She doesn't just smell the smoke; under her closed bedroom door, she can see the flames throwing orange light on the wall. She can hear the crackling. And the 2-month-old infant sleeps in the cradle next to her.
First instinct tells her to crawl toward the window, even though she knows it sticks shut. She grabs a book and tries to smash the glass, but her lungs are burning. She can't find the strength, and the smoke clouds her mind as much as the room. Panic.
What do I do about my baby?
Frantically, she considers her options, though she knows only minutes remain--maybe only seconds. Both of them will die if she doesn't figure out something. The flames are consuming the door now; the paint on the wall peels. Even if firemen arrived, how could they save both mother and child at this point? And even if they did....
Everything has changed already! I don't have the money to put our life back together after this. What about our home? What if one or both of us is severely burned tonight? Can I care for a child with a disability? Who will care for me? I couldn't stand watching my child burn to death. But what kind of life would it be now? And what are my alternatives?
And, that's why she did it. She took its life. In the name of compassion, a frantic, desperate woman intentionally threw her baby into the flames.
She took its life before it could cause perceived damage to her own...
-----
I don't know if this precise story ever took place, but it's not a fictional tale.
This scenario parallels a popular excuse made by those who claim abortion is necessary for disadvantaged or abused women. "What if she's just a teenager?" they ask. "What if she was raped by her father?" They wipe a tear from their eye.
Sounds to me like her house is on fire.
"She can't afford a baby!" "Her life is in danger!" "Nobody WANTS an abortion. It's a traumatic decision, but it's a last resort!"
Unacceptable counterpoints include: Everything happens for a reason. There are other ways to handle the emergency. Even tragedy can produce beauty. And, most importantly, even in sad circumstances, taking an innocent life is murder.
No. Instead, when a woman asks "What do I do about my baby?" both the purely deranged and the simply misguided chant:
"Choose to kill it before it kills you."
Unless you've been raped or lived in desperate poverty, and while your personal opinion is entirely your right and your own, it is impossible for you to know what it is like to be someone else. The proof lives in the fact that you think you can compare every situation in which a woman would consider abortion to a house fire. You know so little of what other people live that you have to compare it to something you can imagine. How can you possibly judge what you can't even discuss in literal terms?
ReplyDeleteI don't mean to offend you; I assume by posting something like this on the internet and having a comments section, you are inviting the thoughts of others.
By all means, I understand not choosing an abortion. (I'm not sure if I could.) But I know women who took their decision very seriously, and lived very difficult lives. I wonder how much you know of their reality if you write about abortion in these terms.
How aware are you of the experiences of rape and desperate poverty if you can't talk about them in literal terms? How can you judge the position of someone else if your best attempt to relate is through a generic analogy that lumps all situations together? And if you can't relate, then how can you actually judge for someone else what the right decision is? How do you know that you are interpreting the Bible the way God wants you to? What if you (as a flawed human being) are wrong?
ReplyDelete(PS, it is also NOT non-fiction unless it is an account of an actual event. You guessing what someone felt/experienced and then calling it non-fiction is incredibly arrogant behavior. I don't know you, so I won't generalize about what kind of person you are, but your statements are outrageously presumptuous.)
I don't know if I could get an abortion myself, and I certainly respect that you would never want to. But don't pretend to know a person you don't. A woman who has an abortion because she's desperately poor is not afraid her baby will kill her, she's afraid the life she provides for the baby will be full of the same abuse and suffering she has experienced. You don't live in poverty and fear, so you probably don't understand that. That's ok, but don't pretend to.
Either that, or the woman does not define life the same way you do. And trust me, no woman who does not believe her fetus is alive thinks it will kill her. She just does not define the fetus in the same way you do. There is plenty of logic in her argument as well.
And really, if you thought you were going to die in order to save your unborn child, that would be a pretty difficult concept to face. Maybe you are very sure how you would react. Maybe you would choose to sacrifice your life. But have you actually faced that decision? Do you really have any idea what it would be like?
First of all, thank you for reading. And I appreciate your many, valid questions, though I'm not really sure where to start. I guess I'll take the last paragraph first and see where it goes from there...
ReplyDeleteAsking what I would do in the case of an unplanned pregnancy and saying I can't judge unless I've experienced it is assuming that truth is relative. (What's right/wrong isn't the same for you as it is for me.) However, we all believe, to some extent, that right/wrong, good/bad exist, though we've experienced very little in the grand scheme of things. It would be like me saying, "How can you say it's wrong for a 70-year-old to have sex with a 10-year-old? You don't know what he was thinking. Maybe they were in love." The point is, we both agree there are certain truths--like the fact that children are not mature enough to make sexual decisions, it very well could scar them for life, and any old man who abuses children is a pervert. Even if we have to use an extreme examples like that one, you and I can find something we agree is DEFINITELY wrong.
So, I assumed, when writing this story, that most readers would think throwing a 2-month old into an open flame was definitely wrong. And, I used this analogy in order to ask, "where is the line, and why? Why is it acceptable to kill the unborn, but not the two-month old?" I agree that rape, incest, poverty--all of those--are traumatic, emergency situations, kind of like a house fire. But whether I've never experienced them is invalid. And I will not accept that abortions are "necessary" any more than I would say it may be "necessary" for a mother to burn an older child alive, if the situation were desperate. That's inconsistent.
Now, the rest of your questions would require a pretty long look at my worldview--why I believe that truth is absolute, unchanging, and universal for all people. And I wouldn't want to start preaching. I'm not sure how far down this path you were looking to go, but I'd hate to talk your ear off. I mean, I could recommend reading (No Doubt About It by Corduan, or C.S. Lewis' Mere Christianity, for example). But, ideally, you and I could continue to discuss various topics over time rather than trying to "prove" our entire belief system all at once... With that in mind, I hope you'll keep reading AND commenting.
Thanks again for asking what I interpreted to be honest, valid questions. If there is such a thing as truth, we need to ask questions to find it. And I really appreciate yours.
~Amanda~
P.S. Some of my older posts outline my thoughts on this subject further. Check out "Risen From Apes" or "Let Me Tell You a Story...Things I Got From My Mom." Also, I found a blog awhile ago which encouraged me because of its respectful, academic debate about philosophical and moral issues. People weren't calling names and such--just asking questions. atheiststalk.blogspot.com (The comments sections are the best, so check it out if you're interested.)
We can certainly judge from an outside perspective if something is wrong/right. (Like rape.) But you are judging from the perspective of the woman herself in your story. I'm just pointing out that you are writing a story from a perspective that you don't really know. Maybe you know what you would do in the case of an unplanned pregnancy, but you don't really know what you would think or feel. You don't know how the experience would change you, either.
ReplyDeleteThere's also a difference between who is impacted in a rape (the child you mention) and who is impacted in abortion (an unborn fetus). What if we make the sexual abuse situation more victimless. What if there is a pervert who gets off on non-pornographic images of children? (This is my best attempt to parallel the "How alive is a fetus?" question.) Maybe we still judge that the pervert is perverted, but conclude that it's none of our business what he does with his own body. But this is a very imperfect analogy that I don't want to keep using because like I said before, if we can't talk about the issue itself, then I don't think we're talking about much of anything. You were talking about emotional manipulation in your other blog post I read, and I think this is a great example of that. Rape to sexual abuse are not the same thing. Just like how throwing a fully sentient child into a fire is not the same as abortion either. Maybe you feel like they are, but practically speaking the actual acts are not the same. One is much more developed and sentient than the other. The value you put on the fetus is what, in your eyes, makes the two comparable. Others do not place the same value on a fetus. I think that's the ultimate question.
I agree that we have very different worldviews, which limits conversation to a large extent. But I do think that we can separate the issue you're discussing (abortion) from the way you're discussing it (your story). I don't think you realize how inflammatory it is to write from a perspective you don't know. You will offend A LOT of people approaching it that way, and I don't think that is your intention. So I wanted to point it out.
Sorry, typo: Rape and abortion are not the same thing. (Paragraph 3, toward the bottom.)
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure why your reply isn't showing up here (at least not the first one you wrote). But I get email notifications when somebody responds to a post, so I was able to hear your thoughts.
ReplyDelete(Maybe the length of our paragraphs is freaking out Blogger or something? I'm not sure...)
Anyway, as far as offending others, you're right. It's not my first intention to do so. However, I DO want to get people's attention and encourage them to think about issues. Most people have already decided what they believe and aren't even willing to listen to discussion about it anymore, which leads to lots of fighting but very little progress. Sometimes the best way to open a topic and generate discussion is with a little controversy. SO, I would say to anyone offended: I'm sorry if my words make you feel badly about yourself or tempt you to shut me out altogether. It's not my intention to judge your value as a person or degrade you. The message of hope at the END of my passionate rants would be that I believe peace and forgiveness are available for all people (even those who intentionally throw their "fully sentient" babies into a literal fire). So, please don't take things personally even if something I say applies to you. I just want to start a discussion. (And, as a side note, I like to offend myself whenever possible, too. It's the uncomfortable situations that give us opportunities to change for the better.)
The rest of your reply spoke about different viewpoints and how one person may see unborn life differently. You say my analogy compares apples to oranges, I think. (Is that right?) However, I think you're still using a relativity argument, claiming that another person may define life differently than me, and that's okay.
But, I suggest the question of "what does it mean to be alive" is kind of a big deal--too big for individual decisions. Since I believe there is a God, I respect what that God says about life--that babies in the womb are alive. But, even someone who doesn't believe in God must answer the question. What is life and when does it begin, then? Are people in the ICU alive, even though they're kept breathing by machines? Are vibrant teens "more alive" than their aging grandparents? Are healthy children more deserving of life than their disabled peers? (I work with children in special needs, as you may have read. It always makes me wonder, "How does someone who doesn't believe in God justify keeping these kids around? Some of them are totally helpless, they drain their parents financially and emotionally, they'll never be able to get jobs. So, if evolution brought us here through natural selection, why are we letting these kids LIVE? Nature would have killed them...Or, are they really alive now anyway?")
Two opposite views cannot both be true (though they both could be wrong). Either way, we can't have one truth for you and another for me. So, I've shared why I believe babies ARE comparable in and out of the womb. Where does another person get their authority on the subject?
[Haha, I am very wordy, I'm not surprised it overwhelmed Blogger a little.]
ReplyDeleteOffending people because you disagree is one thing. Offending people because you are claiming to know a perspective, a life experience, that you don't is another. It's relativity, but not relativity of morality. It's relativity of lived experience. What if I pretended that I worked with disabled children, but I didn't. What if I made lots of conclusions about what that's like. What if I said it was really easy and anyone who said otherwise is just a lazy moron (I don't believe this AT ALL, it's just an example). I think you'd be understandably annoyed, and not because I was talking about disabled kids, but because I was pretending to know your life when I don't. It might get people to argue with you, but not because they want to discuss the issue. I don't think it's going to open up channels for dialogue.
To your point/question about authority: Well, precisely.
Your insinuation (arm-in-arm with the whole "selfishness into service" name/theme) is that you're listening to "God" and not yourself, so somehow your argument is more "selfless" and has higher ground. I disagree, though I see where you're coming from.
[Preface: I'm going to pretend here that I agree with you that the Bible is God's word. I don't believe that, but as we've discussed, sometimes there is a need to put a limit on debate so it can go somewhere.]
If we are limited (as humans) in our knowledge of the world, then how can you claim that two conflicting concepts cannot be true at once? Maybe God is a lot smarter than us (seems highly likely, since it's God we're talking about), and it turns out multiple perspectives can be true. And then there's the classic issue with the Bible, which is that you and I (not God) are the ones interpreting the Bible. In the end, it will always come back to you (or me). We can try to be conscientious, but in the end we are always responsible for our beliefs. Because even if we hope/think it's what God thinks, we cannot know that. And honestly, it's so unlikely that we (as flawed humans) don't project what we want to see when we read the Bible or pray.
So even if there is a Moral Right (objective, just one, etc) I have no idea how we think that we can ever know (as humans) what it is. I think we see moral right/wrong in how we impact others. It's tricky. I don't think there's an easy answer to figuring out right and wrong because our impact on the world is so complex. There are so many factors. So I relate to you because you say you struggle, and I struggle too.
Where is your post?! I promise, I'm not sensoring you by deleting them or anything. Is there some function which hides or makes private certain comments that I need to fix? I just can't figure out why I'm getting emails with your responses, but they aren't showing up here!
ReplyDeleteI'm going to copy and paste what I got from you and THEN reply. :)
YESTERDAY, ANONYMOUS WROTE THE FOLLOWING, AND I RECEIVED IT IN AN EMAIL, THOUGH IT DIDN'T POST TO THIS SITE. IF ANYONE CAN TELL ME WHY, I'LL GET IT FIXED:
ReplyDelete"[Haha, I am very wordy, I'm not surprised it overwhelmed Blogger a little.]
Offending people because you disagree is one thing. Offending people because you are claiming to know a perspective, a life experience, that you don't is another. It's relativity, but not relativity of morality. It's relativity of lived experience. What if I pretended that I worked with disabled children, but I didn't. What if I made lots of conclusions about what that's like. What if I said it was really easy and anyone who said otherwise is just a lazy moron (I don't believe this AT ALL, it's just an example). I think you'd be understandably annoyed, and not because I was talking about disabled kids, but because I was pretending to know your life when I don't. It might get people to argue with you, but not because they want to discuss the issue. I don't think it's going to open up channels for dialogue.
To your point/question about authority: Well, precisely.
Your insinuation (arm-in-arm with the whole "selfishness into service" name/theme) is that you're listening to "God" and not yourself, so somehow your argument is more "selfless" and has higher ground. I disagree, though I see where you're coming from.
[Preface: I'm going to pretend here that I agree with you that the Bible is God's word. I don't believe that, but as we've discussed, sometimes there is a need to put a limit on debate so it can go somewhere.]
If we are limited (as humans) in our knowledge of the world, then how can you claim that two conflicting concepts cannot be true at once? Maybe God is a lot smarter than us (seems highly likely, since it's God we're talking about), and it turns out multiple perspectives can be true. And then there's the classic issue with the Bible, which is that you and I (not God) are the ones interpreting the Bible. In the end, it will always come back to you (or me). We can try to be conscientious, but in the end we are always responsible for our beliefs. Because even if we hope/think it's what God thinks, we cannot know that. And honestly, it's so unlikely that we (as flawed humans) don't project what we want to see when we read the Bible or pray.
So even if there is a Moral Right (objective, just one, etc) I have no idea how we think that we can ever know (as humans) what it is. I think we see moral right/wrong in how we impact others. It's tricky. I don't think there's an easy answer to figuring out right and wrong because our impact on the world is so complex. There are so many factors. So I relate to you because you say you struggle, and I struggle too."
I have to say, your references to philosophy are pretty exciting! ("How can we know two conflicting arguments are not both true? How can flawed humans make definite statements about anything?" etc.) These are seriously important issues, and I'm glad you mentioned them. It's frustrating for me that some people amble through life never asking "why" or "how." But those who DO consider the deeper meaning of things are set to find answers...
ReplyDeleteSince you are raising philosophical questions, I recommend even more highly that you pick up some reading by C.S. Lewis or tackle the book, No Doubt About It by Winfried Corduan. Both of these men are Christians, yet not the kind of say "just believe God did it and that's all." I've never read anyone who addresses questions more honestly and fairly than these two. C.S. Lewis had been an Atheist, as a matter of fact. But he LOVED to read and learn, and this eventually lead him to answers he never expected.
As for Corduan, he writes, "We should never fear investigating the truth. Could it be we are afraid that, if we look too hard, we might discover that what we have accepted to be true by faith turns out to be false?" That's a slap to some Christians, who have no idea why they believe what they believe--and they think they should be able to tell others "JUST AGREE WITH ME!" Corduan says we need to be more informed than that. In another chapter, he says, "Surely, we do not want people to commit their lives to something they honestly believe is not the truth. Rather we should be able to show people why Christianity is true." SO, based on the idea that doubts and curiosity ultimately lead people to find answers--a GOOD thing--he doesn't shy away from the really tough questions. Can we actually know anything? Can we prove whether or not there is a God? Why is there pain/suffering in this world?....and lots of others. He references science, math, philosophy, history, and many other disciplines to build logical arguments for his beliefs. And, best of all, he puts it in lay terms rather than claiming it's too difficult for "the rest of us" to understand.
Anyway, as with the other thread, this one has gone a little off topic, and I always get the feeling I'm bombarding people with information when I start down a new trail. I like talking about truth, God, politics, religion, morality, etc. But I don't want to drive people away with all my words! So, I hope you'll simply keep reading my posts and commenting in the future, so we can toss around ideas little by little.
Oh, and I'm very, very glad to know you're a fellow "struggler" like me. Ultimately, the main point of my little cyber corner is to share with people who find it just as difficult to "be good" as I do. I'm happy to include as many people on my own search for what's real and right as I can! :)
(Oh! Remember that blog I referenced the other day? Here's a post about "How to explain trees to babies" which evolved into a discussion about right/wrong and truth. There are 31 comments, so it takes awhile to wade through. But one of individuals makes the exact same point you do about how a finite, flawed person can understand "purpose." The discussion is really good.) http://atheiststalk.blogspot.com/2009/06/proving-trees-to-babies.html#comments
I've been meaning to read CS Lewis more intensely (read bits in college philosophy classes).
ReplyDeleteI just like discussion, but I agree it's getting off topic. We could go on forever.
And for what it's worth, I do believe in God, just not the Bible. (haha I won't go into all that, I just think it's relevant because maybe that's why we both seek some sort of truth.)
And interesting blog you posted! I'm enjoying reading it! :)