#ShoutYourAbortion

Pro LifeThe Planned Parenthood videos (see a “Quick and Easy Guide” to them at the Federalist) have put the pro-abortion movement on the defensive unlike at any time in the sordid history of legal abortion in America. Of course many abortion defenders have just attacked the messenger, as if Planned Parenthood was not in fact selling baby body parts for a profit. All justified in the name of Science, don’t you know. But one of the most telling and sad responses is by a Lindy West who started something called #ShoutYourAbortion. What stood out to me in an article she penned for The Guardian announcing it was this intro:

Last week I realised that, even among my pro-choice friends, I never, ever talk about my abortion. We need to chip away at stigma, at lies, at the climate of shame.

So we are to believe that any shame a woman feels for killing her child is simply a stigma imposed from a society that doesn’t understand or accept her decision? And what lies? That having an abortion is killing a human being? That is simply an indisputable fact of science. At conception what comes to exist inside the mother is a unique individual completely distinct from the mother and the father with it’s own distinct genetic code. So it is indeed a human being. But according to the Supreme Court these last forty plus years, not a person and thus it’s life can be snuffed out for any and every reason up to birth. That is the law of the land.

Unfortunately for Ms. West, and fortunately for the human race, shame isn’t a matter of climate; you can’t just turn the thermostat down on shame. Nope, the human condition is filled with shame, and thank God for it. The first thing Adam and Eve did after their fall was to hide; they were afraid because they were naked. They had done something wrong by eating what God had told them not to eat, they had disobeyed and were now afraid. Judgment is like that. It doesn’t feel good to know we’ve done wrong and admit it. We prefer to hide. The hiding isn’t necessarily good, but feeling the shame for having done wrong certainly is. We admit there is such a thing as wrong, that God’s law exists, that we live in a moral universe where right and wrong are objectively real, as I argued recently in a post on natural law.

What could be more shameful, more worthy of shame, than a woman purposefully ending a life that grows within her. Here is the bottom line: If there is no God, there are then no objective moral values, no right and wrong that exist outside of our own personal preferences, and thus absolutely nothing inherently wrong with killing unborn babies. If there is a God, then the shame a woman feels for killing her unborn child is sadly deserved, and we don’t do her or anyone else a favor by pretending otherwise.

 

Ashley Madison: Men Acting Like (Sinful) Men

AshleyMadisonAs shocking as it may seem, a website dedicated to helping people find extra-marital dalliances is used almost only by men! Who could have seen that coming. The tag line for the Ashley Madison website, much in the news this past week or so, is, “Life is Short. Have an Affair.” Dubious advice to be sure, but it attracts mostly men: Duh!

Out of 5.5 million female accounts, roughly zero percent had ever shown any kind of activity at all, after the day they were created. The men’s accounts tell a story of lively engagement with the site, with over 20 million men hopefully looking at their inboxes, and over 10 million of them initiating chats. The women’s accounts show so little activity that they might as well not be there. … we’re left with data that suggests Ashley Madison is a site where tens of millions of men write mail, chat, and spend money for women who aren’t there.

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What the Heck is Natural Law Anyway?

KennedyAt the website of the Theopolis Institute a piece was recently posted by Mark Horne with the curious title, “If There is ‘Natural Law’ How Can People Believe in Same-Sex Marriage?” I say curious because I’m not sure why five lawyers in black robes declaring gender complimentarity irrelevant to marriage somehow makes natural law an invalid concept. Nor does a certain percentage of people believing such things can be marriage invalidate natural law. Like any law, natural laws can be broken, but the law is no less a law just because someone decides to flout or ignore it. But first what exactly is “natural law”? (more…)

Yes, Atheists Can Be Fine Upstanding Citizens, and Here’s Why

NietzscheI was looking for a quotation allegedly by G.K. Chesterton (I haven’t been able to find where it came from) to the effect that when people don’t believe in God it isn’t that they believe nothing, but that they will believe anything. We can see throughout history where this has no doubt been true at times, but I came across an atheist who seems to think what Chesterton was implying was that all atheists believe willy nilly in anything at all. This atheist, Austin Cline, or if he’s not at atheist, he is About Religion‘s “Agnosticism & Atheist Expert,” seems to think Chesterton’s quotation prompts this question:

Does Atheism Eliminate Any Standards for Belief, Truth, or Behavior?

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