Prochoice Excuses

        I am tired of all the excuses the prochoice religious fanatics believe through their own philosophy. This blog will address all there excuses and the biblical counter to them. There’s going to be a lot of heavy material in this blog—please bear with me until the very end. The first thing that needed to be addressed is the origins of the Abortion debate. I highly recommend a book from 1987 called Abortion: toward an Evangelical Consensus by Paul B. Fowler. This book dug deep into the heart of the debate about abortion, and gave the history of Roe vs. Wade. The true origins of the prochoice movement came from ancient Greece. The philosophies of the prochoice movement based their reasoning on the philosophy of Aristotle.

        Aristotle wrote in Politics: “when couples have children in excess, let abortion be procured before sense and life have begun; what may or may not be lawfully done in these cases depends on the question of life and sensation.” If you didn’t believe that life begins at conception, which was the biblical definition, you would see it lawful to abort a child as Aristotle did. If you wanted to control the population and not have too many children, than you would believe abortion and birth control were good ideas. The ancient Greeks used pessary to produce an abortion, and there was a Hippocratic Oath by the Physicians to not do it. Biblically, God told mankind to be fruitful and multiply—don’t think God had population control or birth control in mind when he commanded it. That was man’s idea, and a horrible one.

        Aristotle also wrote in Politics: “As to the exposure and rearing of children, let there be a law that no deformed child shall live”. This was the idea behind the Spartans killing their babies because they were deformed. It was also an excuse for prochoicers out there for having abortions. Let’s look at what God sees. Jesus Christ opened the eyes of a blind man that was born blind because “the works of God should be revealed in him” (John 9:3). Today, a man named Nick Vujicic was born without arms and legs, and is an inspirational speaker and author—amazingly. God has a purpose for each one of us, and He wanted the deformed to live to fulfill that purpose for His glory. Those children should not be aborted.

        What about incest? Should abortion be done because of incest? No, because the problem is not the child being born from sexual intercourse between family members or close relatives. It’s the behavior of the incest itself that’s the problem. God forbid incest in Leviticus 18:6-18, and Paul ordered the Corinthians to take away a man that had an incestuous relationship with his father’s wife in 1 Corinthians 5:1-8. Punish the ones that did the deed, and not the child that knew nothing about the deeds of their parents. “Fathers shall not be put to death for their children, nor shall children be put to death for their fathers; a person shall be put to death for his own sin.” (Deuteronomy 24:16). In American English today, don’t punish the children for the sins of the parents and don’t punish the parents for the sins of the children. Don’t kill a child in the womb because of an incestuous relationship of the parents.

        What about rape? Surely the child should be aborted for rape? Again, should the child die for the sin of the rapist father? Shouldn’t the rapist be punished for sexually assaulting the woman through sexual intercourse? In Genesis 34, Dinah (Jacob’s daughter) was raped by a prince of Shechem, and her brothers punished the Canaanites by killing the rapist, killing the men of the city, and took the spoils. In 2 Samuel 13, Amnon raped his sister Tamar, and Absalom (Amnon’s brother) killed him and fled. No one had the idea in mind to kill the child in the womb for rape. Rapists need to be punished for their crimes—not the children in the womb.

        What about the mother’s health? Should the mother risk her health for the birth of her child? Let’s look at some biblical examples for this excuse. In Genesis 35:16-20, Rachel gave birth to a son and died while in labor pains. Jacob named the child Benjamin, which means “Son of my right hand” in Hebrew. If Rachel chose to abort the child, there would be no race of people living in the world today because of one selfish act. Rachel was selfless. About 500 years later, Hannah was selfless as well. Hannah gave born to Samuel, but she lent him to God because she asked for the child. Samuel became a Priest/Prophet that anointed the first two kings of Ancient Israel: Saul and David. Hannah wept in wanting to bore a child because she was barren—she didn’t weep because she aborted one.

        Finally, there’s the argument that the fetus is not really a person, but a potential person that will gradually become a person. That’s an evolutionary approach to the fetus, and it’s only logical to those people who don’t believe that life begins at conception. The Hebrew word for conceive in the bible is Harah: it means to think up, to imagine, to conceive, to become pregnant. It happens instantly the sperm and the egg fertilize. God thought of you from conception. God imagined you to be a part of His family with a special purpose just for you. God ordained Jeremiah to be a prophet from conception in his mother’s womb. Don’t tell me there’s potential life in the womb—God already thought of the idea of you at conception, and that idea came into a living being.

        I know that this is a lot to take in, and I hope everyone who reads this blog would read it until the very end. The truth about abortion is clear: it’s an evil that needs to be done away with. I personally believe that a constitutional amendment to the U.S. Constitution would end the legal problems of it, but only the people of this great nation can make that happen. I am only one man with a cause. I hope abolishing abortion would happen in this generation—if not, it would surely be abolished at the return of Jesus Christ.

The Puritans

        O reader, this will be a special blog. I am taking my time to read all the sources related to this blog with care for I feel that the very identity of America is with the Puritan: more specifically the Puritans that settled at Plymouth plantation. Although there were many settlements in New England that called themselves Pilgrims and Puritans, all of them branched out from the mustard seed planted at Plymouth, Massachusetts bay colony. What made that congregation of individuals so unique? I’ll explain by answering these questions. Who are we as a people? What is America’s identity? This blog is an attempt to answer those questions by identifying the Puritans of Plymouth; for the very identity of America branched from them.

        There was one English plantation in America that everyone knows: the Jamestown colony. It was founded by a Puritan. That’s right: John Smith. William Bradford identified Smith as a Puritan in his book A History of Plymouth Plantation. It was no surprise that the Pilgrims that eventually landed at Cape Cod wanted to go to Virginia, and they even thought that they were going to Virginia during their trials to receive a ship to cross the ocean. Some believed that the Puritans left England because of religious persecution, but it wasn’t about that parse. They were persecuted for their beliefs, but that wasn’t the main reason for coming to the New World. Bradford gave two main reasons: to spread the gospel of Jesus Christ, and to protect their children from the corruption around them.

        These courageous people sold all they had in England, and in Holland, to be part of a voyage to America. They gave all that they had to lay it at their apostles’ feet. They were a covenant keeping people that held on to their bibles for everything that they did. They had guns for protection, and were geniuses in educating their young. The most important thing to notice about them was their devotion to God, and the acknowledgment of His providence: God’s guidance in human affairs. Miracles happened for them: baskets of corn were abandoned by Indians upon the arrival of the group. There was an Indian named Squanto that was fluent in English, and taught the Pilgrims how to use the corn to plant them in the soil. There was a sailor on the voyage that mocked the sick, poor people, and wanted to toss them over the side. The man ended up getting the disease, dying from it, and became the first to be tossed over the side of the ship while on the ocean

        These were only some instances of God’s intervention in the lives of the founding families of America. They were Sabbath-keeping Christians that believed in baptism, laying on of hands, and the resurrection. They elected their leaders by popular vote. Read the English Primer, the poems of Anne Bradstreet, Edward Winslow, and William Bradford to paint a better picture of the Puritans. They considered the English church to be a high place of worship, and were only persecuted because they wanted to reform it to be more biblical and less ritualistic with religious ceremony. When that didn’t work, they had to move away from England to avoid being corrupted themselves. That’s why they were called Puritans. I believe that the very identity of America came from the Puritans of Plymouth Plantation.

My Covenant

        O Reader, I feel the need to explain some key aspects of biblical truth that does effect Americans today. If you would truly listen to what’s being said, perhaps you would make the best decision according to your common sense. Americans today have no idea or concept of covenant keeping in their daily lives. Most of us don’t even understand what a covenant is unless you are someone that’s baptized and under the New Covenant in Jesus Christ. We don’t live in the times of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph—who were covenant keeping men of their day. For the most part, the concept of covenant keeping is very foreign to Americans today. 

However, it wasn’t foreign to the Pilgrims that sailed over here, and established a covenant with God under the Mayflower Compact. It wasn’t foreign to the founding fathers whom established a covenant with God through the Declaration of Independence, and added to it through the constitution. Abraham Lincoln knew about the covenant in His first augural address by describing the covenant process all the way to the Constitution. Americans today don’t have a clue what a covenant is anymore, and that’s a big problem. God is a covenant-keeping God, and is loyal to His everlasting covenants—even if we aren’t loyal. America was a covenant-keeping people in her founding. I’ll explain more of that in a blog about the Pilgrims, but it’s the truth.

We established a covenant with God at the founding of this nation that said: We are your people, and you are our God. We gave “our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor” to God in order to keep His covenant, and have “firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence”. (http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/declaration_transcript.html) Declaration of Independence, 1776. Anyone that doesn’t understand what a covenant is would read these words, and not see the gravity of them. They gave their entire livelihoods to God under obedience to His covenant: obedience to God. They were conditions of a covenant with God in order for Him to be King over us, and receive His providence, His protection, and His blessings on the nation. The providential history of covenants dates back to Adam, but the most common occurrence about covenant-keeping started with Abraham.

Abraham was promised by God a child from his own loins. God promised him a multitude of descendents, and Abraham was 90 years old at the time. Paul said in Romans 4:13-25 that Abraham was as good as dead and Sarah’s womb was dead, yet Abram believed God and it was accounted to him for righteousness. Because of this, God made a covenant with Abram that God would be the God of Abraham and his descendents, and Abraham and his descendents would be God’s people. The sign of that covenant was circumcision. The child of the covenant was Isaac, and he was born to a 90 year old Sarah. Abraham was 100 years old when Isaac was born. God does fulfill His promises, and God is a covenant-keeping God. Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph were all circumcised as a sign of God’s covenant with Abraham.

The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution are the signs of an American covenant with God. Should we not obey the Lawgiver named Jesus Christ? Is He not the Husband? And, is the church, which America secures, not the bride? I am hinting of my own covenant with God. I haven’t considered it a covenant until recently, but it is. The history of my covenant with God was summarized in the blog: My Oath. God is a covenant-keeping God, and I know this from experience. I have yet to see the results of His promise to me that I would have a beautiful wife, but I have to remain faithful to that covenant that I made with Him. It’s not easy with such beautiful women around me, and the covenant-loyal woman is far away from me. God is not finished with both of us, and God has a sign of His covenant with me. It’s my T-shirt small business and the very first T-shirt design. It’s the literature that I write, and the books that I review. It’s the music that I create. I choose to keep obeying the covenant with Him.

Recently, an opinion article was written by LOUIS MICHAEL SEIDMAN in the New York Times. He encouraged the disobedience of the constitution, and demonized it from every political angle: The fiscal cliff in congress, the rise of Presidential power, and the two schools of the judicial branch of government. It’s clear to me that this constitutional law professor has a Marxist, leftist view of American history, and doesn’t see the constitution from a covenant-keeping perspective that I do. He doesn’t look at the constitution from the Pilgrims or the Founders perspective, or from a providential world-view of American history. No, he simply wants to give up on the constitution and elaborated about why it should be given up on by demonizing it with his propaganda against the constitution. It’s clear to me that he is in defiance of God’s covenant, and that bothers me much. Here’s the article from the New York Times: (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/31/opinion/lets-give-up-on-the-constitution.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0).

 From my own experiences, I do not agree with him that disobeying God’s covenant with us is a good idea. I’m sure the founding Fathers and the Pilgrims that came here from the Mayflower would obey God rather than Man. I would much rather obey God rather than this man, and continue to keep my covenant with Him.

Roe Vs Wade and Excuses.

        I had prayed that God would be involved in this, and I still feel the call to do this. I must do this right. You see…O Fairest in the Land… O America… I am not afraid of death, but I am afraid of a worthless life. Life is not—I repeat—not worthless. God saved my life at least 4 times in 2012 alone, and that includes the bet on the election. My Heavenly Father sees that I am not worthless, and I am not to be sacrificed for the sake of power. I am a child of the living God, and I was conceived after my baptism into the family of God when I received the Holy Spirit. This also means that when a physical child is conceived in the womb of the mother, that child is a new creation with God’s breath of life in that child. That giving of God’s breath happens at conception. I believe this is a biblical truth. I also believe it is the spiritual intent of God’s natural right of Life written in the Declaration of Independence.

        Here’s what it says in the Declaration: 

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” 

(http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/declaration_transcript.html) Declaration of Independence, 1776.

        What did the founders believe was the intent for life as it is written as an unalienable right endowed by our Creator? Let’s look at the words of James Wilson, a signer of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, who said in “Of Natural Rights of Individuals”:

“I shall certainly be excused from adducing any formal arguments to evince, that life, and whatever is necessary for the safety of life, are the natural rights of man. Some things are so difficult; others are so plain, that they cannot be proved. It will be more to our purpose to show the anxiety, with which some legal systems spare and preserve human life; the levity and the cruelty which others discover in destroying or sporting with it; and the inconsistency, with which, in others, it is, at some times, wantonly sacrificed, and, at other times, religiously guarded.

In Sparta, nothing was deemed so precious as the life of a citizen. And yet in Sparta, if an infant, newly born, appeared, to those who were appointed to examine him, ill formed or unhealthy, he was, without any further ceremony, thrown into a gulph near mount Taygetus.w Fortunate it was for Mr. Pope—fortunate it was for England, which boasts Mr. Pope—that he was not born in the neighbourhood of mount Taygetus.

At Athens,x the parent was empowered, when a child was born, to pronounce on its life or its death. At his feet it was laid: if he took it in his arms, this was received as the gracious signal for its preservation: if he deigned not a look of compassion on the fruit of his loins, it was removed and exposed. Over almost all the rest of Greece,y this barbarity was permitted or authorized.

In China, the practice of exposing new born children is said to have prevailed immemorially, and to prevail still. As the institutions of that empire are never changed, its situation is never improved.

Tacitus records it to the honour of the Germans, that, among them, to kill infants newly born was deemed a most flagitious crime. Over them, adds he, good manners have more power, than good laws have over other nations. This shows, that, in his time, the restraints of law began to be imposed on this unnatural practice; but that its inveteracy had rendered them still inefficacious.

Under the Roman commonwealth, no citizen of Rome was liable to suffer a capital punishment by the sentence of the law. But at Rome, the son held his life by the tenure of his father’s pleasure. In the forum, the senate, or the camp, the adult son of a Roman citizen enjoyed the publick and private rights of a person: in his father’s house, he was a mere thing;z confounded, by the laws, with the cattle, whom the capricious master might alienate or destroy, without being responsible to any tribunal on earth.

The gentle Hindoo is laudably averse to the shedding of blood; but he carries his worn out friend or benefactor to perish on the banks of the Ganges.

With consistency, beautiful and undeviating, human life, from its commencement to its close, is protected by the common law. In the contemplation of law, life begins when the infant is first able to stir in the womb.a By the law, life is protected not only from immediate destruction, but from every degree of actual violence, and, in some cases, from every degree of danger.

The grades of solicitude, discovered, by the law, on the subject of life, are marked, in the clearest manner, by the long and regular series of the different degrees of aggression, which it enumerates and describes—threatening, assault, battery, wounding, mayhem, homicide. How those different degrees may be justified, excused, alleviated, aggravated, redressed, or punished, will appear both in the criminal and in the civil code of our municipal law.”

(http://oll.libertyfund.org/?option=com_staticxt&staticfile=show.php%3Ftitle=2074&chapter=166652&layout=html&Itemid=27) James Wilson’s lecture “Of Natural Rights of Individuals”, 1790-1792.

        I know that I gave a lot of information from Mr. Wilson’s Lecture, but I wanted to give all that He wanted to say about Life, and how it relates to Abortion. He lectured about what man did to children, and his view was that life was to be protected and preserved. I believe that life should be protected and preserved. However, there is something that you need to take note of though. James Wilson thought that the English Common Law was the best protection of human life. Here’s what’s said about that specific law about abortion in William Blackstone’s Commentaries:

        “LIFE is the immediate gift of God, a right inherent by nature in every individual ; and it begins in contemplation of law as foon as an infant is able to ftir in the mother's womb. For if a woman is quick with child, and by a potion, or otherwife, killeth it in her womb ; or if any one beat her, whereby the child dieth in her body, and fhe is delivered of a dead child ; this, though not murder, was by the antient law homicide or manflaughter.”

(http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/blackstone_bk1ch1.asp) William Blackstone’s commentaries on English common law, 1765.

        The Founders believed that Man has the right to life and to protect life, and James Wilson clearly talked about children in the womb. However, the Founders adopted the English Common Law into the laws of America. It was the best law of the day because there was no medical way to find out about conception until the baby stirred in the womb—which was around 14 weeks. Medical technology has advanced since the 18^th century, and there’s ways to find that a woman have conceived way before the baby stirs in the womb at quickening. There are ultrasounds that can find out about the baby as early as 6 weeks into the pregnancy. But, the spiritual intent is this: Life begins at conception, and is a gift from God.

        Now, the problem with Roe Vs Wade was this: 

“An AMA Committee on Criminal Abortion was appointed in May, 1857. It presented its report, 12 Trans. of the Am.Med.Assn. 778 (1859), to the Twelfth Annual Meeting. That report observed that the Committee had been appointed to investigate criminal abortion "with a view to its general suppression." It deplored abortion and its frequency and it listed three causes of "this general demoralization":

‘The first of these causes is a widespread popular ignorance of the true character of the crime -- a belief, even among mothers themselves, that the foetus is not alive till after the period of quickening.’”

Further into the Court Opinion by Justice Harry A. Blackmun in 1973:

“This right of privacy, whether it be founded in the Fourteenth Amendment's concept of personal liberty and restrictions upon state action, as we feel it is, or, as the District Court determined, in the Ninth Amendment's reservation of rights to the people, is broad enough to encompass a woman's decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy. The detriment that the State would impose upon the pregnant woman by denying this choice altogether is apparent.”

(http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/historics/USSC_CR_0410_0113_ZO.html) Roe V. Wade Opinion by Justice Harry A. Blackmun, 1973.

        Now, O America, have we become like the Greeks of Athens? That we can just be “empowered” to throw away a gift from God? Roe v. Wade has given Americans the power to pick up a child to preserve it, or remove it by exposing it. Should we even have that power to destroy life that God says are His? As it is written in Ezekiel 16: 20-22: 

“Moreover you took your sons and your daughters, whom you bore to Me, and these you sacrificed to them to be devoured. Were your acts of harlotry a small matter, that you have slain My children and offered them up to them by causing them to pass through the fire? And in all your abominations and acts of harlotry you did not remember the days of your youth, when you were naked and bare, struggling in your blood.”

        I believe that man has the unalienable right by God to protect and preserve life in and out of the womb. I believe that life is a gift from God, and it happens immediately at conception. Man should not have the power to terminate life in and out of the womb: “Thou shall not murder”. Now, my heart is set on overturning Roe v. Wade and replacing it with a constitutional amendment that will abolish abortion. God gave us life for a reason, and it’s not to destroy it. If God is with me in this, who can be against me? I have no reason to fear. God wants me near, and will pick me up. God wants to be near to all His children and pick them up to be preserved: “Even so it is not the will of your Father who is in Heaven that one of these little ones should perish.” (Matthew 18:14). I hope y’all will join me in abolishing abortion.