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Nom_the_Wise
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NO, I’M NOT. You have demonstrated the strawman fallacy once again.
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Nom_the_Wise
Guest
It wouldn’t?
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mapleoak
Guest
If you don’t mean what you say, don’t say it.NO, I’M NOT. You have demonstrated the strawman fallacy once again.
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LCMS_No_More
Guest
Of course, you are correct. There’s no way abortion will be outlawed in our democratic republic until the people see it as wrong. That means that people, like us, who believe in the sanctity of human life, actually have to be out there doing the hard work of being agents for real social change.
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Nom_the_Wise
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Nom_the_Wise
Guest
I have been saying the same thing all along. People like you (and others, I don’t mean to single you out, but you’re one of them) have become so sensitive and reactionary in a volatile way to anything that even seems to *hint *at being against a no-tolerance policy. There is far too much word-twisting in the pro-life campaign to be effective anymore. It will stagnate without recourse to Christ, and discernment, and a no-tolerance policy towards logical fallacy.If you don’t mean what you say, don’t say it.
This issue is too important to allow the world to turn a deaf ear to abortion, when the pro-life campaign revels far too often in pithy slogans and not service.
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fix
Guest
Why must it be that way? The Church does not say that. Logic does not say that. Why can’t it be both together? For better, or worse, the civil law is an important structuring principle in people’s lives.
But, that is not the authentic case people are asserting. The law must protect innocent life. That does not mean we say throw away some misguided teenage girl.
Christ is not opposed to just civil law. In fact, he requires it. The law can always be misued but that is no justification for not enacting what is good and necessary.
You are only focusing on personal moral culpability. That does not prove we should not have laws to protect innocent life. It seems you are contradicting yourself when you only accent some poor teenager while not mentioning the innocent life to be taken.
Are you claiming the poor cannot be moral? Do you claim poor people are not capable of acting correctly? This is like those who support condoms in Africa as if those folks are too dumb to act justly. It is insulting.
We each can name many circumstances that could mitigate why certain persons may act as they should not act. How does that lead us to decide not to outlaw killing innocent persons?
Are we not talking about laws to prohibit murder? There can be many ways of crafting laws and many ways to prosecute. But, that does not mean we ought to allow killing because some particular segment of society may be less personally culpable for these crimes.
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Nom_the_Wise
Guest
Despite my being against pithy slogans, this one is actually quite good. It throws light on the fact that vulnerable or endangered species are protected by law, but not unborn children.
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nannygirl
Guest
All kinds of women get abortions for different reasons. Of the women I know who have had abortions, none of them were poor or unable to take care of a baby. They simply didn’t want a baby at that time in their lives. One gal had 2 abortions in one year. This is not a poor, stupid, uneducated person. She just “wasn’t ready” at the time. And now over 20 years later, she cries herself to sleep some nights deeply regretting that she had her own children killed and wishing it had not been so easy. She even named them and thinks about them on what would have been their birthdays. I have consoled her many times, but she will NEVER get over it. There are thousands of women who are going through this.
It doesn’t affect just women either. A man very close to me got his girlfriend in high school pregnant. He wanted to get married, but the parents all decided an abortion would be best. She was 17. He had no say in the matter about his own child. He still cries and that happened in 1968. I can’t help but think that adoption could have been the ideal solution for these situations. Yes, you would miss your child, but they would be alive.
One of my customers (I’m a barber) recently started dating a girl he knew from high school. They are both 20 years old. He lost interest after she told him she had had 7 abortions and didn’t see anything wrong with it.
There is plenty of help for any woman who is contemplating abortion, but sadly, many don’t really want it.
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Fitswimmer
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And banning it legally won’t change those women’s minds about it one bit. Calling them murderers won’t make them suddenly see the light and see that fetus as a baby.All kinds of women get abortions for different reasons. Of the women I know who have had abortions, none of them were poor or unable to take care of a baby. They simply didn’t want a baby at that time in their lives. One gal had 2 abortions in one year. This is not a poor, stupid, uneducated person. She just “wasn’t ready” at the time. And now over 20 years later, she cries herself to sleep some nights deeply regretting that she had her own children killed and wishing it had not been so easy. She even named them and thinks about them on what would have been their birthdays. I have consoled her many times, but she will NEVER get over it. There are thousands of women who are going through this.
It doesn’t affect just women either. A man very close to me got his girlfriend in high school pregnant. He wanted to get married, but the parents all decided an abortion would be best. She was 17. He had no say in the matter about his own child. He still cries and that happened in 1968. I can’t help but think that adoption could have been the ideal solution for these situations. Yes, you would miss your child, but they would be alive.
One of my customers (I’m a barber) recently started dating a girl he knew from high school. They are both 20 years old. He lost interest after she told him she had had 7 abortions and didn’t see anything wrong with it.
There is plenty of help for any woman who is contemplating abortion, but sadly, many don’t really want it.
The pro life movement needs to take a good long look at how it works to create a culture of life in America. Since the majority of Americans believe that abortion should be legal, the first task is to change that mindset-not to simply condemn it, call them unfeeling and uncaring or supporters of murder.
Nobody’s mind will ever be changed by tactics that start off by insulting or demonizing them.
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mapleoak
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You are mistaken in saying that people who want to protect the unborn from being murdered are interested only in ‘pithy slogans’. It is the pro-abortion crowd who constantly twists the issue away from the fact that a person is being killed and the fact that they need to be protected and redirects the focus in some other fashion. They direct it to such things as girls in jail, rape/incest arguments, poor and needy plights, etc. Anything but outrage and shock that innocent people are being killed. This is where the outrage SHOULD be.
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Nom_the_Wise
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The Church has the Doctrine of Free Will. That it staunchly advocates life does not preclude the fact that people have the “right” to disobey God. Even God does not take our free will away. We are being lazy to merely pass a no-tolerance law rather than working among the poor, which Jesus himself commanded us to do.
There are those on this thread who would disagree with you.
I did not say that we should not have laws, but like the OP suggested, a social change must come before a legal one will ever be enacted. **And it must discern culpability, yes. ** especially when handing down judgments. This is a chicken and the egg argument. The chicken is social change, which will lay the egg of a legal change. You must have the chicken in order to lay the egg. It is logical. It cannot, will not happen any other way without damaging the movement in general.
You haven’t been reading my posts closely enough. I also accented, by contrast, those women who have *recreational *abortions.
No.
Are *you *insulted? Are you the poor? Clearly you’ve never worked with them. I’m not talking about someone living check to check who doesn’t have enough money to go to a McDonald’s whenever they want. That you are articulate enough to have reasoned your argument and typed this out shows that you are not “the poor.” The poor are uneducated to a fault. They lack the interpersonal tools and the monetary resources that most of us take for granted. The poor are tedious, boorish, vulgar, petty, and beautiful all at the same time. Christ commanded us to work for them. I have. This is one of the commands of Christ too many Christians ignore. **Go to an impoverished neighborhood. Let experience inform your ignorance. **You will be enriched by the experience, and your faith informed in a way that only *reading *the Gospels cannot provide. *Live *the Gospels.
The legal change must occur only after a social change, hopefully enacted by the work of Christians.
No. We are talking about laws to prohibit abortion.
How will you stop it then? Merely with a law? We stand up for the Gospel. We act as missionaries to our own people. It is the mistake, and the laziness of this country (The U.S. I should clarify as the OP is from London) that all social change happens because of the actions of lawmakers. In our laziness we are handing over our moral imperative to act as agents of Christ, trying to pawn it off on Washington D.C. by suggesting that legislation will save us. Do you not believe that Christ is alive? Do you not believe that God is our first recourse? You cannot have a law until hearts are changed. A law will not do that. But Christ will.
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Nom_the_Wise
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nannygirl
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Sheesh! I’ve never insulted or demonized anyone or called them an unfeeling and uncaring supporter of murder! I think you have me confused with someone else.
I used to be a man-hating feminist who would argue that no one could tell me what I could or couldn’t do with my own body. My poor husband! Then the Hound of Heaven got ahold of me and completely changed my way of thinking. Once when I was a feminist I attended a “pro-choice” rally at our state capitol. We were a noisy, rebellious bunch- mean-spirited and rude to the pro-lifers. But they were very sweet to us, even offering us seats next to them. It was VERY disarming and I have never forgotten that. It was the beginning of my conversion. So I believe you catch more flies with honey.
Those Christians showed me Christ.My post was about my experiences with those who have suffered because of their awful choice. My shoulder has been cried on countless times. Can you imagine how you would feel knowing that you deprived someone of their life? You would have to live with that pain the rest of your life. Abortion had always been illegal before. Why is is legal now? What changed to make people think it is OK? Could it be rebellion against God?
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Joe_5859
Guest
Okay, I realize I’m jumping into the middle of a discussion that is in full swing (when I haven’t even read all the posts 
), but I will toss in my two cents anyway…
Is there any reson we can’t work both for making abortion completely illegal and work at changing people’s hearts about abortion? Most everyone I know that is heavily involved in pro-life work is working for both of these things, not one or the other. (And actually, the ones that favor one over the other tend to favor the changing hearts to the neglect of the legal aspect. I think it’s an unfair media caricature of the pro-life movement that pro-lifers are only concerned with making abortion illegal without offering tangible help to people.)
I undertsand the OP’s sentiment, but I don’t think it’s entirely true that the social change must precede the legal change. I think there are times where the change in the law comes first. How many people thought that file sharing over the internet was just fine until the laws were made saying it wasn’t? Should the lawmakers have waited until the majority of people understood the immorality of downloading music off the internet before they made it illegal? (Perhaps this is not the best analogy, but it’s the first one that came to mind.) I think that, at least in some cases, a change in the law can be the impetus for a change in people’s hearts. Would that happen with abortion? I can’t really say.
I think our best approach should be to work for both social and legal changes. There’s no reason we have to do one first and put the other on the backburner.
If anything, I think there are many in the pro-life movement that are uncomfortable fighting for legal changes. They would much prefer to engage in sidewalk counseling or volunteer at a crisis pregnancy center than to lobby Capitol Hill.
), but I will toss in my two cents anyway…Is there any reson we can’t work both for making abortion completely illegal and work at changing people’s hearts about abortion? Most everyone I know that is heavily involved in pro-life work is working for both of these things, not one or the other. (And actually, the ones that favor one over the other tend to favor the changing hearts to the neglect of the legal aspect. I think it’s an unfair media caricature of the pro-life movement that pro-lifers are only concerned with making abortion illegal without offering tangible help to people.)
I undertsand the OP’s sentiment, but I don’t think it’s entirely true that the social change must precede the legal change. I think there are times where the change in the law comes first. How many people thought that file sharing over the internet was just fine until the laws were made saying it wasn’t? Should the lawmakers have waited until the majority of people understood the immorality of downloading music off the internet before they made it illegal? (Perhaps this is not the best analogy, but it’s the first one that came to mind.) I think that, at least in some cases, a change in the law can be the impetus for a change in people’s hearts. Would that happen with abortion? I can’t really say.
I think our best approach should be to work for both social and legal changes. There’s no reason we have to do one first and put the other on the backburner.
If anything, I think there are many in the pro-life movement that are uncomfortable fighting for legal changes. They would much prefer to engage in sidewalk counseling or volunteer at a crisis pregnancy center than to lobby Capitol Hill.
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nannygirl
Guest
I agree. We have to remember that to some people, if something is legal that means it must be OK. So I think both approaches done in a professional, calm manner can do the most good. I also think that praying the Rosary across the street from the clinics (no signs or yelling or approaching anyone) is a great way to show that we care. I experienced this show of love many years ago BC. After a wild night of partying, my neighbor came to my door and told me she was praying for me. Another step on my way to Christ…
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mapleoak
Guest
Not sure what this has to do with the wrongness of abortion, the rightness of coming to the unborns defense, or the desire to protect the innocent with the weight of the law.
Laws protecting the unborn are just as neccessary as laws protecting the 6 year old school child as well as ones 30 year old neighbor as well as Grandma. Would you say the law that protects grandma from murder is just laziness?
And you reason this how? If most people believe killing Grandma is okay, do we repeal the law of murder until a social change is in order?
**
especially when handing down judgments.**In all legal courses of action, each case is judged on its own merit in a court of law. Why should abortion be any different. This is the strawman.
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mapleoak
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Moral outrage is a good thing. It is part of the motivation to seek correction of the outrage. Their is a difference between being outraged and the various actions of manifesting ones outrage. The method by which one seeks to remedy the situation causing outrage is different from righteous anger.
**
**by stubbornly relying on tactics that have been proven to be ineffective?
And you can show how making abortion illegal has PROVEN to be ineffective and will allow abortion to continue? You can show how displaying the reality of abortion is ineffective and hasn’t saved lives? You can show how picketing, counseling, providing aid to troubled families, etc., is ineffective? There are many tools in the pro-life aresenal. Which ones are you referring to that don’t save lives and allow abortions to continue?
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mapleoak
Guest
No. Though some will have you believe its a ‘this or that’ situation and use it to demonize the effort to make abortion illegal.
As I pointed out earlier, pro-lifers are generally some of the most charitable people you will meet. Their whole lives are dedicated to the pursuit of justice for the living, both born and unborn.
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Nom_the_Wise
Guest
I agree that **both **must be worked for. But they are inter-related. I have read too many posts on this thread that seen to convey a misguided belief that the law is enough, and that once a law is passed then everyone can pat themselves on the back for a job well done. I’ve said this better in previous posts.
I favor changing hearts first, as the natural progression to the law. Seek you first the Kingdom of Heaven, the rest will come. Though I favor one, both must be worked for, but a law will continue to be blocked without a change of heart. We want a law that honors unborn humans to be passed, don’t we? (mapleoak?)…
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