The principle on which pro-life Christian people base their edict of “killing a human life is murder and human life begins at conception” is one of the Ten Commandments: “thou shallt no kill”. Black & white isn’t it? There are no conditions attached, but Christians do go to war, execute people and so on without taking the command in consideration. Things aren’t black and white. We can presume that this command is meant for human life and not animal or plant life. It is also clear from the bible that it only applies to members of ones own tribe and does not extend to other tribes such as the Midianites (Numbers 31) where God promoted genocide. As far as abortion is concerned they have taken the stand that killing human life is wrong and that human life begins at conception, not based on the bible but totally arbitrarily.
The beginning of Human Life can be viewed as follows:
1- At Creation, whether by God or by nature. In that case life is continuous from the first Human being until now, so the female eggs and the sperm are human life and castration and masturbation are murders.
2- At conception, and abortion is murder with no exceptions for rape, handicaps, the mother’s survival etc.
3- At 8 weeks when the first neural net work is formed.
4- At 22 weeks when the brain starts forming
5- At birth. This actually was the norm up to a few hundred years ago and is still present in some remote areas. It was based on the once wide spread belief, in many different religions, that the personal “spirit” (breath) separated from the Great Spirit (the atmosphere) and entered the baby (first breath) and left the body at death (last breath) to rejoin the Great Spirit. So killing a baby before it took its first breath was not murder. A practice that was used in some religious establishments to abort unwed mothers or pregnant nuns.
Pick your choice. I suggest that we do not do that and leave religion out of it. If we want the government to interfere with free choice (personally I support free choice) and legislate, then at least we should let science decide the time frame in which abortion is acceptable and that would entail a decision somewhere between 3 and 4 as ou giving a woman enough time to make an intelligent decision between abortion, adoption or motherhood. To prevent abortion solely based on sex selection one could make it an offense to disclose the sex of a fetus until the permitted time frame has passed. It should NOT be based on arbitrary religious dogma. To the religious people who are convinced that God does not approve of any abortion and that heavenly retribution is the result, I say, Judge not (Mattew 7:1). Let your God make the decision on how to judge the individual.
The beginning of Human Life can be viewed as follows:
1- At Creation, whether by God or by nature. In that case life is continuous from the first Human being until now, so the female eggs and the sperm are human life and castration and masturbation are murders.
2- At conception, and abortion is murder with no exceptions for rape, handicaps, the mother’s survival etc.
3- At 8 weeks when the first neural net work is formed.
4- At 22 weeks when the brain starts forming
5- At birth. This actually was the norm up to a few hundred years ago and is still present in some remote areas. It was based on the once wide spread belief, in many different religions, that the personal “spirit” (breath) separated from the Great Spirit (the atmosphere) and entered the baby (first breath) and left the body at death (last breath) to rejoin the Great Spirit. So killing a baby before it took its first breath was not murder. A practice that was used in some religious establishments to abort unwed mothers or pregnant nuns.
Pick your choice. I suggest that we do not do that and leave religion out of it. If we want the government to interfere with free choice (personally I support free choice) and legislate, then at least we should let science decide the time frame in which abortion is acceptable and that would entail a decision somewhere between 3 and 4 as ou giving a woman enough time to make an intelligent decision between abortion, adoption or motherhood. To prevent abortion solely based on sex selection one could make it an offense to disclose the sex of a fetus until the permitted time frame has passed. It should NOT be based on arbitrary religious dogma. To the religious people who are convinced that God does not approve of any abortion and that heavenly retribution is the result, I say, Judge not (Mattew 7:1). Let your God make the decision on how to judge the individual.
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