I am pro choice. I’m still a Christian, but questioning my faith lately. And I believe that I should not impose my beliefs on others.
But given the question “when does the mass of human cells aquire a God-given soul”, I am loathe to assert to anyone that abortion pleases God.
Now I do take refuge in being pro-choice by not making judgement on others, but if I can do that, doesn’t it make sense that I shouldn’t sit on a jury trying an alleged murderer like Scot Peterson?
IANAC or M, but it strikes me that God’s general pattern is to make lots of extra seeds and embryos and so on, ensuring survival not so much by taking extra-special care of each one but rather through the barrage of sheer numbers. And while I can’t speak for Muslims or Christians, to me the core of what religion speaks to is what it means to be, what it means to be mortal as an individual, and in what sense(s) the identity transcends the death of the mortal individual.
When the human fetus is aborted, it’s not like everything that that fetus was or ever could have been is snuffed out for all time. There is identity other than the identity of the mortal (and always finite anyway) lifespan, whether one’s religion conceives of it as “life in heaven” or “reincarnation” or “individual as a specific expression of the underlying divine” or whatever.
You first must show conclusive proof of the existance of a god of any kind whatsoever. Then show that abortion pleases/displeases him/her/it.
You must first learn to actually read the dame OP…
“Question for Pro- Choice Christians and Muslims”
Obviously if you’re an atheist/agnostic…then the OP really isn’t directed towards you is it?
:smack: :smack: :smack:
This is a slightly strange phrasing which seems to be falling into the old pro-choice = pro-abortion trap. Would anyone at all try to argue that abortion ‘pleases’ God.
If you believe that abortion is a moral choice (I don’t), why wouldn’t God be pleased with someone exercising that option?
“Pro-choice” doesn’t generally describe a position which approves of a choice to have an abortion, any more than it describes a position which approves of a choice notto have an abortion. It approves of a position whereby a pregnant woman has a choice as to whether to have an abortion or not; i.e. she is not constrained by others who decide either that she may not have an abortion, or that she must have an abortion.
A pro-choice position does not necessarily require that we consider the choice to abort or not to be morally neutral, or that we affirm the morality of a choice to abort. I may believe very strongly that in most or all circumstances a woman ought not to have an abortion, but if I also believe that neither I nor anyone else is entitled to require the woman to act in accordance with our moral views on this question, I hold a pro-choice position.
To say what is obvious (to those of us over here in any case), it is quite impossible to be a Muslim and believe in a ‘Woman’s Right to Choose.’ While certainly there is something like a lawful therapeutic abortion, abortion in general is a sin and so is prohibited.
This is not to argue about if this is a good idea or not, I wish to simply point out that for (observant) Muslims, the issue is decided.
Is this true also for civil law? Even where you live, I guess their must be atheists.
I’m thinking the Catholic Church has deemed the 40th day as the day of “ensoulment”- does anyone know if that is correct? No clue on the Islam question.
I don’t think you are. Aquinas (I think) postulated ensoulment as taking place some time after conception, and linked it with the first occasion on which a pregnant mother would feel the child move within her. If I recall correctly, he reckoned that this happened earlier for boys than for girls. But Aquinas, of course, had a very limited understanding of sexual reproduction, and no Catholic thinker would now advance such a proposition. I don’t think the church as an institution ever formally adopted the idea.