only alternative. Others are forced into it because they lack the autonomy to make a conscious choice to use contraception. Others make stupid mistakes, sometimes over and over. Not any of those women are using “abortion as birth control”. In our country abortion is to hard to get (unless you live in some urban areas) and too expensive to be used in that way.
I think there are DJJ statistics to back up what Caleb is saying about the incarceration rate and the abortion rate, and I think those rates would also be correlated to the rate of incarcerated people who were unwanted at birth and who have related psychiatric diagnoses. It’s a sad situation.
I should add that I can’t imagine having an abortion personally. What a terrible thing to go through! In no way should my pro choice stance be taken as some facile approval of abortion generally. It is incumbent on everyone to help people be more responsible with their sexuality and with procreation. That’s the work of the church, not being punitive with people who find themselves in the position of an unwanted pregnancy.
June 10th, 2009 at 10:22 am
Okay, David, you don’t like my answer, but what’s yours? Anti-choice people seem to view the world like children: Abortion is oh so so wrong, we just can’t do it. Fine. Then what’s the alternative? You laugh at my statistics that show that our decline in crime rate is largely due to the abortion of unwanted children, but what solution do you offer? You dispute my prediction that if we make abortion illegal again (and it was illegal for only a short time in the grand scheme of the common law), we will once again have women showing up in emergency rooms with botched attempts at self-abortion, but what do you offer these women? A jail sentence? Being prosecuted for attempting abortion?
I have seen lots of anti-choice web sites, and while each one of them will show you no end of gory pictures of aborted fetuses, not one has ever shown me any information about programs for expectant mothers or unwanted children. If these so-called pro-life organizations spent a tenth as much money trying to help women or help people adopt these unwanted children as they spend on endless PR campaigns, or if they used half the energy they use to stir up their adherents emotionally, we might be a little further down the road on this issue. Instead, they spend their time and energy handing out the names and addresses of people who work in clinics like Dr. Tiller’s (presumably so their adherents can pray for them better), and picketing these clinics, and then are absolutely SHOCKED when one of their flock takes the law into his own hands. And these people claim to be Christians.
Oh yes, the Catholics. Forgot about them. Their solution is to lock the children in Catholic orphanages such as the ones recently in the news in Ireland so that they can be economically exploited, sexually molested and beaten. Good solution, guys. And I wonder what the crime rate is among these children of God and the Church after they leave the orphanages?
And Tertius, I have to agree with Madge: I’ve never seen anyone pray a kid out of PTSD or attachment disorder or the effects of years of sexual and mental abuse. I’m waiting for the anti-choice movement to grow up a little bit and talk about policy instead of pointing fingers.
June 10th, 2009 at 12:24 pm
Caleb, you’re looking for something that doesn’t exist. You’re looking for a perfect world. You’re asking that babies only be born into a perfect existence. That is NOT going to happen until He who rules perfectly comes again.
But the answer is certainly not “abort babies because they won’t be born into a perfect world and might end up with a hardships in life.”
However, I do believe that the way the “pro-life” movement goes about their business is sometimes reprehensible. They would be better off forgetting all the gory pictures and doing what you suggest. In our church we have LDS Social Services, which helps unwed mothers who choose to put their babies up for adoption in contact with couples who wish to adopt. If they choose to keep their babies, they are helped with job skills and such to give their children a chance at a better life. So, yes, there are those in the world that don’t just turn a blind eye to the problem, but offer solutions for those who wish to find them.
Like I said, I am not “anti-choice,” as you’d prefer to call it. Our church allows for abortion in cases of incest, rape and if the child has been determined by competent medical opinion to not be able to live outside the womb once delivered. Even these cases however are still left up to the mother to decide what she will or will not do. She is encouraged to decide with her husband, her local priesthood leaders, and yes, her God through prayer. You see, we believe that if one asks, they will certainly be counseled through the Spirit on what to do. Do I believe abortion should be totally illegal? No. do I believe it should be illegal where the only reason is for birth control? Yes.
Do we need better policies regarding poverty? Sure we do. Do I have all the answers? Heck no I don’t. However, you’re taking one extreme (your example of the Catholic orphanages) and using it as a justification for another extreme (abortion as a means of birth control). That is neither a logical or a legitimate argument. It takes away the fact that each of us are individuals with a right to be born on this earth and take our place in our Father’s plan for his children. Given your liberal leanings, that is predictable. Rights of the masses always are more important than the rights of the individual, correct? If one baby may, statistically speaking, may grow up to be a criminal it would be better of to not take that chance and abort that fetus now, right?
Using that argument, because if you make that argument, Caleb, you must go to it’s obvious end, I wonder how many of those we consider “great” in this world would have been aborted? How about Andrew Jackson? Billy Mills? Colin Powell? All were born into less than ideal circumstances, weren’t they? How far do you take your argument, Caleb?
Heck, Caleb, using your rationale, I should have been aborted. Being born in a low socioeconomic class to a single mother who had no intention of putting me up for adoption when I was born (that didn’t happen until she was talked into it by an evangelical couple after it was proved she couldn’t take care of my brother and me….wonder what they would think if they knew they were somewhat responsible for me ending up a Mormon…) it was statistically probable that I would have ended up as less than a desirable citizen.
If you asked my wife, my children, those who I serve at church, my employer, and perhaps even some of my friends, I’m hopeful they would say that hasn’t been the case.
June 10th, 2009 at 1:36 pm
David, I have no doubt that the Mormons do better on this issue than many others, simply because they do tend to be pretty efficient about what they do. But unfortunately, the world of anti-choice is neither as efficient nor as kind, and I don’t see them attempting to effect the same sorts of reforms nationwide.
We can go into a reverie about who might or might not have been aborted if you want to, but that hardly amounts to public policy, which has to look at the big picture, and suggest solutions for those not aborted who are not Beethoven or Einstein. The problem is not the ones who rise above their origins, but the majority who don’t.
June 10th, 2009 at 3:43 pm
First of all, since we (LDS) are very “efficient” in this matter, why wouldn’t others follow suit? Sort of like our welfare program. It’s is more efficient than anything ever done by government. Congress has even had our presiding bishop testify as to how the LDS church runs their welfare program, but the government is too inefficient, or just plain stupid, to follow the leader.
Secondly, who should be appointed to predict which will “rise above their origins?” You? Me? And should we expect someone to be Beethoven or Einstein just to live on this earth? Neither you nor I would have qualified, Caleb.
It sounds like you want each baby to be born into Utopia or life just isn’t worth it. That isn’t realistic, nor was it ever promised by He who created the earth.
June 10th, 2009 at 4:29 pm
The question is not whether being born outside Utopia is worth it, but what we’re going to do to make the world the baby is born into more Utopian. As far as why other organizations haven’t followed suit, you tell me. They haven’t, and I don’t see any sign that they will. They’d rather just shoot the abortionists and ignore the children. The bottom line is that whatever they’re doing, it’s not much, it’s not working, and I don’t see them doing anything better.
June 10th, 2009 at 6:34 pm
Whoa. So rape and incest are worthy reasons for legal abortion, but having a bad boyfriend and making stupid choices aren’t?
These are REALLY patriarchal reasons. The father and the rapist don’t have to bear the brunt of their sin, but the woman who makes a mistake does. That’s sexism defined.
June 10th, 2009 at 6:49 pm
“Who makes the decision about which life is going to be so terrible that it shouldn’t be given a change to be lived?”
Perhaps this question was meant to be rhetorical but lots of people make decisions of life and death every day, at least collectively. It’s naive to think otherwise. And in many situations you might well affirm that they are acting reasonably, maybe even responsibly.
One of my relatives was the unplanned product of two people (one married, one not) and a bottle of tequila. He was raised by a single mom with the help of her parents. It was a difficult decision and a big sacrifice for a number of people, but now he is a honor student and an outstanding young man. If two adults had been more responsible some years ago this young man never would have been conceived. If they considered their actions soberly they almost surely would have decided against giving this boy a chance to live. Would you call that playing God? I don’t get it.
June 10th, 2009 at 7:04 pm
So long as people are willing and able to make those sacrifices there’s not really a problem, is there?
For a lot of young single mothers there’s just no one willing to make those sacrifices, clearly.
June 10th, 2009 at 8:34 pm
David,
Do the LDS really provide financial support for single mothers who are pregnant because their college boyfriend bailed when she told him she was pregnant? Or for the working mom of three kids with ADHD whose husband is a compulsive gambler who just found out she is pregnant at 45? Or the teenage foster kid who was sexually abused by mom’s string of boyfriends until she ran away at 14 and soon found herself pregnant by one of the many men she slept with for room and board until the state caught up with her six months later? What about the innocent college freshman who is given a date rape drug and finds herself pregnant and truly has no idea what happened? That would be helpful to know.
June 11th, 2009 at 8:13 am
Madge, reading your post, thinking about it and then rehashing it, I came to the conclusion once again, the main problems concerning these abortion issues are moral. Everything in your post required a decision on one or more parts to take part in an act that is/was immoral. The solution, “How can you make people think?”. The population gripes about social programs but in fact, that all the family some of these people have.
It all comes down to an element of society that is concerned only about their particular needs, nobody else’s. Let me ask you this, “How is legalising abortion going to solve this issue in society?”.
June 11th, 2009 at 8:43 am
1. Abortion is already legal.
Here are the moral questions we need to be asking
2. How is criminalizing it going to make the situation better? Abortion has been around since people have been around, but it was extremely dangerous until it was legalized.
3. sexual activity by its’ nature requires two people. How can we hold men and women equally responsible for their choices? the way it works now, particularly with the imperfect contraceptive options available and the limited access to abortion, only women are held responsible.
4. How can the Church focus on raising healthy children and families instead of being punitive with people who don’t fit into the narrow category? This is surely the model Jesus sat for us
June 11th, 2009 at 10:40 am
Madge, your point no. 2 is, I think, particularly important. When we got into this discussion some time ago, I wrote a long-winded post analyzing abortion law back to Adam (or at least Bracton), showing that abortion was legal during what we would call the first trimester under the English common law until that law was changed by statute, which in most states of the United States occurred in the late 1800s.
I have seen statistics that show that more abortions per year occurred illegally in the United States during the ’60s, prior to Roe v. Wade, than occur legally today. The number of abortions performed in this country is dropping steadily year by year, perhaps because of better education about birth control, and perhaps because of enhanced adoption programs. Prior to the enactment of Roe v. Wade, abortion was an illegal and dangerous procedure, requiring the woman to either deal with a physician willing to perform abortions, and you can imagine the quality of physicians willing to do this (most were alcoholics or drug addicts), or had to resort to non-physician abortionists, who were totally incompetent.
When I pointed that out on this blog some time ago, someone posted a reply suggesting that stories of women dying from botched abortions were either false or exaggerated. I was stunned. I had wondered to myself how the right wing would answer the argument that, absent safe legal abortions, abortions would remain common but would become unsafe and illegal. I found that the right wing answered it like it generally answers questions of public policy: It will lie. Apparently the deniers have become common enough that a retired physician wrote an article in the NYTimes not long ago recounting his experiences as a New York City emergency room intern in the ’60s, and the number of botched illegal abortions he had to treat. We forget that an entire generation of both women and physicians has grown up in the era of safe legal abortions, and has no experience of the bad old days.
I hope that ignorance of history doesn’t condemn us to repeat it.
June 11th, 2009 at 2:10 pm
Caleb, history has a strange way of addressing social issues. Abortion in my opinion is one of the strangest, followed only by war. War statistically kills less than abortion.
Over 800k abortions are still performed annually, with the majority, over half being performed on women under 25, with 82% of them being unmarried.
It’s a social behavior that hasn’t been dealt with since the beginning of time. Men and women act like animals and the solution is abortion.
Looks to me history hasn’t changed. I will give you, the decline is continuing, but almost a million babies a year. That’s real social responsibility. That’s a real solution.
June 11th, 2009 at 3:10 pm
Anti-choice people certainly love statistics, but one statistic they never want to give is how many women used to die from botched backroom abortions. I guess that’s a statistic we’re willing to live with. We tend to forget that this was the primary reason that so many people lobbied to make abortion legal in the ’60s and early ’70s.
June 11th, 2009 at 6:46 pm
Perplexed,
That sort of sexual behavior is pretty normal to humanity (just look at the colonies, that hotbed–literally–of puritanism). What isn’t normal is that men leave their children behind. One of the many reasons we need legal and safe abortion.
Here’s another one: 30% of pregnancies (at least, probably many more) end before a live birth. Maybe nature is what nature is, and we are, well natural at our core.
I want women to have dignified, private, and humane medical treatment when they need it. That’s all.
June 11th, 2009 at 6:46 pm
Got those statistics right off the Center for Disease Control site, thats government accounting.
June 11th, 2009 at 6:59 pm
Madge, its a problem that’s never been dealt with, its wasn’t right then, its not right now. I realise that backroom abortions in the 50’s and 60’s were done with coat hangers and God knows what else. Why,with so many available options of birth control hasn’t this number dropped even more. Its because there is no social responsibility. In my town Madge, most of the divorced men I know have their kids at least half the time and quite a few have full custody. I think if you’ll look into it you’ll find the men are responsible in raising their kids as much or more than the mothers. We need to teach these young people to be responsible for their actions. We need to stop making it easy for them, when we’re gone,what will happen to them, how will they deal with adversity?
June 12th, 2009 at 2:50 am
The best birth control options have significant failure rates. Some very large number of unintended pregnancies happen when the couple is using contraception appropriately. The “best” methods (hormonal) have side effects that are intolerable to a lot of people. The more tolerable methods are far less effective.
Perplexed, divorced men are an entirely different issue than men who never took responsibility in the first place. Even the anti abortion research indicates that the role of the father is hugely significant in the woman’s choice to have an abortion.
It could be argued that the majority of people think that a person, faced with contraceptive failure and with the knowledge that the father could not care less about this offspring, is doing the responsible thing in seeking out a safe and legal abortion.
One side note: is abortion an “easy” choice where you live? It sure isn’t here from a financial perspective. at least 400 dollars (more for anesthesia) plus transportation and in some cases overnight lodging (14 states require a 24 hour waiting period and 1 requires an 18 hour waiting period).
June 12th, 2009 at 6:07 am
Madge, if the women thinks the man is such a bad choice for the father, why on earth did she have sex with him. Was he pretty! Its once again boils down to social responsibility.
June 12th, 2009 at 4:47 pm
Perplexed,
You can’t be naive enough to think it’s as simple as that for the vast majority of people. Were it so, we wouldn’t be having this dialogue. . . .again. It does sound like you buy into the notion that only women are responsible for their sexual activity. Your argument sounds sort of like nasty ole Dr. Laura
June 12th, 2009 at 6:27 pm
Madge, you really can’t see the difference between rape or incest and willingly having sex with someone? OK…I’ll explain it to you. In the first two, the woman had no choice in the matter. Does that explain it for you?
And, if you read my post more clearly you’d see that I said it is ultimately the woman’s choice. If she was to abort after rape, incest or the medical situation I described, then she would never face any kind of church discipline. If she chose to abort a child simply because she didn’t want the baby, then she could, as could any church member father if they were party to it. The severity of the discipline; informal or formal probation, being disfellowshipped, or excommunication, would depend on her gospel knowledge, attitude of repentance, etc. Her church leaders would treat her as an individual. There are guidelines, but no strict rules, regarding such a matter.
As for “financial support” for those various people you mention, the answer is yes, if they need it. The money isn’t just thrown around. However, we have one of the most admired welfare systems in the country and we do help your girls who are pregnant, single moms who need to find jobs, etc.
If that young girl, for example, has parents to look to for help, those parents are expected to help. If they can’t then, yes, the church can help.
Obviously, those who we help are our church members, but the help is not limited to just church members. In our area, when we have a “welfare activity” no one is excluded, LDS or not.
We do not throw funds at people who will continue to abuse the system, some personal responsibility is expected. I would imagine if that someone came to the church for help and then continued, after several chanced, to act in a self destructive manner, they would find the help coming less and less.
I can say this with no hesitation, because I spent several years working for a state health and welfare program, taking relative sizes of each program and dollars used, the LDS welfare system is much more efficient and helps more people get up on their feet than any government system that has ever been devised.
As for the legality of the procedure, I’ll just say this. Of course the procedure should continue to be legal. There is a difference between giving a choice to a woman who has been raped and one who simply chose to be irresponsible (according to God, sex outside of marriage is irresponsible, and I will not argue that point because it is irrefutable). Making the procedure completely illegal would take that choice away from a woman who has become pregnant through no choice of her own.
June 12th, 2009 at 6:39 pm
As for what perplexed is saying, I have to agree totally. The “standards” have dropped dramatically. Does the excuse that some, even a majority, choose to act outside of the commandments of God, allow society to just drop our standards and say, “What the hell, everyone is doing it so instead of teaching our children what we expect of them, we’ll just throw them some condoms and birth control pills and let them go at it like rabbits!”
I’m not some prude. I teach my children that sex is a beautiful and wonderful gift. It’s not dirty, it’s not filthy and it’s not something that we don’t talk about. But it is a gift from God and He expects us to use his gifts responsibly. When we don’t there are consequences and there is repentance. I realize that people have sex outside of marriage and that there are going to be issues there, including unwanted babies. I was one of them. That doesn’t mean for one second that the best solution is to lower the standards of what God expects from His children. And I’ll go out on a limb and say that our Father does not think that murdering unborn children is the answer to this most difficult question.
June 12th, 2009 at 6:46 pm
“You can’t be naive enough to think it’s as simple as that for the vast majority of people.”
Your statement is puzzling to say the least. Actually it is that simple, Madge. I choose with whom I have sexual relations, as does everyone unless the act has been forced upon them and I’ve already addressed that.
You know, disregarding my last line of my last post, this issue is not that difficult; except for those who choose to condemn all who might need an abortion for a legitimate reason, or those who choose to believe there should not be consequences for conscience decisions to copulate outside of the covenant of marriage.
June 12th, 2009 at 8:30 pm
David,
You aren’t arguing that abortion should be made illegal or should be considered sinful in all situations (although I do think that the “rape/incest” exception means that women suffer for “sin” more than men do). Your position is more nuanced than most who weigh in on this topic, frankly
Sure: you are a free moral agent who acts with integrity when it comes with sexuality. I’ve been very faithfully married for a long time so the same applies to me and perhaps most of us who comment here on this blog. The ability to act in such a conscious and disciplined way is not a skill many people have, either because they have not been taught/lacked role models or they do something stupid and then regret it. Even people who develop that ability don’t necessarily have it as adolescents, or learn its’ merits the hard way.
Your children are fortunate–most kids don’t get lesson one on the dignity of human sexuality at home. They get the opposite, or they get nothing at all. From pop culture girls learn that they are primarily sexual objects and boys learn that they aren’t accountable to anyone, which leads as we all well know to disaster.
I say all this to say that these issues are much more subtle that what Perplexed in particular suggest, and that binding people to burdens that we don’t help them bear is decidedly un-Christian. It is unjust that women bear the weight of sexual “sin” so much more heavily than men do, and that’s not news or at least it shouldn’t be. Jesus broke up the stoning of the woman caught in adultery and in that action condemmed that sort of self-righteous sexism.
June 12th, 2009 at 8:50 pm
Madge, if you can justify aborting almost a million babies a year for the last 20 years, I’m listening.
June 12th, 2009 at 8:53 pm
Expecting me to believe the primal instinct takes over in humans is a little naive on your part isn’t it.
June 13th, 2009 at 5:41 am
Hmmm. I didn’t say either of these things, P.
June 15th, 2009 at 10:10 pm
Madge,
I hope I don’t come over as judgmental in any way. All of us make mistakes and unfortunately, a lot of them in our society are sexual in nature. I’m not perfect either and have tried to learn from my mistakes. That being said I believe a few things:
1)We should teach and expect the “best” to our children and society as a whole.
2)We should realize that a lot of us will fall short of that “best,” but that should not stop us from striving for that goal.
3)We should be forgiving and loving to those who make mistakes and do the best we can to serve them as the Savior would.
June 16th, 2009 at 4:51 am
Madge, I agree with David and and I too respect you opinion although I don’t agree with it. Roe v Wade is the law but I’m certain that after hearing Marshall Thorogood speak about it, the way society has reacted is not the intent of the decision.
Ii want to ask you another thing, look up an abortion clinic and look at the prices, multiply that by 800k and consider the amount of cash that pumps into the industry. Its much more than a medical procedure in that aspect, its a cash cow!
June 16th, 2009 at 5:58 am
If abortion was more widely available, it would be less of what you call a “cash cow”. It (first trimester or chemical abortion) could easily be performed in most hospitals on an outpatient basis if the controversy and protests weren’t so ugly. they have the equiptment, they just can’t use it for political reasons. Drs can easily be taught the skills, but they’re afraid they will be harassed or shot.
Given the current climate of judgement and hate, the people who take this on deserve hazardous duty pay in my opinion. They are harassed at home, their patient’s license numbers are written down and they are harassed. They are, as we’ve seen all too recently, killed.
June 16th, 2009 at 6:38 am
Check it out Madge, Whats thats pill called, UB480, the morning after pill. Its 500 bucks, tell me its not about making money. Regardless, one act of irresponsibility isn’t cured by another act.
June 16th, 2009 at 10:35 am
Clearly, P., you have an opinion that facts will not sway.
June 16th, 2009 at 11:13 am
Madge, I’m still waiting on your facts?
June 16th, 2009 at 1:20 pm
Exactly. Regardless of how many times I articulate my reasons–based in the lived experience of people–why the majority of us believe that abortion should be available and legal (and that it is sometimes the morally preferable choice to bringing another unwanted child into the world) you will not be open to dialogue.
What have you done, P., to better the lives of all those children brought into the world unwanted? A truly pro-life stance would mean you are doing something positive for them, not just belittling those who find themselves in the position of an unwanted pregnancy or calling those who provide abortion greedy.
June 16th, 2009 at 1:35 pm
Perplexed, until we achieve socialized medicine in this country, which will probably be never, every medical procedure performed in this country, from an ingrown toenail operation to a heart transplant, is performed for profit. Abortion is no different, and while we might blanche at the cost of a morning after pill, that cost is far less than the cost of a traditional abortion.
What we’re really seeing in this debate is what Lawrence Tribe referred to as the clash of absolutes, in his book of that name. To those in favor of legalized safe abortion, the absolute is a woman’s right to choose, based on her right to privacy. To those against it, the absolute is the right to life, which they claim to be absolute.
In fact, our society considers neither right absolute: The state can take your life for any number of reasons, perhaps the least coherent of which is that they need you to try to kill others in a war. Likewise, the right to freedom and choice is also not absolute; we are all prohibited from doing any number of things with our own bodies.
As Dr. Obama has said, what we need to stop doing is demonizing those whose views are different from our own.
June 16th, 2009 at 3:23 pm
There are several arguments against legalized elective abortion that are valid. Harping on the profit motive is not one of them, not today. The anti-abortion rights activists have done an excellent job of driving away any doctor who would consider abortion as just any other profitable procedure.
Dr. Tiller knew his life was in danger every day. He could have retired comfortably but he chose to continue serving. Yes, I expect that he was paid for his services but it would be a lie to pretend that he was in it for the easy buck. Disagree with his cause if you will but surely this man was a martyr.
June 16th, 2009 at 3:25 pm
Madge, I’ll tell you a couple of things that over the years have stuck with me, A man, a drunk, 3 kids, mother in a menial job, Christmas coming, not enough money. I bought those kids a Christmas. now there are grown and on their own and making it and doing very well in life, a joy to know. In another situation, a kid down the street from me was killed in an accident, I had given a bike to him as I had with many other kids, his mother came up to me one day, I didn’t know who she was and this was an extended period of time after his death, she told me how much that boy loved that bike and the freedom it brought him.
I regularly go to school and eat lunch with my kids, several of the children who are used as pawns in failed marriages have been to our house, we go fishing, bowling, to the movies or a ball game. Oddly enough I have seen it give them some sort of security that helps them along their way. I will continue to do this as long as I’m able, after all, I’m still learning too.
Caleb, your right on absolutes, in my world the disposal of life is a sin as all life is sacred, on the other side I am unable to understand how abortion can transpire, just as simple as taking the trash out.
One thing for sure, when its all over, I won’t have that one to answer for.
June 17th, 2009 at 5:44 am
What any of us will or won’t have to answer for in the hereafter, well that’s another subject entirely.
Hopefully we all do these sorts of things, helping those in need, seeing the face of Christ in the rejected and the lost.
For me the absolute is just that, seeing Jesus in the most spurned and rejected person I can find. And for me (refusing to get into the whole “when life begins” argument; the church was absolutely fine with the notion that life begins sometime around fetal movement for most of its’ history and this notion is congruent with what every other major religion articulated)that person is the woman who finds herself pregnant, with no partner, shamed. So long as “good church people” look down their nose at her, or patronize her, or throw her some hand me downs as a way to help themselves feel better, abortion will indeed remain a blessing (although surely heartbreaking and tragic at the same time. In the same way divorce can be.)