Religion has Nothing to Say about Abortion
Or so says historian Garry Wills anyway. DallasNews Religion blog has an energetic discussion about a recent commentary by Wills about abortion. Wills claims that abortion is not a religious issue, that there is no theological basis for defending or condemning abortion. He says the issue hinges on whether the fetus is a person and that religion has not always been consistent on that question.
"The Catholic Church [did not] treat abortion as murder in the past. If it had, late-term abortions and miscarriages would have called for treatment of the well-formed fetus as a person, which would require baptism and a Christian burial."This led to a heated debate on the religion blog over whether Wills was suggesting the church should baptize dead bodies or if he was instead suggesting that if the church believed fetuses to be persons, then baptism of (living) fetuses in the womb would have been the practice.
The debate over what Garry Wills meant reminds me of the endless arguments over what this or that line of Scripture really means. If we can't agree what a contemporary English speaker like Wills meant, we'll never agree on what a bunch of ancients meant. Heck, we can't even agree on who wrote what, when.
No matter what Wills may have meant, his commentary prompts a very good question. Why in the world would God create a fetal development system that leaves the fetus in the womb for nine months, out of reach of saving baptismal waters? Especially since a huge number of pregnancies result in spontaneous abortions before the mother even knows she's pregnant. You'd think God would have arranged for his church to create a baptismal sacrament around the sex act itself, just in case it was going to result in a pregnancy. If he did, think of all the millions and millions of zygotes who would be freed from limbo.
P.S. The above observations were submitted as a comment to the religion blog, but were not accepted by the moderator. As always, if you want to read the uncensored Ed Cognoski, you can only get that here!
Recasting the War against Terrorism
William McKenzie is excited about the renewal of the Mideast peace process. Why? Because it gets the focus back on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, which has a lot more to do with terrorism than the war in Iraq does. McKenzie thinks that's where the US focus should have been after Afghanistan instead of invading Iraq. Better late than never for the Bush administration.
Now just because the Israelis and Palestinians are talking again doesn't mean peace is at hand. That conflict is too deep rooted for quick solutions. But I agree with McKenzie that at least the US is now looking in the right place. Terrorism springs from the conflict in Jerusalem, not Baghdad. The War in Iraq didn't change the dynamics of the region for the better. The war was a distraction. The war just made things worse. Maybe, just maybe, this week's peace conference marks a turning point in America's five years of foreign policy disaster.
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