J., I agree with you 100%. Hell must be freezing over today! 
I very much agree here. I can understand why they wouldn't want to come off as condoning sex outside of marriage, but at the same time, they are essentially ostracizing and condemning the woman.
I very much agree here. I can understand why they wouldn't want to come off as condoning sex outside of marriage, but at the same time, they are essentially ostracizing and condemning woman who become pregnant out of wedlock. It's no wonder that according to the Alan Guttmacher Institue, a large percentage of women who've had an abortion are Christian.
I agree too.
The woman in this case made the right choice, not to pretend to be moral at the cost of killing somene else to cover up her mistake, but to actually be moral, preserving human life and in effect admitting her fallibility.
Show me a reward system, and I'll show you a value system, as they say. In this case, the pro-life choice was punished and the dishonest, deadly choice would not have been. That's a really bad reward system.
Heh, great minds think alike--well, somewhat, anyway.
Thanks for the comments everyone.
L.,
We agree more often than that, don't we?
I must point out the obvious, here. Since when do we condone a person doing a bad thing simply because that person could have done a worse thing? So a pedophile rapes a child and turns him over unharmed and that child identifies the rapist and the rapist goes to trail. Do we excuse the rape because he could have easily murdered that child so she couldn't identify him? I think that in itself is rewarding bad behavior. Because you have the capacity to do something worse, it doesn't make you virtuous for having done something bad.
This woman is not a hero for not killing her baby and as long as we make carrying to term a righteous, heroic thing abortion will remain acceptable. It plays abortion vs. childbirth as "okay choice vs. better choice" instead of abortion as an unacceptable choice.
When I worked in adoption, I greatly respected the mothers for their sacrifice. When they were teased, I thought, "They could have easily aborted and not gotten any crap from anyone." But that legimizes abortion, does it not?
Yes, J., we agree on more than that, but how often do I agree with one of your posts in entirety?
"Because you have the capacity to do something worse, it doesn't make you virtuous for having done something bad." Are they really condoning the premarital sex that led to the unwed pregnancy, by supporting the mother and accepting her baby? If the mother regrets the behavior that led to the pregnancy, and she is a good and loving mother to that baby, is it "condoning" sin to acknowlege this?
L,
You're absolutely right. But you missed what I was saying.
A pregnancy is a sign of something that happened...not a sign of any continuing behavior. You should accept and support her and her child.
My problem is that heralding her as virtuous for not killing the baby is legitimizing abortion even further. We all have the capacity to do extreme evil, but you don't see me demanding a cookie because I didn't kill anyone today.
Hmmmmm, I don`t think anyone, even a flaming liberal, would put an unwed mother on a pedestal, so I`m not sure you what you mean as "heralding her as virtuous." She didn`t follow up her bad choice with another bad choice -- that`s it. Her life as a single mother will almost certainly be harder than it would have been had she waited until she was married to have children.
I`m also not sure I understand the connection when you say that "as long as we make carrying to term a righteous, heroic thing abortion will remain acceptable." What`s the alternative -- make carrying to term undesirable somehow, by firing women who choose to do it?
I would think that making carrying to term into something that`s not shameful would ultimately reduce the number of abortions, not "legitimize" them.
Hi Jacque,
I don't think your thinking regarding adoption would legitimize abortion. I think it recognized the reality of the current world we live in.
I wish we lived in a world where making an adoption plan was more normal than it is today, where premarital sex occurred less often and where abortion wasn't commonly seen as "easiest" route.
But we don't. We live in a world where making an adoption plan is often looked down upon, where all too often people engage in pre-maritial sex and abortion is seen as the correct choice for unmarried pregnant women.
I somewhat understand the point you're tring to make - where if we glorify giving birth as the brave decision then abortion seems like a more normal/average decision - but I don't see how we act otherwise. How else do we make abortion the bad decision?
Jivin J-
Exactly. It's not about making abortion the bad decision, but making it a non-decision. It kills a baby and it should be deemed unacceptable. But since society, even pro-life society, has accepted abortion as a part of our culture, we have pro-life people talking about how "she could have" and she didn't: Praise her.
I am guilty of "doing what I can" (sidewalk counseling, lobbying, crisis pregnancy work) but if abortion really is murder, why is it that I don't act like it? Because, although I know the truth, it has been legitimized through our culture and legalization. I think this story demonstrates this fact.
It seems like making abortion out to be the bad choice concedes that it is a choice. I am saying that we should make it a socially unacceptable choice. I am not saying 'how' because I have no clue how, but what I'm saying is that a bad choice doesn't become a good choice because there was a worse choice.
It reminds me a Chris Rock show I saw once where he talks about men bragging, "Hey, I take care of my kids!" To which he responds, "What, do you want a cookie? You're supposed to take care of your kids." I see pro-lifers saying, "Hey, she could have killed her kid" as if that's acceptable instead of the response being, "You're supposed to not kill your kid."
Having the capacity to do evil and not doing evil does not mean you're doing good. The presence of good is good, not the absence of evil.
In our dark and perverse age, not doing an evil like killing our child is heralded because our culture is so horrid. You wish it doesn't happen, you say, but it does. So because lots of people are doing wrong things, it becomes less wrong?
To quote my Mama, if everyone else jumps off a bridge, are you going to?
That's my point. Killing a child should be unheard of, but since we say that 'she could have' apparently anything thing less wrong she has done is negated. This does not jive with the Biblical standards of absolute right and wrong. (No pun intended on the 'jive' there, Jive.
-Jacqueline
Strangely enough I just went through a similar situation--I am pregnant and lost my job as a Catholic school teacher. I do believe they had just reasons to get rid of me, but the Church is supposed to take Christ as a model. I don't believe that Jesus would not support a repentant sinner who needs desperately to keep her job. I believe He would take the opportunity to teach others about Love, Mercy, Forgiveness.
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