Pro-Abortion vs Pro-Choice and the Double Effect

I hear lots of folks in the pro-life side of the abortion debate insist on characterizing those on the other side of the debate as "pro-abortion."  They insist that being "pro-abortion" and "pro-choice" are really just two different labels for the same thing.  Of course, if these really are just two different labels for same thing, then why insist on using "pro-abortion" instead of "pro-choice" since either would be an equally good way of describing the position?  It's more than a little curious why a person that really believes these are just two different labels for the same thing would insist on using one phrase over the other.  So, perhaps something more is going on here.  I'm tempted to say that characterization of the "pro-choice" side as "pro-abortion" is a convenient and self-serving attempt to frame the issue in a way that's disadvantageous for the opposition because it seems to define them as having less than noble intentions. 

At any rate, I find this aspect of the pro-life community rather confusing because most people in the pro-life community - the pro-life label not withstanding - are willing to accept that abortion is permissible in some cases, e.g. if the mother's life is in danger, entropic pregnancy, etc.  In order to defend abortion under these circumstances the pro-lifers often appeal to what's called the doctrine of the double effect.  According to this doctrine, there's a distinction between "killing", i.e. intending to do harm, and "letting die", i.e. permitting a negative side or double effect of the means used to achieve well intended ends.  So, if a mother's life is in danger it is permissible to let or allow the termination of the unborn baby's life in order to fulfill the intention to save the mother's life.  The idea is that there's a difference between directly and explicitly intending to kill someone and letting or allowing them to die as an unintended and indirect side or double effect.  It's a distinction that is central to debates over the permissiblity of "active" vs. "passive" euthanasia as well.

Now, here's my question: can the pro-lifer both appeal to the doctrine of the double effect and insist that there is no difference between being pro-abortion (i.e. intending to kill, abort, etc.) and being pro-choice (i.e. intending to protect autonomy, reproductive freedom, etc.) without contradiction?  Here, I'm not interested in the issue of whether or not we should accept or reject the doctrine of the double effect, which is a related but distinct issue.  I'm just interested in whether or not a person that does accept the doctrine of the double effect can coherently appeal to that doctrine to defend their view that abortion is permissible in some cases and deny that there is a distinction between being "pro-abortion" and "pro-choice."  Alternatively, can someone that denies there is a distinction between killing and letting die coherently deny that there's a difference between being "pro-abortion" and "pro-choice"?

John Schmidt Piano/ Cello piece...

This is AWESOME!!!!!

Check it out and his webpage as well:

www.johnschmidt.com

This arrangement is dedicated to Sarah, my 7 year old daughter who loves the song Love Story by Taylor Swift. Because of a common rhythm element between the tunes, I decided I could mish/mash the two. My great friend Steven Sharp Nelson (cello percussion) really makes this tune. 

If you want to make God laugh... tell Him your plans

I love country music...I am sorry...don't hate me now. But there is a song that has a great line in it. It says, "if you want to make God laugh tell Him your plans." Obviously this is not a Christian song, but that one line really got me thinking. 

God's ways are so infinitely beyond ours, we can't even begin to comprehend His ways. So when life is confusing, or my circumstances don't seem to make sense, I have to remind myself that God's plan is out of the scope of my understanding. I just have to trust Him and know that the outcome is from the hand of holy, righteous, loving, good, God. And I have to be thankful for ALL of the circumstances He's put me in.

It seems nothing ever works out the way we want it to or expect it to, but God is creating a beautiful portrait with my life and right now I can only see one color, but as time goes by and I look back, more and more of the picture will be revealed and the handiwork of God will be evident in my life for all to see and how thankful I will be for the way God is shaping me right now.

Twouble with Twitters...

Does anyone know of someone who twitters and acts like this?

LIVE OUT LOUD!!!!!!!

Live you lives out loud. It is all about creating the life you have always wanted to live instead of just dreaming one day it will happen or keep putting it off until later.

We all assume we have a future but unfortunately, that is not the case. There is no guarantee what will happen past today. All we really know is that we have the present to live our lives and make them the best that we can.

Of course, I want us all to believe there is a future and be responsible in planning for it but we can not live our whole life based on the future. We have to base our life on the here and now. How many times have you wished you would have taken that opportunity? How many times have you wished you had said something different? How many times have you wished you could get back some of the time you have wasted?

You can make a change today! You can decide to start living your life! How do you do that? Dream Big, Stop the drama, Hold yourself accountable, Learn to say no, LAUGHT TOO MUCH, Stop waiting to be perfect, Be honest, Simplify your life, Achieve goals, and most importantly HAVE FUN!!!!

Life...

Our society places great emphasis on individuality. We are encouraged to express our unique selves, and to pursue our personal aspirations and beliefs.

 

I believe that in most friendships or relationships each person desires this individuality for the other as well as for him or herself. They want to be true to who they are, and for the other person to recognize and accept them for those very qualities. Likewise, they want to know who the other person is, not a character they are good at portraying.

 

There is, however, a catch to being unique, to being open with another. In my experience there are times where being yourself is inconvenient. In certain situations it seems as though being who you are may hinder you from progressing with another person. This is especially true, but not limited to, relationships.

If you start off being someone else, how will they ever know you?

I, unfortunately, came to this realization after the chance to make any changes had passed. On the one hand you helplessly wish to go back in time and stop yourself from pretending. You are able to replay moments and ask yourself, "What was I thinking?" But there is also the part of you that wracks your brain trying to think if even for one instance, you were yourself with that person. And, if so, was it enough? Would circumstances have been different had you remained true to your character?

 

I, personally, would love to say no. It would be comforting to tell myself that nothing could have changed the outcome. But I cannot answer with certainty, because how could I know?

 

Compromising your identity is degrading to yourself as well as the other person. By not being yourself you are assuming you know already that he or she would not accept you for who you are. There are two details very wrong with this logic. One, you should not surround yourself with people who do not care about you because of who you are. You should never feel uncomfortable being yourself around someone. Also, since you are not in fact the other person, you really have no means of determining who they would and would not like, nor should you be the judge of it.

Today

On this brand new, beautiful Monday morning, I want to take a moment to remind myself that my day will not happen to me. I will happen to my day. Today, I will actively create my day by consciously making decisions. I will choose my reactions wisely. I will cultivate those things that bring me fulfillment. I will be aware of the situations that I create today.

In the skyscraper of life, I am the architect, the designer and the construction worker.

The decisions that I make today will yield results. Those results are neither bad nor good; success and failure are judgments. The outcomes that I create today are simply results. Whatever outcomes I create, I will develop, learn and grow as a human being.

Today, I remind myself that there is nothing that I must do. Even breathing, at some level, is a choice. I will create time for the people and things that I love.

Today will unfold exactly as it must. This I know.

Life is a song

This is truly a beautiful short video. Please take 3 minutes out of your day and enjoy!!!

HECK YES!!!!

This was totally a great end to an OK day...

Bizkit, the Sleepwalking Dog @ Yahoo! Video

Sex For Sale

GCC is starting a new series this weekend called Sex For Sale. I am very excited about this new series, as I have invited a few of my co-workers to come to a weekend or more with me. They are a little hesitant but are ready to come encounter it all as well. So I am excited to see how God will open doors in these relationships.

Check out the trailer here...

I love Jesus, but I drink a little...

This is raw honesty!!! Enjoy!!!

The Beauty of Uncertainty... Pt. 4

"It's one thing to be certain. But you can be certain and be wrong." John Kerry addressing George W. Bush in Presidential Debates, 2004.

The world has never been more chaotic despite assurances that the situation is under control. The only thing under control is the manipulation of perception. Global warming is a scare tactic. None of George’s friends are getting rich from Middle East oil. Freedom is America’s greatest export. Baghdad will get its Disneyworld. Let’s not quibble over details like weapons of mass destruction. Osama Bin Laden? Axis of Evil? Crusades? The American Presidential election was a victory of certainty over uncertainty. Tell us what we want to hear and we will follow you. The message was there is little beauty in uncertainty. That uncertainty is ugly, and dangerous, and destructive. We must have resolve. We must kill or be killed. You are either with us or against us. Confusion is a luxury we can’t afford. The religious right is never wrong. Give us your fear of the unknown and we will turn it into the security of the known. Go back to sleep where you will be safe under the intoxication of your agreeable illusions. If you shine a flashlight in a dark room there is light everywhere the flashlight is pointed. We live in a world wherein we are compelled to follow whoever is handling the flashlight. We ignore the reality of the darkness that exists wherever the light is absent. The darkness is the uncertainty and the light is the beauty that helps us overcome it. But we need to hold the flashlight ourselves and recognize that the darkness exists. The people who are selling us certainty can indeed be wrong. As Goethe said, "When ideas fail, words take over." The beauty of uncertainty is it allows ideas to cultivate and grow and hopefully transcend the tyranny of the untested word.

The Beauty of Uncertainty... Pt. 3

"I think the main reason I travel, if I were to sum it up in one word, is for ambiguity." Pico Iyer

Why are the least informed so certain and the thinkers so full of doubt? Our culture is a business and we are the shareholders. We strive to maximize our profits, to eliminate ambiguity in favour of certainty. What is the film we all want to see, what is the book we all want to read, who is the icon we all want to emulate? How can we be different yet all be the same? Amuse us. Distract us. Assure us. Guide us. Tell us what to do and how to do it. Let Martha Stewart design our kitchen, Dr. Phil will raise our kids, Dreamworks will provide our narratives, and ad execs will supply our thoughts. Where can we even find true ambiguity in a world of invented certainty? Who’s dreams are we dreaming? We travel to experience ambiguity. To remind ourselves of the diversity of landscape and the spontaneity of existence. To feel the sheer exhilaration of a new experience. To remind ourselves of the endless possibilities that our lives consist of. The journey we are on is fraught with difficulty. No one here gets out alive. We are constantly challenged to perform, to succeed, to overcome our difficulties and win the race. We come to realize that performance itself answers the challenge. That life is ultimately defined by our difficulties. The race is won in the opportunity to run it. The beauty of uncertainty is that it is ambiguous and ambiguity encourages us to create, search, explore, and travel. As one of us once said, "When you are tired of change, you are weary of life itself."

The Beauty of Uncertainty... Pt. 2

"For without risk there is no faith, and the greater the risk, the greater the faith." Soren Kierkegaard

We are prone to fear. The world is a mass of confusion. Traditions are ridiculed. Mythologies are forgotten. True freedom is a curse. Natural disasters are unnaturally common. Celebrities have replaced heroes. Ideals have been replaced by images. Many are running scared and only too willing to embrace the forces that offer a respite from the winds of change. What can we believe in? God, country, ourselves? What can we be certain about? Death, decay, oppression? What are we willing to risk, defend, support and dream? What would we like to be certain of: life span, love life, finances, and security? Can we gain anything without giving something up? Is there faith without risk? If you knew without question what was going to happen next, would there be any real satisfaction in it happening? The greater the risk, the greater the faith. Embracing uncertainty is to say yes to life: to say yes to the death and destruction, the success and failure, the tragedy and the triumph. Lord Byron said that the great art of life is sensation, to feel that we exist, even in pain. The beauty of uncertainty is that it allows us to overcome our fear. It allows us to take risks so we can experience faith. A life without uncertainty is the end of the imagination; the death of the imagined; the negation of faith.

The Beauty of Uncertainty... Pt. I

"Doubt is not a pleasant situation, but certainty is absurd." Voltaire

People with missing children. Children without parents. People without food or water. There are many who are destroyed by not knowing what the future holds. For those of us more fortunate, the beauty of uncertainty is that it motivates us to seek certainty. We are compelled to replace doubt with conviction, to replace confusion with clarity, to be more fearful of old ideas instead of new ones. Nothing is more disparaged than the person who is lost, hesitant, and anxious. Yet the true path to fulfillment comes from these conditions. Uncertainty becomes truly beautiful when connected with the certainty that there is a better life beyond the life that is known. The artist, scientist, entrepreneur, athlete, and traveller: all embrace uncertainty as their muse. What is going to happen next is more enticing than what is happening now. The thrill of anticipation, the mystery of the unknown, the open road, mistakes as portals of discovery, the inevitability of change, purpose from chaos, questions leading to answers, failure as the threshold of knowledge. All of these conditions inform the life of the adventurer, the human being who is engaged in becoming. The beauty of uncertainty is that it prepares us to embrace life in the face of death. Allows us the strength to deal with the freedom to choose. To willingly exchange the fear of uncertainty for the security of certainty is to admit defeat. To surrender to the fear of actually living your life. As T. S. Eliot observed, "Where is the life we have lost in living?" Nothing moves forward except by the craving to seek certainty from uncertainty. 

The Way I see it

A couple of hundred years ago, Benjamin Franklin shared with the world the secret of his success. Never leave that till tomorrow, he said, which you can do today. This is the man who discovered electricity. You think more people would listen to what he had to say. I don't know why we put things off, but if I had to guess, I'd have to say it has a lot to do with fear. Fear of failure, fear of rejection, sometimes the fear is just of making a decision, because what if you're wrong? What if you're making a mistake you can't undo? The early bird catches the worm. A stitch in time saves nine. He who hesitates is lost. We can't pretend we hadn't been told. We've all heard the proverbs, heard the philosophers, heard our grandparents warning us about wasted time, heard the damn poets urging us to seize the day. Still sometimes we have to see for ourselves. We have to make our own mistakes. We have to learn our own lessons. We have to sweep today's possibility under tomorrow's rug until we can't anymore. Until we finally understand for ourselves what Benjamin Franklin really meant. That knowing is better than wondering, that waking is better than sleeping, and even the biggest failure, even the worst, beat the hell out of never trying. 

What is friendship?

I've been spending some amount of time trying to explain to myself what a friend is, and is not. 

Friendship is the bigger statement. Lots of people are lovers but aren't friends. Lots of people are relatives and aren't friends. Lots of people work together who aren't friends. You can appreciate or admire someone, but that doesn't make them a friend. 

We're relatively casual about the word, but sometimes things happen that take the casualness out of it. When I had my half-way across the country move I had a lot of time to think about what makes someone a friend. If they are scared of you when you need help, sorry, that's not friendship. If their attitude is "for better or worse," if they stick by you through thick and thin, that's when you can tell it's friendship. I do have some friends, but not as many as I thought.

Looking back at past relationships I have had in my life, I can honestly say I may have good handful of AMAZING friends from college. I am working on taking every advantage of ervery moment I have with these friends. Whether it is a vacation in Cancun, surprising a friend at their wedding, attending another wedding. Whatever it is I miss them and am making memories of our time together. It is great!

We never really know how long they will be here or what. But on that same note spending too much time can kick you back in the butt. As time goes on it seems that the more you see one person the more you realize you are not friends and how you wish you could go back to how things were weeks, months, or even years ago. Those are the times we truly treasure, and I wish I could go back in time with some friends to hope that things would be different now.

To all of my friends; old, present, and new: You all have been a great influence on my life and I am grateful to you for that. Thank you for being you and allowing me to be me.

The Rear-View Mirror

Do you ever catch yourself looking back, as if looking through your rear-view mirror?

There is an obvious reason why the windshield is far bigger than the rear view mirror. It's because that is where you'd better be looking when you intend to get somewhere safely.

Nevertheless, many people conduct their life constantly looking back. The outcome is inevitable: several wrecks along the way.

Sad events and traumatic experiences in our lives have the dangerous power of sucking us down into a life of constant defeat and hopelessness. They pull us down in a manner that will significantly affect the outcome of the rest of our lives. If we let them.

It depends on us whether we yield to them or not.

Lift up your eyes and look before you. Picture your life as a path made of cement. The cement behind you is already hardened; you cannot change a thing about it. But turn around and look up in front of you: there is a long stretch of fresh cement you do have influence upon.

Yes, you can make changes in life. And the best time to start is right now. There are changes that I am making and I will stand by the changes I am making.

But how can we possibly ignore, or forget, experiences that have painfully marked our lives? Don't they seem to be constantly lurking in the background, only to show up and discourage us when we are about to make a step forward? Yes they are there, but only if you let them will they hold you back. I have done some things in my past, that I would change if I could, but I can't. They make me who I am and make me have so much compassion for others. I have not always been a good person, but I know that God loves me and forgives me. He will always love me for who I am and not things that I have done. It is things like that, that need to sustain me when I feel the urgency to dwell in the past and keep looking back. I am looking forward in 2009; I will try not to dwell on the past.