Look up the definition of abortion. Google it and they will get you to Planned Parenthood. Bing it and there is a surprise. This link comes up: https://www.biblestudytools.com/dictionary/abortion/. So I used bing to do most of my research.
What do the online dictionaries have in common? Lots of talk about fetuses and embryos. To a lexicographer, an abortion is the termination of a pregnancy, but it doesn’t seem to be the killing of a human being.
What prompted my writing this? Well, New York has a new law, New York’s Reproductive Health Act. Compare the headlines.
- Long-stalled abortion bill passes New York Legislature (buffalonews.com)
- New York passes law allowing abortions at any time if mother’s health is at risk (msn.com)
- New York Senate Passes Bill Legalizing Abortions Up to Birth (lifenews.com)
- NY Enacts New Protections for Abortion Rights (usnews.com)
- New York passes bill expanding abortion access (thehill.com)
- New York Passes Abortion-Rights Bill on Roe v. Wade Anniversary (wsj.com)
- New York Passes Bill On Roe V Wade Anniversary Casting Abortion As A Woman’s Right (dailycaller.com)
- Pro-Life Leader on NY Abortion Law: ‘No Different than Infanticide’ (breitbart.com)
- ‘This is progressive?’ New York bishops react to new abortion law (catholicnewsagency.com)
- New York Governor Andrew Cuomo Signs Abortion Bill Allowing Murder of Unborn Up Until Birth (christiannews.net)
- Disgusting: New York not only legalized late-term abortions, but also celebrated like it won the Super Bowl (washingtonexaminer.com)
- New York Passes Extreme Abortion Legislation on the Anniversary of Roe v. Wade (townhall.com)
- New York’s Landmark Abortion Rights Bill Protecting Roe v. Wade Decision Now Law (finance.yahoo.com)
- New York State Senate Passes Bill Permitting Abortions up to Birth (nationalreview.com)
- New York puts in measures to protect access to abortion even if Roe v. Wade is overturned (cnn.com)
Usually, when I write one of these of twisted words posts, I state what has been twisted using my own words. This time, however, I think I will make use of a better wordsmith.
What Makes Liberals Cheer Murder? (rushlimbaugh.com on Jan 24, 2019)
RUSH: Now, let me see if I can dig deeper on this whole abortion business, and maybe I’m going too deep on it. Maybe I’m making too big a deal out of it. We’re talking murder here, folks. Now, that’s what makes this different from the way they’ve always approached this. There has been is a significant, fundamental change in the way they are describing what they are supporting here, because it’s always been killing. They’ve known it, we know it, everybody knows it. They have sought to massage the language so that it wasn’t seen as that.
And the primary way they did that was to cloak it in a woman’s right to choose. It was a freedom issue or a civil rights issue — and nobody but nobody has the right to tell a woman what she can do with her body! Even though we do it all the time. We have laws against prostitution. We have laws against drug muling. We have laws against any number of things that involve the body, men and women both. But the left couched it as a civil rights issue, and they denied that there was even any killing going on because there wasn’t anything to kill.
It was “an unviable tissue mass.” Pregnancy is “a risky medical condition.” It can develop into a “disease.” Then they told us that there are deep psychological problems that can result from pregnancy itself. Not abortion, but pregnancy! I mean, they built a whole lot of so-called justifications for abortion, never acknowledging that the death of a human being was happening. That was the point! It was not the death of a human being. They argued about when conception began. They said it wasn’t a human being. (continued here (rushlimbaugh.com))
I suppose some will see the name Rush Limbaugh and just blow this off. Not exactly an openminded response. Still, I think he states the issue well.
What is the lesson here? When and if Conservatives win in the Supreme Court, women will still have “abortion rights”. So Conservatives should use point to this problem and use it as part of the solution. There is nothing in the Constitution that protects “abortion rights”. If such a right exists, let the states work out the problem.
For additional posts in this series, see OF TWISTED WORDS => FEMINISM.
Citizen Tom 
“Trump: ‘We’re going to win so much, you’re going to be so sick and tired of winning’”
Hmmm,I don’t know Tom. I don’t really know where the line is between state’s rights and when the Feds should step in with the law of the land. Of course,as confused as I am about it, I’m still not nearly as confused as Congress and the Supreme Court. 😉
I kind of like what scatterwisdom said too. I often have the urge to say the same thing, “this isn’t my country” (or even this isn’t my church, or this sure isn’t my family) but at some point a bit of collectivism or tribal responsibility has to kick in. I would prefer to just draw a line in the sand and distance myself from these people, but I don’t think God works that way. He’s not like that hot sauce commercial going, “NY City??!” Well then, not your people, not your problem.
And in the back of my mind I’m always thinking, this really isn’t about abortion at all. It’s a power struggle, rebellion,as you see in all those pink lights and celebration.So perhaps like in a game of tug of war, just dropping the rope really is a solution.
@IB
How does pride pervert government? Instead of protecting the rights of the people, government becomes an instrument of enslavement.
What does abortion have to do with that? The ultimate power one human being can have over another is not life and death; it is convincing someone to kill someone else, especially their own child.
“There is nothing in the Constitution that protects ‘abortion rights’.”
As you know, my views on this topic are not based on any real religious certainty of opinion. What we are talking about here is a matter of opinion of “religious” philosophy.l, isn’t it? Has God actually has not graced you with enough certainty of knowledge about this topic to wish to participate in making what a woman does with her own body an imprisonable offense at state law. That is what we are ultimately talking about here isn’t it – making a religious philosophy into a punishable crime.
Because You are debating “words”, however, I wonder upon what you are basing the statement above, because, under our constitutional system, your statement makes no definitional sense. The SCOTUS defines and interprets the words of the Constitution im so far as those words and concepts are used to determine cases and controversies before the courts. Your statement above is like saying that the Constitution doesn’t have a clear rule for free speech when it is broadcast on television. The word “television” is not in the Constitution, but the SCOTUS” certainly has interpreted the free speech rights in the Constitution to apply them to new technology that is television.
Have you carefully studied Rowe verses Wade? Have you read the line of cases upon which Rowe was based, and that have since either limited or expanded Rowe? Do you completely understand the legal reasoning even if you don’t agree with it?
Maybe I’m wrong but you seem to be complaining about the terms of the debate without even knowing the actual terms of the debate. 😊
@tsalmon
As usual, it is some form of the who are you to speak for God argument. 😕
The Bible does not condemn abortion outright, but people engaged in baby sacrifice and various other forms of infanticide back then. Abortion would have been highly unusual. Why would the Bible condemn a crime those people did not even know how to commit?
What does the Bible do? The Bible makes it clear a “fetus” is a human being beloved by God.
The party you support wants taxpayer funded abortions. Why aren’t you complaining about their certainty instead of mine? By what right do you seek to make me complicit in your willfully ignorant evil?
I’ve supported a few parties before – St. Patrick’s Day, Mardi Gras, and several birthday parties, but never one that wanted tax payer funded abortions. Whether or not you are complicit in “willfully ignorant evil” is between you and someone else. Why is it that when it is obvious that you don’t have a clue what you are talking about you always have to change the subject in this peculiar way?
“The Bible does not condemn abortion outright, but people engaged in baby sacrifice and various other forms of infanticide back then. Abortion would have been highly unusual. Why would the Bible condemn a crime those people did not even know how to commit?
What does the Bible do? The Bible makes it clear a “fetus” is a human being beloved by God.”
That’s a purely religious argument (and not a very convincing one at that). I’m not a big fan of the case, but the issue in Rowe verses Wade was when does the state’s interest in protecting an unborn human supersede a woman’s right to control her own body, or in words that you might understand, her God given right for big government to just leave her alone. If my religion says a soul enters the body at conception, should I be able to legally criminalize her violation of what is purely a religious opinion? Another issue was when can the state make someone be a life support system for someone else? For example, let’s that the only way someone else can live is if you constantly go through painful, operations to give them bone marrow. Your doing so may be the moral and religious thing to do, but should you, at penalty of law, be continuously required to do so?
@tsalmon
There is no point in debating the Constitution with you. When you think it says whatever you can get the Supreme Court to say it says, then we have deeper philosophical issues to debate first.
You brought up the religious question. I responded. Why? We decide all questions of right and wrong based upon our religious beliefs. When the Supreme Court decided Rowe versus Wade, they did not decide the issue based upon existing law, their job, they just imposed their religious beliefs upon the rest of us.
You want to know what the Bible says about abortion? Except to a Christian who fears dealing with the issue, it is not ambiguous. Read the posts I wrote or visit that link I referenced.
https://www.biblestudytools.com/dictionary/abortion/
Frankly, I don’t have a good proposal for outlawing abortion, and I did not offer one. You just created a straw man and set it on fire. Whoopee!
Speaking of abortion as a woman’s right to choose is just asinine. She chose when she let some guy impregnate her. She is not keeping her baby alive with painful bone transplants. She is just doing what comes naturally, what got her pregnant in the first place. The issue is whether she will complete what she started voluntarily and give birth.
Sex, as you should know by now, is a precious gift that requires us to be responsible. Abortion is just a selfish abrogation of that responsibility, and you know It. In spite of all the sophistry, you know it.
“There is no point in debating the Constitution with you. When you think it says whatever you can get the Supreme Court to say it says, then we have deeper philosophical issues to debate first.”
Well, it helps if you have any idea what the Supreme Court has said and why before we can even get to at least to the constitutional aspects of any philosophy.
“Frankly, I don’t have a good proposal for outlawing abortion, and I did not offer one”
That’s interesting. You don’t know what you want, but you definitely know you want it.🙃
@tsalmon
Imagine the problem of outlawing murder on an island where almost half of the population thinks the people from other islands are a food source. In fact, these cannibals believe the gods demand human sacrifice. It is not going to be easy for the chief to come up with a law that makes it safe for the people from the islands nearby to come to his island and trade, is it?
Sorry Tom, your analogy completely evades me. But speaking of analogies:
“Speaking of abortion as a woman’s right to choose is just asinine. She chose when she let some guy impregnate her. She is not keeping her baby alive with painful bone transplants. She is just doing what comes naturally, what got her pregnant in the first place. The issue is whether she will complete what she started voluntarily and give birth.”
I agree that mine is not a perfect analogy either. However, forcing people to live with result of their immoral choices is an interesting argument, but it is a separate governmental enforcement of your religious morality from a legal protection of religious beliefs in the equality between the lives of a brand new fetus and of an adult citizen. If every religious moral responsibility is to be enforced by government at law then you are opening quite the can of worms for the majority religion to impose all sorts of religious taboos on individuals who feel that they have a right to be left alone from government intrusion by someone else. Also, your moral responsibility opens up an obvious theological inconsistency with your sanctity of unborn life argument in that you will need to draw up exceptions for those women whose pregnancy were the result of rape or sex before the age of consent. Are not these unborn children’s lives just as sacred?
@tsalmon
All the laws we have that are designed to protect people’s rights are based upon our religious beliefs.
Just because someone kills their baby does not mean they won’t be living without the consequences of a choice.
Since the vast majority of abortions have nothing to do with rape or incest, I have not said anything about rape or incest.
Although I may agree that the moral foundation of all laws come from God (as are the foundations of everything in the universe), under our constitutional system not every peculiarly religious belief violation is punishable at law, and all things enforceable at law are not religious in nature. Most often, the magistrate’s job is simply to keep the peace, not establish a religion.
Do you really want to extend government to the point of mastery over women’s souls, as if that were even possible? The question is where to draw the line in the voluntary nature of taking upon ourselves the burden of responsibilities we owe to one another, including the responsibility of a mother to her unborn child. (In this case, as in all the most controversial ones, it is never an either/or solution). You would not use the force law require your fellow citizens to pay for a sick woman’s health care (or prenatal care for that matter) even thoough your religion says we should voluntarily do so, and yet you would legally require her to live your religious morality and be a life support system for a person that she does not want and does not agree is an actual person yet.
Don’t you think that your reason is contradictory in distinguishing what someone normatively “should do” as a matter of religious morality and what someone “must do” at jeopardy of law?
You think that I disagree with you as a matter of religious morality, because it is easier for you to cast these things into warring camps, but I mostly agree with you on the moral question. It’s the legal question upon which we disagree.
The juris prudential logic of Rowe verses Wade was to look at the conflict of rights between the mother and the unborn child. When we are the most reasonably (not religiously) uncertain that the fetus is a human citizen (closer to zygote than fully formed baby), the the privacy rights of the mother supersede. As the unborn child gets closer to a fully formed human, then the state has more power to intercede to protect the citizenship rights of that person.
We both can make a religious argument that unique humanity (a soul) implants at conception, but can’t you see how that is a pure religious (rather than rational) argument, upon which if the court were to rely, it would be establishing one religious belief while infringing upon another?
@tsalmon
The people you vote for are pro-abortion. They want government to pay for it. They want the power to kill the unborn.
Planned Parenthood, the Democrat’s favorite NGO, was established as a eugenics project, a way to relief us of the poor and the dark skinned. Yet look at your knee-jerk — conditioned — response, and I have not even proposed ANYTHING!
Stop and think. You vote for people who have no inhibitions about using government power. They are run-amuck socialists who would complete the nationalization of our healthcare in a heartbeat. You vote for that crap, and then you dare to accuse anybody of forcing their religious beliefs on someone else?
If you actually believe Democrats care about a woman’s right to choose, look at China. That’s your example of where they want to take this, forced abortion.
You’re changing the subject Tom by once again falsely assigning me the most extreme position of the other side. I’m not Vladimir Lenin because I’ve voted for Democrats any more than you’re Adolf Hitler because you’ve voted for Republicans.
Like you, I’ve voted for a lot of people, but unlike you I didn’t swear tribal fealty to their every whim.
If you don’t have a good argument for enforcing a religious belief by criminalizing the taking of all abortifacients after the moment of conception, just say so. Don’t change the subject.
@tsalmon
No, you did swear tribal fealty. You just just jumped on me with both feet for voting Republican, and you spouted your party’s line.
I have changed the subject. I have pointed to the fact that your arguments are wildly out of accord with the actions of the people you enthusiastically supported. You have not even tried to explain.
Tom,
Politically, I’m most closely aligned as a moderate independent. I don’t support ideological extremists on either side. You are being absurd if you really expect me to criticize the whole concept of ideological extremism by becoming an ideological extremist.
@tsalmon
I don’t expect you to do anything except a mainstream news media “moderate”. Let’s dissect the vocabulary.
— Moderate. When we are talking politic, a moderate is someone in the statistical middle, someone with their finger in the air. Don’t want to offend anyone except an extremist. What do you think being moderate looked like in Nazi Germany or the USSR?
— Independent. Political parties nominate candidates. An independent is someone who can’t be bothered to help select the candidates we vote for in the general election. Beneath their dignity, don’t you know.
— Ideological. We already determined you don’t know what an ideology is. The proof is that you don’t think you have one. Ever since Karl Marx started calling folks ideologues, the Communists have decided they don’t have an ideology. They are just right. If ever anyone deserved to called an ideologue, it was Karl Marx. Instead, too many people took that man seriously.
— Extremist. Extremist, like the term moderate, is a statistical term. Thanks to the news media and our public school system, Americans have become pathetically ignorant. Therefore, what was once extreme is now moderate. Democrats are supporting policies that supporting fifty years ago would have made winning an election impossible. Unfortunately, Democrats have pulled Republicans in their direction. So few elected Republicans are actually Conservative. In fact, even though Conservative support TRADITIONAL values, the Liberal Democrat news media paints Conservatives as extreme. It is Conservatives, not they fake news media, who is extreme.
Anyway, don’t worry. I won’t called you an extremist, just a pro-abortion Socialist. It is the way you vote.
@tsalmon
I don’t expect you to do anything except repeat the mantra of the mainstream news media “moderate”.
Let’s dissect the vocabulary.
— Moderate. When we are talking politic, a moderate is someone in the statistical middle, someone with their finger in the air. Don’t want to offend anyone except an “extremist”. Being a moderate means you don’t stand for anything. What do you think being moderate looked like in Nazi Germany or the USSR?
— Independent. Political parties nominate candidates. An independent is someone who can’t be bothered to help select the candidates we vote for in the general election. Beneath their dignity, don’t you know.
— Ideological. We have already determined you don’t know what an ideology is. The proof is that you don’t think you have an ideology. Ever since Karl Marx started calling people who think enough to believe something ideologues, the Communists have decided they don’t have an ideology. They (nose in the air), sniff, are just right. If ever anyone deserved to mocked as an ideologue, it was Karl Marx. Instead, too many people took that man seriously.
— Extremist. Extremist, like the term moderate, is a statistical term. Thanks to the news media and our public school system, Americans have become pathetically ignorant. Therefore, what was once stupid enough to be extreme is now moderate. Democrats are supporting policies that supporting fifty years ago would have made winning an election impossible. Unfortunately, Democrats with stupid ideas have pulled Republicans in their direction. So few elected Republicans are actually Conservative. In fact, even though Conservatives support TRADITIONAL values, the Liberal Democrat news media paints Conservatives as extreme. It is Conservatives, not they fake news media, who is extreme.
Anyway, don’t worry. I won’t called you an extremist, just a pro-abortion Socialist. It is the way you vote.
Tom,
You do know that the Justice who wrote the Rowe v. Wade decision was appointed by a president from the party you belong to? That’s how ridiculous this partisan tribalism gets. Ideological zealotry in either party generally has eventually failed in our democracy over time as the pendulum swings back and forth toward center.
@tsalmon
You don’t get it. The party label doesn’t count as much as what we each personally believe. The Bible says abortion is wrong, and the Bible is my guide.
I don’t know how to stop some women from killing their unborn children. The problem? A good law has to be understandable, enforceable, and widely supported. A law against abortion would be difficult to enforce and not widely supported.
The fact I don’t have an easy fix doesn’t mean I will vote for a candidate who would actually encourage women to get an abortion. I don’t want any part of a jerk whose ethics are that far gone.
Since Blackmun issued that damn decision, the parties have split on the abortion issue. Relative few Republicans are pro-abortion. Virtually all Democrats are pro-abortion. That’s one reason I support the Republican Party, and I don’t feel any need to apologize for it, or pretend Trump is some kind of monster.
“I don’t know how to stop some women from killing their unborn children. The problem? A good law has to be understandable, enforceable, and widely supported. A law against abortion would be difficult to enforce and not widely supported.”
Sounds like you’re pro-choice then.
@tsalmon
No, and you are being disingenuous. If Rowe v. Wade is overturned, the issue will go back to the states. Some states will experiment on ways to discourage the murder of the unborn. If school choice is instituted, more children will read the Bible. If the border is brought under control, Democrats will have to find other ways to fragment and destroy a culture that once supported life.
One other thing, I’m not so sure abortion in some form was that unusual, but I agree that a D & C abortion would have been unimaginable. The fact that there is new technology, however, does little to resolve either the religious or the legal constitutional question for or against something. Like I said, just because the Founders couldn’t have imagined something like the internet, does that also mean SCOTUS should not be able to extrapolate by implication the expressed speech and press rights to the new mediums?
With IUD’s and morning after pills, and who knows what other abortifacients are out there, the ability of states to regulate early term abortion will require more and more authoritarian police powers. Is that something that you want?
@tsalmon
In the ancient Roman world, when the head of a houshould did not want a child, he had eight days to get rid of it. The common practice was to leave the infant on a dunghill where it died of exposure. The pagans within our society have revived the practice of exposure with new technology. We call it abortion.
If you want to know how abominable this can get, consider the Canaanites. These people sacrificed their own children in the arms of a red hot iron idol.
The more states that practice this type of malpractice, the easier it becomes for me as to where I live and where I spend my money.
Isn’t this the same kind of justification they used to legitimize slavery and welfare and every other program and law that is criminal at best?
@bottomlesscoffee007
When we do something wrong, we have to deceive ourselves. See =>
https://citizentom.com/2008/07/07/i-stand-corrected/
One of the links is broken. That dictionary is not out there anymore, but I quote what was applicable.
Tom, I couldn’t agree more.
atimetoshare.me
You stated, “This isn’t my country. When life has no value, “
Some others stated, “This isn’t my President.” After Trump was elected.
While I share your concern and beliefs about abortion, I am also concerned when I hear these above statements.
In my opinion, when a woman decides to an abortion, not only is she killing a baby, she is saying the same thing to God’s postman, return this unopened gift to sender because it was sent to the wrong address.
Sad as you say. What is even sadder when people just shrug off reality that there are consequences and values attached to every decision they make.
“Intercourse leads to lactation,” no matter what country, body, or soul, we live in.
The same for “votes leads to elections.”
Just saying this is not my country when we do not agree on leads to anarchy in countries, bodies, and souls we all live in.
You are right though when neither God or Country are recognized in life, life has no value.
Regards and good will blogging.
I sometimes wonder where I live. This isn’t my country. When life has no value, it won’t be long before the older generation has the right to die if they choose. Thankfully we aren’t home yet. If I didn’t have heaven to look forward to, there would be no hope for any of us. These “fetuses” have been knit together by God. How dare mankind
Determine what happens to them. These are the same folks who scream for gun control and the influx of murderers crossing our borders. Sad😥
Christians are pilgrims. We are not at home because we are going home.
There was a time this country felt more like home. Those who came here for religious freedom taught their children their beliefs, but successive generations have failed to past the message of the Gospel to their children. So too many of their children are behaving like pagans.