Let's talk about Abortion

So, abortion. Hot topic. Everyone wants to get a word in. I hear people shouting about freedom of choice and people shouting about lives and murder, but honestly, we are missing the bigger picture here.

source

The picture of morals. You see, my morals define my beliefs. So if I am for abortion and you are against, and you are trying to tell me how wrong I am by listing off facts and showing me charts or throwing a bible at me, you will get nowhere. Because the reason I believe what I believe is because of my morals: how I view the world. Same goes for you, right?

So what I am trying to do in this blog post is show you that the two sides will never agree because the foundations they are standing on are worlds apart. (But that does not, under any circumstances, give any person on either side the right to act like a spoiled three year old and throw a tantrum in the other person's face. We are all adults here.) I desperately want to show that instead of one side showing traumatized rape victims while touting the repression of women and extolling "their right to choose" in the face of the other side, who are themselves waving flags with "right to life" and speaking of a living human that is growing in a woman's womb, and it's right to grow up, breathe air, and exist--instead of all this rabble that really leads to nowhere but anger--we should be having an ethics discussion.

Let me explain. I am a Christian. This is a loaded word, and it means several things at once on a lot of separate levels. In regards specially to abortion, Christian people believe:  

• You only get one life. When you die you go to heaven or hell.
• At some point during pregnancy the baby is given a soul.  (Ecclesiastes 11:5)
• Life starts at conception, the moment a sperm joins an egg. (Isaiah 44:24)
• Every life is precious and worth saving.

Now, since Christians believe you only have one life (no reincarnation) and they believe that at some point during conception you are given a soul, then to them terminating a pregnancy is wrong, and this is why many Christians stand up against abortion. This does not mean we are judging anyone who has had an abortion. This does not mean we hate women or want to enslave them or force them to give birth to their baby that, sadly, was formed during rape. It just means we think life starts at conception and we want to preserve life because life is precious and you only get one life. We believe those babies only get one life. 

Does understanding this help you understand better why many are Pro-life? I hope so! Because what I believe about abortion didn't just fall out of the sky--I didn't just wake up one day and roll over and go, hhrmm, I think I'll be pro-life toady. No, it's ingrained in my moral framework right up there with loving my neighbor and attending church and trying to the best of my ability to follow God.

The same is true for the other side, of course. One of my friends believes in reincarnation. To her, we all get reborn again, so whats the big deal with abortion? The baby is attached to a women's body. The women has control over her own body, right? Further, she does not believe in a "soul". To my friend, life begins at birth, when the baby is no longer attached to it's mother. To her, abortion is just a medical procedure where a women gets rid of something that she either can't afford, accidentally created during consensual sex, or was sadly a product of forced rape. To her, a baby in the womb is not alive, it is just a mass of cells with the potential to be alive, and thus flushing it out causes no harm. 

So no wonder she is totally fine with abortion. I mean, from her standpoint it makes perfect sense, doesn't it?

Furthermore, in order to make her change her mind, I would have to introduce her not only to the idea that a fetus is alive, but to the whole moral framework attached to that. I would have to change her entire foundational belief system in order to get her to see my argument. Telling her about DNA, baby heartbeats, brainwaves--speaking to her about how life isn't about what she wants, but rather what she can do for God--explaining to her that abortion is selfish, that it's putting her life above another-- none of that will reach her because her morals are altogether different then mine.

But there is something I can do.

I can be her friend. And she can be mine.

If we understand our differences they can bring us together. I've never had an angry discussion about abortion because I won't attack another person's choices. Because I understand what they are saying comes not from their inability to see right from wrong--but comes from their morals.

So. Even if you don't agree with me, lets be friends, okay?