Republicans, Christianity, Marriage, and Abortion

What about the souls of the unborn?

If the New Testament is correct, it would be more compassionate to give humans to Yahweh before they are born, rather then let them grow up and possibly get sent to hell

In the past few months, because of the overruling of Roe vs Wade and the upcoming presidential primaries, abortion and marriage have become a more prominent topic of cultural and political discussion.  Given that 63% of Americans identify as Christian, its not surprising that a lot of the arguments made in relationship to abortion and marriage attempt to appeal to Christian tradition or ethics.  While no doubt some Christian Democrats hold views on abortion and marriage in relationship to Christianity, I have more often observed Christian Republicans who support their arguments with Christianity as an authority.  In fact, during the first recent primary Republican debate, candidates suggested their views about abortion were grounded in their Christianity. Pence, for example, preached:

¹ ”Well, look, I’m not new to this cause. After I gave my life to Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior, I opened up the book and I read, “Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you and see, I set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life.” And I knew from that moment on the cause of life had to be my cause. And I’ve been a champion for life in the Congress, a champion for life as Governor and as Vice President.

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Among the most popular religions, Christianity is unique in that the earliest Christians were apocalypticists.  Many Christians today still hold apocalyptic views, as you will hear Christians talk about the end-times, but there is a big difference between typical Christians today when they talk about the end-times and the Christians of 50 AD.  Paul, for example, arguably the primary creator of Christianity, in his letter to the Corinthians, expressed a belief so strong that the end-times was near to him that he thought getting married, and thus also having babies, was pointless. 

1 Corinthians 7:7-8 (RSV): “I wish that all were as I myself am. But each has his own special gift from God, one of one kind and one of another. To the unmarried and the widows I say that it is well for them to remain single as I do. But if they cannot exercise self-control, they should marry. For it is better to marry than to be aflame with passion.”

1 Corinthians 7:25-28 (RSV): “Now concerning the unmarried, I have no command of the Lord, but I give my opinion as one who by the Lord's mercy is trustworthy. I think that in view of the present distress it is well for a person to remain as he is. Are you bound to a wife? Do not seek to be free. Are you free from a wife? Do not seek marriage. But if you marry, you do not sin, and if a girl marries she does not sin. Yet those who marry will have worldly troubles, and I would spare you that."

Why would someone want to have children when the end of the world was about to arrive, like-any-hour? That would be just another worldly trouble.  He praised celibacy and being unwed.  Its in his letters.  The only reason he suggested that his followers should get married is because of the possibility they would have sex, and he thought sex was sinful for unmarried people. Under Paul’s teachings, the earliest Christians believed that the apocalypse was to occur within their own lifetime, just as Jesus' says in Matthew:

Matthew 16:27-28 (RSV): "For the Son of man is to come with his angels in the glory of his Father, and then he will repay every man for what he has done. Truly, I say to you, there are some standing here who will not taste death before they see the Son of man coming in his kingdom."

It was only until after ancient Christians began to doubt that the end-times was right around the corner and they started thinking that Yahweh had a different conception of time where an hour was a century, or now was later, and somehow when Jesus spoke of “people standing here” he meant some unknown time in the distant future, did they begin to embrace marriage as a practice that would ensure the propagation of their religion. We can see this in some of the forged letters of Paul, after a church hierarchy had been well established — the so-called “pastoral letters”. The holy life for women became to be submissive to men and give birth:

1 Timothy 2:12 (RSV): “I permit no woman to teach or to have authority over men; she is to keep silent. For Adam was formed first, then Eve;  and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor.  Yet woman will be saved through bearing children, if she continues in faith and love and holiness, with modesty.”

And while in the earliest letters by Paul, remarriage was discouraged because of “worldly troubles”, by the time some Christian(s) forged 1 Timothy, remarriage was now being encouraged to widows to have children so that it will look good for the Church:

1 Timothy 5: 13 (RSV): “Besides, they get into the habit of being idle and going about from house to house. And not only do they become idlers, but also busybodies who talk nonsense, saying things they ought not to.  So I counsel younger widows to marry, to have children, to manage their homes and to give the enemy no opportunity for slander. Some have in fact already turned away to follow Satan.”

Thus, given that the earliest Christians viewed marriage simply as a tool to avoid what they thought was sexual sin, modern Christians who view marriage as something that should be understood and codified as a practice for producing and raising children are in murky scriptural grounds. Sure, they can accept the opinion of the forged letters of Paul, but there is no consistent view in the New Testament about the meaning of the institution of marriage as a baby factory.

Furthermore, I have not come across any opponents of gay marriage who, while holding views that marriage is about having babies, also support the notion that infertile young heterosexual couples or elderly couples should lose their right to marriage; even though they, after all, are just as incapable of having babies.  Also, plenty of heterosexual couples choose to not have children simply out of a disinterest in having them and I haven’t come across any arguments for restricting these fertile heterosexual couples from marriage unless they intend to give birth to children and raise them.  To be fair, and logically consistent, this is what people who want to restrict gay marriage on the notion that marriage is about having and raising children would have to support: no marriage for the infertile; no marriage for couples without children or who do not have the intent to have them.  To satisfy these requirements, before people become married they should have to get engaged, and during their engagement, the woman must get pregnant.  Then they can get married.  Want to get married?  Show your ultrasound papers. 

So what of abortion?  The preciousness of human life! And a human life, many modern Christians assert, begins at conception (or even before conception?) as Pence apparently did.  Like Pence, Christians often appeal to the Christian bible as the foundation of their attitudes toward abortion.  

The biblical appeal -- I’m very perplexed.   So, the notion is that Yahweh cares so much about human life, that no matter the condition of what led to the creation of the zygote, that zygote is of absolute importance.   Yet, we have story after story in the bible of Yahweh decimating human life.  Zygotes included.   

It begins at Genesis -- when Yahweh kicks his two human “children” out of Eden for violating a moral law they could not have understood yet since they hadn't eaten from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.  And after Yahweh kicks his children out, he actually creates a more dislikable world.  And he was worried that his human children, after learning good and evil, would also eat from the “tree of life” and live forever.   And then it says he introduced all sorts of horrible things into the world -- .  multiplied pain in the woman’s childbirth for example:

Genesis 3:16 (RSV): “To the woman he said,
’I will greatly multiply your pain in childbearing;
    in pain you shall bring forth children’”

If it wasn’t for Yahweh’s wrath, according to Paul, there would be no miscarriages since before Adam sinned, death did not exist — mark that; death allegedly did not exist before Yahweh created it as punishment — which means no miscarriages. There would be no miscarriages if Yahweh didn’t think it was right according to Paul.

Romans 5:12-19 (RSV): “Therefore as sin came into the world through one man and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all men sinned”  

Following the logic of Paul — there have been trillions of miscarriages and they could only happen because Yahweh made it possible, if Yahweh is responsible for the biological nature of humans and Yahweh punished his morally ignorant children with death. And those miscarriages are all aborted humans, if we assume the “human life starts at conception” view.

It continues.  Eventually he floods the whole world and basically kills off most of the human species.  And Christians want us to think he cares about zygotes?  Later on, when he wants his gang of bandits to acquire more land, he supposedly commands Moses, the leader, to murder every Midianite man and boy and woman who has slept with a man, and enslave all the girls and women who have not.  That means he commanded Moses to murder pregnant women.  Women, not just with zygotes, but with 8 month old babies preparing to leave their mothers' wombs.

Numbers 31:17-18 Now therefore, kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman who has known man by lying with him. But all the young girls who have not known man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves.

But Yahweh loves every zygote? According to the bible, Yahweh is not at all concerned about “life” in general. There is no way one could describe Yahweh as simply “pro-life”. He demonstrates a greedy passion for inflicting death no less than creating life. One may as well call Voldemort “pro-life” because he seeks to be immortal.  

What do Christians think will happen to aborted zygotes, fetuses, embryos, or babies?  Isn't there, like heaven, or something?   From what I can gather from the bible, the authors claim people who worship Jesus go to heaven, and people who don't worship Jesus either get tortured and then exterminated or get tortured forever.

Mark 9:42-49 (NIV)If anyone causes one of these little ones—those who believe in me—to stumble, it would be better for them if a large millstone were hung around their neck and they were thrown into the sea. If your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life maimed than with two hands to go into hell, where the fire never goes out. And if your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life crippled than to have two feet and be thrown into hell. And if your eye causes you to stumble, pluck it out. It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into hell, where the worms that eat them do not die, and the fire is not quenched.

So -- do these zygotes get... exterminated? Develop consciousness in hell and get tortured?  That sounds horrifying.  What about, they go to heaven?  If they go to heaven, why would we want to stop the abortion?  According to the bible there is a chance that if they are born, they will end up not worshiping Jesus and then get tortured or exterminated.  If a Christian thinks the former -- that aborted babies get exterminated or tortured -- why are they worshipping an alleged god who would allow or facilitate that (in addition of course to the question of why are they worshipping a god who allegedly commanded the murder and enslavement of innocent people)?  If it is the latter, if babies go to heaven, why are they trying to stop babies from a guaranteed trip to heaven?  This is a fallen world according to Genesis, why, if babies go to heaven, would Christians want to bring babies into a fallen world? The decision matrix for Christian theology is thus: abort a baby → baby goes to heaven; allow a baby to be born → baby maybe goes to heaven, maybe hell. Their opposition to abortion cannot be driven by compassion for the babies’ eternal souls. If zygotes and babies are guaranteed to go to heaven, it would be in the best interest of babies to abort them. The only reason a Pauline Christian can be against abortion is because of a concern for their own soul, which is not surprising given the emphasis Christianity places on personal reward for obeying Yahweh and punishment for disobeying Yahweh.

Matthew 5:11-12(RSV): “Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.”

Personally, I think legally women should have *unrestricted* rights to abortion for about a month -- after which the possibility of the fetus, aka, baby, having the capacity to experience pain and pleasure is significant enough to have moral weight and deserves compassion.  After that, it becomes complicated.  I consider positions at both extremes of the debate to be bonkers.  Unrestricted right to abortion until birth, for example -- I think that is wrong. Complete restriction of the right to abortion from conception -- also, wrong. Somehow, regardless of how unpopular those two extremes are, they manage to suck up an enormous amount of political space. 

However, I am still alarmed to see that 34% think that abortion should be legal under “any circumstance.” That is almost 3 times as many people who think it should be illegal under any circumstance. Who are these people who think that it should be legal for a doctor to kill a healthy baby from a healthy mother a day before it would otherwise come into the world? Are they okay with infanticide as well? Do they think that insurance should cover a doctor killing a baby the day it is born? What’s going on with that 34%? We know that the 13% are mostly Christians who have strange extrabiblical views about “life” — who are the 34%? I’d wager they are the “Woke”. The same folks who think that trans women are women, are more likely to think a trans man can kill her twins the day before she delivers them.

I like to think at least a fragment of that 34%, if they were to be told the logical possibilities of their stance, would see the problem with their absolutism with regard to abortion. They would in fact affirm that it should not be legal for a doctor to kill a healthy baby from a healthy mother a day before she delivers. I have the same hope for the 13%. Still, I do think that a minority of people may have a fundamental problem with moral reasoning in color—they cannot see anything but black and white; they cannot think in nuance; and they are stuck, perhaps by their nature, to be *obedient* to adhering to dogmatic authority. Perhaps their mind can change, but only if a new authority imprints upon them like a hen onto her ducklings. I suspect many of the people on the extremes are people who are most motivated by conformity, and when coming to their moral judgements, they do not deliberate on context or circumstance, they go to “the book” like Pence, or their master hen, and get their answer. Unfortunately, the structure of our electoral system, albeit not established deliberately for this end, contributes to such mindless factions having a disproportionate affect on political debates and outcomes. But it is something we can change.

1. The verse Pence quoted actually does not exist in the Christian bible, aka “the Book.” It is actually a confabulation of 2 different passages. Jeremiah 1:5 and Deuteronomy 30:19. And neither passage, or their context, is addressing abortion. You are welcome to read them and argue otherwise.