Shouldn't Christian fundies be pro-abortion? (contains possible sketchy logic)

Great Debates
1

I had a fundamentalist Christian roommate in college who told me once that if there wasn’t a way for a person to obtain knowledge of the Bible and Jesus, they’d get an automatic pass to heaven. She used the example of Africans who hadn’t yet been visited by missionaries and people who were born so profoundly mentally disabled that they’d never be able to understand the Bible. She also said that infants who die at birth automatically go to heaven.

I also know that most fundamentalists believe life begins at conception. Now, follow me on this… if you believe a fetus is a person, then it’s a person who cannot learn about the Bible. Under fundamentalist teachings (some, anyway–I’m thinking of Jack Chick here), getting to heaven is the only thing that’s important; good works count for nothing if you don’t accept Jesus as a savior. Earth is just a way-station. So, shouldn’t fundies be pro-abortion? It gives those fetuses/people a free pass to heaven, and considering that women who get abortions wouldn’t be the best role models for their kids (to the fundies’ thinking anyway), it might be those fetuses’ only shot. In fact, why don’t fundies abort their own pregnancies? Their kid might grow up to reject Jesus; wouldn’t it be more “safe” to send them to heaven now, and preclude that from happening?

Is my thinking on this (or my former roommates’) just totally screwed? I thought she was insane when I lived with her because she thought God implanted aged dinosaur bones in the Earth as a “test,” and that the Earth was literally six thousand years old, but I’ve come to find out that there are people who believe that too, so even if she was still insane it was a shared delusion. Do other fundamentalists believe that people who have no way to learn about Jesus go to heaven? And if so, is my logic sound?

(For reference, I’m an agnostic who doesn’t believe a fetus becomes a person until it is viable outside the womb.)

2

You’re attempting to apply logic to illogical belief. Don’t waste your time.

3

Now me, I’m wondering about this:

" I thought she was insane when I lived with her because she thought God implanted aged dinosaur bones in the Earth as a “test,”’

Did Earth pass the test?

Your argument seems logical to me, if a little insane…if heaven is the be all and end all–(to extend your argument)–why no commit suicide and get there sooner? Oops, that’s a sin. But then why do we gireve when someone dies–shouldnt fundies be ever so happy that one of their number is in that special place now?
:slight_smile:

4

I don’t know which is more pathetic- the rant, or your apparent belief that is was clever.

5

I was ranting?

And trust me, I’ve never once thought I was clever about anything.

6

What’s the problem? I know it’s impertinent, but it’s not a rant, and it’s a major logical hole in Fundie-style Christianity, as far as I can tell. Abortions oughta be a good thing to them.

7

Actually, I believe that was Andrea Yates’s logic-that her children were going to end up “bad”, so she had to kill them while they still had a chance to get to Heaven.

8

The problem is, in their opinion inducing an abortion goes directly against the commandment which reads “Thou shalt not kill.” Someone who dies of more or less natural causes without hearing the Word of God is different from someone who is killed by another human being. It’s not so much a matter of the state of the victim’s soul as it is of the soul of the person who killed him or her. If the person dies of natural causes, no human killed him or her, so no sin is involved. It the person is killed, then the person who killed him or her has sinned and is liable for the consequences.

Here’s where things get hairy. As I understand the more conservative forms of Christianity, and even mainstream Christianity, if you have become a Christian and accepted Christ as your Saviour, you’ll get into heaven no matter what you do on this earth. On the other hand, to many such people, including me, although I’m firmly pro-choice, having an abortion is a sin. That’s not enough to prevent you from getting into heaven if you’re a Christian (if you’re not, all bets are off), and I’m not sure how those consequences come into play in my own set of beliefs let alone anyone else’s. Based on what I’ve read in discussions of religion, I’ve no doubt there are some who’d say “No true Christian would ever have an abortion.” I have read stranger things and I’m not sure that’s all that strange. To me, life is more complicated than that.

At this point, I can feel myself degenerating into vague, pointless meanderings, so I’ll break off now. I hope some of this made sense!

CJ

9

That would explain why a Christian wouldn’t get an abortion themselves (I admit I was grasping at straws with that one), but what about non-Christians? If the woman getting the abortion is, say, a pagan, and there’s nothing in the world that would divert her from her faith, then she’s going to hell anyway, with or without the abortion. If she did have the child, she’d raise it as a pagan too, and there’s no guarantee that the child would change its religion later on in life. So wouldn’t it be more logical to support an abortion in that case, since there’s no further sin that’s going to be heaped on the woman, since she’s already broken the cardinal rule by not being Christian?

10

Trust me, Christians have abortions.
As to the rest of this–I am sure that there are people out there who think that way(the convulated logic of encouraging the pagan to abort)–but most evangelicals would have you try to convert the woman–to save both souls, of course. Catholics would want to baptize (christen) the baby to protect it from hell etc. I don’t know of any mainstream religion that encourages death as an answer to living in a sinful state.

Tad OT:
My support for pro-choice has nothing to do with sin or religion. I figure that unless and until every person is willing to support, nurture and help every child born, abortion is a fact of life. Outlawing it will not make it “go away”.

I consider myself a Protestant, but take one look at history(and today)–“thou shalt not kill” is not followed by Christians anywhere. There are pro-capital punishment Christians, pro-choice Christians, pro-war Christians etc. IMO, the world would be a better place if Christians actually practiced their religion…

11

And yet, many of them have no problem with capital punishment. (IIRC, the Commandment doesn’t contain any exceptions.)

I saw a bumper sticker the other day: ‘Abortion stops a beating heart.’ I thought to myself, ‘So does execution.’

Sorry for the hijack, but it seems odd to me that people who say they believe in a religion of forgiveness should be in favour of killing people, and against abortion.

12

But is fundamentalist belief actually what is described in the OP? People who never heard of Christianity / Jesus just automatically go to heaven, no matter how they’ve lived? Or is it believed that they go to heaven if they’ve been good; to hell if they’ve been bad? Or are they believed to go to hell regardless of how they’ve lived, because if you don’t have the right beliefs, you don’t get to heaven, and never being exposed to the right beliefs is no excuse?

13

Because most fundamentalists I’ve known and even most Christians I’ve known don’t really buy the notion that there is nothing which would divert her from her faith, even the ones who’d be offended if you implied there’d be something which would divert them from their faith. As long as a person is alive, there is a hope that he or she will find Jesus, accept Him as his or her Saviour and become a good Christian. As long as the child lives, there’s a chance the child will do the same.

Remember, some of these folks have led what they regard as sinful, immoral lives and were raised without Jesus in their lives before they became Christians. If wretched sinners like them can do it, being born to a pagan mother’s nothing. Indeed, it might even be an advantage. There is also the hope that the child will become a Christian and convert his family. There are several people on this message board who’ve had a relative who tried to do that, as did the brother of a friend of mine.

CJ

14

I nearly started a thread about this a few weeks ago, but, uh…I chickened out. Luckily, I saved my ramblings in Word, so here it is: (There may be copious amount of illogic and misinformation about various religions here as well.):

I was thinking about this the other day, and my thoughts went something like this: apparently, Christians believe that the soul is present from conception. They also believe that after death, the soul goes to heaven to be with God. So wouldn’t an unborn baby just get to the Big Guy a little sooner? Shouldn’t that be a thing for rejoicing, as they tell us at funerals? Of course, Christianity has the Do Not Kill clause. So that might be sticky. But those who perform the abortions can either repent and be forgiven (in some Christian faiths) or believe in Jesus anyway (which is all it takes in other faiths). Either way, I’ve never understood why Christians (broad sweeping generalization alert!) are concerned with whether or not the not-innocent adults (abortion doctors) go to heaven. But my major wonder here is what’s so bad about it for the unborn child?

Wouldn’t Buddhists who believe in reincarnation simply recognize the unborn child as going 'round another time? Ditto for Hindus - can an unborn baby gather any new Karma?

Most neo-pagans have the reincarnation idea also, and many don’t even believe the soul or spirit incarnates until birth, so no biggie there. In many of thse belief systems, the unborn child actually serves as a teacher and guide for the mother, the family, or anyone else touched by her brief visit to this plane, through prior agreements between the souls. Back to the Summerlands and be reborn again, with our thanks for your blessings.

In at least old forms of Judaism, reincarnation happens, but isn’t really something to be happy about. Still, if the soul had no opportunities to reach YHVH this time, perhaps it’s best to get things moving so it can be reborn. I’m not sure what more modern views have to say on the matter. There would, of course, be the problem of uncleanliness of blood and contamination from death. But as far as I can tell, even Orthodox Jews don’t mind such things if someone else (not Jewish) takes care of it. So while I wouldn’t expect an Orthodox man to *perfom *abortions, I also wouldn’t expect to see them on the picket lines storming clinics. (And I don’t.)

Islam - I got nothing. Don’t know enough about it.

But as far as I know, no religion damns unborn babies to hell, torment or everlasting badness. Even Purgatory is passe. They did away with Limbo years ago. So what’s the religious basis of objection to abortion? People die all the time, and your deity or Great Spirit or Universe has ways of cleaning up the mess.

15

I don’t know too much about fundamentalist Christian beliefs, but this doesn’t sound right to me. It’s not a matter of having an “excuse” not to have accepted Jesus as your savior before you die. All humans are tainted by sin, and deserve to burn, whether they’ve heard of Jesus or not. So if I’m born again, I deserve to go to hell just as much as some African tribesman who has never heard of Jesus (or some embryonic person who was conceived five minutes ago). The only difference is, he hasn’t learned the truth - that he’s inherently sinful, that he’s destined to burn for eternity, that Jesus is his only hope for salvation - and I have. That’s why I should go to Africa and spread the Gospel (and be against abortion), or at least support the efforts of others to do so.

If I’m mischaracterizing the beliefs of fundamentalist Christians, please correct me. This is just the way I always understood it. I also know there are wide differences between denominations. It could be that only a very small segment of the fundamentalist population believes this way.

16

By logic, the most virtuous task a fundamentalist mother can take is to have as many babies as possible and to abort them all. Yes, abortion is a sin but to deliberately forsake your own place in heaven to guarentee your children a sure slot cannot be thought of as anything but the ultimate self-sacrifice.

As the first reply said, apply logic to religion leads to crazyness.

17

That’s what you get for not reading the Commandments in context. The Big Ten are in Exodus 20; it starts the Book of the Covenant which continues in Exodus 21-23. There are plenty of exceptions listed therein. While that Covenant applies to Israel, the Noahic Covenant of Genesis 9 applies to all peoples, and in that Covenant, the death penalty is mandated for murder.

18

And doesn’t the Hebrew word used in the commandment translate better as “murder” than “kill”? At least this is what I’ve heard, though it could obviously be a just-so-story.