\u201cWhen it is a clear-cut case of either taking the life of the unborn baby or letting the mother die, then abortion is called for. An actual life (the mother) is of more intrinsic value than a potential life (the unborn). The mother is a fully developed human; the baby is an undeveloped human. And an actually developed human is better than one which has the potential for full humanity but has not yet developed. Being fully human is a higher value than the mere possibility of becoming fully human. For what is has more value than what may be. \u2026\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cBirth is not morally necessitated without consent. No woman should be forced to carry a child if she did not consent to intercourse. A violent intrusion into a woman\u2019s womb does not bring with it a moral birthright for the embryo. The mother has a right to refuse that her body be used as an object of sexual intrusion. The violation of her honor and personhood was enough evil without compounding her plight by forcing an unwanted child on her besides. \u2026 the right of the potential life (the embryo) is overshadowed by the right of the actual life of the mother. The rights to life, health, and self-determination \u2014 i.e., the rights to personhood \u2014 of the fully human mother take precedence over that of the potentially human embryo.\u201d<\/em> (italics mine)<\/p>\n\n\n\n Those two paragraphs come from a 1971 book called Baptist Ethics: Alternatives And Issues.<\/em> Written by Norman Geisler, famous apologist for biblical literalism and no one\u2019s wild-eyed liberal by any stretch. As Fred Clark is so fond of saying, the Southern Baptist anti-abortion stance is newer than the McDonalds Happy Meal. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The enemy isn\u2019t Trump. Never was. He is merely the tool to keep the necks fired up. The enemy is a cult that worships power, currently doing business as the Republican Party. It is a cult that has gleefully broken every unwritten rule in government and not a few of the written ones. And it is a cult that has spent 2022 making the kind of decisions you make when you are sure you will never<\/em> again be out of power, that the law will always<\/em> protect and not bind you, and that you may then use it to bind others it does not protect. Crudely put, it ensures the rednecks will always have somebody<\/em> they\u2019re allowed to shit on. And if it can\u2019t win a majority of votes, it will strangle and shrink the electorate until it can. <\/p>\n\n\n\n What are you prepared to do?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u201cWhen it is a clear-cut case of either taking the life of the unborn baby or letting the mother die, then abortion is called for. An actual life (the mother) is of more intrinsic value than a potential life (the unborn). The mother is a fully developed human; the baby is an undeveloped human. And … <\/p>\n