It was really a moot point that long ago because there weren’t any means to do abortion without virtually attempting suicide. There was also less desire for abortion without as much promiscuity or desire to limit family size. Children then were generally seen as income producers rather than income consumers.

The Hippocratic Oath also proscribed surgery in general, yet it was never banned. Needless to say, the oath is no longer used in the medical profession.

The reason matters only to the extent that the law itself is enforced and maintained consistent with all other existing rights. Mainly, you don’t want it to violate the Supreme Court’s Lemon test for establishment clause violations.

I don’t personally care much why abortion is banned, as long as it is banned. The result is my concern.

We need to grow the percentage of atheists and agnostics and avid secularists who are pro-life. It’s not something only preachers and religious spokespersons should be arguing strongly for. It does not and should not require a Biblical or faith-based foundation. It merely requires awareness of the biological facts and agreement on the equality of all human beings. Nothing more.

Pro-life people are going to have to stop using the message as a vehicle for spreading the gospel. The message MUST reasonably appeal to people who want nothing to do with God. And there MUST be a basis for making it the law for nonbelievers too.

I will add that the Bible does not tell us how to make law. It provides teachings for fellow believers. It is stupid and counter to the Bible to seek to apply those teachings to nonbelievers too. Laws are there so that we can worship freely and keep a society where everyone’s rights are protected. Abortion should be prohibited BY LAW not because it is against God’s will but because the unborn are distinct whole living humans as defined by biology and objective observation. To protect everyone, they must be protected. Otherwise, it is only to be enforced among church members. By your standards, you may as well be making laws that people go to church.

There was not technically a valid Biblical argument against abortion for some time. It required biology to tell us in the 1800′s when a distinct whole human life began. This IS as progressive and non-faith-based a cause as opposition to slavery was in the 1800′s. You’ll note abortion was never prohibited in the first place on grounds of faith or religion. Nor was it done to restrict women or for “safety” reasons. It was done to maintain the integrity of the medical profession in light of the then recent scientific discovery of when life began.

But I digress. The point of the entire post is about Christmas and how some use this time of year to try and demonize or otherwise cast Christians in a bad light specifically when giving, Christian or otherwise, is highest. This time of year is about loving all mankind, helping your neighbor, peace and goodwill toward men. Some intolerant people use their own glass houses to try and cast Christians in the mold they least resemble just because we happen to have a moral compass and aren’t afraid to put it on display.

That’s my opinion, we welcome yours
Snake Davis

Kathleen Parker states:

“The glue that binds the GOP’s religious right — social issues, especially abortion — is not insignificant and doesn’t deserve to be dismissed. But nor should those issues be tied to scripture. Some religious conservatives understand this, but the memo apparently isn’t reaching all the pews.”

The response is:

“She just does not get it. Scripture defines what Christians believe. It is the source of truth. It defines the values of the believer. I can no more separate my values about all aspects of life from the Scriptures than I can change who my parents are.”

That’s beside the point. No one has used religious arguments to defend life. It’s not a matter of faith. Regardless of religion, EVERYONE opposes murder. Some people just don’t value all life, can’t understand what abortion is, or deny blatantly observable life exists. Of course people should not be using faith to justify protecting life by LAW. It’s silly because it’s so obvious based on observation and objective fact to anyone who looks. It should be as instinctive as not murdering a born infant. This is NOT a religious matter, and is NOT faith based. Otherwise, one would have to be an idiot to care if it were law!

Look at Elizabeth Cady Stanton, a Bible-hating atheist who was vehemently pro-life.

Ramesh Ponnuru made this point in a response he wrote to this column stating the exact same thing. See http://www.lifenews.com/nat4631.html for a synoposis of his response.

I’m not a lawyer, and what legal analysis I’ve heard is that the athiest group is on pretty firm ground. The Washington State governor supposedly is allowed to exercise some discretion in allowing public displays but likely took the high road here.

My beef is this, I’m all for multi-culturalism. If you’re going to put up a Nativity scene, I’ve got no problem putting up symbols for Hanukkah, Kwanzai, or whatever (after all, if one of the tenets of Christianity is tolerance, than Christians should be accepting of the beliefs of other faiths). In this case, however, the athiests are not touting the benefits or what they consider positive aspects of atheism. They’re simply insulting anyone who, in their opinion, is stupid enough to believe in a higher being. They’re simply looking to be inflammatory. On those grounds, I think the governor would have been well within her “discretionary” parameters to reject the display, saying that it did nothing constructive.

Fox News had a very good, brief debate this morning between a member of the Christian anti-defamation league and a member of this athiest group. The Christian raised the very good point that one has to ask, if athiests don’t hold religious beliefs, meaning the season of Christmas doesn’t mean anything to them, than why put up this sign now? Couldn’t they do it at any time in the year? Or did they do it now just to spite those with religious beliefs? The athiest gave some fairly weak response that the athiests were indeed celebrating winter solstice, and it was the Christians that had hijacked that celebration with Christmas. He even added that the Nativity scene itself was insulting as it insinuates that people must accept a savior.

Ahh… peace on earth and goodwill to men.

Mr. Obama, I am praying for you as my faith instructs me to do. I am praying for you to be wise, to make good decisions, and most importantly, to listen to God when he tries to speak to your heart.

She seems to characterize the whole lot as Huckabee clones, and seems to lump Palin in as one of the worst offenders based on left-wing propaganda hit pieces that exaggerated her statements and record, which in reality were fairly tame.

Her last piece I felt was coherent, but like this one, unnecessarily vindictive towards a major part of the party she obvious despises. More importantly though, her conclusions were absolutely wrong. The GOP wins Presidential elections when social values are higher on the radar among the electorate. She seems to want to negate the previous elections where the GOP won when those issues were front and center with an election where they were not, and then use that as proof that those issues are somehow irrelevant now.

Further, the post election gallup polling showed strong support for social value/religious candidates… Palin topping the list, with Romney (though I dispute his deathbed conversion on this and a host of issues, though others were more forgiving), and Huckabee came in behind her.

So where’s this retreat from social conservatism? What evidence beyond her own bias does she provide? Zilch, nada, zippo.

I can relate to some of her views. My political views are fairly extreme on limited government and enhancing liberty, which on top of my atheism puts me at strong odds with much of the social conservative movement, just as my views on foreign policy and federalism put me at strong odds with the left.

But for someone like Parker to demand reason be used as she’s ignoring political realities is just absurd. The Republican Party is a coalition of people with many disagreements, but more agreements that hold them together to win elections and have more influence than if they split into competing factions and lost every election to a left wing coalition. Parker’s spite towards SoCons is self-defeating. She’s literally trying to saw off the third leg of the stool and assuming the other two can perform the balancing act.

For someone demanding reason, she seems to be burying her head in the sand pretty deep to avoid facts.

So, in Parker’s opinion, all that Western religion has done is give us pretty buildings and nice words? It is not the basis of our laws? How big of her not to want to “evict” God and at least acknowledge (by stating that it’s not necessary to evict Him) that this is a war she can’t win. No one can dispute that the Bible is the foundation of our laws and the foundation on which our forefathers built this nation. And there’s no amount of words she can type that will change that fact. She can’t win on this.

She believes that Judeo-Christian beliefs have had no impact on the history of this nation – aside from some great art and the Constitution – and it’s time is over.

Again, she’s not big enough for the war that she is apparently declaring on people of faith and the God they worship. She, and people like her, will lose.

This is really the nugget I want to remember: “… faith drives values, and values drive public arguments. Which means, of course, that faith drives public arguments by nature. If one’s faith is true faith, it will frame their entire worldview. It is inseparably coupled with all parts of life, including politics. People of (true) faith do not check their beliefs at the door of the church when they leave there on Sunday morning.”

I can’t believe she was not astute enough to have seen this gaping hole in her arguement when she started this. Where does she think public/personal opinion come from, if not from a personal faith and a moral basis in SOMEthing?

This is a great diary!