Mr. Candidate, How Does Religion Inform Your View on Abortion?

In the vice presidential debate last week, this question was asked of the candidates:

I would like to ask you both to tell me what role your religion has played in your own personal views on abortion. Please talk about how you came to that decision. Talk about how your religion played a part in that. And please, this is such an emotional issue for so many people in this country, please talk personally about this, if you could.

The two candidates focused on the idea that life begins at conception, but I don’t think that's where the true controversy lies. Here’s how I would love to hear a pro-life politician answer this question in two minutes:

Saying that life begins at conception isn’t a controversial statement. It’s a question of science. Ask any embryologist and he can tell you that what’s growing in the mother’s womb is a whole, living, human boy or girl at his or her earliest stage of development, with his or her own unique DNA that will remain the same through all stages of development, from conception to death.

What’s controversial is that I think every human being is valuable simply because he or she is a member of the valuable human race. I don’t think human beings have to earn their rights by having certain characteristics like the “correct” race, or gender, or size, or ability, or age.

In other words, it’s the fact that I think we ought to be upholding universal human rights that’s the controversial position.

Now as a Christian, I do believe it’s my duty to protect the natural rights of human beings—to protect universal human rights—because human beings are the kind of being that’s valuable. But one doesn’t have to be a Christian to agree with universal human rights. There are many people of other religions, or no religion, who also want to uphold universal human rights.

The idea that we’re all created equal and equally possess unalienable rights regardless of our differences (race, size, age, ability, etc.) is a founding principle of this nation. Sadly, in the past, we allowed the government to define some human beings out of the human family by requiring they have certain preferred characteristics (like white skin) in order to qualify for protection.

Our failures in the past to hold our government accountable to our professed principle of unalienable rights for every human being led to serious human rights violations. I don’t want to repeat that same mistake. Instead, I would like to hold us to that founding principle.

You asked for a personal answer, and I agree that there are many emotions involved on all sides of this question. But I don’t want to confuse the issue by giving the impression that this is a matter of personal preference. Regulating subjective preferences is not the role of government, so answering as if the abortion issue were merely personal wouldn’t clarify what’s at stake. The issue of human rights is a public issue, and the protection of the lives of human beings is an area of public life that requires the government’s involvement.

Comments

[Carolyn]

Well said, Amy--you'd get my vote!

[Brandon]

That would be an incredible, amazing answer.

[Darth Dutch]

What always gets me whenever people speak publicly for abortion is they quite often say something along the lines of "science hasn't been able to definitively determine when human life begins so we don't know if it begins at conception or sometime afterwards." The argument being that because we don't know we shouldn't impose our views on someone else.

They then proceed to err on the side of assuming that the fetus is not human by allowing it to be killed (quite often in a gory & gruesome way). If we truly don't know when life begins, then why wouldn't we err on the side of assuming it begins at conception so as not to commit a grave moral sin by killing what is possibly a human being?

There are a number of holes in the pro-choice logic, but this one always gets me.

(A close second is the one of "I am personally against it but I would never push my views on someone else" by then proceeding to push that view on others by allowing abortion to take place for nearly any reason.)

Darth Dutch

[Louis Kuhelj]

Darth

"If we truly don't know when life begins, then why wouldn't we err on the side of assuming it begins at conception so as not to commit a grave moral sin by killing what is possibly a human being?"

The assumption is that there is no responsibility if one is ignorant. The thing is, is it willful ignorance in order to do whatever one wants, or not. The key question here is when does a reason become nothing more than an excuse and the explanation nothing more than an intentional deception. You have to parse out the two and it usually hinges on the motives of the individual. Any time you have things reduce to that, you can be sure that obfuscation, intentional or not, is at play. When you deal with motives of the heart, it is something that is hidden from view and that is why it is so difficult to determine the truth of the matter. If there is intentionality on the part of the individual to hide his true motivation it may be just about impossible to determine if it is an excuse or a reason for them...that is, if they genuinely believe what they claim or if they are just using it as an excuse for doing whatever they want with total disregard for its moral value. Ultimately, it takes god to parse out the truth as he is the only one that can judge the matters of the heart.

[Man Wong]

Louis,

Your point would be a good one, except it shouldn't really apply to just about any adult who has not been *and* continue to be living under a rock or something.

IF someone has intention to go use his/her vote (and/or to argue in favor of abortion), it's a pretty tough argument to continually claim true ignorance instead of willful ignorance. And that's the context of the matter here. We're not talking about little kids or hermits living completely out of step w/ the rest of modern society afterall or even a perhaps desparate pregnant woman who might not have been well educated on the matter (and other alternatives) just yet before needing to make a decision to abort.

Yes, there is some uncertainty in a great many areas, and ultimately, God will be the final judge of all things. BUT that does not give us a pass on doing our best w/ what we do know or are quite aware. And given the issue, our best can't rationally be to ignore the point being made and choose to support (and at times, even endorse) abortion anyhow; you'd have to argue that a woman's preference to not bear a child has greater priority than the preservation of what an abortion is very likely destroying (even if you wish to argue about the certainty of the matter) is indeed human life -- and that's besides the point that it'd be one's own offspring, not just any other human life. Of course, this broad point does not address exceptional situations where you're faced w/ either saving the mother's life or the unborn's life or something like that, but is only talking about the more typical situation where the choice is more about some sort of subjective preference on the part of the pregnant woman...

[Jailer]

Superb! Thanks for the brain food. Yes, I borrowed, and gave you a shout-out :) http://www.philippianjailer.com/2012/10/the-political-church-iv-faith-politics.html