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Is Abortion a Religious or Political Position?

Nakosis

Non-Binary Physicalist
Premium Member
It can be.
It's obviously a belief. Any belief can be a religion.

Ok, but legally. As per the link in the OP, this is not being accepted as a religious position to exempt one from getting the vaccination. Although it seems a fairly gray area.
 

Regiomontanus

Ματαιοδοξία ματαιοδοξιών! Όλα είναι ματαιοδοξία.
I note that you didn't fill an entire page with a rant about how war or genodice against fellow human beings are a crime condemned by Orthodox Christianity and the Orthodox churches. Perhaps that may be because no Orthodox Christian church has so roundly condemned war or ethnic cleansing as they have condemned abortion or homosexuality.

I am not going to defend those that have failed to live as Jesus instructed.
 

Sand Dancer

Crazy Cat Lady

Just heard over the radio that religious exemptions will be accepted for vaccination.

So one lady wrote that they used fetal stem cells in testing the Covid 19 vaccine. Therefore since she is against abortion because of her religious beliefs, she is requesting an exemption for being vaccinated.

Is anti-abortion a fundamental religious belief?

Boston College is facing a wave of Catholic parents and students “disgusted” by religious exemptions being denied over a link to aborted fetal tissue used to test the efficacy of coronavirus vaccines.
Boston College faces fury over vaccine exemptions denied over coronavirus abortion link

Political. There might be some religions that are pro-life, but the Christian right don't realize that their holy book and god are not at all pro-life.
 

Sand Dancer

Crazy Cat Lady
Do you think if this goes to court, it will or should be accepted as a religious exemption


I read the Pope is anti-abortion, which kind of surprised me. I thought the Catholic church had become more liberal but I guess not in this regard.

Like Protestantism, half of Catholics are on the left and half on the right. Just because they preach against abortion from the pulpit doesn't mean that the normal everyday folks don't have them, or use not birth control, etc.
 

Sand Dancer

Crazy Cat Lady
I think I'm an oddball here, so I'll weigh in. I won't stay in this discussion(I will unwatch after this reply) and won't respond to quotes(so don't bother) because the issue of abortion makes me sick and I don't want to discuss it. No sense ruining my day. However, I feel all we hear from regarding abortion is from one 'side' or the other. I want to give what I feel is a different perspective.

There is no clear cut 'yes or no' in my religion regarding abortion. Hinduism doesn't work like that. When I was a Pagan, I was still pro-life, even though most Pagans are not. There is no clear cut stance in Paganism, either, though most Pagans tend to be liberal, politically speaking.

Politically speaking, I think both parties are full of crap, and they don't influence my pro-life stance at all. I think those who are politically pro-life miss the mark; those who would see all babies born also have little interest in helping care for them, and often vote against spending on society's more needy. Politically speaking, I'd love to see all needy women and babies cared for so finances didn't have to come into play when a woman encounters an unexpected pregnancy. I'd also like to see no barriers receiving birth control, as this is going to be most important in stopping unexpected pregnancies.

I am pro-life because I believe in the sanctity of life. I have been pregnant three times, and I could interact with my babies, and they had personalities(enough so that I could tell a bit what they were like before birth). I know not all women feel this way, but women are not a uniform group. However, my reverence for life does not end after birth. I care for life after it is born, for the life of the mother and father as well. I would love to see health care available for all to sustain that life, and policy in place to sustain the life of the flora and fauna as well. For me, pro-life goes beyond abortion(though it includes it).

I can't say my views are either political or religious for me. Its just part of my heart.
That's beautiful.
 

Sand Dancer

Crazy Cat Lady
It's basically a moral issue. But unfortunately, we humans can't seem to keep our morals to ourselves. We think everyone else should abide by them. And in a democratic collective sense that is partly true: morality tends to be enforced by general consensus.

At the present time, however, we do not have a strong general consensus. We are somewhat evenly divided on the issue, which means no matter what we decide, a lot of people will disagree with it. All the more reason, I would think, to let people decide for themselves. But religion has weighed in on the issue, and religion is not democratic. Nor will it tolerate any affront to it's self-assumed righteousness. Such that those who base their own moral determination of their religion become absolutely intractable, and intolerant; willing to suppress and subvert democracy itself to get their moral determinations imposed on everyone else. And that, then, makes it a social and political issue, as well.

Not sure how evenly it's divided. More people want abortion legal with certain restrictions than those who want it illegal. Also few are those that want it legal 100%.
 

Kooky

Freedom from Sanity
It's a moral position.

Being pro-childbirth shouldn't be about being conservative or liberal. Nor should it be about being Christian or some other specific belief. It's about being a decent human being.
Making the state force pregnant women to carry a fetus to term against their wishes is not "being a decent human being", it's authoritarian oppression for the sake of religiously themed narcissism.
 

Kangaroo Feathers

Yea, it is written in the Book of Cyril...
What I find most interesting is that before it was co-opted by the Religious Right in the 80s, abortion was really only an issue for Catholics, and even then it was hardly the single issue political motivator it is today. The types of protestants who today are so energised by it would have been horrified to be associated with a "Catholic issue" 40 years ago.

I don't doubt that a lot of people sincerely believe abortion is wrong, but I think a lot of them are very ignorant of how engineered it was as a deliberate wedge issue and in-group signifier in American politics.
 

Revoltingest

Pragmatic Libertarian
Premium Member
Not all vaccines were tested using fetal stem cells, so the argument is mute.

I guess anti-abortion can be a religious influenced belief.
Anti-abortion laws otoh are a secular/judicial/political thing.
If you are religiously against abortions, don't get one. If you are voting/demanding/protesting (anti-)abortion, you are a political activist.

(And if you want an exemption from vaccination based on stem cell research, you are misinformed.)
"Moot"....not "mute".
Anyway, if one's scripture doesn't oppose abortion, then
claiming "tradition" as a reason to eschew vaccination
when it's required of all others strikes me as a very
strained, needless, & dangerous accommodation.
What will be next...
The right to refuse driving sober?
 

9-10ths_Penguin

1/10 Subway Stalinist
Premium Member
It should be. Why is one religion more " legal" then another.
Because there's a legal exemption based on religion.

If you give out special legal rights, privileges and exemptions on the basis of religion, then you're necessarily going to have secular governments and courts ruling on which religions are and aren't valid, and what beliefs are a legitimate part of a given religion.

The only way to avoid this is to not give out legal privileges on the basis of religion.
 

Heyo

Veteran Member
"Moot"....not "mute".
Thanks, I was in doubt but too lazy to look it up.
Anyway, if one's scripture doesn't oppose abortion, then
claiming "tradition" as a reason to eschew vaccination
when it's required of all others strikes me as a very
strained, needless, & dangerous accommodation.
What will be next...
The right to refuse driving sober?
Especially when there is still a choice. Having a religion has its advantages and disadvantages. Sometimes you have to sacrifice. E.g. your job as a health worker in times of a pandemic when a vaccine is mandatory.
 

Revoltingest

Pragmatic Libertarian
Premium Member
Thanks, I was in doubt but too lazy to look it up.

Especially when there is still a choice. Having a religion has its advantages and disadvantages. Sometimes you have to sacrifice. E.g. your job as a health worker in times of a pandemic when a vaccine is mandatory.
True....if God says one must not vaccinate,
then this supersedes useful things like work,
health, & some of life's pleasures.
 

PureX

Veteran Member
Not sure how evenly it's divided. More people want abortion legal with certain restrictions than those who want it illegal. Also few are those that want it legal 100%.
There are legitimate arguments to be made for either position. We are closely divided enough that it effects our politics (clearly). And now it's been tossed in with a whole range of other social issues that even further divide us.
 

9-10ths_Penguin

1/10 Subway Stalinist
Premium Member
Ok, but legally. As per the link in the OP, this is not being accepted as a religious position to exempt one from getting the vaccination. Although it seems a fairly gray area.
I'm still not understanding what the basis of her objection is.

I mean, even if we grant for argument's sake that a fetus is a person, we're just talking about tissue donation:

- a "baby" "died."
- a doctor not involved in that "death" took kidney tissue from that "baby" for medical research purposes.
- the kidney tissue has been used to help other people.

No church I know of (except maybe Christian Scientists or the Jehovah's Witnesses) opposes organ and tissue donation.

I really don't see what she's objecting to here. I mean, if she needed a lung transplant and lungs from a murder victim became available, would she say, "no, no, I can't take those lungs. I'm opposed to murder"?
 

Wildswanderer

Veteran Member
Because there's a legal exemption based on religion.

If you give out special legal rights, privileges and exemptions on the basis of religion, then you're necessarily going to have secular governments and courts ruling on which religions are and aren't valid, and what beliefs are a legitimate part of a given religion.

The only way to avoid this is to not give out legal privileges on the basis of religion.
That's stupid. And biased.
 

9-10ths_Penguin

1/10 Subway Stalinist
Premium Member
That's stupid. And biased.
Nonsense.

If you have a secular law that gives people special treatment on the basis of religions' tenets, then secular courts will have to rule on:

- what is and isn't a genuine religion
- what is and isn't a genuine tenet of a given religion

... since those questions form the basis of what secular rights and privileges the person is entitled to.
 

metis

aged ecumenical anthropologist
There is a difference. She shares her opinion, but you criticize her opinion. If you would also share your opinion, then it would have been the same;) (of course I can't see what is in her mind, it might be that her words are different from her thoughts and she does the same like you ... criticize others who abort babies, I would not be surprised. But until proven differently, I give her the (little) benefit of the doubt;))
All of us comment on someone else's opinion(s) one way or another, such as what you just did, but what I didn't do was to insult her, and nor did you insult me, which I appreciate btw.:)
 

Clara Tea

Well-Known Member
Sussman-VaccinePregnancy.jpg

Just heard over the radio that religious exemptions will be accepted for vaccination.

So one lady wrote that they used fetal stem cells in testing the Covid 19 vaccine. Therefore since she is against abortion because of her religious beliefs, she is requesting an exemption for being vaccinated.

Is anti-abortion a fundamental religious belief?

Boston College is facing a wave of Catholic parents and students “disgusted” by religious exemptions being denied over a link to aborted fetal tissue used to test the efficacy of coronavirus vaccines.
Boston College faces fury over vaccine exemptions denied over coronavirus abortion link
For decades abortion has been a wedge issue. That is, it drove a wedge between the Democrats and Republicans, delineating their stance on issues. Republicans often swore to end abortion, and never gave it a second thought once elected. If they had stopped abortion, what would they use as a wedge issue for the next election? They had to keep the abortion issue as it is in order to have something to gripe about during the next election.

The fetal stem cell phase of testing is over now, and the vaccine was not made with fetal material.
 
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