Oh brother, I know I’m going to get barbecued here for this diary. But it needs to be said, I think. I always find it amazing that fundamentalists never sit down and follow their dogmas and logic to their inescapable conclusions. All I’m trying to do here is just that.
To do so, let’s look at some things from a strictly “Christian Fundamentalist” perspective. Following are some beliefs shared by people who classify themselves as evangelicals and are actively “pro-life”, or, to be clear, people who vehemently oppose abortion.
● The vast majority of humans who make it to adulthood, and who thus are accountable to the Almighty for their actions on Earth, will never make it to Heaven. To put it simply, there are always many more sinners on earth than saints. The most generous ratio I’ve ever seen is 4 sinners for every saint.
● Those souls who do not live a righteous life (setting aside for a moment squabbles about what exactly such a thing constitutes) are condemned, after death, to Hell. These are the folks who listened to Satan’s call rather than God’s.
● Those humans who perish in a state of innocence, for example very young children who don’t know right from wrong, are immediately granted access to Heaven if they happen to die at that age, for whatever reason. Some sects split hairs on this issue, asserting that if an innocent soul is unbaptized then it will not go to Heaven upon death but instead find itself in Limbo. (Limbo is always poorly defined, but Dante assumed, in his “Purgatorio”, that Limbo was just like paradise [i.e. no punishment or suffering] except it was always night. This drawback was offset by the fact that if you went there you would be in exceptional company, since all the righteous people who died prior to Christ’s coming to Earth would be there too. Who cares if the Sun isn’t shining as long as you can have Aristotle and Moses over for dinner?)
● Anti-abortion evangelicals believe that a human life is formed at the moment of conception, and thus a fertilized human embryo instantly acquires all the attributes of “soulhood” as Christianity defines it.
● Therefore if any fertilized human egg, gamete, zygote or fetus is not carried to term, whether through miscarriage or abortion, being innocent its soul is eligible for immediate entry into Heaven (or Limbo, depending on your sect; see above).
● So all the abortions that have taken place in America since the Roe vs Wade decision in 1973 (quite a lot—best estimate is around 55 million) have produced a steady stream of unblemished “souls” that went straight to Heaven and avoided the punishments of Hell, because they were never subjected to Satan’s temptations. This seems to be something that would make the Almighty happy.
● But had those 55 million people been born instead, and thus subjected to all the temptations this sorry world has to offer, most would have led lives that would not be rewarded with Paradise. (See first point above.) Of that number some forty-plus million (at least—probably more) would have ended up in the fires of hell, and would not be sitting today peacefully in Heaven. If there is a God, does anyone really think he would be happy with that?
● So the person who ardently crusades for banning abortion, who has succeeded in closing abortion clinics down, or frightened a woman into not having one, or who even murdered doctors who perform abortions—those people, by the irrefutable calculus above, seems to be doing the work of Satan by delivering such multitudes to him for torture.
Here’s a couple quotes from the Bible that help illustrate the idea that the ways of the Almighty are mysterious and unknowable:
“For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.” –Isaiah 55:9
“As thou knowest not what is the way of the spirit, nor how the bones do grow in the womb of her that is with child: even so thou knowest not the works of God who maketh all.” –Ecclesiastes 11:5
I'm pro-choice myself, but am perfectly comfortable with the fact that some people oppose and would never have an abortion, but I don't agree that their personal choice and decisions in this matter should acquire the force of law.