An Unwilling Participant

Not exactly what I was expecting when I signed up...

Some things with unwilling participants
  • Politics
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  • Fame
  • An ice storm
  • Global warming
  • Celiac disease
  • Breast cancer
  • UNFPA
  • FOCA
  • Abortion
  • Rape
  • Celibacy
  • Court
  • Jail
  • Getting old
  • Depression
  • Airport security
  • Sporting events
  • Family drama
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How Obama is different than Hitler

I'm reading President Obama's book The Audacity of Hope in an attempt to understand why he has been so adamantly in favor of abortion "rights" and passing FOCA. My first impression was that it was a political ploy needed to get the radical left-wing vote. Maybe. But after reading a little bit of his book and listening to him talk I'm thinking that he might just be mistaken about the facts. He doesn't want to inflict anyone's religious views, including his own, on another person. That's fine, but I don't think it's a religious question. Either human life begins at conception or it doesn't. If it does, then you shouldn't kill that human person. If life doesn't begin at conception, then when does it? Once conception has occurred nothing else needs to be done to produce life, except to refrain from destroying it; an inchoate human being exists. It certainly seems that abortion survivors would count as human beings, so why is it all right to kill them?

President Obama quotes Dr. Martin Luther King in his chapter on values: "It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can keep him from lynching me, and I think that's pretty important." I think it's pretty important too, and that the law should prevent a woman from killing another human being that she finds inconvenient. I'm not political, but Dr. King also says, "He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it. "

And then I think about the other famous Obama comment about not wanting to burden someone with a child for making a mistake. Okay, then let that person give the child to someone who's eager for a child and can't have one. You're not taking away someone's choice by restricting abortion; that person has made many choices up to that point in order to be pregnant. If you'd like to bring up cases of rape or incest as an objection to that point, fine, but there are already laws against those things. By restricting abortion you're just attempting to prevent the unwilling participant in the abortion from being forced to take part in it. At some point people need to be responsible for the consequences of their decisions, and if they choose to have unprotected sex then they need to deal with the people involved, even if it is somebody new.

But I don't think that President Obama hates babies and wants to kill them all; in that way he is not like Hitler. Plus, it's not like he's forcing people to kill their children and grandchildren, he's just allowing them to by not restricting their access to the tools of fetal destruction. It just seems that in the America and global community that he is giving us hope for that destroying our own children should not be an inalienable right.

President Obama is taking the tact that this is a religious battle, and religion shouldn't factor into the laws. My suggestion is that this is not a religious issue. I'm not trying to make a decision about whether a soul in limbo or Sheol or that has been reincarnated should have rights or not. I'm talking about the living progeny of two human beings. It's a human rights issue, not a religious issue.

The "right" to abortion is often couched in terms of women's health. Okay. While I'm opposed to abortion I recognize there are circumstances that might demand one, jeopardy of the mother's life potentially being one. So it shouldn't be completely illegal to do an abortion. But neither should it be illegal not to do one. Forcing doctors and hospitals to be unwilling participants in this genocide is also an untenable position.

What we really need to do is move our culture in the direction of respect and dignity for each other and for our children rather than fight about how many days after I conceive my child do I have to kill him or her. I believe that this is where the President is trying to head. I dare to hope that I am correct.

***** RhineDawg, February 15, 2009 *****