The Manhattan Declaration








Your Comments

Syndicate (Full Text) XML

Syndicate (Excerpt) XML



WWW Mere Comments





« 16th Annual Bioethics Conference in Chicago | Main | Plan-B from Circuit Court Number 9 »

July 10, 2009

Francis Collins's "Devout" Views on Abortion

That's the idea behind David Klinghoffer's article at Beliefnet on the comments and opinions of Francis Collins, a Christian convert, just appointed to head the National Institutes of Health. One example: Collins

considers a bioethical situation where a genetic counselor is discussing with a (married) mother, 8 weeks pregnant, whether to abort her child because there's a 7 to 8 percent chance the child will have a mild learning disability. Should the mother indicate an interest in aborting, Collins and his two co-authors commend to the counselor a stance of "respect for [patient] autonomy" and "nondirective counseling."

Klinghoffer rightly points out that the media's use of "devout" seems safe as long as the religious believer's views on certain topics are amenable to secular liberal orthodoxies. His religion will be no threat to the current ruling party.

Posted by James M. Kushiner at 01:12 PM | Permalink

TrackBack

TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.typepad.com/services/trackback/6a00d8341c5ee953ef011571ef22d3970b

Listed below are links to weblogs that reference Francis Collins's "Devout" Views on Abortion:

Comments

James Kushiner: "Klinghoffer rightly points out that the media's use of "devout" seems safe as long as the religious believer's views on certain topics are amenable to secular liberal orthodoxies. His religion will be no threat to the current ruling party."

His religion (Francis Collins's) will be no threat to the current ruling party which just so happens to be the secular liberals.

Says it all right there.

Posted by: Truth Unites... and Divides | Jul 10, 2009 1:20:08 PM

a 7 to 8 percent chance the child will have a mild learning disability

Someone on the web put this better than I can:

If you knew a woman who was pregnant, who had 8 kids already, three who
were deaf, two who were blind, one mentally retarded, and she had
syphilis, would you recommend that she have an abortion?

Would FC have counseled aborting Beethoven?

It's a utilitarian argument, of course, but the message is: every human life has eternal significance. Does this "Christian convert" understand as much?

Posted by: bonobo | Jul 10, 2009 3:16:55 PM

Let's just let this argument sink in:

A SEVEN to EIGHT percent chance of a MILD learning disability;
Ergo, it might be better for this child not to be born.

Has it really come to this? We're not even talking about some debilitating illness. (As someone who was once put on meds for a mild case of ADD, I'm a little offended...)

Posted by: Matthew Kemp | Jul 10, 2009 8:42:54 PM

James Kushiner: "Klinghoffer rightly points out that the media's use of "devout" seems safe as long as the religious believer's views on certain topics are amenable to secular liberal orthodoxies. His religion will be no threat to the current ruling party."

The best comment that I read today that affirms James Kushiner's comment is this one:


"What I was trying to say is that a so-called "Christian", whose positions actually contradict and violate God's law, often ends up doing more damage to the cause of Christ's kingdom, than he or she does good in our earthly kingdom. Give me an inconsistent atheist whose lack of conviction compels him or her to embrace principles affirmed by God, than an inconsistent Christian who embraces the principles of the age.

Were Collins just any other scientist, I wouldn't be at all surprised that Obama picked him. His positions are almost 100% in line with Obama's. But the fact that he claims to be an evangelical Christian lets Obama propagate this myth that he is "reaching out" to Christians, when he is in fact exploiting either weak-minded or false -Christians to promote anti-Christian policies."

Posted by: Truth Unites... and Divides | Jul 10, 2009 11:12:52 PM

I did not know Francis's views on abortion politics. This is disappointing. Francis has built much on solid material, but like all of us who believe, there is always the danger of straw being mixed in with the rest.

Christians should pray that God will sharpen Francis's thinking, and that those more orthodox Christians who are close to him will counsel and exhort him toward godliness.

Posted by: Mairnéalach | Jul 11, 2009 3:29:15 AM

Matthew, as a father of a special needs child who has a serious chromosomal abnormality, I'm more than a little offended.

Posted by: GL | Jul 11, 2009 8:30:51 AM

Apparently, he's enough of a Christian to cause offense to those who think that Christians should not hold positions of public responsibility:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/09/health/policy/09nih.html?_r=1

"There are two basic objections to Dr. Collins. The first is his very public embrace of religion. He wrote a book called “The Language of God,” and he has given many talks and interviews in which he described his conversion to Christianity as a 27-year-old medical student. Religion and genetic research have long had a fraught relationship, and some in the field complain about what they see as Dr. Collins’s evangelism."

Dr. Collins appears to be between a rock and a hard place.

Posted by: Benighted Savage | Jul 11, 2009 10:21:53 AM

"Collins needs to come clean. Either he upholds the dignity of human life or he doesn’t. If he does, and he accepts the nomination to head the NIH, then it seems that he is deeply compromised as a professing evangelical Christian. If he does not, then the evangelical community needs to know. For his appointment to this position has the potential to cause great harm in the way of moral confusion to many unsuspecting evangelicals as long as his views on nascent human life remain veiled behind a cloud of sophistical rhetoric."

Here.

Posted by: Truth Unites... and Divides | Jul 13, 2009 12:36:13 PM

Post a comment