https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Stork_with_new-born_child.png
Pro-Life people like to pretend the fetus is a genuine human being, i.e., a baby. That they pretend should be no surprise because their chosen label of “Pro-Life” contains its own pretense in that most of them are merely anti-abortion but pretend they are pro-life. Much of the pro-life position rests on lies, misrepresentations, pretense, and delusions.
Take, for example, the claim that the Bible forbids abortion. As evidence, they offer a misrepresentation, a pretense, based on a skewed reading of Jeremiah 1:5 which is “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations.” An obvious reading of the verses says that God had foreknowledge of a particular man who would be a “prophet to the nations.” How can we make the verse about abortion? First, we need to delete the part about a particular man so that we are left with " Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you.” Then we place the words over a picture of an infant and done! The pretense that the Bible condemns abortion is complete.
Does the Bible have any condemnation of abortion? If it does, someone needs to tell the Catholic Church because in 1995 Pope Paul II in the encyclical letter Evangelium Vitae said: “The texts of Sacred Scripture never address the question of deliberate abortion and so do not directly and specifically condemn it.” But if not the Bible, then on what does the Church base its condemnation of abortion? On the slippery phrase “human life.”
The logical fallacy of equivocation is “when a key term or phrase in an argument is used in an ambiguous way, with one meaning in one portion of the argument and then another meaning in another portion of the argument.” The phrase “human life” lends itself to equivocation as it can mean an individual human life, like the life of Albert Einstein or Abraham Lincoln, or it can mean tissue which has human life. In a body which is human and is alive, every living cell possesses “cellular human life.” The fetus begins as a tiny organism that possesses cellular human life from the moment of conception, just as the unfertilized egg and sperm possess cellular human life even before conception. But the fetus becomes a genuine human being only when “ensoulment” occurs, that is, only when God gives the fetus a human soul.
And when does ensoulment occur, you might wonder? When does the Catholic Church teach the soul enters the fetus? It’s an old question. Saints Augustine and Aquinas weight in on the question. Their teaching? That the human soul unites with the fetus about 90 days after conception! That statement may amaze some people because the Church has done its best to hide what is TODAY still official dogma. Crucial in the deception is the “human life” equivocation.
As an example, consider this excerpt from Evangelium Vitae.
Some people try to justify abortion by claiming that the result of conception, at least up to a certain number of days, cannot yet be considered a personal human life. But in fact, from the time that the ovum is fertilized, a life is begun which is neither that of the father nor the mother; it is rather the life of a new human being with his own growth. It would never be made human if it were not human already.
By the way, “Some people” include Saints Augustine and Aquinas. Now read the excerpt with additions in [brackets].
Some people try to justify abortion by claiming that the result of conception, at least up to a certain number of days, cannot yet be considered a personal human life. But in fact, from the time that the ovum is fertilized, a [cellular human] life is begun which is neither that of the father nor the mother; it is rather the [cellular human] life of [what will someday become] a [genuine] new human being with his own growth [once God gives the fetus a human soul]. It would never be made [into a genuine] human [being] if it were not [did not possess cellular] human [life] already.
“It would never be made [into a genuine] human [being] if it were not [did not possess cellular] human [life] already.” In other words, it possesses cellular human life so God can eventually give it a human soul. God never implants a human soul in the fetus of a frog or a horse. Who knew?
The maternal mortality rate (MMR) of a country is the number of infant deaths per 100,000 live births. You’d expect genuinely pro-life people to be at least as concerned with their country’s MMR as they are with abortion. But most self-described pro-lifers, at least, in the U.S., are more concerned with the “lives” of frozen embryos than the MMR, which is 23.8 for the U.S., 8.4 for Canada, 2.9 for Italy, and 1.8 for the Slovak Republic.[i] Want to give you baby a better chance of survival? Move from “pro-life” U.S. to the Slovak Republic. What’s wrong with that picture?
This is not to say that all pro-life people are hypocrites. Many were taught (some when they were quite young, for instance, in fourth grade Catholic School) that the fetus is a “baby.” The idea stuck in their head and they feel they are saving the lives of “babies” when they oppose abortion. But what happens to the “baby” that is aborted? The Catholic Church once had the idea of Limbo, the place were unbaptized babies go. But the idea of Limbo was dropped in the Church’s 1992 official catechism. The dogma of Limbo—pardon the pun—is now itself in a limbo of its own. Besides, Protestants don’t accept the idea of Limbo.
So, where do aborted “babies” go? There are only two ultimate destinations: heaven or hell. I have nothing to say to anyone who believes God sends aborted babies to hell. So, there’s only one destination remaining: heaven. So, abortion is mommies giving their “babies” to God. Christians, if you disagree, explain why.
But why do the churches so dishonestly portray the abortion question? If the Bible doesn’t condemn abortion, why don’t the people in the pews know it? Why don’t Catholics know that their own Church says ensoulment doesn’t happen until about 90 days after conception?
It’s a risky business trying to put yourself in the mind of someone else to explain their motivations. But I find it suspicious that Christian churches so often take a hardline policy against things sexual, especially their neighbor’s sexuality. Abortion, divorce, pre-marital sex, sex outside matrimony, conception, masturbation, homosexuality, transgender acceptance—Christians have much to say about such subjects, which all have to do with sexuality. If the child in the next home has two daddies or mommies, that’s a huge concern. If the child is hungry or doesn’t have access to quality medical care, well, their parents should stop being lazy and get a job. Not my problem. After all, this isn’t a Communist country.
I once read a book titled The Wisdom of Abortion which has an entire chapter devoted to the Christian mindset about sexuality. It claims that when it comes to sexuality, Christians often become hysterically unbalanced. Of course, it mentions the centuries that Christians killed mostly older women for the imaginary crime of witchcraft. But it had other, less known examples. For instance, in 1591 a woman by the name of Euphanie Macalyane took a mixture to lessen the pain of childbirth. The Bible has “I will intensify the pangs of your childbearing; in pain shall you bring forth children.” So, the religious King James VI of Scotland had the unfortunate Euphanie Macalyane brought to Castle Hill of Edinburgh and burned alive. This is the same King James who later became King of England and authorized the English Bible translation known as the King James Bible. It took centuries for Christians to allow pain remedies during childbirth.
The book also describes how Christian religious hysterics condemned masturbation a few centuries ago. It cites the 1879 book “Plain Facts for Old and Young,” written by a Dr. J.H. Kellogg M.D. who sat on the Michigan State Board of Health and upon his death received tributes from such notables as John D. Rockefeller, Jr., and President Herbert Hoover. Masturbation, says Dr. Kellogg, results in “impotency in the male, sterility in the female,” not to mention “heart disease, diseases of the nervous system, epilepsy, cancer, idiocy, suicide, insanity and piles.” So, the good doctor advises parents to be vigilant. But what’s a concerned parent to do? Kellogg suggests, “bandaging the parts,” “covering the organs with a cage” or “tying the hands.” If all that fails, Dr. Kellogg observes that circumcision is “a remedy that is almost always successful in small boys . . . The operation should be performed by a surgeon without administering an anesthetic, as the brief pain attending the operation will have a salutary effect upon the mind, especially if it be connected with the idea of punishment.”
The Wisdom of Abortion, which was written in 2005, ends with some paragraphs that seem prophetic. Here they are.
The religious hysteric never really comes to terms with his own sexuality, never successfully integrates it into his life. He remains extremely, sometimes obsessively, concerned with sex—not with indulging in sex, but with fighting his own sexual urges. And fighting everyone’s sexual urges, too. Thus, the long history of oppressive, puritanical laws against premarital sex, contraception, and most other things that concern sex. And he often sees sex (and members of the opposite sex) negatively. Augustine is an interesting example of someone who never successfully integrated sexuality into his life. In his early days, he obsessively acted on his sexual impulses. Later in life, he became a religious hysteric and obsessively rejected them. Augustine expressed the attitude of religious hysterics throughout the centuries when he wrote: “Nothing is so much to be shunned as sex relations.” and “Women should not be enlightened or educated in any way. They should, in fact, be segregated as they are the cause of hideous and involuntary erections in holy men.” In fact, what is hideous is Augustine’s view of half the human race.
Religious hysterics like Augustine greatly influenced Christianity at the time when it was still young, still formalizing its dogma. During the Middle Ages, religious hysterics took control of the Catholic Church and instituted the two-hundred year orgy of torture and murder called the Inquisition. All of the Inquisition’s officials were men; most of its victims were women. Today religious hysterics are less powerful, but still deeply affect the Catholic Church’s teaching about sex.
The war against religious hysterics has been in progress for thousands of years and will probably continue for thousands more. At present, religious hysterics are in power and are chipping away at your rights to abortion and contraception. Since we are speculating, it’s tempting to ask: What does the future hold?
The future of abortion and contraception isn’t clear. Perhaps someday you’ll lose your right to abortion and even to contraception. Perhaps not. But one thing is clear: while particular forms of population control (i.e., abortion and contraception) are at risk, the future of population control itself is not.
The earth’s population will be controlled, one way or the other. There will be population control, the only question is: what type? Post-birth or pre-birth?
Post-birth methods of population control are starvation, disease, and war. When a country can no longer support its growing population, some people starve or, weakened by malnutrition, die of disease. Or the country goes to war in an effort to provide for its people.
Pre-birth methods are contraception and abortion. Contraception doesn’t kill human beings and neither does abortion if performed early enough. Yet people who absurdly call themselves “pro-life” favor post-birth over pre-birth methods of population control. Such people would deny that they favor any type of population control at all; but that, like so many of their other claims, is fantasy-based. Population control cannot be avoided. In fact, both methods of population control are in use now, at this very moment. The pre-birth methods of contraception and abortion are in use throughout the world. But so are post-birth methods. The post-birth method of malnutrition-related illness kills about ten million people a year. The post-birth method of polluted drinking water kills millions of children a year and sickens many others, making them more susceptible to disease.
But even with these methods, the earth’s population is increasing at a dangerous rate. While our population is mushrooming, we are losing some of the land that grows food. Land overuse and misuse has destroyed the food growing capacity of a third of the earth’s soil. At the present rate of increase the earth will have three billion more people by 2050. Yet some scientists doubt that the earth in the long term can support its present population of six billion people. Clearly, to avoid the horrors of starvation, disease and war, the earth is desperately in need of more pre-birth population control. But religious hysterics are doing everything they can to give us less pre-birth population control; they are doing everything they can to deprive you of your access to contraception, and the option of abortion should you ever need it.
Are you going to let them?
Are we?
[i] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1240400/maternal-mortality-rates-worldwide-by-country/
