Women's reproductive rights explained for right wingers who just don't get it.

[lees1975]

https://signalpress.blogspot.com/2024/10/pro-choice-pro-life-and-lgbtq-rights.html

'll get back to the "proliferation of LGBTQ intrusion" in a few paragraphs. But let's start with the elimination of abortion rights. I hope we can clear up a lot of ignorance.

Most Evangelicals who have made this their top political issue have almost no understanding at all of what happens medically when a law is written that essentially dictates how a medical procedure can be performed. The only thing that comes to their mind is that an abortion is murdering the life of an infant, because life begins at conception, and abortion is nothing more than birth control.

Does life begin at conception?

That would be an exclusively religious perception, if it is true. However, in Evangelical doctrine, any assertion of the truth of a statement must be supported by a correctly interpreted scripture, applied according to its context. And there is no specific place anywhere in the Bible that makes this statement and declares it to be true. There are, in fact, very few places where there is any kind of teaching on when human life actually begins. There are a couple of examples where a child in the womb was identified, or, in the case of John the Baptist, "leapt" for joy when Mary came into the presence of her cousin Elizabeth, John's mother. But there is no conclusive support for a doctrine stating that human life begins at conception. It is inferred, but inference is not authoritative in Evangelical theology. So they have come to a doctrinal conclusion without sufficient evidence to support their claim.

Is all abortion performed exclusively for the purpose of birth control?

This would be so much easier if that actually were the case. Unfortunately, it's not, and that's why the simplistic "ban" of abortion that most Evangelicals are seeking is an impossible issue.

Abortion is an invasive medical procedure. And any time such a procedure is regulated by law, it removes all of the medical benefits the procedure was developed to deal with. That's exactly the aspect of this that Harris' campaign has been demonstrating, by their use of examples. They're not showing mothers who wanted to get an abortion because the pregnancy was unplanned and unwanted. They're showing examples of women who couldn't get the medical care they needed to save their life because doing so involved removing the fetus to stop the spread of sepsis or some other potentially fatal infection. But the restrictive abortion bans in the states that passed them since the Roe v. Wade decision was made have not taken that into consideration.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

1. And it's not as though those who

oppose all abortion are out there adopting otherwise unwanted babies, or making sure all women get free pre- and post-natal care. That's what a real "Right to Life" person would do.

[JT45242]

2. The life begins at conception for evangelicals is a farce and a lie to promote racism at Bob Jones University ...

The whole evangelical crowd is supposed to be an outgrowth of the Second Great Awakening in the United State, a movemnt founded by two frontier preachers named Stone and Campbell. They both stressed that their should be a restoration of to the first century church (i.e the new testament churches view of the world).

Both the Stones and the Campbells are famous for two key precepts...
1) NO CREED BUT CHRIST -- the only creed in evangelical restoration churches should be that you believe that Jesus is the Christ the son of the living God who dies on a cross and rose from the dead. [No Nicene creed, no apostles creed, no catechism, no papal decrees, nothing]

2) Speak where the Bible speaks and be silent where it is silent -- If you can't find it in scripture stay out of it. Period. So, since we know that Peter had a wife in the Bible, it's OK for clergy to marry ... no matter what Paul said about it being better

There was a third key precept ..
3) The priesthood of all believers -- Everyone should dive into the book. Anyone could give communion. Anyone could baptize someone

They consider new testament to supercede rules from the old testament -- so issues about what to eat (like no pork are no longer an issue. The only real rule was don't drink blood and don't eat animals that were first sacrificed to another God , which are both rules from the book of ACTS to reconcile Jewish and Gentile believers. Of course, if you don't want to eat pork -- that's fine; however, you can't make others give up pork)

Since there is nothing in the New Testament that addresses abortion and the start of life, evangelicals should turn to the Old Testament (the Hebrew scriptures). Here it is pretty clear that life begins with the first breath. Additionally, the rules about what happens if you were to injure a woman and cause a miscarriage were not the same as the penalties for killing the wife. So, clearly the Hebrew scriptures put greater value on a living woman than a potential child. There is even a part in the first five nooks that describe how a priest could make basically an abortion elixir to give to a woman if the pregnancy was illegitimate.

That is where evangelicals should be based on their religion (trust me -- was a member of Church of Christ (the acapella variant) for about 20 years before I switched to a more progressive part of the STone Campbell movement (Christian Church -- Disciples of Christ).

Bob Jones university wanted to find an issue to get political power and to siphon people from the democrats so that they could continue to be racists in the late 1970s. They settled on abortion as a way to wedge Catholics out of the Democratic party. Then they amplified that message on radio stations and in megachurches.


It really is sick to see them pervert the Stone-Campbell movement that includes people like Rev Barber and others.

[Girard442]

3. The implication is that we can all live the lives God intended...

...if we just read the Bible, interpret it straightforwardly, and follow what it says.

That has worked soooo well throughout history.