11 years in jail for a stillbirth: did the Church in El Salvador support this legislation?

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IWantGod said:
So you don’t support the split between church and state or the split between Catholic law and state law. You want a theocracy right?
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“Theocracy” happens when priests (or religious) do the governing. Directly. Ex officio.

Vatican is a theocracy. States of Teutonic Order or Livonian Order were theocracies. States of archbishops of Cologne, Mainz and Trier in Holy Roman Empire were theocracies.

But, let’s say, Holy Roman Empire itself was not a theocracy. It was not ruled by a bishop, but by an emperor.

Likewise, Lithuania at about 1920 was not a theocracy, although some of its main politicians were priests. For example, Minister of Agriculture was a priest Mykolas Krupavičius. Another priest, Justinas Staugaitis, was Chairman of Seimas. Before that out of 20 signatories of Act of Independence 4 were priests. But they were elected (or appointed) just as any other politician, they did not end up in the office just because they were priests. And thus Lithuania of that time was not a theocracy.

So, no, no one here has proposed a “theocracy”. That would have had suspiciously little to do with the topic.

On the other hand, you seem to be in favour of “separation of Church and State” - meaning that Catholics are supposed to be “second class citizens”, where State must ignore their opinions, but can take opinions of everyone else into account.

Sorry, but that is neither very reasonable, nor very democratic. And I don’t think that’s an opinion a Catholic should hold.
 
Anytime one has the intent to kill, it is murder. Abortion is the intent to kill a life, and therefore that is murder.

A woman who punches another woman in the stomach, not knowing she is pregnant, and the child ends up dying in the womb, this is killing at its base. When you have an idea in mind, and its end is the death of a person, that is murder.
 
Hey, it is unfortunate, but if you have laws against something, then there is a non zero chance that someone innocent is going to be convicted of breaking those laws and have to spend a lot of time in prison unjustly. It is an imperfect system.

Therefore it stands to reason that if you vigorously enforced laws against abortion, then there is a non zero chance that some woman is going to be imprisoned for an abortion she didn’t commit.

Unfortunate, but that’s how the system works.

Maybe those women can offer up their unjust conviction to Christ and they will be rewarded in heaven with a martyrs crown.

But surely a few women unjustly convicted of abortion because they had a miscarriage somewhere besides a hospital is acceptable if it gets abortion outlawed, right?
 
Actually, if you really want to prevent abortions, then all fertile women should be required to take pregnancy tests every month and those found to be pregnant would be shipped off to 24/7 supervision to make sure they don’t do anything that could harm their fetus.

And if you have a problem with that, then it is obvious that you don’t care about babies.
 
MPat said:
On the other hand, you seem to be in favour of “separation of Church and State” - meaning that Catholics are supposed to be “second class citizens”, where State must ignore their opinions, but can take opinions of everyone else into account.
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What are you talking about? You seem to be of the opinion that you should be able to impose your religious convictions through secular law on the grounds that you are convinced that your faith is representative of actual reality. But that is not how it works, and it will never work like that no mater how much you want it to.Just because you believe that a human embryo has a personal soul does not mean that the state has the authority to impose that belief on the rest of society simply because that’s just your faith and it is not self evident. The existence of a personal soul is not the basis upon which we are assigned value in secular law, full stop… The best that religious institutions can argue for is that they should not be forced to perform abortions or provide contraceptives. That’s all.

If you want your religious convictions to become state law then you don’t really want a secular democracy and so it just becomes incredibly naive and ill informed to think you can achieve your goal through the mechanism of a secular democracy.

I don’t understand why you are not aware of that.
 
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That would be financially impractical for society and incredibly invasive. Policing women’s wombs 24/7?!!!. I don’t understand why you can’t see that would be a problem.
 
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I think I’ve figured it out. Any political position IWantGod disagrees with is a “religious conviction”. And it’s wrong to impose religious convictions via the state. Therefore only ideas he agrees with should be implemented in the law.
 
Obviously, we can’t trust women not to have abortions, so the safest course of action is to confine then until they give birth.
 
So lock all the women up that are pregnant, because we don’t trust women. This may work as a punchline to a joke, but in real life that would be an act of fascism.
 
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IWantGod said:
What are you talking about? You seem to be of the opinion that you should be able to impose your religious convictions through secular law on the grounds that you are convinced that your faith is representative of actual reality. But that is not how it works, and it will never work like that no mater how much you want it to.
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Every interest group, every citizen or group of citizens has a right to lobby the government to pass laws that they want.

Now, you seem to claim that the Church is an exception, that it cannot lobby the government, while all other interest group can. And it looks like you want to deny even individual Catholics the right to do that work for the Church. Why?

Or do you want to deny the interest groups the rights to lobby for the laws they want as well?

For that matter, slavery in America was abolished for religious reasons. Are you going to say that abolitionists were also wrong to lobby the government to do so?
IWantGod said:
The existence of a personal soul is not the basis upon which we are assigned value in secular law, full stop…
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Can you find a law that actually says so? 🙂
IWantGod said:
The best that religious institutions can argue for is that they should not be forced to perform abortions or provide contraceptives. That’s all.
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And how exactly have you decided that?
IWantGod said:
If you want your religious convictions to become state law then you don’t really want a secular democracy and so it just becomes incredibly naive and ill informed to think you can achieve your goal through the mechanism of a secular democracy.
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So, now you do agree that it is not somehow illegal to lobby for criminalisation of abortion, just that it won’t work?

I don’t know if it won’t work. It sure won’t work if no one tries. It probably won’t work instantly, but then, we can wait. Maybe we will succeed after tens of years, maybe after centuries.

Thus no, I do not think that such things can’t be achieved in a “secular democracy” (which, by the way, hasn’t been defined here). But if they cannot - is there some reason why “secular democracy” is supposed to be “non-negotiable”? It is one form of government among many.
 
MPat said:
Every interest group, every citizen or group of citizens has a right to lobby the government to pass laws that they want.

Now, you seem to claim that the Church is an exception,
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Not at all. I’m saying that the Church cannot impose matters of faith through secular law, simply because the underlying principles by which they operate are not the same… In other-words it is not a Christian democracy where its legal principles our grounded in God’s law, but rather it is a circular democracy and its law is grounded in pragmatism and social contracts.

You are acting like you are not aware of that, and i have to say this is baffling beyond comprehension.
 
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What IWantGod is doing here is basically an argument from tradition, i.e. we’ve done things this way for the last 45 years, therefore we can’t change it.

He’s yet to make any substantive arguments.
 
Or you are ignoring the argument, or maybe you do not fully comprehend the legal principles of the society you live in.
 
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I understand the principles, I just see that they’re insane and immoral.

You’ve yet to make an argument for why these principles are good.
 
Arkansan said:
What IWantGod is doing here is basically an argument from tradition, i.e. we’ve done things this way for the last 45 years, therefore we can’t change it.

He’s yet to make any substantive arguments.
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That is not true.
 
Arkansan said:
I understand the principles, I just see that they’re insane and immoral.
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The fact that you see it as insane and immoral is irrelevant. Its a secular democracy and if you do not support the principles its founded upon you will have to have a revolution to change it. You cannot vote it out.
 
IWantGod said:
Not at all. I’m saying that the Church cannot impose matters of faith through a secular law, simply because the underlying principles by which they operate are not the same…
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And how exactly is that different?

This “explanation” would only work if someone was suggesting that Pope or some bishop can just sign a piece of paper, and it would instantly become a secular law.

We are suggesting lobbying the government, just as any other interest group.

And you seem to say that no, we can’t even try.
IWantGod said:
In other-words it is not a Christian democracy where its legal principles our grounded in God’s law, but rather it is a circular democracy and its law is grounded in pragmatism and social contracts.
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Um, “Christian Democracy” is not a form of government, but ideology. The one that, at least supposedly, is the ideology of, let’s say, main German ruling party (CDU). Given that, are you going to call Germany names like “theocracy” too?

Also, again, can you offer some law that actually says so?
IWantGod said:
You are acting like you are not aware of that, and i have to say this is baffling beyond comprehension.
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Have you considered a possibility that you just haven’t explained your position very well? It is not “self-evident”, you know.
 
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