An interesting twist on the point, don’t you think?
The Pro-Life people argue for the body as though the soul is somehow affected. It isn’t. Our souls are eternal. They can’t be destroyed. And ephemeral existence isn’t the point of our being anyway.
As my husband is fond of pointing out, the idea of the sanctity of human life is a myth. If it weren’t a myth, then, for example, we wouldn’t be capitalists. The free market would be rightly called out for catering to the destruction of the many for the good of the very, very few. Where is life held sacred in homelessness, hunger and the inability to access health care for those without better than average means?
If life were sacred, share and share alike would be the norm because every life would have a minimum standard of maintenance that we’d all agree on and would strive to make sure was fairly distributed.
Life teaches us to be fearful and to cling to the trappings that separate us – ultimately – from the thing that we are. A soul.
So, if I am a soul, does it matter if I am born or not? Conception of a physical warehouse doesn’t make me more than who I am and who I am is not my body.
Think about it.
Related Articles
- The Divided Self (timesunion.com)
- Life and Death (socyberty.com)
- 22nd October 2010 (atheistweb.org)
anniegirl1138 
“Love the fetus, hate the child” seems to be their prevailing attitude. Once you’re actually born, too bad — you’re on your own.
i can’t… it makes my head hurt.
can’t i just go through life enjoying the moment? is that so wrong, either?
No, it’s not wrong. But don’t forget Sondheim’s wise words (via the Baker’s Wife) “if life were only moments … then you’d never know you had one.”
I find this take on the topic of abortion is the best defense I have heard in regards to Pro-Choice in a very very long time. If I get a free minute this week, mind if I link to you on my blog on this?
Thanks. I’d appreciate a link.
So, if I am a soul, does it matter if I am born or not? That really is a disconnect with so much of the attitude of the evangelical right. If the state of one’s soul is all-important, then they should rejoice that the baby was never exposed to the evils and sins and temptations of the world.
One of my first arguments with a conservative Christian in college was about the famine in __whatever_part_of_the_world_was_starving_in_1978__. I was sending money to Oxfam for food, and she was sending money to some Christian missionary organization for Bibles. “They need food a lot more than they the Bible,” I said. “But they’ll be happy,” she answered. “They’ll know Jesus and won’t care that they’re hungry.”
Ummm. Yeah. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs means nothing to the proselytizer.
The problem is that evangelicals don’t have the capacity to separate the physical from the spiritual. They are taught that earthly reward is a direct reflection of God’s love for them and for their faithfulness to him. They are taught that poverty is a punishment for being a sinner. Worst of all, they are taught that the entire relationship between what is God and themselves is based on tangibles – reward/punishment. There is no nuance. There is no give/take. There is actually no relationship.
This idea of “happiness” is so not what it’s all about. Happiness is simply a perception of one’s state of being that really has nothing to do with anything but the person. Half empty? Half full? POV.
There is a great clip on Jezebel of a man confronting anti-abortion protesters outside a clinic. They’d taunted his wife as they went in earlier. The couple’s much wanted baby had a fatal birth defect and would have been stillborn. One of the women seems taken aback and apologizes but the other could care less. Couples like that don’t fit inside her narrow paradigm and therefore must not be allowed to intrude on her fantasy that she does good by screaming at women on – as the husband puts it ‘ “the worst day of their life”. That she could do babies actual good by volunteering at hospitals, childcare centers, emergency shelters or by raising money for food banks, etc. just doesn’t compute for her. The good derived from that isn’t seen as good since people/babies who are not well off are being punished by God.
Ack, I ramble. The idiocy of evangelicals overrides whatever sincerity there may be. Religion in general has been lost to the hierarchy and their corruption and most people will never realize that.