Jivin J’s Life Links 9-10-09
by JivinJ
Why then, in the face of its bad arguments, does the pro-choice movement continue to prevail legally and politically?
I think it’s because abortion is the debris of the sexual revolution. We have seen a great shift in the sexual mores of Americans in the past half-century. Today a widespread social understanding persists that if there is going to be sex outside marriage, there will be a considerable number of unwanted pregnancies. Abortion is viewed as a necessary clean-up solution to this social reality….
If I’m on the right track, pro-life arguments are not likely to succeed by simply continuing to stress the humanity of the fetus. The opposition already knows this, as probably do most women who have an abortion.
Rather, the pro-life movement must take into account the larger cultural context of the sexual revolution that invisibly but surely sustains the triumphant advocates of abortion.
Jill Stanek is a nurse turned speaker, columnist and blogger, a national figure in the effort to protect both preborn and postborn innocent human life.
Interesting take on the argument that we’re trying to treat the symptom and not the cause.
Not that I disagree, but I’m not sure how TO treat the cause, when the sexual revolution has weaseled its way into just about everything. We’re saturated with sex.
So how to we extricate? I mean, other than providing good examples for future generations….
I think it’s because abortion is the debris of the sexual revolution. We have seen a great shift in the sexual mores of Americans in the past half-century. Today a widespread social understanding persists that if there is going to be sex outside marriage, there will be a considerable number of unwanted pregnancies. Abortion is viewed as a necessary clean-up solution to this social reality….
Absolutely. This is what I’ve always maintained.
And if you’re going to have sex outside of marriage, you need contraception. And contraception fails which means you need abortion to make it “right” again.
Therefore, get rid of contraception, promote sex within marriage only and abortion will eventually end.
Great article by Dinesh.
I think the Christianity Today author is right on with his point. This is a battle for the minds, bodies and hearts of our young people that could be won. There has been a dramatic increase of teens who say they have not had sex and say that they are not ashamed of being a virgin in the last 10 years but with the assualt against abstinence education the numbers are probably going to climb up dramatically again.
An excellent article by Rev Sam L. Ruteikara, co-chair of Uganda’s national AIDS-prevention committee in the Washington Post “Let My People Go, AIDS Profiteers”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/29/AR2008062901477
This article is about how Uganda was succeeding against the spread of HIV with the ABC campaign (1.Abstinence first, 2. Be faithful to one partner and 3. use Condoms if having sex outside of marriage), the proportion infected with HIV dropped from 21% in 1991 to 6% in 2002 because they taught, promoted and expected ABSTNENCE FIRST, faithfulness to one partner and condoms as a last resort. Then the UN PEPFAR Western experts found out they were NOT making money off of the Ugandans because they did not need a lot of HIV drugs and condoms. PEPFAR even lied in a report and said that the HIV infection rate among married couples was 42%, twice as high as the rate among prostitutes, when the actual rate among married couples was 6.3% far lower than widowed (31.4%) or divorced (13.9) Ugandan rate. Rev. Ruteikara says “As fidelity and abstinence have been subverted, Uganda’s HIV rates have begun to tick back up.” Now “the loudest HIV prevention message in Africa is “universal access” to condoms, testing, anti-retroviral treament and assorted other drugs and devices” “Western media have been told this renewed surge of HIV infection is because there are “not enough condoms in Uganda”. “To treat one AIDS patient with… antiretrviral drugs costs more than $1000 a year. Our sucessful ABC campaign cost just 29 cents per person each year.” “Our wisdom about our own culture is ignored”. “Most HIV infections in Africa are spread by sex outside of marriage: casual sex and infidelity. The solution is faithful love.”
Rev. Ruteikara ends his article with:
“So hear my plea, HIV-AIDS profiteers. Let my people go. We understand that casual sex is dear to you, but staying alive is dear to us. Listen to African wisdom, and we will show you how to prevent AIDS.”
If we really wanted to see the STDs, abortions and unwed pregnancies go down we have to reach and change our entire culture especially parents, how to communicate love, values, that we don’t want or expect their teens to have pre-marital sex, even if we made bad decisions ourselves. 93% of teens want a “strong abstinence message” 2/3rds of sexually active teens wish they would have waited. We can arm them and their parents with the strategies and boundaries to be successful. It can be done, but I can guarantee you it will NOT make money for PP and all the liberal welfare government programs cashing in on immoral behavior. Star Parker’s books “Uncle Sam’s Plantation” and “White Ghetto” give an excellent expose’ of how people are making money off of immorality and laziness in this nation.
It won’t be easy, but somehow the case against abortion must include a case against sexual libertinism.
ah, yes! exactly my point. The problem always goes right back to the libertine choice of contraception.
After 35 years, the debris has become a mountain, and as a society, we are still adding bodies to the heap. No one in the pro-choice camp, of course, wants to admit any of this. It’s not only politically embarrassing, it’s also painful to one’s self-image to acknowledge a willingness to sustain permissive sexual values by killing the unborn.
actually I think the pro-choice movement has gone way beyond this. I don’t think they care anymore at all what anyone thinks. They don’t care that babies are killed to further the choice to engage in promiscuous sex without any consequences. They never really have.
They have now moved on to ensuring that everyone in society participates in some way – no conscientious objectors allowed.
You were heard on Ricks program. The reason the Christian Hospitals are doing abortions is because Christianity is the LIE. It is all PAGANISM!! Yahusuah is HIS TRUE NAME.Not Jesus the letter J is only 500 years old.
Look up BAAL On the Internet it means lord.
Hosea 2:16&17 No more call me Baal.The more you promote Christianity the worse the society gets.
COME OUT OF HER MY PEOPLE! REV.18:4
D’Souza say it well.
Promiscuous pre-marital sex is primarily a selfish act. The sexual revolution was motivated by selfishness. Women wanted “free sex” because they perceived that men were already entitled to it. Abortion is the ultimate selfish act – a “necessary clean-up solution” as D’Souza states.
Also, abortion is a direct slap in the face to men. The pro-abort women effectively say to men “we can use you for sex and be done with you”. Men need to wake up to this reality.
abortion is a direct slap in the face to men
Posted by: Janet at September 10, 2009 10:34 PM
Abortion and sexual promiscuity are a slap in everyone’s face, really. They both make of people simply the functions of our parts rather than exalting the dignity of mankind. Women, men, children, and elderly all become objectified, looked at as a sum of parts.
Sexual promiscuity, in its objectification, makes abortion acceptable. It creates of civilized man a carnal beast, driven by his urges. It degrades us to objects to be used for one another’s pleasure and tossed aside.
Our society has completely separated sex from love, from marriage, from the life-giving act that it innately is. When this is recognized, it is hardly difficult to understand the correlation with rising rates of divorce and premarital sex. The separation of sex from commitment has lent to the acceptance of abortion, of abandonment, of absent parenting.
My concern is how far the pendulum has swung. Can we, having indoctrinated the youth of our society into acceptance of this as a basic reality, realistically expect to reverse the momentum of the sexual revolution? How do we go about this? We have parents now who have been indoctrinated with this idea, who are allowing their children to become indoctrinated with the same concept. How do we fight that?
I’m not saying it’s impossible by any means. I’m genuinely asking, other than being a good example and being involved in encouraging good role models, good behaviors, and good morals, how do I change the momentum?
I’m trying to get involved in the youth program at my church. I think they see me as a bit too old to be a member and a bit too young to be a mentor yet, because I’ve run into a little… not opposition so much as reluctance, really. I have a son (1yo) who I try not to expose to poor examples and elements. I try to be an example of Christ in my life…
I’m just not sure what else we can do to change the social attitude surrounding sex.
Suggestions?
I agree that the underlying problem is confusion over basic sexual morality–which really means confusion about the meaning, role, and nature of marriage. Sexuality and marriage, rudders of cultural trajectory that they are, are always integrally linked whether society wants to admit this or not.
We have forgotten the history of Western civilization. This issues boils down to whether our culture finally wants to reject or accept longstanding traditional Christian morals about marriage and sex. We naively take for granted that any “decent” traditional society practices abstinence before marriage and then embraces monogamy in lifelong marriage. As I understand it, this arrangement was not the norm on a widespread basis in any culture until Christianity became widely practiced.
The understanding of marriage as a monogamous, unbreakable covenant for life between equally valued partners simply did not exist widely until Christ came and taught the world about marriage and sexuality according to God’s original plan. We forget that in the first few centuries of the Christian faith–before it became dominant in what would become Western civilization–the single most amazing and shocking thing to non-Christians about how Christians lived was the radical transformation of marriage as it was actually lived by Christians. The new dignity it gave to women and to family life had never been experienced before. The greatest number of early converts were women because they especially sensed the rightness and the beauty of marriage and family life in the Christian vision.
We are losing this fundamental sense of sexual moral decency because we are losing our Christian roots.
I for myself, am completely convinced that the way to bring back sanity (and end the abortion bloodshed) to how we approach marriage and sexuality in our great nation is to convert people to Christ. And not just a superficial, glossy-magazine, hip, anything goes Jesus–but the full Jesus of the New Testament as He has always been understood and taught by the oldest Christian traditions since the first century.
There is no such thing as a widespread societal acceptance of a chaste, balanced, life-giving, lifelong, monogamous, non-contraceptive, equal-partners-in-dignity understanding of marriage outside of a truly Christian culture. I don’t think it exists in the past, and it won’t in the future. To the degree we don’t clearly recognize this we have no chance of making positive progress for the future.
I think we can. But I am personally certain that there can be no large-scale healing and transformation of the way society lives marriage without the grace that comes from Christ and His Church. Yes, we need homes where parents model Christian marriage to their children. We need homes that pray for the restoration of healthy marriage. We need parents who learn, reflect upon, and teach to their children the essential role of marriage in the plan of Christ for the transformation of this world for the better.
We need prayer, we need the sacraments (the free spiritual assistance given by Christ through the sacraments are essential–we can’t change society on our own), we need great instruction from our Christian pastors, we need a beautiful and well-taught theology of marriage, we need tons of things! There is no one simple answer, no magic bullet. Is is the very root issue of what fundamentally makes a culture Christian at its roots.
The theology of the body of Pope John Paul II is a step along this very road of reclaiming our contemporary world for Christ where it most desperately needs transformation–how it lives and understands marriage and sex in relationship to Jesus Christ and His Church.
The world has never seen such a life-giving, life-affirming, life-enhancing, dignity-bestowing, beautiful picture of marriage as was given it by the Christian faith. We did not stumble upon it. We were given it by God. With His grace and our faith-filled cooperation, we can heal and transform our world again.
Scott,
That was really beautiful!
And a great big kudos for the mention of JPII’s Theology of the Body. :)
“The individuals quoted seem to be much more concerned about the possibility of children seeing a gruesome picture of an aborted child than the fact that such gruesome actions are taking place at the clinic.”
That pretty much sums up the opposition to the use of aborted baby photos. It’s all about ME, ME, ME…. and my comfort. Never mind the “discomfort” of the baby being torn into pieces, just don’t make ME see the results!
Scott I very much commend your post, and like Maryrose love your comments ….
However, as is often the case that which is morally questionable is also questionable from more ‘secular’ aspects as well. It is very strange, but much of these are perpetrated by a depression scenario brought on by low zinc levels in the cerebellum (a part of the brain). The uncommon persistence of these events (and others) can all stem from the fact that low-zinc is actually never met, even if people are taught about ‘low-zinc hazards’. Its very much like stopping smoking. Few actually do stop even with the hazards known.
We must not only preach the Truth but actually Live His Life/His Truth. And yes, I do think that low-zinc does affect Christians, Hindu’s, atheists … etc… Americans, Canadians, Bolivians, etc … It is very difficult to separate ANY of the prevalent ‘news’ present today and low-zinc levels … from violence, addictions, and sexual aspects …