Is the Adventist Church Really Pro-life?

[Woody]

Does ANYone have an idea about the cost of an adoption. I do. I adopted my son. It is very expensive.

[karl]

Originally Posted By: karl

Still, isn't it nice that we're not about to overrun the earth like a plague of locusts? Actually, the analogy was never correct. The Earth has never been in danger of overcrowding. It has just been in danger of environmentalist hysteria. The entire population of the earth could live in the state of Texas and be no more crowded than in many large cities of the world.

As of 5 January 2010, the Earth's population is estimated by the United States Census Bureau to be 6,794,400,000.

texas covers a land area of 261,797 square miles.

so you see 6,794,400,000 people being able to live in 261,797 square miles? that is .19 feet per person.

well ok. dont know where you get your info from but youre par for your course.

I'm sorry I have to correct you so often, but here is the math:

261,797 sq miles times 28.878,400 sq ft per sq mile equals roughly 7.3 trillion sq ft. This is more than 1000 square feet per person.

[karl]

Originally Posted By: Karl

And with 1.5 million American families wanting to adopt a child, there is no such thing as an unwanted child.

where did you get that data?

Every week in my newspaper is a section on foster kids waiting for someone to adopt them because no one has wanted them.

Here are just a few of many, many sites of families desiring to adopt:

http://www.lifetimeadoption.com/for_birtmothers/profiles.html

http://www.parentprofiles.com/

http://www.adoptionnetwork.com/waitingfamilies/adoption-unplanned-pregnancy.html

http://www.adoptionbygentlecare.org/home/families

http://www.adoptiontree.com/families.html

I wish you would not try to derail this discussion. The adoption I was describing is mothers giving up their newborn babies for adoption. That is the easiest adoption to facilitate.

Yes, there are older children with behavior problems who are much more difficult to place, but even they can find homes.

[rudywoofs (Pam)]

Yes, people want a cute little baby to adopt. No one wants to adopt those "other" children...

Why don't you want the older children to find homes before adding more children to the evergrowing list of "unadoptables"?

and btw, where did you get the "1.5 million families wanting to adopt" figure?

[Dr. Shane]

you may want to go back and review the arguments presented that decided roe vs wade.

The Supreme Court used the Fourteenth Amendment to legalize abortion in Roe v. Wade. Please show me where the 14th Amendment grants the right to abortion or where those supporting the Amendment in the post-Civil War era were supporting abortion.

[Dr. Shane]

What you posted makes my point. Restriction of abortion tends to reduce the number of abortion. Imagine what would happen if those restriction were to be increased by making abortion illegal in the entire country. Common sense, logic, and the data you provided indicates that such an action would further decrease the number of abortions.

No it doesn't. We need only look at Mexico or Kenya to see what happens when abortion is banned. In fact, when abortion is banned, the pro-life groups disappear and stop trying to reduce abortions. A black market takes root and abortions increase to a greater number than in countries where they are legal. Banning abortion clearly does not reduce abortion. If our goal is to reduce abortions, the proven way to do that is to keep it legal, pass restrictions, encourage contraceptives and pro-life counseling centers. That has a proven record of success. Banning abortion has a proven record of failure.

[Dr. Shane]

Does ANYone have an idea about the cost of an adoption. I do. I adopted my son. It is very expensive.

Did you get the $10,000 tax credit?

[Dr. Shane]

Originally Posted By: Nic

Restriction of abortion tends to reduce the number of abortion. Imagine what would happen if those restriction were to be increased by making abortion illegal in the entire country. Common sense, logic, and the data you provided indicates that such an action would further decrease the number of abortions.

It would probably lead to an increase in the number of back alley abortions, and an increase in deaths of women due to those....that's what common sense and logic would indicate.

Not only that, the actual number of abortions increases. It is counterproductive.

[karl]

Since the end of World War II, interest in adoption primarily has focused on healthy, young infants. By the mid-1950's, the demand for healthy infants grew so significantly that it exceeded the number of children available for adoption, a trend that has accelerated with each passing decade. (Freundlich, 1998)

How Many People are Seeking to Adopt?

According to the data from the National Surveys of Family Growth from 1973, 1982, 1988, and 1995, there were 9.9 million women who had ever considered adoption, 16% had taken steps towards adoption, and 31% of these had actually adopted a child. (National Center for Health Statistics, 1999)

The 1995 National Survey of Family Growth found that 500,000 women were currently seeking to adopt a child. (Freundlich, 1998)

Most adoptive parents are two parent families aged 31 to 40. A growing number of parents are aged 41 to 49. Most parents attended or completed college. The number of parents with college degrees increased sharply from 1983 to 1993.

More up-to-date are US CDC (Centers for Disease Control ) 2002 statistics on United States adoptions found here: http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/series/sr_23/sr23_027.pdf

We find that the number of living US women aged 18-44 who have ever considered adoption equals 33.1% or 18,465,000.

The number of U.S. women currently desiring to adopt equals 4.9% of women aged 18-44 or 901,000. Other prospective families include the 44-49 age group and others living in North America but outside the US.

The bottom line is that LOTS of people want to adopt a baby. It is absolutely the wrong decision to kill any baby.

[rudywoofs (Pam)]

Thank you for the numbers.

I still maintain that a woman has the right to choose, it is between her and God, and I will not interfere with her choice.

[Woody]

Originally Posted By: Redwood

Does ANYone have an idea about the cost of an adoption. I do. I adopted my son. It is very expensive.

Did you get the $10,000 tax credit?

No Tax Credit.

[Dr. Shane]

And where does this right come from? Who gave a woman the right to abortion? Does a man also have the right to commit adultery?

[karl]

Yes, people want a cute little baby to adopt. No one wants to adopt those "other" children...

Why don't you want the older children to find homes before adding more children to the evergrowing list of "unadoptables"?

Are you really that upset about the idea of letting these babies live?

We're not talking about who gets adopted first. That's a completely different issue. We're talking life or death for babies already in existence, but not yet born. Let's not talk about them as if they don't exist. They do.

ALL these kids need homes, but when there are people (of all colors, by the way) lining up to adopt, there is absolutely no feasible excuse to kill unborn babies!

BTW, people do want to adopt those "other" children. Our next door neighbors just adopted a two year old with leukomalacia. They were told she will never be normal, but that doesn't matter to them.

[Woody]

Thank you for the numbers.

I still maintain that a woman has the right to choose, it is between her and God, and I will not interfere with her choice.

And WHY? Because God created us with a free will.

[Dr. Shane]

The free will God gives us allows us the right to sin. So in that since, yes women have the right to abortion. Men have the right to rape. We all have the right to sin.

[Woody]

Quote:

We all have the right to sin.

And praise God for that ...

[Woody]

The issue here is ... do you intend to make a law that every human being be required to go to church on Saturday?

[rudywoofs (Pam)]

Men have the right to rape? That's sick thinking. So you think all abortion is sinful? Even spontaneous abortions?

[Dr. Shane]

Redwood's reasoning is that as fallen humanity God has given us the right to sin. Rape is sin. So that logic would follow that God has given us the right to rape. Yes, it is kind of a sick way of thinking but I follow the logic.

Is abortion sin? Well, I agree with the church's position that when used as birth control, to choose the sex of the child or as convenience, abortion is sin. Over 90% of abortions in America fall into one of those three categories. If we can all agree that those types of abortions are sinful, then we are down to talking about less than 10% of abortions.

[SivartM]

I am 90% sure what by "right" he simply means "freedom". We have the free will to sin.

[there buster]

Red and Rudy, I like you both, but you're dead wrong on this one.

I have a choice to steal or not. I can choose whether to speed or not. I can choose whether to take illegal drugs or not. That choice is between me and God, just like abortion. Using your logic, anything we can choose to do could not be outlawed by anyone at any level.

This is ridiculous on its face.

[Guest]

Red and Rudy, I like you both, but you're dead wrong on this one.

I have a choice to steal or not. I can choose whether to speed or not. I can choose whether to take illegal drugs or not. That choice is between me and God, just like abortion. Using your logic, anything we can choose to do could not be outlawed by anyone at any level.

This is ridiculous on its face.

Good point TB.

[Nic Samojluk]

Originally Posted By: rudywoofs

I don't think the church SHOULD take a stand. But if it does, I still would not judge a woman's choice to have an abortion. To take a stand against abortion would be to declare it a sin, and I don't believe that is the case for all abortions. We don't need to be judging people. That's God's work. Satan is the condemner of man. I don't understand why someone thinks he needs to set himself up as God. And by the same token, be doing the condemning work of Satan.

Amen.

[rudywoofs (Pam)]

It is true that condemning is God’s work, but it was also the work of God’s prophets.

Are you a prophet, Nic?

No, I didn't think so. So stop the condemnation of women you don't even know.

[Nic Samojluk]

Originally Posted By: Nic Samojluk

The number of abortions is predicted to increase due to the opening of new abortion clinics. Can you see the effect of making abortion legal and readily available? More clinics=more abortions!

Quote:

Barbara Lyons, executive director of Wisconsin Right to Life, said her organization was worried abortions might increase in 2008 because abortion clinics in Appleton and Milwaukee that were closed for the last half of 2007 reopened at the beginning of 2008. http://www.jsonline.com/news/wisconsin/49559452.html

What you posted makes my point. Restriction of abortion tends to reduce the number of abortion. Imagine what would happen if those restriction were to be increased by making abortion illegal in the entire country. Common sense, logic, and the data you provided indicates that such an action would further decrease the number of abortions.

Our world is committing a slow suicide in multiple areas. Abortion is only one of them, but I think it is so symptomatic of the rest.

After decades of fear-mongering books like Paul Ehrlich's best-selling The Population Bomb (1968) and its sequel, The Population Explosion (1990), and exhortations from environmentalists that humans will soon cover every inch of the planet, birthrates are plummeting.

Europe as a whole is expected to lose almost 100 million people by 2050. The populations of several Soviet-bloc nations already are falling because of declining birth rates and emigration. Japan will peak out right after Italy and lose about 14 percent of its population, almost 20 million people, by 2050. Germany will experience a similar decline, while Russia will lose about a third of its population and Hungary a fourth.

The United States will continue to grow, only because of essentially unfettered immigration and births to those immigrants. The U.N. middle estimate puts the U.S. population at about 409 million by 2050. The complexion of the US will continue to change. Caucasians, with a birthrate of less than 2, are not maintaining their population, much less growing.

Birth rates are also falling fast in the underdeveloped world, so much so that by 2050 the world population will increase by only 2.6 billion more and then top out at about 8.9 billion, according to the U.N. That's less than the projection from just two years earlier, which in turn was less than the prediction two years before that.

At that point, with fertility rates at around 1.85, world population will go into free-fall.

Still, isn't it nice that we're not about to overrun the earth like a plague of locusts? Actually, the analogy was never correct. The Earth has never been in danger of overcrowding. It has just been in danger of environmentalist hysteria. The entire population of the earth could live in the state of Texas and be no more crowded than in many large cities of the world.

Karl,

You must have read my mind! Thank you for injecting some common sense into this debate. Keep it up!