A few weeks ago a friend of mine put a post on Facebook with a link to her blog www.iliveloud.net. It was hot on the heels of the riot in the Texas State House during a vote on late-term abortion. The article (linked here) was a moving story of my friend’s personal decision on abortion. I’d appreciate it if you’d take a few minutes to head over to her blog and read the article before we continue with my posting.

Now that you’ve read her article, I think you’ll probably agree with me that it is a great example of someone sticking by their convictions and honoring not just God, but their unborn children. I’m proud to claim Jessie Kirkland as a friend. She’s exactly the type of heroic person that I like to hang out with in my life.

Jessica Kirkland

Heroic? Yes. My definition of that word includes people willing to sacrifice their own lives for the lives of others. It also includes people willing to put their life on the line for their principles. Do I advocate risking your life for every cause? No. Not every cause is worthy of such a level of effort. But the ones involving life and death, especially the death of another, are among the reasons one might contemplate such a sacrifice.

The thing that amazed me even more than her blog post was the response. A friend of mine put up a post on Facebook within 48 hours that appalled me. It was an argument, allegedly based on The Bible, that it is not human life until the child draws a breath of air.

Think about that for just a moment. Aside from the fact that it’s ignorant of the book’s message, it’s an example of being able to prove any point, any argument, based on picking and choosing from 66 books and taking one or two sentences out of context. Every cleric I’ve ever talked to, or listened to in school, warned that that little trick was a one-way ticket to stupidville.

I won’t throw the vile thing a link, but if you were to Google “life begins with the first breath” you’ll find a host of these things going back for decades. Almost all of them that I found came from groups with names like (this one is fictitious) “Crazy Liberal Christians Who Defy Your Paradigm.”

The logical extension of the argument (and it was actually made on one of the sites) was that even a baby at day 280 (well past 9 months) who had not yet emerged from the womb is not a human being, and could be aborted with no moral compunctions. The phrase the ghouls (yeah, I’m calling names on that one) use is that it’s “living tissue” but not “human life” until a breath is drawn.

The basis for the argument is the same on each site – they take 5 examples from the Old Testament and extrapolate. The first is talk about the formation of Adam beginning with God breathing life into him. True. First human life was indeed initiated by God breathing life into Adam. Gotta start somewhere, and after that God used his plan for the rest of the human race involving sexual reproduction.

The second item usually cited is that Mosiac Law, the ten commandments we use most often, came from God in an oral fashion. And that Moses altered them to suit his whim. The tangent then tracks off to talk about foreskins and placenta being “living tissue” as well and there’s no big sweat over them “being murdered” so why should an unborn child be any different. Sadly, I’ve spent enough time doing public speaking and debate in my life to see where they get their argument. I also understand the mentality of the woman who told me “George Wallace is secretly a Catholic Nun” during a stay at the Minneapolis Greyhound Depot in 1976. Eh, I have a soft spot for this kind of thing it appears.

This is traditionally followed with quotes from Job, Ezekial, and Exodus. Again, taking things from a limited context and proving their point.

Yawn. It’s boring. And hateful. And stupid. Yes, stupid. I posted an item about a brave friend and why she doesn’t support abortion. The response was, essentially, “Hey, you. Think you’re a Christian because you read the Bible? Well, you missed the part where God says it’s just fine to abort kids until they suck some oxygen through the old pie-hole. So shut up and let us do what we want.” That may be a loose interpretation of what they actually are saying, but it’s close enough for my money.

Yes, I am a Christian. Strangely, I’ve read that other part of the Bible – The New Testament. That one talks a bit about birth – two births and two children in particular: John The Baptist and Jesus The Christ. Some good reading there – about life in the womb, the baby stirring at the prompting of The Holy Spirit. Lots about the sanctity of life in that part of the book as well. I’d encourage anyone who has questions about abortion to give it a read. It might just change their heart.

What’s the point of my blog today? You can justify anything you want (almost) by selectively citing the Bible. But you look like a fool. Moreover, you show what evil lurks in your heart when you do what these articles do in the case of abortion. Beware of how you use scripture – the author is kind of finicky about copy write.

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