1. Income taxes.

2. Public schools.

3. The rabid feminist revolution. This is not to say that voting and working rights for women is wrong — that was a very good thing! But the “Hands off, Male” attitude came into being.

4. The Russian Revolution — and the infiltration of the socialists.

5. Darwinism started to take hold.

6. World War I and the League of Nations — the beginning of losing our sovereignty.

With such onslaughts, it’s amazing this country has held up so well!!

Shayne

Allowing it just ONE time, just once, opens the door for it becoming the acceptable practice (as our own history has proven).

We all hear it and we have probably said it ourselves, “It’ll only happen just this once”, or “I am only doing it because such and such happened”.

It’s similar to addictions.

BTW, Before I forget… Have a Happy and Blessed Thanksgiving everyone

That’s right. Thanks.

Andy:

The other reason the “which one do we choose” line is a canard is that it leaves unaddressed, while implicitly answering, one of the central questions: is it right to do evil so that good may come of it?

The implicit answer is Yes.

And that, I’m afraid, is the wrong answer, b/c it justifies ANY wrongdoing we “are forced” to commit to get ourselves out of a jam.

A.

One way of looking at it, one’s short-sighted but selfish act to abort, the line, as God intended would have ended then and there.

Plus I have read testimonies of women who were raped and decided to keep their baby and the blessings that flowed from the birth of thoose children.

As for the lifeboat scenario of who gets rescued, that’s a canard, in that we can never have pat answers for any given situation. We can only do the best we can in the heat of the moment.

For instance, let’s say my family and I are hiking and we get attacked by a grizzly. 1st off, I’d hope I’d be packing a heavy cal pistol, but let’s say I only have my wits. What I can do will only be determined by my judgment and instinct based on what I see in the exact moment that reaction is called for. Without a doubt, I would risk my life for all, but who knows how it could pan out. So in that case, it’s not something to fret over until such actually happens.

On one hand, knowing that abortion is not an option would cause many to change their worldview attitudes.

In the case of mother dying or having to carry a rape baby to term, liberals like to quote Jesus out of context, so how about tossing this ‘what would Jesus do’ meme back at them. Greater love has no man than to lay down his life – that holds true even if a mother dies so that the baby may live, much less the ‘inconvenience’ of birthing and raising a rape child.

Jesus demonstrated that by his suffering and grieveous death on the cross. It’s not like we’re being asked to carry the sins of the world.

Spoil the good feeling , I like that…LOL

Nope not at all.

Our society spends far to much time pushing the “easy way out”, the immediate fix and what ends up happening is we invite in a host of far worse problems and behaviors. All of this intertwines with everything else in our lives, which in turn, affects OTHERS lives (although we keep hearing the “It’s not hurting anyone else” mantra).

On the other end of what I said about looking at the attacker, what created hi (I hint at it all starts with the family and nurturing our children when they are young), the same is true of the one raped. You are correct, we do not mention to women the compassion in making the hard decision of having the child (and the many good things that can come from that, even for the woman). We dwell on the, “you were raped, you are a VICTIM (go ahead and stay a victim), and because of that, it justifies an abortion (two wrongs scenario)”. Abortion is an immediate “band aid” fix (in the mind of our society), but as we all know, band aids wear off and if we don’t take care of the wound it becomes infected and causes far greater problems possibly life threatening).

I hope I don’t spoil the good feeling, but I would like to say a couple of things about Allan’s post.

First of all, the idea that you can’t feel another’s pain is true and false in different respects. In one respect, it’s true, because you’re not the other person. In another respect, though, it’s false: there’s such a thing as sympathy, you know.

Second, sympathy shouldn’t stop with feeling another’s pain. Why not? Because his/her pain isn’t/shouldn’t be the final goal in his journey. What’s/should be the final goal? Health, joy.

Third, then, and most crucially: are you going to help a woman who’s gotten pregnant by rape heal and reach health and joy by counselling her to abort/not counselling her not to abort?

Well, if the the unborn baby is an innocent third party who is NOT the attacker (even though fathered by him), abortion in this case means killing an innocent third party. But how is killing an innocent third party going to help the woman to heal.

The problem with a lot of what passes for compassion nowadays is that it’s actually not loving ENOUGH, because it doesn’t care enough to challenge people to grown into health and joy.

Adrian

And people still wonder why we declined, why we are still in decline, and why we will continue to decline.

All those things our country was founded on (especially Judeo-Christian beliefs) are now said to be wrong. Amazingly, it was those same beliefs and actions which endured us (or else we would have never made it through the Civil War, let alone a bicentennial).

On another blog they discussed the NBA fiasco (with the fighting last week). A lot of people respond with “it was just one fight, they don’t have to punish him so hard”.

It’s like when we raise our children. They do something wrong, we tell them immediately it is wrong (I hope). It’s our nature and human beings to push the envelope and see just how much we can get away with (we worry about our actions effects on others after the fact, not before).

Scary to think how worse off we would be if we just had no “rules”, “laws” or punishment.

It took almost 100 comments to scratch some of what goes on under the surface.

What comes to mind for me in regards to abortion (even with rape), there are other elements in play that lead to the decision of abortion. Abortion is the end result. There were many steps/actions that occured to get to the point of the pregnancy and the abortion.

What can we learn from rape? We can look at the life of the attacker. What caused him to do this act? What environment created the mindset he was in? A lot of times all of this starts right in the home and is years in the making. Maybe that is the argument or the counter discussion we should focus on.

Allan,
When you sit down and talk with women who have :

1. Had an abortion
2. Are contemplating abortion
3. May have been raped and are now pregnant

Then maybe you will be able to answer your own question and present your in-sight to others.

I recommend trying it.

Comment by Renee — 11.23.04

Renee:

I have done all of those things. My full time professional job requires having people tell me things that they would never tell anyone else.

I also spent 13 months as a MARS operator in Viet Nam where beacuse of the primitive state of electronic communications radio operators had to be on the line to allow soldiers to make calls home. There is little in human relationships that I have not heard personally.

That having been said, hearing of others difficulties has its limits in terms of understanding. I know that being a male, there is no way I can fully understand a womans relationship to child bearing.

I believe that what Margi said is the absolute truth. But I cannot in any way fully relate to her pain.

As with domestic violence there is yet another even more unseen group of people. I don’t believe that they are large, but because they are unseen, I cannot be certain. That group of people is men impacted in various ways by this topic.

I have never had one of them come forward. They are less likely than male victims of women attackers to come forward.

But I have heard from them to.

I also agree that almost anyone who brings up the issue of abortion and rape victims has almost certainly already made up their mind. That is one of the major reasons I want to be able to deal with them. As it stands, in the end, they feel they have won the exchange.

Like an army attacking the strong points of an opponent, having a good response to this may defeat the position. The gold standard would be converting the proponent of the argument.

Adrian

I mentioned earlier in this thread that one of the hardest things is forgiving oneself.

Please keep posting and talking with others.