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Pro-Life Group: “It is shameful that Christians would rally around the physical needs of the poor”

Jill

Nope, couldn’t make it up if I tried. The full press release (emphasis mine):

“Abortion is an act that takes the life of an innocent human child,” said Erik Whittington, American Life League’s youth outreach director. “It is shameful that Christians would rally around the physical needs of the poor and ignore the deaths of untold millions of babies. Abortion is poverty and the number one priority of our day should be its demise.”

This past weekend, Sojourners opened Pentecost 2007: Taking Vision to the Street, a conference aimed at placing “poverty at the top of our nation’s agenda.” Today, Sojourners will host a march that will run from National City Christian Church to the Upper Senate Park. American Life League, through its youth outreach project Rock for Life, will be there to present to conference attendees the importance of putting abortion, not poverty, at the top of the list of social concerns.

“Mother Teresa, the universal icon for fighting poverty once said, ‘It is a poverty to decide that a child must die so that you may live as you wish.’ While we commend Christians for working towards eliminating poverty,” said Whittington, “we must not forget that abortion kills a human person, and leaves the mother spiritually and psychologically broken. Abortion ends the lives of more than 3,500 American babies a day. This bloodshed dwarfs any other issue, including poverty.”

What is it with this week? I feel like the running theme is “Wingnuts finally say out loud the abhorrent things we always knew they believed, but thought they were smart enough to keep under wraps.” I thought the “They want to break down the white, Christian, male power structure” comment couldn’t be beat, until they came out with “The old procedure [standard D&E], which is still legal … means there is greater legal liability and danger of internal bleeding from a perforated uterus. So we firmly believe there will be fewer later-term abortions as a result of this ruling” — that had to top all, right? Admitting that they think it’s a good thing that more women will have their uteruses perforated? I was sure we had a winner. Sadly, it was beaten out by “Feminism is a minority social movement, whose members murder innocent children in order to obtain sexual gratification.” Which is most surely the champion — abortions make all the ladies come? It’s incredible.

But no. Now Christians should be ashamed for helping the poor.

Let me re-contextualize this statement: It’s a press release. Not dumb, unscripted O’Reilly-style verbal diarrhea. Not an off-the-cuff comment to a reporter. Not something penned by a notoriously pathetic and vile dude who spews wingnut insanity on the regular and probably writes his columns in crayon. A press release. A planned, vetted, thought-out, purposeful statement, deemed important enough to release to news organizations. It’s a whole new level of unbelievable.

And it should make all of us pause for a moment and recognize just how emboldened anti-choice groups have become in the wake of the “partial-birth” abortion Supreme Court decision. It’s no coincidence that these kind of atrocious views are finally being verbalized now.

Pro-choice advocates have long pointed out that poverty relief and choice go hand in hand — the more financial security a woman has, the freer she may feel to choose to give birth. The inability to support a child is one of the primary reasons women give for terminating pregnancies. You’d think that “pro-life” activists, then, would be supportive of poverty relief programs, and would place women’s economic well-being at the top of their list.

But if you were under the impression that “pro-life” activists were actually about lowering the abortion rate, you would be sadly mistaken. If that were the case, they’d not only support poverty relief and social welfare programs, but they’d support contraceptive access and comprehensive sex education, two tried-and-true methods of lowering the unintended pregnancy rate. Instead, they’re advocating against basic birth control and against medically accurate health classes. We should not be surprised that they’re now advocating against poverty relief.

And yet somehow, I was still shocked to read “It is shameful that Christians would rally around the physical needs of the poor” in a press release from a Christian pro-life organization. Chalk it up to my youthful innocence.

Thanks to Amanda for sending this on.

64 thoughts on Pro-Life Group: “It is shameful that Christians would rally around the physical needs of the poor”

  1. As a Christian — and a longtime Sojourners subscriber, as a progressive evangelical who spent time in the pro-life camp before returning home to the choice position — I find this exasperating and perverse. I understand the reasoning of these folks, and heck, it’s worth a post later this week. Thanks for this.

    Bottom line, if wealthy Christian men want to combat poverty, real poverty, we have to surrender so much of our privilege. If we choose to combat abortion, we give up nothing of value to us — no question where the easier path lies.

  2. Oh, the American Life League.

    They’re just slightly to the right of Operation Rescue, basically. Their motto is “no abortions, no exceptions, no apologies.”

    Their former Executive Director is actually a state legislator in Virginia – Bob Marshall. As vile a human being as you can imagine in a legislator. Anti-gay, anti-contraception, anti-woman in general. Ugh.

    The American Life League not only opposes abortion; they also oppose assisted reproduction. Their literature says artificial insemination is a form of adultery. I kid you not. And Bob Marshall authored a book called “Blessed Are the Barren”. (Lovely title for infertile women to read, don’t you think?)

    If you feel like sending some positive vibes out in contrast to these American Life League a**holes, Bruce Roemmelt is a courageous pro-choice, pro-marriage equality progressive candidate running against the vile Bob Marshall. Running in a conservative district against the poster-child for right-wing extremism, Bruce is a proud progressive who doesn’t sell out his support for reproductive freedom. He could really use your support:

    http://www.electroemmelt.org/

    (I’m a friend of Bruce and volunteered for his first run against Marshall in 2005.)

    Anyway, the American Life League has never been an organization that disguised its “focus on the fetus above all else” mentality.

  3. These people clearly haven’t bothered to read their bibles from cover to cover (I’m about two-thirds through at the moment, and could, if called upon, quote at least a dozen passages to refute the claptrap spouted by those so-called Christians).

    Poverty was a key issue in the time of the Prophets, and the ruling elite of Israel and Judah were severely told off for causing it, and not doing anything to alleviate it. I can’t off-hand think of any passages about abortion specifically. The central message of the biblical writings seems to be clear: “fight poverty, alleviate suffering, help the poor and downtrodden” Doesn’t say anything about forcing women to go full-term and give birth…

  4. Their literature says artificial insemination is a form of adultery. I kid you not.

    Well, assuming they oppose stem-cell research, at least they’re the only consistent ones on the whole “IVF creates unwanted embryos” thing.

  5. Their literature says artificial insemination is a form of adultery. I kid you not.

    Well, assuming they oppose stem-cell research, at least they’re the only consistent ones on the whole “IVF creates unwanted embryos” thing.

    What’s so hard about using the quote button?

    I’m as curious as you, Jill: what is with the parade of honesty Tourette Syndrome this week? Incredible. Yet all the good moderate/liberal Christians are going to turn their heads from it nevertheless. Makes me want to scream.

  6. Ugh, nevermind about the quote button thing. Feminite’s wacky-ass coding smashed the nested quotes and exploded their proper order.

  7. ALL is–I remember seeing their website a while ago, I think maybe in an early incarnation. “obsessed” didn’t begin to cover it. nor did “freak” or “run away! RUN AWAYYYYY”

    but yeah, for a while now, not just this week, some months or so, i’ve had this sense of “the (barely, but still) repressed made manifest.” some astrological portent no doubt.

  8. aw man, I wish I hadn’t looked at their website… I think my head is going to explode… it’s never good when you start arguing with your computer screen…

  11. I love the logic of these guys. By all means, let’s get very excited about potential/theoretical/we don’t know what to call it life but let’s ignore the real, actual, live woman carrying the fetus and the costs to her, and let’s also ignore those losers who happen to be poor. It’s not like Jesus said anything about taking care of those poor dudes. Except that he did. In political terms, obviously, these guys suck, but the hilarious thing is that they’re twisting their own religion so far away from the message of its central founder that there’s only one word to describe it – blasphemy.

  12. Even if you buy their premise, don’t they know people also die from poverty?

    Duh.

  13. But Laura, those aren’t *people*, they’re just women, minorites and other moral failures

  18. Judie Brown- Please kindly stop talking.

    As someone very pro-life and very christian, this woman makes me furious. She seems to believe that abortion occurs in a vacuum (ugh bad pun) with no sociatal factors influencing the decision.

    She demonizes those of us who are working to help women get to a place where they don’t need “no other choice” abortions.

    I don’t understand why supporting pregnant women is such a controversial idea. It seems like there are people on both sides of the issue who don’t want this to happen. What’s wrong with them?

    Anyways, sorry I got off topic. I just get so frustrated when people stick their head in the sand and pretend that just saying “ABORTION IS WRONG” is going to do anything to help anyone.

  19. “Mother Teresa, the universal icon for fighting poverty”

    Please. That bitch loved poverty, suffering and compliant women. What did she do to “fight” poverty?

  20. hmmm, ok to be sure I’m staunchly prochoice and can’t stand these religious nutbags, but then again, I prefer tearing them apart for what they say and believe. There’s a blatant misinterpration involved in this “analysis” of what they are saying. Read the sentence. They aren’t saying there is anything wrong with supporting the poor. They’re saying that Christians who believe in supporting the poor should be ashamed of themselves for not working just as hard to reject abortion. I don’t get that logic, but it’s important to not misinterpret the actual point, which *everyone* here seems happy to do.

  21. pssh, I don’t expect much out of Erik Whittington. I emailed him a little while back and told him how stupid he is, so to get back at me he said I was no better than Hitler and blah blah blah and that apparently I’m racist or something. I don’t know what that was about, poor little chap sounded threatened. It just goes to show you that Christians like that care more about their political agendas rather than doing what their Jesus actually told them to do, care for those in need. But of course, they don’t really care about anyone but themselves. Assholes.

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  23. lauren,
    Supporting pregnant women is a great idea, and I hope the group you work with does so. However, the point is that for most of the organizations (CareNet is the one that comes to mind), the support basically stops once the baby is born. That doesn’t do much for the woman who now has 18 years of taking care of a child that needs done. And, in fact, the leadership of those organizations are the same ones who advocate against welfare, universal child health care, public school support, and so on. Women who get abortions aren’t just thinking in terms of having their pregnancy supported, but how they’re going to cope with everything after that.

  24. I guess Christianity gets a lot easier once you adopt the “God will provide for those he likes enough” stance.

  25. Christians were helping the poor?!?!? I’m poor, and I didn’t get no help from any dang ol’ biblethumpers!

  26. Oh car, I think you mistook what being said. Such groups most likely don’t want to help women raise their children, they just want to make sure they grow them so the executive director gets a fat salary, and the “nonprofit” gets a new building in another town from which to sell bumper stickers and babies in order to buy off politicians. The ROI for repeating a load of misogynistic fundmentalism is a golden goose in the right political circles. It sure beats feeding the poor and sheltering the homeless, and the added bonus is that it allows part of that donation to go toward slut shaming and punishment instead of feeding a starving child or providing medical care to a sick real-live-born baby somewhere.

    41 million dead children since 2003:

    http://www.wdm.org.uk/deathcounter/

    See, the thing is, those aren’t really “human people” like an embryo is. /boggle

  27. Your title/first spot of emphasis completely misses the point of the sentence. Mr Whittington was not, in fact, saying that rallying around the physical needs of the poor is shameful, he was saying that it is shameful that people who care so much about and for the poor seem not to care about unborn children. I honestly don’t see any way you could interpret it the way you have, other than merely seeing what you want to see: Christians making fools of themselves.

  28. Justin,

    I believe you’ve misinterpreted the intial press release. The release says:

    This bloodshed dwarfs any other issue, including poverty.

    That doesn’t mean, as you’ve indicated, that Christians should work just as hard to eliminate abortion as they do to eliminate poverty. It means they should work HARDER. And forget about poverty.

    Nevertheless, I think Jill’s initial analysis of this release sums up the things that are wrong with it pretty well, even if you believe others got off topic.

  29. I hate to pull out the Marxist card, but all this really is about class struggle – how do we keep poor people poor, and begging for whatever we’re willing to give them? Force them to have children.

    At least the other side’s being candid about it now.

  30. Ryan and justin: Your “interpretation” doesn’t actually sound any better — still supposed-Christians being asshats.

    Sing it with me people –“If you care so much about X, why don’t you care about Y?”

  31. I honestly don’t see any way you could interpret it the way you have, other than merely seeing what you want to see: Christians making fools of themselves.

    Which the good gentleman has clearly succeeded in doing all by himself. There’s no evidence that having an abortion leaves a women spiritually and psychologically broken. (Excepting Leslee Unruh.) There is also data which indicates that (if I am remembering correctly), more than 25,000 children die daily from causes directly linked to poverty. (Malnutrition, preventable diseases, dirty water, etc.)

    If someone cannot figure out if 3,500 or 25,000 is the larger number, he’s made a fool of himself without my assistance.

  32. US vs world evil fizz. Not that the press release is actually coherent, but if you count every abortion as a death, then they might outnumber those due to poverty. Although by their own quoting of Mother Theresa, many of those abortions are due to poverty, so who knows how you’d make the comparison.

  33. US vs world evil fizz

    Yeah, noted that a little belatedly.

    I am sort of curious to know how they address women who die of illegal abortions which are a direct result of such poverty.

  34. Clearly if we’re going to invoke MT, the RCC should divest its assets, particularly that obscene display of privilege, greed, and pride known as the Vatican, and distribute the funds to feed and shelter and vaccinate children the world over.

    Hey, maybe we can all just feed the children cooked uterus and the remains of dead women. Win-win for the fundies.

  35. That doesn’t mean, as you’ve indicated, that Christians should work just as hard to eliminate abortion as they do to eliminate poverty. It means they should work HARDER. And forget about poverty.

    The Christian Right already works harder to eliminate abortion than they do to eliminate poverty. In fact, most of them work harder to get out of bed in the morning than they do to eliminate poverty.

    If you do nothing to eliminate it, and in fact do many things to support it (opposition of social services, concentrating tax cuts to the rich, et cetera), well, the asshole isn’t saying much. Considering the people who will actually listen to him rather than become revolted could generally drop their anti-abortion activities to almost nothing and still be working harder to eliminate abortion than they are to eliminate poverty.

  36. The part of the bible that could arguably be said to prohibit abortion is “thou shalt not kill,” but to think this, you would have to distort the ancient’s concept of what killing means, to include unborn children.

    By that logic, it could mean, don’t pull up a weed, or eat yogurt or animals, which is pretty perverse.

  37. I am reninded of that song that went “would Jesus wear a rplex on his television show?”

  39. “Clearly if we’re going to invoke MT, the RCC should divest its assets, particularly that obscene display of privilege, greed, and pride known as the Vatican, and distribute the funds to feed and shelter and vaccinate children the world over. ”

    Wow, no anti-Catholic bigotry here. Notice the extremes: scrap the Vatican or lose any concern for the poor.

    And I have no idea how pulling out unsavory quotes from certain pro-life people discredits the pro-life position itself. It’s like pulling out something General Patton said and going, “Well, I guess we shouldn’t listen to those war-crazed Yanks about WWII anyway. They’re all crazy–even their leaders!”

    It’d be much more honest and effective to attack the pro-life arguments, not just the bad eggs, even if you find a lot of them. (There are millions of pro-lifers out there.)

    I also still don’t get why being opposed to welfare means you lose all moral ground to oppose abortion. One is partly an economic decision, the other more of a scientific/health& well-being/moral one. One is about positive rights, the other a negative right. You don’t have to answer both thumbs up or thumbs down. You just don’t. There’s nothing inconsistent about that position, no matter how much you repeatedly say there is.

  40. I’m wondering if this has to do with the Christian right starting to split up a little bit over the issue of abortion? There is a sense on the ground (not that I’m on the ground in the right-wing Christian movement) that the constant drumbeating of all-abortion-all-the-time, while useful as a political movement might not be exactly what a Christian movement should focus on.

    I don’t know…it seems that I’ve been hearing whispers that even some conservative christians feel that a church needs to do more than just be against abortion and homosexuals. Like it can’t just be the Our Patron Saint of Stopping Gays From Marrying And Women From Getting Abortions.

    The whole David Kuo branch of conservative Christians basically.

    So in response to losing the attention of their audience, the anti-abortion-only side of the Christian churches are trying to correl everyone back into the tent. I think this press release is church infighting, but its kind of not good.

    Although I don’t know, does this kind of argument appeal to the David Kuo kind of conservative christians? (He is conservative he’s just decided he’s more interested in poverty than stopping abortion). Is this going to get them back into the tent or make them realize how the all-abortion-all-the-time group has kind of lost it over this issue.

  41. . . . I’m just shocked. I don’t even know what to say.

    What would Jesus do? Not help the poor, that’s for sure!

  42. They were protesting the Sojourners action-protesting-

    and the quote says it is “shameful” to do the poverty work.

    So while in one sentence the work is “commended” in other sentences it is also called “shameful” and in fact, the entire action is a “protest” of what Sojourners is doing–and the whole action is parasitic-
    American Life League is piggybacking Sojourners press to get a word in. I agree that many pro life activists are against social programs that help, at all, so this “commendation” is probably just lipservice-
    I do antiwar activism and am told regularly that it is not important and wrong to work on when the real problem is abortion by right wing Christians.
    I was actually told the difference was “a child can run” from a bomb or stray bullet. That’s shameful.

    Anti-war & Catholic

  43. They’re saying that Christians who believe in supporting the poor should be ashamed of themselves for not working just as hard to reject abortion.

    You may be surprised to hear this, but Jesus didn’t say one word — not one — about abortion. He did have a heck of a lot to say about caring for the poor. So I find it surprising that these supposed “Christians” would reject the actual words that Jesus said and decide that their pet issue is much more important.

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  45. And I have no idea how pulling out unsavory quotes from certain pro-life people discredits the pro-life position itself. It’s like pulling out something General Patton said and going, “Well, I guess we shouldn’t listen to those war-crazed Yanks about WWII anyway. They’re all crazy–even their leaders!”

    It’d be much more honest and effective to attack the pro-life arguments, not just the bad eggs, even if you find a lot of them. (There are millions of pro-lifers out there.)

    And your criticism would be much more effective if you actually read through the archives and learned that we have attacked pro-life arguments many, many times.

    I also still don’t get why being opposed to welfare means you lose all moral ground to oppose abortion. One is partly an economic decision, the other more of a scientific/health& well-being/moral one. One is about positive rights, the other a negative right. You don’t have to answer both thumbs up or thumbs down. You just don’t. There’s nothing inconsistent about that position, no matter how much you repeatedly say there is.

    You don’t have to do anything, but it’s pretty dumb to claim you want to lower the abortion rate and then oppose social programs which have been proven to lower the abortion rate (of which social aid to needy families is only one). You’re right, though, there is certainly nothing inconsistent about that position — people who are anti-welfare and anti-abortion are pretty consistently assholes.

  46. I don’t agree with the original source, but I think it’s important to point out that you are misrepresenting the statement they are giving.

    The idea presented in your argument is that the pro-life organization quoted does not believe in helping in the poor, and in fact deride those people who do help. However, reading to the end the statement given in the original quote gives a different story- that they believe the more serious, pressing issue is that of abortion and that time spent away from that cause is better spent on preventing abortion.

    Their argument centers around the fact that people are taking time away from the supposedly much more serious issues surrounding abortion, and are instead spending that time dedicated to a less-worthy cause. This is a specious argument because it compares two different kinds of ‘good works’ against some sort of arbitrary rating system that determines some ‘good works’ to be more important than others, and this determination of worthiness is completely at the will of the people making the argument.

    I believe a better way to paraphrase the intent of the original article would be “Pro-Life Group: ‘Preventing abortion is far more important than helping the poor, and those Christians who help the poor but do not also dedicate themselves to stopping abortion are not doing as much ‘good work’ as those of us dedicated completely to stopping abortion.'”

    Just my 2 cents.

  47. I don’t agree with the original source, but I think it’s important to point out that you are misrepresenting the statement they are giving.

    …which is why I put the entire press release at the top of the post — you all can read it and draw your own conclusions. I think it’s pretty clear that they’re saying it’s shameful for Christians to help the poor when they should be focusing on abortion and abortion only. Because it wouldn’t make any sense to claim that Christians should be focusing on “abortion also” (as opposed to “abortion instead“), since Christian groups all over the country are leading the anti-choice fight, and it’s relatively obvious that abortion is one of the primary causes of the religious right.

    You’re welcome to interpret it differently. But I don’t think it’s quite fair to claim that I’m “misrepresenting” them when I posted the entire content of their statement.

  48. I believe a better way to paraphrase the intent of the original article would be “Pro-Life Group: ‘Preventing abortion is far more important than helping the poor, and those Christians who help the poor but do not also dedicate themselves to stopping abortion are not doing as much ‘good work’ as those of us dedicated completely to stopping abortion.’”

    Again … Jesus said, “Help the poor.” Many, many, many times. Over and over again.

    Not once did he say, “Help the fetuses.”

    When you have “Christians” who are IGNORING THE WORDS OF JESUS in favor of their own supposedly more important issue, I think that’s a pretty big deal. It makes you wonder what religion these people are following, ’cause it sure ain’t Christianity.

  49. Don’t take disdain for the RCC hierarchy and priorities as meaning disdain for the laity in general. Plenty of RC laity (and many parish priests) have disdain for the hierarchy and its priorities, and are more interested in trying to help folks.

    Just because Bush is president doesn’t mean that I approve of his policies or consider him to be the spokesman for all Americans and the definer for all time of what America stands for.

  50. Psalm 139 v.13-16

    13 For you created my inmost being;

    you knit me together in my mother’s womb.

    14 I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;

    your works are wonderful,
    I know that full well.

    15 My frame was not hidden from you

    when I was made in the secret place.
    When I was woven together in the depths of the earth,

    16 your eyes saw my unformed body.

    All the days ordained for me

    were written in your book
    before one of them came to be.

    This is the scripture of reference that leads me to take a position as pro-life. (in addition to Deuteronomy 5:17). Not all Christians have no regard for the mother’s life and the difficult decision she must make when faced with an unwanted pregnancy. I just believe that we cannot tell ourselves that an abortion is just about the mother’s right to choose and forget about the fact the “fetus” inside her body is precious to God. (albeit no more precious than the poor or the woman herself). I find it troubling that so many on both sides choose to focus on either the woman or the child with no regard for the other.

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  52. Can somebody clarify for me why exactly do they care so much about what I do with my body?

    If I abort my baby, then it is my “sin” and not theirs. I will go to Hell and not them. They should be happy. I won’t be taking up a place among the 144,000.

  53. Wow, no anti-Catholic bigotry here. Notice the extremes: scrap the Vatican or lose any concern for the poor.

    Oh yes, suggesting the RCC not privilege itself with obscene wealth whilst demanding women forgo ownership of their own bodies to support the life of others is “anti-Catholic” bigotry. Sure. Clearly, suggesting the RCC go without opulence, greed, and pride is horrific, but suggesting a woman render up her body parts to be used by others without her consent is open for discussion.

    Notice the extreme here: give up your riches and finery to save the life of others–blasphemy for the RCC apologists! My GOD! It’s damn near Christian to suggest such a thing!

    Way too funny.

  54. Okay, so someone made the point that what this wingnut group is saying is that the scale of the abortion problem FAR outweighs the scale of the poverty problem. Let’s look at some numbers to see JUST how wing-nutty that is:

    According to UNICEF, Poverty kills 30,000 children PER DAY worldwide. That’s just short of 11 million children per year worldwide.

    According to ChristianAction.org, abortion kills about 5 million children per year worldwide.

    The argument that the scale of the abortion problem dwarfs the scale of the poverty problem FAILS on its face. It’s FALSE, UNTRUE, and unsupportable. In short, even if they ARE saying that, they are total wingnuts, because it’s just not true. What’s more, not only children die of poverty, adults do, too. So the total death toll from poverty makes abortion look like Sunday in the Park with George.

    Those “Christians” should be ashamed of themselves. Abortion before Poverty. Pfaugh!

  55. Beth,

    According to my Study Bible, the womb was referred to in Psalm 139 as “the secret place” and “the depths of the earth” not only because the womb was recognised as concealing, enclosed, dark, but also because it was a place where life had not yet begun.

    Both phrases are used elsewhere in the Bible to refer to the place of the dead (Psalm 63:9, Isaiah 45:19 and others).

    In other words, in Psalm 139 and elsewhere in the bible, the womb is not seen as a place of life, but of before-life: the “dust” from which man (taking the Bible’s male-centric view!) comes. He may be knit together and formed there by God, but God’s knowledge of what will become of a man is not the same as that man having life.

    A modern analogy would be that a computer cannot be said to be a computer until it is given an electricity supply: the computer’s maker might no exactly what the computer will do even as she builds it, but that knowledge is nothing until she plugs it in.

    Another relevant passage, of course, is Genesis 2:7 – Adam was not living until God breathed the breath of life into him, and Adam began to breathe. Before that, Adam was simply a thing made out of dust.

    Ecclesiastes is another relevant source, and perhaps directly addresses the balance you mention between the unborn child and the mother, for example, Ecclesiastes 4:1-3

    “Again I looked and saw all the oppression that was taking place udner the sun:

    I saw the tears of the oppressed – and they have no comforter; power was on the side of their oppressors –

    and they have no comforter.

    And I declared that the dead, who had already died, are happier than the living, who are still alive.

    But better than both is he who has not yet been, who has not seen the evil that is done under the sun.”

    (Admittedly, Ecclesiastes concludes these thoughts later with the suggestion, “better a live dog than a dead lion”)

    I see a strong suggestion in the bible that abortion is preferable to oppression or poverty. As many others have said, there are very few indeed who undergo abortion without having some thought for what it means. It is a mistake to assume that “pro-choice” implies a disregard for the potential life that is being rejected. Pro-choice means letting a woman consider all the matters that are important in her life, such as her ability to love and care for a new child, and make a wise decision about the future.

  56. Can somebody clarify for me why exactly do they care so much about what I do with my body?

    If I abort my baby, then it is my “sin” and not theirs. I will go to Hell and not them. They should be happy. I won’t be taking up a place among the 144,000.

    Mary I have wondered about that myself quite a bit.

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  58. Beth, I feel you. My response to that is: It’s self-defense. Have you read Judith Jarvis Thompson’s essay about the unconscious violinist? Let’s see here… http://spot.colorado.edu/~heathwoo/Phil160,Fall02/thomson.htm
    I don’t believe I should be forced – by the state – just because I am a woman – to let another person use my body to live, even if I conceived that person.

    I agree that both sides seem to only be concerned with one or the other, the fetus or the woman. It’s just shameful to me that the pro-forced-pregnancy side doesn’t seem to get that yes, okay, it’s a person, but it’s inside another person’s body. That ultimately makes it a feminist issue, because if the government can FORCE a pregnant woman to carry her child to term, then she essentially becomes a second-class citizen, at least for nine months. I find that prospect terrifying.

    The solution, of course, is choice! If you don’t believe in abortion, don’t have an abortion. It’s very simple.

  59. Snowdrop,

    Good points…although you could make the argument that John the Baptist “leaping” in the womb in recognition of the presence of Christ could give a pro-life counter arguement.

    OTOH, in the Old Testament, the penalty for murder (heck, even for adultry, homosexuality, etc) was to be stoned. The penalty for causing a pregnant woman to miscarry was much less (don;t remember exactly…but I think it was some sort of material reimbursement), putting life in utero at a totally different level than a sentinent human life.

    Bottom line is that the Bible doesn’t really deal directly or firmly with either contraception or abortion, and the 2000 year Christian tradtion has similar inconsistancies and grey areas. I’m sure that God is not fond of abortion, the same way God is not fond of people having to undergo heart surgery, but he hardly has made his will and mind clear on it judging from Scripture or the tradtion of the Church. But when it comes to poverty and injustice against the poor and oppressed, including spiritual oppression of the Pharisees, the Bible has MORE than enough strong words that should leave no doubt as to where God stands on issues of social justice or who his kingdom belongs to.

    How Christianity became such a parody of everything Jesus was against is just beyond me.

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  61. oh dear. you have taken part of a quote out of context repeatedly and placed it in bold font. shame on you. you are supposed to be the one representing fairness as a non-brainwashed skeptic! the quote doesn’t only say christians shouldn’t rally around the poor… the second half changes the meaning – it says that instead of focusing on poverty, “christians” should focus primarily on abortion. Of course, this is still bullshit and ignorant of the reasons for abortion, but come on, you totally blew up a part of the sentence and conveniently downplayed the second half, when that other half was a crucial part of the author’s meaning & intention. i may not agree with him, but i don’t agree with your twisting of quotes either. i know the full press release is right there, but your emphasis on only half of the quote several times, and the headline… you just give them ammunition.

  62. Monkey, I didn’t “twist” the quote — I put the entire quote, in context, at the top of the post. Had I only put up the headline and not included the context, or only used half the sentence and then linked to the ALL site without explaining the context, that would be twisting the quote, and you might have a point.

  63. Hello All
    There really isn’t much hypocrisy in the “pro-life” crowd being adamantly against any and all ameliorative policies for poverty etc. It seems confusing/hypocritical to most people because they conveniently leave out class and race markers in most of their analysis and fail to read between the lines of what these “pro-lifers” are really saying. They are not against abortions for all women, they are against abortions for WHITE women. Hell, you’ll find many a Christian organization working hand in hand with a Planned Parenthood etc when it comes to sterilizing or providing abortions for “females” (in that they are non-women/non human) of color/poor. Honestly, take a look at all of the abortion clinic bombings, their locations and the primary demographic (white) served by said attacked abortion clinics. Then take a look at what these same groups say about the poor (which despite official numbers to the contrary, is highly racialized in “majority/white” beliefs/i.e. the terms are racially loaded.) When they spit fire on “the poor” , they do not and can not see one of the little blonde babies they’ve “rescued” from between the legs of some “evil abortionist”- they see a teeming mass of dusky faced, for lack of a better word here, “darkies, looking to steal their “birthright”. When you actually use the hidden modifiers/adjectives and get at the real meanings when these groups use the word “women”, “poor” and “children” then you see that these groups aren’t being hypocritical, they are being deadly serious and deadly consistent. After all, Christian groups in this country were (i’d say, still are) the number one supporters of sterilization/abortion etc when it comes to the “untermenchen known in American parlance as the “urban poor”/”underprivileged/illegal immigrants(which in turn means immigrant of color/Mexican) .

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