What do we care what Christians think? What about the establishment clause? Those Christians should just shut up. Plus lots of Christians are pro-choice. You can be pro-choice and be a Christian. You don't speak for Christianity. Who do you think you are, the Pope? Shut up. Shut up, shut up, shut up.
Okay. You should care what Christians think, because most people in our society call themselves Christians, and try to be Christians. We might be bad Christians, we might suck at it, but that's how we self-identify. And our behavior might not match up with what we say we believe. We might be hypocrites. Nonetheless, the abortion debate, like the abolitionist debate of a century before, is pretty much a debate among Christians.
All Christians think infanticide is evil. Judeo-Christianity has so wiped the floor with pagan ideology that even modern-day pagans think infanticide is evil. Roe v. Wade is an epic fail precisely because large numbers of Christians are convinced that it has opened the door to infanticide. And infanticide is a Christian no-no.
Harry Blackmun self-identified as a Christian. That means, at some level, that Harry Blackmun is opposed to infanticide, too. And we say none of this is important, because Supreme Court Justices are supposed to just follow our law. But if Harry Blackmun is finding unenumerated rights that aren't written in the Constitution, then the values of the people finding those rights are very important indeed. You want them to have some majoritarian, Judeo-Christian mindset, and not some weird, 2400-year-old pagan asshole mindset.
Okay. You should care what Christians think, because most people in our society call themselves Christians, and try to be Christians. We might be bad Christians, we might suck at it, but that's how we self-identify. And our behavior might not match up with what we say we believe. We might be hypocrites. Nonetheless, the abortion debate, like the abolitionist debate of a century before, is pretty much a debate among Christians.
All Christians think infanticide is evil. Judeo-Christianity has so wiped the floor with pagan ideology that even modern-day pagans think infanticide is evil. Roe v. Wade is an epic fail precisely because large numbers of Christians are convinced that it has opened the door to infanticide. And infanticide is a Christian no-no.
Harry Blackmun self-identified as a Christian. That means, at some level, that Harry Blackmun is opposed to infanticide, too. And we say none of this is important, because Supreme Court Justices are supposed to just follow our law. But if Harry Blackmun is finding unenumerated rights that aren't written in the Constitution, then the values of the people finding those rights are very important indeed. You want them to have some majoritarian, Judeo-Christian mindset, and not some weird, 2400-year-old pagan asshole mindset.
Otherwise the Supreme Court is finding an unenumerated right to own slaves (Dred Scott) or an unenumerated right to terminate babies (Roe v. Wade). Christians, of course, disagree as to what the right thing to do is, as do non-Christians. Some Christians supported slavery, and other Christians were abolitionists. The slavery debate, like the abortion debate, was in many ways a religious debate among religious people. Secular people can be abolitionists, just like secular people can be pro-life. In general, though, it's religious people who are pro-life. You hear this when people talk about the sanctity of life.
Most pro-lifers are inspired by religion. Religious people believe that a pregnancy is a unique, even sacred event. It is often said to be a miracle. We did not create this baby. All we did was have sex like a couple of animals. God created this baby. God designed this baby. A baby is an act of God.
Art is an analogy I like to draw for secular people. Imagine your favorite work of art. Mine would be a Monet, or perhaps an Yves Klein. Art gives us a happy, nice feeling. Now imagine some asshole taking your favorite painting and putting his foot through it. If you have an emotional attachment to a work of art, you are not going to be happy if somebody wantonly destroys it. And the creation of a human being is far more complex and interesting than any work of sculpture, or literature, or a painting. Human creation pales before God's creation. Maybe one day we can clone a human being. We can copy. But we can't create. We can't design.
Abortion is destruction. It is termination. You are terminating a unique life. That DNA sequence will never be recreated. You can have another baby, but it will not replace the miracle that you terminated. That creation has been destroyed, flushed down a toilet. So if you believe that God has made this happen, then you also have to acknowledge that you have destroyed God's creation. You have taken something sacred and made it into nothing.
Abortion is destruction. It is termination. You are terminating a unique life. That DNA sequence will never be recreated. You can have another baby, but it will not replace the miracle that you terminated. That creation has been destroyed, flushed down a toilet. So if you believe that God has made this happen, then you also have to acknowledge that you have destroyed God's creation. You have taken something sacred and made it into nothing.
So that's the religious objection. We have taken something miraculous and amazing, the creation of a human life, and sucked all the wonder out of it. It seems, to religious people, a callous act of disrespect. And I understand why a secular person might say, "It's none of your business." You may feel that way if you destroy a work of art. You paid for it, it's yours. Why can't you destroy it? And the Supreme Court might agree with you, that you have a right to destroy a work of art that you own. But other people will still hate what you did. And it's no use telling them their feelings are illegitimate. Because to them, you do not care. You are a philistine. You destroy an amazing work of beauty and grace, and you don't even see it.
No comments:
Post a Comment