On killing babies

"Killing babies no different from abortion, experts say"

At first I was quite heartened by that headline.

Though I wondered why we needed "experts" to point out the obvious: that abortion equals killing babies:

• Babies are persons, whether they've yet travelled the length of the birth canal or not
• Killing babies outside the womb is wrong
• And so it is wrong to kill them inside the womb too
  

However on reading the story itself, it became clear that their logic was something quite different...

• Babies are not persons, whether they've yet travelled the length of the birth canal or not
• Killing babies inside the womb is (so they say) fine
• And so there's nothing wrong with killing them inside the womb, either

Academics are often more willing than others to follow through the logic of their premises.

If it's OK to kill babies who are located at one end of the birth canal, why not the other?

Why not indeed?

If on the other hand, babies are persons (which they are!) then abortion is murder of the most defenceless people of all, and our societies are ripe for the fierce and holy wrath of God.

Abortion, politics and moral equivalence in the modern West

We have to wonder at what kind of twisted moral universe folk who think that killing innocent babies is OK, but that performing an ultrasound test first would be equivalent to rape have manoeuvred themselves in to.

So...

From various news sources:

"Women should be able to continue to abort their unborn babies up to 24 weeks because the baby can't feel pain, according to a controversial review of the scientific evidence."

"Interesting" logic. So, presumably it's OK to kill people who are under general anaesthetic, because they can't feel pain. "Yes, your honour, I'm not guilty of any crime here. I sedated my victim first, so when I hacked his head off / destroyed his limbs with a suction device / etc., he did not feel it!"

It's amazing how confused fallen humans can get about the simplest things, once we've decided we want something that God has forbidden, and what twisted and perverse reasonings we can come up with.

It ought to be clear... but the reason why it's wrong to kill babies is not because of how much pain they do or do not feel at the time.

It's because they are human beings.

Confused? You will be...

God has a super-special deal on confusion - buy one, get two extra free!

It works like this: in God's created world, God's creatures need to put God their Creator first in their thinking. If they rebel and refuse to do so, they are deliberately choosing confusion. And then confusion is what they get - by the barrel-load.

The world is very busy trying to ignore God's revealed moral law. In the West, for example, the laws against sexual immorality or dishonouring your parents and other authorities are so far from being observed that a very high number of people think that things like valuing chastity (ooh, what an old word!) or honouring authority are very close to being signs of mental illnesses.

But however much we ignore the moral law, we remain moral creatures, crafted by God. If our sense of morality is attacked and supresseed, yet still it cannot be obliterated.

Result? Moral confusion. It cannot be wiped out - so it has to be distorted and perverted instead. Here's an outstanding example from last week: "Great-grandmother given an electronic tag and curfew for selling a goldfish to a 14 year-old". Normally when I see a newspaper headline like that I think, "yes, but if you read the story there'll be more to it than that...". In this case there was - a slightly poorly cockatiel, a gerbil that wasn't well looked after by a disabled girl, a £1,000 fine for all this overflow of iniquity, and a self-righteous council spokesman dealing out sound-bite slogans to justify this punishment upon the 66-year old dear as exactly the right thing, which "sends out a message", blah blah blah. When Manchester and the result of the UK is full of adultery, abortion, drugs, prostitution, knife crime, pornography, disrespect to authorities, and so on, it's amazing that he can work up such an overflow of righteous indignation about the poor twee goldfish's potential mistreatment (though it does say something else about the British schools if by the age of 14 it can safely be assumed that you're not yet competent to look after one...). It's amazing - until you join up the dots and realise that the excess of perverted righteousness in such a case of this is simply the result of a excessive lack of concern for righteousness in the other: they're not independent ases.

The solution to this isn't a return to "common sense" or "old-fashioned values" or caning in schools etc. These things were consequences and concomitants, not causes. The root cause is godless thinking. When God hands over a nation to intellectual and moral confusion, it's because that nation has already wilfully chosen intellectual and moral confusion. They shut the door on God and after his long patience, God says "let me lock that for you". Buy one, get two free. The only way back is repentance and faith in Jesus Christ. With godly repentance, the grip of moral confusion is broken and that's when the re-building can begin - not until.

Live baby thrown out with the rubbish in Florida

"Abortion Shock: Baby Born Alive Then Thrown Out"
http://www.sermonaudio.com/new_details.asp?ID=26912

Thankfully the idea of dumping a new-born baby in the trash still shocks people. But please, why would it have been legal to do exactly the same had the same woman in question not gone into labour at that moment and the same baby had still been in the womb?

Whatever labels people decide to apply to it, it's still murder. And the failure to speak out and speak clearly about that is a guilty silence.

Modern eugenics

Take a look at this story, "Abortionist: life only matters if it's wanted".

Now, fundamentally the Bible definitely contradicts the idea that the value of life consists in its being wanted - its value consists in that God made man in the image of God (Genesis 1:26-28).

The point I want to highlight in this particular case, though, isn't that one. It's that here the abortionist isn't only saying that the value of life is relative to how it is valued. It's that it is relative to how it is valued by someone other than the living person themselves, in this case the mother. We're familiar with people arguing for personal euthanasia saying "it's my life" and "I no longer wish to go on"; but here the value of your life is defined by someone else, not you. The baby isn't given the opportunity to live and grow, and then pass its own evaluation; others do it for it, it gets chopped up, and we hope it would have agreed we did the right thing - we're sorry if not.

This root idea, voice by the Chief Executive of the British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS), is nothing other than the key idea behind Eugenics. Some significant other (your parents, society, or the government), gets to define the value of your life. You get to suffer the consequences, and we're sorry if you didn't like it, but you'll have to put up with it for the greater good.

Government as God, again

"Enforce sex lessons from the age of five: Speculation is growing that the Government’s answer to record abortion numbers among schoolgirls is to start sex education with five-year-olds and scrap the parental opt-out." - read more here: http://www.christian.org.uk/news/20080620/enforce-sex-lessons-from-the-age-of-five/

Is it actually the case that all the abortions are happening amongst schoolgirls who were being withdrawn from the government's sex education lessons? Is it that the ones in the lessons are angels and the tiny minority are single-handedly sending the abortion figures through the roof? Or would this be just another example of the government in all of its omni-competence deciding that the solution to the problem is to take yet more of parents' prerogatives to themselves?

In any case, the wider ongoing issue in stories like the above is Western governments' continuing attempt to take over the role of God, of parents, and of everything else: you will do with your children as they think best, and they will criminalise you if you don't agree with whatever their latest folly is. This is the tragic fate of the godless. Once they lose their belief in an all-powerful sovereign ruler in heaven, they have to create an alternative one on earth. There can't be no god; the nature of humanity requires one. If we depose one, we need to set up another to replace it. Unfortunately the counterfeit always ends up not being a God of glory for our admiration, devotion and willing service, but a terrifying seven-headed beast.

Abortion and the beginning of life

Two of the US presidential candidates were recently asked if life begins at conception or not. In case you just arrived from another planet, the significance of this question is that if life does begin at conception, then abortion can only be classified as murder. Here are their answers:

Barack Obama: This is something that I have not come to a firm resolution on. I think it’s very hard to know what that means — when life begins. Is it when a cell separates? Is it when the soul stirs? So I don’t presume to know the answer to that question. What I know, as I’ve said before, is that there is something extraordinarily powerful about potential life and that that has a moral weight to it that we take into consideration when we’re having these debates.

Hillary Clinton: Potential for life begins at conception. . . I am a Methodist, as you know. My church has struggled with this issue. In fact, you can look at the Methodist Book of Discipline and see the contradiction and the challenge of trying to sort that very profound question out. But for me, it is also not only about a potential life — it is about the other lives involved. And, therefore, I have concluded, after great concern and searching my own mind and heart over many years, that our task should be in this pluralistic, diverse life of ours in this nation that individuals must be entrusted to make this profound decision, because the alternative would be such an intrusion of government authority that it would be very difficult to sustain in our kind of open society.

Both candidates are, their voting records show, strong supporters of a right to abortion. Senator Obama has even put on record, in the Illinois  Senate, his support for the right to kill disabled babies even immediately after birth, as well as before it.

There are many things that we could say about the above two answers. There's one point I wanted to make though. It's to take a step back and point out that the answers both show that pro-abortionists are badly losing the intellectual debate. Both candidates, when all is trimmed away, say "I don't know" in answer to the question "does life begin at conception?" That means, they also don't know if abortion is immoral and if modern states are turning a blind eye to the murdering of millions of the most vulnerable every year. It means they don't know if abortion is on the one hand an important human right, or on the other hand the greatest moral atrocity of modern times. They're both campaigning to become the most powerful person in the world, but this fundamental question... well, they're not decided. Hmmm.

Why does this mean that pro-abortionists are losing the debate? Because, a generation ago, they confidently exclaimed that life did not begin at conception; at that point we were just dealing with a blob of cells. This was the whole basis for legitimising abortion - at that point, we were told, there was nothing more than an unwanted growth in the womb, which could be dealt with however we pleased - even up to 18, 22 or 26 weeks, depending on what figure you felt like plucking out of the air when you got out of bed this morning.

That position is now untenable. Babies have been born, and survived, at less than 22 weeks. Babies have been born, and died, younger than that - and nobody dares say they weren't real babies whilst they were struggling for their little lives. Modern technology has allowed the most amazing insights into the baby's life within the womb, showing their highly developed existence even at half the number of weeks mentioned above. Through modern scientific answers, we know that once a baby has been conceived, all it needs is protection and nourishment to make it into the outside world: there are no fundamental subsequent stages in its existence that can be pinpointed as "the beginning of life" rather than at conception. That's leaving aside the moral and philosophical arguments.

In the light of these answers, pro-abortionists have it tough. It's become increasingly untenable to say "that thing's not alive, so it's OK to hack it to pieces - it's not a moral issue!" They're now reduced to saying we don't know. If at this stage you can't work out which side of the debate is in the right, you're in real trouble...

Abortion petition

"The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill, now in the House of Commons, provides the first opportunity for 18 years for changing the law on abortion.

Please sign the new petition at http://www.aliveandkickingcampaign.org/petition/ calling on Parliament to support amendments to reduce the number of abortions in the UK from 200,000 a year and to oppose amendments that would further liberalise the abortion law.

Please also alert others to this."

For past generations, the battles against slavery and against racism were the defining battles of their time. In both cases, there was a large apathetic majority, and many sympathisers for the status quo who produced many bogus arguments for their cause.

The same is true today. The ending of the lives of babies in their mothers' wombs is absolutely indefensible, just as considering those babies as inferior beings because of the wrong ancestry, or considering them as someone else's possession are absolutely indefensible. Just because there is a "debate" does not mean that the arguments used by abortion's defenders are any less bogus than those used in the "debate" by slave masters and racists of past generations.

Legalised abortion will one day fall, just as legalised slavery and racism have. The only question will be whether it's in our generation, or whether we'll fail our tiny human brothers and sisters and leave it to others.

The UK's moral confusion

On the BBC news website today:

"Abortion tablets in wife's food: A baker put abortion tablets into his wife's breakfast to try to make her lose their baby, a court has heard."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/london/7271546.stm

Quote: "Mrs Abraham suffered pain and bleeding but the child survived unharmed. ... Magira, 36, of Holmebrook Drive, Hendon, north London, admitted 'using an instrument to procure a miscarriage' - the first such charge in 30 years."

According to the story, Mr. Magira's wife was 11 weeks pregnant at the time. What's wrong with this picture?

What's wrong with this picture is that the only reason this was a criminal offence, and the only reason the young one was considered a "baby" or a "child" whose life needed protecting, was because the wrong person administered the tablets. Had his wife administered the tablets to herself, then instead of "baby", "child", "baby", "child, the little one would have just been identified as a non-entity - an impersonal mass of tissue - and there would have been no question of any prosecution. The young life would have been defined out of existence, the courts and the BBC would have cared nothing for it, and the professionals involved in killing it would have used the politically correct terminology of "foetus" or "foetal tissue", or the like to make it sound like nothing notable happened.

Did you get that? Whether the baby was a real person, and whether artificially ending its life would constitute a crime or a non-event, was decided by who put the tablets in the food.

Welcome to the UK!