Kansas votes 62% to retain the right to access an abortion in its constitution.

[Hvizsgyak]

Reasoning. That would be a well constructed argument based on facts that lead to a conclusion. Pictures are just an attempt to elicit a emotional response and not an argument.

Are you a lawyer? I'm not and I'm a doctor or a psychiatrist or a anybody who can present anything the way you want it presented. In fact, I'd bet my life's savings you can't even present the case for abortion the way you want me to present the case against abortion. You are an obstinate person is all you are. My arguments against abortion are done with you because you have nothing to offer to it. You are an angry stubborn person who listens to no one but his/her self.

 

[Bradskii]

The principle of democracy cannot be applied when it comes to the question of life or death, because even a majority of people supporting the murder of children would not make such a crime acceptable.

You'll find that in a lot of cases people will support democracy...until they don't like the result of said democratic process. You can't say 'I won't let you vote on this because I have already made my mind up'. That's not how it works. But you can, by all means, try to convince people that your view is the correct one - and I wish you well in doing that. I'm pro life in that I'd prefer that there were no abortions. But I am also pro choice in that the decision is not mine to make. The two positions are not incompatible.

Thus in relation to the original headline, it is impossible, I would argue, to, from an objective standpoint, for anyone who has received the Gospel of Christ...

That wouldn't include me.

 

[Bradskii]

Disgust is actually a human evolutionary response which forms in response to that which is dangerous or unhealthy, and therefore, when something disgusts us, there is often a good reason for it.

That's right. But it doesn't indicate right or wrong in a moral sense. Incest will often result in genetic abnormalities. So those who thought it might be OK to have sex with a close relative - their lineages will generally die out. Leaving those who might think it unadvisable. So thanks to our old chum evolution, that perception has become the dominant one. You might not know why incest is wrong but you have evolved to understand that it's to be avoided.

But it's a quirk of the biological process. If things had, for some reason, turned out differently and it was advantageous to breed within a family group then we'd think that having sex with someone not in your immediate family would be disgusting.

 

[ralliann]

Guess we'll have to see if the GOP realizes that their policy plans are not interesting to a majority of voters.

??? The plan was to give the vote back to the people.

They could change their goals to line up with what voters want and actually have a chance to win elections, or perhaps they'll continue doubling down on trying to outdo each other in how much they can alienate the voting public.
Seems like either way America wins.

America wins when voters decide. It was rediculous for Dems to admit most people want access to abortion, and then complain Republicans were trying to take away access. Yes most want access so they will vote it in.

 

[Bradskii]

...whose morality has been properly formed, through catechesis in the traditional values of the Christian religion, as expressed by traditional Protestantism, Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, Oriental Orthodoxy, and the Assyrian Church of the East, and also to a large extent by certain related religions, such as Orthodox Judaism, Samaritanism and certain syncretic religions of the Middle East such as the Alevis of Turkey or the Yazidis of Iraq and Armenia, and indeed other religions from around the world, a great many of which prohibit abortion (even the ancient Roman religion prohibited abortion, for all its faults).

Why choose only the religions which oppose it? Why are you excluding the ones that allow it? Why not include Episcopalians? Or Judaism? Presbyterians? Have the people who follow those religions not had their morality properly formed?

You can't carefully select only those religions or denominations that agree with you and exclude the rest.

 

[Bradskii]

Are you a lawyer? I'm not and I'm a doctor or a psychiatrist or a anybody who can present anything the way you want it presented.

From what I've see you are presenting it in two ways. One, it's morally wrong - and this is generally a religious argument (although there are religions that do allow abortion). And two, it's an emotional argument.

It seems the first is irrelevant when it comes to making a personal decision. From here: Catholics are just as likely to get an abortion as other U.S. women. Why?.

'According to the latest numbers from the Guttmacher Institute, 24 percent of women who procure abortions identify as Catholic, almost the same as 22 percent of all U.S. women who called themselves Catholic'.

So even those who are followers of a religion which specifically condones abortion, when they get pregnant and they don't want it to continue...

As regards the second, you have to ask yourself why a woman considers what she is carrying very early in her pregnancy to be different to that which she is carrying late in the same pregnancy. She might be disappointed in discovering that a pregnancy didn't proceed one week after conception. But she'd be absolutely devasted if she lost the pregnancy one week before birth.

Do you understand that her emotional attachment is completely different?

 

[The Liturgist]

Why are you excluding the ones that allow it? Why not include Episcopalians? Or Judaism? Presbyterians?

I specifically included traditional Anglicans, who still constitute a visible minority of Episcopal church members, including the graduates of one of their seminaries, and many parishes and dioceses throughout the US who hope to change the Episcopal Church from within and wish to avoid causing money to be wasted in lawsuits which they will lose, if a parish, but win, if a diocese, under the policy implemented by the former presiding bishop, which may have changed following the ECUSA’s loss in the Fort Worth case, but still, and I also included Orthodox Judaism, which is actually opposed to abortion under many circumstances. As for Presbyterianism, it didn’t occur to me to include it since it is not one of the more ancient liturgical forms of Christianity, however, if I were to include it, it would be in support of my position, since the vast majority of the world’s Reformed and Presbyterian denominations are pro-life, in the US including the PCA, OPC, eCo, and RPCNA, as well as the closely related Christian Reformed Church.

While unfortunately advocates of various contemporary theological schools such as Liberation Theology, Queer Theology and Postmodern Theology have come to dominate the mainline Protestant churches, which has been correlated with, and in several instances, where they have changed the doctrine of those churches, causally linked, with enormous declines in membership, the vast majority of Christians are pro-life, whether Roman Catholic, Baptist or Orthodox (indeed seeing members of so many denominations working together to organize pro-life demonstrations, to fund crisis pregnancy centers, and to provide financial assistance for single parents.

And considering that the only liberal denomination that is experiencing meaningful growth is the Unitarian Universalist Association, which considers itself “Post-Christian” and which has only a small number of heterodox Unitarian Christian churches left, such as King’s Chapel in Boston, it is likely that the sale of church properties by the mainline denominations to more traditional churches will continue, and also the likelihood of traditional Christians reasserting control increases. Indeed recently an Episcopal diocese sold their cathedral to an evangelical mega-church; this did not trouble me in the slightest as the cathedral was widely regarded as being the ugliest work of Brutalist church architecture in North America.

 

[The Liturgist]

So thanks to our old chum evolution, that perception has become the dominant one.

Indeed. Conversely, also thanks to evolution, which is the God-designed method for ensuring the adaptability and versatility of biological life, killing infants and performing abortions is repulsive to humans because it is profoundly contrary to the survival of the species. We are genetically programmed by evolutionary instinct to defend our young, but the extent to which this aligns with Scriptural morality and with natural beauty is compelling proof that evolution was created by God, and that Charles Darwin thought otherwise, and was horrified, for example, by the discovery of the cockroach wasp, is a testament to his lack of proper theological formation, which is why biologists should leave it to theologians to determine what, if any, theological ramifications attach themselves to their findings.

Otherwise the result is ugliness such as the anti-religious hate speech of Richard Dawkins, which really should be prosecuted in those jurisdictions that allow for such prosecution, such as the UK, which conveniently happens to be where he spends most of his time.

 

[The Liturgist]

You'll find that in a lot of cases people will support democracy...until they don't like the result of said democratic process.

I have never supported direct democracy. The US was founded as a constitutional Republic, organized by design with layers of abstraction and indirection between the voting public and the various organs of power, and unfortunately this has been compromised to some extent. However I would be happier with an explicitly Christian constitutional monarchy governed along traditional lines.

That being said, my interpretation of the First Amendment is that it has actually been interpreted in a completely erroneous way in the past 70 years - prayer in schools should be reintroduced, because its clear the First Amendment was not to preclude a Christian government but rather to preclude any one church from having the kind of official status that the Anglicans had in the UK, or the Presbyterians in Scotland, or the Puritans in the Massachusetts Bay Colony during its early years.

 

[The Liturgist]

Disgust should never be the basis for outlawing anything. It is a response based on social mores and is not an acceptable substitute for good reasoning. That is why we did away with laws against miscegenation even though many found it disgusting. The facts were that the social response was not based on any actual harm.

If, as you correctly point out, things like incest and child abuse are disgusting because of the harm they cause then that should be the reason for outlawing them. Not social conditioning. It is easy to show how these things cause negative outcomes inherent to the act and those negative outcomes are the reason we do not allow them. It used to be "disgusting" for aristocracy to marry someone from a different class but most of us would not find that a valid reason to outlaw such behavior today.

Insofar as that is correct, it simply underscores the need to ensure the population is socially conditioned to adhere to Christian values and not those of contemporary civil society. If more people found abortion to be disgusting, millions of lives would be saved. And they would find it disgusting if they knew what it entailed.

The reality is that the best reason for prohibiting abortion is because it contradicts Christian moral values.

 

[The Liturgist]

You can't carefully select only those religions or denominations that agree with you and exclude the rest.

Sure I can. This is a Christian site, after all. Traditional Christians, who represent an absolute majority of those Christians alive today, including the majority of Roman Catholics (the largest denomination), all Orthodox Christians (Eastern Orthodox are the second largest denomination and Oriental Orthodox are around the seventh largest), most Anglicans, about half of Lutherans (those are the third and fourth largest denominations), most Reformed, Calvinist and Presbyterians (the fifth largest collectively), and also most Baptists, which include the largest Protestant denomination in the US, the SBC, are pro-life. Those Christians who are not pro-life represent a tiny minority, and their views are unsupported either scripturally or by the Canons of the Early Church (one simply cannot find an Early Church Father who supported abortion - even the majority of heretical sects were opposed to it, with the exception of one Syriac sect whose beliefs were so abhorrent I refuse to discuss them, but for those interested, they are documented in the Panarion, or First Aid Kit, written by St. Epiphanios the Bishop of Salamis in the fourth century.

 

[Bradskii]

I specifically included traditional Anglicans...

Whoa, let's back the truck up a little here. That's way too much irrelevant information.

 

[Bradskii]

The reality is that the best reason for prohibiting abortion is because it contradicts Christian moral values.

Then you'll never win the argument. You saw the figures that I posted on Catholics. People are fine upholding the teachings that they agree with. Not so much the ones that they don't. You need a different approach.

 

[Bradskii]

Indeed. Conversely, also thanks to evolution, which is the God-designed method for ensuring the adaptability and versatility of biological life, killing infants and performing abortions is repulsive to humans because it is profoundly contrary to the survival of the species.

Abortion doesn't affect the survival of the species. In fact, there are evolutionary reasons for infanticide (and I'm obviously not saying that that means that infanticide is acceptable or that it means that abortion is acceptable - evolutionary facts and morality aren't connected in any way).

We are genetically programmed by evolutionary instinct to defend our young...

But we are obviously 'programmed' to value a zygote and a baby differently.

Otherwise the result is ugliness such as the anti-religious hate speech of Richard Dawkins, which really should be prosecuted in those jurisdictions that allow for such prosecution, such as the UK, which conveniently happens to be where he spends most of his time.

He's anti-fundamentalism, not anti-religion per se. It's those who deny science he argues with. He still classes himself as something of a cultural Anglican.

 

[Bradskii]

Sure I can.

Well, of course you can choose to. But then you are leaving yourself open for someone to claim that you are cherry picking. If I listed all the religions and denominations that allowed abortions and said that therefore it's acceptable, it wouldn't be an argument that you'd accept.

For the same reason, I can't accept yours.

 

[Belk]

Are you a lawyer? I'm not and I'm a doctor or a psychiatrist or a anybody who can present anything the way you want it presented. In fact, I'd bet my life's savings you can't even present the case for abortion the way you want me to present the case against abortion. You are an obstinate person is all you are. My arguments against abortion are done with you because you have nothing to offer to it. You are an angry stubborn person who listens to no one but his/her self.

 

[Belk]

Insofar as that is correct, it simply underscores the need to ensure the population is socially conditioned to adhere to Christian values and not those of contemporary civil society. If more people found abortion to be disgusting, millions of lives would be saved. And they would find it disgusting if they knew what it entailed.

The reality is that the best reason for prohibiting abortion is because it contradicts Christian moral values.

As one of the none Christians in the site I can not agree with that reasoning. Personally I think the trend towards more personal autonomy is a good thing and I hope it is not reversed. I fully support your right to worship as you see fit and want the same right for myself.

 

[Belk]

I honestly think a we've had well crafted arguments. There are some topics where a well crafted argument won't satisfy anyone. Abortion is one of them. Now you may claim there hasn't been one that you have seen, but all that means is that you are so set on believing what you will, that there can't be an argument good enough to convince you.

I think that's fair to acknowledge. There isn't any argument that you could produce to convince me any of us pro-lifers that abortion is okay except to protect the life of the mother.

The difference is between both positions we are the most reasonable. We are willing to compromise. However it appears that most abortion supporters are not. Everytime I have offered to compromise for the things they are most concerned about as long as they agree to limit the other things, I fet a big fat no.

This also let's me know that there really isn't anything we can do to satisfy the abortion supporters no matter what we say.

I think there is a strong case against abortion later on in a pregnancy. I think that a lot of effort is put towards trying to make the arguments work from the point of conception which weakens the case immensely.

As far as compromise, I think both sides are willing to do so. The issue I think you run in to is that the things you want to have compromise on are some of the non negotiable items and the things you are willing to give up are not that big a deal. That is of course part of the problem. Compromise is difficult and hard to balance so that both sides are equally unhappy.

 

[Hans Blaster]

Sure I can. This is a Christian site, after all. Traditional Christians, who represent an absolute majority of those Christians alive today, including the majority of Roman Catholics (the largest denomination), all Orthodox Christians (Eastern Orthodox are the second largest denomination and Oriental Orthodox are around the seventh largest), most Anglicans, about half of Lutherans (those are the third and fourth largest denominations), most Reformed, Calvinist and Presbyterians (the fifth largest collectively), and also most Baptists, which include the largest Protestant denomination in the US, the SBC, are pro-life. Those Christians who are not pro-life represent a tiny minority, and their views are unsupported either scripturally or by the Canons of the Early Church (one simply cannot find an Early Church Father who supported abortion - even the majority of heretical sects were opposed to it, with the exception of one Syriac sect whose beliefs were so abhorrent I refuse to discuss them, but for those interested, they are documented in the Panarion, or First Aid Kit, written by St. Epiphanios the Bishop of Salamis in the fourth century.

As much as I would prefer it, Kansas is not 60% non-Christian. As much as you claim otherwise a significant fraction of Christians *want* abortion to be available.

 

[rjs330]

think there is a strong case against abortion later on in a pregnancy.

Like how much later on?

Compromise is difficult and hard to balance so that both sides are equally unhappy.

I think thats very much true.