I DON’T GET IT.
In political discussions, especially about Obamacare, here’s a version of one of the arguments I hear over and over from many of my Christian friends:
When God told us to help the poor, he didn’t intend for the government to impose that demand on everyone. Instead, he wanted us to take it personally. He wanted each of us to help in our own way. Someone in Ohio shouldn’t have to pay for the healthcare of someone in Oregon.
Yet when it comes to criminalizing abortion—a topic not directly addressed by God or anyone else in the Bible—it’s okay for the government to impose that demand? Someone in Ohio can tell a college girl in Oregon that she can’t end that six-week pregnancy?
Many Christians have trouble following that argument.
On the one hand, we’ve got God, Jesus, and a gallery of prophets spanning a thousand years telling us to help the poor, tend the sick, and treat our neighbor the way we’d want them to treat us. And we Christians shouldn’t feel inclined to support candidates wanting to do that?
But when science class dropouts insist that life begins at conception, that women’s bodies have the magical power to inhibit pregnancy from a rape, or that rape pregnancies are gifts from God, we feel compelled to support them?
Where’s their source of authority for saying these things? That’s what many thinking Christians want to know.
The Bible doesn’t address any of that, as far as many can tell. And even if it did, wouldn’t it be a double standard to enforce the sanctity of an unborn life that’s sucking amniotic fluid while ignoring the sanctity of breathing human beings?
I’ll not quote the Bible verses in this blog—verses used to argue against abortion and those used to argue for allowing it. I’ve done that before.
In this case, let’s assume the Bible does teach that life begins at conception—many Christians believe that, and the Roman Catholic Church teaches it. Other Christian don’t see it at all. But even if the Bible does teach it, why would abortion trump dying people?
Why would we fight for a fetus and not fight for a fellow?
So here’s the question many Christians want to know.
How do folks justify lobbying for laws to save a fetus without lobbying for laws to save the dying among us?
George Carlin said it best: “Boy, these conservatives are really something, aren’t they? They’re all in favor of the unborn. They will do anything for the unborn. But once you’re born, you’re on your own. Pro-life conservatives are obsessed with the fetus from conception to nine months. After that, they don’t want to know about you. They don’t want to hear from you. No nothing. No neonatal care, no day care, no head start, no school lunch, no food stamps, no welfare, no nothing. If you’re pre-born, you’re fine; if you’re preschool, you’re f*!&ed.
Conservatives don’t give a sh*t about you until you reach “military age”. Then they think you are just fine. Just what they’ve been looking for. Conservatives want live babies so they can raise them to be dead soldiers. Pro-life… pro-life… These people aren’t pro-life, they’re killing doctors! What kind of pro-life is that? What, they’ll do anything they can to save a fetus but if it grows up to be a doctor they just might have to kill it?They’re not pro-life. You know what they are? They’re anti-woman. Simple as it gets, anti-woman. They don’t like them. They don’t like women.They believe a woman’s primary role is to function as a brood mare for the state.
Pro-life… You don’t see many of these white anti-abortion women volunteering to have any black fetuses transplanted into their uterus’s, do you? No, you don’t see them adopting a whole lot of crack babies, do you? No, that might be something Christ would do. “
Thanks, Erin. George wasn’t one for beating around the bush, was he?
There are certainly Christians who do provide services for families dealing with crisis pregnancies and with tough living conditions. But we’re not famous for that, are we?
No Steve, we are not known for being kind, giving, unselfish or compassionate. I wonder when the term “Christian” became synonymous for “homo-phobic, gun-toting, money hoarding, white, upper class misogynist”