i have found myself wandering onto a couple big evangelical pastory type blogs (people that are into the emergent church and relevant magazine...etc) and i have found there is one other thing they are into, big time... politics. and obama, man, do they like obama.
it got me thinking... since when did abortion become and irrelevant issue for Christians? i used to believe this was number one on the list of moral injustices occurring in our country... we kill our babies. i mean, think about that, we live in a country where we kill our own babies.
it seems like this subject has been thrown to the wayside. we are big into social justice and we are against the war and we like the planet and so we think obama is the man because he sticks up for this stuff... but somehow down the line we forgot about abortion? is it just that is gets lost in the shuffle of other things we care about or do we convince ourselves its not a relevant issue anymore? and so we tell ourselves it's no big deal to back a man that is defending this horrible thing? someone explain this to me...
tonight i got the nail in my obama coffin nailed. a woman named jill stanek who for years has been testifying for the 'born alive infants protection act'. you have probably heard about this bill in one way or another when or if you have discussed obama's pro-choice stance... this is the bill he voted against.
this is a video from 2000, when they were first confronting this issue...
In politics, and particularly in the Senate, there is a tactic that looks like this: Let's say a bill was passed, that sets limits on how much the government can spend on services and financial support to the widows of fallen soldiers. Let's also say, that you want to overturn that bill- you think there should be no limit on this kind of spending.
ReplyDeleteYou cannot write up a bill that simply contradicts the one that was passed and try to push it through (it's this kind of thing is the reason Congress and the Senate doesn't get enough done, in my opinion.) Instead you write up a bill that targets a specific type of support for the widows of fallen soldiers. Something like "Mental counseling or medical services to the families of fallen soldiers should not have a spending limit."
This sounds great- it shows compassion and sounds reasonable. And it's very hard for anyone to stand up to this type of bill "What... you don't think we should support the families of our troops? You don't think our military families deserve it? You want to see the families completely go without these types of services??"
But what the opposing side is saying is "Look... you're just trying to unravel what we already voted on with regards to spending caps on these types of services. We need better language in the bill about what exactly 'mental and medical services' entails, and for how long we'll provide them. If we're going to undo a specific part of the last bill we passed, we need to be very clear about what we're undoing. Let's rewrite it to say when/where this type of exception about spending limits can be made."
But instead, the supporters of the bill (who do not think the original bill about spending limits should have been passed in the first place) push it through. What do you do? You vote against it and take the beating when everyone says you're a heartless asshole and you're not supporting the troops. You allow the opposition to get an "ace in the pocket"- if you ever run for higher office or write an unpopular bill, you will hear "Well clearly we can't support them- after all, they voted against supporting our troops."
So, in closing, what I'm saying is that a topic as grotesque and nauseating as partial/live birth abortion is a prime candidate for that type of thing. Want to overturn RvW in general? Write up a bill that says something like this "A fetus must be protected if it is planted to the uterus and is viable. If labor is induced and the baby is born, the baby must be kept alive." Clearly the first sentence is different from the second. A pro-choice advocate in the senate would say "We need to loose the first sentence, because we already voted on that. Obviously, I support the second sentence."
Obama's on-the-spot response
Anyway, what do you think about this? I am anti-choice (I do not think anyone has the right to sever sustainable life once the process has began) and I take this into strong consideration when I vote. However, I also recognize that the type of thing I described above goes on ALL THE TIME in politics. It's a shady, lame way to overturn or undermine laws and bills you disagree with.
Thoughts?
By the way, thanks for the "bit of controversy"! It did cause me to think about Obama's stance on the issue. I recognize that I'm fundamentally opposed to Obama on the issue of abortion in general, and that's a good thing to recognize. For me, the issue is not a trump card though. I feel equally as passionate about other agents of death- war, poverty, disease, etc. In my mind, things like sickle-cell research, cancer research, avoiding wars, recovering from and avoiding natural disasters, etc are all very important. A life is a life.
ReplyDeleteWell I say.... babies shmabies... scabies!
ReplyDeletejeremy! thanks for your comments and insight. sorry is taken me so long to get a response in...
ReplyDeleteso, here is what i think. first of all, i appreciate you posting the vid of obama on the subject. i do see what you mean about bills getting passed and i see the problem in the bill both hitting babies born alive and roe v wade... and i agree on the shadiness of politics in the respect and a number of others.
the issue that still remains is this, and if you are anti-choice and can say you disagree with obama on his stance on abortion, then you can see what i mean here... if all life is life (which, of course, i agree with implicitly) then being pro-life crosses a number of social issues, like the ones you mentioned...war, poverty, disease.
i think at that point we are forced to tackle a really horrible issue and that just comes down to choosing the greater of two evils.
its like looking at two burning buildings, one with 10,000 people and one with 10, who do you fight to save? this is not saying somehow the lives of the ten are of any less importance than the lives of 10,000... but if are going to count aborted babies as lives then we have to look at abortion as our modern day holocaust, times 100.
last night we had a big discussion about this with the pardee's and lindy made the point that abortion is quiet, it's done in secret, in a doctors office, in the womb of the mother... we cannot see the way the babies writhes in pain, we can experience the horror of what abortion actually is, like we would experience people being shot on the street... so we become relativists, and we make this a non-issue in terms of politics.
now wars being waged that we can watch on the news or read about in books, and so we are more easily swayed to feel passionate about and want to fight for. i think, as a culture, we tend to view abortion lightly because 1) like i said, its not in our faces, its quiet and its hidden and 2)it's legal and, in the vast majority, is totally socially acceptable. and so we start to consider it an issue of less importance than the ones you mentioned, and we vote for change on issues of war (which im gonna use as an example because it's the most relevant to this campaign) and we just shrug and hang on heads on the issue of abortion.
now this is a major dilemma i face because there is plenty i disagree with in regards to mccain. especially the war... but i have to consider the war we wage right here and because of the evil that it is and because of the numbers (over 40 million since roe v wade was passed), i am morally obligated to oppose the candidate that is pro-choice and to suport the one that isn't.
on top of that the issue to of new supreme court nominations is hugely important. mccain will nominate conservative judges and obama will not. while i don't necessary think that roe v wade will be overturned on a national level, i think it has the chance to, at least, be passed down on a state level and if that happens, you can guarantee a large number of states will make it illegal. this possibly alone gets mccain my vote. if we went' headed for a few new supreme court justices, i don't think i would be voting this election... just on principle.
to throw one more issue in the mix, i gotta just say that aside from wanting roe v wade to be overturned because it is wrong, i think abortion is a catalyst for a number of other crimes against humanity, such as euthanasia and infanticide...as we saw starting to happen with partial birth abortion and this 'born alive' act. and in those cases i will say thank God bush was in office to pass the ban on such things. if he was good for anything, it was that. the problem with abortion and being pro-choice, for that matter, is the deadening of our basic respect for life on every level...and while it effects only life in utero at this point in our nations history, i think our relativist attitude towards issues such as these will worsen and we will become indifferent to when people should have the right to live on any level. in holland this ha already happened... euthanasia is legal and the goverment has rights over your child until 4 months of age. and again, i think we see it already starting to happen here with issue of partial birth abortion, even though it is an illegal practice. i don't think we have seen the end of topics like these as long is socially acceptable and legal.
in the same light, as much as obama appears to be right on other issues of justice, he is gravely wrong on the biggest violation of human rights happening in our country. i think this makes him untrustworthy in other issues requiring moral judgment, as i think his moral judgment is impaired.
to wrap it up, our country has a pretty sketchy history when it comes to violating human rights. thank God people still fought for was just then. i think we need to keep reminding ourselves that this is a political issue and an enormous one, at that. and i fear people are starting to forget about it...namely christians, which is what i was getting at with this blog in the first place (not that i mind focusing in the topic of politics, i think this is awesome). and it is giving me new ideas for my next controversial blog:)
i still wanna keep hearing your thoughts...
by the way...if you are the opinion that roe vs. wade can't be over turned during this next presidential office...check out this link for a radio ad endorsed by Obama about the issue. we know someone that heard it 12 times in one day. It seems Obama is pretty convinced it could happen. http://www.mydd.com/story/2008/9/3/194554/9924
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