Great post, Paul. Thanks. Very on-target!

I propose we consider what such a speech would have looked like during the contentious debate about slavery or saving Jews from the Nazis. President Obama’s words could almost be used verbatim by asking the abolitionists to be fair minded and respectful about those they disgree with. These same words could apply to those seeking to help the Jews escape from the Nazis as well.
My point is that the pro-abortion absolutist like President Obama and the folks at Planned Parenthood essentially base their view of human personhood in the arbitrary decision of the one who has power over the one who does not. President Obama followed his logic to even tolerate infanticide. I find this current brand of Liberalism that tolerates the mass murder all races in the womb and even starting to tolerate it outside the womb far more evil than what the Nazis did.
It is harder to detect because we assume if it is not inherently racist then it does not rise to the level of evil of what the Nazis did, but it is far worse. Jesus said not to prevent the infants and children from coming to Him. I wonder what kind of judgment He will give to those who support the murder of infants and children?

Earlier this year our Sunday school class did a five-week study on abortion. In the course of exploring this issue, we discovered that there are least seven different approaches to take regarding the issue of when life begins, and that these seven perspectives in many shades exist across nearly every belief system in the United States. We learned that the potential for human life can exist in each zygote, but the viability and actuality of that life is far more fragile and complicated.
As someone who had a first-trimester abortion because of medical complications, I empathize with those who are anti-abortion. Had there been another option to have continued with the pregnancy at the time, I would have taken it, but there wasn’t, and my husband didn’t want to lose me and the potential child at the same time.
Likewise, the issue of the high number of abortions in America today represents a complex set of social ills. Among them are:
Lack of adequate education from the earliest age of comprehension about human sexuality;
Unintegrated social values in which poor women are denied access to contraception at the same time they’re denigrated for having abortions;
Media that glamorize single parenthood when in reality parenthood is one of life’s most difficult tasks, requiring not merely two parents but an extended community for success.
Like President Obama and my own United Methodist denomination, I believe abortion should be legal, medically safe, and rare. We’ve achieved the first two goals. Making abortion rare requires us to enact a fully realized ethic of life that puts the value of human life from birth forward above all else, and enacts social systems to foster that life in its fullest realization.

BCT threw a stink bomb into the discussion.
As the first one to invoke the “Nazis” he automatically loses.
He compounds the stench by blathering on about “pro-abortion absolutist,” “arbitrary decision,” and “murder of infants and children.” Clearly he is not interested in any sort of reasoned discourse.

“He compounds the stench by blathering on about “pro-abortion absolutist,” “arbitrary decision,” and “murder of infants and children.” Clearly he is not interested in any sort of reasoned discourse.”
No, he would rather have the abortion issue as a GOP campaign tactic in 2010 and 2012 than to actually make any headway in reducing the number of abortions.
Funny how all of these “abortion abolitionists” finally found their voices after 8 years of do-nothing GOP initiatives on abortion. The minute the White House goes to a Democrat, abortion is an issue with them again.
The GOP needs dead babies to win elections, which is why they will do nothing meaningful to reduce abortions.

Paul said, “President Obama confirmed his approach which is sincerely aimed a creating a middle way for this most divisive of issues.”
He is a fence sitter pretending to know right from wrong, pretending to me a man of faith. His actions show something quite different. He is a man with no backbone, no moral compass. He is a chameleon, someone who just bates and feeds the audiences and gives them what they want to hear. He is a man who stands on a faith that he obviously knows nothing about. That much is obvious.
And when he took that platform at Notre Dame, he spit in Gods face. Judas also betrayed his faith and Christ and Obama did nothing less. There are some issues you can’t bend on and abortion is one of those isues. He wants abortion legal so that his precious girls should they get pregnant have the option to kill. He said so himself.
He went into a Christian Catholic community of believers and raped the Word for his benefit and ratings because its always been just about him. The first thing he mentioned was the fact he was black. I was under the impression that his mother was white. Obviously he is embarrassed of that fact.
They say satan is beautiful and that the anti-Christ will be beautiful as well. Obama is a master deceiver and he comes off cool, calm and collected. He has power alright, but IMO its not from the God he pretends to follow.
The blind idly follow him….they don’t care about right and wrong and they mock morality. Paul thinks its so bad for protestors to show humanity in the pictures of the unborn and abortion, because he to thinks abortion is ok, he is pro-choice. The majority of protestors do not scream. The screaming and the intolerance usually come from those who condone the slaughter who laugh at the Word and who don’t know right from wrong.
It the shoe fits……
Those who are pro-choice put a bulls-eye on every unborn in the womb….they simply are not worth standing up for. And if a woman wants to kill, its acceptable to them. How sad is that?

Paul said, “President Obama confirmed his approach which is sincerely aimed a creating a middle way for this most divisive of issues.”
He is a fence sitter pretending to know right from wrong, pretending to me a man of faith. His actions show something quite different. He is a man with no backbone, no moral compass. He is a chameleon, someone who just bates and feeds the audiences and gives them what they want to hear. He is a man who stands on a faith that he obviously knows nothing about. That much is obvious.
And when he took that platform at Notre Dame, he spit in Gods face. Judas also betrayed his faith and Christ and Obama did nothing less. There are some issues you can’t bend on and abortion is one of those isues. He wants abortion legal so that his precious girls should they get pregnant have the option to kill. He said so himself.
He went into a Christian Catholic community of believers and raped the Word for his benefit and ratings because its always been just about him. The first thing he mentioned was the fact he was black. I was under the impression that his mother was white. Obviously he is embarrassed of that fact.
They say satan is beautiful and that the anti-Christ will be beautiful as well. Obama is a master deceiver and he comes off cool, calm and collected. He has power alright, but IMO its not from the God he pretends to follow.
The blind idly follow him….they don’t care about right and wrong and they mock morality. Paul thinks its so bad for protestors to show humanity in the pictures of the unborn and abortion, because he to thinks abortion is ok, he is pro-choice. The majority of protestors do not scream. The screaming and the intolerance usually come from those who condone the slaughter who laugh at the Word and who don’t know right from wrong.
It the shoe fits……
Those who are pro-choice put a bulls-eye on every unborn in the womb….they simply are not worth standing up for. And if a woman wants to kill, its acceptable to them. How sad is that?

Rdaughter said, “Like President Obama and my own United Methodist denomination, I believe abortion should be legal, medically safe, and rare. We’ve achieved the first two goals. Making
life from birth forward above all else, and enacts social systems to foster that life in its fullest realization.”
What a joke. You did a Sunday school lesson about abortion? I hope to heck you were not influencing children because your position is anti-Christ. You obviously never delved deep enough into scripture to see that God would never condone abortion.
You say you want abortion to be rare. Why? Rachels daughter is there something wrong with abortion? If there is then why do you condone it? If their isn’t anything wrong with it then why should it be rare? And in this case abortion even at full term would be ok. Or are you one of those who guess at when the unborn is viable. Did you also know that the heart beats around 20 days? In that tiny tiny tiny body its heart is beating. Didn’t God create that which is in the womb? If so then what right do you have to take that life away? God in the Christian Bible is not pro-choice. Show me scriptures that say differently. I could care less how you candy coat the issue, abortion is murder.
You should empathize with the unborn my dear. They are the ones you condone to be slaughtered in the name of God.
I know of only one medical complication in the first term and that is an ectopic pregnancy. With science today both mother and baby can make it through just fine.
Why do you think we need education if you are pro-choice and think woman should have the choice to kill? Is there anything wrong with abortion?
The fact is you oppose legal protection for the innocent unborn. To the baby who dies it makes no difference whether those who refuse to protect her were pro-abortion or merely pro-choice.
You said that we needed the community for success. My husband and I did not need the communities help in raising our children. Are you saying abortion should be legal because raising kids is so hard? Gods blessings are children. I don’t know what Methodist Church you attend but do you even have Bibles there?
Honey is there something wrong with abortion? Again if abortion doesn’t kill children, why would someone be opposed to it? If it does kill children, why would someone defend another’s right to do it?
“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart.” (Jeremiah 1:5) “Even before I was born, God had chosen me to be His” (Galatians 1:15) “For you created my inmost being; You knit me together in my mothers womb…Your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in Your book before one of them came to be.” Psalms 139;13-16

@Asinus Gravis
He compounds the stench by blathering on about “pro-abortion absolutist,” “arbitrary decision,” and “murder of infants and children.” Clearly he is not interested in any sort of reasoned discourse.
So what do you suggest we call abortion if it is not the murder of infants and children? Some new Orwellian terminology like the Obama precedent calling the war on terrorism a “man based contingency program”, so maybe call abortion the removal of a cancerous growth or parasite? Mind you that many feminists at Planned Parenthood who dictate abortion policy think just that about the unborn baby boy or girl.
Atheist philosopher Peter Singer thinks infanticide can be justified up to 28 days. On what basis could you argue against that if you accept abortion on demand without being purely arbitrary?
Seems like when you assert having a “reasoned discussion” you have the same thing in mind as President Obama, abortion on demand and nothing else. It is hard to take his “abortion reduction” rhetoric seriously when everything he does will actually lead to more abortions.
@RJohnson,
No, he would rather have the abortion issue as a GOP campaign tactic in 2010 and 2012 than to actually make any headway in reducing the number of abortions.
Funny how all of these “abortion abolitionists” finally found their voices after 8 years of do-nothing GOP initiatives on abortion. The minute the White House goes to a Democrat, abortion is an issue with them again.
The GOP needs dead babies to win elections, which is why they will do nothing meaningful to reduce abortions.
I guess you forgot that under Bush there were the fewest abortions in about 25 years? At least Bush believes in the right’s of parents to be informed about our underage daughters seeking abortion. Republicans can do much better but at least they support common sense restriction on abortion.
And President Obama is not just a Democrat, he is a radical pro-abortion absolutist seeking to overturn all common sense restrictions on abortion. He will even fund China’s forced abortion policy via the UN. Sweden just acted consistently with such a radical abortion view and is tolerating sex selective abortions. Eugenics is firmly planted in the Liberal world view but now it is just cloaked in the rhetoric of “compassion” and “open mindedness”.

Rachel’s Daughter,
I am sorry you were confronted with such a difficult situation.
You chose as you saw fit and I honor your choice.
Blue Collar Tod and Churchmouse, since last we did battle, two more States and the District of Columbia have granted my marriage in the US – and me – human and legal status. Yesterday, the State of Washington finalized and signed the legislation equating civil unions to marriage in all aspects for homosexuals and transgendered.
Your approach of hating all of us who do not agree with you 100% is not working. You are losing the fight to deny me human status. You are losing the fight to deny women sovereignty over their own bodies.
Now that the first Supreme Court Justice (of, sadly, several to come in the near future) will retire at the end of this session, we not you will be choosing his replacement. At least two more will almost certainly follow before 2012.
Not all that long ago, several of us suggested that your time for making decisions was running short. This was before the 2008 elections and the nastiness your side threw back at us was so bad, even over at crunchycon some of you were asked to moderate your tone…
Well, now the time when you had the say has past. Even yet, we are still trying to engage you and find solutions with you. Even yet, you act as tho’ any cooperation with us is tantamount to commiting the vilest sin.
Sigh.
Well, we tried. What will be your next step? Going back to throwing bombs and murdering doctors and nurses just as your side now does to the gays and transgendered in the US?

past=passed.
Shouldn’t try to write in foreign languages while doing two other things at once.

How is ‘Pro-Life’ Defined in Texas…
If Texas… were a country…
Texas has the 12th largest economy in the World…
2005 Office of the Texas Comptroller Reports
Texas State of the Child…
1st… In the US in the percentage of Uninsured Children
48th… In the US for Spending on Child Protection
Health Care for Children…
5oth… In the US for Insured Low Income Children
Education
50th… in the US for High School Graduation Rates
48th… in the US for SAT Scores
Health and Welfare…
7th… in the US for Poverty Rate
2nd… in the US for the Percentage of Population that goes hungry
3rd… in the US for the Percentage of Population that is malnurished
47th… Amount of Welfare and Food Stamp Benefits
49th… in Number of WIC recipients
Women’s Issues
2nd… in the US for Teen Birth Rate
37th… in Prenatal Care
Environment
1st… In Toxic and Cancerous Manufacturing Emissions
1st… In number of Clean water violations
Executions
1st… Number of Executions
2nd… In the rate of Incarcerations
2009… 50th for service provided to homeless children
AND
2005 Texas reported over 400,000 abortions
Begin a new conversation…
Let’s stop using Children, both born and unborn as political capital. Let’s love ALL the Children… not just some of them.

To Rachel’s Daughter:
I am so sorry you had to go through that. I can’t imagine the darkness and the aloneness you and your husband had to be feeling as you wrestled with what had to be a heart-wrenching decision. My prayers are with you and your husband, that you would find healing and strength in this undoubtedly difficult time.
To all the rest of us: we need to tone down our rhetoric! We are talking about real people here, real lives, real hurts, in many cases. Whatever your views are, please try to find some compassion for those faced with the decision to end a pregnancy, regardless of the reason. It can’t be easy, and those of us who consider ourselves pro-life blithely tossing about sayings like “abortion is murder” can’t make it any easier.

Your Name,
How very true. It is one of the great ironies of this and the other beliefnet forums that those who claim to be the sole representatives of God’s will are also the ones who are nastiest and most hateful to those of us Christians here who are gay or transgendered, those of us who do not feel that we have the right to force our wills upon women.
It’s noticeable – and very sad.

@Panthera,
I am wondering about you view on aborting the baby who has down syndrome, is blind, deaf or suffering from any other perceived condition that will effect his or her quality of life? Is it not better to abort such babies in order to prevent needless suffering and pain, both for the parents and the individual in question?

Dearest Blue Collar Todd,
To answer your questions:
quote
@Panthera,
I am wondering about you view on aborting the baby who has down syndrome, is blind, deaf or suffering from any other perceived condition that will effect his or her quality of life?
end quote
I shall begin by summarizing my statements on this issue over the last several months here and across the blogs at beliefnet:
First, I firmly believe only the woman confronting a pregnancy has standing to decide what is to be done.
Second, I find no evidence in science, medicine or the Bible that prior to quickening, there is a soul involved, a separate human being if you will.
Third, I do most firmly believe that after the first 12 weeks, there clearly is a baby who is an independent human life and not a growth in the mother’s body which could become life.
This status of the growth prior to quickening is capable of becoming a new human life in exactly the same way my body, through meiosis, produces cells which could become life by the millions every day or the woman’s body was born with several dozen cells which could, at some point become life.
Fourth, there are four points at which I feel one can intercede prior to quickening to prevent a new human life from arising:
a) Don’t have sexual intercourse unless you are prepared to spend at least the next 18 years of your life being responsible for the potentially resulting new human being. Applies equally to both men and women.
b) If you do want to have sexual intercourse but aren’t prepared to raise a child, together, then do use safe and effective contraception.
c) No rational doctor regards a pregnancy as occurring until after the blastophere has anchored to the mother’s body. This is understandable as we know today that some enormous amount of fertilized eggs are never permitted to implant themselves but are flushed from the body. Depending on how current the information you read (the more current, the higher the number) it looks like up to 90% fail to implant. For this reason, doctors have long held that it is not a “pregnancy” until after the first 10 days have passed. Makes sense to me, thus I have no problem with drugs such as “Plan B”.
d) In the period after the blastophere anchors and quickening has not yet arisen, I see the removal of this potential human life as a removal of a part of the woman’s body, not the end of a separate, individual human life. So, within the first 12 weeks, abortion is acceptable to me. If I were a woman and not a man, if I were heterosexual and not gay, mayhap I should feel differently. I just know how much I resent other people telling me what to do with my body (like leaving my husband and partner of 24 years now simply because our love doesn’t please them). It makes sense to me that a woman has the same sense of self I have.
As a corollary to the above, obviously, I regard abortion after 12 weeks as ending a human life.
Will you forgive me if I dismiss the “quality of life” part of your sentence? It is only 2009 and yet, to repair the damage my body suffered when my fundamentalist Christian relations beat me so badly for being gay, I now have in my body:
-Several implanted “teeth” as well as a number of caps.
-My lower jaw was regrown (they shattered it by kicking me directly in the jaw) using genetically modified bone tissue from cows. Of course, today we are far past that.
-My ribs, while healing, were helped along with targeted minerals in chelates that weren’t available 20 years ago.
-One of my eyes is still fuzzy, but thanks to laser re-attachment of the retina and an outstanding artificial lens (their kick to the eye drove the lens right into the humour) I can even almost read with it. My doctors promise me a bionic lens with automatic focusing within the next five years.
And that is just me – so, again, I beg your forgiveness, but quality of life is a very relative term. If my severe damage can be repaired and made acceptable after being beat up for being gay in these primitive medical times, I daresay it is seriously wrong to assume medicine will not continue to advance to the point where any one, single, “quality of life” issue may be addressed.
Now, on to the real nasty ones: Syndromes relating from damage to the 21st chromosome and related. May I throw them all together? You separated quality of life out from the life-threatening illnesses for reasons I think we all understand here, I am just following your own grouping.
And there, Blue Collar Todd, I must say the problem has been addressed in my country, here in Europe. Should a woman receive such an appalling report from her doctor during pregnancy, my country stands ready to help her, her spouse and the child to make the best of it. Money for operations, treatments, medications, special education and – most important of all – continued support after the parents are dead – is constitutionally guaranteed in my country. These people with special needs are not institutionalized if there is any means for them to live independently.
Your country does diddly to help the parents and child when these horrific problems arise. Yes, within the first 12 weeks the woman here could chose an abortion. But the only reason an abortion after those first 12 weeks would be granted would be if the child’s abnormality (I know that word is going to upset some folks, tough) presented a clear danger to the pregnant mother’s survival. Unfortunately, there are such cases and then, yes – I would rather see the child die than both the child and the mother.
OK?
That’s your answer. As you can see, there are two areas of agreement between us – prevention is best and after quickening at 12 weeks, we are discussing a living human being.
We also have one very great area in which my country puts its money where its mouth is on reducing abortion – post-natal care. There, your country ignores the welfare of the child the moment the umbilical cord is cut. We offer young women the chance to raise the child without descending into poverty or choosing an abortion. We make adoption uncomplicated for the mother. You do nothing there. In Texas, less than nothing.
Would you care to address why you do nothing for children once they are born? Do you believe there is no relevance between providing a desperate young woman with alternatives to abortion and not helping her? By your own logic that we are talking about a separate human being the second the first sperm penetrates the outer layer of the egg, it seems a bit contradictory to not do everything possible to help this completely human and totally dependent person. You don’t. Not a bit. Why not?
Given that we have far lower per-capita abortion rates than you (and far lower mortality rates of babies and children), could it be that our policy actually does reduce abortions in cases when the child born will have serious health or “quality of life” issues?

” As President Obama said at Notre Dame, the pro-life movement is no longer filled with caricatures. ”
You repeat the myth that pro-life caricatures are dead, and yet you perpetuate them yourself. You focus entirely on a small group of vocal protestors, and ignore the hundreds of thousands of peaceful petition signers and thousands of students, alumni and others who showed up to peacefully protest ND’s honoring of Obama with a doctorate in law in an ND approved manner (which is no small feat).
In order for caricatures to truly die, reporters need to quite focusing on a small set of radicals and give some attention to the mainstream pro-life movement. Until that happens, saying caricatures are dead only reinforces them by giving the appearance among the ignorant that the people you focus on are mainstream.