I'm Catholic, recently returned to the faith of my youth. I hope you'll hear me out on abortion. [View all]

Last edited Mon Apr 22, 2024, 06:31 PM - Edit history (2)

I'd also like to point out why neither Catholics nor Christianity is a monolith about abortion, and neither are the 48% of Democrats who are Christian. Apologies if the following seems obvious or repetitious.

First,
the majority of Catholics are pro-choice like the secular population. Because abortion is not biblical. That's explainable in its history -- why the church founded by the apostle Peter (as the historical Jesus made him the "rock on which I will build my church" ) and all the popes who succeeded him over 15 centuries, never called abortion murder until 1588 (Pope Sixtus). After that decree was deleted by the next pope (Urban VII) three years later, it wasn't again decreed murder for another 300 years.

Overall, across 266 popes in 1,991 years -- "infallible on matters of faith and morals" -- only 12 held abortion to be murder. Because 254 popes knew what the Word of God said.

Re Catholics


Second,
more Christian denominations are biblically pro-choice, whereas the Catholic Church's doctrine is not biblically based.



Why is Christianity not a monolith about abortion?
Again, because abortion is not biblical. Why? Because not a single version of the Christian Bible (Old & New Testament) uses the word abortion, or even refers to abortion as sin. It lists a LOT of sins, but abortion isn't one of them.

It is unreasonable to think that 40+ authors of the Bible (declared by church fathers as inspired by God) who knew about abortion (of course they did) thought that abortion was a grievous and unforgivable sin -- and somehow they just simply forgot to include that sin for a thousand years before Jesus? who came to fulfill all the law and the prophets? or that the NT writers forgot to quote Jesus about it after his death? Yes, it's unreasonable.

For all of the writers' quotes of Jesus’s references to hell, if he had wanted to condemn abortion, he would have. And Jesus told the apostles that the Holy Spirit would help them ( NT writers ) remember everything he said and did. But they didn't even allude to anything about abortion. Jesus never once said when life begins. Not once.

Nor did any of New Testament writers themselves -- Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Paul, Peter, James -- declare when life begins. Only twice does the Old Testament say when life begins: once when God breathed life and soul into Adam & Eve, and next, when an unborn takes its first breath, then it gets a soul.
First breath is when life begins. That's it. That's what's in all versions of the Christian Bible. It was Hebrew law.

Third,
and bottom line, abortion is a made up sin. As shown above, six Christian denominations say that the Bible, their God's Word, has the final word, so they're pro-choice in that abortions are between women and God.
The other six denominations are anti-abortion per papal decree or church-based doctrine.

After years of reading the Bible, years of atheist research about abortion, it's my considered opinion that anti-abortion Christians -- and SCOTUS for that matter -- base their claims on historical patriarchal claims about women that Jesus never endorsed in word or deed. Patriarchy was pre-historical. Patriarchy existed across continents and civilizations before Moses. Nevertheless, pastors do endorse a thing called "biblical patriarchy."
But Jesus did not. He fulfilled the law and the prophets, then brought a new convenant for all humans.

The Dobbs legal decision was brought by patriarchal power worshippers -- the ADF legal group and a SCOTUS majority -- who believe their God and scripture are on their legal side.
But they are wrong. At the church/state level, their very Word of God-inspired book never mentions abortion, nevermind that it's a sin. Their Jesus acted toward women as spiritual equals to men. At the state level, 1st, 7th, 9th, 13th and 14th Amendment rights get stripped from child bearing women in all red patriarchal states.

Justice Sonya Sotomayor recently said to the other SC justices:
"How is your ruling anything but a religious view?"
It was a wrong religious view. It was a patriarchal view.

Thanks for reading this far. I'm just a Christian Democrat trying to live up to Jesus's 1st Great Commandment's "Love God ...with your whole mind..." part.

Thanks for reading.