TotD: Abortion

I'm doing this blog because it is really topical at the moment, I'm surprised to find myself wanting to write it.

Abortion... The murder of babies or the removal of inconveniences?

The answer to that question has to come about where you define life as beginning. Many people say that life begins at birth. That is when human rights kick in, not before. Before birth the only human who's rights matter is the mother's.

Christians, by in large, say that life begins the moment the sperm reaches the egg. This idea comes from verses in the Bible such as Psalm 51:5 and Jeremiah 1:5, (the former of which talks about being sinful from conception and the latter being about how God knitted us together in our mother's wombs and knew us and had a plan for us even from then.)

Traditionally I think I would be of the first paragraph in my mindset. As a member of the Labour Party, who are traditionally (at least in perception) pro-abortion (pro-choice, really the same thing), I would have mentally been fairly in line with their thinking.
We did classes on abortion with Jonathan (Lawes) in RE in school and after that I was a little less pro and a little more 'this is over my head'. In a Labour meeting on whether we would continue to support a pro-choice campaign I did not vote, I was so unsure that I abstained.

I don't think, and I still don't think, that I have any right to decide for an individual, based on the law of the God that they most likely don't follow, to tell women that they can or can't do anything. In general I believe that the law of God, where it is not a universal right, universal truth or an understood international law (which I understand come from God in their origins) I don't think it has a place in Irish society...

Having said that I would also, if I was to ever be in the strange and extremely unlikely situation of getting a girl pregnant, do anything... ANYTHING to stop her from aborting... I would sell the kid to Madonna or one of those other loonies (they don't have Irish babies yet)... as long as she did not abort... Ultimately though I would have to accept that beyond all my begging and pleading it would be her choice, though I would not be for it.

In recent times, my opinion has changed largely. I have met someone who has had an abortion. It wasn't their choice and it was heart wrenching and still is. I won't say anymore than that for, if they read this, having this paragraph in it might be hard enough.

I am, on Facebook, a 'liker' of the keep Ireland pro-life thingy (in my opinion pro-life is anti-abortion, pro-life is a little too broad for what they do). They recently have posted some stuff I want to mention here.

-One is about the search for single celled micro-organisms on Mars. If we found those we would consider it life but a single (and growing celled living organism in another organisms body isn't life?)
- The second is one that says that in 2008 in the USA there were 1.21 million abortions... That roughly equates to one every 26 seconds. So in the time it takes you to read this sentence a baby in the US has been aborted, going on 2008 figures. Making a cup of tea, 7 babies aborted; while you sleep for 8 hours tonight there will be 1105 babies aborted in the US....
-In the second World War the US, in the three or four years it was involved lost 418,500 people (that includes soldiers, civilians and victims of crimes against humanity. The US population in 1941 was apparently 133,402,471 people. Today it is 314,785,000. So it was roughly one third of what it is now, basically this means that as many people as died in a three year war (the one we all point to as the worst ever) die every year to abortion in the US... That is fairly shocking.

Another thing that annoys me about all this abortion talk is that it finds its origins from places outside of Ireland, like the European Court, or the husband of a wife lost in a tragedy. Internal affairs guys, get your noses out.

Finally, I think it would be really sad to see abortion legalised and abused here, as it is in many other nations. I do think it is God's will that the child He created be born and live in the world as He intended it. Abortion is right in very very few circumstances and a consumer approach to something as important as this is not the way to go.

Ireland needs to be careful of what it does and how it reacts to all this pressure. I, personally, think we should remain as we are. It would be interesting to see a referendum campaign and results though.