Top Rated Comments on Abortion Article

kamikaze • 2 months ago −
It's very easy to believe a lot of things about Why Other People Do Bad Things. It's very easy to believe things like "women get abortions because they are selfish" and "women get abortions because they aren't discipled Christians." But it's harder (and more worthwhile) to actually listen to the women who are getting those abortions. Mr. Fisher, have you talked to any Christian women who have gotten abortions? What did they say? Somehow I expect that they did not say, "Well, I just didn't understand the gospel!"

Maybe they themselves have shunned pregnant single women; they know how people will talk because they've participated in that before. They know that the church will look on them not with understanding but with pity and condescension. They have been taught that "we are all sinners" but they know --we all know--there's a hierarchy, and that pregnant single women are at the bottom of it. So they abort. It's so much easier. No one has to know. And when you are 20 and single and pregnant and your boyfriend is an abusive jerk and you're broke and you know the church is not going to help you...well.

The (conservative, American) church tells young people a lot of things: you must believe in a literal 6-day creation! You should definitely vote how we vote! Homosexuals may seem happy, but deep down they're not! Atheists are all angry and hate God! Abortion is murder! Young people grow up, talk to people out in the world, and realize, hmmm...these things just aren't true. Science seems to support the theory evolution. The GOP isn't actually acting in my best interest; in fact, some things it does are downright immoral. My gay friend seems genuinely happy, and my atheist neighbor is pretty kind to me! Abortion has a lot more gray area that I was taught...starting with the fact that the Bible never even mentions it. When the rubber meets the road, when a person has to decide for him/herself what they believe and how they should act, the chaff falls away. The lies they've been told no longer correlate to their own lived experience. So they ditch the lies, obviously.

If you want Christian women to stop getting abortions, start by tell them the truth about the world. Provide actual, physical support for single mothers. Encourage contraception and comprehensive sex-ed. Don't tolerate gossip but encourage honest relationships. Don't treat them like chattel or like children. Give women actual power in the church so that they don't feel helpless, like their only contribution to the church is their "purity".

And don't patronize them by writing articles telling them why they do what they do.



Comment 2
Why so many abortions among Christians? Because the salt is not salting and the light is not lighting. When Christians were focused on presidential politics and becoming a special interest army to mobilize the Moral Majority, the devil snuck through the back door, the door of culture. Christian principles no longer provide the dominant ethos of the culture. We traded spiritual power for political power, access to the Spirit for access to the Whitehouse. And we lost both. The church became good for nothing but to be trampled under the foot of men.

The second reason is moral inconsistency and hypocrisy. Until the Christian community is just as horrified by the 35,ooo children who die each day from starvation as it is about abortion -- can we really claim to be serious about the sanctity of life? Shouldn’t the child outside the womb be protected from the bloody hands of Moloch just as much as the child inside the womb?

Comment 3

kamikaze E.Ceph • 2 months ago −
Thank you for speaking for my gay friends. I'm sure they appreciate it. Especially given that you don't know anything about them, or their lives, or their faith.

Contraception prevents pregnancy and therefore prevents abortion. It needs to be available and accessible. End of story.
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