Donny's Ramblings

Donny,
You make some very good points in this blog. Of course, the “heart cure” is always the best but not everyone accepts the “heart cure” If people don’t accept it do we change the laws to accomodate? If would be better if drug addicts would accept Jesus and have their hearts made whole and make a choice to become free of that addiction, but many won’t, so should we therefore make drugs legal? Just a thought.

If everyone truly accepted the”Heart Cure” with all of there being, would we even need laws?

For how long have drugs been illegal? Many of the drugs used now never existed during the time of Jesus. We pass laws like there is no tomorrow. But the fact of the matter is that most of these things that have come to exist wouldn’t exist if the Church was doing its job. Drug use is an attempt to fill the void where Jesus should be. If we loved people the way we should and showed them Jesus in skin, instead of sitting around watching television and becoming just as self absorbed as any other group of people, there wouldn’t be so many social problems.

If the divorce rate in church wasn’t just as high as the divorce rate outside the church, and families were really valued the way we claim to value them with our mouths, there wouldn’t be so many social problems.

If those who picket outside abortion clinics instead held signs saying, “I’ll take your child. I’ll feed and clothe you while you go through pregnancy. I’ll give you a place to live. Don’t be scared. I’m here for you.” there wouldn’t be so many abortions.

Jesus negates the need for laws. He said so himself. I believe Him.

Yeah, we have laws. More all the time. Apparently our law makers need to keep making laws to justify their position. By just accepting this, we encourage them. We dumb people down by making rules about every aspect of how they should live their lives, rather than letting them figure it out for themselves. People (in general) live up to the standards we expect of them, just like children.

Sure, some laws are necessary. SOME being the key word.

The fact that Obama did not vote to ban partial birth abortion gives me cause for concern about his heart. I know it was supposedly because it didn’t contain a clause about protection for the mother or something but to me that seems like a cop out. How often does that happen and how far do you take that? It just seems there is always some excuse to let the mother make her “choice.”

I assume you’re referring to the Born Alive issue that is so often discussed when referring to Barack Obama and abortion. I choose to accept his explanation: laws already exist that compels doctors to care for babies born alive… it’s called the Hippocratic Oath. Doctors MUST care for those who need care. A law wasn’t necessary to stipulate this, and it was loaded with (or lacked) other aspects he didn’t find acceptable.

But again… John McCain, who champions of Pro Life hold up as the hope of overturning Roe v Wade, has publicly stated that his appointments to the Supreme Court, should he become our next President, will not face a litmus test of holding his views of abortion. He admitted this on live national television. What he’s telling us is that his administration will not overturn Roe v Wade, just like the more than 30 years of Republican Presidential rule before him since Roe v Wade was ruled upon. That being the case, it doesn’t really matter how he feels about it… he’s not going to do anything.

The point of this blog post, however, was to demonstrate that Obama is NOT a baby killer.

I have to be honest. I reject free-will as even possible in this life. Like it or not, we are all prone towards the exact opposite of what is good, that is, we are prone towards doing evil. And we are prone towards that because we are slaves to sin, as both Jesus and St. Paul point out. To believe otherwise is to actually not be a Christian, since one has already disowned the messengers of Christ and thereby the one who sent them.

We are free to some extent, this is true, in matters of daily life, but these are even skewed by our being prone to sin. And to blame God for the fact that we are prone to sin is stupidity as well, since it is we who share with the first man, Adam himself, the original guilt that we all bear and that infects not our bodies, but our souls.

It is natural for the fallen, sinful and wicked mankind to try and put himself/herself in God’s place, in fact to become his/her own little god, and to think himself/herself able to judge his/her creator and to decide what god he/she will worship. But all this is, in reality, is self-deification, thus proving that the story of Genesis 3 is true and we are all in fact guilty, for we all want to be like god – in fact to be god.

We want to think we are free and independent of God, that we don’t depend on him for every movement and every breath, though “in him we live and move and have our being.”

And so, in doing this, we show that we are enslaved to this rebellion, unable to be free of it, unable to obey willingly, but that only by the death of the will that is enslaved to sin can any true freedom be obtained. This is why we must do something that we cannot do of ourselves – “deny ourselves, take up our cross, and follow” the Incarnate God himself.

But we want explanations for why God allows this or that, things that are above or beyond us, and we challenge that God could be God if he did things we don’t think of as fair or right – thus judging God and proving our guilt all the more. We say that if man is responsible apart from some supposed “free (neutral) will,” God has no right to judge him. But with our words we judge God, and so condemn ourselves, and prove our slavery all the more.

Abortion is rightly a matter of the heart, and is as common as nearly every other idea throughout the history of man. The ancient Jews used to through their infant children while they were still breathing into the fires inside the idol Molech, and the Roman women would drink a potion to dispose of the unwanted child. In every civilization around the globe, the sacrifice of children or infanticide in some form has always been common, and disposing of the unwanted children has also been more the norm than the exception, with the exception being within historical Christianity, because historic Christianity understood that human opinions were irrelevant and we were bound to repent of our thoughts and live by the ways and thoughts of God.

We were to do so because of the love God first showed us by becoming one of us in the man Jesus Christ, who took the place of judgement on Calvary’s Tree, and then overcame our human weakness and was the exception to the rule in his glorious resurrection. He, who is the firstfruits from the grave, is where their hope and the hope of all men resides, but not apart from their repentance of their thoughts, words, and deeds that run contrary to the ways of the creator.

They did not do such things such as abortion and infanticide, but instead spared the unwanted children (which is how orphanages came into exstance), for they knew that abortion and other practices like it were seen with the greatest sickening in the heart of the Almighty, who judges the hearts and ways of men. They knew that those who do such things condemn themselves and bring about many curses upon themsleves, both in this life and in the next, as their slavery to sin is proven all the more and they grow further and futher from their creator, becoming less human by the moment and by the day, so that the only thing that is left of their humanity is their bodies, which contain worthless and inhuman souls.

For how can a person be human who lives not according to the ways of the only man who maintained the Image of God perfectly: Jesus Christ? No, those who do such detestable and wicked evils, who “are wise in their own eyes” are rightly called by the Lord “white washed tombs.” And some don’t even bother to be white washed! But they are dead, so much enslaved to sin that their is no life to speak of, and they cannot choose their path unless they are freed by the power of God – yes, his very Word that brings to be what is not, and casts out of existance what is.

Do not condemn or question the Creator because he allows the wicked to prove their guilt, and so proving the greatness and the wisdom of his final judgements upon them! For in doing so, we are not proving ourselves wise but foolish. No, condemn the foolish, those who cannot see what is right before their eyes, what is self-evident but what their wickedness does not allow them to see – the Creator who stands in their midst and who grants to all in his mercy life despite their wickedness, being patient with them that none might perish but instead might see their guilt and repent.

For wickedness leads men to deceive themselves and the ignoant into thinking that there is a problem with what the true God has revealed, and in fact in the worship of our race seeks to commingle the Truth with lies, and then say that the Truth is in error. This is an abomination and evil ,and is the ways of the wisdom of men, but is not of the Wisdom that is from Above.

Our institutions in their arrogance have become places where foolishness reigns, and those places that are the most prestigious are the centers of the proclamation of foolishness.

For had they considered the evidence before them, these who are wise in the eyes of the wicked would not be condemned and condemning themselves. Such is the wisdom of men, which evidences that there is no freedom in their wills, for they with all their intelligence cannot do anything but love what is false and hate what is good, thus “calling evill good and good evil”.

So Donny, after all is said and done, there is nothing that can be done but that men abandon any credit for anything in this life, and instead find themselves wholly and utterly dependent on their Creator for every breath, every aspect of their being, for their salvation, and for their restoration to true humanity.

Hey Donny. The question of God’s culpability in his creatures’ actions is one with a long history, isn’t it. It’s a great question.

Out of curiosity, do you feel all abortions are murder, beginning at conception? Or just those after a central nervous system is developed, etc?

Look at the story of Lazarus recorded in John 11. Jesus knew all about Lazarus’ condition and loved him. Yet, He allowed Lazarus to die. Jesus knew the end of the story, but he still wept after Lazarus died. We can have faith but still experience great pain and sorrow at the “loss of life” we see in front of us. Jesus came to destroy death. He knows the end of the story where Lazarus was raised from the dead. For Christians, death is nothing to fear. Jesus conquered it; when we think from a bigger standpoint, the death of a child is not the “end of the story”. We can have great sorrow over this loss of life, but we should also understand that earthly death is required and Jesus solved the permanent side of the problem.

Shifting gears, let’s be careful not to be complacent. If a person witnesses an attempted murder, they generally have a moral responsibility to help the victim. Likewise, when a person knows a murder (or mass murders) are going to happen, there is a moral responsibility to make every effort to try to stop them. The first question man asked God is something like, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” The rest of time gives us the clear answer that we are. We can debate about how much that means government-sponsored welfare or other ideas, but it seems pretty clear on abortion that once we accept the idea that an unborn child is human that we’re required to do everything we can (including how we vote) to protect that life.

An example comes from WWII. During the Holocaust, was it sufficient justification for a member of the Nazi party to continue their membership and support of the government if they knew about the death camps? Unlike the Nazis at that time, we’re not coerced. We’re not forced to sacrifice our own lives to resist American legal death clinics. Voting for the institutions that support abortion violates our moral responsibility. In this case, while the conservatives are imperfect, the institutions that support abortion are strongly concentrated on the left and this includes Mr. Obama.

When it comes to war, the intent is not to kill innocent people. In Iraq and Afghanistan, though it’s not possible to prove one way or the other, there’s a strong case to be made that more “innocent” lives were saved by the war than were lost by the war. Life doesn’t always give us a choice between 100% life and 100% death. Sometimes, it requires that we pick between some death and more death. Would it have been acceptable to bomb Auschwitz in WWII? That would have killed thousands of innocent people, but it would have slowed the death machine itself and possibly saved thousands more. Americans found mass graves in Iraq. It was well-known that people who could potentially stand up to Hussein frequently disappeared into thin air. Hussein’s son employed industrial plastic shredders to torture and kill people. Hussein gassed the Kurds. How’d he do that without chemical weapons? He had them, but they weren’t new ones or from an active program. However, they were lethal enough. Granted, death by an accident isn’t any less dead than intentional death, but there’s something to be said for intent. Are we, using the best knowledge that we have, working to save as many lives as we can or working to end them? Complacency is not an option.

My position is that changing hearts is important, but changing the law is important, too. One of these does not come at the expense of the other. We have to try at least a two-pronged approach. While doing this, we need to understand that God is in control and that, with Christ, death is not permanent.

Carrie,

By the time a woman is able to tell whether or not she’s pregnant I feel it’s wrong to end her pregnancy.

As for things like the “morning after” pill… here’s what is said about it:

Although scientists aren’t completely sure how it works, they believe that levonorgestrel prevents pregnancy either by stopping the ovulation process or by disrupting the ability of sperm and egg to meet in the Fallopian tubes. Some speculate that the drug may prevent the fertilized egg from implanting as well, perhaps by making the uterine lining less receptive to the egg.

You won’t find me out campaigning against something like that.

When in doubt, I always choose the lesser of two evils. No candidate in this election is without flaw. But there is definitely one candidate (as always, with politicians, and human-kind as a whole) who is less evil, and more right. You should just vote for McCain…. you’d sleep better at night. ….or, don’t vote at all. Just PLEASE don’t vote for a man who so blatantly opposes God’s will.

Click on this link to see the video—–wow!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kri8G-lGYfg

Watch it again. And yes, the election is about much more than the issue of abortion. But that issue alone is fundamental. It’s one of the 10 commandments, for crying out loud. Rationalize all you want, but deep in the heart of every one of us, we KNOW that every life is God’s creation. Every life (and in my opinion, especially the lives of the innocents… the unborn we assist in murdering just may be the ones who would bring about revival in this depraved and fallen world) deserves a chance at being.

Popular Christian author Donald Miller just published a great article on his blog that I think all should read:

http://donmilleris.com/2008/11/03/from-reagan-to-obama-a-brief-political-history/

donny,
I haven’t waded through all the comments here yet, but I did read your blog and Donald Miller’s blog. love him and his non- “Christianese” approach to things.

I must say, you have gotten me to think more about this election than I ever intended to.

I feel you do have some very good arguements for your potential choice of Obama.

Concerning the abortion issue, one of my chief concerns is that I have heard that as senator Obama voted to end the lives of babies that survived an abortion procedure. I cannot quote exact voting records at the moment, but I am sure someone more versed on this topic could. Or perhaps they already have. If he did vote for this, I would be interested in hearing his reasonings behind doing so.

In my gut, I do not trust Obama. I feel he is very eloquent, has some great ideas and is full of energy and hope. But I am not sure I know the man underneath all of that. His character matters most to me honestly, as I feel his character will determine his choices if he becomes president. And I have not completely answered the character question in my heart yet.

thank you for continuing to make me think Donny.
Val:)

Donny, thanks for posting the link to Miller’s blog. I love him as an author and person, though he and I arrive at different conclusions regarding this election. I thought I’d copy my comment from his blog over here, since it’s relevant to your recent posts as well:

This sounds very enlightened and intelligent, but I’m still not convinced.

Rather, this is how I think it goes down: Many of us from similar backgrounds are raised from early childhood to be Good Republicans™. We eventually grow up to discover the world isn’t what we thought it was, and in our disillusionment, we find ourselves becoming quickly disenfranchised with the political party we synonymized with being the “correct” party throughout our childhood. We ask ourselves, “What if the OTHER side was the right side?” And the allure of that possibility is just so tempting that we convert.

It’s kind of like having a crisis of faith, but in a way that feels safer and has less far-reaching implications. It seems like a really big, complicated deal to ditch Christianity and become an atheist. Not quite such a big deal to switch from being a Christian Republican to being a Christian Democrat. It’s a safer rebellion. Not that we’re rebels without a cause; we’re just lashing out over the realization as adults that the world is bent and broken, and the political party we grew up supporting (because we were told it was the “Christian” party) failed us, so it becomes an easy scapegoat.

I strongly dislike both parties. I grew up Republican, had my Democratic phase a few years ago, and then realized that the Democrats weren’t any more correct than the Republicans, AND much of what they supported ran contrary to my faith, more so than that of the almost-equally-corrupt Republican party.

As much as the Obama camp has tried to paint McCain as another George W. Bush, I don’t see that when I look at what he proposes and what he stands for. I see someone who admittedly voted in alignment with Bush much of the time, likely because he thought what Bush proposed was “more correct” than the alternatives, but who would do things quite differently if he were not just one voice among many and had the ability to fix what’s broken.

I tried, I really tried, to become an Obama fan. And I don’t think he’s the Antichrist that the radical right has painted him to be. But I think that, if I’m honest with myself, my wanting to support him has to do more with my wanting to rebel against the upbringing that I felt failed me later in life than it does with truly believing that Obama is what’s best for America. I suspect that’s true of many of my fellow brothers and sisters in the church as well.

At the end of the day, I have to go with my gut, my heart. And that tells me that though he’s far from ideal, John McCain is a better choice than Barack Obama.

As to the idea of God (or Obama) being a baby killer by the standards laid in that email, I think it’s a very thought-provoking question you’ve raised. I love questions that force me to wrestle through difficult topics in my mind, and that’s why I’m a constant reader of your blog.

My response is that I don’t think the logic quite carries through, because while God gives us free will, he also tells us in no uncertain terms, “Do not murder.” And it wasn’t even given as a suggestion, it was given as law. Why give us free agency and laws simultaneously? It makes me think that perhaps both are important.

I had to explain to my young son yesterday why Obama is NOT a baby killer, as had been communicated to him in a poorly-worded, reckless comment he overheard.

But I do think there is a flaw in the line of thinking that says, “Abortion is wrong, but it should be a legal choice.” Free will makes EVERYTHING a choice, regardless of the laws of any country. The question is whether we want the laws of our country to reflect the laws of the Kingdom.

While I completely agree with your assessment that it’s most important to compassionately and lovingly fix the heart issue that’s behind abortion, I think that there’s some front-end work to be done as well.

Example: I recently went to the emergency room with a severe toothache. Turns out a tooth became infected and needed a root canal, badly. The real underlying issue was that the tooth needed a root canal — that was the heart issue, if you will. But the short-term symptom needed to be treated as well. That is, I had to go on an antibiotic for a week to clear up the infection before the root canal could be performed. Without first addressing the immediate emergency, the long-term solution couldn’t be addressed effectively. I think we’re facing a similar scenario with abortion.

Do I think McCain will be able to overturn Roe v. Wade? No, I don’t. It would take a Republican majority in Congress AND a Republican president to successfully implement a Supreme Court that, even then, might or might not do it. (And though I would hope to see it happen for the express purpose of overturning Roe v. Wade, I also cringe to think what other legislation an overly-Republican government would try to weasel through.)

The reason I’m still voting McCain, as far as the abortion issue is concerned, is that I think that a Democratic president coupled with a Democratic Supermajority will give us so much more abortion legislation than just Roe v. Wade to work to overturn in years to come. The Dems know that Roe is a target, so I foresee them busily working for the next four years to get as many reinforcements as possible on the books to make it harder for the pro-lifers when the majority inevitably swings back from the left toward the right.

From that perspective, I don’t think it’s possible for me to really set abortion aside and focus exclusively on other issues.

Hey Donny. I know what you’re saying. In my reading, I’ve been persuaded that the 8th week is the point at which a central nervous system can develop, so the fetus can feel pain while the pregnancy is aborted. I can understand why someone would object to that. Just wondering if you feel that before that 8th week, the fetus has a soul, or is there another factor in there that you’re considering?

You kinow, there is in all the midst of this a question first of what is “definitionally true” and what is actually “opinion.”

Like it or not – and this is quite simple – if the unborn child is a living person, then the taking of that life for personal gain or to avoid personal suffering is by definition murder.

Thus, as harsh as the term sounds, saying that a woman and her doctor are “baby killers” is not a mean-spirited phrase (even if it is used that way), it is simply a description of the individuals in relationship to their own private actions.

And since we are a tolerant society, we ought to tolerate all life as much as we are able, and not allow the taking of life, even if it is at best “borderline” alive or “borderline” human (that is, a matter of debate as to if it is a human being or not).

To devalue a single life based on development, size, age, where it lives, or its level of dependency is to devalue all life that is less than any other person in the same department.

Thus, every woman, no matter what her age, is discriminated against when a little girl is aborted, and every woman who is not yet dead is of no value everytime the youngest of female human beings is killed for the comfort or conveinence of another human being (especially at the hands of a male abortionist or because a male influence is the source of such destructive behavior).

As a result, the feminist destroys her own cause by supporting abortion, which I suppose is why every feminist leader prior to the late 1960′s was pro-life.

By the way, I would also note that the Hitler analogy only works in-so-far as we acknowledge that countless young girls are given the choices of “suffer a pregnancy” and “abortion” as Hitler said “suffer having these Jews” or “kill the Jews” as choices to the German nation. This is the case in most abortion clinics. If other choices were promoted, such as adoption and the ability to be provided for until the child is born, the analogy I think would fall apart. I do believe that abortion is actually much worse than the holocost.

Probably just as important, it is destroying our economy (and so injuring the living), since 1/3 of our generation never was born, which means fewer workers, inventors, entreprenuers, leaders, and such, thus making immigration the only thing that is enlarging our population and economy at this point in time. Oddly enough, the only thing that is really reducing the number of abortions is the number of girls that have been born in the last generation due to having been aborted by the last generation.

It has been pointed out – and I think rightly – that we should call abortion a civil rights issue. That is, it is an issue of generational discrimination, wherein the present generation destroys the following generation, treating it as an object in a manner that reminds us of how slaveowners are depicted of viewing their slaves – as objects and not human beings. In this sense, we could also note that this view of other human beings as mere objects is in fact what pornography and most of the media, as well as our youth, do with other human beings. It is the selfish use of human beings – in every relationship imaginable where others exist for our selfish use – that is probably the single most cause of a large majority of the relationship problems that we have in the present era. In other words, we have dehumanized each other, and so are dehumanized, and wonder why we can’t seem to have sturdy relationships with others. Even worse, we are teaching our young people that in order to meet their relationship needs, they must first dehumanize themselves.

And so, abortion is not only a problem, but evidence of a much deeper and horrid evil that is central to the present age.

I wanted to add a comment on changing the law…

Throughout the Old & New Testaments, I believe it is clear that God rules the world by two separate means – a kingdom of grace and a kingdom of law. The first is meant to be the avenue of the believers, the latter of the civil government. The believer does what is right because of repentance, but the unbeliever only does what is right because of fear from either the external law or fear from an internal law received from personal experience or the experience of others. Either way, the law motivates the unbeliever, and the unbeliever (who hates the law and wants to do whatever they want to do) only operates based on the law imposed upon him/her.

We are told in Romans 13 that the Government only has its authority becasue it is a deacon (helper) of God for these purposes, and the Old Testament makes it quite clear that governments are removed when they try the patience of God by going far enough against their mission, which is to establish and uphold the moral code of law that exists from the foundation of the world.

As a result, the first and most important duty of the government (and we who influence the government) is to pursue bringing the law of our land as much in line with God’s law as possible.

Oddly enough, this is also what the Muslim, who believes in a dramatically different law and a god of dramatically different nature, is openly trying to do if he/she is a true believer and not a “moderate” as most are. As a result, we can expect that in the future we will see moves to legalize polygamy, wife-beating, and the harming or murder of homosexuals in some form, or at least that muslims not be condemned for such actions that are in accord with Sharia law.

The difference is that Christians aren’t trying to force the government to be Christian (Christianity has an inherent belief in the separation of Church & State, with the former influencing the latter) while Islam sees no separation – the Church is the State.

My point is, we ought to try and have the law changed because it is something God hates, and because otherwise human beings will act more like animals than human beings (though there’s no real difference if you believe in the Theory of Evolution).

Of all the laws that we should fight for, this is #1 because the unborn child never has the chance to live a life that violates God’s law and to join or reject the faithful in a clear and open manner. At least give the unborn the chance to become an atheist rather than kill it before it has a chance! Give the child a chance to live a sexually perverted life, rather than taking the opportunity for the gain of the woman!

A well done argument but it contains one little flaw. God is man-made – not the other way around. God doesn’t allow choice nor did He give it to us. Choice exists because we exist and we exist because of a freak of nature (and dinosaurs were not a plant to test our faith). You have the choice to believe in myths if you want, but you would be better off taking responsibility for your own life. Bad things happen because WE let them not HE. WE have to be the change we want. If you oppose abortion then get out and fight for changes in the world that will decrease unwanted pregnancy in the first place. Making it illegal only marginalizes people you don’t know and don’t care about. Start caring and fight (not in the violent sense that is) for proper education, proper health care, proper wages and jobs for people. In short, care for the other, not you own sense of what is right.

It seems this entire argument boils down to whether God is culpable for his creation’s activities. Many non-believers would say yes, assuming God can foresee the future perfectly. But I don’t think this is very specific to abortion. We do outlaw certain practices because we find them too violent for a civilized society… rape and murder come to mind. So if abortion is really on that same level, then I suppose we ought to outlaw it in all circumstances. The question would just be whether that is true. This is all muddy water to cross. I definitely think that the murder of animals is on par with the murder of unborn babies (assuming those babies have a nervous system), and we haven’t outlawed killing animals (though perhaps we should). It’s all tricky, and I don’t have the answer yet.

Carrie,

For me it’s not about whether or not the fetus can feel pain. I’m not concerned with whether or not death is accomplished in a “humane” manner.

An 8 week old fetus definitely has a soul, there is no doubt in my mind.

Thank you so much for your thoughts. I’ve really struggled in this election to break out of the “to be a good christian you have to be republican” mold. I live in a very red, seminary town and was chastised by many just for be open to the possibilities and even thinking about voting democratic. I have even been hoping today not to be asking who I voted for because the thought of having to defend myself is a little overwhelming. I hate being a “secret” voter, but I appreciate so much your boldness, I needed that encouragement today.

By the way, for those who question Barack Obama’s Christianity, what do you think of this:

http://donnysramblings.files.wordpress.com/2008/11/obama_faith.jpg

??

Aww, Taryn. You rock.

As a Christian who voted for Obama, please allow me the opportunity to explain why:

1) How many verses in the Bible directly address abortion? Zero. How many directly address poverty and oppression? Over 2,000.

2) Author Jim Wallis did a good job of explaining “pro-life” when he said, ““Choosing life” is a constant biblical theme, so I will choose candidates who have the most consistent ethic of life, addressing all the threats to human life and dignity that we face — not just one. Thirty-thousand children dying globally each day of preventable hunger and disease is a life issue. The genocide in Darfur is a life issue. Health care is a life issue. War is a life issue. The death penalty is a life issue. And on abortion, I will choose candidates who have the best chance to pursue the practical and proven policies which could dramatically reduce the number of abortions in America and therefore save precious unborn lives, rather than those who simply repeat the polarized legal debates and “pro-choice” and “pro-life” mantras from either side.” (www.sojo.net/blog/godspolitics/?p=3166)

3) The idea that simply overturning Roe v. Wade will end abortion is as outdated as it is uncaring. It is time to try a new approach; addressing the social and economic reasons behind why most women feel the need for an abortion, and doing it out of a feeling of love and genuine kindness towards the women forced to make such hard decisions. The old way has failed, let’s be willing to open our hearts to a new way of addressing the issue. As Don and others have mentioned before, http://www.prolifeproobama.com has some good research on the issue.

We Christians need to take a step back for a moment and look at the big picture. We need more dialogue and less shouting from both sides. Consider this thought from another blogger at “God’s Politics:”

“On one side, so-called “values voters” rally for the right to life of the baby. But they see my cousin’s death and the displacement of his family (in Iraq) as “collateral damage” in a war for freedom and their own security.

On the other side, so-called “change voters” protest a war that claims the life of innocents. But they see my unborn daughter’s life or death as a “freedom of choice.”

When I look at the reality of my family in light of a consistent ethic of life, all I hear from most politicians and preachers are inconsistencies. Both sides argue freedom for a way of life. But is any of this really about freedom, or just misplaced selfishness? Could it be as Bono once sang that, “what you thought was freedom was just greed.”
http://www.sojo.net/blog/godspolitics/?p=3411

Wow. This discussion turned everything I believed about pro-choice vs. pro-life on its head. Thanks for the “changing hearts” perspective.

All military service personel are voluntary, unborn children are not. I believe the so called ” freedom of choice” movment will be the first to insist on reinstituting the draft.

As far as Bono’s comment… how much money is made in the abortion industry? Billions. Greed indeed.