OK, men, what if your wife elects to end a doomed pregnancy?

[Hailey]

I do not dispute D. Johnson that a woman who ends a pregnancy through abortion has to tell her children and her husband this news and it has the potential to cause unbelievable harm to those relationships.

I just believe that marriage is forever so I would be hard-pressed to believe that leaving is the right thing. I think that all things can be reconciled with God.

Premeditated murder of an innocent being?

I am not diluting the seriousness of the act.

[Gerry T. Neal]

This arises from this thread, where I made the statement that under these circumstances a man who wouldn't be supportive of his wife wasn't much of a man. I stand by that.

http://www.freedominion.com.pa/phpBB2/v ... p?t=137025

After extensive testing at a renowned Boston hospital three weeks earlier, we were told our baby had Sirenomelia. Otherwise known as Mermaid Syndrome, it’s a rare (one in every 100,000 pregnancies) congenital deformity in which the legs are fused together. Worse than that, our baby had no bladder or kidneys. Our doctors told us there was zero chance for survival.

I’m not a religious person and I’ve never believed in heaven or hell. But there is a hell on Earth. Hell is sitting next to the person you love most and listening to her wail hysterically because her heart just broke into a million pieces. Hell is watching her entire body convulse with sobs because she’s being tortured with grief. For as long as I live and no matter how many children we have, I will never forget that sound.

His wife was already being tortured with grief. An abortion would do nothing to remove the grief. All it would do would be to intensify the torture by adding guilt on top of it.

This is what we are now calling "being supportive" of one's wife?

[dwday]

This arises from this thread, where I made the statement that under these circumstances a man who wouldn't be supportive of his wife wasn't much of a man. I stand by that.

http://www.freedominion.com.pa/phpBB2/v ... p?t=137025

After extensive testing at a renowned Boston hospital three weeks earlier, we were told our baby had Sirenomelia. Otherwise known as Mermaid Syndrome, it’s a rare (one in every 100,000 pregnancies) congenital deformity in which the legs are fused together. Worse than that, our baby had no bladder or kidneys. Our doctors told us there was zero chance for survival.

I’m not a religious person and I’ve never believed in heaven or hell. But there is a hell on Earth. Hell is sitting next to the person you love most and listening to her wail hysterically because her heart just broke into a million pieces. Hell is watching her entire body convulse with sobs because she’s being tortured with grief. For as long as I live and no matter how many children we have, I will never forget that sound.

His wife was already being tortured with grief. An abortion would do nothing to remove the grief. All it would do would be to intensify the torture by adding guilt on top of it.

This is what we are now calling "being supportive" of one's wife?

See my response at the bottom of the previous page re: carrying a doomed baby being a mere 'inconvenience'. If your wife felt that the guilt she would feel over the abortion would outweigh the stress of the 'inconvenience', she's free to make that choice, and more power to her. Most women I know would not, and I would never ask a woman to do that. I know that makes me an accessory to murder in this crowd...tough.

[Post Tenebras Lux]

By the way, I did ask my wife what she would do (though I knew the answer already), and here is what she said.

"I would carry the child to term, even if the doctors told me it was going to be still-born. It wouldn't be the first time doctors have been wrong, and furthermore, God is bigger than the doctors."

If you make choices based on convictions rather than convenience then you don't need to revisit every question as it comes up.

Your principles carry you through the questions of life.

Read the article that started this discussion - your cavalier dismissal of that woman's choice as being for 'convenience' reveals a thing or two about your bias.

It is Convenience.

She didn't want to deal with the situation any longer than she had to.

Right on. You beat me to the answer.

So, a woman is asked to carry inside her a baby that has a zero chance of survival. A baby she will feel begin to move about inside her as it grows, a baby whose movements will increase, then become feeble, then stop altogether. Then she faces a trip to the hospital to deliver a dead child.

That's an ordeal, not an inconvenience, and your dismissal of women who choose not to go through it as acting for the sake of 'convenience' is about the most sactimonious and self-righteous thing I've seen anybody here post.

You have a strange take on a marriage relationship.

Would it be any less for a loving, supportive husband to go through the ordeal you have outlined above?

You still don't get the concept of oneness in a marriage. Everything you have stated is in the context of the 'wife-against-husband' or 'husband-against-wife'.

A truly "supportive" husband won't wait until after a distressed wife has felt she has no choice but to terminate the life of her child, he would support her all the way through and constantly affirm his love and care with words and actions letting her know they are in this together.

If under such circumstances a wife chose to disregard her husband's desires, and in fact act against them in such a deliberately hurtful manner, then the marriage has much more serious problems. Problems that won't be solved by the husband now being 'supportive' of his wife after the murder of their child.

[Post Tenebras Lux]

I know that makes me an accessory to murder in this crowd...tough.(sic)

What you are in my eyes or the eyes of "this crowd" really doesn't matter.

But you would be an accessory to murder in the eyes of God if you 'supported' your wife's decision to kill her child.

[Yoda]

And the two shall become one flesh

My, but how the world hates that

[Post Tenebras Lux]

And the two shall become one flesh

My, but how the world hates that

They hate the One who said that, and so don't expect them to like His followers.

[Hailey]

This arises from this thread, where I made the statement that under these circumstances a man who wouldn't be supportive of his wife wasn't much of a man. I stand by that.

http://www.freedominion.com.pa/phpBB2/v ... p?t=137025

After extensive testing at a renowned Boston hospital three weeks earlier, we were told our baby had Sirenomelia. Otherwise known as Mermaid Syndrome, it’s a rare (one in every 100,000 pregnancies) congenital deformity in which the legs are fused together. Worse than that, our baby had no bladder or kidneys. Our doctors told us there was zero chance for survival.

I’m not a religious person and I’ve never believed in heaven or hell. But there is a hell on Earth. Hell is sitting next to the person you love most and listening to her wail hysterically because her heart just broke into a million pieces. Hell is watching her entire body convulse with sobs because she’s being tortured with grief. For as long as I live and no matter how many children we have, I will never forget that sound.

His wife was already being tortured with grief. An abortion would do nothing to remove the grief. All it would do would be to intensify the torture by adding guilt on top of it.

This is what we are now calling "being supportive" of one's wife?

See my response at the bottom of the previous page re: carrying a doomed baby being a mere 'inconvenience'. If your wife felt that the guilt she would feel over the abortion would outweigh the stress of the 'inconvenience', she's free to make that choice, and more power to her. Most women I know would not, and I would never ask a woman to do that. I know that makes me an accessory to murder in this crowd...tough.

I think that it's important to realize that pro-life women would not just look at it from the perspective of which was more emotionally taxing on them but about the whole idea of what it meant to be a mother. I confess that I will agree with you that "inconvenience" does trivalize the very real challenge of carrying a pregnancy to term when the life within is at high risk of dying. That would truly take it's toll on the human heart. I would, however, say that the whole mindset of being a mother is to savour and enjoy each day with your child. If God gave my baby only a short period of time with our family I would savour each and every day that I was given and would take no action to shorten that life by even one day. I do not believe that most pro-life women would ever take steps to reduce their time with their baby.

In Edmonton one of the women on the Executive of the pro-life witnessed her own daughter have to go through the very sad journey of carrying a pregnancy to term that was known in advance to have as the best possible outcome being a few hours of life. Sadly, the baby died in the final stages of labour without the parents having the chance to hold a living child. They wrote a beautiful tribute to their experience and her funeral card is also noted on the blog.

http://lilyemkevisser.blogspot.com/

Of all of the beautiful things that they wrote I would say that what I found the most inspiring was her husband's words


We were not blessed to hear her cry but we cried for her and with her.

I think that captures so perfectly the heart of loving caring parents. It brings tears to my eyes.

I have not had the experience of having a stillborn child but I have had the experience of carrying a high-risk pregnancy when I was having our twins and I would not have done anything to ever complicate that pregnancy or to interfere with their jouney. My daughter has health problems right now. I have never considered taking steps to reduce my time with her. I think that every parental instinct is to draw out your time with your child, to savour them, and to rejoice in every day being a blessing.

I don't believe that the right action when someone in a marriage does something wrong - even horribly wrong - is to leave them. I believe that we are called to be married for life and I believe all things can be reconciled with God but it is hard for me to imagine that things would ever be the same after someone failed in something as fundamentally important as being a protective nurturing parent. I can understand how a spouse would never quite feel the same.

[D. Johnson]

By the way, I did ask my wife what she would do (though I knew the answer already), and here is what she said.

"I would carry the child to term, even if the doctors told me it was going to be still-born. It wouldn't be the first time doctors have been wrong, and furthermore, God is bigger than the doctors."

If you make choices based on convictions rather than convenience then you don't need to revisit every question as it comes up.

Your principles carry you through the questions of life.

Read the article that started this discussion - your cavalier dismissal of that woman's choice as being for 'convenience' reveals a thing or two about your bias.

It is Convenience.

She didn't want to deal with the situation any longer than she had to.

Right on. You beat me to the answer.

So, a woman is asked to carry inside her a baby that has a zero chance of survival. A baby she will feel begin to move about inside her as it grows, a baby whose movements will increase, then become feeble, then stop altogether. Then she faces a trip to the hospital to deliver a dead child.

That's an ordeal, not an inconvenience, and your dismissal of women who choose not to go through it as acting for the sake of 'convenience' is about the most sactimonious and self-righteous thing I've seen anybody here post.

You have a strange take on a marriage relationship.

Would it be any less for a loving, supportive husband to go through the ordeal you have outlined above?

You still don't get the concept of oneness in a marriage. Everything you have stated is in the context of the 'wife-against-husband' or 'husband-against-wife'.

A truly "supportive" husband won't wait until after a distressed wife has felt she has no choice but to terminate the life of her child, he would support her all the way through and constantly affirm his love and care with words and actions letting her know they are in this together.

If under such circumstances a wife chose to disregard her husband's desires, and in fact act against them in such a deliberately hurtful manner, then the marriage has much more serious problems. Problems that won't be solved by the husband now being 'supportive' of his wife after the murder of their child.

I just realized PTL was clearing up something I fairly well failed to at least imply.

Lets understand for a second what being in this together actually means. Yes the woman feels the baby, and the baby draws nourishment directly from her until that moment that the baby is no more. But I would make it clear to my wife that this baby still depends on US for its nourishment, and later on down the road, perhaps her grandmother will too. And then perhaps it will be my sister, and then perhaps it will be her father, and then perhaps my mother. It matters little who, or why, or in what form those who bless our lives require of us, we must be there to ensure the support is there.

I will not allow her to feel guilty for not supporting her mother, for not supporting my father, and certainly not for a being that never had the chance to do us wrong. The womb does not give any person, man or woman, any more right to murder, then does the hospital bed.

[Gerry T. Neal]

See my response at the bottom of the previous page re: carrying a doomed baby being a mere 'inconvenience'. If your wife felt that the guilt she would feel over the abortion would outweigh the stress of the 'inconvenience', she's free to make that choice, and more power to her. Most women I know would not, and I would never ask a woman to do that. I know that makes me an accessory to murder in this crowd...tough.

I just read the post in question. What you said in that post does not speak to my remarks. You say, that in the specific hypothetical circumstances in question, a woman's delivering this baby would be an "ordeal" rather than an "inconvenience". I don't deny that, but I would suggest that having an abortion is trading one ordeal for another. Some feminists, in order to toe the party line, might claim otherwise, but abortion is always an ordeal for women.

It is the nature of women to be the bearers and nurturers of children. Women's bodies are designed to bear children for 9 months and then nurture them with their milk for months after giving birth. Physically, men and women are clearly different in this way. The idea that they be physically different but psychologically indistinguishable is a-scientific, illogical, politically correct, feminist claptrap. If women's bodies are physically designed for them to be the bearers and nurturers of children, they are psychologically designed to be the same, as well. No amount of egalitarian, feminist dogma to the contrary is every going to change that. If the feminine mind is psychologically predisposed to bearing and nurturing children (such as the motherly instinct of self-sacrifice on behalf of her children) then abortion, which is violently contrary to that nature, will be a traumatic experience.

Abortion serves the interests of one group of people, and one group of people alone. That group consists of psychologically immature males who wish to shirk the responsibility society places on men of loving, marrying, and supporting the women who bear their children. You will find an irresponsible young man pressuring his pregnant girlfriend to have an abortion far more often than you will find a wife having an abortion against the wishes of her husband. The language of "supporting" one's wife/girlfriend/partner in her "choice" to have an abortion, is the language of irresponsible men who wish to place a pleasant mask on their own irresponsibility. I am not saying that that is what a husband in this extremely unusual hypothetical situation would be doing, necessarily, just that the language is the same.