CBC Opinion: Abortion Is The Christian Thing To Do

RALEIGH – Readers of WRAL.com, or other publications associated with the Capitol Broadcasting Company, have been regularly subjected to editorials that reveal the owners’ Radical Leftist sentiments. This weekend the CBC Opinion piece was written by a progressive professor at Elon University that argues there is nothing more un-Christian than denying mothers the choice to abort babies at will, and that a more devout approach would be to free mothers of the societal shame associated with murdering their unborn children for reasons of inconvenience.

We’ll give you a moment to gather yourself before diving into the mind-numbing stupidity of one Rebecca Todd Peters, a religious studies professor and champion of ‘reproductive justice.’

Okay, deep breath.

“Exceptions to the idea that “abortion is wrong” are regularly made for PRIM [Pregancy, Rape, Incest, health of the Mother] reasons. In fact, since 1972, some 77 percent of the U.S. public has consistently approved of abortion in cases of serious prenatal health issues, 78 percent approved of abortion in circumstances of rape and incest, and 87 percent when a woman’s health is endangered. On the face of it, public acceptance of PRIM reasons indicates a broad public consensus that abortion is sometimes necessary.

By focusing on the acceptability of PRIM abortions, Christians have shaped the dominant public discourse about abortion into a debate about justification. By requiring women to justify their reasons for ending a pregnancy, this framework divides women who have abortions into two categories – the tragic and the damned.

Women who have PRIM abortions are portrayed as tragic, not only deserving of access to abortion services but also equally deserving of public sympathy. Women who have abortions for other reasons are stigmatized as morally unfit and labeled as selfish, cruel, and irresponsible. In short, they are the damned.

Only 1 percent of abortions are a result of rape and less than 0.5 percent the result of incest. About 12 percent are sought to protect a woman’s health, and 13 percent for prenatal health issues. That means that what legal scholar Kate Watson calls “ordinary abortions” make up nearly three-quarters of abortions in the United States.

These ordinary abortions stand outside acceptability in the justification paradigm that conservative Christian voices have established for our public conversation about abortion. This justification framework supports a view of abortion that holds that when women get pregnant, we expect them to have babies.”

Peters is arguing that the Christian community is too hard on women that get abortions for ‘ordinary’ reasons – like they aren’t ready, don’t have the money to care for a child, or simply don’t want to have children in the first place. Peters chastises the consensus Christian view that women that get pregnant ought to have the baby.

Uhhhhh….yeah. If you were not interested in having a baby for ‘ordinary’ reasons then there are myriad ways to prevent such a pregnancy. Accessible, inexpensive, and downright easy and straightforward ways to keep eggs and sperm from joining together to create nascent human life.

But if you didn’t do that, and became pregnant (through no fault of your own, Peters seems to imply) Christians, Peters argues, would reflect a better image of the teachings of Jesus Christ by encouraging aborting that baby if that’s what the mother chooses is best for her.

“It is time for Christians to challenge the inadequacy, intolerance and misogyny of this paradigm of abortion. As my deeply Christian mother taught me, “You shouldn’t have a baby because you are pregnant. You should have a baby because you want to be a mother, because you want to have a family.”

The moral wisdom of this Christian perspective recognizes that parenting is a profoundly moral act. To choose to have a child is to make a significant moral commitment to that child to raise it or to place it for adoption. Given the fact that only 1 percent of women place their children for adoption, the overwhelming majority of women who continue unplanned pregnancies are making the choice to mother that child.”

The fact that Peters addresses the moral nature of parenting, of ‘choosing to mother a child’, while ignoring the obvious reality that every woman of child-bearing age that engages in sex with no contraceptive is also MAKING A CHOICE is a contradiction that makes the logical brain ache in agony. A logical brain Peters does not have.

But the twisted rationalizing of her pro-abortion position, under the guise of Christian ethics, gets much worse.

“Creating healthy families requires more than ensuring that babies are born. It recognizes that creating healthy families and raising children is a deeply spiritual and moral task requiring commitment, desire, and love on the part of the parent(s).

Limiting our cultural approval of women’s reproductive decisions about the size, shape, and timing of their families to a narrow list of PRIM reasons flies in the face of Jesus’ teaching that he came to bring abundant life. A Christian vision of abundant life requires that we recognize and support the development of healthy and robust families. It requires that we respect women and the moral decisions that they make about their families. A Christian approach to supporting healthy families recognizes that only individual women and their partners are able to determine their ability to parent a child.

There is nothing Christian about requiring women to “justify” their reasons for abortion. And there is certainly nothing Christian about forcing women to continue pregnancies against their will.

If we truly value women and healthy families, we must accept that “I do not want to have a baby” is an imminently appropriate reason to end a pregnancy. And we must trust that pregnant women are the only ones who are capable of making these decisions.”

Peters talks about the narrative of “abundant life” relative to Jesus’ teachings in the same breath she is advocating at will abortions for any reason whatsoever. Seriously.

She talks about abortion being crucial the a Christian vision of healthy and robust families. Ask yourself, how healthy and robust are the families that don’t exist because the children were aborted? How functional, content, and proud are those groups with the highest rates of abortion?

The failure of this university professor to recognize the conflicting premises she lays out is mind boggling. This woman teaches students that actually look upon her as someone capable of critical thinking. She is merely capable of post-modernist drivel predicated on the notion that life is not life, unless the progressive class deems it so.

That same thinking is what laid the foundation for eugenics and slavery.

Peters closes it out by proclaiming that “I do not want to have a baby” is a perfectly acceptable reason – a perfectly Christian reason – for a mother to end the life inside her womb. It’s almost too easy to point out that “I do not want to have a baby.” is a feeling a woman needs to act upon BEFORE taking actions that could get her pregnant.

A better question might be, ‘Where do you draw the line?’

What if a mother comes to the same conclusion when the same child is a month removed from the womb, still totally dependent on the mother, but now outside the womb? Peters tortured logic would seem to suggest that we, as a society, or Christians as a community, should find nothing wrong with a mother making the choice to end that child’s life ‘in the best interest of her and her family.’

These are the extreme positions and policies propagated by WRAL, and the Capitol Broadcasting Company, while they then try to turn around and present political news to their audience as if they were an honest arbiter of truth. In this instance, as THE source for Christian dogma.

Can’t say we’re surprised, but we can’t help but shake our heads at the dangerous ideas permeating the American Left and spreading their messaging far and wide in the media.