Supreme Court ends Roe v. Wade?

I have only seen excerpts at this point but I do intend to read it in full once I have time.

You can continue asserting this all you want but until you actually substantiate it with something approaching rational argument, it’s nothing more than emotion-driven single-issue fanaticism. The fetus is not a person according to the traditional Christian definition of the word, and the Bible never, not once, defines the death of a fetus as a crime at all, let alone murder. But keep slamming the table if that makes you feel better. You do realize that falsely accusing people of murder is a grave sin of its own, don’t you? You might want to rely on a bit more than the tradition fallacy and emotional arguments when tossing around that kind of inflammatory language. I would’ve thought a bunch of Anglicans would be alarmed to see recent Roman Catholic dogma imposed by force on a nominally Protestant population…

 

The Personhood of the unborn was demonstrated in Scripture when the unborn John the Baptist leapt for joy in Elizabeth's womb at the sound of the Blessed Virgin's greeting (Luke 1:41-44).

Therefore, killing John in utero would be murder.

 

RE: the personhood of the unborn

Psalm 139:13 For You formed my inward parts; You wove me in my mother’s womb.
Psalm 139:16 Your eyes have seen my unformed substance; And in Your book were all written The days that were ordained for me, When as yet there was not one of them.

Isaiah 49:1 Listen to Me, O islands, And pay attention, you peoples from afar. The Lord called Me from the womb; From the body of My mother He named Me.

Jeremiah 1:5 “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, And before you were born I consecrated you; I have appointed you a prophet to the nations.”

Amos 1:13 Thus says the Lord, “For three transgressions of the sons of Ammon and for four I will not revoke its punishment, Because they ripped open the pregnant women of Gilead In order to enlarge their borders."

Psalm 22:9-10 Yet You are He who brought me forth from the womb; You made me trust when upon my mother’s breasts. Upon You I was cast from birth; You have been my God from my mother’s womb.

Proverbs 6:16,17 ....things which the Lord hates...which are an abomination to Him:...hands that shed innocent blood...

 

Scripture seems to be quite consistent on the personhood of the unborn.

 

A few more scriptures:

Gen 25:21 And Isaac prayed to the LORD for his wife, because she was barren. And the LORD granted his prayer, and Rebekah his wife conceived.
Gen 25:22 The children struggled together within her, and she said, “If it is thus, why is this happening to me?” So she went to inquire of the LORD.

Hos 12:3 (speaking of Jacob) In the womb he took his brother by the heel...

Gen 5:3 When Adam had lived 130 years, he fathered a son in his own likeness, after his image, and named him Seth. (Notice that Adam "fathered" a son in his own image when he got Eve pregnant, not merely after she gave birth. Seth received the likeness of Adam when Seth was conceived.)

BTW, an interesting fact: the US and Netherlands are the only two countries in the world that still use a 'viability' standard for when life allegedly begins. All other countries have recognized the inherent unworkability of that standard and have moved on. Now, it seems, the US is poised to move on as well.

We should defend the "fatherless" unborn when the natural father is not sticking up for him/her. We should not interrupt the sovereign working of God as He shapes the child in the womb.

 

Thanks for the words of common sense @Invictus. As a woman, I fully support Roe v Wade but don't want to get into the whole theological debate about when life begins since no one really knows - it is all just opinion.

I think if this were something that affected a man's privacy and body, there might be a few different opinions here, but men certainly do seem to have a lot to say about something that basically affects women. And so much of what they say is just trying to play on emotion and to condemn women who are facing a decision that men would never have to face. There are a lot of inflammatory pictures about abortion but most of them just seem to me to be trying to present things in the most horrific light possible.

I wonder how men would feel if more of them were raped. I watched Deliverance and saw a man being sodomised by a group of other men, and it was horrific. Can any men really know what it would be like unless they have thought about that happening to their own body? Isn't that why prison seems so bad for men - they worry about being raped? At least they don't have to worry about getting pregnant from it.

For honesty's sake, I do not think I would choose to have an abortion once I were pregnant (perhaps I might feel differently if raped) but I have used the morning after pill after an unplanned encounter, and that could be considered contraception or chemical abortion (but only if the egg had been fertilised). I had a miscarriage once and that was sad, but it was a much wanted and planned pregnancy, not a rape. But is does give me a perspective on pregnancy that a man doesn't have.

I realise that women around the world face problems that I don't - like the Ukrainian women being raped by Russian soldiers right now, so I would never judge someone who did choose abortion. Chemical abortion and contraception just don't seem to stir quite as much emotion and yet that is just a matter of timing that makes one thing contraception and another abortion.

I adopted a child who was a product of rape and whose mother rejected her because of it. No matter how much love I gave her, she had a sorrow at her core than came from being a product of her father's crime and her mother's rejection. Yes, she has life, and that is a good thing, but don't imagine that all these unwanted babies go on to live cheerful, happy lives.

No one know for sure when the soul enters the body - no one - opinions are not facts. And to take things into fantasy - what if laws said men could not control their own bodies? I won't list the imaginary ways this could manifest, but think about it. How would you feel as a man if the government told you that you had no control over some aspect of your body, especially your genitals? Just think about it . . .

No, I won't get into debates about morality or theology on this issue. This is a much more personal issue than that to me.

 

Let's realize that the "rape" argument is a red herring in the abortion debate. It is an attempt to emotionally charge the issue and is not a legitimate reason in favor of abortion-on-demand, because rape and incest together account for less than 1% of all abortions. And more than 3/4 of women who become pregnant from rape do choose to carry the baby to term. Nearly all abortions are sought by women who simply didn't take responsibility for their actions and who use abortion as "easy birth control". So it is not valid to attempt to justify all abortions on the basis of a rare exception that accounts for a tiny, tiny fraction of those abortions.

If a man beats up a woman and horribly disfigures her, wouldn't you punish that ma? Or would you seize the man's son or daughter and put the child to death? (Imagine sending police to the man's house to seize the man's offspring and take the child the rape victim so she can execute the child for the father's crime.) Wouldn't that be unjust and horrific? Yet that is what abortion-rights activists favor. Aborting an unborn child created through rape is an act of punishing an innocent baby for the crime of his/her father. It's abhorrent. The "what about rape" argument centers on the female victim's emotions and feelings rather than on obtaining a just outcome. Essentially, abortion after rape lashes out in angst, in an unreasoning fashion, against innocent and guilty alike.

 

The common consent of theologians has been, when there is first motion in the body. Ie. when the heart starts beating, is when it becomes a human being fully developed (not in potentiality but in actuality). Prior to the heartbeat, it would be a potential human being. With this distinction, the restrictions on ejecting a fertilized egg were much less severe than the restrictions on aborting a moving, human fetus.

This is also why in historic Christianity there were no debates about what to do about conceptions coming out of rape. There were constant yearly wars, and a different social ethics which made rape in war more acceptable; this meant that vast amounts of women were suffering from wartime rape. Yet there aren't a lot of Christian warnings to not abort fetuses conceived in that rape. That's because of this teaching: that the human soul does not enter a fetus at conception, but at first movement. A woman would take a potion sold in a dark alley, and hope that things go well, and then go to Church, confess and repent of her sins, and go on her way (taking the potion was still a sin; just not a crime).

The modern pro-life movement took a bit of a hardline stance on this, which stems from a Roman Catholic change in historic teaching, which then spread to the rest of the pro-life movement. In the late 1800s, Leo XIII dispensed with the historic teaching, and suddenly began to affirm that the egg becomes human at conception. It wasn't controversial then, and most people did not notice it. But with the emergence of the pro-life movement in the 1970s, the RC's being the largest block and staunchly affirming this teaching, it has snuck into everyone's mindset. I bet there are those reading my words now who will be furious at my denial of it. But I can't change the historic teaching. Facts are facts.

Historic Christianity did not have those issues of "what to do in the first 5-6 weeks", while also being staunchly pro-life and unreservedly against abortion.

 

I doubt that you anti-choice posters have bothered to watch the video I posted about how the whole controversy was propaganda from the beginning.

The red herring and emotional debates are things the conservatives use to support their claims, but sorry, don't buy them.

 

How? It doesn’t address the subject at all.

 

I am going to honor your request to not debate this with you with theology or reason because this is an emotional personal issue for you but I h ave to ask how can you make that request and then say emotional debates are something conservatives do when you just said earlier you will not debate people on this because it is "No, I won't get into debates about morality or theology on this issue. This is a much more personal issue than that to me."

 

The interviewer says, "Without the Schaeffers, this culture war might not have been so fired up." That is her presumptive statement and it proves nothing.

Frank Schaeffer is not a Christian. He was a church-going Presbyterian at the time (now he's a self-professed church-going atheist), and his family profited from promoting the pro-life position. That doesn't make the pro-life position incorrect, any more than the Bible would be incorrect simply because a book seller to recommend the Bible and then sell a copy (earning a profit). Why would we expect to hear wisdom on a faith topic from a non-Christian? Frank was spiritually dead when he saw dollar signs in making movies, and he is still spiritually dead today. The man needs to get born again. The video clip is a waste of 19 minutes.

By the way, pro-lifers are not "anti-choice." We simply want women to make their choices in a way that does not impinge on the right of an unborn child to be born and to live. A woman's "right to choose" is not unlimited; surely no one thinks, for example, that a woman has the right to choose to axe-murder her husband. So why should she have the right to choose to poison and suction her unborn infant?

Here is wisdom. Deut. 30:19 says, I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live.

 

In any case, SCOTUS makes its rulings on the legal and constitutional merits of a case, whatever its morality. That is the purpose Okey doke the Supreme Court.

I have yet to read the ruling myself, and that is something we probably all ought to do.

whatever the morality of the case, and we all have deep commitment to our own moral position, it is not of any consequence where jurisprudence is concerned.

 

Agreed. The US Constitution is supposed to safeguard the right to life as a fundamental right. The unborn child's right to life is far greater than the woman's right to privacy (the privacy right is not enshrined in so many words in our Constitution, and it only exists by modern judicial extrapolation).

 

I have to inject some more common sense and historical literacy here. Actually, the Bill of Rights applies to citizens, and one has to be born in this country to be a citizen, unless one is naturalized later. If it is unborn, it is neither a child nor an individual. So a right to life on the part of the unborn must be proved rather than assumed. Even if we grant such a right, it would not trump the mother’s right to privacy and autonomy. A right to life is not inherently superior to all other rights, and there are instances where it can be morally and legally overridden.

The right to privacy preexists the state and is not destroyed by it. The presumption that an individual ought to be free of arbitrary interference is basic. Without that, neither the Declaration of Independence nor the Constitution make any sense. There is no reason for government to be limited at all if there is no private realm for it to violate, and it is not possible to destroy the idea of privacy without destroying the individual, the only real bearer of value and rights in the first place. It is basic to human society, and was in no sense the invention of “modern judicial extrapolation”. (Where do you think the word “privacy” came from?)

Lastly, rights do not have to be explicitly mentioned by the Constitution (see the Ninth Amendment). The government is empowered to do only what the Constitution grants to it (implicitly or explicitly); citizens are free to do whatever is not prohibited by the law. If the law doesn’t mention it, the government can’t stop you from doing it. That’s the rule of law.

Some of you guys have all this exactly backwards, and it’s frankly appalling. The reasoning you’re deploying leads directly to totalitarianism. I’m pretty sure it’s not worth taking that step even if you guys were correct in your assessment of the morality of abortion in the first place. Who on earth would actually want to live in a society that acknowledged no right to privacy?

 

Invictus is correct, the right to life is not something that comes from our constitution, but comes from natural law. We have a right to life simply by the virtue of being human, wherever we happen to be living. The Constitution doesn't give us that right (rights cannot be given; we are born with them, and they can only be taken away). The Constitution simply protects and helps us keep that which is due to us by nature.

However I disagree from Invictus that the right to life isn't mentioned or taught in the Scriptures. Now, it would be perfectly fine for a right to not be mentioned in Scripture, because rights are a purely natural, this-worldly phenomenon, and the Scriptures are an otherworldly revelation, which touches on this-worldly things only incidentally. We do not need to derive natural law teachings, or political principles, from the Scripture which is not concerned with them. However that being said, the brief references to human beings in the womb clearly indicate God's relationship to them, as @Rexlion and others have noted. It is unmistakable. God loves us even in the womb. We are human, already in the womb. And theology, in addition to that, teaches us that on a more systematic level. So one cannot be an orthodox Christian, much less an orthodox Anglican, and deny the personhood of an unborn fetus. To do so would be to:
-1. ignore the passages of scripture
-2. violate Christian but specifically Anglican theology
-3. violate philosophy and natural law which also teach this

 

Okey doke.

 

You make some fine points here , particularly in the first two paragraphs