Then, one weakness in your post, IMO: "... but I am not responsible for what other people do and I am certainly not the person to keep another from using it."You are not responsible if someone walked into your place of work and began firing a gun at people, but if you had an opportunity to stop them and did not, then you would be responsible for what happened as a result.
Thanks for your comments. This is such a tricky topic, as there are so many considerations - the moral, ethical, religious, commerce, social, political and on and on - that I find it difficult to make a tight argument out of it without sounding like a Bible Thumper or a heathen. My comment back got so long that it turned into another whole blog post.
To clarify, I 100% believe that abortion is taking a life and therefore is murder. I believe that if I commited an act of abortion then my afterlife would be as damned as if I shot you in the face and killed you, there is no grade of murder, it is murder period.
I also believe the "womb broom" as it has been called is murder as surely as smothering a newborn child would be, there is no grade, it is murder period.
I would love to think that, God forbid, I were raped and became pregnant that I would have the emotional support needed to deliver the child to term and then give it up if I could not care for it because of my devastation. I also know that a person cannot know what feelings will arise in a situation like that and real-world situations often call for extreme measures.
There are people who have no traditional belief systems or practice religions that do not think life begins at conception. It is those people I speak for when I say that I am not the person to keep it away from them. My religion should not dictate the life of someone of another religion.
Granted, if I do nothing to stop a murder I can be held accountable. If I were asked "hey should I do this" I would surely say my piece, that I think it is murder - that according to my God and my religion you are committing a heinous sin - that I think it should NOT be done. However, I am not the one that has to live with it - if a person feels strong enough in her faith (or has no faith to dictate her feelings) then she needs to do what she can live with and let God (or not) sort it out in the end. I pray for those people and hope they find peace and repentance with God, but I will not add to the suffering that is already there by cramming my belief down their throats.
Despite the fact that I was raised Catholic, I am much more practical than would be thought. I do not totally adhere to Catholic doctrine. I had sex before I was married, I have used birth control - I have done a million things that "good" Catholics do not do.
There are good reasons for faith but there are also practical concerns in life. The Catholic Church will tell you birth control is a sin - but I could not effectively parent a child at twenty-one so I used birth control. Good thing too because I never married and started a family until eleven years later. I don't think I committed a sin by causing children not to be conceived - I would have committed a much greater sin by causing children to be born that I could not physically or emotionally support.
And I know the Church will tell you that is what abstinence is for - but I live in the real world. I was a virgin until I was twenty-one, it is not as if I was out sleeping around the block.
I think my point is that each must keep her own house. If something is legal, then every person has a legal right to it no matter what other belief tenets say.
The thing that scares me most about the morning after pill is that it is taken and effective before a woman has a chance to make a decision and I worry that that will teach younger girls that embryos are disposable and not real people. One minute pregnant is a life as surely as eight months pregnant is.
Gosh, I sure hope I made sense and did not make it even worse.
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Today is my very first Open Trackback Alliance Party - Around the Blogosphere.
Essentially what you want to do is trackback a post of yours to this post and then ping using the trackback below. Your post can be interesting, funny, poingant or even just plain odd. Right, left, gay, straight, Christian, nonChristian, male, female, alien, human - it doesn't matter, I don't discriminate against much except red Sox fans ;)
Sexy is fine, but outright pornographic material, hatred or affiliate spam is about all I can think that would be removed.
I just installed the inline trackback thing yesterday, so if it ends up looking screwy I will fix it up ASAP, don't panic. I am half-geek, it just takes me time sometimes and I will be out most of the day today.
If all else fails, leave a comment and I will be sure you get your proper linkage.
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