Ensoulment and abortion

 I remember being a seven year old in Sunday School and being told that if a baby dies, they go to heaven because they are innocent. Also that children reach an age of accountability – the age at which you’re old enough to know better than to commit a sin, is the age at which you’re accountable when you do sin (and apparently, we as seven year olds were therefore already eligible for damnation, so we’d better repent and accept Jesus Christ as our personal Lord and Savior).

So, these same people believe that a fetus is already a human being that has a soul. They believe that if that fetus dies, it will go straight to heaven, but if it is born then within a few short years it will start sinning, and the overwhelming majority of sinners will go to hell because they don’t pray to the right god in the right way. Straight is the gate and narrow the way to life, and few there be that find it.

100% chance of heaven if that fetus is aborted, and very poor odds of heaven if we force the mother to give birth.

You would think, given those odds, Evangelicals would be in favor of the option that is guaranteed to save the soul of the “baby” rather than the option nearly guaranteed to damn its soul.

The mother’s soul was probably damned anyway since she dared to have sex without intending to make babies for a husband, so there’s no point worrying about her salvation. The doctor’s soul was certainly damned since he was willing to “murder” a “baby” and even THINKING about committing a sin is just as bad as doing it according to Jesus, so there’s no point worrying about his salvation. The Evangelicals who oppose abortion aren’t going to get one, so there’s no need to worry about their own souls here. So, from the perspective of eternity – from the perspective of wanting to save as many souls as possible from the eternal flame – the Evangelical opposition to abortion is actually hurting rather than helping their cause.

… That is, IF they actually believe a fetus is an ensouled human being. Or that the purpose of this existence is to prepare for the afterlife. Or that there IS an afterlife for those "babies".

Ask them about IVF and whether the fertilized eggs that get thrown away instead of implanted were really babies that just got murdered, and you’ll find they DON’T really believe that. It’s only murder if the alternative is forcing a woman to have a baby she doesn’t want. If the woman WANTS to have babies, the lab techs grow 8 fetuses that could be implanted, and the woman CHOOSES to only have one implanted instead of 8… that choice is apparently fine even though seven “ensouled” “babies” will be “murdered” in this scenario and only one would be “murdered” in most cases of a woman choosing abortion.

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