Fetus Worship

I had been considering a post on this subject for some time, but this story from Mexico has prompted me to delay no longer.

There is a dangerous cult in this country and around the world. This cult attracts not just the naive religious types, but also those who consider themselves to be critical thinkers. The cult is that of the "Fetus Worshipers".

This cult lives under the delusion that early stages of embryonic human life are full grown human beings - living and breathing and due rights that no one else in our society hold. Most of the members of this cult are religious, with some exceptions, and most are conservatives. Most cult members not only worship the fetus, but they hold some form of disdain for women or the rights of women in general. In the view of many fetus worshipers, the fetus has the right to take the life of a woman if it is inside her body. Rapists are encouraged by the fetus worshipers to impregnate women and form more glorious fetuses which a woman must carry within her body for nine months. It is a bizarre cult indeed.

The cult has the idea that premature human forms have desires and thoughts. They do not. They do not desire to be born. They do not desire to destroy their mother or endanger her life. They are not rational, thinking, fully formed humans. They are fetuses. Get it?

This cult is personal to me because most of my fundaMentalist family belongs to this cult. My sister, who is just over 40 years old, recently remarried and decided to try to have a second child. She knew the risks and made the decision to try anyway realizing that the odds were substantial that the pregnancy would not mature. She became pregnant, but after about 2 months began having complications. She prayed. She went to the doctor and was told that the fetus was dead. It was not alive. She was devastated. She was told that she would need to have the dead tissue which was this fetus removed in order to avoid serious health risks. But being a fetus worshiper, she could not bring herself to have it removed. She bled for over a week before the majority of the tissue exited her body. She could have died because she worshiped this fetus so much and believed, I suppose, that 'God' could somehow bring it back to life. Having the procedure was too much like having an abortion in her view. She would have rather died than have this dead tissue taken from her body. It makes me so angry and so sick. This fetus could have robbed me of my little sister.

Here is my view on 'Fetus Worship'. If the fetus is so grand that it actually the right to prosecute an assault (look it up here) , then I say let it appear in court as a witness. Let it walk right out of that uterus and state it's views. Ridiculous you say? Isn't this what fetus worshipers believe? That the fetus is a consciousness – a thinking human with as many rights as an actual living breathing person? If you want to save a fetus, then we will have aborted fetuses sent to you and you can have them put into YOUR body. Women who are denied to right to end a pregnancy and control their body will send you their unwanted children and YOU can raise them. Or the state can just send all of you fetus worshipers the bill for all the unwanted and uncared for children.

So what does this have to do with atheism as atheism has no one view on the subject and obviously some atheists are as rabid anti-abortionists as the most idiotic believer? In my view, if you don't believe in the idea of a 'soul' and you understand basic biology, then you would have to understand that a fetus is not a fully formed human. It is at it's essence a parasite of the host - its mother. It is what it is. It is not what it might become. It has no potential outside of its mother’s body. If you believe that 'God' is the only one who decides what life should live or die (unless of course he directs his followers to murder), then you would be inclined to have a child you might not want or to coerce or force a woman to bear an unwanted child.

Also, if you are religious, you are taught that sex is bad. Pregnancy, for many, is the unintended result of sex. So to make sex less of a risk with birth control or even abortion is wrong. While I would not condone abortion as a first line means of birth control, it is odd that the anti-abortionists almost all oppose trying to prevent the pregnancies in the first place.

Growing up as little Baptist conservative, I was naturally a rabid anti-abortionist. I understand the naive views of those who worship the fetus because I have been one of them. I am glad that as an adult I have managed to care more for my fellow living and breathing human beings, my family and my wife, and worry less about all of the fetuses.

religion,abortion,atheism