Comments | lunar_amaranth: Abortion vs. Family Planning

lunar_amaranth

Abortion vs. Family Planning

Feb 05, 2008 17:08

We have a pair of rabbit ears sitting on top of our TV, which provide us with a few stations. We basically get the news, PBS, a couple of Spanish stations, a couple of Christian stations, and some odds and ends. PBS is having an audio mix-up of some kind right now, so I was flipping around looking for something else. I happened across a fellow on ( Read more... )

Comments 3

blastus February 6 2008, 01:04:50 UTC

In my own experience as a Christian, I realized over the past year that I didn't have any clear thoughts on pre-conceptual birth control. (Is that a legitimate conjugation of 'conception'?) From what I have seen and heard, Christians do keep a relatively clean separation between these methods and abortion, but the discussions seem to be in vastly different contexts.

The objections raised by evangelicals to abortion often are universal in terms of age, or economic or marital status. By contrast, when preventative birth control is discussed, it is usually in the context of teenagers. "Giving them condoms," we say, "is tantamount to saying that 'boys will be boys,' and that is the wrong message to send." I will not, for the moment, get into my own views on the subject because they are in flux. The short answer to your first question is that if he is restricting discussion to unmarried teenagers, then I would suppose that he takes a dim view of all means of preventing or ending a pregnancy or STD, because they shouldn't be having ( ... )

blastus February 6 2008, 01:08:15 UTC

Meh. There's no "focus on this moratorium" in regards to abstinence. It is "emphasis on the right message." No matter how much I proofread...

lunar_amaranth February 6 2008, 03:03:36 UTC

That is interesting. I have no idea what audience this guy was targeting, because of course I flipped on the channel in the middle of the talk. If he was talking about teenagers, I could understand why he might object to any and all "family planning" along with abortion. Already I'm in such married-mommy-grown-up mode that I forget what it was like to be a teenager.

However, I still take issue with his equating family planning and abortion. They just aren't the same thing at all, in my view.

Maybe marital birth control is like turning 21 and realizing that you are legally old enough to drink...but then realizing that you really don't want to. Woo-hoo, we're married, we can have sex and children now and nobody can say anything! Wait...do we want children right now? Hmm...how long does the pill take to kick in...?

It's something married people would do well to discuss, unless they don't mind a little surprise nine months after their wedding night. If not...well, make sure you have insurance. :P