Abortion Analogies

[LeafByNiggle]

How would one go about trying to answer this arguments?

“Do you believe a fetus has the right to use a woman’s body without her consent?”

The question pre-supposes an unreasonable analogy. It asks us to consider the fetus as if it were a responsible individual with the ability to choose to use the woman’s body or not. In fact the case of a fetus is nothing at all like that. The fetus did not choose to use the woman’s body. The fetus has no other option. It is not like kicking out some squatter who has decided to pitch his tent on my lawn. A squatter made the decision to pitch his tent on my lawn. And that squatter can very well pick up his tent and go somewhere else. Such is not the case with a fetus. The fetus has been created in a unique position by no fault of its own. It is dependent on the woman for nourishment for a few months. Now one can argue all day long about whose fault it was that the fetus got there. But the fact is that the woman owes her consent to that fetus in a relationship that is unlike any other. The fetus is both a separate person and at the same time it is part of the woman’s body. One does not ask if my heart or my lungs has the right to use my body without my consent. So why should it be so surprising that a woman need not give her consent for her fetus to “use” her body?

 

[wynnejj]

One does not ask if my heart or my lungs has the right to use my body without my consent.

Your overall response is excellent.

If I may play devil’s advocate here, I might ask the question which so many Pro-Choice advocates would ask “Does a woman have the right to remove a blob of tissue before it becomes a person with self-awareness and pain centers?”.

Such advocates get the impression that Pro-Lifers are tugging at the heart strings of the voting public on a non-issue that is a blob of tissue. They recoil at the use of the term “baby” or “child”.

To me, the Pro-Life conversion effort must start in Christian circles to eradicate the sense that the early stages of human life are not a person with the rights of an individual.

 

[LeafByNiggle]

Your overall response is excellent.

If I may play devil’s advocate here, I might ask the question which so many Pro-Choice advocates would ask “Does a woman have the right to remove a blob of tissue before it becomes a person with self-awareness and pain centers?”…

Without making recourse to Catholic doctrine, I would just ask on what basis the notion of pain centers and self-awareness are to be taken as the markers for personhood? An adult person who is under anesthesia is temporarily deprived of both pain sensations and self-awareness. Does that mean this adult person is no longer a person and has just lost his right to life, and that anyone can kill him without guilt?

 

[wynnejj]

Without making recourse to Catholic doctrine, I would just ask on what basis the notion of pain centers and self-awareness are to be taken as the markers for personhood? An adult person who is under anesthesia is temporarily deprived of both pain sensations and self-awareness. Does that mean this adult person is no longer a person and has just lost his right to life, and that anyone can kill him without guilt?

That’s a good question to ask Pro-Choice advocates. They would probably respond that you chose two out of three of the pre-conditions of the question. The first is the premise that human life in its earliest stages is a blob of tissue in the process of developing brain centers that will eventually have the capacity of self-awareness and feel pain. An adult person under anasthesia already has these brain centers. In the case of Terry Schiavo, those brain centers (to those who believe that she was a permanent vegetable) were irreparably destroyed. In their mind, she was brain dead, ergo dead - a zombie so to speak. My response would be that the worth of man as distinct from an animal is the existence of the soul. From conception to natural death, that soul remains in the body and is what constitutes the basic sanctity of human life.

 

[vz71]

Such is not the case with a fetus. The fetus has been created in a unique position by no fault of its own. It is dependent on the woman for nourishment for a few months. Now one can argue all day long about whose fault it was that the fetus got there.

I appreciate the different way to argue the point.

Further though…the women provided the proper circumstance for the fetus to be conceived and grow.

To force the squater analogy, it would be as though you invited the squaters, built shelter and provided the utilities as well as food. And then decided they are trespassers.

 

[wynnejj]

The public considers priests Monsters because of child molestation.

In keeping with that theme, maybe God has exposed pedophilia (whether real or alleged) at this time in the Catholic Church’s history to chastise the clergy and warn them to route out all forms of child molestation - the most heinous being the slaughter of the innocents.

The movie “Silver Bullet” by Stephen King about a werewolf minister killing the town’s people makes a great allegory to illustrate my issue with the clergy, both Catholic and Protestant, for not being the outspoken voice for legal action in defense of the unborn from the Sunday pulpit. My premise is that inaction is tantamount to actively killing the unborn.

In the movie, I’m struck by several points:

(1) By the boy who sends the minister a note that says: “I know what you are! Why don’t you just kill yourself?”.

Many Pro-Life activists would say that the church should “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesars” (that is, pay your taxes and surrender your tax exempt status) in order to “Render unto God the things that are God’s.” (that is, all of God’s children as baptized souls).

(2) By the discussion about ‘private justice’. The townspeople are seeking vigilante justice. The peace officer says the law has a name for what the townspeople intend to do… it is called “private justice”. The father of a slain boy steps out from the shadows and says “Have you seen the body of my slain boy? You explain to my boy about ‘private justice’! As for me, I’m going to go out and get me a little ‘private justice’.”.

Is not the blood spilled upon the ground crying to the heavens: “Lord, have you seen the discarded remains of the least of your brethren? They dare talk about ‘social justice’. Lord, teach them ‘social justice’!”?

(3) By the bat with the inscription “Peacemaker” used to settle heated arguments of the townspeople at the local pub.

To me, it reads “Peace and Justice”, an argument offered to pacify and justify the Christian conscience for its criminal neglect of failing to insist that Christians must vote to make abortion illegal.

(4) By the minister in his human form, who goes after the disabled boy to kill him. He says that he considered killing himself but suicide is unacceptable by the church. So, he is going to have to murder the boy.

Unwilling to commit financial suicide in terms of tax status and the collection plate, the Pro-Life activist’s message that abortion must be made illegal is virtually killed in local parishes.

 

[John21652]

The question pre-supposes an unreasonable analogy. It asks us to consider the fetus as if it were a responsible individual with the ability to choose to use the woman’s body or not. In fact the case of a fetus is nothing at all like that. The fetus did not choose to use the woman’s body. The fetus has no other option. It is not like kicking out some squatter who has decided to pitch his tent on my lawn. A squatter made the decision to pitch his tent on my lawn. And that squatter can very well pick up his tent and go somewhere else. Such is not the case with a fetus. The fetus has been created in a unique position by no fault of its own. It is dependent on the woman for nourishment for a few months. Now one can argue all day long about whose fault it was that the fetus got there. But the fact is that the woman owes her consent to that fetus in a relationship that is unlike any other. The fetus is both a separate person and at the same time it is part of the woman’s body. One does not ask if my heart or my lungs has the right to use my body without my consent. So why should it be so surprising that a woman need not give her consent for her fetus to “use” her body?

Some years ago there was a philosophical analogy put forward about a baby “using” someone’s womb.

The story went something like suppose you woke up in a hospital and found yourself connected by tubes to another person. Horrified, you asked the medical personel what was going on. You are then told that the other person is a world famous violinist whose kidneys have failed. They have connected you to him so his blood can be filtered by your kidneys. However, it is only a temporary situation and will only last for nine months, after which he will be cured and able to live normally and you can go. Of course you are free to unplug and go now, if you so desire, but the world famous violinist, a totally unique musician the likes of which the world has never seen before, will surely die. Do you unplug?

Of course, you can speculate endlessly about how you got there.

 

[Krakatoa]

I think the Holocaust is an excellent analogy to abortion. In both cases, one group of people decides that another group of people have no rights and are unfit to live.

 

[stephe1987]

^ I agree. Abortion and euthenasia are two growing problems, and are like the Holocaust in so many ways.

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I think the reasons for abortion are not excusable. A woman has no other choice. Really? There is government aid to support children and pregnant women.

If she is being raped (statutory or not), it needs to be reported to the police. Sorry, all abortion does is cover up crime and allow serial rapists to get away with their crimes and to keep the girl/woman imprisoned even longer. It’s happened time and again and it’s disgusting that it’s being allowed to happen just because of this so-called “right to privacy.” Men get away with their perverse crimes because voters decided that child abuse doesn’t have to be reported to the police if it leads to pregnancy.

If she was being irresponsible/selfish, she needs to take responsibility for her actions. The new child is not at fault and should not be murdered. Should she be stoned to death for having sex outside of marriage (which can also spread disease, esp. since, even if one is used, condoms have 1:12 chance of slipping off or breaking)? Of course not. But someone who didn’t commit a sin has less rights than someone who did? That is not justice.

There are over 100,000 married couples on waiting lists to adopt newborns, and something like 7,000 on a list to adopt newborns with disabilities.

If there is a danger to the mother’s life (extremely rare in this day and age), she needs medical care, not an abortion.

Not to mention all the women who later regretted having an abortion.

Or women whose boyfriends forced them into abortions (sometimes at gunpoint) and then left them.

Abortion is terrible and only serves men to let them treat women badly (sex objects to satisfy their urges) with no consequence or responsibility. Sometimes women from broken homes or other bad situations (a woman I know slept around at bars after her husband left her) and get abortions. But they later get out of the situation and realize what they’ve done. Abortion hurts women and murders babies.

---

Some people are now pressing for young babies up to a few months old to be able to be murdered. Once abortion is okay, everything is okay.

If a fetus is a “potential” person, then a baby becomes a “potential” toddler, a toddler becomes a “potential” child, a child becomes a “potential” teenager, a teenager becomes a “potential” young adult, a young adult becomes a “potential” middle-aged adult, and a middle-aged adult becomes a “potential” elderly person.

The same societies that don’t blink an eye at abortioon are the ones who encourage euthenasia, and some people are fleeing their country in order to die naturally and not be “put down” once the government decides they are of no further use to society.

So in other words, everyone is either a “potential” later state in human life, or they’re too old to work so they should be euthenized.

 

[St_Francis]

How would one go about trying to answer this arguments?

“Do you believe a fetus has the right to use a woman’s body without her consent?”

They don’t seem to see the fetus as a valuable human life, as we do, so I’m not sure what I would say at this point.

Some years ago there was a philosophical analogy put forward about a baby “using” someone’s womb.

The story went something like suppose you woke up in a hospital and found yourself connected by tubes to another person. Horrified, you asked the medical personel what was going on. You are then told that the other person is a world famous violinist whose kidneys have failed. They have connected you to him so his blood can be filtered by your kidneys. However, it is only a temporary situation and will only last for nine months, after which he will be cured and able to live normally and you can go. Of course you are free to unplug and go now, if you so desire, but the world famous violinist, a totally unique musician the likes of which the world has never seen before, will surely die. Do you unplug?

Of course, you can speculate endlessly about how you got there.

I think that the first kbjection is answered in terms of consensual sex, but that non-consensual sex and the violinist situation can both be answered this way, and i hope I get it down clearly…

Imagine that some bad person comes to your hoise to do you or your family harm. You have the right to self-defense, even if defening yourself means killing the other person. So you kill the bad guy.

However, you then discover that on his way in, he left a baby just inside your door.

Do you have the right to kill the baby?

 

[Warrior1979]

Semantics. Parables are simply disparate stories showing parallels, which is the essence of what the OP is trying to achieve.

The first thing that comes to mind when mentioning, say, the Holocaust is Hitler and Jewish genocide. The abortion analogy simply gets lost, due to offensiveness and the lack of parallel between no Hitler and Jewish genocide parallel. You may believe there is, but the general public does not, thus making it an entirely ineffective analogy for the purpose of education. Hardcore pro-lifers speaking to the choir will listen to this, but it will be shunned by 99.99% of everyone else.

Evasive response. All one learns is that you have nothing to add to the pot.

Not true…but with that said, not adding anything to the pot is better than poisoning it.

 

[TheRealJuliane]

It would seem that our friend Militus Sanctus has closed his account and all his posts on this thread have been removed. I did not put him on my ignore list but he is not listed in the member list any longer.

 

[JReducation]

First, to those who ask whether a fetus has the right to use a woman’s body without her consent the answer is simple. “Yes, because that’s where it belongs. It no more needs consent than a child does to live in his parents’ home. That’s why we arrest parents who put children on the street. The child has a right to be there, whether you like it or not. If the child needs the mother’s consent to use her womb, why not take it the next step. Shouldn’t the child need the parent’s consent to live in their home?” If we’re going to use analogies, we can say that we should not limit the parents’ right to consent. People have the right to return a product that they buy and decide not to keep. Why not allow them to get rid of a child after they take him home?

Yet, in most societies, abandonment and neglect are crimes. Parents can put a child up for adoption, but they cannot abandon their child on the street. Even in the safe zones, such as hospitals and fire stations, if you want to leave your child, you must do so without being identified. If you are identified, the state can file against you in a court of law for abandonment. Why? Because the child has a right to be with the parent and the parent cannot deny consent. Parental rights and duties must be transferred through a process that protects the interest of the child. Denying the child the use of a womb is not in the interest of the child and it is not a transfer of rights and duties. It is a refusal to accept them.

Catholics need to get off the rape and incest train. Everyone else should too, but Catholics have a great moral duty to do so, because they know better. The number of children conceived through rape or incest is negligible. Second, the great lie that society has told us is that a woman who has been raped or who has conceived through an incestuous relationship can be relieved of her pain, if the child is killed.

There are three problems with this thought.

1. It’s a lie. It does not work that way. Any psychiatrist, psychologist or spiritual director who deals with these women knows that PTSD does not go away because you take away the consequences. PTSD is not about the consequences; it’s about the event. The person is stuck in the event and needs help to put closure on it and move forward, even if she has to live with the consequences. The soldier who loses his limbs on the battlefield comes home with PTSD. He can heal, but he will never recover his limbs. Part of the healing is living with the outcome of the event. In this case, it is living with having given birth to a child.
2. You may never intentionally kill an innocent person to alleviate the suffering of another human being or even to save another person’s life.
3. Whether the material found in the womb has consciousness, feels pain, or is viable or not, does not determine whether it is human. If you take material expelled by a woman who miscarries, you will find the genes from both parents,intertwined to form a unique individual. You will find that it has gender, even though the organs are not present. You will find that it has a central nervous system that coordinates cell preproduction. You will find that unless you clone it, you cannot artificially duplicate the genetic map. Had you not interfered with it, it would have evolved into a person just like you. There is nothing that we have that is missing from the material in the womb. This whole obsession with consciousness and self-awareness is another desperate search to justify killing a baby, since we can no longer argue that it’s not a human being, due to the progress in genetics. We can even trace its family tree within hours after conception, because the genetic map comes into existence when the sperm cell fertilizes the ovum.

It behooves Catholics to get away from even discussing the possibility that incest and rape can be analogous to some other situation that may allow some wiggle room. That’s the problem with analogies. We can use analogies for the good. But we can also use them to justify great evil. There is no analogy that can mitigate the evil of abortion.

Fraternally,

Br. JR, OSF

 

[Muze]

How would one go about trying to answer this arguments?

“Do you believe a fetus has the right to use a woman’s body without her consent?”

They don’t seem to see the fetus as a valuable human life, as we do, so I’m not sure what I would say at this point.

She gave her consent when she accepted sperm from the guy, even if they were trying to prevent conception.

The only exception is rape, and for that, we don’t kill one victim to make the other one feel better.

 

[wynnejj]

The assertion that the use of analogies to the “general public” may take away focus from anti-abortion discourse using direct analysis may have its merit. However, there is a whole class of people who should know that abortion should be illegal and to whom most of these “exagerated analogies”, as some would consider them, are directed.

These exagerated analogies do offend and are meant to shame by calling to task the Christian conscience as “Vipers! Hypocrites!”.

Christians know about Herod’s efforts to kill Jesus and the lengths that Herod would go in the slaughter of the innocents. Christians were mauled to death in Roman colliseums, slaughtered as innocent lambs, by an uncaring nation that considered Christians as slave property, non-citizens, and undesirables. No Roman seriously questioned whether Christians were human. They simply considered them undesirables to be denied citizenship and treated as slave property. They could be disposed of at will and in any manner.

The use of the Holocaust perpetrated by Hitler is offensive to Christians precisely because it labels Christians precisely what they are when they allow their laws to perpetrate such crimes - “Vipers! Hypocrites!”. It begs the question of just how low can a Christian nation go.

We all know that Hitler behaved as a monster and sociopath who came to power in a Christian nation. It begs the question that if Hitler was a monster, do we not perpetuate his legacy that undesirable, yet undeniably human, beings can be eliminated at the whim of a dictator, a society, or even their own fathers and mothers. It shames the Christian for its lethargy on behalf of the threat to innocent life and insinuates that inaction makes us co-conspirators - therefore, monsters and sociopaths - in mass genocide.

Pro-Choice Christians - politicians and those who elect them - are simply vipers and hypocrites. They know that Jesus became Man precisely at the point of conception. They know that by extension, so do all human beings become Man at the point of conception. They know that Jesus life in the womb was a sacred trust of His Mother, just as all unborn are a sacred trust of their mothers - most especially after having given consent.

Pro-Choice Catholics - politicians and those who elect them - are the worst kind of viper and hypocrite. To entertain the idea that the earliest stages of human life are just a “blob of tissue” is to deny the sacredness of the Real Presence of God in Man in the same way Catholic detractors would use the term “cracker” to deny the Real Presence of Jesus in the Holy Eucharist.

“Hard-core” Pro-Life activists in the Catholic Church are not politically correct, and often treated as unwelcome undesirables. We call to task the Catholic status quo as “Vipers! Hypocrites!”.

 

[beafedor]

Some years ago there was a philosophical analogy put forward about a baby “using” someone’s womb. The story went something like suppose you woke up in a hospital and found yourself connected by tubes to another person. Horrified, you asked the medical personel what was going on. You are then told that the other person is a world famous violinist whose kidneys have failed. They have connected you to him so his blood can be filtered by your kidneys. However, it is only a temporary situation and will only last for nine months, after which he will be cured and able to live normally and you can go. Of course you are free to unplug and go now, if you so desire, but the world famous violinist, a totally unique musician the likes of which the world has never seen before, will surely die. Do you unplug? Of course, you can speculate endlessly about how you got there.

John, that is an interesting example but one flaw is that it presupposes that conception is always an unfortunate accident that no one has control over except a group of scientists in a lab. Of course it negates God’s will to create each and every one of us and the parent’s will to have that child. It fails to present a conceived child as the fruit and fulfillment of a loving union. Some people might say that what I just said doesn’t apply to them, but it is consistent with a Catholic definition of conception/pregnancy. In your example it seems that each child is “unwanted” and “unplanned”.
Another flaw is that this violinist will surely die if you ‘unplug’ him from you whereas babies born prematurely can survive (however in that case the moment when the pregnancy ends is not the choice of the one who has the power to “unplug”). Another problem is that after the pregnancy period is over, the mom just doesn’t walk away. Life began 9 month ago (or less if premature birth) but now the child is still dependent on her to be fed and taken care of. And what about the dad? What about love, what about responsibility? Thank you for bringing up this example because if makes me think hard about these subjects.

 

[JMartyr73340]

When I pray outside an abortion clinic, I fill my heart with love for those women and men. I can’t imagine comparing abortion to the Shoah will make their hearts more tender. I was an abortion supporter and am grateful that God brought me to love life and forgave my foolishness. But I don’t think calling me a NAZI would have converted me any sooner, do you? What is, after all, the point of our witness? To save two lives. That takes action, not just words of hate. Let’s all make a special point to stock those shelves in the local pro-life clinic or woman’s shelter. .

I’m not entirely sure how to reply to this. I commend the good work this person is doing on behalf of the pro-life cause. The person who wrote this is clearly a compassionate person.

One thing I don’t like about the post is its heavy use of rhetoric. The poster is trying to make me feel guilty for suggesting that abortion is as evil an act as the sexual abuse of a child. But if you strip away all the rhetoric, there is a much simpler argument that is being presented. It is a very common argument that, I am beginning to see, is a fundamental underlying principle of almost all liberal ideology, liberal theology and liberal religions (like Buddhism).

The idea is that compassion (for individuals) and conviction (about the truth) are at odds with each others. In others words, people who strongly condemn great evils (who try to talk to others about the evilness of certain acts and how deeply they offend God) are somehow lacking in compassion and empathy.

The Christian rule has always been “Love the sinner, hate the sin.” You need to love the sinner with all your heart, with all your mind and your soul. But the same applies for the second part. You need to hate the sin with all your heart, with all your mind and all your soul. The problem today is that people do not understand the difference between hating the sin and hating the sinner. They think if you condemn the sin, you automatically condemn the sinner. They think that in order to love the sinner, you need to go easy on the sin. How you apply this rule in every-day life is hard to explain. But there are some basic principles I think we can apply.

First, there is a difference between public and personal discourse. Some examples of public discourse would be an abortion protest, an abortion debate, or an article in a newspaper. An example of private discourse would be a woman talking to a priest privately about her abortion. It is in public discourse that we need to firmly express our hatred and condemnation of particular sinful behaviors. It is in these situations that I might use my analogies – but only because purely logical/factual debates are no longer effective with most people. It is in personal discourse that we need to be more cautious in how we talk, because only God fully understands the circumstances of each individual.

Second, there is a huge difference between a repentant sinner and a non-repentant sinner. A lot of people don’t understand the difference or ignore the difference when discussing how Christians are to engage in public discourse (the above post does that). Jesus had a very different attitude towards repentant and non-repentant sinners. Jesus was very tough on non-repentant people:

*Then Jesus began to denounce the cities where he had done most of his miracles, because they hadn’t turned from their sins and turned to God.

”What horrors await you, Korazin and Bethsaida! For if the miracles I did in you had been done in wicked Tyre and Sidon, their people would have sat in deep repentance long ago, clothed in sackcloth and throwing ashes on their heads to show their remorse. I assure you, Tyre and Sidon will be better off on the judgment day than you! And you people of Capernaum, will you be exalted to heaven? No, you will be brought down to the place of the dead.* For if the miracles I did for you had been done in Sodom, it would still be here today. I assure you, Sodom will be better off on the judgment day than you."*

Jesus was loving and forgiving towards those who repented, but he was hard on those who did not. Suppose a woman who had an abortion came up to me and said:

“*I’m glad I had an abortion. I have no remorse at all. It was the best decision in my life. In fact, my friends and I had a party after my abortion to celebrate my choice. It was fun. You people who say it is wrong are freaks.” *

There is a huge difference between how I would talk to this woman, and how I would talk to a woman like beafador. Is such a woman, in fact, acting like a Nazi or Pedophile? Does she deserve to hear it? Difficult to say. Do we have a moral obligation to point out her moral blindness, regardless of her immediate reaction? I’m not sure.

 

[JMartyr73340]

When I pray outside an abortion clinic, I fill my heart with love for those women and men. I can’t imagine comparing abortion to the Shoah will make their hearts more tender. I was an abortion supporter and am grateful that God brought me to love life and forgave my foolishness. But I don’t think calling me a NAZI would have converted me any sooner, do you? What is, after all, the point of our witness? To save two lives. That takes action, not just words of hate. Let’s all make a special point to stock those shelves in the local pro-life clinic or woman’s shelter. Lots of girls are thrown out when finding themselves pregnant. Give them a hand. It’s better to turn our attentions to helping those in need than in condemning when love is called for.

There is one other thing I wanted to write. My logic professor said that sometimes the only way to counter rhetoric is with rhetoric, so I am going to try. Please forgive the hypocrisy.

Suppose tomorrow the government made a law saying that children between the ages of two and twelve could be killed if they were causing severe financial or emotional difficulties for their parents. Suppose the government established hundreds of “Children Elimination Facilities” around the country. Suppose hundreds of parents all over the country started bringing their children to these facilities. Suppose there was no outcry by the public, and that many Americans actually thought it was a good idea. Suppose that every day on your way to work you walked by one of these “facilities” and heard the cries of children being shot.

Now, I suppose you could say that we need to be compassionate towards these parents, and that making extreme arguments would be ineffective. We should just go into facilties and “stock the shelves” with pamphlets. We should just pray for them. I would agree with all of that. Those are good actons. The problem is that sometimes the evil being done is so great, more serious action is needed. Regardless of the outcome, we must speak out against it. Occasionally a situation arises where you have a moral obligation to disturb people.

Sometimes purely logical/compassionate arguments work, and sometime disturbing arguments work. Jesus used both.

 

[wynnejj]

Suppose tomorrow the government made a law saying that children between the ages of two and twelve could be killed if they were causing severe financial or emotional difficulties for their parents. Suppose the government established hundreds of “Children Elimination Facilities” around the country. Suppose hundreds of parents all over the country started bringing their children to these facilities. Suppose there was no outcry by the public, and that many Americans actually thought it was a good idea. Suppose that every day on your way to work you walked by one of these “facilities” and heard the cries of children being shot.

Sniff. Sniff. I feel a little tear in my eye. My first thread on CAF dealt with this very subject.

It was entitled “Which is more serious - killing the born or unborn?”.
forums.catholic-questions.org/showthread.php?t=266768

At the time, I was in a crisis of faith because I couldn’t understand the relative silence on the abortion issue coming from the Catholic Church. I watched everybody receiving Our Lord at Mass in the Holy Eucharist, yet little to nothing seemed to be said from the pulpit or in conversation with other Catholics about the abortion issue in my experience. Thankfully, the issue is being treated more directly and openly today.

 

[JMartyr73340]

Thankfully, the issue is being treated more directly and openly today.

I’m glad the priests in America have enough fortitude and courage to address the issue directly. The Church in Canada is very liberal minded. Most of the priests I’ve met are very “sympathetic” towards the pro-choice movement. The few priests who are firmly pro-life are afraid to speak because they may be fined or, in the worse case, arrested.

There is an extreme political correctness in Canada which has slowly eroded our freedom to speak openly on moral issues such as abortion and gay marriage. You guys need to be very careful who you vote for, or the same thing will happen in your country.