Texas Abortion Regulations Upheld in Federal Appeals Court

According to this news article and this one, a federal court has upheld the new Texas regulations on abortion. Among these regulations are a requirement that doctors performing abortions must have admitting privileges at a nearby hospital and regulations on how abortion-inducing pills may be administered. Planned Parenthood had sued to block these regulations, claiming they would make abortions "virtually impossible" to get for thousands of Texas women and might jeopardize the health of these women. Today's court ruling was that the new regulations do "not impose an undue burden on the life and health of a woman."

I find it interesting that requiring a doctor performing abortions to have hospital admitting privileges is so controversial. I don't actually consider these regulations to be pro-life, though they will most likely cause many abortion clinics to close or reduce the number of abortions they can provide. Planned Parenthood seems to think this is the case, seeing that they spent their money suing to block the regulations.

If the goal of PP and other abortion advocates is to have "safe" abortions (as they claim), one would think that upgrading abortion facilities to the level of any ordinary medical facility and having safeguards in place in case of an emergency would be a good thing. But they see these regulations as only an obstacle to be blocked in any way possible. Their concerns doesn't seem to be with the women's safety so much as their bottom line. Fewer abortions means less money in their pockets. That concerns them greatly. The fact that women have been getting abortions from second and third rate doctors who can't get admission privileges anywhere doesn't bother them. The fact that abortionists have been giving abortion-inducing pills with potentially life-threatening side-effects for the mother over webcams doesn't bother them. They just don't want any decrease in business.

Of course, abortion can't really be made safe since it's sole goal is to kill the unborn child. But this incident shows how false the "safe" abortion facade really is. For Planned Parenthood, it's not about making abortions safe. It's certainly not about making them rare. It's about having no restrictions on their butchering facilities so they can kill as many babies as possible while they rake in the money. Anyone who can't see that is blind.

Should Abortion be Illegal Simply because the Bible Says it is Wrong?

In the few days since this blog went public, we have begun to see a surprising amount of resistance, but not from the usual culprits. We expected to see the illiterate and barely coherent ramblings from the pro-abort crowd. We expected to see the usual fomenting, insulting and name calling that we have grown so accustomed to from those who see their pro-abort bumper sticker slogans torn to shreds.

We were somewhat surprised, however, to see that our most vocal opponents so far are others who profess to support the right to life position – the very right to life position that we are defending. Of course, we are taking a different – more rational – approach to that defense, but we should be allies nevertheless.

In particular, many in the right to life movement are objecting to the fact that we are presenting a secular argument for the right to life position which is not based on Biblical doctrine. They seem to believe that this entire argument should go something like this: The Bible says abortion is wrong, and therefore, we must make it illegal.

Thus, we have decided to take another stab at showing why our more rational approach is necessary, and why one cannot enforce every doctrine from the Bible in a secular society. As we will show, not everything that is wrong should be illegal.

Let me give you some examples:

The Bible is pretty clear that homosexuality is a sin. Should that be illegal? Note that I’m not talking about whether or not marriage should be redefined here. I am simply asking if we should round up practicing homosexuals and toss them in prison (just like in the movie V for Vendetta).

In the Bible, God states that we are to have no other gods before Him. Does that mean that we are to allow only one religion in this country? Should we establish an official state religion and send government agents after all those who do not acknowledge and worship the God of the Bible?

The Bible makes it clear that we are to tithe, and to keep the Sabbath. Should we make it a law that everyone do so? Perhaps we should institute a tithe withholding and send the funds to that organized state religion?

The Bible states that children are to honor their father and mother, but the next time you’re at Wal-Mart, do you want government agents to sweep in and toss your kid in juvenile detention if they do not?

Of course, the answer to each of these is a resounding, “No, we should not.” That is not in keeping with the origin or history of this country. How then is it OK to try to argue that we should base other laws on Biblical doctrine without an accompanying secular argument to support it?

We have mentioned this and given examples such as those above several times and thus far, no one – and I repeat, no one – has even attempted to address it. The reason is quite simple – they have no response. They have no coherent answer for this observation that we cannot take everything that God considers to be sin, and make it illegal.

Sin should not be made illegal simply because the Bible says that it is sin.

In fact, arguing that something should be illegal simply because it is wrong means that you are looking to government as the arbiter of good and evil rather than to God. (Did you get that point? It has profound implications for conservative Christians, or at least it should.)

Government has its place and God has given government some authority over mankind, but government is not the entity that enforces right and wrong and brings all people to account for their wrong-doing. That entity is God and only God. Some issues of right and wrong fall under government's jurisdiction and some do not. The way you tell the difference is through the principle of inalienable rights.

The laws of the Bible deal with the heart and morality. The concept of inalienable rights deals with outward behaviors and government's duty concerning them. And while our faith and the Bible should definitely inform our behavior and how we interact with government, we shouldn't look to government as our salvation by expecting government to do God's job in outlawing wrong behaviors. Rather than outlawing wrong behaviors, government should outlaw harmful behaviors - those that violate the inalienable rights of others.

15,000 aborted babies incinerated to heat hospitals in the UK

In this news article from the UK, it was reported that more than 15,000 aborted and miscarried babies were incinerated along with other "clinical waste" to heat hospitals. Apparently, this has led to a lot of outrage and policies are being changed to prevent it from happening in the future.

But my question is, why are people outraged? I can understand being outraged about the remains of a person being disrespected so callously. We treat the bodies of our dead with respect because we have respect for their lives. But if the unborn aren't people, as the pro-abortion crowd maintains, why does it matter what you do with their bodies? Why not treat them like any other kind of medical waste? If it's okay to kill the unborn, then surely it must be okay to burn their bodies in a garbage heap.

I think the outrage says a lot about what people really know, deep down, about the personhood of the unborn. People will say that the unborn aren't human. They say that they are just a clump of cells or tissue. But we know better. We don't want their dead bodies treated like other refuse because we know they aren't just trash. This cognitive dissonance - where we rationalize abortion and yet instinctively react to this news with outrage - is very telling.

Here's a thought. If the dead body of an unborn baby is not just ordinary garbage and should be treated with respect, maybe we should consider that the body of a living unborn baby isn't just trash to be discarded either. The truth is, a living unborn baby is a person and should be afforded the same protection and respect that we afford any other living person.

The Need for a Secular Argument Against Abortion

Many pro-life advocates use the Bible in making their arguments. While the Bible does have a lot to say about the unborn and about the value of human life in general, the use of Biblical arguments in the discussion of abortion’s legality is often well-intentioned, but misguided.

You see, laws in the United States are not based on religion. In fact, our Founding Fathers specifically planned to create a nation where religious freedom was protected. In order to do that, one must have a secular country based on logical principles, not a theocracy. History has shown that government based upon religion inevitably persecutes those who disagree with the religion in power. Many, if not most, of those who came to America and founded this nation came to escape religious persecution. They knew firsthand the dangers of living in a church state. They wanted to ensure freedom for all, so they set up a secular government and laid out basic principles to limit the government’s power and prevent oppression of the people. Their principles were based on the concept of inalienable rights (also known as human rights) – rights that are innate in every human being and which government cannot grant or take away. These rights include the right to life, liberty, ownership of property, religion, a fair trial, and many others – all developed from basic logical principles. And, in this country, laws are to be made by the people, but only in accordance with these principles so that no one's rights will be violated.

The primary purpose of our government and our laws is to protect the inalienable rights of the people, not to stop people from doing wrong things. It’s an important distinction.

Of course, these logical principles on which our country was founded are quite consistent with a Biblical worldview – and not by accident. The concept of inalienable rights, for example, comes from the view that mankind is the product of a Creator who has endowed them with these rights. Religious freedom is also consistent with the Bible. After all, even God Himself does not force Himself upon anyone, but gives all people the free choice to choose Him or not.

But one cannot enforce every doctrine from the Bible in a secular society. There are things that are wrong, according to the Bible, which cannot be made law. How would one, for example, make lust or coveting illegal? And while the Bible commands us to remember the Sabbath day, one cannot enforce this on all people within a society without violating their freedom of religion. These are all examples that demonstrate that not everything that is wrong should be illegal.

Did you catch that? Not everything that is wrong should be illegal. That’s important to remember when making arguments about whether or not abortion should be legal.

Arguing that abortion is morally wrong is one thing. To do that, you do have to refer to God and His laws. You need the Bible. It is quite possible to make a compelling case from the Bible that abortion is wrong.

But to show that abortion should be illegal – for all people, of all religions, in a secular society – takes more than that. The argument that abortion should be illegal requires showing that government has a duty to make laws prohibiting abortion. In other words, it is necessary to show that abortion violates inalienable human rights.

Keep in mind that all violations of inalienable rights are wrong (since these rights come from God), but not all wrong things violate inalienable rights. Wrong things must also be violations of inalienable rights if they are to fall under government’s jurisdiction. Government isn’t in the right and wrong business. Government’s business is protecting inalienable rights.

How does one decide what should and should not be legal in a secular society? The answer lies in applying the concept of inalienable rights by making laws that protect the human rights of all the people. Thus, murder should be illegal – not because the Bible says it is wrong, but because such a behavior violates the inalienable right to live of the victim. Similarly, theft should be illegal – not because the Bible says it is wrong, but because theft violates the right to own property of the victim. Since government's purpose is to protect the inalienable rights of all the people, any activity or behavior that violates someone's inalienable rights should be illegal. Government should never allow violations of inalienable rights or it has failed in its primary duty.

If we hope to make abortion illegal we must use the correct argument. We have to develop a secular argument against abortion that demonstrates that abortion violates inalienable rights. Without the argument from inalienable rights, we have failed to show why a secular government should be involved in prohibiting abortion, regardless of how wrong it is. It is this secular argument we MUST be making if we are to succeed. Many of us who are pro-life are Christians and have religious reasons to believe that abortion is morally wrong according to the Bible. However, that does not mean that abortion should be illegal in a secular society. We have to make the right argument if we are going to produce change.

The truth is, the unborn do have inalienable rights. They are human beings with the same rights as all other human beings. And those rights should be protected in a secular society just as the rights of all other humans should be. This can be demonstrated with science and logic and can convince even those who do not believe the Bible. More importantly, this is WHY abortion should be illegal – not because the Bible says it is wrong, but because abortion is a violation of basic human rights. All people should be in favor of protecting the rights of all human beings, regardless of their religion.

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Stay tuned for more development of these ideas. As time goes on, we plan to provide solid arguments that abortion does, in fact, violate the inalienable rights of the unborn. We also plan to debunk the many arguments (if you can call them that) of the pro-abortion side with logic and science.

The Right to Life Argument Based on Science and Logic

The right to life argument does not rest on any religious doctrine or text. Rather, there is a completely secular argument (based completely upon science and logic) to be made for the right to life of unborn human beings. This argument is a rational one - not a religious one, and therefore, makes a better foundation upon which to make law.

First, one must recognize that science has conclusively proven that conception results in a complete, unique and distinct human individual who has a body of his very own (i.e. his body is not simply an extension of his mother's body). Every bit of that statement is completely accurate and is not debated by any educated biologist. At the point of conception, a new, complete, unique and distinct human being comes into existence (i.e. begins to live). Of course, one's life can be divided into various arbitrary stages - beginning with the single-celled zygote and ending with elderly adult (passing continuously through such stages as embryo, fetus, infant, toddler, child, adolescent, adult, etc.). However, in each and all of these stages the individual is a complete human being, and there is no qualitative difference between an individual in one stage and one in another stage - they are all equally human. This is all based on observational science, not on opinion or anything religious.

Second, science has yet to discover any sort of magic that happens during birth which makes the individual being born any more human. Aside from being born, there is nothing special that happens to a human being during the birth process. The body of the human being is exactly the same shortly before birth as it is shortly after birth. The birth itself does not make any fundamental changes to his body. Of course, his body changes over time, but that process begins at conception and does not end until the individual becomes an adult. (Actually, it continues to change slowly after that, as well.) The point is that birth is just one event in one's life, and most certainly does not mark the beginning of one's life. Once again, this is based entirely upon science. It is not based upon any religious doctrine or text.

So let me review, according to observational science, conception results in a new human being who is just as human as any other human being, and birth is nothing more than one event in that person's life and is not the beginning of that person's life.

Therefore, since science has shown that nothing happens in the life of a human being (from the point of conception onward) which makes the individual any more human, it is only logical to conclude that all human beings (from the point of conception onward) possess the exact same inalienable right to life, regardless of value that other humans place on them. In other words, unborn human babies must possess the exact same right to life that the rest of us possess, and should therefore have the exact same legal protection.

Now, without using some religious doctrine, one may have a hard time showing that there is any such thing as an inalienable right to live. However, this argument is based solely on the logical conclusion that all human beings must have the exact same right to live as all other humans, regardless of age, gender, race, etc., and should logically therefore have the exact same legal protection. In other words, if we are going to make it illegal to kill someone who is old enough to be born, we are logically bound to provide the same legal protection to those other human beings who are not yet old enough to be born.

By the way, this does not diminish the rights of women when they become pregnant because no one (including women) have the right to kill another innocent human being, anyway. They do not have that right when they are not pregnant, and they do not acquire that right when they become pregnant. It is simply logical to conclude that their rights do not change (diminish or increase) when they become pregnant.

Moreover, the argument that the law should be changed does not mean that we wish to remove some rights that women currently have over their body. As I have already shown logically, the right to abort does not actually exist. Thus, the argument is simply that the law currently allows women to do things that they currently do not have a right to do, and so changing the law would not remove or limit any rights that actually exist now.

As you can see, it is not necessary to use religion or religious doctrine to defend the right to life position, nor to argue for the abolition of human abortion. This secular argument is based solely on observational science and rational thinking. That said, I am not maligning religion in any way. We all have certain religious beliefs. However, one does not need to resort to one's religion in order to make the right to life argument, nor to make law accordingly.