Politicians or Theologians; Blurring the Line.

It is that time of year again, campaign season, when the people running for office dust off their Bibles and find an inner knowledge to their religious faith.  Abortion is a favorite issue. Our “devout Catholic” President has long traded on his religious faith.  In recent months he seems to have claimed some sort of Divine right.

President Biden was blasted for crediting his natural rights to being a “child of God” in defense of abortion, with one critic saying he “just made the case” against the practice.  “I believe I have the rights that I have not because the government gave it to me, which you believe, but because I’m just a child of God; I exist.”  Biden has made similar comments over the years, wherein he decided that he is a Theologian.

Vice-President Kamala "Wisconsin will help decide the future of our country and that is what Wisconsin does," Harris said. "When we look at a woman's right to make decisions about her own body, we need two additional seats in the Senate, one of which will be Mandela Barnes to say, listen, let's stop playing politics with women's bodies. You don't have to change your faith or abandon your faith or your deeply held beliefs to agree the government should not be telling a woman what to do with her body." Clearly, the Vice-President does not understand the earliest teachings of Christianity, specifically the Didache, a document that has been dated to about 70 AD which condemns the practices of abortion and infanticide.  Some years ago, Hillary Clinton swept religious beliefs in a similar, cavalier, way.   She argued, "Yes, we've cut the maternal mortality rate in half, but far too many women are still denied critical access to reproductive health care and safe childbirth, and laws don't count for much if they're not enforced. Rights have to exist in practice — not just on paper. Laws have to be backed up with resources and political will. And deep-seated cultural codes, religious beliefs and structural biases have to be changed," at the sixth annual Women in The World Summit in New York City.  She never answered the question, “why?”  Clinton is making the fallacious argument of equating abortion with healthcare.  This type of comparison is, logically, completely invalid.  Essentially, she is connecting a procedure that is designed to eliminate life to the overall healthcare system.  The irony, or hypocrisy, is evident.

Now, in Georgia, Stacey Abrams claims a unique understanding of the abortion issue.  In recent weeks, Abrams has been using Christianity to defend her pro-abortion views. During a speech at the Allen Temple AME Church in Woodstock, Abrams claimed the Bible supports abortion.

As the daughter of two pastors, Abrams said she has a “strong moral core” and a good understanding of scripture.  She, incredibly, claimed,

“I was trained to read and understand the Bible, and I will tell you this: There is nothing about the decision to eliminate access to abortion care that is grounded in anything other than cruelty and meanness and danger in the state of Georgia,” she told the church. “Nothing.”  The Bible recognizes unborn babies as valuable human beings, and Christianity teaches that abortions are wrong because they kill innocent children who are created in the image of God.  Abrams clearly has no concept of Biblical history or Theology.  According to the Bible, people who did not have children were disgraced, as numerous verses indicate (Cf. Genesis 30:1, 1 Samuel 1:6).  On a practical level, there was very high infant mortality, so abortions would not be considered.  Also, more children meant more help in taking care of the family and property.  Apparently, Abrams has not read through the book of Proverbs recently.  In the book we read, There are six things that the Lord hates, seven that are an abomination to him: haughty eyes, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked plans, feet that make haste to run to evil, a false witness who breathes out lies, and one who sows discord among brothers. (Proverbs 6:16-19).

What Abrams and others do not understand is the fallacious aspect of their Biblical argument.  Because the Bible does not mention abortion, they assume is justified.  This is called “argumentum Ad  Ignorantiam”, appeal to ignorance, it occurs when someone argues that something must be either true or false because it hasn’t been proven to be one way or the other. In other words, a particular belief is said to be true because you do not know that it is not true. The issue typically has to do with something that is either incapable of being proven true or false, or has not yet been proven true or false.

We must call upon the Catholic community to call out and debunk these ridiculous statements.  We cannot let politicians trade off their mutated