The battle starts. NERD Hangout is a sweet blog, that caused a small reaction recently by blogging about the abortion/stem cell issue. Bethany is for it, and made a reply to those who answered against her stance that the abortion/stem cell movement kills are wrong. Her arguments are the usual fundie thinking, which I present now in bold and which I rebut immediately after.

First off, abortion shouldn’t be a choice. The choice is a person’s whether they want to have a child or not, but once you are pregnant it seems that choice is made doesn’t it?

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And as far as a women’s choice, it’s her choice of abstinence, but after the baby is already been concieved it turns to personal responsibility.

Simple shot across the bow here. What about rape? The woman has no choice in that scenario. If she gets pregnant, she must now live her entire life in subservience to that horrible act. Lose out her chance on school, her chance to become a “a future president, a doctor, a lawyer, a teacher, a thinker, an artist, an actor”.

Side note: The only correlation between societal behavior and crime that studies have found is a decrease in crime. This may be backed up by studies that find that parents of unwanted children allow their children to wander further away, be less protected, experiment with drugs (not necessarily a bad thing), and generally make a fuck up of their lives.

And yes, whether or not you choose to accept it, abortion is murder.

Who says? And please don’t quote the bible to me. At no point does it declare abortion illegal. It maintains that you will not kill another human life, so the question is really at what point does human life begin. I’ll get to that in a minute, I want to hack at some other points here.

Soo your pregnant right? But you don’t want to keep it so you KILL it!?!?!? I MEAN COME ON!! If you don’t want to keep it, at least give it up for adoption. Millions of couples that can’t have babies try to adopt but can’t, you wanna know why? cuz the the kids they want to adopt are being killed.

Sorry that is simply bullshit. Yes, I agree that adoption is a great alternative to abortion, if the woman is willing to give up nine months of her life and deal with the financial and health costs involved. But the facts do not support the image of genocide being created.

As far as W.W.J.D. what does the bible say about and eye for an eye? It’s not so much about one-time offenders but what about serial killers? if you KNOW they are going to do it again why give them a chance? or why let them rot in prison with the chance of getting out to kill another unsuspecting victim?

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You talk about W.W.J.D. as your main point, but do you think that Jesus would concieve a child then encourage its mother to kill it? Does He think it’s a "choice" of whether or not to kill your baby or let it live? How’s that for mercy?

Ah, the What Would Jesus Do question. I love Jesus. I really do. And you know what He would do? He would forgive the serial killer, take care of the child, and be the great guy He is. And being that great guy, He wouldn’t judge if someone chose differently.

When a women is pregnant, it is no longer just her body we are talking about, but another innocent CHILD.

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Some of you may say that it’s just a "fetus" not actually a human being. but it is. And you could be killing a future president, a doctor, a lawyer, a teacher, a thinker, an artist, an actor, A PERSON!!!! regardless what you may say, it’s not an organ or just a fetus IT’S A LIVING BREATHING HUMAN BEING. If you would let it live, it would become just like you, would it not?

This is the issue at heart of this discussion. When is a human being created, and once it is, should we prevent its destruction. I am not a wise enough man to answer it.

But neither is President Bushie. If we follow his example though he actually does not mind the destruction of embryo.

As you may know, Congress is debating a bill to expand the types of stem cell research supported to include harvesting cells from embryos coming from in vitro fertilization (IVF). In the process of IVF for one couple MANY embryos are created, because while it takes only one to get pregnant, several tries may be required before you get it right. Once a couple gets pregnant, the unused embryos are 1.) given up for adoption, 2.) stored for later use by the couple or 3.) 90% of the time are SIMPLY THROWN AWAY. The stem cell bill suggests taking stem cells from the 90% that would OTHERWISE BE DESTROYED.

President Bushie has of course come out against the bill, stating he would veto it if it passed the senate. He made his intentions clear in a press conference earlier this week standing in front of the cameras with families whose children came from IVF embryos. His point is the children with him would never been born if their stem cells had been harvested. He is right except those children on stage with him were in the 10% stored/adopted category. For every child up there with him that day, 9 embryos were lost … or “killed” to follow fundie thinking.

Of course, a fundie come back and say “well we should then pass a law to store all the embryos that are not adopted.” Typical fundie reaction; damn all costs, let’s just do it.

But here is a point all seem to be missing. By holding this conference, Bush shows his approval for the IVF process. And in that process, as previously described we create many embryos because SOME WILL BE LOST IN THE PROCESS BEFORE PREGNANCY OCCURS. If embryos are humans, the IVF process is mass producing humans to be killed, if you follow fundie logic.

So Bushie either:

• supports IVF and the killing of 90% of embryos with nothing to show for it
• is okay with a process that kills “huma beings” before it reaches a conclusion of success or failure.

A rebuttal a fundie may make is that its different then abortion because IVF is trying to improve lives; giving a childless couple hope of a family.

Well, stem cell research is also trying to improve lives. Many, many lives.

[Via the NERD hangout]