School is drawing to a close, college applications are done, and family activities are in full swing (interfering with what school I have left and all the scholarships I need to apply for 🙂 ). I should start to have more time now. Should.
Due to the almost complete loss of compatibility with WordPress in the paid version, as well as other, independent rethinking of things, etc., I have given up on the idea of a forum for this website, and have come to terms with a simple “normal blog” style. I’m pretty sure you can only have one website at once in a free WordPress account, which causes a lot of problems with changing the url, so unless I can find a way to change just the base url, I will simply be changing the titles and stuff like that on this site to read “The Christian Theorist,” while leaving the actual domain as “6tscience.wordpress.com,” so nothing should change for you except the look of the website.
That is my task for December, and hopefully I will get a real post out in January (though it is more likely that I will fix up the site in January or February and get a real post out in February or March). Thanks for being patient with me through this floundering in the world of website development. If you want to see how far I got on the intended new website, go to thechristiantheorist.com
Meanwhile, here’s a fun tesla coil video from Smarter Every Day.
Also, I wrote a paper on abortion for school this week, and, at least within the boundaries of the assignment (I was given a specific paragraph map and I had to come up with a topic to fit it), I feel like I wrote a really good paper. If you feel like making suggestions, they would be much appreciated (I have to turn in the final draft on the 19th), but I’m just putting it here for your enjoyment. If you want, I can post some of my discussion board posts from the same class in my January update (more theological/political discourses off the top of my head, in roughly similar style to the science stuff I have on this site).
Infant Rights: The Forgotten Human Rights Movement
Perhaps the most nobly intentioned movement of the modern era is the human rights movement. The Black Rights movement fought to ensure that the black man was treated as the equal of the white man, the Women’s Rights movement fought, and is still fighting, to ensure that women are treated as well as men, and the current Gay Rights movement is fighting to ensure equal treatment for LGBT people. All of these movements exist to ensure that the United States’ Declaration of Independence’s claim that “all men are created equal” is followed to its fullest extent. Far be it from us to treat anyone as less than ourselves. But in our fight for the rights of these minorities, we have forgotten one large group: the unborn. In 1857, a former prisoner from Salem named Paon made the famous statement that “your liberty ends where the liberty of others commences.” (Salem Register). This is the code on which all human rights movements are based, but it is one which has been violated in the case of the unborn.
The rallying cry of the abortion movement is that a woman should be able to choose what to do with her own body. I agree. But with Paon I say, “The woman’s liberty ends where the liberty of her baby begins.” No one would disagree with that. The trouble is that the baby is often not considered to be a human being. However, this position is inconsistent, for there are laws that explicitly state the personhood of the unborn. Take, for example, The Unborn Victims of Violence Act of 2004, which says, “Whoever…causes the death of, or bodily injury (as defined in section 1365) to, a child, who is in utero at the time the conduct takes place, is guilty of a separate offense [from any harm done to the mother].” (Congress.gov). Later, lest the definition of “child” be nitpicked into oblivion, the law specifically states that “the term ‘child in utero’…means a member of the species homo sapiens, at any stage of development, who is carried in the womb.” Unfortunately, this law is inconsistent in that while it defines a fetus as a person as quoted above, it explicitly excepts abortion from punishment as harming the baby. I heartily agree with the law that an unborn baby is a human, but if that is so, then the baby’s right to life should not be ignored in favor of the mother’s right to choose what happens to her body. The mother’s right to this ends where the baby’s right to life begins. If a baby is a human, abortion should fall under the same laws as killing any other human. As such, the vast majority of abortions, even in the case of rape and incest, would be undeniably considered 1st degree murder, for any abortion is undeniably premeditated. If the life of the mother is in danger, an abortion would immediately fall under the laws for self defense, and would be considered justifiable homicide.
None of this is disputed; however, many today would disagree with my assumption of the baby’s humanity, so why should it be made? The moment a human egg and sperm merge, they create a distinct new entity. The DNA this new entity carries is a unique set of human DNA at the moment of conception, and it is at that moment that, if the development goes successfully, it will become a SPECIFIC human. We can kill human eggs, and we can kill human sperm, because those are just individual cells from a human, and any combination of them into a new human is merely theoretical, but the instant they combine, that theoretical combination becomes reality, and the combination is a specific human, just at a very early stage in development. If the lack of development means it isn’t a person, then we could “abort” people all the way up until their last growth spurt, or at least puberty, because they are not fully developed, and therefore not a person. If the connection and dependence on another human means it isn’t a person, then we could “abort” fully grown Siamese twins, because they are both connected to and dependent on the other, and therefore neither is a person. Neither of these cases makes the least bit of sense, and in my opinion, neither does the argument that an unborn baby is not a person.
So if the humanity of a fetus is such common sense, why is it so common to think of it as non-human? Basically, it comes down to the efforts of Planned Parenthood. Margaret Sanger started Planned Parenthood to further her eugenicist efforts. Her views and those of her peers in this movement the eugenics movement contributed to the enactment of compulsory sterilization laws in 30 US states, which resulted in “more than 60,000 sterilizations of those people considered ‘feeble minded,’ ‘idiots’ and ‘morons’” (The Washington Times). While many, if not all, of today’s abortion advocates would recoil at the mere suggestion of eugenics, they are nevertheless continuing the eugenics movement, because they are operating off of the selective train of thought that has been fed to them from every area of their lives, including the ministry. The Washington Times cites Sanger as saying, “We do not want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population, and the minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members.”
The rallying cry of the abortion movement is that humans should be allowed to make choices about their own bodies. I heartily agree. However, because they do not acknowledge the personhood of the fetus, they use this mantra to support abortion. I refuse to accept this, and say with Paon, “the right of the woman to make choices about her body ends where the right of the baby to make choices about its body begins.” There is no reason to treat infants as any less deserving of equality than Blacks, women, Hispanics, or Italians, and I invite you to join me in support of the new Human Rights movement: Infant Rights.
The Christian Theorist 