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 - Endorsed - Indifferent - Contested
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| The Nashville Statement
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Name:Daniel
Home: Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada
About Me: I used to believe that evolution was reasonable, that homosexuality was genetic, and that people became Christians because they couldn't deal with the 'reality' that this life was all there was. I used to believe, that if there was a heaven - I could get there by being good - and I used to think I was more or less a good person. I was wrong on all counts. One day I finally had my eyes opened and I saw that I was not going to go to heaven, but that I was certainly going to suffer the wrath of God for all my sin. I saw myself as a treasonous rebel at heart - I hated God for creating me just to send me to Hell - and I was wretched beyond my own comprehension. Into this spiritual vacuum Jesus Christ came and he opened my understanding - delivering me from God's wrath into God's grace. I was "saved" as an adult, and now my life is hid in Christ. I am by no means sinless, but by God's grace I am a repenting believer - a born again Christian.
My complete profile...
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Daniel's posts are almost always pastoral and God centered. I appreciate and am challenged by them frequently. He has a great sense of humor as well.
- Marc Heinrich
His posts are either funny or challenging. He is very friendly and nice.
- Rose Cole
[He has] good posts, both the serious like this one, and the humorous like yesterday. [He is] the reason that I have restrained myself from making Canadian jokes in my posts.
- C-Train
This post contains nothing that is of any use to me. What were you thinking? Anyway, it's probably the best I've read all day.
- David Kjos
Daniel, nicely done and much more original than Frank the Turk.
- Jonathan Moorhead
There are some people who are smart, deep, or funny. There are not very many people that are all 3. Daniel is one of those people. His opinion, insight and humor have kept me coming back to his blog since I first visited earlier this year.
- Carla Rolfe
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| In this case, let your left hand see it... |
A Canadian member of Parliament (MP) has introduced a bill which will make it illegal for Canadians to request an abortion based on the gender of the fetus.
Think about that for a second.
Why is it (legally) okay to end the life of a fetus? The logic goes that the fetus is not yet a legal person. No intellectually honest person will deny that the life of a fetus is a human life, or that this human life is alive. What is denied is that this human life is a legal person. Because this unborn child is not yet a legal person, the law does not concern itself with protecting him or her.
Yet there is a disconnect in this kind of shell and pea logic that stands like a stack of prismatic, neon elephants gesticulating in the corner of the room. A disconnect that comes out when we are appalled by the notion that anyone would end the life of an unborn child, based on the gender of that unborn child.
Think on this: In Canada we have a federal act called SARA (Species At Risk Act) which defines an individual of a species as, "...an individual of a wildlife species, whether living or dead, at any developmental stage and includes larvae, embryos, eggs, sperm, seeds, pollen, spores and asexual propagules." Because of this definition, it is illegal, for instance, to destroy the eggs of an endangered fowl - to destroy the eggs is to destroy an individual of the species. Thus the Canadian legal system accords the equivalent of personhood to animals, even before they are born or hatched, that it denies to children in the womb of Canadian citizens.
I mention this, not to suggest that the law for endangered species is flawed, but rather to illustrate that our nation fully recognizes with unflawed clarity the fact that to destroy the developing fetus of a Panda Bear is one and the same as destroying an "already born" Panda Bear. We could care less of the pregnant mother bear decides that she doesn't want to be a mom half way through her pregnancy, because the life of that unborn bear is precious to civilized folk.
Yet when it comes to people, we are far less civilized, aren't we? The same minds that fully comprehend a universal truth when it comes to animals, deny this truth for human beings? Why? Because we have convinced our self, contrary to our own reason, that the life of an unborn human does not represent an actual person yet. The only reason we would invent, and then accept, such a ridiculous, irrational notion is because we want to justify something that is unthinkable: murdering our own children.
There is a reason why a pregnant mother agonizes over the decision to abort her child, and it is because the only way she can go through with it, assuming she is not a psychopath, is by convincing herself that the child is not really a child, and that ending the life of her child is not really a wicked and unthinkable thing to do.
So along comes the notion of abortion for reasons of gender, and everyone knows that ending the life of a human, based on that human's gender is abominable - so we rail against it, and attempt to bring laws into being that forbid it. Why? Because in spite of the Orwellian "double-think" we feed ourselves, a thing like this slips past our arguments, and into our hearts, which have not yet been convinced of what our minds have been fooled into thinking. We know in our hearts that these unborn children are human, and the thought that the gender of this unborn child should be used to decided whether we murder them or not does not sit right with us, even if our minds are otherwise hood-winked into drinking the cultural Kool-Aid.
Don't mistake me, I regard abortion as the killing of a child on the pretense that doing so will ease the comfort of the parents to one degree or another. In other words, I think it is an abomination - the sacrificing of our children on the altar of our own pleasures, or (worse) imagined pleasures. It is an exaltation of our self-determination to the point of saying that it is okay to kill your own children, if you think that would make your life better. It puts our momentary opinion about what is best for us on one scale, and the life of an unborn child on the other, and that is an unjust scale in my book. So don't read me wrong when I say that if we allow abortions by reason of gender, what's to stop us from allowing abortions for even more trivial reasons? I am not suggesting we ought not to allow abortions for reasons of gender on the grounds that it is a slippery slope. We shouldn't allow abortions at all. If however, we can avoid allowing some (or any) abortions, we ought to do so.
The fascinating thing (morbidly, mind you) in all this, to me at least, was that even though a person may be convinced that abortions are fine and dandy, that conviction is really just an intellectual persuasion intended to convince the heart that evil is good. When something comes along for which hasn't yet been throttled into silence by some as yet invented intellectual postures, it goes straight to the heart (where it ought to), and we know that something is wrong, even if we can't put our finger on it.
Thus after a person has managed to convince himself or herself that abortion is morally and legally acceptable, that same person may stumble over the idea that it is okay to abort a child on the basis of that child's gender. That would be wrong even the fog of their deceit wouldn't allow them to understand just why.
If an unborn child isn't a person, it really shouldn't matter why we take that unborn child's life. Right? The fact that it does matter to some who otherweise support abortion points to a (promising) disconnect in their thinking. I hope the Lord uses this to unblind the mind of those whose hearts still have eyes. |
posted by Daniel @
9:25 AM
 
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| 3 Comments: |
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I loved this... "a thing like this slips past our arguments, and into our hearts"; so tragically true. Thanks, Daniel, this was a terrific piece. I wonder if anyone asks the same question I do in this instance. Why bother with outlawing abortions for reason of gender? Are parents obliged to give any reason other than "I just want it"? Any reason will do, won't it?
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Bob,
I was remiss in replying to this comment. You see well my point: why bother? the reason people a person gets an abortions is because they refuse to accept the responsiblity of the life they (pro)created. Whatever the secondary reason is, it is not the reason for the abortion, it is the reason they use to justify (to themselves) the murder of their unborn child.
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haha I meant to replace "people" with "a person" (for obvious, physiological reasons), but apparently didn't delete the former when I inserted the latter.
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I loved this... "a thing like this slips past our arguments, and into our hearts"; so tragically true. Thanks, Daniel, this was a terrific piece. I wonder if anyone asks the same question I do in this instance. Why bother with outlawing abortions for reason of gender? Are parents obliged to give any reason other than "I just want it"? Any reason will do, won't it?