Aborting Babies With Severe Illnesses?

[Damaris]

Another thing to consider is the fact that God made the baby that way, on purpose. Who are we to say His creation is so shoddy it should be scrapped?

Moses had a speech impediment all his life, and God called him to speak to Pharaoh on behalf of the entire Israelite nation. That's about equivalent to me talking with the President of the United States on the behalf of, say, all modern day slavery. It's a huge responsibility, and God was commanding someone who could barely form words with his mouth to do it. Here's how the conversation between God and Moses played out:

Moses said to the LORD, "O Lord, I have never been eloquent, neither in the past nor since you have spoken to your servant. I am slow of speech and tongue."

The LORD said to him, "Who gave man his mouth? Who makes him deaf or mute? Who gives him sight or makes him blind? Is it not I, the LORD? Now go; I will help you speak and will teach you what to say." (Exodus 4:10-11)

So when Moses said, "Lord, I'm the wrong man for the job--look, I was born with this speech impediment that makes me difficult to understand, and the mission needs a smooth-talking guy to address Pharaoh." God replied, "Hey, that's my handiwork you're talking about; I made you this way on purpose and I don't see a problem with it. Now go, and I'll help you. No more excuses!"

In Psalm 139 David poetically describes God's role in forming a baby in the womb:

For you created my inmost being;
you knit me together in my mother's womb.
I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
your works are wonderful,
I know that full well.
My frame was not hidden from you
when I was made in the secret place.
When I was woven together in the depths of the earth, your eyes saw my unformed body.
All the days ordained for me
were written in your book
before one of them came to be.

Here we see God actively involved in the process of forming a baby, knitting the child together, skillfully weaving each cell into place, with God overseeing every bit of the process. And God has decreed how many days we are to live even before we are born.

If God is the God that we know, who is gentle, kind, and infinitely loving, then He would not create a baby to suffer more than He deems is best. If it is better that the baby should die and be in heaven, then God can easily have that happen through miscarriage or accident. In other words, either way, God will take care of it. He is watching over every bit of pain, and He knows far better than we do how much the severely impaired suffer. He would not have created them and enabled them to live if He did not know it was for the best. Who are we to take the matter into our own hands and throw his creation away? God has ordained all the days of that baby's life even before conception...who are we to cut them short based on our very limited idea of what's best?

I know this thread is in the non-biblical debates section but I cannot leave God out of the picture. I can't. These babies are God's creation, God's possessions--they belong to Him and not to us. The parents are just temporary caretakers. Just like a babysitter or nanny conforms to the parent's wishes on how their children are raised, so also any true Christian parents will raise their kids by conforming, as best as they understand, to God's wishes on how their children should be raised. And that starts with life. If God created the life and God sustained the life, that must mean that God wants the life to continue rather than be extinguished at the hands of those He entrusted the child to.

Think of it this way: say someone was taking a year of traveling and they entrusted you (whoever's reading this) to care for their dog, a pet they love dearly, while they were away. Now, say the dog was missing two legs, for whatever reason. The owner obviously knows about the dog's condition and, obviously, does not think putting the dog down is a necessary or wise decision. You agree to take responsibility for the dog while the owner travels. But in your estimation, the dog should have been put down a long time ago because you think it would be so horrible to live without a leg or two that you don't think the dog should be put through that. Thus, as soon as the owner leaves you take the dog to the vet and get him euthanized. How do you think the owner would respond? Ooh, you'd be in big trouble. Wouldn't the owner be correct to be outraged, declaring that he loved the dog on a far deeper level than you ever could and he had full understanding of the dog's suffering and had decided that the dog should live?

It is the same with parents and their children, which are just on loan from God. He loves those babies and understands them on a far deeper level than we ever could, and He breathed life into their lungs and causes their hearts to beat. A Christian intentionally snuffing out their lives out of our limited understanding and limited love seems ignorant at best.

[BaldJesus]

Another thing, how would you decide what a 'severe' illness is?
In the UK, abortion is legal righ up until birth if the baby is going to be disabled.
Disability including a cleft lip, which here, can be fixed by a free operation at three months.
So basically, here, you can abort a nine month old unborn baby becuase it has a cleft lip.

So what would count as a severe illness?
Where do you draw the line?