{"id":966,"date":"2006-12-22T12:06:50","date_gmt":"2006-12-22T17:06:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/?p=966"},"modified":"2017-03-03T12:39:27","modified_gmt":"2017-03-03T17:39:27","slug":"to-russ-on-abortion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/?p=966","title":{"rendered":"To Russ on Abortion"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Finally, here is my reply to <a href=\"http:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/?p=949\">Rev. Young&#8217;s letter<\/a> to me about abortion.<\/strong><\/p>\n<blockquote><p><font size=\"3\"><span style=\"font-size: 10pt; font-family: Verdana; mso-fareast-font-family: 'MS Mincho'; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: JA; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA\"> I don\u2019t mean to hide behind semantics where abortion is concerned. Abortion ends life. Where I disagree with you is in treating newly conceived \u201cbabies\u201d as the equal of newborns. Yes, pregnant women call the offspring in their wombs \u201cbabies.\u201d However, forced to make a \u201cSophie\u2019s Choice,\u201d virtually every parent I know would choose the child in their arms to the one nine months from birth. The choice, no matter how wrenching, wouldn\u2019t even be a close contest.<\/p>\n<p>You say that calling a baby a fetus, or \u201clittle one\u201d in Latin, is deceitful but it strikes me that calling a fertilized egg a baby is also a deceit. In common parlance babies need suckling, burping and changing. You can\u2019t do that with something the size of a punctuation mark.<br \/>\nYou have graphically described the gruesome realities of surgical abortion. Yet one of the ironies of the pro-life movement has been its complicity in driving up the number of abortions because of its opposition to birth control.<\/p>\n<p>You are too young to remember the days prior to Roe vs. Wade before the anti-abortion movement began calling itself \u201cpro-life.\u201d Back then the people who opposed abortion were more upset about the possibility that access to birth control and\/or abortions would encourage young people to have pre-marital sex. In fact, pregnancy was typically viewed as a fitting punishment for the sin of sex. \u201cIf you\u2019re gonna play you gotta pay.\u201d So severe was the disgrace faced by unmarried mothers that back-alley abortion mills thrived.<\/p>\n<p>Even after the movement adopted the pro-life label it did not give up its opposition to birth control. I\u2019ve always marveled at this because I agree that rescuing \u201cbabies\u201d in the womb is noble. But apparently the pro-life movement is less concerned with saving the lives of unborn babies than it is with discouraging illicit sex.<\/p>\n<p>The folly of this anti-sex priority was revealed in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.spokesmanreview.com\/ap\/story.asp?AP_ID=D8M46H483\">yesterday\u2019s news story<\/a> which reported that the rate of premarital sex has held very steady since World War II. Since that time roughly 19 out of every 20 Americans, of both sexes, have engaged in premarital sex. With \u201cpro-lifers\u201d doing everything in their power to discourage contraception it is no wonder that <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 10pt; font-family: Verdana; mso-fareast-font-family: 'MS Mincho'; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: JA; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA\">America<\/span><span style=\"font-size: 10pt; font-family: Verdana; mso-fareast-font-family: 'MS Mincho'; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: JA; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA\"> leads the world in the dismemberment of the unborn.<\/p>\n<p>You have said that it would be wonderful if every child in the womb could be held in its mother\u2019s arms. Yes, it would, but pro-lifers have tried to prevent contraceptives from being distributed in the third world where infant mortality is rampant. Pro-lifers even oppose birth control which could prevent mothers from contracting and dying from AIDS. Orphans have no mothers to hold them.<\/p>\n<p>Infant mortality drops when women can choose <em><span style=\"font-family: Verdana\">when<\/span><\/em> to conceive. I look forward to the day where all women can expect to see their children reach maturity. I\u2019d like to think that this is because I care deeply about people but you find fault with my \u201cheart condition.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Well Russ, you worship a God whose son will send me and others like me to a fate worse than any surgical or saline abortion. What\u2019s more our suffering will be eternal. How does that reflect on your heart?<\/p>\n<p>I asked you whether you believed aborted babies would go to heaven but you gave me an equivocal answer to this question. Perhaps this is because you believe that heaven is reserved for those who have been \u201creborn.\u201d That is what some of your pro-life allies believe. For all I know you expect aborted babies to spend eternity with me in Hell rather than with you in Heaven.<br \/>\nInstead, you explained that my being glad that aborted children might be destined for Heaven is like being glad that Dietrich Bonhoffer was hung on a meat hook so that he could enter heaven. Russ, I don\u2019t think either of us is confused by the difference between a brutal death and the hope for a heavenly afterlife.<\/p>\n<p>At the end of your letter you offered me blessings and I thank you. If I can\u2019t have your God\u2019s blessing I\u2019ll be happy to accept yours.<\/span><\/font><font size=\"3\"><span style=\"font-size: 10pt; font-family: Verdana; mso-fareast-font-family: 'MS Mincho'; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: JA; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA\">Sincerely,<br \/>\nHarry Welty<\/span><\/font><font size=\"3\"><span style=\"font-size: 10pt; font-family: Verdana; mso-fareast-font-family: 'MS Mincho'; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: JA; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA\" \/><\/font><font size=\"3\"><span style=\"font-size: 10pt; font-family: Verdana; mso-fareast-font-family: 'MS Mincho'; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: JA; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA\"> <\/p>\n<p><\/span><\/font> <\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Finally, here is my reply to Rev. Young&#8217;s letter to me about abortion. I don\u2019t mean to hide behind semantics where abortion is concerned&#8230;.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43,47,52],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/966"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=966"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/966\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21003,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/966\/revisions\/21003"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=966"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=966"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=966"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}