This question "Why do Christians want
to control women's bodies" shows how willing people are to deceive
themselves when they don't want to accept the truth and instead
would prefer to believe a lie. (cf 2 Thess 2.12). Before I get to
this question concerning a woman's body, let me ask three questions that will help put things in
context:
1. Is murder dependent on a person's location? For example, if you
murder someone outside their house, is it still murder if you
unjustifiably with "malice aforethought" (Num 35.20-21) kill them inside their house?
2. Is murder dependent on the
dependence or independence of a person health wise? For example, if
it is murder when you intentionally, without justification kill
someone who is not dependent on medical machines like oxygen
suppliers or dialysis machines; is it still murder if you kill
someone dependent on oxygen generators or dialysis machines or the like?
3. Is murder dependent on a
person's dependence on another person for their well being? For example, if
you murder someone who is fully independent and needs no assistance
to live, is it still murder if you unjustifiably "with malice
aforethought" kill someone
dependent on a nurse or other person to provide needed support for
life?
Recall your answers to these. Write
them down. We'll come back to this.
Before we get to the featured
image above, let me clearly delineate what this question is about.
Why is this question being asked? This question is all about the
Christian strong rejection of and refusal to support abortion.
People who refuse to accept the morality that God has given us -
that sex belongs only within the confines of marriage use this false
accusation because they don't want to deal with that truth.
And before I leave the topic let me
define marriage - since the
supreme court has confused many people about what it is.
Marriage is the God initiated and blessed (Gen 1.28) union
between a man and a woman that is recognized by society. (And due to
the refusal to accept what a woman is, it is not being pedantic to
define it: a woman is an adult human female; and a (human) female is
a human who has two X chromosomes, and is designed to produced eggs, bear children,
and have female genitalia. (So all the men pretending to be women and
stealing athletic prizes from them are not woman.)
It's unfortunate one must take time
to define basic biological terms like "woman" and "female" these
days. Now as I was saying, those who do not want to accept God's
morality, which allows sexual intercourse only within the bounds of
marriage as defined by God, want to carry on the "free sex"
philosophy of the 60s and have sex whenever and with whomever they
want without the benefit and blessings of marriage. They disregard
that the divine purpose of sexual intercourse is reproduction. So
after the purpose of sex is fulfilled - a child is conceived - but
the act has been performed outside of marriage with a partner to whom they have no
commitment, now the woman is faced with a dilemma. What to do with
this child whom she never intended to conceive? And many men (most?)
are content to go their way and leave the woman alone with their
child that the new mother is now carrying.
What should the woman do when faced
with this situation? She's facing being a single mother, raising a child alone,
a prescription for poverty for most. Not to mention if the child is
a boy, he will grow up with no father to guide them into what it
means to be a man. And if the child a girl, she will grow up with no father who
will grow up without the affirmation of the father they so
desperately need to provide the self worth required to say no to the
many males who will try to take advantage of her. Many secular
people would encourage the mother of the unborn child to get an abortion so she is
not "burdened" with an unwanted child. Christians would tell her -
no! Don't kill your baby. If you don't want the baby, deliver the
baby then give it up for adoption. But don't kill the baby. This,
then is called "controlling the woman's body."
But some object to Christians
characterizing abortion as "murder." So we return to the three
questions asked at the beginning. What were your answers? If you
answered yes to all three you are affirming:
1. Murder is not dependent on location. Thus if a human is in the
womb, that has no bearing on whether unjustly killing the child is murder or not.
2. Murder is not dependent on the person being independent of
another person for their health. Thus if a human is dependent on the
mother's umbilical cord for life and sustenance, that has no bearing
on whether or not killing the person in the womb is murder or not.
3. Murder is not dependent on whether a person requires assistance
to live or not. So if a person is required to live in a certain
place for assistance - inside a hospital, nursing home, or inside a womb, if you
unjustifiably kill that person it is still murder.
Clearly those who claim that
Christians use "murder" when describing abortion really have no
basis to do so, other than to justify their sinful life. They want
to have immoral sex and pretend there are no consequences. And when
sex produces what sex is intended to produce - a child - they still
want to pretend there are no consequences by getting rid of the
"problem" by killing the child.
So in short, arguments based on the
baby's viability are nonsense and unjustifiable. Just because you
need assistance to live does not give another person license to kill
you. (This goes for Euthanasia too by the way.)
Now, as to the claim that Christians want to control a woman's body.
Again, that is untrue. It's not that Christians want to control a
woman's body; we want women not to destroy another person's
body, even if that person
resides inside the mother's womb. If you answered yes to
question number 1, you've already agreed that where a person lives
does not justify murder. Whether in a home or out, inside a womb or
out, if you unjustifiably kill another person, it's murder.
Finally, to address the laughable
claim that the baby's body is a part of the woman's body, we turn to
the featured picture. It shows a baby in the womb reaching out to
grasp the surgeon's hand as the physician operated on the baby in
the womb. Below is the write up from the year 2000, which Dr. Dobson
called the picture of the year or decade. I considered it the
picture of the century. (2000 being the last year of the 20th
century.) For as you can see, even one year shy of a
quarter century later, I still have a graphic memory of this picture. An
image burned deep enough in my memory for me to find it and share it
again for this article. (I shared it in 2000 when Dr. Dobson first
wrote about it.) Following is a portion of that newsletter he posted.
You can read the entire newsletter archived
here. [1] Here are some excerpts:
April
2000,
"What you are witnessing should be designated ‘Picture of
the Year,’ or, perhaps, ‘The Picture of the Decade.’ It
won’t be. Most people will never get an opportunity to see
it.
The
photo depicts a 21-week-old pre-born baby, who was being
operated on by a surgeon named Joseph Bruner (It is his
finger in the photo). The baby had been diagnosed with spina
bifida, which leaves the spinal cord exposed after it fails
to develop properly. Unless the gap was closed to protect
his nervous system, serious brain damage would likely have
occurred before birth. There was no time to lose.
Unfortunately, the baby was too immature to survive outside
the womb, and corrective surgery had never been performed on
a baby this young. However, the parents, Julie and Alex
Armas, have a deep faith. She is an obstetrics nurse in
Atlanta, who had heard through the Internet of Dr. Bruner’s
work at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville.
He and his team pioneered these delicate operations. Despite
the fact that the procedure has not yet been endorsed in
medical journals, the decision was made to attempt it on
behalf of little Samuel.
…
This picture should be shown on every newscast and run in
every newspaper in America. Every teenager should also see
it. Why? Because it is an unmistakable reminder that growing
in the womb of each mother is a baby. It is not a ‘blob of
tissue,’ or a ‘product of conception.’ A pre-born baby is
fully human from the moment of conception. What we see in
the photograph expresses that understanding better than a
thousand words.
|
A final
question on the picture: Is anyone really going to argue the hand
reaching out of the womb to grasp the doctor's hand is part of the
woman's body?
I started to keep this article simple by just using a meme as the only
evidence of the absurdity of a baby being a part of the woman's
body. As you can see on further thought I decided such an important
and wide spread topic (important and widespread enough to be number
10 in a list of more than 100 questions to Christians) needed further explanation
than just the meme. But now that you have the explanation, I don't
want you to miss out on the meme, so here it is. With that and the
above, enough said.

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Duane Caldwell | May 26, 2029
Notes
1. Referenced from Dr Dobson's
article reposted (with permission) on familyschoice.com and
retrieved from retrieved from web.archive.org
here:
https://web.archive.org/web/20060328004054/http://www.familyschoice.com/archive/samuelarmas1.htm
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Featured Image: from Dr. James Dobson's Newletter, April 2000;
Michael Clancy Photography of Samuel Alexander Aramas
used with permission of SABA Press, New York, NY