In one sentence, you say I’m only reading what I want to believe into what you say.
In the second sentence, you admit that what I say has merit.

So what does a baby who is born with a disease do to have deserved to suffer?

What does a woman who loses a baby through miscarriage or stillbirth do to cause her suffering?

You then proceeded to answer the question, “why do you believe that God gives people free will?”

That is not what I asked.

Nor did I ever imply that God IMPOSES suffering on others. I asked why He ALLOWS it.

There was a movie on TV some thirty years ago, which started with an unmarried pregnant women who had sought an illegal abortion, and hadn’t made her connection. Her mother figured it out when she got home, and told her “Honey, its a sin against God.” The daughter tearfully exclaimed “There is no God!” Mom got a little angry, but lovingly, and answered “Oh yes there is! And he didn’t get you into this mess, and he’s not going to get you out of it.”

Even though I was then and am still pro-choice, I loved that answer. I’m not sure I even believed in God at the time. But it is so true — we suffer because of situations we get ourselves into, and God is not going to get us out of them.

As to your imputing resentment to my choice of wording, I think you are reading what you want to believe into what I said. Abstractly I might resent it. But, when in the course of my work I have in front of me a flesh and blood person, however incapable, someone who has a name and a face, who can stand up and walk, however uncertainly, there is no time or place for resentment.

http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/sci_cult/bridges/transformation/bethesdastory.html

The key phrase is:

In Love’s service only the wounded soldiers can serve.

But can’t you see that the way you have expressed yourself here sounds as though you are resentful of the fact that you “have” to be gracious to them, because they are here?

“have to”
“have to”
“have to”.

Think about the way that sounds. It sounds like you are resentful of being forced to tolerate the “unfit”.

But there is nothing good about it for its own sake. Why are you so anxious to glorify suffering?

Siarlys, why do you personally believe that God allows people to suffer?

Moving on, I don’t wish people who are in the world out of it. I have occasionally seen posts from people who said “I’m glad my parents didn’t abort me.” Well, they didn’t. If you are here, abortion is not an issue for you, so relax. I was actually recognized for being able to coax people on and off the bus who most drivers couldn’t handle — they related well to me, and I appreciated that. They are here, they are alive, of course we have to be gracious to them, and not be condescending or patronizing about it either. On the other hand, there are some you have to speak loudly and firmly to. But, if we could prevent another person having to deal with that illness, I believe that is fine.

Why am I afraid of suffering? Any sensible person would be afraid of suffering, just as any sensible person would be afraid of death, but we do all have to die eventually, and if there is anyone who hasn’t had to suffer, I never heard of them. Most of what we do with our lives is an attempt to lessen suffering, for ourselves, or if we have the moral sense to do so, of others. Agriculture is about reducing the possibility we will suffer from hunger. America may have overdone that. Vaccinations are about reducing the suffering from disease. Mechanization, up to a point, reduces the suffering of debilitating forms of labor which can really cause life-long muscle pain and skeletal deformity.

If suffering comes from a cause I cannot prevent, or comes to me as a natural consequence of failing to to what I could have done to prevent it, it is a part of life, to be met in whatever manner I have to meet it, overcome if possible, endured if necessary. But there is nothing good about it for its own sake. Why are you so anxious to glorify suffering?

We could probably find some common ground on government programs. There is a legitimate role for government, but it can make things worse rather than better. It has really messed up provision for people with disabilities by setting one-size-fits-all rules and regulations, which is a natural tendency of government, and overlooks the tremendous spectrum and variety of individual needs. On the other hand, if we leave it all up to individual or community response, it probably wouldn’t come close to meeting the need. People would rather pay taxes than actually provide care themselves in person, unless of course it is their paid job, in which case affection does develop, but the paycheck is essential. That could be a whole discussion site in itself.

Everyone must suffer at some point and time in life.

Why do you seem so afraid of it?

No one wants to suffer. But suffering is a part of life, and no one is going to escape having some kind of suffering…some suffer more than others, but everyone suffers.

We people can use our sufferings, whether great or small, to help ease the burdens of others….to share our love, to fill each other with encouragement, to see and experience the world in a different and more profound way.

Our sufferings do not have to be in vain.

Why do you think death is better than suffering?

I will try to answer the rest of your comment tomorrow, but let me ask you this.

Why is it a great mercy to wish these people out of existence, but not a great mercy to want to care for them and show them love and compassion?

The problem you have expressed says more about the governments’ inability to truly give actual care to the poor and needy than it does about a need to keep these disabled people from existing – it speaks volumes about a true need for individual people to reach out with their own time and help these people.

I believe that you advocate for more government, don’t you? Why is that, based on what you have just told me about the way they treat these people?

Your scenario does not say to me, “those people shouldn’t be here- or shouldn’t have been born”. If anything, it says to me, those people given the opportunity to know they are loved and valuable, no matter what!

Why is their life any less valuable than your own, Siarlys? Because you wouldn’t personally want to live like they do? You speak of people who have so much love in their hearts. They would never wish you out of existence. That woman who hugs you every time she sees you- how do you think she would feel if she were able to know that you wished she didn’t exist?

You say some of these people wanted nothing more than to lie next to a window, and were not given the opportunity to because of the state’s manner of care? Well, isn’t the state the problem then, and not the person with the disability?

As to our current discussion, I understand that if I am totally and utterly wrong about when a unique new human being exists, or whether personhood and consciousness are even relevant, I am accountable to God for that. God may be merciful, as Gerard invoked God to be merciful to Susan Hill, but I am accountable. I worry about that. I have not come to the conclusion that I am wrong, but I consider it. We all fall short of the glory of God. Your way may be safer, in a Voltairean sort of way, and I’m sure that has significance for many, but it comes with what I consider to be moral dillemmas of its own.

I drove a paratransit bus for five years. I’ve seen a wide range of physical and cognitive disabilities, congenital and traumatic. I remember a young woman with severe brain injuries in a wheel chair who would give me a faint hug with the one arm that still had some motion, and always smiled to see me. I remember the woman with the 40 year old body half my height who ran up to me and called me her buddy. I remember the man who was blind, barely able to comprehend speech, whose favorite past-time was to dig whatever he could find out of his pants and smear it on the seat — who on arrival at a day program was dragged of to the bathroom crying “No, no, no!” I remember people who wanted nothing more than to spend the day curled up in the sunlight on the floor, but who had to be shoved out the door of their group home and bundled onto the bus, because that’s the way the state paid for their care.

The latter two are examples of whom I could say without hesitation, it would have been a great mercy if they had never been born. Would I slit their throat? No, they are here now, we may not do that. If, as I believe, their condition was genetic, if such a condition could be identified in the first trimester, would I have recommended abortion of the tissue with the genetic abnormality? Absolutely — and from the fresh healthy tissue of another sperm and another egg, the same mother could grow a healthy baby, the one she was undoubtedly praying for in the first place. If you consider that the fertilized egg IS the person we may not destroy, then of course you would not make the same choice.

“Admit it Bethany…” well, no, I won’t finish that sentence, because I have a good deal of contempt for your use of that phrase. I will not try to put words into your mouth. I will say that it seems to me that you are afraid to face what I’m really saying, because I’m not the demon you want to find yourself fighting. You have to reduce what I say to something I didn’t say to reassure yourself that there is no possibility you might be even a little bit wrong. I don’t ask you to accept my position. You obviously believe passionately in what you have said. But try to have more confidence in the truth of your own belief, your ability to sustain your own principles, without having to blind yourself to what I’ve said as your source of justification.

Now where we differ on abortion is, I believe there is a period when instead of asking “Shall I destroy my baby?” I can ask “Is this the raw material I want to grow my baby from?” I don’t believe that just because a sperm cell has penetrated an egg, we are now past that point. I do believe that, some weeks before natural delivery, we are past that point. The period in between is what we are arguing about.

I had a brother who died of cancer at age 34. Why wouldn’t I shoot him in the head? Because, he would experience that as death, and I would be deprived of the last few months left to talk to him. If I could shoot him and have him spring back to life, 24 hours later, with all his memories and personality intact, free of the cancer, I might have considered it. He might have requested it. He did ask his doctors to try a harsh form of chemotherapy. They initially said “We couldn’t do that, it might kill you.” He suggested they let him take that risk, since the cancer WOULD kill him in less than a year anyway, and the treatment MIGHT help. It didn’t, but it was worth trying.

A zygote doesn’t experience anything that happens to it as death. Neither does a blastocyst or an embryo or a flat set of three layers of tissue. At some point, a fetus does. That point is very important to me. You consider it an artificial boundary. There lies our difference.

P.S. Glad we agree on STDs. If marriage were more the norm, and children mostly born within marriage, there would be a lot less abortions, and that would be a good thing for many reasons. We’d still have a few things to argue about.

Oh I grasp it just fine! The unfit and imperfect are burdens to society. They disrupt the gene pool. They must be killed or prevented from existing.

James Madison, when it was first proposed that the federal government should build and maintain national roads, responded that he could see no authority to do so in the constitution, but he thought it a good idea, and would support an amendment to authorize it. Others, more opportunistic, found a way to twist the existing language into a semblance of authority. To impose eugenics by law would require granting to the government vast powers it does not currently have, and I don’t want it to have those powers. Further, it would mean entrusting Congress to define what is and is not a proper criterion for eugenics. I am confident that congress would get that wrong, many times over.

Like I said, you just can’t figure out how you could force people to kill their unfit babies without negative consequences for yourself happening as a result. If you could, you’d go for it in a heartbeat.

I might flatter myself that I could get it right, if only I had unlimited powers to write and administer the law myself.

Case in point.