I am a little more sympathetic to the anti-abortion crowd than the author evidently is. I think that, given their presuppositions, their actions seem more reasonable. I just wish more of them were willing to engage in a real philosophical/biological/legal discussion of the issue and put down their bumper sticker slogans and misinterpreted Bible verses.

And while I am also sympathetic to the late-term abortion parents described in the article, they are unrepresentative of parents who terminate pregnancies overall. Medical necessity is sometimes given as a primary reason for abortion, but it is hardly the norm. The whole late-term abortion thing is dicey.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mary-mapes/no-mercy_b_209529.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/26/opinion/26douthat.html

http://www.abajournal.com/news/many_women_lawyers_with_kids_do_as_well_as_the_men_researcher_says/

The link I provided in my last comment would be a good place to start, miniman.

“Let a woman learn in silence with full submission. 12I permit no woman to have authority over a man; she is to keep silent. 13For Adam was formed first, then Eve; 14and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor. 15Yet she will be saved through childbearing, provided they continue in faith and love and holiness, with modesty.” (NRSV)

How you can read passages like this and not see the sexist perspective of the author is incredible to me, but I’m open to any arguments to the contrary. Karen L’s initial interpretation of part of the above passage ignores the context of the passage and is obviously influenced by her personal experiences, and while I don’t think that the meaning she found is bad, if “original intent” is the goal here, then I would say that it is woefully innaccurate.

On the perspective issue, I admitted that I insert my own perspective, influenced by society, when I read a text like the Bible. Everybody does, though, so that doesn’t make me special. It just makes you delusional if you think that you do not.

On Biblical relevance, you could not be more incorrect. You think “scripture is the sum of its particulars,” and that is a tragic way of viewing Christianity. If that were true, it never would have survived like it did. The Bible is full of things that do not apply to the modern world at all – all sorts of agrarian metaphors, relations with a foreign occupying power, etc. It fails completely to address most of the modern issues with its particulars – abortion, stem cells, doctor assisted suicide, the death penalty, and torture. If Christianity is limited by the particulars of the Bible as you say, then it is already irrelevant.

Luckily, I have a higher view of Christianity than that. I think that its principles are bigger than just the way they were applied to the ancient Roman world two thousand years ago, and that those principles can still speak to us today to provide guidance through different situations.

I don’t struggle to straddle two world at all; I am perfectly satisfied with my own beliefs, even though they might be more complex than the other, easily categorized people you know.

You are falsely dichotomizing again with your choice of the Bible being authoritative or completely useless. Of course it is not either, and stop pretending like complex issues are so simple. They deserve more thought than you are giving them.