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Following up on my Rally for Life LTTE

By Scott Tibbs, January 10, 2014

   
Here are answers for some of the criticisms of my January 5, 2014 letter to the editor in the Herald-Times.

You are forcing your beliefs on others.

We force our beliefs on others all the time. That is the entire purpose of having a government - with environmental regulations, workplace safety laws, and laws against rape and theft. Unless you are an anarchist, you favor using the power of the state to force your beliefs on others.

Banning abortion enforces a particular religious code on others.

Again, we do that all the time. The Ten Commandments forbid murder and theft, and many other things (including environmental protections) are many times justified on the basis of moral beliefs. Many liberal Christians use God's commandment to care for the poor as a justification for compulsory charity enforced by the civil magistrate. None of that is unconstitutional in and of itself.

Using religious arguments will not convince anyone.

I used to believe arguments from Scripture were ineffective and that only secular arguments should be used - because I was clearly more intelligent and convincing than God. I am not. God's Word says it far better than humans can and it is silly for me to unilaterally disarm by not using my Sword.

What about Jesus' message of love and compassion?

First, the God of the Old and New Testaments are one and the same, so the prohibition against killing babies is as much a commandment of Jesus as it is a commandment of God the Father. Second, Jesus talks about judgment frequently in the Gospels. Third, love and compassion necessarily includes protecting the innocent from those who would oppress them - and there is no more obvious example of that than protecting the unborn from abortion.

Your argument is invalid unless you have personally adopted children.

The same thing could be said of people who oppose dog fighting but have not adopted a dog from the animal shelter - especially a breed commonly used in dog fighting. It is a silly and childish "argument." Abortion is either a violation of human rights or it is not. Whether someone has adopted a baby has no relevance to the logical merit of the argument.

"God aborts more babies than man ever thought about killing."

This "argument" is just plain childish. According to this "logic" we should decriminalize drive-by shootings, because God "kills" more people than have ever been killed by man. Cancer, AIDS, influenza, heart disease and old age are responsible for far more deaths than killing by man, after all. People making this "argument" do not even believe what they are saying, so I cannot respect them or their "argument."